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Jerry Fodor

Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 - November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. He held the position of State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Rutgers University and was the author of many works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, in which he laid the groundwork for the modularity of mind and the language of thought hypotheses, among other ideas. He was known for his provocative and sometimes polemical style of argumentation and as "one of the principal philosophers of mind of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. In addition to having exerted an enormous influence on virtually every portion of the philosophy of mind literature since 1960, Fodor's work has had a significant impact on the development of the cognitive sciences."

Fodor and the nature of mental states

In his article "Propositional Attitudes" (1978), Fodor introduced the idea that mental states are relations between individuals and mental representations. Despite the changes in many of his positions over the years, the idea that intentional attitudes are relational has remained unchanged from its original formulation up to the present time. In that article, he attempted to show how mental representations, specifically sentences in the language of thought, are necessary to explain this relational nature of mental states. Fodor considers two alternative hypotheses. The first completely denies the relational character of mental states and the second considers mental states as two-place relations. The latter position can be further subdivided into the Carnapian view that such relations are between individuals and sentences of natural languages and the Fregean view that they are between individuals and the propositions expressed by such sentences. Fodor's own position, instead, is that to properly account for the nature of intentional attitudes, it is necessary to employ a three-place relation between individuals, representations and propositional contents. Considering mental states as three-place relations in this way, representative realism makes it possible to hold together all of the elements necessary to the solution of this problem. Further, mental representations are not only the objects of beliefs and desires, but are also the domain over which mental processes operate. They can be considered the ideal link between the syntactic notion of mental content and the computational notion of functional architecture. These notions are, according to Fodor, our best explanation of mental processes. CANNOTANSWER

Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modularity of mind and the language of thought hypotheses, and he is recognized as having had "an enormous influence on virtually every portion of the philosophy of mind literature since 1960." At the time of his death in 2017, he held the position of State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Rutgers University, and had taught previously at the City University of New York Graduate Center and MIT. Early life and education Jerry Fodor was born in New York City on April 22, 1935, and was of Jewish descent. He received his A.B. degree (summa cum laude) from Columbia University in 1956, where he wrote a senior thesis on Søren Kierkegaard and studied with Sidney Morgenbesser, and a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University in 1960, under the direction of Hilary Putnam. Academic career From 1959 to 1986 Fodor was on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From 1986 to 1988 he was a full professor at the City University of New York (CUNY). From 1988 until his retirement in 2016 he was State of New Jersey Professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he was emeritus. Besides his interest in philosophy, Fodor passionately followed opera and regularly wrote popular columns for the London Review of Books on that and other topics. Philosophical work Fodor argued that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, are relations between individuals and mental representations. He maintained that these representations can only be correctly explained in terms of a language of thought (LOT) in the mind. Furthermore, this language of thought itself is an actually existing thing that is codified in the brain and not just a useful explanatory tool. Fodor adhered to a species of functionalism, maintaining that thinking and other mental processes consist primarily of computations operating on the syntax of the representations that make up the language of thought. For Fodor, significant parts of the mind, such as perceptual and linguistic processes, are structured in terms of modules, or "organs", which he defines by their causal and functional roles. These modules are relatively independent of each other and of the "central processing" part of the mind, which has a more global and less "domain specific" character. Fodor suggests that the character of these modules permits the possibility of causal relations with external objects. This, in turn, makes it possible for mental states to have contents that are about things in the world. The central processing part, on the other hand, takes care of the logical relations between the various contents and inputs and outputs. Although Fodor originally rejected the idea that mental states must have a causal, externally determined aspect, in his later years he devoted much of his writing and study to the philosophy of language because of this problem of the meaning and reference of mental contents. His contributions in this area include the so-called asymmetric causal theory of reference and his many arguments against semantic holism. Fodor strongly opposed reductive accounts of the mind. He argued that mental states are multiple realizable and that there is a hierarchy of explanatory levels in science such that the generalizations and laws of a higher-level theory of psychology or linguistics, for example, cannot be captured by the low-level explanations of the behavior of neurons and synapses. He also emerged as a prominent critic of what he characterized as the ill-grounded Darwinian and neo-Darwinian theories of natural selection. Fodor and the nature of mental states In his article "Propositional Attitudes" (1978), Fodor introduced the idea that mental states are relations between individuals and mental representations. Despite the changes in many of his positions over the years, the idea that intentional attitudes are relational has remained unchanged from its original formulation up to . In that article, he attempted to show how mental representations, specifically sentences in the language of thought, are necessary to explain this relational nature of mental states. Fodor considers two alternative hypotheses. The first completely denies the relational character of mental states and the second considers mental states as two-place relations. The latter position can be further subdivided into the Carnapian view that such relations are between individuals and sentences of natural languages and the Fregean view that they are between individuals and the propositions expressed by such sentences. Fodor's own position, instead, is that to properly account for the nature of intentional attitudes, it is necessary to employ a three-place relation between individuals, representations and propositional contents. Considering mental states as three-place relations in this way, representative realism makes it possible to hold together all of the elements necessary to the solution of this problem. Further, mental representations are not only the objects of beliefs and desires, but are also the domain over which mental processes operate. They can be considered the ideal link between the syntactic notion of mental content and the computational notion of functional architecture. These notions are, according to Fodor, our best explanation of mental processes. The functional architecture of the mind Following in the path paved by linguist Noam Chomsky, Fodor developed a strong commitment to the idea of psychological nativism. Nativism postulates the innateness of many cognitive functions and concepts. For Fodor, this position emerges naturally out of his criticism of behaviourism and associationism. These criticisms also led him to the formulation of his hypothesis of the modularity of the mind. Historically, questions about mental architecture have been divided into two contrasting theories about the nature of the faculties. The first can be described as a "horizontal" view because it sees mental processes as interactions between faculties which are not domain specific. For example, a judgment remains a judgment whether it is judgment about a perceptual experience or a judgment about the understanding of language. The second can be described as a "vertical" view because it claims that our mental faculties are domain specific, genetically determined, associated with distinct neurological structures, and so on. The vertical vision can be traced back to the 19th century movement called phrenology and its founder Franz Joseph Gall. Gall claimed that mental faculties could be associated with specific physical areas of the brain. Hence, someone's level of intelligence, for example, could be literally "read off" from the size of a particular bump on his posterior parietal lobe. This simplistic view of modularity has been disproved over the course of the last century. Fodor revived the idea of modularity, without the notion of precise physical localizability, in the 1980s, and became one of the most vocal proponents of it with the 1983 publication of his monograph The Modularity of Mind, where he points to Gall through Bernard Hollander, which is the author cited in the references instead, more specifically Hollander's In search of the soul. Two properties of modularity in particular, informational encapsulation and domain specificity, make it possible to tie together questions of functional architecture with those of mental content. The ability to elaborate information independently from the background beliefs of individuals that these two properties allow Fodor to give an atomistic and causal account of the notion of mental content. The main idea, in other words, is that the properties of the contents of mental states can depend, rather than exclusively on the internal relations of the system of which they are a part, also on their causal relations with the external world. Fodor's notions of mental modularity, informational encapsulation and domain specificity were taken up and expanded, much to Fodor's chagrin, by cognitive scientists such as Zenon Pylyshyn and evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker and Henry Plotkin, among many others. But Fodor complained that Pinker, Plotkin and other members of what he sarcastically called "the New Synthesis" have taken modularity and similar ideas way too far. He insisted that the mind is not "massively modular" and that, contrary to what these researchers would have us believe, the mind is still a very long way from having been explained by the computational, or any other, model. Intentional realism In A Theory of Content and Other Essays (1990), Fodor takes up another of his central notions: the question of the reality of mental representations. Fodor needs to justify representational realism to justify the idea that the contents of mental states are expressed in symbolic structures such as those of the LOT. Fodor's criticism of Dennett Fodor starts with some criticisms of so-called standard realism. This view is characterized, according to Fodor, by two distinct assertions. One of these regards the internal structure of mental states and asserts that such states are non-relational. The other concerns the semantic theory of mental content and asserts that there is an isomorphism between the causal roles of such contents and the inferential web of beliefs. Among modern philosophers of mind, the majority view seems to be that the first of these two assertions is false, but that the second is true. Fodor departs from this view in accepting the truth of the first thesis but rejecting strongly the truth of the second. In particular, Fodor criticizes the instrumentalism of Daniel Dennett. Dennett maintains that it is possible to be realist with regard to intentional states without having to commit oneself to the reality of mental representations. Now, according to Fodor, if one remains at this level of analysis, then there is no possibility of explaining why the intentional strategy works:There is ... a standard objection to instrumentalism ...: it is difficult to explain why the psychology of beliefs/desires works so well, if the psychology of beliefs/desires is, in fact, false.... As Putnam, Boyd and others have emphasized, from the predictive successes of a theory to the truth of that theory there is surely a presumed inference; and this is even more likely when ... we are dealing with the only theory in play which is predictively crowned with success. It is not obvious ... why such a presumption should not militate in favour of a realist conception ... of the interpretations of beliefs/desires. Productivity, systematicity and thought Fodor also has positive arguments in favour of the reality of mental representations in terms of the LOT. He maintains that if language is the expression of thoughts and language is systematic, then thoughts must also be systematic. Fodor draws on the work of Noam Chomsky to both model his theory of the mind and to refute alternative architectures such as connectionism. Systematicity in natural languages was explained by Chomsky in terms of two more basic concepts: productivity and compositionality. Productivity refers to a representational system's unbounded ability to generate new representations from a given set of symbols. "John", "loves", and "Mary" allow for the construction of the sentences "John loves Mary" and "Mary loves John". Fodor's language of thought theorizes that representations are decomposable into constituent parts, and these decomposed representations are built into new strings. More important than productivity is systematicity since it does not rely on questionable idealizations about human cognition. The argument states that a cognizer is able to understand some sentence in virtue of understanding another. For example, no one who understands "John loves Mary" is unable to understand "Mary loves John", and no one who understands "P and Q" is unable to understand "P". Systematicity itself is rarely challenged as a property of natural languages and logics, but some challenge that thought is systematic in the same way languages are. Still others from the connectionist tradition have tried to build non-classical networks that can account for the apparent systematicity of language. The fact that systematicity and productivity depend on the compositional structure of language means that language has a combinatorial semantics. If thought also has such a combinatorial semantics, then there must be a language of thought. The second argument that Fodor provides in favour of representational realism involves the processes of thought. This argument touches on the relation between the representational theory of mind and models of its architecture. If the sentences of Mentalese require unique processes of elaboration then they require a computational mechanism of a certain type. The syntactic notion of mental representations goes hand in hand with the idea that mental processes are calculations which act only on the form of the symbols which they elaborate. And this is the computational theory of the mind. Consequently, the defence of a model of architecture based on classic artificial intelligence passes inevitably through a defence of the reality of mental representations. For Fodor, this formal notion of thought processes also has the advantage of highlighting the parallels between the causal role of symbols and the contents which they express. In his view, syntax plays the role of mediation between the causal role of the symbols and their contents. The semantic relations between symbols can be "imitated" by their syntactic relations. The inferential relations which connect the contents of two symbols can be imitated by the formal syntax rules which regulate the derivation of one symbol from another. The nature of content From the beginning of the 1980s, Fodor adhered to a causal notion of mental content and of meaning. This idea of content contrasts sharply with the inferential role semantics to which he subscribed earlier in his career. Fodor criticizes inferential role semantics (IRS) because its commitment to an extreme form of holism excludes the possibility of a true naturalization of the mental. But naturalization must include an explanation of content in atomistic and causal terms. Anti-holism Fodor has made many and varied criticisms of holism. He identifies the central problem with all the different notions of holism as the idea that the determining factor in semantic evaluation is the notion of an "epistemic bond". Briefly, P is an epistemic bond of Q if the meaning of P is considered by someone to be relevant for the determination of the meaning of Q. Meaning holism strongly depends on this notion. The identity of the content of a mental state, under holism, can only be determined by the totality of its epistemic bonds. And this makes the realism of mental states an impossibility:If people differ in an absolutely general way in their estimations of epistemic relevance, and if we follow the holism of meaning and individuate intentional states by way of the totality of their epistemic bonds, the consequence will be that two people (or, for that matter, two temporal sections of the same person) will never be in the same intentional state. Therefore, two people can never be subsumed under the same intentional generalizations. And, therefore, intentional generalization can never be successful. And, therefore again, there is no hope for an intentional psychology. The asymmetric causal theory Having criticized the idea that semantic evaluation concerns only the internal relations between the units of a symbolic system, Fodor can adopt an externalist position with respect to mental content and meaning. For Fodor, in recent years, the problem of naturalization of the mental is tied to the possibility of giving "the sufficient conditions for which a piece of the world is relative to (expresses, represents, is true of) another piece" in non-intentional and non-semantic terms. If this goal is to be achieved within a representational theory of the mind, then the challenge is to devise a causal theory which can establish the interpretation of the primitive non-logical symbols of the LOT. Fodor's initial proposal is that what determines that the symbol for "water" in Mentalese expresses the property H2O is that the occurrences of that symbol are in certain causal relations with water. The intuitive version of this causal theory is what Fodor calls the "Crude Causal Theory". According to this theory, the occurrences of symbols express the properties which are the causes of their occurrence. The term "horse", for example, says of a horse that it is a horse. In order to do this, it is necessary and sufficient that certain properties of an occurrence of the symbol "horse" be in a law-like relation with certain properties which determine that something is an occurrence of horse. The main problem with this theory is that of erroneous representations. There are two unavoidable problems with the idea that "a symbol expresses a property if it is ... necessary that all and only the presences of such a property cause the occurrences". The first is that not all horses cause occurrences of horse. The second is that not only horses cause occurrences of horse. Sometimes the A(horses) are caused by A (horses), but at other times—when, for example, because of the distance or conditions of low visibility, one has confused a cow for a horse—the A (horses) are caused by B (cows). In this case the symbol A doesn't express just the property A, but the disjunction of properties A or B. The crude causal theory is therefore incapable of distinguishing the case in which the content of a symbol is disjunctive from the case in which it isn't. This gives rise to what Fodor calls the "problem of disjunction". Fodor responds to this problem with what he defines as "a slightly less crude causal theory". According to this approach, it is necessary to break the symmetry at the base of the crude causal theory. Fodor must find some criterion for distinguishing the occurrences of A caused by As (true) from those caused by Bs (false). The point of departure, according to Fodor, is that while the false cases are ontologically dependent on the true cases, the reverse is not true. There is an asymmetry of dependence, in other words, between the true contents (A= A) and the false ones (A = A or B). The first can subsist independently of the second, but the second can occur only because of the existence of the first:From the point of view of semantics, errors must be accidents: if in the extension of "horse" there are no cows, then it cannot be required for the meaning of "horse" that cows be called horses. On the other hand, if "horse" did not mean that which it means, and if it were an error for horses, it would never be possible for a cow to be called "horse". Putting the two things together, it can be seen that the possibility of falsely saying "this is a horse" presupposes the existence of a semantic basis for saying it truly, but not vice versa. If we put this in terms of the crude causal theory, the fact that cows cause one to say "horse" depends on the fact that horses cause one to say "horse"; but the fact that horses cause one to say "horse" does not depend on the fact that cows cause one to say "horse"... Functionalism During the 1960s, various philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, and Fodor tried to resolve the puzzle of developing a way to preserve the explanatory efficacy of mental causation and folk psychology while adhering to a materialist vision of the world which did not violate the "generality of physics". Their proposal was, first of all, to reject the then-dominant theories in philosophy of mind: behaviorism and the type identity theory. The problem with logical behaviorism was that it failed to account for causation between mental states and such causation seems to be essential to psychological explanation, especially if one considers that behavior is not an effect of a single mental event/cause but is rather the effect of a chain of mental events/causes. The type-identity theory, on the other hand, failed to explain the fact that radically different physical systems can find themselves in the identical mental state. Besides being deeply anthropocentric (why should humans be the only thinking organisms in the universe?), the identity-type theory also failed to deal with accumulating evidence in the neurosciences that every single human brain is different from all the others. Hence, the impossibility of referring to common mental states in different physical systems manifests itself not only between different species but also between organisms of the same species. One can solve these problems, according to Fodor, with functionalism, a hypothesis which was designed to overcome the failings of both dualism and reductionism. What is important is the function of a mental state regardless of the physical substrate which implements it. The foundation for this view lies in the principle of the multiple realizability of the mental. Under this view, for example, I and a computer can both instantiate ("realize") the same functional state though we are made of completely different material stuff (see graphic at right). On this basis functionalism can be classified as a form of token materialism. Evolution Fodor and the biolinguist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini co-authored the book What Darwin Got Wrong (2010), in which they describe neo-Darwinists as "distressingly uncritical" and say of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution that "it overestimates the contribution the environment makes in shaping the phenotype of a species and correspondingly underestimates the effects of endogenous variables". Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne describes this book as "a profoundly misguided critique of natural selection" and "as biologically uninformed as it is strident". Moral philosopher and anti-scientism author Mary Midgley praises What Darwin Got Wrong as "an overdue and valuable onslaught on neo-Darwinist simplicities". The book also received a positive review from mathematician and intelligent-design theorist William Dembski. Awards and honors Fodor was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received numerous awards and honors: New York State Regent's Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (Princeton University), Chancellor Greene Fellow (Princeton University), Fulbright Fellowship (University of Oxford), Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He won the first Jean Nicod Prize for philosophy of mind and cognitive philosophy in 1993. His lecture series for the Prize, later published as a book by MIT Press in 1995, was titled The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and Its Semantics. In 1996–1997, Fodor delivered the prestigious John Locke Lectures at the University of Oxford, titled Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, which went on to become his 1998 Oxford University Press book of the same name. He has also delivered the Patrick Romanell Lecture on Philosophical Naturalism (2004) and the Royce Lecture on Philosophy of Mind (2002) to the American Philosophical Association, of whose Eastern Division he has served as Vice President (2004–2005) and President (2005–2006). In 2005, he won the Mind & Brain Prize. Criticism A wide variety of philosophers of diverse orientations have challenged many of Fodor's ideas. For example, the language of thought hypothesis has been accused of either falling prey to an infinite regress or of being superfluous. Specifically, Simon Blackburn suggested in an article in 1984 that since Fodor explains the learning of natural languages as a process of formation and confirmation of hypotheses in the LOT, this leaves him open to the question of why the LOT itself should not be considered as just such a language which requires yet another and more fundamental representational substrate in which to form and confirm hypotheses so that the LOT itself can be learned. If natural language learning requires some representational substrate (the LOT) in order for it to be learned, why shouldn't the same be said for the LOT itself and then for the representational substrate of this representational substrate and so on, ad infinitum? On the other hand, if such a representational substrate is not required for the LOT, then why should it be required for the learning of natural languages? In this case, the LOT would be superfluous. Fodor, in response, argues that the LOT is unique in that it does not have to be learned via an antecedent language because it is innate. In 1981, Daniel Dennett had formulated another argument against the LOT. Dennett suggested that it would seem, on the basis of the evidence of our behavior toward computers but also with regard to some of our own unconscious behavior, that explicit representation is not necessary for the explanation of propositional attitudes. During a game of chess with a computer program, we often attribute such attitudes to the computer, saying such things as "It thinks that the queen should be moved to the left." We attribute propositional attitudes to the computer and this helps us to explain and predict its behavior in various contexts. Yet no one would suggest that the computer is actually thinking or believing somewhere inside its circuits the equivalent of the propositional attitude "I believe I can kick this guy's butt" in Mentalese. The same is obviously true, suggests Dennett, of many of our everyday automatic behaviors such as "desiring to breathe clear air" in a stuffy environment. Some linguists and philosophers of language have criticized Fodor's self-proclaimed "extreme" concept nativism. Kent Bach, for example, takes Fodor to task for his criticisms of lexical semantics and polysemy. Fodor claims that there is no lexical structure to such verbs as "keep", "get", "make" and "put". He suggests that, alternatively, "keep" simply expresses the concept KEEP (Fodor capitalizes concepts to distinguish them from properties, names or other such entities). If there is a straightforward one-to-one mapping between individual words and concepts, "keep your clothes on", "keep your receipt" and "keep washing your hands" will all share the same concept of KEEP under Fodor's theory. This concept presumably locks on to the unique external property of keeping. But, if this is true, then RETAIN must pick out a different property in RETAIN YOUR RECEIPT, since one can't retain one's clothes on or retain washing one's hands. Fodor's theory also has a problem explaining how the concept FAST contributes, differently, to the contents of FAST CAR, FAST DRIVER, FAST TRACK, and FAST TIME. Whether or not the differing interpretations of "fast" in these sentences are specified in the semantics of English, or are the result of pragmatic inference, is a matter of debate. Fodor's own response to this kind of criticism is expressed bluntly in Concepts: "People sometimes used to say that exist must be ambiguous because look at the difference between 'chairs exist' and 'numbers exist'. A familiar reply goes: the difference between the existence of chairs and the existence of numbers seems, on reflection, strikingly like the difference between numbers and chairs. Since you have the latter to explain the former, you don't also need 'exist' to be polysemic." Some critics find it difficult to accept Fodor's insistence that a large, perhaps implausible, number of concepts are primitive and undefinable. For example, Fodor considers such concepts as EFFECT, ISLAND, TRAPEZOID, and WEEK to be all primitive, innate and unanalyzable because they all fall into the category of what he calls "lexical concepts" (those for which our language has a single word). Against this view, Bach argues that the concept VIXEN is almost certainly composed out of the concepts FEMALE and FOX, BACHELOR out of SINGLE and MALE, and so on. Personal life and death Fodor lived in Manhattan with his wife, the linguist Janet Dean Fodor, and had two children. Fodor died at home on November 29, 2017. Books The Structure of Language, with Jerrold Katz (eds.), Prentice Hall, 1964, . Psychological Explanation, Random House, 1968, . The Psychology of Language, with T. Bever and M. Garrett, McGraw Hill, 1974, . The Language of Thought, Harvard University Press, 1975, . Representations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science, Harvard Press (UK) and MIT Press (US), 1979, . The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology, MIT Press, 1983, . Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind, MIT Press, 1987, . A Theory of Content and Other Essays, MIT Press, 1990, . Holism: A Shopper's Guide, with Ernie Lepore, Blackwell, 1992, . Holism: A Consumer Update, with Ernie Lepore (eds.), Grazer Philosophische Studien, Vol 46. Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1993, . The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and Its Semantics, The 1993 Jean Nicod Lectures, MIT Press, 1994, . Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, The 1996 John Locke Lectures, Oxford University Press, 1998, . In Critical Condition, MIT Press, 1998, . The Mind Doesn't Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology, MIT Press, 2000, . The Compositionality Papers, with Ernie Lepore, Oxford University Press, 2002, . Hume Variations, Oxford University Press, 2003, . LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited, Oxford University Press, 2008, . What Darwin Got Wrong, with Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, . Minds without meanings: an essay on the contents of concepts, with Zenon W. Pylyshyn, MIT Press, 2014, . See also Computational theory of mind Special sciences References External links Jerry Fodor's Homepage Jerry Fodor at the London Review of Books "Semantics – An Interview with Jerry Fodor", ReVEL. Vol. 5, n. 8 (March 2007). BloggingHeads dialogue between Jerry Fodor and Elliott Sober meaningful words without sense, & other revolutions Interview by Richard Marshall Guardian obituary Jerry A. Fodor, Philosopher Who Plumbed the Mind’s Depths, Dies at 82 New York Times obituary Jerry A. Fodor (1935—2017) entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Category:1935 births Category:2017 deaths Category:20th-century American essayists Category:20th-century American philosophers Category:21st-century American essayists Category:21st-century American philosophers Category:20th-century American Jews Category:Linguists from the United States Category:American logicians Category:American male essayists Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American philosophy academics Category:Analytic philosophers Category:Columbia College (New York) alumni Category:American consciousness researchers and theorists Category:Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Category:Jean Nicod Prize laureates Category:Jewish linguists Category:Jewish philosophers Category:Philosophers of language Category:Philosophers of logic Category:Philosophers of mind Category:Philosophers of psychology Category:Philosophers of science Category:Philosophers of social science Category:Philosophy writers Category:Presidents of the American Philosophical Association Category:Princeton University alumni Category:Rationalists Category:Rutgers University faculty Category:21st-century American Jews

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Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis, FBA (born 31 May 1916) is a British American historian specializing in oriental studies. He is also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis' expertise is in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West.

Academic career

In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplome des Etudes Semitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940-41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East." The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. CANNOTANSWER

Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis's expertise was in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern history. In 2007 Lewis was called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East". Others have argued Lewis's approach is essentialist and generalizing to the Muslim world, as well as his tendency to restate hypotheses that were challenged by more recent research. On a political level, Lewis is accused by his detractors with having revived the image of the cultural inferiority of Islam and of emphasizing the dangers of jihad. His advice was frequently sought by neoconservative policymakers, including the Bush administration. His active support of the Iraq War and neoconservative ideals have since come under scrutiny. Lewis was notable for his public debates with Edward Said, who accused Lewis of being a Zionist apologist and an Orientalist who "demeaned" Arabs, misrepresented Islam, and promoted Western imperialism, to which Lewis responded by defending Orientalism as a facet of humanism and accusing Said of politicizing the subject. Lewis was also known for Armenian genocide denial. His argument that there was no evidence for a deliberate genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenian people is rejected by mainstream historians. He argued that the mass killings resulted from a mutual struggle between two nationalistic movements, a view that has been criticized as "ahistorical." Family and personal life Bernard Lewis was born on 31 May 1916 to middle-class British Jewish parents, Harry Lewis and the former Jane Levy, in Stoke Newington, London. He became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah. In 1947 he married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm, with whom he had a daughter and a son. Their marriage was dissolved in 1974. Lewis became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982. Academic career In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940–41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS, where he would remain for the next 25 years. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1963, Lewis was granted fellowship of the British Academy. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East". The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. Research Lewis's influence extends beyond academia to the general public. He began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years. However, after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in Arab countries, where they were suspected of espionage. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics. Lewis argued that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the West and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades. In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian Civil War (1992–1998), and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Three of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks), which explored the reasons of the Muslim world's apprehension of (and sometimes outright hostility to) modernization; The Crisis of Islam; and Islam: The Religion and the People. Abraham Udovitch described him as "certainly the most eminent and respected historian of the Arab world, of the Islamic world, of the Middle East and beyond". Colombian historian Richard Bulliet said that Bernard Lewis "looked down on modern Arabs." and suggested that he considers them "worthy only to a degree they follow a Western path." Edward Said called him a Zionist apologist and an orientalist who "demeaned" Arabs. Armenian genocide The first two editions of Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961 and 1968) describe the Armenian genocide as "the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished". In later editions, this text is altered to "the terrible slaughter of 1915, when, according to estimates, more than a million Armenians perished, as well as an unknown number of Turks". In this passage, Lewis argues that the deaths were the result of a struggle for the same land between two competing nationalist movements. The change in Lewis's textual description of the Armenian genocide and his signing of the petition against the Congressional resolution was controversial among some Armenian historians as well as journalists, who suggested that Lewis was engaging in historical negationism to serve his own political and personal interests. Lewis called the label "genocide" the "Armenian version of this history" in a November 1993 interview with Le Monde, for which he faced a civil proceeding in a French court under the Gayssot Law. The prosecution failed because the court determined that the law did not apply to events before World War II. In a 1995 civil proceeding brought by three Armenian genocide survivors, a French court censured Lewis' remarks under Article 1382 of the Civil Code and fined him one franc, and ordering the publication of the judgment at Lewis' cost in Le Monde. The court ruled that while Lewis has the right to his views, their expression harmed a third party and that "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide". Three other court cases against Bernard Lewis failed in the Paris tribunal, including one filed by the Armenian National Committee of France and two filed by Jacques Trémollet de Villers. Lewis's views on the Armenian genocide were criticized by a number of historians and sociologists, among them Alain Finkielkraut, Yves Ternon, Richard G. Hovannisian, Robert Melson, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Finkelstein|first1=Norman G.|title=The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering|date=2003|publisher=Verso|location=London|isbn=978-1-85984-488-5|page=69}}</ref> Lewis did not deny that large numbers of murders took place, but he denied that they were a purposeful Young Turk government policy and therefore they should not be categorized as a genocide. In 2002, he argued for his denial stance: Lewis has been labelled a "genocide denier" by Stephen Zunes, Israel Charny, David B. MacDonald and the Armenian National Committee of America. Israeli historian Yair Auron suggested that "Lewis' stature provided a lofty cover for the Turkish national agenda of obfuscating academic research on the Armenian Genocide". Israel Charny wrote that Lewis's "seemingly scholarly concern ... of Armenians constituting a threat to the Turks as a rebellious force who together with the Russians threatened the Ottoman Empire, and the insistence that only a policy of deportations was executed, barely conceal the fact that the organized deportations constituted systematic mass murder". Charny compares the "logical structures" employed by Lewis in his denial of the genocide to those employed by Ernst Nolte in his Holocaust negationism. Lewis has also falsely implied that the Armenians had military and police forces at their disposal, whom they could have called upon, when, in reality, they had no such forces at all. Views and influence on contemporary politics In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East and his analysis of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community". Lewis's policy advice had particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked "in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media". A harsh critic of the Soviet Union, Lewis continued the liberal tradition in Islamic historical studies. Although his early Marxist views had a bearing on his first book The Origins of Ismailism, Lewis subsequently discarded Marxism. His later works are a reaction against the left-wing current of Third-worldism which came to be a significant current in Middle Eastern studies. During his career Lewis developed ties with governments around the world: during her time as Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir assigned Lewis's articles as reading to her cabinet members, and during the Presidency of George W. Bush, he advised administration members including Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush himself. He was also close to King Hussein of Jordan and his brother, Prince Hassan bin Talal. He also had ties to the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, the Turkish military dictatorship led by Kenan Evren, and the Egyptian government of Anwar Sadat: he acted as a go-between between the Sadat administration and Israel in 1971 when he relayed a message to the Israeli government regarding the possibility of a peace agreement at the request of Sadat's spokesman Tahasin Bashir. Lewis advocated closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw as especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Modern Turkey holds a special place in Lewis's view of the region due to the country's efforts to become a part of the West. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Turkish Studies, an honor which is given "on the basis of generally recognized scholarly distinction and ... long and devoted service to the field of Turkish Studies." Lewis views Christendom and Islam as civilizations that have been in perpetual collision since the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In his essay The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990), he argued that the struggle between the West and Islam was gathering strength. According to one source, this essay (and Lewis's 1990 Jefferson Lecture on which the article was based) first introduced the term "Islamic fundamentalism" to North America. This essay has been credited with coining the phrase "clash of civilizations", which received prominence in the eponymous book by Samuel Huntington. However, another source indicates that Lewis first used the phrase "clash of civilizations" at a 1957 meeting in Washington where it was recorded in the transcript. In 1998, Lewis read in a London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden. In his essay "A License to Kill", Lewis indicated he considered bin Laden's language as the "ideology of jihad" and warned that bin Laden would be a danger to the West. The essay was published after the Clinton administration and the US intelligence community had begun its hunt for bin Laden in Sudan and then in Afghanistan. Some of his views have been likened to the Eurabia thesis, such as warning that Europe would turn Muslim by the end of the century, becoming "part of the Arab West, the Maghreb", and his 2007 pamphlet Europe and Islam. Jihad Lewis writes of jihad as a distinct religious obligation, but suggests that it is a pity that people engaging in terrorist activities are not more aware of their own religion:The fanatical warrior offering his victims the choice of the Koran or the sword is not only untrue, it is impossible. The alleged choice—conversion or death—is also, with rare and atypical exceptions, untrue. Muslim tolerance of unbelievers and misbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom until the rise of secularism in the 17th century. Muslim fighters are commanded not to kill women, children, or the aged unless they attack first; not to torture or otherwise ill-treat prisoners; to give fair warnings of the opening of hostilities or their resumption after a truce; and to honor agreements. At no time did the classical jurists offer any approval or legitimacy to what we nowadays call terrorism. Nor indeed is there any evidence of the use of terrorism as it is practiced nowadays. The emergence of the by now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in the terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition.As'ad AbuKhalil, has criticized this view and stated: "Methodologically, [Lewis] insists that terrorism by individual Muslims should be considered Islamic terrorism, while terrorism by individual Jews or Christians is never considered Jewish or Christian terrorism." He also criticised Lewis's understanding of Osama bin Laden, seeing Lewis's interpretation of bin Laden "as some kind of influential Muslim theologian" along the lines of classical theologians like Al-Ghazali, rather than "the terrorist fanatic that he is". AbuKhalil has also criticized the place of Islam in Lewis's worldview more generally, arguing that the most prominent feature of his work was its "theologocentrism" (borrowing a term from Maxime Rodinson)—that Lewis interprets all aspects of behavior among Muslims solely through the lens of Islamic theology, subsuming the study of Muslim peoples, their languages, the geographical areas where Muslims predominate, Islamic governments, the governments of Arab countries and Sharia under the label of "Islam". Debates with Edward Said Lewis was known for his literary debates with Edward Said, the Palestinian American literary theorist whose aim was to deconstruct what he called Orientalist scholarship. Said, who was a professor at Columbia University, characterized Lewis's work as a prime example of Orientalism in his 1978 book Orientalism and in his later book Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1981). Said asserted that the field of Orientalism was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination. He further questioned the scientific neutrality of some leading Middle East scholars, including Lewis, on the Arab World. In an interview with Al-Ahram weekly, Said suggested that Lewis's knowledge of the Middle East was so biased that it could not be taken seriously and claimed "Bernard Lewis hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world." Said considered that Lewis treats Islam as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal dynamics, and historical complexities, and accused him of "demagogy and downright ignorance". In Covering Islam, Said argued that "Lewis simply cannot deal with the diversity of Muslim, much less human life, because it is closed to him as something foreign, radically different, and other," and he criticised Lewis's "inability to grant that the Islamic peoples are entitled to their own cultural, political, and historical practices, free from Lewis's calculated attempt to show that because they are not Western... they can't be good." Rejecting the view that Western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion. He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. In his 1993 book Islam and the West, Lewis wrote "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?" Furthermore, Lewis accused Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases. Stance on the Iraq War In 2002, Lewis wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal regarding the buildup to the Iraq War entitled "Time for Toppling", where he stated his opinion that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers of inaction are greater than those of action". In 2007, Jacob Weisberg described Lewis as "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq". Michael Hirsh attributed to Lewis the view that regime change in Iraq would provide a jolt that would "modernize the Middle East" and suggested that Lewis's allegedly 'orientalist' theories about "what went wrong" in the Middle East, and other writings, formed the intellectual basis of the push towards war in Iraq. Hirsch reported that Lewis had told him in an interview that he viewed the 11 September attacks as "the opening salvo of the final battle" between Western and Islamic civilisations: Lewis believed that a forceful response was necessary. In the run up to the Iraq War, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney several times: Hirsch quoted an unnamed official who was present at a number of these meetings, who summarised Lewis's view of Iraq as "Get on with it. Don't dither". Brent Scowcroft quoted Lewis as stating that he believed "that one of the things you've got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power". As'ad AbuKhalil has claimed that Lewis assured Cheney that American troops would be welcomed by Iraqis and Arabs, relying on the opinion of his colleague Fouad Ajami. Hirsch also drew parallels between the Bush administration's plans for post-invasion Iraq and Lewis's views, in particular his admiration for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's secularist and Westernising reforms in the new Republic of Turkey which emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Writing in 2008, Lewis did not advocate imposing freedom and democracy on Islamic nations. "There are things you can't impose. Freedom, for example. Or democracy. Democracy is a very strong medicine which has to be administered to the patient in small, gradually increasing doses. Otherwise, you risk killing the patient. In the main, the Muslims have to do it themselves." Ian Buruma, writing for The New Yorker in an article subtitled "The two Minds of Bernard Lewis", finds Lewis's stance on the war difficult to reconcile with Lewis's past statements cautioning democracy enforcement in the world at large. Buruma ultimately rejects suggestions by his peers that Lewis promotes war with Iraq to safeguard Israel, but instead concludes "perhaps he loves it [the Arab world] too much": Hamid Dabashi, writing on 28 May 2018, in an article subtitled "On Bernard Lewis and 'his extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong'", asked: "Just imagine: What sort of a person would spend a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is quite a bizarre proposition. But there you have it: the late Bernard Lewis did precisely that." Similarly, Richard Bulliet described Lewis as "...a person who does not like the people he is purporting to have expertise about...he doesn't respect them, he considers them to be good and worthy only to the degree they follow a Western path". According to As'ad AbuKhalil, "Lewis has poisoned the Middle East academic field more than any other Orientalist and his influence has been both academic and political. But there is a new generation of Middle East experts in the West who now see clearly the political agenda of Bernard Lewis. It was fully exposed in the Bush years." Alleged nuclear threat from Iran In 2006, Lewis wrote that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon for fifteen years. In August 2006, in an article about whether the world can rely on the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent in its dealings with Iran, Lewis wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the significance of 22 August 2006 in the Islamic calendar. The Iranian president had indicated he would respond by that date to U.S. demands regarding Iran's development of nuclear power. Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of Muhammad from Jerusalem to heaven and back. Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world". According to Lewis, mutual assured destruction is not an effective deterrent in the case of Iran, because of what Lewis describes as the Iranian leadership's "apocalyptic worldview" and the "suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today". Lewis's article received significant press coverage. However, the day passed without any incident. Death Bernard Lewis died on 19 May 2018 at the age of 101, at an assisted-living care facility in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, twelve days before his 102nd birthday. He is buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv. Bibliography Awards and honors 1963: Elected as a Fellow of the British Academy 1973: Elected to the American Philosophical Society 1978: The Harvey Prize, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, for "his profound insight into the life and mores of the peoples of the Middle East through his writings" 1983: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1990: Selected for the Jefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities 1996: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, for The Middle East (Scribner) 1999: National Jewish Book Award in the Israel category for The Multiple Identities of the Middle East 2002: The Thomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Society 2002: Atatürk International Peace Prize on grounds that he contributed extensively to history scholarship with his accurate analysis of Turkey's and in particular of Atatürk's positive impact on Middle Eastern history. 2004: Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement 2006: National Humanities Medal, from the National Endowment for the Humanities 2007: Irving Kristol Award, from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 2007: The Scholar-Statesman Award from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy See also Bernard Lewis bibliography List of Princeton University people References External links Lewis's page at Princeton University Revered and Reviled – Lewis's profile on Moment Magazine'' The Legacy and Fallacies of Bernard Lewis by As`ad AbuKhalil Category:1916 births Category:2018 deaths Category:20th-century American historians Category:20th-century British historians Category:20th-century British writers Category:21st-century American historians Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century British historians Category:21st-century British writers Category:Academics of SOAS University of London Category:Alumni of SOAS University of London Category:American centenarians Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American people of English-Jewish descent Category:Deniers of the Armenian genocide Category:British Army personnel of World War II Category:English centenarians Category:British emigrants to the United States Category:English historians Category:English Jews Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:American historians of Islam Category:British historians of Islam Category:Scholars of Ottoman history Category:Honorary members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences Category:Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Category:Intelligence Corps soldiers Category:Islam and antisemitism Category:Islam and politics Category:Jewish American historians Category:Jewish scholars of Islam Category:Men centenarians Category:Middle Eastern studies in the United States Category:National Humanities Medal recipients Category:Neoconservatism Category:People from Stoke Newington Category:British political commentators Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Royal Armoured Corps soldiers Category:Scholars of antisemitism Category:University of Paris alumni Category:Cornell University faculty Category:Foreign Policy Research Institute Category:Historians of the Middle East Category:Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Category:Middle Eastern studies scholars Category:Burials at Trumpeldor Cemetery Category:21st-century American Jews Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Turkey

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Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis, FBA (born 31 May 1916) is a British American historian specializing in oriental studies. He is also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis' expertise is in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West.

Research

Lewis' influence extends beyond academia to the general public. He is a pioneer of the social and economic history of the Middle East and is famous for his extensive research of the Ottoman archives. He began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years. However, after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in the Arab countries, where they were suspected of espionage. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics. Lewis argues that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the West and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades. In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian civil war (1992-98), and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88). In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Three of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks), which explored the reasons of the Muslim world's apprehension of (and sometimes outright hostility to) modernization; The Crisis of Islam; and Islam: The Religion and the People. CANNOTANSWER

Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis's expertise was in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern history. In 2007 Lewis was called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East". Others have argued Lewis's approach is essentialist and generalizing to the Muslim world, as well as his tendency to restate hypotheses that were challenged by more recent research. On a political level, Lewis is accused by his detractors with having revived the image of the cultural inferiority of Islam and of emphasizing the dangers of jihad. His advice was frequently sought by neoconservative policymakers, including the Bush administration. His active support of the Iraq War and neoconservative ideals have since come under scrutiny. Lewis was notable for his public debates with Edward Said, who accused Lewis of being a Zionist apologist and an Orientalist who "demeaned" Arabs, misrepresented Islam, and promoted Western imperialism, to which Lewis responded by defending Orientalism as a facet of humanism and accusing Said of politicizing the subject. Lewis was also known for Armenian genocide denial. His argument that there was no evidence for a deliberate genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenian people is rejected by mainstream historians. He argued that the mass killings resulted from a mutual struggle between two nationalistic movements, a view that has been criticized as "ahistorical." Family and personal life Bernard Lewis was born on 31 May 1916 to middle-class British Jewish parents, Harry Lewis and the former Jane Levy, in Stoke Newington, London. He became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah. In 1947 he married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm, with whom he had a daughter and a son. Their marriage was dissolved in 1974. Lewis became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982. Academic career In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940–41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS, where he would remain for the next 25 years. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1963, Lewis was granted fellowship of the British Academy. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East". The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. Research Lewis's influence extends beyond academia to the general public. He began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years. However, after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in Arab countries, where they were suspected of espionage. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics. Lewis argued that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the West and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades. In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian Civil War (1992–1998), and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Three of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks), which explored the reasons of the Muslim world's apprehension of (and sometimes outright hostility to) modernization; The Crisis of Islam; and Islam: The Religion and the People. Abraham Udovitch described him as "certainly the most eminent and respected historian of the Arab world, of the Islamic world, of the Middle East and beyond". Colombian historian Richard Bulliet said that Bernard Lewis "looked down on modern Arabs." and suggested that he considers them "worthy only to a degree they follow a Western path." Edward Said called him a Zionist apologist and an orientalist who "demeaned" Arabs. Armenian genocide The first two editions of Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961 and 1968) describe the Armenian genocide as "the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished". In later editions, this text is altered to "the terrible slaughter of 1915, when, according to estimates, more than a million Armenians perished, as well as an unknown number of Turks". In this passage, Lewis argues that the deaths were the result of a struggle for the same land between two competing nationalist movements. The change in Lewis's textual description of the Armenian genocide and his signing of the petition against the Congressional resolution was controversial among some Armenian historians as well as journalists, who suggested that Lewis was engaging in historical negationism to serve his own political and personal interests. Lewis called the label "genocide" the "Armenian version of this history" in a November 1993 interview with Le Monde, for which he faced a civil proceeding in a French court under the Gayssot Law. The prosecution failed because the court determined that the law did not apply to events before World War II. In a 1995 civil proceeding brought by three Armenian genocide survivors, a French court censured Lewis' remarks under Article 1382 of the Civil Code and fined him one franc, and ordering the publication of the judgment at Lewis' cost in Le Monde. The court ruled that while Lewis has the right to his views, their expression harmed a third party and that "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide". Three other court cases against Bernard Lewis failed in the Paris tribunal, including one filed by the Armenian National Committee of France and two filed by Jacques Trémollet de Villers. Lewis's views on the Armenian genocide were criticized by a number of historians and sociologists, among them Alain Finkielkraut, Yves Ternon, Richard G. Hovannisian, Robert Melson, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Finkelstein|first1=Norman G.|title=The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering|date=2003|publisher=Verso|location=London|isbn=978-1-85984-488-5|page=69}}</ref> Lewis did not deny that large numbers of murders took place, but he denied that they were a purposeful Young Turk government policy and therefore they should not be categorized as a genocide. In 2002, he argued for his denial stance: Lewis has been labelled a "genocide denier" by Stephen Zunes, Israel Charny, David B. MacDonald and the Armenian National Committee of America. Israeli historian Yair Auron suggested that "Lewis' stature provided a lofty cover for the Turkish national agenda of obfuscating academic research on the Armenian Genocide". Israel Charny wrote that Lewis's "seemingly scholarly concern ... of Armenians constituting a threat to the Turks as a rebellious force who together with the Russians threatened the Ottoman Empire, and the insistence that only a policy of deportations was executed, barely conceal the fact that the organized deportations constituted systematic mass murder". Charny compares the "logical structures" employed by Lewis in his denial of the genocide to those employed by Ernst Nolte in his Holocaust negationism. Lewis has also falsely implied that the Armenians had military and police forces at their disposal, whom they could have called upon, when, in reality, they had no such forces at all. Views and influence on contemporary politics In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East and his analysis of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community". Lewis's policy advice had particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked "in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media". A harsh critic of the Soviet Union, Lewis continued the liberal tradition in Islamic historical studies. Although his early Marxist views had a bearing on his first book The Origins of Ismailism, Lewis subsequently discarded Marxism. His later works are a reaction against the left-wing current of Third-worldism which came to be a significant current in Middle Eastern studies. During his career Lewis developed ties with governments around the world: during her time as Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir assigned Lewis's articles as reading to her cabinet members, and during the Presidency of George W. Bush, he advised administration members including Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush himself. He was also close to King Hussein of Jordan and his brother, Prince Hassan bin Talal. He also had ties to the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, the Turkish military dictatorship led by Kenan Evren, and the Egyptian government of Anwar Sadat: he acted as a go-between between the Sadat administration and Israel in 1971 when he relayed a message to the Israeli government regarding the possibility of a peace agreement at the request of Sadat's spokesman Tahasin Bashir. Lewis advocated closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw as especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Modern Turkey holds a special place in Lewis's view of the region due to the country's efforts to become a part of the West. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Turkish Studies, an honor which is given "on the basis of generally recognized scholarly distinction and ... long and devoted service to the field of Turkish Studies." Lewis views Christendom and Islam as civilizations that have been in perpetual collision since the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In his essay The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990), he argued that the struggle between the West and Islam was gathering strength. According to one source, this essay (and Lewis's 1990 Jefferson Lecture on which the article was based) first introduced the term "Islamic fundamentalism" to North America. This essay has been credited with coining the phrase "clash of civilizations", which received prominence in the eponymous book by Samuel Huntington. However, another source indicates that Lewis first used the phrase "clash of civilizations" at a 1957 meeting in Washington where it was recorded in the transcript. In 1998, Lewis read in a London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden. In his essay "A License to Kill", Lewis indicated he considered bin Laden's language as the "ideology of jihad" and warned that bin Laden would be a danger to the West. The essay was published after the Clinton administration and the US intelligence community had begun its hunt for bin Laden in Sudan and then in Afghanistan. Some of his views have been likened to the Eurabia thesis, such as warning that Europe would turn Muslim by the end of the century, becoming "part of the Arab West, the Maghreb", and his 2007 pamphlet Europe and Islam. Jihad Lewis writes of jihad as a distinct religious obligation, but suggests that it is a pity that people engaging in terrorist activities are not more aware of their own religion:The fanatical warrior offering his victims the choice of the Koran or the sword is not only untrue, it is impossible. The alleged choice—conversion or death—is also, with rare and atypical exceptions, untrue. Muslim tolerance of unbelievers and misbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom until the rise of secularism in the 17th century. Muslim fighters are commanded not to kill women, children, or the aged unless they attack first; not to torture or otherwise ill-treat prisoners; to give fair warnings of the opening of hostilities or their resumption after a truce; and to honor agreements. At no time did the classical jurists offer any approval or legitimacy to what we nowadays call terrorism. Nor indeed is there any evidence of the use of terrorism as it is practiced nowadays. The emergence of the by now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in the terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition.As'ad AbuKhalil, has criticized this view and stated: "Methodologically, [Lewis] insists that terrorism by individual Muslims should be considered Islamic terrorism, while terrorism by individual Jews or Christians is never considered Jewish or Christian terrorism." He also criticised Lewis's understanding of Osama bin Laden, seeing Lewis's interpretation of bin Laden "as some kind of influential Muslim theologian" along the lines of classical theologians like Al-Ghazali, rather than "the terrorist fanatic that he is". AbuKhalil has also criticized the place of Islam in Lewis's worldview more generally, arguing that the most prominent feature of his work was its "theologocentrism" (borrowing a term from Maxime Rodinson)—that Lewis interprets all aspects of behavior among Muslims solely through the lens of Islamic theology, subsuming the study of Muslim peoples, their languages, the geographical areas where Muslims predominate, Islamic governments, the governments of Arab countries and Sharia under the label of "Islam". Debates with Edward Said Lewis was known for his literary debates with Edward Said, the Palestinian American literary theorist whose aim was to deconstruct what he called Orientalist scholarship. Said, who was a professor at Columbia University, characterized Lewis's work as a prime example of Orientalism in his 1978 book Orientalism and in his later book Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1981). Said asserted that the field of Orientalism was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination. He further questioned the scientific neutrality of some leading Middle East scholars, including Lewis, on the Arab World. In an interview with Al-Ahram weekly, Said suggested that Lewis's knowledge of the Middle East was so biased that it could not be taken seriously and claimed "Bernard Lewis hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world." Said considered that Lewis treats Islam as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal dynamics, and historical complexities, and accused him of "demagogy and downright ignorance". In Covering Islam, Said argued that "Lewis simply cannot deal with the diversity of Muslim, much less human life, because it is closed to him as something foreign, radically different, and other," and he criticised Lewis's "inability to grant that the Islamic peoples are entitled to their own cultural, political, and historical practices, free from Lewis's calculated attempt to show that because they are not Western... they can't be good." Rejecting the view that Western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion. He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. In his 1993 book Islam and the West, Lewis wrote "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?" Furthermore, Lewis accused Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases. Stance on the Iraq War In 2002, Lewis wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal regarding the buildup to the Iraq War entitled "Time for Toppling", where he stated his opinion that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers of inaction are greater than those of action". In 2007, Jacob Weisberg described Lewis as "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq". Michael Hirsh attributed to Lewis the view that regime change in Iraq would provide a jolt that would "modernize the Middle East" and suggested that Lewis's allegedly 'orientalist' theories about "what went wrong" in the Middle East, and other writings, formed the intellectual basis of the push towards war in Iraq. Hirsch reported that Lewis had told him in an interview that he viewed the 11 September attacks as "the opening salvo of the final battle" between Western and Islamic civilisations: Lewis believed that a forceful response was necessary. In the run up to the Iraq War, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney several times: Hirsch quoted an unnamed official who was present at a number of these meetings, who summarised Lewis's view of Iraq as "Get on with it. Don't dither". Brent Scowcroft quoted Lewis as stating that he believed "that one of the things you've got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power". As'ad AbuKhalil has claimed that Lewis assured Cheney that American troops would be welcomed by Iraqis and Arabs, relying on the opinion of his colleague Fouad Ajami. Hirsch also drew parallels between the Bush administration's plans for post-invasion Iraq and Lewis's views, in particular his admiration for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's secularist and Westernising reforms in the new Republic of Turkey which emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Writing in 2008, Lewis did not advocate imposing freedom and democracy on Islamic nations. "There are things you can't impose. Freedom, for example. Or democracy. Democracy is a very strong medicine which has to be administered to the patient in small, gradually increasing doses. Otherwise, you risk killing the patient. In the main, the Muslims have to do it themselves." Ian Buruma, writing for The New Yorker in an article subtitled "The two Minds of Bernard Lewis", finds Lewis's stance on the war difficult to reconcile with Lewis's past statements cautioning democracy enforcement in the world at large. Buruma ultimately rejects suggestions by his peers that Lewis promotes war with Iraq to safeguard Israel, but instead concludes "perhaps he loves it [the Arab world] too much": Hamid Dabashi, writing on 28 May 2018, in an article subtitled "On Bernard Lewis and 'his extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong'", asked: "Just imagine: What sort of a person would spend a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is quite a bizarre proposition. But there you have it: the late Bernard Lewis did precisely that." Similarly, Richard Bulliet described Lewis as "...a person who does not like the people he is purporting to have expertise about...he doesn't respect them, he considers them to be good and worthy only to the degree they follow a Western path". According to As'ad AbuKhalil, "Lewis has poisoned the Middle East academic field more than any other Orientalist and his influence has been both academic and political. But there is a new generation of Middle East experts in the West who now see clearly the political agenda of Bernard Lewis. It was fully exposed in the Bush years." Alleged nuclear threat from Iran In 2006, Lewis wrote that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon for fifteen years. In August 2006, in an article about whether the world can rely on the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent in its dealings with Iran, Lewis wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the significance of 22 August 2006 in the Islamic calendar. The Iranian president had indicated he would respond by that date to U.S. demands regarding Iran's development of nuclear power. Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of Muhammad from Jerusalem to heaven and back. Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world". According to Lewis, mutual assured destruction is not an effective deterrent in the case of Iran, because of what Lewis describes as the Iranian leadership's "apocalyptic worldview" and the "suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today". Lewis's article received significant press coverage. However, the day passed without any incident. Death Bernard Lewis died on 19 May 2018 at the age of 101, at an assisted-living care facility in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, twelve days before his 102nd birthday. He is buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv. Bibliography Awards and honors 1963: Elected as a Fellow of the British Academy 1973: Elected to the American Philosophical Society 1978: The Harvey Prize, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, for "his profound insight into the life and mores of the peoples of the Middle East through his writings" 1983: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1990: Selected for the Jefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities 1996: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, for The Middle East (Scribner) 1999: National Jewish Book Award in the Israel category for The Multiple Identities of the Middle East 2002: The Thomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Society 2002: Atatürk International Peace Prize on grounds that he contributed extensively to history scholarship with his accurate analysis of Turkey's and in particular of Atatürk's positive impact on Middle Eastern history. 2004: Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement 2006: National Humanities Medal, from the National Endowment for the Humanities 2007: Irving Kristol Award, from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 2007: The Scholar-Statesman Award from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy See also Bernard Lewis bibliography List of Princeton University people References External links Lewis's page at Princeton University Revered and Reviled – Lewis's profile on Moment Magazine'' The Legacy and Fallacies of Bernard Lewis by As`ad AbuKhalil Category:1916 births Category:2018 deaths Category:20th-century American historians Category:20th-century British historians Category:20th-century British writers Category:21st-century American historians Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century British historians Category:21st-century British writers Category:Academics of SOAS University of London Category:Alumni of SOAS University of London Category:American centenarians Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American people of English-Jewish descent Category:Deniers of the Armenian genocide Category:British Army personnel of World War II Category:English centenarians Category:British emigrants to the United States Category:English historians Category:English Jews Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:American historians of Islam Category:British historians of Islam Category:Scholars of Ottoman history Category:Honorary members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences Category:Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Category:Intelligence Corps soldiers Category:Islam and antisemitism Category:Islam and politics Category:Jewish American historians Category:Jewish scholars of Islam Category:Men centenarians Category:Middle Eastern studies in the United States Category:National Humanities Medal recipients Category:Neoconservatism Category:People from Stoke Newington Category:British political commentators Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Royal Armoured Corps soldiers Category:Scholars of antisemitism Category:University of Paris alumni Category:Cornell University faculty Category:Foreign Policy Research Institute Category:Historians of the Middle East Category:Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Category:Middle Eastern studies scholars Category:Burials at Trumpeldor Cemetery Category:21st-century American Jews Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Turkey

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Joe Tex

Joe Tex was born Joseph Arrington, Jr. in Rogers, Texas, in Bell County to Joseph Arrington and Cherie Sue (Jackson) Arrington. He and his sister Mary Sue were initially raised by their grandmother, Mary Richardson. After their parents divorced, Cheri Arrington moved to Baytown. Tex played baritone saxophone in the high-school band and sang in a local Pentecostal church choir.

Early recordings

Tex recorded for King Records between 1955 and 1957 with little success. He later claimed he sold musical rights to the composition "Fever" to King Records staff, to get money to pay his rent. The song's credited songwriters, Otis Blackwell (who used the pseudonym John Davenport) and Joe Cooley, disputed Tex's claims. Labelmate Little Willie John had a hit with "Fever", which inspired Tex to write the first of his answer songs, "Pneumonia". In 1958, he signed with Ace and continued to have relative failures, but he was starting to build a unique stage reputation, opening for artists such as Jackie Wilson, James Brown, and Little Richard. He perfected the microphone tricks and dance moves that defined the rest of his career. Many, including Little Richard, claim that Tex's future nemesis James Brown stole Tex's dance moves and microphone tricks. In 1960, he left Ace and briefly recorded for Detroit's Anna Records label, where he scored a Bubbling Under Billboard hit with his cover version of Etta James' "All I Could Do Was Cry". By then, Tex's use of rapping over his music was starting to become commonplace. In 1961, he recorded his composition "Baby You're Right" for Anna. Later that year, James Brown recorded a cover version, though with different lyrics and a different musical composition, gaining songwriting credit, making it a hit in 1962, and reaching number two on the R&B chart. During this time, Tex first began working with Buddy Killen, who formed the Dial Records label behind Tex. After a number of songs failed to chart, Killen decided to have Atlantic Records distribute his recordings with Dial in 1964. By the time he signed with Atlantic, Tex had recorded 30 songs, all of which had failed to make an impact on the charts. CANNOTANSWER

Yusuf Hazziez (born Joseph Arrington Jr.; August 8, 1935 – August 13, 1982), known professionally as Joe Tex, was an American singer and musician who gained success in the 1960s and 1970s with his brand of Southern soul, which mixed the styles of funk, country, gospel, and rhythm and blues. His career started after he was signed to King Records in 1955 following four wins at the Apollo Theater. Between 1955 and 1964, he struggled to find hits, and by the time he finally recorded his first hit, "Hold What You've Got" in 1964, he had recorded 30 previous singles that were deemed failures on the charts. He went on to have four million-selling hits, "Hold What You've Got" (1965), "Skinny Legs and All" (1967), "I Gotcha" (1972), and "Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)" (1977). Joe Tex was nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame six times, most recently in 2017. Early life Joe Tex was born Joseph Arrington, Jr. in Rogers, Texas, in Bell County to Joseph Arrington and Cherie Sue (Jackson) Arrington. He and his sister Mary Sue were initially raised by their grandmother, Mary Richardson. After their parents divorced, Cheri Arrington moved to Baytown. Tex played baritone saxophone in the high-school band and sang in a local Pentecostal church choir. He entered several talent shows, and after an important win in Houston, he won $300 and a trip to New York City. Joe Tex took part in the amateur portion of the Apollo Theater, winning first place four times, which led to his discovery by Henry Glover, who offered him a contract with King Records. His mother's wish was that he graduate from high school first, and Glover agreed to wait a year before signing him at age 19. Music career Early recordings Tex recorded for King Records between 1955 and 1957 with little success. He later claimed he sold musical rights to the composition "Fever" to King Records staff to get money to pay his rent. The song's credited songwriters, Otis Blackwell (who used the pseudonym John Davenport) and Joe Cooley, disputed Tex's claims. Labelmate Little Willie John had a hit with "Fever", which inspired Tex to write the first of his answer songs, "Pneumonia". In 1958, he signed with Ace and continued to have relative failures, but he was starting to build a unique stage reputation, opening for artists such as Jackie Wilson, James Brown, and Little Richard. He perfected the microphone tricks and dance moves that defined the rest of his career. Many, including Little Richard, claim that Tex's future nemesis James Brown stole Tex's dance moves and microphone tricks. In 1960, he left Ace and briefly recorded for Detroit's Anna Records label, scoring a Bubbling Under Billboard hit with his cover version of Etta James' "All I Could Do Was Cry". By then, Tex's use of rapping over his music was starting to become commonplace. In 1961, he recorded his composition "Baby You're Right" for Anna. Later that year, James Brown recorded a cover version, though with different lyrics and a different musical composition, gaining songwriting credit, making it a hit in 1962, and reaching number two on the R&B chart. During this time, Tex first began working with Buddy Killen, who formed the Dial Records label behind Tex. After a number of songs failed to chart, Killen decided to have Atlantic Records distribute his recordings with Dial in 1964. By the time he signed with Atlantic, Tex had recorded 30 songs, all of which had failed to make an impact on the charts. Success Tex recorded his first hit, "Hold What You've Got", in November 1964 at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. He was unconvinced the song would be a hit and advised Killen not to release it. However, Killen felt otherwise and released the song in early 1965. By the time Tex got wind of its release, the song had already sold 200,000 copies. The song eventually peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and became Tex's first number-one hit on the R&B charts, staying on the charts for 11 weeks and selling more than a million copies by 1966. Tex placed six top-40 charted singles on the R&B charts in 1965 alone, including two more number-one hits, "I Want To (Do Everything For You)" and "A Sweet Woman Like You". He followed that with two successive albums, Hold On To What You've Got and The New Boss. He placed more R&B hits than any artist, including his rival James Brown. In 1966, five more singles entered the top 40 on the R&B charts, including "The Love You Save" and "S.Y.S.L.J.F.M." or "The Letter Song", which was an answer song to Wilson Pickett's "634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A.)". His 1967 hits included "Show Me", which became an often-covered tune for British rock artists and later some country and pop artists, and his second million-selling hit, "Skinny Legs and All". The latter song, released off Tex's pseudo-live album, Live and Lively, stayed on the charts for 15 weeks and was awarded a gold disc by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in January 1968. After leaving Atlantic for Mercury, Tex had several more R&B hits including "Buying a Book" in 1970 and "Give the Baby Anything the Baby Wants" in 1971. The intro saxophone riffs in his 1969 song, "You're Right, Ray Charles" later influenced Funkadelic's "Standing on the Verge of Gettin' It On". Tex recorded his next big hit, "I Gotcha", in December 1971. The song was released in January 1972 and stayed on the charts for 20 weeks, staying at number two on the Hot 100 for two weeks and sold more than 2 million copies, becoming his biggest-selling hit to date. Tex was offered a gold disc of the song on March 22, 1972. The parent album reached number 17 on the pop albums chart. Following this and another album, Tex announced his retirement from show business in September 1972 to pursue life as a minister for Islam. Tex returned to his music career following the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975, releasing the top-40 R&B hit, "Under Your Powerful Love". His last hit, "Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)", was released in 1977 and peaked at number 12 on the Hot 100 and number 2 in the UK. His last public appearances were as part of a revised 1980s version of the Soul Clan in 1981. After that, Tex withdrew from public life, settling at his ranch in Navasota, Texas, and watching football games by his favorite team, the Houston Oilers. Rivalry with James Brown The feud between Tex and fellow label mate James Brown allegedly originated sometime in the mid-1950s, when both artists were signed to associated imprints of King Records, when Brown reportedly called out on Tex for a "battle" during a dance at a local juke joint. In 1960, Tex left King and recorded a few songs for Detroit-based Anna Records; one of the songs he recorded was the ballad "Baby, You're Right". A year later, Brown recorded the song and released it in 1961, changing the lyrics and the musical composition, earning Brown co-songwriting credits along with Tex. By then, Brown had recruited singer Bea Ford, who had been married to Tex but had divorced him in 1959. In 1960, Brown and Ford recorded the song, "You've Got the Power". Shortly afterward, Tex got a personal letter from Brown telling him that he was through with Ford and if Tex wanted her back, he could have her. Tex responded by recording the diss record "You Keep Her" in 1962. In 1963, their feud escalated when Tex and Brown performed a concert in Macon, Georgia. Tex, who opened the show, imitated Brown by appearing in a torn, tattered cape and rolling around on the floor screaming, "Please—somebody help get me out of this cape!" Brown, already angry with Tex over the song "You Keep Her", left the club and returned with guns. Tex had left the club before the shooting had commenced. The incident led to multiple people being shot and stabbed. Since Brown was still on parole at the time, he relied on his agent Clint Brantley "and a few thousand dollars to make the situation disappear". According to fellow performer Johnny Jenkins, "seven people got shot", and after the shootout ended, a man appeared and gave "each one of the injured a hundred dollars apiece not to carry it no further and not to talk to the press". Brown was never charged for the incident. Tex later claimed that Brown stole his dance moves and his microphone stand tricks. In a few interviews he gave in the 1960s, Tex dismissed the notion of Brown being called "Soul Brother No. 1", insisting that Little Willie John was the original "Soul Brother No. 1". Tex even claimed Brown stopped some radio disc jockeys from playing his hit "Skinny Legs and All", which Tex claimed prevented Tex from taking down one of Brown's number-one songs at the time. During a 1968 tour, Tex had the words "The New Soul Brother No. 1" on his tour bus, but eventually took the name off the bus and had it repainted. Tex challenged Brown to contest who "the real soul brother" was. Brown reportedly refused the challenge, telling the Afro-American, "I will not fight a black man. You need too much help." While Tex moved on from his initial feud with Brown, Brown reportedly joked, "Who?" in his Bobby Byrd and Hank Ballard duet "Funky Side of Town" from his Get on the Good Foot album when Ballard mentioned Tex's name as one of the stars of soul music. Personal life and death A convert to Islam in 1966, he changed his name to Yusuf Hazziez, and toured as a spiritual lecturer. He had two daughters, Eartha Doucet and Leslie Arrington, and four sons, Joseph Arrington III, Ramadan Hazziez, Jwaade Hazziez, and Joseph Hazziez. Though he lived most of his life free of drugs and alcohol, according to his longtime producer Buddy Killen, Tex suffered from addiction during the last four years of his life. In his final performances as part of the Soul Clan, he appeared gaunt and unwell, and Killen claimed that Tex had "lost his will to live". In early August 1982, Tex was found at the bottom of a swimming pool at his home in Navasota, after which he was revived in hospital and sent home. Just a few days later, on August 13, five days after his 47th birthday, he died at Grimes Memorial Hospital in Navasota, following a heart attack. Cover versions Several other artists have covered Tex's work. The Foundations covered "Show Me". US R&B group The Raelettes and UK hard rock band Nazareth covered "I Want To (Do Everything for You)", and Phish performed "You Better Believe It Baby". Selected discography Chart albums Chart singles See also Blues Southern soul Atlantic Records Notes References The New Musical Express Book of Rock, 1975, Star Books, External links Joe Tex – I Gotcha at superseventies.com Joe Tex – The New Boss: Dial Sessions And Dates at keepkey.yochanan.net Joe Tex becomes Muslim at Raresoul.com Category:1935 births Category:1982 deaths Category:Ace Records (United States) artists Category:African-American male dancers Category:African-American dancers Category:20th-century African-American male singers Category:African-American Muslims Category:African-American male singer-songwriters Category:American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters Category:American funk singers Category:American soul singers Category:Atlantic Records artists Category:Converts to Islam Category:Epic Records artists Category:People from Baytown, Texas Category:People from Rogers, Texas Category:Singer-songwriters from Texas Category:People from Navasota, Texas Category:20th-century American dancers

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Children of Bodom

Children of Bodom is a Finnish extreme metal band from Espoo. Formed in 1993, the group consists of Alexi Laiho (Lead vocals, guitar), Janne Wirman (keyboards), Henkka Seppala (bass), Jaska Raatikainen (drums) and Daniel Freyberg (guitar). They have released nine studio albums, two live albums, two EPs, two compilation albums and one DVD. The band's third studio album, Follow the Reaper, was their first album to receive a Gold certification in Finland, and subsequent studio albums have acquired the same status.

Something Wild (1997-1998)

Something Wild was produced, recorded and mixed by Anssi Kippo and Children of Bodom at Astia-studios (Lappeenranta, Finland). In an attempt to promote their band, they opened a show for Dimmu Borgir in 1997. Their success was such that a representative from the Nuclear Blast label approached them with a contract for a European release, a deal which started on the subsequent year. Something Wild was released in late 1997 in Finland and in 1998 worldwide. In early 1998, for promotional purposes the band recorded a music video of the song "Deadnight Warrior". The video was directed by Mika Lindberg and had a slim budget of EUR1000. It made use of simple scenery, which consisted essentially of an outdoors location after a snowstorm. The band played for a couple of hours at night, with an average temperature of minus fifteen degrees Celsius. Although Laiho is very critical of all of the music he has written, he notes that he dislikes Something Wild the most of all of his albums. When recording this album, Laiho had tried to mimic the style of one of his idols, Yngwie Malmsteen, which is why Something Wild is considered one of the most technical albums Children of Bodom have produced. Despite this, he still considers it to be their "most important" record, as it "put them on the map." Children of Bodom's first European tour began in February 1998. They played with bands such as Hypocrisy (at such festivals as Under the Black Sun), The Kovenant and Agathodaimon, but suffered from the absence of Wirman, who was concentrating on finishing his studies. He was replaced by pianist Erna Siikavirta for the duration of the tour. Months later, the band recorded two new songs again at Astia-studios with producer Anssi Kippo, entitled "Towards Dead End" and "Children of Bodom". The latter was included in a compilation by Spinefarm Records, which after being released remained on the top of Finnish charts for eight consecutive weeks. In late August, the band played the song "Forevermore" live for the first time during a show in Russia. This song was later renamed "Downfall". Their second European tour occurred in September of that same year, but once more Wirman was not able to perform with them. Laiho's then-girlfriend Kimberly Goss (from Sinergy and formerly of Dimmu Borgir, Ancient and Therion) assumed the keyboards this time. By the end of the tour, Kimberly invited Laiho to join Sinergy, which at the time was still in its early stages. CANNOTANSWER

Children of Bodom was a Finnish melodic death metal band from Espoo. Formed in 1993 as Inearthed, the final line-up of the group upon their split in 2019 consisted of Alexi Laiho (lead guitar, lead vocals), Jaska Raatikainen (drums), Henkka Seppälä (bass), Janne Wirman (keyboard), and Daniel Freyberg (rhythm guitar). The band released ten studio albums, two live albums, two EPs, two compilation albums and one DVD. The band's third studio album, Follow the Reaper, was their first album to receive a gold certification in Finland, and subsequent studio albums acquired the same status. Their next four albums debuted at number one on the Finnish album charts, and have also seen chart positions on the United States Billboard 200. They are one of Finland's best selling artists of all time with more than 250,000 records sold there alone. In 2019, Children of Bodom held their last concert in Helsinki named A Chapter Called Children of Bodom, before disbanding the band. Laiho and Freyberg carried on as Bodom After Midnight in 2020. Laiho, who was one of the founding members of Children of Bodom as well as the only main songwriter, died on 29 December 2020. History Formation and early years (1993–1996) Children of Bodom was formed in 1993 by guitarist Alexi "Wildchild" Laiho and drummer Jaska Raatikainen under the name of Inearthed. They had known each other since early childhood and had shared an interest in heavy metal, especially death metal groups, such as Dissection, Entombed, Cannibal Corpse, Autopsy, and Obituary and classic metal groups such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Dio, and Ozzy Osbourne. Bassist Samuli Miettinen completed the initial line-up of the band. Inearthed recorded its first demo, Implosion of Heaven, during August of the same year. Samuli was the main composer of the band's lyrics for the two years that he took part in Inearthed, but his family moved to the United States in 1995, making it impossible for him to remain in the band. His last contributions to Inearthed were the lyrics of the songs from their second demo, Ubiquitous Absence of Remission which was the first time they worked with producer Anssi Kippo at Astia-studios (Lappeenranta, Finland). In this demo, keyboards were incorporated into the band's songs for the first time. In order to achieve this, both Laiho and Raatikainen played the keyboards separately and subsequently mixed the recorded track with the other instruments. Laiho, who had previously only composed the melodies of the songs, assumed the role of the band's lyricist. At the time, Raatikainen played French horn in a local big band, and during a rehearsal, he met Alexander Kuoppala, a trumpet player and also a proficient guitarist. Shortly after the recording of their second demo, Kuoppala was invited to join Inearthed as a rhythm guitarist. The bassist chosen to replace Samuli was Henkka "Blacksmith" Seppälä, whom Laiho and Raatikainen had previously known from school. Apart from playing the bass, Seppälä also often doubles as the band's backing vocalist. Also, the band recruited a musician to specialize on keyboards, whose name was Jani Pirisjoki. Both joined Inearthed in early 1996. With this new line-up, Inearthed proceeded to record their third demo, titled Shining. This demo did not impress record labels any more than the previous ones had, and none took interest in the band. Despite their efforts, their music got little exposure and managed only to play at local events. As a last resort, the band decided to record an independent, self-funded album. Laiho wanted to make use of the keyboards more effectively, but Pirisjoki was not attending rehearsals. Thus, he was fired and replaced by a friend of Raatikainen's, a jazz pianist named Janne "Warman" Wirman. Wirman was the component which was previously missing from Inearthed. His presence allowed the band to assume the style which would later characterize Children of Bodom. With Wirman, the band successfully recorded their first album in 1997. Their debut, Something Wild, was supposed to be released by a small Belgian label, Shiver Records, but second vocalist Sami Tenetz (from Thy Serpent) acquired a copy of their album through the hands of Kuoppala. They both worked for the same company at the time. Shortly after Inearthed signed this contract, Spinefarm Records' boss became interested in signing them for a country-wide release. The latter deal was much more attractive to the band since the Belgian label was offering them close to no help, to the point where they would have to distribute and sell the album themselves. The band was required to create a new name to sign up to Spinefarm Records. The contract with Shiver records had already been signed under the name of Inearthed. The answer to that problem came as the members looked for good names in their local phone book. When they stumbled upon Lake Bodom, they realized that it was a name with impact and one which had an interesting story behind it. A long list of possible names involving the word Bodom was then made, and they settled with Children of Bodom. The band's name is derived from the Lake Bodom murders. Something Wild and Hatebreeder (1996–2000) Something Wild was produced, recorded and mixed by Anssi Kippo and Children of Bodom at Astia-studios (Lappeenranta, Finland). In an attempt to promote their band, they opened a show for Dimmu Borgir in 1997. Their success was such that a representative from the Nuclear Blast label approached them with a contract for a European release, a deal which started on the subsequent year. Something Wild was released in late 1997 in Finland and in 1998 worldwide. In early 1998, for promotional purposes, the band recorded a music video of the song "Deadnight Warrior". The video was directed by Mika Lindberg and had a slim budget of €1000. It made use of simple scenery, which consisted essentially of an outdoors location after a snowstorm. The band played for a couple of hours at night, with an average temperature of minus fifteen degrees Celsius. Although Laiho is very critical of all of the music he has written, he notes that he dislikes Something Wild the most of all of his albums. When recording this album, Laiho had tried to mimic the style of one of his idols, Yngwie Malmsteen, which is why Something Wild is considered one of the most technical albums Children of Bodom have produced. Despite this, he still considers it to be their "most important" record, as it "put them on the map." Children of Bodom's first European tour began in February 1998. They played with bands such as Hypocrisy (at such festivals as Under the Black Sun), The Kovenant and Agathodaimon, but suffered from the absence of Wirman, who was concentrating on finishing his studies. He was replaced by pianist Erna Siikavirta for the duration of the tour. Months later, the band recorded two new songs again at Astia-studios with producer Anssi Kippo, titled "Towards Dead End" and "Children of Bodom". The latter was included in a compilation by Spinefarm Records, which after being released remained on the top of Finnish charts for eight consecutive weeks. In late August, the band played the song "Forevermore" live for the first time during a show in Russia. This song was later renamed "Downfall". Their second European tour occurred in September of that same year, but once more Wirman was not able to perform with them. Laiho's then-girlfriend Kimberly Goss (from Sinergy and formerly of Dimmu Borgir, Ancient and Therion) assumed the keyboards this time. By the end of the tour, Kimberly invited Laiho to join Sinergy, which at the time was still in its early stages. The second album, Hatebreeder, was recorded between the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999 by Anssi Kippo at Astia-studios (Lappeenranta, Finland). It was originally titled Towards Dead End, but while in studio the members of the band opted for the current title. To create anticipation in Finland, the '"Downfall" single was released two weeks prior to the album's release. It was accompanied by a new music video, once more directed by Mika Lindberg. Hatebreeder ultimately topped the charts in many European countries. In July 1999, the success of the "Downfall" single and Hatebreeder allowed Children of Bodom to schedule three concerts in Japan with Sinergy and In Flames. During two of these concerts, the live album Tokyo Warhearts was recorded. In it the band managed to seamlessly reproduce and at times improve on their songs. At their request, no overdubs were used on the recording of the concert. Rise to popularity: Follow the Reaper and Hate Crew Deathroll (2000–2004) For their next release, Children of Bodom decided to make use of Peter Tägtgren's Abyss studio in Sweden instead of the Finnish Astia-studio from Anssi Kippo where they had recorded all of their previous releases including the demos from Inearthed. The band wrote eight songs for the album. While in the studio, they decided to include an extra track that was hastily composed and featured lyrics improvised by Laiho; that track would eventually receive the name of "Kissing the Shadows". The band gave the album the name of Follow the Reaper and recording sessions took place between August and September 2000; the album saw a worldwide release in late 2000. A music video for "Everytime I Die" was recorded by the Finnish director Tuukka Temonen shortly after. In February 2002, Children of Bodom began writing songs for their upcoming album, titled Hate Crew Deathroll. They returned to Astia-studio (Lappeenranta, Finland) to work with producer Anssi Kippo again. The session ensued during the months of August and September, and the album was released January 2003 in Finland. It remained on the top of the Finnish charts for a total of three weeks and subsequently became the band's first gold album. Eventually, all of the band's albums reached this status and Follow the Reaper reached platinum. On 3 January 2003, the Finnish Metal Music Awards were held at Tavastia Club in Helsinki. Voting was open to all the metal fans and was presented through the various media outlets that were working with the event's organizers. Children of Bodom was awarded Finnish Band of the Year. Children of Bodom's first world tour began in 2003 and lasted until late 2004. The tour had many sold-out concerts and marked the consolidation of the band in North America, but was also accompanied by an unexpected announcement: Kuoppala decided to quit Children of Bodom for personal reasons right in the middle of the tour without giving previous warning. In an interview, when Laiho was asked why Kuoppala left the band, he stated that "Well, I try to be careful about what I say about him because there is no bad blood between us. He told me that he just got sick of touring and the whole band/rock 'n roll lifestyle living in hotels and tour buses and stuff. For me it was really weird because he was always the one who was SO into it! He was a die hard rock 'n roller and suddenly he made a quick 180 turn in his whole life. This whole situation involves a new girlfriend." Griffin's guitarist Kai Nergaard was invited by Laiho to replace Kuoppala, but did not accept the offer. Thus, Alexi's bandmate from Sinergy, Roope Latvala (founding member of Stone, one of the bands which started the heavy metal movement in Finland) assumed the guitars as a session player, until a more permanent solution could be found. This formation was introduced in Moscow on 16 August. Breakthrough with Are You Dead Yet? (2004–2007) After finishing the world tour with Latvala – who then assumed a permanent position in the band's line-up – Children of Bodom proceeded to record and release the EP Trashed, Lost & Strungout and the single "In Your Face", which contained songs from their upcoming album and a parody cover of "Oops!... I Did It Again" by Britney Spears. In late 2005, the album Are You Dead Yet? was released, featuring a style different from what had been presented by the band on its previous works. Simpler and heavier guitar riffs were incorporated into Children of Bodom's sound, as well as elements from industrial music. Reactions from fans to the release were varied; however, the album remains the band's most commercially successful. It was awarded gold status in Finland and reached first place on the Finnish charts, 16th in Germany, 16 in Sweden and 17 in Japan. The next release of the band was a DVD-single for the song "In Your Face", which included the music video, backstage footage from the band and a live recording of the song "Sixpounder" at Wacken Open Air festival in 2004. In June, Children of Bodom was in front of 120,000 spectators, one of their biggest concerts, on the last concert of the Böhse Onkelz. The DVD of the concert, called Vaya Con Tioz, includes Children of Bodom's performance of "Everytime I Die". Children of Bodom's live DVD Chaos Ridden Years - Stockholm Knockout Live was released on 5 December 2006. It contains a recording of a live concert performed on 5 February 2006 in Stockholm, Sweden, with over 90 minutes of live footage. "Chaos Ridden Years" refers to a documentary featuring interviews with band members about the history of the band and footage of the band on tour. It also contains every music video Children of Bodom has made, except for "Needled 24/7". Guitarist Alexi Laiho was voted world's best guitarist of 2006 by Metal Hammer magazine. In June 2006, the band embarked on one of their biggest tours: The Unholy Alliance tour, playing alongside Slayer, Lamb of God, Mastodon, In Flames and Thine Eyes Bleed. The bands toured the US through June and July, and Europe through October and November. On 31 January 2007, Laiho slid down the lane at a bowling alley after accidentally stepping over the foul line. He slammed hard into the wall, breaking his left shoulder. This rendered him unable to play guitar for six weeks. Due to this incident, Children of Bodom was forced to cancel their first 2007 tours, and a festival that they were slated to headline. On 31 March 2007, the band's website released information on Laiho's condition stating that while Laiho's injury will never fully heal, it no longer affects his ability to play the guitar. The same notice also stated that the band had already written some songs for a new album and would start recording sometime later in 2007. Blooddrunk and Relentless Reckless Forever (2007–2012) From October to December 2007, Children of Bodom recorded their sixth studio album, titled Blooddrunk, which was released on 15 April 2008. The album contained 10 songs including a cover of "Ghost Riders in the Sky". Children of Bodom was featured on the Gigantour 2008 North American tour with Megadeth, In Flames, Job for a Cowboy and High on Fire. Children of Bodom was one of the first bands to be confirmed for Wacken Open Air 2008, where they performed alongside many bands including Iron Maiden, Sonata Arctica and Avantasia. Children of Bodom played at Donington Download on 15 June, playing a mixture of old and new songs. On 8 March 2008, Children of Bodom did their first UK signing event at the Zavvi music shop in Oxford Street, London. They signed copies of their new single "Blooddrunk" in CD, 7 inch and 12 inch vinyls, only 666 copies of the 12 inch vinyls have been made. On 26 June 2008, Children of Bodom played their first show in Auckland, New Zealand with support from local scene acts Dawn of Azazel and Subtract at the Transmission Room. In 2008, Children of Bodom's first three studio albums, as well as Tokyo Warhearts, were remastered and re-released with bonus tracks. In September and October 2008, the band toured the U.S. supporting Blooddrunk with support from The Black Dahlia Murder and Between the Buried and Me. Testament also made a special guest appearance in the main support slot at the tour's New York City date. In November and December 2008, the band toured in Europe supporting Slipknot and Machine Head. From late January to early March 2009, the band also co-headlined the European tour with Cannibal Corpse with Diablo opening for them. On 2 April 2009, Children of Bodom embarked on the No Fear Energy Tour headlined by Lamb of God with main support from As I Lay Dying and themselves, and rotating opening slots with God Forbid and Municipal Waste, but dropped off the tour a week before it was finished following a serious injury Alexi sustained after falling from the top bunk of his tour bus on 26 April 2009, after the show in Palladium Ballroom, Dallas, Texas. In addition to the injury, on 8 May 2009, at Roseland Ballroom in New York City, Alexi and Children of Bodom were forced to quit playing after a few of their songs because of Alexi's previous injury. Laiho originally planned to continue touring despite his injury but was forced to cancel last six dates when any efforts to alleviate the pain failed. All summer festival dates went down as planned and were unaffected by Alexi's injury. In February 2009, Children of Bodom hinted at plans to release a cover album titled Skeletons in the Closet, which was released on 23 September 2009. They also admitted to being "lazy" when it comes to practicing and talked about plans to have more songs on future albums. The band embarked on a tour of South America and Mexico in September 2009. Support for the trek came from Amorphis. Also in September and October 2009, the band returned to North America to headline a massive month-long tour. On most dates support on the trek came from The Black Dahlia Murder and Skeletonwitch. Austrian Death Machine and Holy Grail made a special guest appearance in the main support slot at the tour's second Pomona, California date. On October 18, 2009, four days after the band's North American tour finale in Honolulu, Hawaii they performed at Japan's Loudpark Festival along with Megadeth, Judas Priest, Slayer, Anthrax, Rob Zombie and Arch Enemy. In the six days following their performance at the Loudpark Festival, they held three shows in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China respectively. They finished their two-month September to October tour in Moscow, Russia. This concluded their year and a half long Blooddrunk World Tour. Skeletons in the Closet is a cover album released on 22 September 2009. It features covers released on versions of previous albums but also includes four new tracks. Covered artists include Suicidal Tendencies, Britney Spears, Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Andrew WK, Billy Idol and Scorpions Children of Bodom featured a contest to promote their new album in which anyone could win prizes featuring an ESP/LTD M-53 electric guitar, the band's entire back catalog, and Skeletons in the Closet. The contest ran from 25 August to 21 September 2009. The winners were announced 28 September 2009. Return to form with Halo of Blood (2010–2014) After the Blooddrunk tour ended, Children of Bodom started recording their new album. During the recording of the drum tracks there was a small tornado and the power was cut out. Consequently, the recording was delayed until after their tour with Black Label Society. Children of Bodom released some information to Metal Hammer magazine about new album tracks. The three tracks they released were titled "Pussyfoot Miss Suicide", "Ugly", and "Was It Worth It?" In November the band announced "The Ugly World Tour 2011" which would run from March–May 2011 and would feature dates around Europe. Opening Acts were Ensiferum, Machinae Supremacy and Amon Amarth (UK only). On 24 November, it was announced that the title of the album would be Relentless Reckless Forever. The album was released on 8 March 2011. A music video for "Was It Worth It?" was produced, featuring skateboarder Chris Cole as well as noted pro skaters Jamie Thomas, Garrett Hill and Tom Asta. "Was It Worth It?" was released as a downloadable track for the video game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock in February 2011. Halo of Blood is the band's eighth studio album. It was released on 6 June in Europe, 10 June in the United Kingdom and on 11 June in North America. The Mayhem Festival tour alongside Rob Zombie, Mastodon and Amon Amarth was also announced on 18 March 2013. Music journalist Neil Kelly of PopMatters said in praise of the album, "Death metal could very well re-enter mainstream consciousness through Halo of Blood, the most accessible Children of Bodom release yet." In May 2014, the band toured eastern Australia, visiting Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne with Eye of the Enemy as support, along with Orpheus Omega in Melbourne, and Emergency Gate in Brisbane and Sydney. I Worship Chaos, Hexed and final show (2014–2019) On 7 April 2015, the band announced that they have begun working on the follow-up of Halo of Blood. On 29 May 2015, the band announced on their Facebook page that Roope Latvala is no longer part of Children of Bodom with the new album to be recorded as a four-piece for the first time. However, the band later updated that Latvala's part in the band will be filled in by Antti Wirman, keyboardist Janne Wirman's younger brother for live commitments until the end of the year; he debuted with the band in a private live show in Helsinki. In a later interview with Wirman, he stated that his brother would not join the band permanently. On 8 June 2015, the album title was announced as I Worship Chaos and was released through Nuclear Blast on 2 October 2015. On 19 January 2016, the band announced the addition of Daniel Freyberg on guitar. He would make his live debut with them in Tampa, Florida on 9 February. In an interview with Noizr Zine, taken on September 14, 2017, Children of Bodom's keyboardist Janne Wirman answering to the question about the band's plans to start working on a new album with "the same production team" (Mikko Karmila and Mika Jussila) after '20 Years Down & Dirty' tour ends, said the following: "Yes, I think we are. And we're going to record it in our warehouse." In November 2017, Bassist Henkka Seppälä discussed in an interview that the band have half an album's worth of material written for the next album. They began to start recording the new album in March 2018. In August 2018, Seppälä stated in an interview with TotalRock Radio that the album will be released in early 2019. In November 2018, the band revealed that the album would be called Hexed. It was released on 8 March 2019. On November 1, 2019, it was announced that Children of Bodom would play their final show with the line-up at the time on December 15. The gig, dubbed "A Chapter Called Children of Bodom", took place at the Helsinki Ice Hall, Finland. The statement said: It was later reported that the main reason for the departures was that Raatikainen, Seppälä and Wirman could no longer find a shared viewpoint with Laiho. Laiho and Freyberg found a new bassist and a new drummer according to Helsingin Sanomat. According to Finnish music zine Soundi, Laiho could not use the band's name without permission from his former bandmates. Bodom After Midnight and death of Alexi Laiho (2020–2021) In 2020, Laiho decided to carry on with Freyberg in their new band Bodom After Midnight. Joining them were bassist Mitja Toivonen (ex-Santa Cruz), drummer Waltteri Väyrynen (Paradise Lost) and touring keyboardist Lauri Salomaa. The band made a live debut on 23 October 2020 in Seinäjoki, Finland with two more shows at Tavastia in Helsinki, Finland, where the band played an hour-long set of Children of Bodom songs. On 4 January 2021, it was announced that Alexi Laiho had died in late December 2020 from health complications at the age of 41. Bodom After Midnight was in the process of working on its full-length debut album, and before his death, recorded three songs and shot a music video, which were announced to be released posthumously. On 10 February, the band announced the release of an EP titled Paint the Sky with Blood, which was released on 23 April 2021. The 3-song EP features the final recordings by Laiho, consisting of two original songs and a Dissection cover. Guitarist Daniel Freyberg stated that there would be no more releases: "There was no more songs written. That was all the songs, all the riffs Alexi ever presented us. So there's no leftovers." In an April 2021 interview with Loudwire, Freyberg stated that Bodom After Midnight would not continue without Laiho: "Unfortunately, Bodom After Midnight as an active band is pretty much going to be buried with Alexi. We don't really feel comfortable using the name Bodom without Alexi, because it's so connected to him." Their song "Paint the Sky With Blood" was elected by Loudwire as the 8th best metal song of 2021. Musical style and influences Children of Bodom has been described usually as melodic death metal and power metal, combining the two genres together. Influences and inspirations to Children of Bodom were cited as a variety of artists such as Anthrax, Black Sabbath, Blind Guardian, Cannibal Corpse, Darkthrone, Dimmu Borgir, Dingo, Dire Straits, Entombed, Paul Gilbert, Guns N' Roses, Hanoi Rocks, Helloween, Hurriganes, Hypocrisy, Billy Idol, Impaled Nazarene, In Flames, Iron Maiden, Kreator, Yngwie Malmsteen, Metallica, Motörhead, Mötley Crüe, Nine Inch Nails, Obituary, Ozzy Osbourne, Pantera, Poison, the Ramones, Sepultura, the Sex Pistols, Skid Row, Slayer, Stone, Suicidal Tendencies, Twisted Sister, Steve Vai and W.A.S.P. Laiho has been, according to AllMusic, "widely celebrated as one of the genre's most accomplished players", while the band has an "instantly recognizable sound". Tributes In 2022, a restaurant bar dedicated to the band called Bodom Bar & Sauna was opened in Espoo, located next to the Niittykumpu metro station. As the name suggests, the bar also includes a public sauna. Band members Final lineup Alexi Laiho – lead guitar, lead vocals (1993–2019), bass (1993–1994, 1995–1996), keyboards (1993–1996, 2019), rhythm guitar (1993–1996, 2003, 2015) (died 2020) Jaska Raatikainen – drums (1993–2019), keyboards (1993–1996) Henkka Seppälä – bass, backing vocals (1995–2019) Janne Wirman – keyboards, backing vocals (1997–2019) Daniel Freyberg – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (2016–2019) Bodom After Midnight lineup (2020–2021) Alexi Laiho – lead guitar, lead vocals (died 2020) Daniel Freyberg – rhythm guitar, backing vocals Mitja Toivonen – bass, backing vocals Waltteri Väyrynen – drums Lauri Salomaa – keyboards, backing vocals (live member) Former members Samuli Miettinen – bass, backing vocals (1994–1995) Jani Pirisjoki – keyboards, backing vocals (1994–1997), rhythm guitar (1994–1995) Alexander Kuoppala – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1995–2003) Roope Latvala – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (2004–2015; live member 2003–2004) Former live members Erna Siikavirta – keyboards (1998) Kimberly Goss – keyboards, backing vocals (1998) Netta Skog – accordion (guest 2015, 2016) Antti Wirman – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (2015) Timeline Discography Something Wild (1997) Hatebreeder (1999) Follow the Reaper (2000) Hate Crew Deathroll (2003) Are You Dead Yet? (2005) Blooddrunk (2008) Relentless Reckless Forever (2011) Halo of Blood (2013) I Worship Chaos (2015) Hexed (2019) See also List of best-selling music artists in Finland References External links Category:1993 establishments in Finland Category:2019 disestablishments in Finland Category:Century Media Records artists Category:Finnish melodic death metal musical groups Category:Finnish power metal musical groups Category:Musical groups established in 1993 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 2019 Category:Musical quintets Category:Nuclear Blast artists

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Children of Bodom

Children of Bodom is a Finnish extreme metal band from Espoo. Formed in 1993, the group consists of Alexi Laiho (Lead vocals, guitar), Janne Wirman (keyboards), Henkka Seppala (bass), Jaska Raatikainen (drums) and Daniel Freyberg (guitar). They have released nine studio albums, two live albums, two EPs, two compilation albums and one DVD. The band's third studio album, Follow the Reaper, was their first album to receive a Gold certification in Finland, and subsequent studio albums have acquired the same status.

Hate Crew Deathroll (2002-2004)

In February 2002, Children of Bodom began writing songs for their upcoming album, entitled Hate Crew Deathroll. They returned to Astia-studio (Lappeenranta, Finland) to work with producer Anssi Kippo again. The session ensued during the months of August and September, and the album was released January 2003 in Finland. It remained on the top of the Finnish charts for a total of three weeks and subsequently became the band's first gold album. Eventually all of the band's albums reached this status and Follow the Reaper reached platinum. On 3 January 2003, the Finnish Metal Music Awards were held at Tavastia Club in Helsinki. Voting was open to all the metal fans and was presented through the various media outlets that were working with the event's organizers. Children of Bodom was awarded Finnish Band of the Year. Children of Bodom's first world tour began in 2003 and lasted until late 2004. The tour had many sold-out concerts and marked the consolidation of the band in North America, but was also accompanied by an unexpected announcement: Kuoppala decided to quit Children of Bodom for personal reasons right in the middle of the tour without giving previous warning. In an interview, when Laiho was asked why Kuoppala left the band, he stated that, "Well, I try to be careful about what I say about him because there is no bad blood between us. He told me that he just got sick of touring and the whole band/rock 'n roll lifestyle living in hotels and tour buses and stuff. For me it was really weird because he was always the one who was SO into it! He was a die hard rock 'n roller and suddenly he made a quick 180 turn in his whole life. This whole situation involves a new girlfriend." Griffin's guitarist Kai Nergaard was invited by Laiho to replace Kuoppala, but did not accept the offer. Thus, Alexi's bandmate from Sinergy, Roope Latvala (founding member of Stone, one of the bands which started the heavy metal movement in Finland) assumed the guitars as a session player, until a more permanent solution could be found. This formation was introduced in Moscow on 16 August. CANNOTANSWER

Children of Bodom was a Finnish melodic death metal band from Espoo. Formed in 1993 as Inearthed, the final line-up of the group upon their split in 2019 consisted of Alexi Laiho (lead guitar, lead vocals), Jaska Raatikainen (drums), Henkka Seppälä (bass), Janne Wirman (keyboard), and Daniel Freyberg (rhythm guitar). The band released ten studio albums, two live albums, two EPs, two compilation albums and one DVD. The band's third studio album, Follow the Reaper, was their first album to receive a gold certification in Finland, and subsequent studio albums acquired the same status. Their next four albums debuted at number one on the Finnish album charts, and have also seen chart positions on the United States Billboard 200. They are one of Finland's best selling artists of all time with more than 250,000 records sold there alone. In 2019, Children of Bodom held their last concert in Helsinki named A Chapter Called Children of Bodom, before disbanding the band. Laiho and Freyberg carried on as Bodom After Midnight in 2020. Laiho, who was one of the founding members of Children of Bodom as well as the only main songwriter, died on 29 December 2020. History Formation and early years (1993–1996) Children of Bodom was formed in 1993 by guitarist Alexi "Wildchild" Laiho and drummer Jaska Raatikainen under the name of Inearthed. They had known each other since early childhood and had shared an interest in heavy metal, especially death metal groups, such as Dissection, Entombed, Cannibal Corpse, Autopsy, and Obituary and classic metal groups such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Dio, and Ozzy Osbourne. Bassist Samuli Miettinen completed the initial line-up of the band. Inearthed recorded its first demo, Implosion of Heaven, during August of the same year. Samuli was the main composer of the band's lyrics for the two years that he took part in Inearthed, but his family moved to the United States in 1995, making it impossible for him to remain in the band. His last contributions to Inearthed were the lyrics of the songs from their second demo, Ubiquitous Absence of Remission which was the first time they worked with producer Anssi Kippo at Astia-studios (Lappeenranta, Finland). In this demo, keyboards were incorporated into the band's songs for the first time. In order to achieve this, both Laiho and Raatikainen played the keyboards separately and subsequently mixed the recorded track with the other instruments. Laiho, who had previously only composed the melodies of the songs, assumed the role of the band's lyricist. At the time, Raatikainen played French horn in a local big band, and during a rehearsal, he met Alexander Kuoppala, a trumpet player and also a proficient guitarist. Shortly after the recording of their second demo, Kuoppala was invited to join Inearthed as a rhythm guitarist. The bassist chosen to replace Samuli was Henkka "Blacksmith" Seppälä, whom Laiho and Raatikainen had previously known from school. Apart from playing the bass, Seppälä also often doubles as the band's backing vocalist. Also, the band recruited a musician to specialize on keyboards, whose name was Jani Pirisjoki. Both joined Inearthed in early 1996. With this new line-up, Inearthed proceeded to record their third demo, titled Shining. This demo did not impress record labels any more than the previous ones had, and none took interest in the band. Despite their efforts, their music got little exposure and managed only to play at local events. As a last resort, the band decided to record an independent, self-funded album. Laiho wanted to make use of the keyboards more effectively, but Pirisjoki was not attending rehearsals. Thus, he was fired and replaced by a friend of Raatikainen's, a jazz pianist named Janne "Warman" Wirman. Wirman was the component which was previously missing from Inearthed. His presence allowed the band to assume the style which would later characterize Children of Bodom. With Wirman, the band successfully recorded their first album in 1997. Their debut, Something Wild, was supposed to be released by a small Belgian label, Shiver Records, but second vocalist Sami Tenetz (from Thy Serpent) acquired a copy of their album through the hands of Kuoppala. They both worked for the same company at the time. Shortly after Inearthed signed this contract, Spinefarm Records' boss became interested in signing them for a country-wide release. The latter deal was much more attractive to the band since the Belgian label was offering them close to no help, to the point where they would have to distribute and sell the album themselves. The band was required to create a new name to sign up to Spinefarm Records. The contract with Shiver records had already been signed under the name of Inearthed. The answer to that problem came as the members looked for good names in their local phone book. When they stumbled upon Lake Bodom, they realized that it was a name with impact and one which had an interesting story behind it. A long list of possible names involving the word Bodom was then made, and they settled with Children of Bodom. The band's name is derived from the Lake Bodom murders. Something Wild and Hatebreeder (1996–2000) Something Wild was produced, recorded and mixed by Anssi Kippo and Children of Bodom at Astia-studios (Lappeenranta, Finland). In an attempt to promote their band, they opened a show for Dimmu Borgir in 1997. Their success was such that a representative from the Nuclear Blast label approached them with a contract for a European release, a deal which started on the subsequent year. Something Wild was released in late 1997 in Finland and in 1998 worldwide. In early 1998, for promotional purposes, the band recorded a music video of the song "Deadnight Warrior". The video was directed by Mika Lindberg and had a slim budget of €1000. It made use of simple scenery, which consisted essentially of an outdoors location after a snowstorm. The band played for a couple of hours at night, with an average temperature of minus fifteen degrees Celsius. Although Laiho is very critical of all of the music he has written, he notes that he dislikes Something Wild the most of all of his albums. When recording this album, Laiho had tried to mimic the style of one of his idols, Yngwie Malmsteen, which is why Something Wild is considered one of the most technical albums Children of Bodom have produced. Despite this, he still considers it to be their "most important" record, as it "put them on the map." Children of Bodom's first European tour began in February 1998. They played with bands such as Hypocrisy (at such festivals as Under the Black Sun), The Kovenant and Agathodaimon, but suffered from the absence of Wirman, who was concentrating on finishing his studies. He was replaced by pianist Erna Siikavirta for the duration of the tour. Months later, the band recorded two new songs again at Astia-studios with producer Anssi Kippo, titled "Towards Dead End" and "Children of Bodom". The latter was included in a compilation by Spinefarm Records, which after being released remained on the top of Finnish charts for eight consecutive weeks. In late August, the band played the song "Forevermore" live for the first time during a show in Russia. This song was later renamed "Downfall". Their second European tour occurred in September of that same year, but once more Wirman was not able to perform with them. Laiho's then-girlfriend Kimberly Goss (from Sinergy and formerly of Dimmu Borgir, Ancient and Therion) assumed the keyboards this time. By the end of the tour, Kimberly invited Laiho to join Sinergy, which at the time was still in its early stages. The second album, Hatebreeder, was recorded between the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999 by Anssi Kippo at Astia-studios (Lappeenranta, Finland). It was originally titled Towards Dead End, but while in studio the members of the band opted for the current title. To create anticipation in Finland, the '"Downfall" single was released two weeks prior to the album's release. It was accompanied by a new music video, once more directed by Mika Lindberg. Hatebreeder ultimately topped the charts in many European countries. In July 1999, the success of the "Downfall" single and Hatebreeder allowed Children of Bodom to schedule three concerts in Japan with Sinergy and In Flames. During two of these concerts, the live album Tokyo Warhearts was recorded. In it the band managed to seamlessly reproduce and at times improve on their songs. At their request, no overdubs were used on the recording of the concert. Rise to popularity: Follow the Reaper and Hate Crew Deathroll (2000–2004) For their next release, Children of Bodom decided to make use of Peter Tägtgren's Abyss studio in Sweden instead of the Finnish Astia-studio from Anssi Kippo where they had recorded all of their previous releases including the demos from Inearthed. The band wrote eight songs for the album. While in the studio, they decided to include an extra track that was hastily composed and featured lyrics improvised by Laiho; that track would eventually receive the name of "Kissing the Shadows". The band gave the album the name of Follow the Reaper and recording sessions took place between August and September 2000; the album saw a worldwide release in late 2000. A music video for "Everytime I Die" was recorded by the Finnish director Tuukka Temonen shortly after. In February 2002, Children of Bodom began writing songs for their upcoming album, titled Hate Crew Deathroll. They returned to Astia-studio (Lappeenranta, Finland) to work with producer Anssi Kippo again. The session ensued during the months of August and September, and the album was released January 2003 in Finland. It remained on the top of the Finnish charts for a total of three weeks and subsequently became the band's first gold album. Eventually, all of the band's albums reached this status and Follow the Reaper reached platinum. On 3 January 2003, the Finnish Metal Music Awards were held at Tavastia Club in Helsinki. Voting was open to all the metal fans and was presented through the various media outlets that were working with the event's organizers. Children of Bodom was awarded Finnish Band of the Year. Children of Bodom's first world tour began in 2003 and lasted until late 2004. The tour had many sold-out concerts and marked the consolidation of the band in North America, but was also accompanied by an unexpected announcement: Kuoppala decided to quit Children of Bodom for personal reasons right in the middle of the tour without giving previous warning. In an interview, when Laiho was asked why Kuoppala left the band, he stated that "Well, I try to be careful about what I say about him because there is no bad blood between us. He told me that he just got sick of touring and the whole band/rock 'n roll lifestyle living in hotels and tour buses and stuff. For me it was really weird because he was always the one who was SO into it! He was a die hard rock 'n roller and suddenly he made a quick 180 turn in his whole life. This whole situation involves a new girlfriend." Griffin's guitarist Kai Nergaard was invited by Laiho to replace Kuoppala, but did not accept the offer. Thus, Alexi's bandmate from Sinergy, Roope Latvala (founding member of Stone, one of the bands which started the heavy metal movement in Finland) assumed the guitars as a session player, until a more permanent solution could be found. This formation was introduced in Moscow on 16 August. Breakthrough with Are You Dead Yet? (2004–2007) After finishing the world tour with Latvala – who then assumed a permanent position in the band's line-up – Children of Bodom proceeded to record and release the EP Trashed, Lost & Strungout and the single "In Your Face", which contained songs from their upcoming album and a parody cover of "Oops!... I Did It Again" by Britney Spears. In late 2005, the album Are You Dead Yet? was released, featuring a style different from what had been presented by the band on its previous works. Simpler and heavier guitar riffs were incorporated into Children of Bodom's sound, as well as elements from industrial music. Reactions from fans to the release were varied; however, the album remains the band's most commercially successful. It was awarded gold status in Finland and reached first place on the Finnish charts, 16th in Germany, 16 in Sweden and 17 in Japan. The next release of the band was a DVD-single for the song "In Your Face", which included the music video, backstage footage from the band and a live recording of the song "Sixpounder" at Wacken Open Air festival in 2004. In June, Children of Bodom was in front of 120,000 spectators, one of their biggest concerts, on the last concert of the Böhse Onkelz. The DVD of the concert, called Vaya Con Tioz, includes Children of Bodom's performance of "Everytime I Die". Children of Bodom's live DVD Chaos Ridden Years - Stockholm Knockout Live was released on 5 December 2006. It contains a recording of a live concert performed on 5 February 2006 in Stockholm, Sweden, with over 90 minutes of live footage. "Chaos Ridden Years" refers to a documentary featuring interviews with band members about the history of the band and footage of the band on tour. It also contains every music video Children of Bodom has made, except for "Needled 24/7". Guitarist Alexi Laiho was voted world's best guitarist of 2006 by Metal Hammer magazine. In June 2006, the band embarked on one of their biggest tours: The Unholy Alliance tour, playing alongside Slayer, Lamb of God, Mastodon, In Flames and Thine Eyes Bleed. The bands toured the US through June and July, and Europe through October and November. On 31 January 2007, Laiho slid down the lane at a bowling alley after accidentally stepping over the foul line. He slammed hard into the wall, breaking his left shoulder. This rendered him unable to play guitar for six weeks. Due to this incident, Children of Bodom was forced to cancel their first 2007 tours, and a festival that they were slated to headline. On 31 March 2007, the band's website released information on Laiho's condition stating that while Laiho's injury will never fully heal, it no longer affects his ability to play the guitar. The same notice also stated that the band had already written some songs for a new album and would start recording sometime later in 2007. Blooddrunk and Relentless Reckless Forever (2007–2012) From October to December 2007, Children of Bodom recorded their sixth studio album, titled Blooddrunk, which was released on 15 April 2008. The album contained 10 songs including a cover of "Ghost Riders in the Sky". Children of Bodom was featured on the Gigantour 2008 North American tour with Megadeth, In Flames, Job for a Cowboy and High on Fire. Children of Bodom was one of the first bands to be confirmed for Wacken Open Air 2008, where they performed alongside many bands including Iron Maiden, Sonata Arctica and Avantasia. Children of Bodom played at Donington Download on 15 June, playing a mixture of old and new songs. On 8 March 2008, Children of Bodom did their first UK signing event at the Zavvi music shop in Oxford Street, London. They signed copies of their new single "Blooddrunk" in CD, 7 inch and 12 inch vinyls, only 666 copies of the 12 inch vinyls have been made. On 26 June 2008, Children of Bodom played their first show in Auckland, New Zealand with support from local scene acts Dawn of Azazel and Subtract at the Transmission Room. In 2008, Children of Bodom's first three studio albums, as well as Tokyo Warhearts, were remastered and re-released with bonus tracks. In September and October 2008, the band toured the U.S. supporting Blooddrunk with support from The Black Dahlia Murder and Between the Buried and Me. Testament also made a special guest appearance in the main support slot at the tour's New York City date. In November and December 2008, the band toured in Europe supporting Slipknot and Machine Head. From late January to early March 2009, the band also co-headlined the European tour with Cannibal Corpse with Diablo opening for them. On 2 April 2009, Children of Bodom embarked on the No Fear Energy Tour headlined by Lamb of God with main support from As I Lay Dying and themselves, and rotating opening slots with God Forbid and Municipal Waste, but dropped off the tour a week before it was finished following a serious injury Alexi sustained after falling from the top bunk of his tour bus on 26 April 2009, after the show in Palladium Ballroom, Dallas, Texas. In addition to the injury, on 8 May 2009, at Roseland Ballroom in New York City, Alexi and Children of Bodom were forced to quit playing after a few of their songs because of Alexi's previous injury. Laiho originally planned to continue touring despite his injury but was forced to cancel last six dates when any efforts to alleviate the pain failed. All summer festival dates went down as planned and were unaffected by Alexi's injury. In February 2009, Children of Bodom hinted at plans to release a cover album titled Skeletons in the Closet, which was released on 23 September 2009. They also admitted to being "lazy" when it comes to practicing and talked about plans to have more songs on future albums. The band embarked on a tour of South America and Mexico in September 2009. Support for the trek came from Amorphis. Also in September and October 2009, the band returned to North America to headline a massive month-long tour. On most dates support on the trek came from The Black Dahlia Murder and Skeletonwitch. Austrian Death Machine and Holy Grail made a special guest appearance in the main support slot at the tour's second Pomona, California date. On October 18, 2009, four days after the band's North American tour finale in Honolulu, Hawaii they performed at Japan's Loudpark Festival along with Megadeth, Judas Priest, Slayer, Anthrax, Rob Zombie and Arch Enemy. In the six days following their performance at the Loudpark Festival, they held three shows in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China respectively. They finished their two-month September to October tour in Moscow, Russia. This concluded their year and a half long Blooddrunk World Tour. Skeletons in the Closet is a cover album released on 22 September 2009. It features covers released on versions of previous albums but also includes four new tracks. Covered artists include Suicidal Tendencies, Britney Spears, Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Andrew WK, Billy Idol and Scorpions Children of Bodom featured a contest to promote their new album in which anyone could win prizes featuring an ESP/LTD M-53 electric guitar, the band's entire back catalog, and Skeletons in the Closet. The contest ran from 25 August to 21 September 2009. The winners were announced 28 September 2009. Return to form with Halo of Blood (2010–2014) After the Blooddrunk tour ended, Children of Bodom started recording their new album. During the recording of the drum tracks there was a small tornado and the power was cut out. Consequently, the recording was delayed until after their tour with Black Label Society. Children of Bodom released some information to Metal Hammer magazine about new album tracks. The three tracks they released were titled "Pussyfoot Miss Suicide", "Ugly", and "Was It Worth It?" In November the band announced "The Ugly World Tour 2011" which would run from March–May 2011 and would feature dates around Europe. Opening Acts were Ensiferum, Machinae Supremacy and Amon Amarth (UK only). On 24 November, it was announced that the title of the album would be Relentless Reckless Forever. The album was released on 8 March 2011. A music video for "Was It Worth It?" was produced, featuring skateboarder Chris Cole as well as noted pro skaters Jamie Thomas, Garrett Hill and Tom Asta. "Was It Worth It?" was released as a downloadable track for the video game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock in February 2011. Halo of Blood is the band's eighth studio album. It was released on 6 June in Europe, 10 June in the United Kingdom and on 11 June in North America. The Mayhem Festival tour alongside Rob Zombie, Mastodon and Amon Amarth was also announced on 18 March 2013. Music journalist Neil Kelly of PopMatters said in praise of the album, "Death metal could very well re-enter mainstream consciousness through Halo of Blood, the most accessible Children of Bodom release yet." In May 2014, the band toured eastern Australia, visiting Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne with Eye of the Enemy as support, along with Orpheus Omega in Melbourne, and Emergency Gate in Brisbane and Sydney. I Worship Chaos, Hexed and final show (2014–2019) On 7 April 2015, the band announced that they have begun working on the follow-up of Halo of Blood. On 29 May 2015, the band announced on their Facebook page that Roope Latvala is no longer part of Children of Bodom with the new album to be recorded as a four-piece for the first time. However, the band later updated that Latvala's part in the band will be filled in by Antti Wirman, keyboardist Janne Wirman's younger brother for live commitments until the end of the year; he debuted with the band in a private live show in Helsinki. In a later interview with Wirman, he stated that his brother would not join the band permanently. On 8 June 2015, the album title was announced as I Worship Chaos and was released through Nuclear Blast on 2 October 2015. On 19 January 2016, the band announced the addition of Daniel Freyberg on guitar. He would make his live debut with them in Tampa, Florida on 9 February. In an interview with Noizr Zine, taken on September 14, 2017, Children of Bodom's keyboardist Janne Wirman answering to the question about the band's plans to start working on a new album with "the same production team" (Mikko Karmila and Mika Jussila) after '20 Years Down & Dirty' tour ends, said the following: "Yes, I think we are. And we're going to record it in our warehouse." In November 2017, Bassist Henkka Seppälä discussed in an interview that the band have half an album's worth of material written for the next album. They began to start recording the new album in March 2018. In August 2018, Seppälä stated in an interview with TotalRock Radio that the album will be released in early 2019. In November 2018, the band revealed that the album would be called Hexed. It was released on 8 March 2019. On November 1, 2019, it was announced that Children of Bodom would play their final show with the line-up at the time on December 15. The gig, dubbed "A Chapter Called Children of Bodom", took place at the Helsinki Ice Hall, Finland. The statement said: It was later reported that the main reason for the departures was that Raatikainen, Seppälä and Wirman could no longer find a shared viewpoint with Laiho. Laiho and Freyberg found a new bassist and a new drummer according to Helsingin Sanomat. According to Finnish music zine Soundi, Laiho could not use the band's name without permission from his former bandmates. Bodom After Midnight and death of Alexi Laiho (2020–2021) In 2020, Laiho decided to carry on with Freyberg in their new band Bodom After Midnight. Joining them were bassist Mitja Toivonen (ex-Santa Cruz), drummer Waltteri Väyrynen (Paradise Lost) and touring keyboardist Lauri Salomaa. The band made a live debut on 23 October 2020 in Seinäjoki, Finland with two more shows at Tavastia in Helsinki, Finland, where the band played an hour-long set of Children of Bodom songs. On 4 January 2021, it was announced that Alexi Laiho had died in late December 2020 from health complications at the age of 41. Bodom After Midnight was in the process of working on its full-length debut album, and before his death, recorded three songs and shot a music video, which were announced to be released posthumously. On 10 February, the band announced the release of an EP titled Paint the Sky with Blood, which was released on 23 April 2021. The 3-song EP features the final recordings by Laiho, consisting of two original songs and a Dissection cover. Guitarist Daniel Freyberg stated that there would be no more releases: "There was no more songs written. That was all the songs, all the riffs Alexi ever presented us. So there's no leftovers." In an April 2021 interview with Loudwire, Freyberg stated that Bodom After Midnight would not continue without Laiho: "Unfortunately, Bodom After Midnight as an active band is pretty much going to be buried with Alexi. We don't really feel comfortable using the name Bodom without Alexi, because it's so connected to him." Their song "Paint the Sky With Blood" was elected by Loudwire as the 8th best metal song of 2021. Musical style and influences Children of Bodom has been described usually as melodic death metal and power metal, combining the two genres together. Influences and inspirations to Children of Bodom were cited as a variety of artists such as Anthrax, Black Sabbath, Blind Guardian, Cannibal Corpse, Darkthrone, Dimmu Borgir, Dingo, Dire Straits, Entombed, Paul Gilbert, Guns N' Roses, Hanoi Rocks, Helloween, Hurriganes, Hypocrisy, Billy Idol, Impaled Nazarene, In Flames, Iron Maiden, Kreator, Yngwie Malmsteen, Metallica, Motörhead, Mötley Crüe, Nine Inch Nails, Obituary, Ozzy Osbourne, Pantera, Poison, the Ramones, Sepultura, the Sex Pistols, Skid Row, Slayer, Stone, Suicidal Tendencies, Twisted Sister, Steve Vai and W.A.S.P. Laiho has been, according to AllMusic, "widely celebrated as one of the genre's most accomplished players", while the band has an "instantly recognizable sound". Tributes In 2022, a restaurant bar dedicated to the band called Bodom Bar & Sauna was opened in Espoo, located next to the Niittykumpu metro station. As the name suggests, the bar also includes a public sauna. Band members Final lineup Alexi Laiho – lead guitar, lead vocals (1993–2019), bass (1993–1994, 1995–1996), keyboards (1993–1996, 2019), rhythm guitar (1993–1996, 2003, 2015) (died 2020) Jaska Raatikainen – drums (1993–2019), keyboards (1993–1996) Henkka Seppälä – bass, backing vocals (1995–2019) Janne Wirman – keyboards, backing vocals (1997–2019) Daniel Freyberg – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (2016–2019) Bodom After Midnight lineup (2020–2021) Alexi Laiho – lead guitar, lead vocals (died 2020) Daniel Freyberg – rhythm guitar, backing vocals Mitja Toivonen – bass, backing vocals Waltteri Väyrynen – drums Lauri Salomaa – keyboards, backing vocals (live member) Former members Samuli Miettinen – bass, backing vocals (1994–1995) Jani Pirisjoki – keyboards, backing vocals (1994–1997), rhythm guitar (1994–1995) Alexander Kuoppala – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1995–2003) Roope Latvala – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (2004–2015; live member 2003–2004) Former live members Erna Siikavirta – keyboards (1998) Kimberly Goss – keyboards, backing vocals (1998) Netta Skog – accordion (guest 2015, 2016) Antti Wirman – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (2015) Timeline Discography Something Wild (1997) Hatebreeder (1999) Follow the Reaper (2000) Hate Crew Deathroll (2003) Are You Dead Yet? (2005) Blooddrunk (2008) Relentless Reckless Forever (2011) Halo of Blood (2013) I Worship Chaos (2015) Hexed (2019) See also List of best-selling music artists in Finland References External links Category:1993 establishments in Finland Category:2019 disestablishments in Finland Category:Century Media Records artists Category:Finnish melodic death metal musical groups Category:Finnish power metal musical groups Category:Musical groups established in 1993 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 2019 Category:Musical quintets Category:Nuclear Blast artists

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Chick Corea

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (born June 12, 1941) is an American jazz pianist/electric keyboardist and composer. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta" and "Windows", are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed the fusion band Return to Forever.

Duet projects

In the 1970s Corea started working with vibraphonist Gary Burton, with whom he recorded several duet albums for ECM, including 1972's Crystal Silence. They reunited in 2006 for a concert tour. A new record called The New Crystal Silence was issued in 2008 and won a Grammy Award in 2009. The package includes a disc of duets and another disc with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Toward the end of the 1970s, Corea embarked on a series of concerts and two albums with Hancock. These concerts were presented in elegant settings with both pianists dressed formally and performing on Yamaha concert grand pianos. The two traded playing each other's compositions, as well as pieces by other composers such as Bela Bartok. In 1982, Corea performed The Meeting, a live duet with the classical pianist Friedrich Gulda. In December 2007 Corea recorded a duet album, The Enchantment, with banjoist Bela Fleck. Fleck and Corea toured extensively for the album in 2007. Fleck was nominated in the Best Instrumental Composition category at the 49th Grammy Awards for the track "Spectacle". In 2008 Corea collaborated with Japanese pianist Hiromi Uehara on the live album Duet (Chick Corea and Hiromi). The duo played a concert at Tokyo's Budokan arena on April 30. In 2015 Corea reprised the duet concert series with Hancock, again sticking to a dueling-piano format, though both also had synthesizers at their station. The first concert in this series was played at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle, and featured improvised music along with iconic songs from each of the duo and standards from other composers. CANNOTANSWER

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz composer, pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered to have been one of the foremost jazz pianists of the post-John Coltrane era. Corea continued to collaborate frequently while exploring different musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He won 27 Grammy Awards and was nominated more than 70 times for the award. Early life and education Armando Corea was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts on June 12, 1941, to parents Anna (née Zaccone) and Armando J. Corea. He was of southern Italian descent, his father having been born to an immigrant from Albi comune, in the Province of Catanzaro in the Calabria region. His father, a trumpeter who led a Dixieland band in Boston in the 1930s and 1940s, introduced him to the piano at the age of four. Surrounded by jazz, he was influenced at an early age by bebop and Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Horace Silver, and Lester Young. When he was eight, he took up drums, which would influence his use of the piano as a percussion instrument. Corea developed his piano skills while exploring music on his own. A notable influence was concert pianist Salvatore Sullo, from whom Corea began taking lessons at age eight; Sullo introduced him to classical music, helping spark his interest in musical composition. He also was a performer and soloist for several years in the St. Rose Scarlet Lancers, a drum and bugle corps based in Chelsea. Given a black tuxedo by his father, he started playing gigs while still in high school. He enjoyed listening to Herb Pomeroy's band at the time and had a trio that played Horace Silver's music at a local jazz club. He eventually moved to New York City, where he studied music at Columbia University, then transferred to the Juilliard School. He quit both after finding them disappointing, but remained in New York. Career Corea began his professional recording and touring career in the early 1960s with Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo, Blue Mitchell, Herbie Mann, and Stan Getz. In 1966 he recorded his debut album, Tones for Joan's Bones which was not released until 1968. Two years later he released a highly regarded trio album, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, with drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Miroslav Vitouš. In 1968, Corea began recording and touring with Miles Davis, appearing on the widely praised Davis studio albums Filles de Kilimanjaro, In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and On the Corner. He appeared as well as the later compilation albums Big Fun, Water Babies, and Circle in the Round. In concert performances he frequently processed the sound of his electric piano through a ring modulator. Utilizing the unique style, he appeared on multiple live Davis albums including Black Beauty: Live at the Fillmore West, and Miles Davis at Fillmore: Live at the Fillmore East. His membership in the Davis band continued until 1970, with the final touring band he was part of consisting of saxophonist Steve Grossman, fellow pianist Keith Jarrett (here playing electric organ), bassist Dave Holland, percussionist Airto Moreira, drummer Jack DeJohnette, and Davis himself on trumpet. Holland and Corea departed the Davis group at the same time to form their own free jazz group, Circle, also featuring multireedist Anthony Braxton and drummer Barry Altschul. They were active from 1970 to 1971, and recorded on Blue Note and ECM. Aside from exploring an atonal style, Corea sometimes reached into the body of the piano and plucked the strings. In 1971, Corea decided to work in a solo context, recording the sessions that became Piano Improvisations Vol. 1 and Piano Improvisations Vol. 2 for ECM in April of that year. The concept of communication with an audience became a big thing for me at the time. The reason I was using that concept so much at that point in my life–in 1968, 1969 or so–was because it was a discovery for me. I grew up kind of only thinking how much fun it was to tinkle on the piano and not noticing that what I did had an effect on others. I did not even think about a relationship to an audience, really, until way later. Jazz fusion Named after their eponymous 1972 album, Corea's Return to Forever band relied on both acoustic and electronic instrumentation and initially drew upon Hispanic music styles more than rock music. On their first two records, the group consisted of Flora Purim on vocals and percussion, Joe Farrell on flute and soprano saxophone, Miles Davis bandmate Airto on drums and percussion, and Stanley Clarke on acoustic double bass. Drummer Lenny White and guitarist Bill Connors later joined Corea and Clarke to form the second version of the group, which blended the earlier Latin music elements with rock and funk-oriented music partially inspired by the Mahavishnu Orchestra, led by his Bitches Brew bandmate John McLaughlin. This incarnation of the band recorded the album Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy, before Connors' replacement by Al Di Meola, who later played on Where Have I Known You Before, No Mystery and Romantic Warrior. In 1976, Corea released My Spanish Heart, influenced by Hispanic music and featuring vocalist Gayle Moran (Corea's wife) and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. The album combined jazz and flamenco, supported by Minimoog synthesizer and a horn section. Duet projects In the 1970s, Corea started working with vibraphonist Gary Burton, with whom he recorded several duet albums for ECM, including 1972's Crystal Silence. They reunited in 2006 for a concert tour. A new record called The New Crystal Silence was issued in 2008 and won a Grammy Award in 2009. The package includes a disc of duets and another disc with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Towards the end of the 1970s, Corea embarked on a series of concerts with fellow pianist Herbie Hancock. These concerts were presented in elegant settings with both artists dressed formally and performing on concert grand pianos. The two played each other's compositions, as well as pieces by other composers such as Béla Bartók, and duets. In 1982, Corea performed The Meeting, a live duet with the classical pianist Friedrich Gulda. In December 2007, Corea recorded a duet album, The Enchantment, with banjoist Béla Fleck. Fleck and Corea toured extensively for the album in 2007. Fleck was nominated in the Best Instrumental Composition category at the 49th Grammy Awards for the track "Spectacle". In 2008, Corea collaborated with Japanese pianist Hiromi Uehara on the live album Duet (Chick Corea and Hiromi). The duo played a concert at Tokyo's Budokan arena on April 30. In 2015, he reprised the duet concert series with Hancock, again sticking to a dueling-piano format, though both now integrated synthesizers into their repertoire. The first concert in this series was at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle and included improvisations, compositions by the duo, and standards by other composers. Later work Corea's other bands included the Chick Corea Elektric Band, its trio reduction called “Akoustic Band”, Origin, and its trio reduction called the New Trio. Corea signed a record deal with GRP Records in 1986 which led to the release of ten albums between 1986 and 1994, seven with the Elektric Band, two with the Akoustic Band, and a solo album, Expressions. The Akoustic Band released a self-titled album in 1989 and a live follow-up, Alive, in 1991, both featuring John Patitucci on bass and Dave Weckl on drums. It marked a return to traditional jazz trio instrumentation in Corea's career, and the bulk of his subsequent recordings have featured acoustic piano. In 1992, Corea started his own label, Stretch Records. In 2001, the Chick Corea New Trio, with bassist Avishai Cohen and drummer Jeff Ballard, released the album Past, Present & Futures. The eleven-song album includes only one standard (Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz"). The rest of the tunes are Corea originals. He participated in 1998's Like Minds with old associates Gary Burton on vibraphone, Dave Holland on bass, Roy Haynes on drums, and Pat Metheny playing guitars. During the later part of his career, Corea also explored contemporary classical music. He composed his first piano concerto—an adaptation of his signature piece "Spain" for a full symphony orchestra—and performed it in 1999 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2004 he composed his first work without keyboards: his String Quartet No. 1 was written for the Orion String Quartet and performed by them at 2004's Summerfest in Wisconsin. Corea continued recording fusion albums such as To the Stars (2004) and Ultimate Adventure (2006). The latter won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group. In 2008, the third version of Return to Forever (Corea, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White, and Di Meola) reunited for a worldwide tour. The reunion received positive reviews from jazz and mainstream publications. Most of the group's studio recordings were re-released on the compilation Return to Forever: The Anthology to coincide with the tour. A concert DVD recorded during their performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival was released in May 2009. He also worked on a collaboration CD with the vocal group The Manhattan Transfer. A new group, the Five Peace Band, began a world tour in October 2008. The ensemble included John McLaughlin whom Corea had previously worked with in Miles Davis's late 1960s bands, including the group that recorded Davis's classic album Bitches Brew. Joining Corea and McLaughlin were saxophonist Kenny Garrett and bassist Christian McBride. Drummer Vinnie Colaiuta played with the band in Europe and on select North American dates; Brian Blade played all dates in Asia and Australia, and most dates in North America. The vast reach of Corea's music was celebrated in a 2011 retrospective with Corea guesting with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; a New York Times reviewer had high praise for the occasion: "Mr. Corea was masterly with the other musicians, absorbing the rhythm and feeding the soloists. It sounded like a band, and Mr. Corea had no need to dominate; his authority was clear without raising volume." A new band, Chick Corea & The Vigil, featured Corea with bassist Hadrien Feraud, Marcus Gilmore on drums (carrying on from his grandfather, Roy Haynes), saxes, flute, and bass clarinet from Origin vet Tim Garland, and guitarist Charles Altura. Corea celebrated his 75th birthday in 2016 by playing with more than 20 different groups during a six-week stand at the Blue Note Jazz Club in Greenwich Village, New York City. "I pretty well ignore the numbers that make up 'age'. It seems to be the best way to go. I have always just concentrated on having the most fun I can with the adventure of music." Personal life Corea and his first wife Joanie had two children, Thaddeus and Liana, though the marriage ended in divorce. In 1972, Corea married his second wife, vocalist/pianist Gayle Moran. In 1968, Corea read Dianetics, author L. Ron Hubbard's most well-known self-help book, and developed an interest in Hubbard's other works in the early 1970s: "I came into contact with L. Ron Hubbard's material in 1968 with Dianetics and it kind of opened my mind up and it got me into seeing that my potential for communication was a lot greater than I thought it was." Corea said that Scientology became a profound influence on his musical direction in the early 1970s: "I no longer wanted to satisfy myself. I really want to connect with the world and make my music mean something to people." He also introduced his colleague Stanley Clarke to the movement. With Clarke Corea played on Space Jazz: The soundtrack of the book Battlefield Earth, a 1982 album to accompany L. Ron Hubbard's novel Battlefield Earth. Corea was excluded from a concert during the 1993 World Championships in Athletics in Stuttgart, Germany. The concert's organizers excluded him after the state government of Baden-Württemberg had announced it would review its subsidies for events featuring avowed members of Scientology. After Corea's complaint against this policy before the administrative court was unsuccessful in 1996, members of the United States Congress, in a letter to the German government, denounced the ban as a violation of Corea's human rights. Corea was not banned from performing in Germany, however, and had several appearances at the government-supported International Jazz Festival in Burghausen; he was awarded a plaque on Burghausen's "Street of Fame" in 2011. Corea died of a rare form of cancer shortly after his diagnosis. He died at his home near Tampa Bay, Florida on February 9, 2021, at the age of 79. Discography Awards and honors Corea's 1968 album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. In 1997, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music. In 2010, he was named Doctor Honoris Causa at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Grammy Awards Corea won 27 Grammy Awards and was nominated 71 times for the award. Latin Grammy Awards References External links Official site Official discography An Interview with Chick Corea by Bob Rosenbaum, July 1974 Chick Corea talks to Michael J Stewart about his Piano Concerto Chick Corea Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2016, 2018) Category:1941 births Category:2021 deaths Category:20th-century American keyboardists Category:20th-century American pianists Category:20th-century jazz composers Category:21st-century American keyboardists Category:21st-century American pianists Category:21st-century jazz composers Category:American Scientologists Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz pianists Category:American male jazz composers Category:American male pianists Category:American people of Italian descent Category:People of Sicilian descent Category:People of Calabrian descent Category:Chick Corea Elektric Band members Category:Circle (jazz band) members Category:Crossover (music) Category:Deaths from cancer in Florida Category:ECM Records artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:GRP All-Star Big Band members Category:GRP Records artists Category:Jazz fusion pianists Category:Jazz musicians from Massachusetts Category:Keytarists Category:Latin Grammy Award winners Category:Miles Davis Category:People from Chesterfield, Massachusetts Category:Post-bop composers Category:Post-bop pianists Category:Return to Forever members Category:The Jazz Messengers members

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Chick Corea

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (born June 12, 1941) is an American jazz pianist/electric keyboardist and composer. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta" and "Windows", are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed the fusion band Return to Forever.

Jazz fusion

In the early 1970s, Corea took a profound stylistic turn from avant-garde to a crossover jazz fusion style that incorporated Latin jazz with Return to Forever. Named after their eponymous 1972 album, the band relied on both acoustic and electronic instrumentation and drew upon Latin American styles more than on rock music. On their first two records, Return to Forever consisted of Flora Purim on vocals, Joe Farrell on flute and soprano saxophone, Airto Moreira on drums , and Stanley Clarke on double bass. Drummer Lenny White and guitarist Bill Connors later joined Corea and Clarke to form the second version of the group, which expanded the earlier Latin jazz elements with a more rock and funk-oriented sound inspired by the Mahavishnu Orchestra, led by his Bitches Brew bandmate John McLaughlin. This incarnation of the group recorded the album Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy, before Connors' departure and replacement by Al Di Meola, who was present on the subsequent releases Where Have I Known You Before, No Mystery, and Romantic Warrior. Corea's composition "Spain" appeared on the 1972 Return to Forever album Light as a Feather. This is probably his most popular piece, and it has been recorded by a variety of artists. There are also a variety of recordings by Corea himself. These included an arrangement for piano and symphony orchestra that appeared in 1999 and a collabration with vocalist Bobby McFerrin on the 1992 album Play. Corea usually performs "Spain" with a prelude based on Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez (1940), which earlier received a jazz orchestration on Davis and Gil Evans' Sketches of Spain. In 1976, he issued My Spanish Heart, influenced by Latin American music and featuring vocalist Gayle Moran (Corea's wife) and electric violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. The album combined jazz and flamenco, supported by Minimoog backup and a horn section. CANNOTANSWER

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz composer, pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered to have been one of the foremost jazz pianists of the post-John Coltrane era. Corea continued to collaborate frequently while exploring different musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He won 27 Grammy Awards and was nominated more than 70 times for the award. Early life and education Armando Corea was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts on June 12, 1941, to parents Anna (née Zaccone) and Armando J. Corea. He was of southern Italian descent, his father having been born to an immigrant from Albi comune, in the Province of Catanzaro in the Calabria region. His father, a trumpeter who led a Dixieland band in Boston in the 1930s and 1940s, introduced him to the piano at the age of four. Surrounded by jazz, he was influenced at an early age by bebop and Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Horace Silver, and Lester Young. When he was eight, he took up drums, which would influence his use of the piano as a percussion instrument. Corea developed his piano skills while exploring music on his own. A notable influence was concert pianist Salvatore Sullo, from whom Corea began taking lessons at age eight; Sullo introduced him to classical music, helping spark his interest in musical composition. He also was a performer and soloist for several years in the St. Rose Scarlet Lancers, a drum and bugle corps based in Chelsea. Given a black tuxedo by his father, he started playing gigs while still in high school. He enjoyed listening to Herb Pomeroy's band at the time and had a trio that played Horace Silver's music at a local jazz club. He eventually moved to New York City, where he studied music at Columbia University, then transferred to the Juilliard School. He quit both after finding them disappointing, but remained in New York. Career Corea began his professional recording and touring career in the early 1960s with Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo, Blue Mitchell, Herbie Mann, and Stan Getz. In 1966 he recorded his debut album, Tones for Joan's Bones which was not released until 1968. Two years later he released a highly regarded trio album, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, with drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Miroslav Vitouš. In 1968, Corea began recording and touring with Miles Davis, appearing on the widely praised Davis studio albums Filles de Kilimanjaro, In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and On the Corner. He appeared as well as the later compilation albums Big Fun, Water Babies, and Circle in the Round. In concert performances he frequently processed the sound of his electric piano through a ring modulator. Utilizing the unique style, he appeared on multiple live Davis albums including Black Beauty: Live at the Fillmore West, and Miles Davis at Fillmore: Live at the Fillmore East. His membership in the Davis band continued until 1970, with the final touring band he was part of consisting of saxophonist Steve Grossman, fellow pianist Keith Jarrett (here playing electric organ), bassist Dave Holland, percussionist Airto Moreira, drummer Jack DeJohnette, and Davis himself on trumpet. Holland and Corea departed the Davis group at the same time to form their own free jazz group, Circle, also featuring multireedist Anthony Braxton and drummer Barry Altschul. They were active from 1970 to 1971, and recorded on Blue Note and ECM. Aside from exploring an atonal style, Corea sometimes reached into the body of the piano and plucked the strings. In 1971, Corea decided to work in a solo context, recording the sessions that became Piano Improvisations Vol. 1 and Piano Improvisations Vol. 2 for ECM in April of that year. The concept of communication with an audience became a big thing for me at the time. The reason I was using that concept so much at that point in my life–in 1968, 1969 or so–was because it was a discovery for me. I grew up kind of only thinking how much fun it was to tinkle on the piano and not noticing that what I did had an effect on others. I did not even think about a relationship to an audience, really, until way later. Jazz fusion Named after their eponymous 1972 album, Corea's Return to Forever band relied on both acoustic and electronic instrumentation and initially drew upon Hispanic music styles more than rock music. On their first two records, the group consisted of Flora Purim on vocals and percussion, Joe Farrell on flute and soprano saxophone, Miles Davis bandmate Airto on drums and percussion, and Stanley Clarke on acoustic double bass. Drummer Lenny White and guitarist Bill Connors later joined Corea and Clarke to form the second version of the group, which blended the earlier Latin music elements with rock and funk-oriented music partially inspired by the Mahavishnu Orchestra, led by his Bitches Brew bandmate John McLaughlin. This incarnation of the band recorded the album Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy, before Connors' replacement by Al Di Meola, who later played on Where Have I Known You Before, No Mystery and Romantic Warrior. In 1976, Corea released My Spanish Heart, influenced by Hispanic music and featuring vocalist Gayle Moran (Corea's wife) and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. The album combined jazz and flamenco, supported by Minimoog synthesizer and a horn section. Duet projects In the 1970s, Corea started working with vibraphonist Gary Burton, with whom he recorded several duet albums for ECM, including 1972's Crystal Silence. They reunited in 2006 for a concert tour. A new record called The New Crystal Silence was issued in 2008 and won a Grammy Award in 2009. The package includes a disc of duets and another disc with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Towards the end of the 1970s, Corea embarked on a series of concerts with fellow pianist Herbie Hancock. These concerts were presented in elegant settings with both artists dressed formally and performing on concert grand pianos. The two played each other's compositions, as well as pieces by other composers such as Béla Bartók, and duets. In 1982, Corea performed The Meeting, a live duet with the classical pianist Friedrich Gulda. In December 2007, Corea recorded a duet album, The Enchantment, with banjoist Béla Fleck. Fleck and Corea toured extensively for the album in 2007. Fleck was nominated in the Best Instrumental Composition category at the 49th Grammy Awards for the track "Spectacle". In 2008, Corea collaborated with Japanese pianist Hiromi Uehara on the live album Duet (Chick Corea and Hiromi). The duo played a concert at Tokyo's Budokan arena on April 30. In 2015, he reprised the duet concert series with Hancock, again sticking to a dueling-piano format, though both now integrated synthesizers into their repertoire. The first concert in this series was at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle and included improvisations, compositions by the duo, and standards by other composers. Later work Corea's other bands included the Chick Corea Elektric Band, its trio reduction called “Akoustic Band”, Origin, and its trio reduction called the New Trio. Corea signed a record deal with GRP Records in 1986 which led to the release of ten albums between 1986 and 1994, seven with the Elektric Band, two with the Akoustic Band, and a solo album, Expressions. The Akoustic Band released a self-titled album in 1989 and a live follow-up, Alive, in 1991, both featuring John Patitucci on bass and Dave Weckl on drums. It marked a return to traditional jazz trio instrumentation in Corea's career, and the bulk of his subsequent recordings have featured acoustic piano. In 1992, Corea started his own label, Stretch Records. In 2001, the Chick Corea New Trio, with bassist Avishai Cohen and drummer Jeff Ballard, released the album Past, Present & Futures. The eleven-song album includes only one standard (Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz"). The rest of the tunes are Corea originals. He participated in 1998's Like Minds with old associates Gary Burton on vibraphone, Dave Holland on bass, Roy Haynes on drums, and Pat Metheny playing guitars. During the later part of his career, Corea also explored contemporary classical music. He composed his first piano concerto—an adaptation of his signature piece "Spain" for a full symphony orchestra—and performed it in 1999 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2004 he composed his first work without keyboards: his String Quartet No. 1 was written for the Orion String Quartet and performed by them at 2004's Summerfest in Wisconsin. Corea continued recording fusion albums such as To the Stars (2004) and Ultimate Adventure (2006). The latter won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group. In 2008, the third version of Return to Forever (Corea, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White, and Di Meola) reunited for a worldwide tour. The reunion received positive reviews from jazz and mainstream publications. Most of the group's studio recordings were re-released on the compilation Return to Forever: The Anthology to coincide with the tour. A concert DVD recorded during their performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival was released in May 2009. He also worked on a collaboration CD with the vocal group The Manhattan Transfer. A new group, the Five Peace Band, began a world tour in October 2008. The ensemble included John McLaughlin whom Corea had previously worked with in Miles Davis's late 1960s bands, including the group that recorded Davis's classic album Bitches Brew. Joining Corea and McLaughlin were saxophonist Kenny Garrett and bassist Christian McBride. Drummer Vinnie Colaiuta played with the band in Europe and on select North American dates; Brian Blade played all dates in Asia and Australia, and most dates in North America. The vast reach of Corea's music was celebrated in a 2011 retrospective with Corea guesting with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; a New York Times reviewer had high praise for the occasion: "Mr. Corea was masterly with the other musicians, absorbing the rhythm and feeding the soloists. It sounded like a band, and Mr. Corea had no need to dominate; his authority was clear without raising volume." A new band, Chick Corea & The Vigil, featured Corea with bassist Hadrien Feraud, Marcus Gilmore on drums (carrying on from his grandfather, Roy Haynes), saxes, flute, and bass clarinet from Origin vet Tim Garland, and guitarist Charles Altura. Corea celebrated his 75th birthday in 2016 by playing with more than 20 different groups during a six-week stand at the Blue Note Jazz Club in Greenwich Village, New York City. "I pretty well ignore the numbers that make up 'age'. It seems to be the best way to go. I have always just concentrated on having the most fun I can with the adventure of music." Personal life Corea and his first wife Joanie had two children, Thaddeus and Liana, though the marriage ended in divorce. In 1972, Corea married his second wife, vocalist/pianist Gayle Moran. In 1968, Corea read Dianetics, author L. Ron Hubbard's most well-known self-help book, and developed an interest in Hubbard's other works in the early 1970s: "I came into contact with L. Ron Hubbard's material in 1968 with Dianetics and it kind of opened my mind up and it got me into seeing that my potential for communication was a lot greater than I thought it was." Corea said that Scientology became a profound influence on his musical direction in the early 1970s: "I no longer wanted to satisfy myself. I really want to connect with the world and make my music mean something to people." He also introduced his colleague Stanley Clarke to the movement. With Clarke Corea played on Space Jazz: The soundtrack of the book Battlefield Earth, a 1982 album to accompany L. Ron Hubbard's novel Battlefield Earth. Corea was excluded from a concert during the 1993 World Championships in Athletics in Stuttgart, Germany. The concert's organizers excluded him after the state government of Baden-Württemberg had announced it would review its subsidies for events featuring avowed members of Scientology. After Corea's complaint against this policy before the administrative court was unsuccessful in 1996, members of the United States Congress, in a letter to the German government, denounced the ban as a violation of Corea's human rights. Corea was not banned from performing in Germany, however, and had several appearances at the government-supported International Jazz Festival in Burghausen; he was awarded a plaque on Burghausen's "Street of Fame" in 2011. Corea died of a rare form of cancer shortly after his diagnosis. He died at his home near Tampa Bay, Florida on February 9, 2021, at the age of 79. Discography Awards and honors Corea's 1968 album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. In 1997, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music. In 2010, he was named Doctor Honoris Causa at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Grammy Awards Corea won 27 Grammy Awards and was nominated 71 times for the award. Latin Grammy Awards References External links Official site Official discography An Interview with Chick Corea by Bob Rosenbaum, July 1974 Chick Corea talks to Michael J Stewart about his Piano Concerto Chick Corea Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2016, 2018) Category:1941 births Category:2021 deaths Category:20th-century American keyboardists Category:20th-century American pianists Category:20th-century jazz composers Category:21st-century American keyboardists Category:21st-century American pianists Category:21st-century jazz composers Category:American Scientologists Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz pianists Category:American male jazz composers Category:American male pianists Category:American people of Italian descent Category:People of Sicilian descent Category:People of Calabrian descent Category:Chick Corea Elektric Band members Category:Circle (jazz band) members Category:Crossover (music) Category:Deaths from cancer in Florida Category:ECM Records artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:GRP All-Star Big Band members Category:GRP Records artists Category:Jazz fusion pianists Category:Jazz musicians from Massachusetts Category:Keytarists Category:Latin Grammy Award winners Category:Miles Davis Category:People from Chesterfield, Massachusetts Category:Post-bop composers Category:Post-bop pianists Category:Return to Forever members Category:The Jazz Messengers members

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Dev Anand

Dev was born Dharam Dev Anand on 26 September 1923 in the Shakargarh tehsil of the Gurdaspur district in Punjab (British India). His father Pishori Lal Anand was a well-to-do advocate in Gurdaspur District Court. Dev was the third of four sons born to Anand. One of Dev's younger sisters is Sheel Kanta Kapur, who is the mother of film director Shekhar Kapur.

Romantic hero image in the 1960s

In the sixties, Dev Anand acquired a romantic image with films such as Manzil and Tere Ghar Ke Samne with Nutan, Kinaare Kinaare with Meena Kumari, Maya with Mala Sinha, Asli-Naqli with Sadhana Shivdasani, Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai, Mahal with Asha Parekh and Teen Deviyaan opposite three heroines Kalpana, Simi Garewal and Nanda. In the film Teen Deviyaan, Dev Anand played a playboy. His first colour film, Guide with Waheeda Rehman was based on the novel of the same name by R. K. Narayan. Dev Anand himself was the impetus for making the film version of the book. He met and persuaded Narayan to give his assent to the project. Dev Anand tapped his friends in Hollywood to launch an Indo-US co-production that was shot in Hindi and English simultaneously and was released in 1965. Guide, directed by younger brother Vijay Anand, was an acclaimed movie. Dev played Raju, a voluble guide, who supports Rosy (Waheeda) in her bid for freedom. He is not above thoughtlessly exploiting her for personal gains. Combining style with substance, he gave an affecting performance as a man grappling with his emotions in his passage through love, shame and salvation. He reunited with Vijay Anand for the movie Jewel Thief, based on the thriller genre which featured Vyjayanthimala, Tanuja, Anju Mahendru, Faryal and Helen and was very successful. Their next collaboration, Johny Mera Naam (1970), again a thriller, in which Dev was paired opposite Hema Malini was a big hit. It was Johnny Mera Naam which made Hema Malini a big star. In 1969, he was a member of the jury at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival. CANNOTANSWER

Dharamdev Pishorimal Anand (26 September 1923 – 3 December 2011), better known as Dev Anand, was an Indian actor, writer, director, and producer known for his work in Hindi cinema, through a career that spanned over six decades. He was one of the most successful actors of Indian cinema and a part of "Trinity – The Golden Trio" along with Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar. The  Government of India  honored him with the Padma Bhushan  in 2001 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award  in 2002 for his contribution to Indian cinema. He has won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor  twice and Filmfare's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993. A fast dialogue delivery style and nodding while doing so soon became the trademarks of Anand's acting in movies. His style was copied by other actors. Most of Dev Anand's films explored his viewpoint of the world and often highlighted many socially relevant topics. In 1946, he debuted with a lead role in Prabhat Films' Hum Ek Hain, a film about Hindu-Muslim unity. In the late 40s, Anand was offered a few roles starring as the male lead opposite singer-actress Suraiya in woman-oriented films such as Vidya (1948), Jeet (1949), (1950) and Sanam (1951). In 1949, Anand launched his own company Navketan Films, under this banner, he produced and directed some of his most successful films. His breakthrough Baazi (1951), is regarded as the forerunner of the spate of "Bombay Noir" films that followed in Bollywood in the 1950s. In later years, he starred many successful films such as Jaal (1952), Pocket Maar (1956), Munimji (1955), Funtoosh (1956), Paying Guest (1957) and Kala Pani (1958). He acquired a romantic image with films such as Manzil (1960), Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai (1961), Hum Dono (1961), Tere Ghar Ke Samne (1963), His first colour film, Guide (1965) was based on the novel of the same name by R. K. Narayan was entered for Best Foreign Language Film at the 38th Academy Awards. In the 70s, he debuted in the direction of the espionage drama Prem Pujari. Throughout the 70s and 80s, he starred in many box office hits such as (1970), which was highest grosser of the year, and Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971), Banarasi Babu (1973), Heera Panna (1973), Amir Garib (1974), Warrant (1975), Des Pardes (1978), Lootmaar (1980) and Swami Dada (1982), Hum Naujawan (1985) and Lashkar (1989). Early life and background Anand was born Dharamdev Pishorimal Anand on 26 September 1923 in the Shakargarh tehsil of the Gurdaspur district in Punjab (British India). His father Pishori Lal Anand was a well-to-do advocate in Gurdaspur District Court. Dev was the third of four sons born to Anand. One of Dev's younger sisters is Sheel Kanta Kapur, who is the mother of film director Shekhar Kapur. His older brothers were Manmohan Anand (Advocate, Gurdaspur Dist. Court), Chetan Anand and the younger one was Vijay Anand. He did his schooling till matriculation from Sacred Heart School, Dalhousie, (then in Punjab) and went to Government college Dharamshala before going to Lahore to study. Later Dev completed a B.A. degree in English Literature from the Government College, Lahore in British India. Part of the Anand family, he co-founded Navketan Films in 1949 with his elder brother Chetan Anand. Career After completing his BA degree in English literature from the Government College, Lahore (then in British India). Anand left his hometown for Bombay in the early 1940s. He began his career in the military censor's office at Churchgate, for a monthly salary of Rs. 65. Later, he worked as a clerk in an accounting firm for a salary of Rs. 85. He joined his older brother, Chetan, as a member of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA). Anand aspired to become a performer after seeing Ashok Kumar's performance in films such as Achhut Kanya and Kismet. Anand quoted in an interview that "I remember when I gate-crashed into the office of the man who gave me the first break, he kept looking at me – Babu Rao Pai of Prabhat Film Studios. At that time he made up his mind that this boy deserves a break and later mentioned to his people that 'this boy struck me because of his smile and beautiful eyes and his tremendous confidence.'" Then he was soon offered the lead role in Prabhat Films' Hum Ek Hain (1946), a film about Hindu-Muslim unity, where Dev Anand played a Hindu boy and was paired opposite Kamala Kotnis. While shooting the film in Pune, Anand befriended the actor Guru Dutt. Between them, they agreed that if one of them were to become successful in the film industry, he would help the other also to be successful. They formed a mutual understanding that when Anand produced a film, Dutt would direct it and when Dutt directed a film, Anand would act in it. Late 1940s and romance with Suraiya In the late 1940s, Anand was offered a few roles starring as the male lead opposite singer-actress Suraiya in woman-oriented films. While shooting these films, they became romantically involved. The two of them were paired in seven films together: Vidya (1948), Jeet (1949), (1949), (1950), Nili (1950), Do Sitare (1951) and Sanam (1951), all of which were successful at the box office. In these films, Suraiya was always the first biller in the credits, indicating that she was a bigger star than Anand. She fell in love with him during the shooting of the song Kinare Kinare Chale Jayen Ge from the film Vidya— while shooting the scene, the boat they were in capsized, and Anand saved Suraiya from drowning. Initially, Suraiya's family used to welcome Anand at home, but when her maternal grandmother found out that the two were in love, and even planned an actual marriage on the set of Jeet, she started monitoring them. The two shared love letters and messages through their co-actors, like Durga Khote and Kamini Kaushal, who went out of their way to engineer secret rendezvous. During the shooting of the film (1950), Anand finally proposed to Suraiya and gave her a diamond ring worth Rs 3,000. Her maternal grandmother opposed the relationship as they were Muslim and Anand was Hindu, so, Suraiya remained unmarried. They stopped acting together after her grandmother opposed their partnership, and Do Sitare was the last film in which they appeared together. Although the films he starred in with Suraiya had been successful, the producers and directors of those films attributed their success to the acting prowess and screen presence of Suraiya. Anand began looking for an opportunity to play the main male lead in a film where his acting skills could be demonstrated, so as to dispel scepticism about his acting abilities. Dev Anand often spoke about Suraiya and his love affair with her, in various interviews, he gave to film magazines, such as Stardust (June 1972 issue), Star & Style (Feb 1987 issue) and TV to Karan Thapar for BBC (2002), while both were alive and after Suraiya's death in interviews given on TV to Simi Garewal (Rendezvous with Simi Garewal) and others on TV and for news magazines. Break and the 1950s Anand was offered his first big break by Ashok Kumar. He spotted Anand hanging around in the studios and picked him as the hero for the Bombay Talkies production Ziddi (1948), co-starring Kamini Kaushal, which became an instant success. After Ziddis success, Anand decided that he would start producing films. It was in the film Ziddi, that the first ever Kishore-Lata duet, "Yeh Kaun Aaya Karke Yeh Sola Singhar", was recorded. This duet was an instant hit, and from here on both playback singers' associations with Dev Anand began. This continued for the next four decades. His association with Kishore Kumar started when the former sang the first solo of his playback singing career – "Marne Ki Duayen" – picturized on Dev Anand in the movie Ziddi. Dev had forged a very strong bond of friendship with Kishore Kumar during the making of the film. In 1949, he launched his own company Navketan Films (named after his elder brother Chetan's son Ketan and which means "New Banner"), which, as of 2011, has produced 35 films. Nirala (1950), a commercial success, saw him being paired opposite Madhubala for the first time, with whom he would later form a popular pair. Dev chose Guru Dutt as director for the crime thriller, Baazi (1951). The film, starring Dev Anand, Geeta Bali, and Kalpana Kartik was a trendsetter, regarded as the forerunner of the spate of urban crime films that followed in Bollywood in the 1950s. The film Baazi saw the debut of Kalpana Kartik (aka Mona Singha) as the lead female actress and Guru Dutt as a director. The collaboration was a success at the box office and the duo of Dev Anand and Kalpana Kartik were offered many films to star in together. They signed all the film offers and subsequently the movies Aandhiyan (1952), Taxi Driver (1954), House No. 44 (1955) and Nau Do Gyarah (1957) went on to become big hits too. During the making of the film Taxi Driver, the couple fell in love and Dev proposed marriage to his heroine Kalpana. In 1954, Taxi Driver was declared a hit and the two decided to marry in a quiet ceremony. The couple had a son, Suneil Anand in 1956 and later a daughter, Devina, was born. After her marriage, Kalpana decided not to pursue her acting career further. Nau Do Gyarah was the couple's last movie together. A rapid-fire style of dialogue delivery and a penchant for nodding while speaking became Dev's style in films such as Baazi (1951), Jaal (1952), House No. 44 (1955), Pocket Maar (1956), Munimji (1955), Funtoosh (1956), C.I.D. (1956) and Paying Guest (1957). In the 1950s his films were of the mystery genre or light comedy love stories or were films with social relevance such as Ek Ke Baad Ek (1959) and Funtoosh (1956). His style was lapped up by the audience and was widely imitated. He starred in a string of box office successes for the remainder of the 1950s opposite newcomer Waheeda Rehman in C.I.D. (1956), Solva Saal (1958), Kala Bazar (1960) and Baat Ek Raat Ki (1962). Waheeda first became a star when C.I.D became a hit. The pair acted in Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja (1961 film) and Prem Pujari later. In 1955, he also co-starred with Dilip Kumar in Insaniyat. With his acting in the box office success Kala Pani (1958) opposite Madhubala and Nalini Jaywant, as the son who is willing to go to any lengths to clear his framed father's name, he won his first Filmfare award for Best Actor for the film. He attempted films of tragic genre occasionally, such as Pocket Maar (1956), Kala Pani (1958), Bombai Ka Baboo (1960) and Sharabi (1964) and tasted success with them. Dev also played a few characters with a negative shade, as in Jaal (1952) where he played a smuggler, then as an absconding gang member in Dushman (1957), and as a black marketer in Kala Bazar. Apart from his pairing with Suraiya and Kalpana Kartik, his pairing with Nutan and Waheeda Rehman was popular among the audiences in the late 50s and 60s. His films Rahi (1952) and Aandhiyan (1952), were screened along with Raj Kapoor's Awaara. From the early fifties till the mid-sixties, the trio of actors Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, and Anand ruled the roost. Romantic hero image in the 1960s In the sixties, Dev Anand acquired a romantic image with films such as Manzil and Tere Ghar Ke Samne with Nutan, Kinare Kinare with Meena Kumari, Maya with Mala Sinha, Asli-Naqli with Sadhana Shivdasani, Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai, Mahal with Asha Parekh and Teen Deviyaan opposite three heroines Kalpana, Simi Garewal and Nanda. In the film Teen Deviyaan, Dev Anand played a playboy. One of his notable films of the early sixties was Hum Dono (1961) which he produced and acted in, as Anand, a young lover who joins the army in frustration over being shunned by the father of his love Meeta (played by Sadhana Shivdasani). Anand played a double role in the film, also acting as Major Varma, his look-alike who he runs into in the army and forms a deep friendship. Notable for its music by Jaidev, the film was a box office hit. His first colour film, Guide with Waheeda Rehman was based on the novel of the same name by R. K. Narayan. Dev Anand himself was the impetus for making the film version of the book. He met and persuaded Narayan to give his assent to the project. Dev Anand tapped his friends in Hollywood to launch an Indo-US co-production that was shot in Hindi and English simultaneously and was released in 1965. Guide, directed by younger brother Vijay Anand, was an acclaimed movie. Dev played Raju, a voluble guide, who supports Rosy (Waheeda) in her bid for freedom. He is not above thoughtlessly exploiting her for personal gains. Combining style with substance, he gave an affecting performance as a man grappling with his emotions in his passage through love, shame, and salvation. He reunited with Vijay Anand for the movie Jewel Thief, based on the thriller genre which featured Vyjayanthimala, Tanuja, Anju Mahendru, Faryal and Helen and was very successful. Their next collaboration, (1970), again a thriller, in which Dev was paired opposite Hema Malini was a big hit. It was Johnny Mera Naam which made Hema Malini a big star. In 1969, he was a member of the jury at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival. Directorial debut and the Versatile Hero Image in the 1970s His directorial debut, the espionage drama Prem Pujari, was a flop but has developed a cult following over the years. The film introduced Zaheeda and had Waheeda Rehman as the female lead. He tasted success with his 1971 directorial effort, Hare Rama Hare Krishna, shot primarily in Nepal around Swyambhunath, and Bhaktapur, in which talks about the prevalent hippie culture. His find Zeenat Aman, who played the mini-skirt sporting, pot-smoking Janice, became an overnight sensation. Dev also became known as a filmmaker of trenchantly topical themes. The same year, he starred with Mumtaz in Tere Mere Sapne, an adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel, The Citadel. The film was directed by Dev's brother, Vijay, and was also successful. In 1971 he paired again with Zaheeda in Gambler which went on to become a success. In the 1970s, Raj Kapoor started playing roles of fathers in films such as Kal Aaj Aur Kal in 1971 and Dharam Karam in 1974 and had put on a lot of weight and films with Dilip Kumar as a lead hero like Dastaan and Bairaag were failures at the box office. Some of the hurriedly made films with Dev Anand as the leading man—three each opposite Hema Malini – Shareef Badmaash, Jaaneman, Joshila and two with Zeenat Aman – Ishq Ishq Ishq, Prem Shastra and Saheb Bahadur with Priya Rajvansh — became flops and posed a threat to his career as a leading man. He bounced back with the double-role film Banarasi Babu in 1973. He delivered commercial hits again with young heroines like with Sharmila Tagore in Yeh Gulistan Hamara (1972), with Yogeeta Bali and Raakhee in Banarasi Babu (1973), with Hema Malini in Chhupa Rustam (1973) and Amir Garib (1974), with Zeenat Aman in Heera Panna (1973), Warrant (1975), Kalabaaz and Darling Darling (1977) and with Parveen Babi in Bullet (1976). The presence of his discoveries in the 1970s—Zeenat, and later Tina Munim, in films and his good on-screen chemistry with beautiful young stars such as Raakhee, Parveen Babi, Hema Malini and Zeenat Aman in various films boosted Dev's image as the evergreen star even though he was well into his fifties. He attempted different genres of films to acquire versatile hero images. He was already 55 when he was paired with Tina Munim in 1978 in Des Pardes, which became among the top five-grossing films of the year. Political activism during the Emergency in the late 1970s Dev Anand has also been politically active. He led a group of film personalities who stood up against the Internal Emergency imposed by the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. He actively campaigned against her with his supporters in the Indian parliamentary elections in 1977. He also formed a party called the " National Party of India", which he later disbanded. Later Career and Evergreen Hero Image The 1978 hit Des Pardes, directed by Dev Anand was the debut movie of actress Tina Munim and this film's success gave him the tag of the Evergreen Hero. Dev Anand was offered the lead role in Man Pasand by director Basu Chatterjee. Dev Anand's successful run at the box office continued in the 1980s with Man Pasand, Lootmaar (both opposite Tina Munim), and Swami Dada (1982), all being critically acclaimed and box office hits. Though Dev Anand's demand as the lead hero had not decreased even in the 1980s, he decided that it was the right time to introduce his son Suneil Anand in films as the hero. He launched his son in the Kramer vs. Kramer-inspired Anand Aur Anand (1984), which was produced and directed by Dev Anand himself and had music by R.D. Burman. He expected the film to do well, but the film was a box office disaster, and Suneil Anand decided not to act in films anymore. But films with Dev Anand as the lead hero in Hum Naujawan (1985) and Lashkar (1989) continued to be box office successes and were appreciated by critics. Awwal Number (1990), where Dev Anand co-starred with Aditya Pancholi and Aamir Khan became an average grosser in the year 1990. Aamir said in an interview that Awwal Number is the only film he signed without reading the script because it was being directed by his senior Dev Anand. Aamir quoted: "Dev saab was an icon for many generations and entertained us throughout his life". He was already 60 years old in 1983 when he acted opposite Christine O'Neil and alongside Rati Agnihotri and Padmini Kolhapure in Swami Dada. In 1989, his directorial venture Sachche ka Bolbala was released. Though critically acclaimed, it was a commercial failure. His performance as Professor Anand in the 1989 film Lashkar was widely appreciated and was a major success at the box office. Lashkar was his last hit film in the lead role in 1989, with him neither producer nor director of the film. He directed Pyar Ka Tarana in 1993, without casting himself in any role. His directorial movie Gangster (1995) had a controversial nude rape scene of an unknown actress, though the movie was released uncut. He received offers to star in the lead roles outside of his home banners in films like Return of Jewel Thief and Aman Ke Farishtey but the former was not successful at the box office and the latter wasn't released in 1993 though the film was fully ready to be released. Since 1992, seven of his directorial ventures were box office failures. His films Sau Crore (1991) and Censor (2000) were critically acclaimed. His performance and direction in the 1991 film Sau Crore was appreciated as it was a movie ahead of its time dealing with the real-life murder of badminton star Syed Modi and the arrest being made of the wife and her ex-lover. Sau Crore remains the last commercial hit film of Dev Anand as the lead hero as well as a director. His last film Chargesheet (2011) was panned by critics across the board. He also starred in English films such as The Evil Within (1970), where he was paired opposite Vietnamese actress Kieu Chinh and Zeenat Aman and Guide (English Version). The English language film The Evil Within was a 20th-Century Fox production that couldn't get the nod from the concerned authorities due to its parallel track dealing with opium selling and thus the Indian viewers were deprived of this American venture. Of the 114 Hindi films, he appeared in, over 6 decades, Kahin Aur Chal (1968) had a delayed release in the early 1970s and the multi-starrer film Ek Do Teen Chaar (1980) remained unreleased and Shrimanji (1968) had him in a guest appearance. By 2011, he had the second most solo lead roles in Hindi films— 92, with Rajesh Khanna having the record for the most films as the solo lead hero in Hindi films – 106. Recognition Comparisons with Gregory Peck Often compared to the famous actor Gregory Peck the world over, Dev Anand said that he didn't feel ecstatic hearing the tag line bestowed on him in his heyday. "When you are at an impressionable age you make idols, but when you grow out of the phase, you develop your own persona. I don't want to be known as India's Gregory Peck, I am Dev Anand". Acquainted with the Bollywood actor, Peck's personal interactions with him spanned four to five long meetings in Europe and Mumbai. Dev Anand and Suraiya met Peck for the first time at Bombay's Willingdon Club, after the Filmfare Awards in 1954, on Peck's stopover from a schedule in Sri Lanka after shooting for The Purple Plain. He knew of the "Indian Star" as an actor, more so probably because his romance with Suraiya was grabbing the headlines, and they had a chat. The second time they met was in Rome when Dev Anand was on his way back from the Venice Film Festival, he visited him on the set of Roman Holiday. "I was returning from the Venice film fest. I stopped my car and joined the crowd watching the shoot, hoping that his eyes would fall on me. As expected, he nodded and I walked up to him. He remembered me and we exchanged pleasantries." The third meeting was at London on the set of Moby Dick. However, Suraiya asked for an exclusive meeting with her idol at her house. Though Anand says jealousy was natural for anyone in love, he didn't mind that he was not invited. "I didn't quite feel anything. It wasn't as if they were going to fall in love or make love. Even if they would have, it wouldn't have mattered. I was mature enough. Moreover, he wasn't my rival. I too was a big star by then," says Anand. Critical appraisal Dev Anand has directed 19 films and produced 35 films. Of the 35 films he produced, 18 were commercially successful at the box office, and of the 19 films directed by him, 10 were hits. He wrote the stories for 13 of his films. Critics say his directorial ventures have always been ahead of their time. Dev Anand's films are well known for their hit songs. He is known to have been an active participant in the music sessions of a number of his films. His association with music composers Shankar-Jaikishen, O. P. Nayyar, Kalyanji-Anandji, Sachin Dev Burman and his son Rahul Dev Burman, lyricists Hasrat Jaipuri, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Gopaldas Neeraj, Shailendra, Anand Bakshi, and playback singers Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi and Hemant Kumar produced some very popular songs. Guru Dutt, Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Pran, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Sunil Dutt, Nargis, Vyjayanthimala, S.D. Burman, Shammi Kapoor and R.D. Burman were his closest friends from the film industry. In September 2007, Dev's autobiography Romancing with Life was released at a birthday party with the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. In February 2011, his 1961 black-and-white film Hum Dono was digitised, colourised and re-released. Dev Anand is credited with giving actors such as Zarina Wahab in Ishq Ishq Ishq, Jackie Shroff in Swami Dada (1982), Tabu in Hum Naujawan and Richa Sharma (Sanjay Dutt's first wife) a break in the film industry, discovering Zeenat Amaan, Tina Munim and encouraging music composer Rajesh Roshan. Amit Khanna started his career with Navketan as executive producer in 1971 and had been secretary to Dev Anand in the 1970s. He adds, "The uniqueness of Navketan today is that it's the only film company in the world still run by the one who started it." Shatrughan Sinha disclosed in an interview that it was Dev Anand who gave him a break in films by giving him a role in Prem Pujari and since Dev had given Sinha a very small role in that film, he compensated for it by giving Sinha another role in his next film Gambler. Sinha quoted: "Later on we worked together in Sharif Badmash and it was really a privilege to work with him". It was under Dev Anand's Navketan Banner where Guru Dutt, Raj Khosla, Waheeda Rehman, S.D. Burman, Jaidev, Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Yash Johar, Shekhar Kapur and Kabir Bedi were given breaks into Hindi films and Dev launched actors Zaheera, Zaheeda Hussain, Zarina Wahab, Natasha Sinha, Ekta Sohini and Sabrina. Personal life Anand had a love affair with actress Suraiya from 1948 to 1951, but they never married, because of opposition by Suraiya's maternal grandmother. Suraiya remained unmarried throughout her life till she died on 31 January 2004. In 1954, Dev married Kalpana Kartik (actual name Mona Singha), a Bollywood actress from Shimla, in a private marriage during the shooting of the film Taxi Driver. They have two children, son Suneil and daughter Devina. Death Dev Anand died in his room at The Washington Mayfair Hotel in London at the age of 88 on 3 December 2011 of a cardiac arrest. His death came just two months after the release of his last film Chargesheet, which he directed and produced. Anand was reportedly in London for a medical checkup at the time of his death. On 10 December, his funeral service was held at a small chapel in London after which his coffin was taken to the Putney Vale Crematorium in southwest London. His ashes were returned to India for immersion burial in the Godavari River. Awards and honours The Government of India honored him with the Padma Bhushan in 2001 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2002 for his contribution to Indian cinema. His career spanned more than 65 years, acting in 114 Hindi films, of which 92 had him play the main solo lead hero, and he did two English films. He was the recipient of the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for his performances in Kala Pani and Guide, the latter being India's official entry to the Oscars. Civilian award 2001 – Padma Bhushan (India's third highest civilian award from the Government of India) National Film Awards Winner 1965 – National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi for Guide 2002 – Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India's highest award for cinematic excellence Filmfare awards Winner 1959 – Best Actor for Kala Pani 1967 – Best Actor for Guide 1967 – Best Film for Guide 1993 – Lifetime Achievement Award National honours 1995 – Screen Lifetime Achievement Award 1997 – Mumbai Academy of Moving Images Award for his Outstanding Services to the Indian Film Industry 1998 – Lifetime Achievement Award by the Ujala Anandlok Film Awards Committee in Calcutta 1999 – Sansui Lifetime Achievement Award for his "Immense Contribution to Indian Cinema" in New Delhi 2000 – Film Goers' Mega Movie Maestro of the Millennium Award in Mumbai 2001 – Special Screen Award for his contribution to Indian cinema 2001 – Evergreen Star of the Millennium Award at the Zee Gold Bollywood Awards on 28 April 2001 at the Nassau Coliseum, New York 2003 – Lifetime Achievement Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Indian Cinema" at IIFA Award in Johannesburg, South Africa 2004 – Legend of Indian Cinema Award at Atlantic City (United States) 2004 – Living Legend Award by the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in recognition of his contribution to the Indian entertainment industry 2005 – Sony Gold Award 2006 – ANR National Award by the Akkineni International Foundation 2006 – Glory of India Award by IIAF, London 2007 – Punjab Ratan (Jewel of Punjab) Award by the World Punjabi Organisation (European Division) for his outstanding contribution to the field of art and entertainment. 2008 – Lifetime Achievement Award by Ramya Cultural Academy in association with Vinmusiclub 2008 – Lifetime Achievement Award by Rotary Club of Bombay 2008 – Awarded at the IIJS Solitaire Awards 2009 – Outstanding contribution to Indian cinema at the Max Stardust Awards 2009 – Legend Award given to Dev Anand by Rajinikanth 2010 – Phalke Ratna Award by Dadasaheb Phalke Academy 2010 – Rashtriya Gaurav Award 2011 – Rashtriya Kishore Kumar Samman from the Government of Madhya Pradesh 2011 – NDTV Indian of the Year's Lifetime Achievement Award with Rahul Dravid Lifetime Achievement Maestro Award by the Whistling Woods International Institute. 2013 – To honor him, a brass statue in his likeness was unveiled at Walk of the Stars at Bandra Bandstand in Mumbai in February 2013. 2013 – On the occasion of 100 years of Indian cinema, a postage stamp bearing his likeness was released by India Post to honor him on 3 May 2013. International honours In July 2000, in New York City, he was honored by an Award from the hands of the then First Lady of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton, for his "Outstanding Contribution to Indian Cinema". In 2000, he was awarded the Indo-American Association "Star of the Millennium" Award in Silicon Valley, California. Donna Ferrar, Member of the New York State Assembly, honored him with a "New York State Assembly Citation" for his "Outstanding Contribution to the Cinematic Arts Worthy of the Esteem and Gratitude of the Great State of New York" on 1 May 2001. In 2005, he was honored with a "Special National Film Award" by the Government of Nepal at Nepal's first National Indian film festival in Stockholm. In 2008, he was guest of honor at a dinner hosted by the Provost of Highland Council in Inverness, Scotland to celebrate 10 years since he first worked in the Scottish Highlands. He spent several days in the area, en route to Cannes, as a guest of the Highlands and Islands Film Commission. Filmography Some of his best considered films are Baazi (1951), Jaal (1952), Taxi Driver (1954), C.I.D. (1956), Kala Pani (1958), Kala Bazar (1960), Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai (1961), Hum Dono (1961), Guide (1965), Jewel Thief (1967) (1970), Haré Rama Haré Krishna (1971), Banarasi Babu (1974) Warrant (1975), Des Pardes (1978) and Swami Dada (1982), Lashkar (1987). Further reading Cinema Modern: Navketan Story, by Sidharth Bhatia. Harpercollins, 2011. . Evergreen Dev Anand (An Anthology of Dev Anand's Contribution to Cinema), by Kamal Dhiman. Nikita Publications, 2014. . References External links RIP Dev Anand – Bollywood Mourns Dev Anand's Death The Telegraph – Dev Anand Bio and Obituary Category:Indian male film actors Category:1923 births Category:2011 deaths Category:Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Dadasaheb Phalke Award recipients Category:Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in arts Category:Hindi-language film directors Category:Hindi film producers Category:Male actors in Hindi cinema Category:Film directors from Mumbai Category:Film producers from Mumbai Category:Male actors from Mumbai Category:Government College University, Lahore alumni Category:People from Gurdaspur Category:Punjabi people Category:20th-century Indian male actors Category:20th-century Indian film directors Category:21st-century Indian film directors Category:Filmfare Awards winners Category:People from Narowal District Category:People from Lahore

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Dev Anand

Dev was born Dharam Dev Anand on 26 September 1923 in the Shakargarh tehsil of the Gurdaspur district in Punjab (British India). His father Pishori Lal Anand was a well-to-do advocate in Gurdaspur District Court. Dev was the third of four sons born to Anand. One of Dev's younger sisters is Sheel Kanta Kapur, who is the mother of film director Shekhar Kapur.

Comparisons with Gregory Peck

Often compared to the famous actor Gregory Peck the world over, Dev Anand said that he didn't feel ecstatic hearing the tag line bestowed on him in his heyday. "When you are at an impressionable age you make idols, but when you grow out of the phase, you develop your own persona. I don't want to be known as India's Gregory Peck, I am Dev Anand". Acquainted with the Bollywood actor, Peck's personal interactions with him spanned four to five long meetings in Europe and Mumbai. Dev Anand and Suraiya met Peck for the first time at Mumbai's Willingdon Club, after the Filmfare Awards in 1954, on Peck's stopover from a schedule at Sri Lanka after shooting for The Purple Plain. He knew of the "Indian Star" as an actor, more so probably because his romance with Suraiya was grabbing the headlines, and they had a chat. The second time they met was in Rome when Dev Anand was on his way back from the Venice Film Festival, he visited him on the set of Roman Holiday. "I was returning from the Venice film fest. I stopped my car and joined the crowd watching the shoot, hoping that his eyes would fall on me. As expected, he nodded and I walked up to him. He remembered me and we exchanged pleasantries." The third meeting was at London on the set of Moby Dick. However, Suraiya asked for an exclusive meeting with her idol at her house. Though Anand says jealousy was natural for anyone in love, he didn't mind that he was not invited. "I didn't quite feel anything. It wasn't as if they were going to fall in love or make love. Even if they would have, it wouldn't have mattered. I was mature enough. Moreover, he wasn't my rival. I too was a big star by then," says Anand. CANNOTANSWER

Dharamdev Pishorimal Anand (26 September 1923 – 3 December 2011), better known as Dev Anand, was an Indian actor, writer, director, and producer known for his work in Hindi cinema, through a career that spanned over six decades. He was one of the most successful actors of Indian cinema and a part of "Trinity – The Golden Trio" along with Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar. The  Government of India  honored him with the Padma Bhushan  in 2001 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award  in 2002 for his contribution to Indian cinema. He has won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor  twice and Filmfare's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993. A fast dialogue delivery style and nodding while doing so soon became the trademarks of Anand's acting in movies. His style was copied by other actors. Most of Dev Anand's films explored his viewpoint of the world and often highlighted many socially relevant topics. In 1946, he debuted with a lead role in Prabhat Films' Hum Ek Hain, a film about Hindu-Muslim unity. In the late 40s, Anand was offered a few roles starring as the male lead opposite singer-actress Suraiya in woman-oriented films such as Vidya (1948), Jeet (1949), (1950) and Sanam (1951). In 1949, Anand launched his own company Navketan Films, under this banner, he produced and directed some of his most successful films. His breakthrough Baazi (1951), is regarded as the forerunner of the spate of "Bombay Noir" films that followed in Bollywood in the 1950s. In later years, he starred many successful films such as Jaal (1952), Pocket Maar (1956), Munimji (1955), Funtoosh (1956), Paying Guest (1957) and Kala Pani (1958). He acquired a romantic image with films such as Manzil (1960), Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai (1961), Hum Dono (1961), Tere Ghar Ke Samne (1963), His first colour film, Guide (1965) was based on the novel of the same name by R. K. Narayan was entered for Best Foreign Language Film at the 38th Academy Awards. In the 70s, he debuted in the direction of the espionage drama Prem Pujari. Throughout the 70s and 80s, he starred in many box office hits such as (1970), which was highest grosser of the year, and Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971), Banarasi Babu (1973), Heera Panna (1973), Amir Garib (1974), Warrant (1975), Des Pardes (1978), Lootmaar (1980) and Swami Dada (1982), Hum Naujawan (1985) and Lashkar (1989). Early life and background Anand was born Dharamdev Pishorimal Anand on 26 September 1923 in the Shakargarh tehsil of the Gurdaspur district in Punjab (British India). His father Pishori Lal Anand was a well-to-do advocate in Gurdaspur District Court. Dev was the third of four sons born to Anand. One of Dev's younger sisters is Sheel Kanta Kapur, who is the mother of film director Shekhar Kapur. His older brothers were Manmohan Anand (Advocate, Gurdaspur Dist. Court), Chetan Anand and the younger one was Vijay Anand. He did his schooling till matriculation from Sacred Heart School, Dalhousie, (then in Punjab) and went to Government college Dharamshala before going to Lahore to study. Later Dev completed a B.A. degree in English Literature from the Government College, Lahore in British India. Part of the Anand family, he co-founded Navketan Films in 1949 with his elder brother Chetan Anand. Career After completing his BA degree in English literature from the Government College, Lahore (then in British India). Anand left his hometown for Bombay in the early 1940s. He began his career in the military censor's office at Churchgate, for a monthly salary of Rs. 65. Later, he worked as a clerk in an accounting firm for a salary of Rs. 85. He joined his older brother, Chetan, as a member of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA). Anand aspired to become a performer after seeing Ashok Kumar's performance in films such as Achhut Kanya and Kismet. Anand quoted in an interview that "I remember when I gate-crashed into the office of the man who gave me the first break, he kept looking at me – Babu Rao Pai of Prabhat Film Studios. At that time he made up his mind that this boy deserves a break and later mentioned to his people that 'this boy struck me because of his smile and beautiful eyes and his tremendous confidence.'" Then he was soon offered the lead role in Prabhat Films' Hum Ek Hain (1946), a film about Hindu-Muslim unity, where Dev Anand played a Hindu boy and was paired opposite Kamala Kotnis. While shooting the film in Pune, Anand befriended the actor Guru Dutt. Between them, they agreed that if one of them were to become successful in the film industry, he would help the other also to be successful. They formed a mutual understanding that when Anand produced a film, Dutt would direct it and when Dutt directed a film, Anand would act in it. Late 1940s and romance with Suraiya In the late 1940s, Anand was offered a few roles starring as the male lead opposite singer-actress Suraiya in woman-oriented films. While shooting these films, they became romantically involved. The two of them were paired in seven films together: Vidya (1948), Jeet (1949), (1949), (1950), Nili (1950), Do Sitare (1951) and Sanam (1951), all of which were successful at the box office. In these films, Suraiya was always the first biller in the credits, indicating that she was a bigger star than Anand. She fell in love with him during the shooting of the song Kinare Kinare Chale Jayen Ge from the film Vidya— while shooting the scene, the boat they were in capsized, and Anand saved Suraiya from drowning. Initially, Suraiya's family used to welcome Anand at home, but when her maternal grandmother found out that the two were in love, and even planned an actual marriage on the set of Jeet, she started monitoring them. The two shared love letters and messages through their co-actors, like Durga Khote and Kamini Kaushal, who went out of their way to engineer secret rendezvous. During the shooting of the film (1950), Anand finally proposed to Suraiya and gave her a diamond ring worth Rs 3,000. Her maternal grandmother opposed the relationship as they were Muslim and Anand was Hindu, so, Suraiya remained unmarried. They stopped acting together after her grandmother opposed their partnership, and Do Sitare was the last film in which they appeared together. Although the films he starred in with Suraiya had been successful, the producers and directors of those films attributed their success to the acting prowess and screen presence of Suraiya. Anand began looking for an opportunity to play the main male lead in a film where his acting skills could be demonstrated, so as to dispel scepticism about his acting abilities. Dev Anand often spoke about Suraiya and his love affair with her, in various interviews, he gave to film magazines, such as Stardust (June 1972 issue), Star & Style (Feb 1987 issue) and TV to Karan Thapar for BBC (2002), while both were alive and after Suraiya's death in interviews given on TV to Simi Garewal (Rendezvous with Simi Garewal) and others on TV and for news magazines. Break and the 1950s Anand was offered his first big break by Ashok Kumar. He spotted Anand hanging around in the studios and picked him as the hero for the Bombay Talkies production Ziddi (1948), co-starring Kamini Kaushal, which became an instant success. After Ziddis success, Anand decided that he would start producing films. It was in the film Ziddi, that the first ever Kishore-Lata duet, "Yeh Kaun Aaya Karke Yeh Sola Singhar", was recorded. This duet was an instant hit, and from here on both playback singers' associations with Dev Anand began. This continued for the next four decades. His association with Kishore Kumar started when the former sang the first solo of his playback singing career – "Marne Ki Duayen" – picturized on Dev Anand in the movie Ziddi. Dev had forged a very strong bond of friendship with Kishore Kumar during the making of the film. In 1949, he launched his own company Navketan Films (named after his elder brother Chetan's son Ketan and which means "New Banner"), which, as of 2011, has produced 35 films. Nirala (1950), a commercial success, saw him being paired opposite Madhubala for the first time, with whom he would later form a popular pair. Dev chose Guru Dutt as director for the crime thriller, Baazi (1951). The film, starring Dev Anand, Geeta Bali, and Kalpana Kartik was a trendsetter, regarded as the forerunner of the spate of urban crime films that followed in Bollywood in the 1950s. The film Baazi saw the debut of Kalpana Kartik (aka Mona Singha) as the lead female actress and Guru Dutt as a director. The collaboration was a success at the box office and the duo of Dev Anand and Kalpana Kartik were offered many films to star in together. They signed all the film offers and subsequently the movies Aandhiyan (1952), Taxi Driver (1954), House No. 44 (1955) and Nau Do Gyarah (1957) went on to become big hits too. During the making of the film Taxi Driver, the couple fell in love and Dev proposed marriage to his heroine Kalpana. In 1954, Taxi Driver was declared a hit and the two decided to marry in a quiet ceremony. The couple had a son, Suneil Anand in 1956 and later a daughter, Devina, was born. After her marriage, Kalpana decided not to pursue her acting career further. Nau Do Gyarah was the couple's last movie together. A rapid-fire style of dialogue delivery and a penchant for nodding while speaking became Dev's style in films such as Baazi (1951), Jaal (1952), House No. 44 (1955), Pocket Maar (1956), Munimji (1955), Funtoosh (1956), C.I.D. (1956) and Paying Guest (1957). In the 1950s his films were of the mystery genre or light comedy love stories or were films with social relevance such as Ek Ke Baad Ek (1959) and Funtoosh (1956). His style was lapped up by the audience and was widely imitated. He starred in a string of box office successes for the remainder of the 1950s opposite newcomer Waheeda Rehman in C.I.D. (1956), Solva Saal (1958), Kala Bazar (1960) and Baat Ek Raat Ki (1962). Waheeda first became a star when C.I.D became a hit. The pair acted in Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja (1961 film) and Prem Pujari later. In 1955, he also co-starred with Dilip Kumar in Insaniyat. With his acting in the box office success Kala Pani (1958) opposite Madhubala and Nalini Jaywant, as the son who is willing to go to any lengths to clear his framed father's name, he won his first Filmfare award for Best Actor for the film. He attempted films of tragic genre occasionally, such as Pocket Maar (1956), Kala Pani (1958), Bombai Ka Baboo (1960) and Sharabi (1964) and tasted success with them. Dev also played a few characters with a negative shade, as in Jaal (1952) where he played a smuggler, then as an absconding gang member in Dushman (1957), and as a black marketer in Kala Bazar. Apart from his pairing with Suraiya and Kalpana Kartik, his pairing with Nutan and Waheeda Rehman was popular among the audiences in the late 50s and 60s. His films Rahi (1952) and Aandhiyan (1952), were screened along with Raj Kapoor's Awaara. From the early fifties till the mid-sixties, the trio of actors Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, and Anand ruled the roost. Romantic hero image in the 1960s In the sixties, Dev Anand acquired a romantic image with films such as Manzil and Tere Ghar Ke Samne with Nutan, Kinare Kinare with Meena Kumari, Maya with Mala Sinha, Asli-Naqli with Sadhana Shivdasani, Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai, Mahal with Asha Parekh and Teen Deviyaan opposite three heroines Kalpana, Simi Garewal and Nanda. In the film Teen Deviyaan, Dev Anand played a playboy. One of his notable films of the early sixties was Hum Dono (1961) which he produced and acted in, as Anand, a young lover who joins the army in frustration over being shunned by the father of his love Meeta (played by Sadhana Shivdasani). Anand played a double role in the film, also acting as Major Varma, his look-alike who he runs into in the army and forms a deep friendship. Notable for its music by Jaidev, the film was a box office hit. His first colour film, Guide with Waheeda Rehman was based on the novel of the same name by R. K. Narayan. Dev Anand himself was the impetus for making the film version of the book. He met and persuaded Narayan to give his assent to the project. Dev Anand tapped his friends in Hollywood to launch an Indo-US co-production that was shot in Hindi and English simultaneously and was released in 1965. Guide, directed by younger brother Vijay Anand, was an acclaimed movie. Dev played Raju, a voluble guide, who supports Rosy (Waheeda) in her bid for freedom. He is not above thoughtlessly exploiting her for personal gains. Combining style with substance, he gave an affecting performance as a man grappling with his emotions in his passage through love, shame, and salvation. He reunited with Vijay Anand for the movie Jewel Thief, based on the thriller genre which featured Vyjayanthimala, Tanuja, Anju Mahendru, Faryal and Helen and was very successful. Their next collaboration, (1970), again a thriller, in which Dev was paired opposite Hema Malini was a big hit. It was Johnny Mera Naam which made Hema Malini a big star. In 1969, he was a member of the jury at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival. Directorial debut and the Versatile Hero Image in the 1970s His directorial debut, the espionage drama Prem Pujari, was a flop but has developed a cult following over the years. The film introduced Zaheeda and had Waheeda Rehman as the female lead. He tasted success with his 1971 directorial effort, Hare Rama Hare Krishna, shot primarily in Nepal around Swyambhunath, and Bhaktapur, in which talks about the prevalent hippie culture. His find Zeenat Aman, who played the mini-skirt sporting, pot-smoking Janice, became an overnight sensation. Dev also became known as a filmmaker of trenchantly topical themes. The same year, he starred with Mumtaz in Tere Mere Sapne, an adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel, The Citadel. The film was directed by Dev's brother, Vijay, and was also successful. In 1971 he paired again with Zaheeda in Gambler which went on to become a success. In the 1970s, Raj Kapoor started playing roles of fathers in films such as Kal Aaj Aur Kal in 1971 and Dharam Karam in 1974 and had put on a lot of weight and films with Dilip Kumar as a lead hero like Dastaan and Bairaag were failures at the box office. Some of the hurriedly made films with Dev Anand as the leading man—three each opposite Hema Malini – Shareef Badmaash, Jaaneman, Joshila and two with Zeenat Aman – Ishq Ishq Ishq, Prem Shastra and Saheb Bahadur with Priya Rajvansh — became flops and posed a threat to his career as a leading man. He bounced back with the double-role film Banarasi Babu in 1973. He delivered commercial hits again with young heroines like with Sharmila Tagore in Yeh Gulistan Hamara (1972), with Yogeeta Bali and Raakhee in Banarasi Babu (1973), with Hema Malini in Chhupa Rustam (1973) and Amir Garib (1974), with Zeenat Aman in Heera Panna (1973), Warrant (1975), Kalabaaz and Darling Darling (1977) and with Parveen Babi in Bullet (1976). The presence of his discoveries in the 1970s—Zeenat, and later Tina Munim, in films and his good on-screen chemistry with beautiful young stars such as Raakhee, Parveen Babi, Hema Malini and Zeenat Aman in various films boosted Dev's image as the evergreen star even though he was well into his fifties. He attempted different genres of films to acquire versatile hero images. He was already 55 when he was paired with Tina Munim in 1978 in Des Pardes, which became among the top five-grossing films of the year. Political activism during the Emergency in the late 1970s Dev Anand has also been politically active. He led a group of film personalities who stood up against the Internal Emergency imposed by the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. He actively campaigned against her with his supporters in the Indian parliamentary elections in 1977. He also formed a party called the " National Party of India", which he later disbanded. Later Career and Evergreen Hero Image The 1978 hit Des Pardes, directed by Dev Anand was the debut movie of actress Tina Munim and this film's success gave him the tag of the Evergreen Hero. Dev Anand was offered the lead role in Man Pasand by director Basu Chatterjee. Dev Anand's successful run at the box office continued in the 1980s with Man Pasand, Lootmaar (both opposite Tina Munim), and Swami Dada (1982), all being critically acclaimed and box office hits. Though Dev Anand's demand as the lead hero had not decreased even in the 1980s, he decided that it was the right time to introduce his son Suneil Anand in films as the hero. He launched his son in the Kramer vs. Kramer-inspired Anand Aur Anand (1984), which was produced and directed by Dev Anand himself and had music by R.D. Burman. He expected the film to do well, but the film was a box office disaster, and Suneil Anand decided not to act in films anymore. But films with Dev Anand as the lead hero in Hum Naujawan (1985) and Lashkar (1989) continued to be box office successes and were appreciated by critics. Awwal Number (1990), where Dev Anand co-starred with Aditya Pancholi and Aamir Khan became an average grosser in the year 1990. Aamir said in an interview that Awwal Number is the only film he signed without reading the script because it was being directed by his senior Dev Anand. Aamir quoted: "Dev saab was an icon for many generations and entertained us throughout his life". He was already 60 years old in 1983 when he acted opposite Christine O'Neil and alongside Rati Agnihotri and Padmini Kolhapure in Swami Dada. In 1989, his directorial venture Sachche ka Bolbala was released. Though critically acclaimed, it was a commercial failure. His performance as Professor Anand in the 1989 film Lashkar was widely appreciated and was a major success at the box office. Lashkar was his last hit film in the lead role in 1989, with him neither producer nor director of the film. He directed Pyar Ka Tarana in 1993, without casting himself in any role. His directorial movie Gangster (1995) had a controversial nude rape scene of an unknown actress, though the movie was released uncut. He received offers to star in the lead roles outside of his home banners in films like Return of Jewel Thief and Aman Ke Farishtey but the former was not successful at the box office and the latter wasn't released in 1993 though the film was fully ready to be released. Since 1992, seven of his directorial ventures were box office failures. His films Sau Crore (1991) and Censor (2000) were critically acclaimed. His performance and direction in the 1991 film Sau Crore was appreciated as it was a movie ahead of its time dealing with the real-life murder of badminton star Syed Modi and the arrest being made of the wife and her ex-lover. Sau Crore remains the last commercial hit film of Dev Anand as the lead hero as well as a director. His last film Chargesheet (2011) was panned by critics across the board. He also starred in English films such as The Evil Within (1970), where he was paired opposite Vietnamese actress Kieu Chinh and Zeenat Aman and Guide (English Version). The English language film The Evil Within was a 20th-Century Fox production that couldn't get the nod from the concerned authorities due to its parallel track dealing with opium selling and thus the Indian viewers were deprived of this American venture. Of the 114 Hindi films, he appeared in, over 6 decades, Kahin Aur Chal (1968) had a delayed release in the early 1970s and the multi-starrer film Ek Do Teen Chaar (1980) remained unreleased and Shrimanji (1968) had him in a guest appearance. By 2011, he had the second most solo lead roles in Hindi films— 92, with Rajesh Khanna having the record for the most films as the solo lead hero in Hindi films – 106. Recognition Comparisons with Gregory Peck Often compared to the famous actor Gregory Peck the world over, Dev Anand said that he didn't feel ecstatic hearing the tag line bestowed on him in his heyday. "When you are at an impressionable age you make idols, but when you grow out of the phase, you develop your own persona. I don't want to be known as India's Gregory Peck, I am Dev Anand". Acquainted with the Bollywood actor, Peck's personal interactions with him spanned four to five long meetings in Europe and Mumbai. Dev Anand and Suraiya met Peck for the first time at Bombay's Willingdon Club, after the Filmfare Awards in 1954, on Peck's stopover from a schedule in Sri Lanka after shooting for The Purple Plain. He knew of the "Indian Star" as an actor, more so probably because his romance with Suraiya was grabbing the headlines, and they had a chat. The second time they met was in Rome when Dev Anand was on his way back from the Venice Film Festival, he visited him on the set of Roman Holiday. "I was returning from the Venice film fest. I stopped my car and joined the crowd watching the shoot, hoping that his eyes would fall on me. As expected, he nodded and I walked up to him. He remembered me and we exchanged pleasantries." The third meeting was at London on the set of Moby Dick. However, Suraiya asked for an exclusive meeting with her idol at her house. Though Anand says jealousy was natural for anyone in love, he didn't mind that he was not invited. "I didn't quite feel anything. It wasn't as if they were going to fall in love or make love. Even if they would have, it wouldn't have mattered. I was mature enough. Moreover, he wasn't my rival. I too was a big star by then," says Anand. Critical appraisal Dev Anand has directed 19 films and produced 35 films. Of the 35 films he produced, 18 were commercially successful at the box office, and of the 19 films directed by him, 10 were hits. He wrote the stories for 13 of his films. Critics say his directorial ventures have always been ahead of their time. Dev Anand's films are well known for their hit songs. He is known to have been an active participant in the music sessions of a number of his films. His association with music composers Shankar-Jaikishen, O. P. Nayyar, Kalyanji-Anandji, Sachin Dev Burman and his son Rahul Dev Burman, lyricists Hasrat Jaipuri, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Gopaldas Neeraj, Shailendra, Anand Bakshi, and playback singers Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi and Hemant Kumar produced some very popular songs. Guru Dutt, Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Pran, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Sunil Dutt, Nargis, Vyjayanthimala, S.D. Burman, Shammi Kapoor and R.D. Burman were his closest friends from the film industry. In September 2007, Dev's autobiography Romancing with Life was released at a birthday party with the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. In February 2011, his 1961 black-and-white film Hum Dono was digitised, colourised and re-released. Dev Anand is credited with giving actors such as Zarina Wahab in Ishq Ishq Ishq, Jackie Shroff in Swami Dada (1982), Tabu in Hum Naujawan and Richa Sharma (Sanjay Dutt's first wife) a break in the film industry, discovering Zeenat Amaan, Tina Munim and encouraging music composer Rajesh Roshan. Amit Khanna started his career with Navketan as executive producer in 1971 and had been secretary to Dev Anand in the 1970s. He adds, "The uniqueness of Navketan today is that it's the only film company in the world still run by the one who started it." Shatrughan Sinha disclosed in an interview that it was Dev Anand who gave him a break in films by giving him a role in Prem Pujari and since Dev had given Sinha a very small role in that film, he compensated for it by giving Sinha another role in his next film Gambler. Sinha quoted: "Later on we worked together in Sharif Badmash and it was really a privilege to work with him". It was under Dev Anand's Navketan Banner where Guru Dutt, Raj Khosla, Waheeda Rehman, S.D. Burman, Jaidev, Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Yash Johar, Shekhar Kapur and Kabir Bedi were given breaks into Hindi films and Dev launched actors Zaheera, Zaheeda Hussain, Zarina Wahab, Natasha Sinha, Ekta Sohini and Sabrina. Personal life Anand had a love affair with actress Suraiya from 1948 to 1951, but they never married, because of opposition by Suraiya's maternal grandmother. Suraiya remained unmarried throughout her life till she died on 31 January 2004. In 1954, Dev married Kalpana Kartik (actual name Mona Singha), a Bollywood actress from Shimla, in a private marriage during the shooting of the film Taxi Driver. They have two children, son Suneil and daughter Devina. Death Dev Anand died in his room at The Washington Mayfair Hotel in London at the age of 88 on 3 December 2011 of a cardiac arrest. His death came just two months after the release of his last film Chargesheet, which he directed and produced. Anand was reportedly in London for a medical checkup at the time of his death. On 10 December, his funeral service was held at a small chapel in London after which his coffin was taken to the Putney Vale Crematorium in southwest London. His ashes were returned to India for immersion burial in the Godavari River. Awards and honours The Government of India honored him with the Padma Bhushan in 2001 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2002 for his contribution to Indian cinema. His career spanned more than 65 years, acting in 114 Hindi films, of which 92 had him play the main solo lead hero, and he did two English films. He was the recipient of the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for his performances in Kala Pani and Guide, the latter being India's official entry to the Oscars. Civilian award 2001 – Padma Bhushan (India's third highest civilian award from the Government of India) National Film Awards Winner 1965 – National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi for Guide 2002 – Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India's highest award for cinematic excellence Filmfare awards Winner 1959 – Best Actor for Kala Pani 1967 – Best Actor for Guide 1967 – Best Film for Guide 1993 – Lifetime Achievement Award National honours 1995 – Screen Lifetime Achievement Award 1997 – Mumbai Academy of Moving Images Award for his Outstanding Services to the Indian Film Industry 1998 – Lifetime Achievement Award by the Ujala Anandlok Film Awards Committee in Calcutta 1999 – Sansui Lifetime Achievement Award for his "Immense Contribution to Indian Cinema" in New Delhi 2000 – Film Goers' Mega Movie Maestro of the Millennium Award in Mumbai 2001 – Special Screen Award for his contribution to Indian cinema 2001 – Evergreen Star of the Millennium Award at the Zee Gold Bollywood Awards on 28 April 2001 at the Nassau Coliseum, New York 2003 – Lifetime Achievement Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Indian Cinema" at IIFA Award in Johannesburg, South Africa 2004 – Legend of Indian Cinema Award at Atlantic City (United States) 2004 – Living Legend Award by the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in recognition of his contribution to the Indian entertainment industry 2005 – Sony Gold Award 2006 – ANR National Award by the Akkineni International Foundation 2006 – Glory of India Award by IIAF, London 2007 – Punjab Ratan (Jewel of Punjab) Award by the World Punjabi Organisation (European Division) for his outstanding contribution to the field of art and entertainment. 2008 – Lifetime Achievement Award by Ramya Cultural Academy in association with Vinmusiclub 2008 – Lifetime Achievement Award by Rotary Club of Bombay 2008 – Awarded at the IIJS Solitaire Awards 2009 – Outstanding contribution to Indian cinema at the Max Stardust Awards 2009 – Legend Award given to Dev Anand by Rajinikanth 2010 – Phalke Ratna Award by Dadasaheb Phalke Academy 2010 – Rashtriya Gaurav Award 2011 – Rashtriya Kishore Kumar Samman from the Government of Madhya Pradesh 2011 – NDTV Indian of the Year's Lifetime Achievement Award with Rahul Dravid Lifetime Achievement Maestro Award by the Whistling Woods International Institute. 2013 – To honor him, a brass statue in his likeness was unveiled at Walk of the Stars at Bandra Bandstand in Mumbai in February 2013. 2013 – On the occasion of 100 years of Indian cinema, a postage stamp bearing his likeness was released by India Post to honor him on 3 May 2013. International honours In July 2000, in New York City, he was honored by an Award from the hands of the then First Lady of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton, for his "Outstanding Contribution to Indian Cinema". In 2000, he was awarded the Indo-American Association "Star of the Millennium" Award in Silicon Valley, California. Donna Ferrar, Member of the New York State Assembly, honored him with a "New York State Assembly Citation" for his "Outstanding Contribution to the Cinematic Arts Worthy of the Esteem and Gratitude of the Great State of New York" on 1 May 2001. In 2005, he was honored with a "Special National Film Award" by the Government of Nepal at Nepal's first National Indian film festival in Stockholm. In 2008, he was guest of honor at a dinner hosted by the Provost of Highland Council in Inverness, Scotland to celebrate 10 years since he first worked in the Scottish Highlands. He spent several days in the area, en route to Cannes, as a guest of the Highlands and Islands Film Commission. Filmography Some of his best considered films are Baazi (1951), Jaal (1952), Taxi Driver (1954), C.I.D. (1956), Kala Pani (1958), Kala Bazar (1960), Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai (1961), Hum Dono (1961), Guide (1965), Jewel Thief (1967) (1970), Haré Rama Haré Krishna (1971), Banarasi Babu (1974) Warrant (1975), Des Pardes (1978) and Swami Dada (1982), Lashkar (1987). Further reading Cinema Modern: Navketan Story, by Sidharth Bhatia. Harpercollins, 2011. . Evergreen Dev Anand (An Anthology of Dev Anand's Contribution to Cinema), by Kamal Dhiman. Nikita Publications, 2014. . References External links RIP Dev Anand – Bollywood Mourns Dev Anand's Death The Telegraph – Dev Anand Bio and Obituary Category:Indian male film actors Category:1923 births Category:2011 deaths Category:Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Dadasaheb Phalke Award recipients Category:Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in arts Category:Hindi-language film directors Category:Hindi film producers Category:Male actors in Hindi cinema Category:Film directors from Mumbai Category:Film producers from Mumbai Category:Male actors from Mumbai Category:Government College University, Lahore alumni Category:People from Gurdaspur Category:Punjabi people Category:20th-century Indian male actors Category:20th-century Indian film directors Category:21st-century Indian film directors Category:Filmfare Awards winners Category:People from Narowal District Category:People from Lahore

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Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and playwright. His works include the Broadway plays A Few Good Men and The Farnsworth Invention; the television series Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and The Newsroom; and the films A Few Good Men, The American President, Charlie Wilson's War, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs. For writing The Social Network, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, among other awards. He made his feature directorial debut in 2017 with Molly's Game, which he also wrote.

Early years

Sorkin was born in Manhattan, New York City, to a Jewish family, and was raised in the New York suburb of Scarsdale. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father a copyright lawyer who had fought in WWII and put himself through college on the G.I. Bill; both his older sister and brother went on to become lawyers. His paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). Sorkin took an early interest in acting. Before he reached his teenage years, his parents were taking him to the theatre to see shows such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and That Championship Season. Sorkin attended Scarsdale High School where he became involved in the drama and theatre club. In eighth grade he played General Bullmoose in the musical Li'l Abner. At Scarsdale High, he served as vice president of the drama club in his junior and senior years and graduated in 1979. In 1979, Sorkin attended Syracuse University. In his freshman year he failed a class that was a core requirement. It was a devastating setback because he wanted to be an actor, and the drama department did not allow students to take the stage until they completed all the core freshman classes. Determined to do better, he returned in his sophomore year, and graduated in 1983. Recalling the influence on him at college of drama teacher Arthur Storch, Sorkin recalled, after Storch's death in March 2013, that "Arthur's reputation as a director, and as a disciple of Lee Strasberg, was a big reason why a lot of us went to S.U. ... 'You have the capacity to be so much better than you are', he started saying to me in September of my senior year. He was still saying it in May. On the last day of classes, he said it again, and I said, 'How?', and he answered, 'Dare to fail'. I've been coming through on his admonition ever since". CANNOTANSWER

Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American playwright, screenwriter and film director. Born in New York City, he developed a passion for writing at an early age. As a writer for stage, television and film, Sorkin is recognized for his trademark fast-paced dialogue and extended monologues, complemented by frequent use of the storytelling technique called the "walk and talk". Sorkin has earned numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, five Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globes. Sorkin rose to prominence as a writer-creator and showrunner of the television series Sports Night (1998–2000), The West Wing (1999–2006), Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006–07), and The Newsroom (2012–14). He is also known for his work on Broadway including the plays A Few Good Men (1989), The Farnsworth Invention (2007), and To Kill a Mockingbird (2018) as well as the revival of Lerner and Loewe's Camelot (2023). He wrote the film screenplays for A Few Good Men (1992), The American President (1995), and several biopics including Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Moneyball (2011), and Steve Jobs (2015). For writing 2010's The Social Network, he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He made his directorial film debut with Molly's Game (2017), followed by The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), and Being the Ricardos (2021). Early life Sorkin was born in Manhattan, New York City, to a Jewish family, and was raised in the New York suburb of Scarsdale. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father a copyright lawyer who had fought in WWII and went to college on the G.I. Bill; both his older sister and brother went on to become lawyers. His paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). Sorkin took an early interest in acting. During childhood, his parents took him to the theatre to see shows such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and That Championship Season. Sorkin attended Scarsdale High School where he became involved in the drama and theatre club. In the eighth grade, he played General Bullmoose in the musical Li'l Abner. At Scarsdale High, he served as vice president of the drama club in his junior and senior years, and graduated in 1979. In 1979, Sorkin attended Syracuse University. In his freshman year, he failed a class that was a core requirement, which caused a setback because he wanted to be an actor, and the drama department did not allow students to take the stage until they completed the core classes. Determined to do better, he returned for his sophomore year, and graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre. Recalling the influence of theatre teacher Arthur Storch, Sorkin said: "Arthur's reputation as a director, and as a disciple of Lee Strasberg, was a big reason why a lot of us went to S.U. [Syracuse University]... 'You have the capacity to be so much better than you are', he started saying to me in September of my senior year. He was still saying it in May. On the last day of classes, he said it again, and I said, 'How?', and he answered, 'Dare to fail'. I've been coming through on his admonition ever since". Career 1983–1990: Early work and breakthrough Sorkin moved to New York City where he spent much of the 1980s as a struggling, sporadically-employed actor who worked odd jobs, such as delivering singing telegrams, driving a limousine, touring Alabama with the children's theatre company Traveling Playhouse, handing out fliers promoting a hunting-and-fishing show, and bartending at Broadway's Palace Theatre. One weekend, while house-sitting for a friend, he found an IBM Selectric typewriter, started typing, and "felt a phenomenal confidence and a kind of joy that [he] had never experienced before in [his] life". He continued writing and eventually put together his first play, Removing All Doubt, which he sent to his former theatre teacher, Arthur Storch, who was impressed. In 1984, Removing All Doubt was staged for drama students at his alma mater, Syracuse University. After that, he wrote Hidden in This Picture which debuted off-off-Broadway at Steve Olsen's West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar in New York City in 1988. The quality of his first two plays earned him a theatrical agent. Producer John A. McQuiggan saw the production of Hidden in This Picture and commissioned Sorkin to turn the one-act into a full-length play called Making Movies. Sorkin was inspired to write his next play, a courtroom drama called A Few Good Men, from a phone conversation with his sister Deborah, who had graduated from Boston University Law School and signed up for a three-year stint with the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. Deborah told Sorkin that she was going to Guantanamo Bay to defend a group of Marines who came close to killing a fellow Marine in a hazing ordered by a superior officer. Sorkin took that information and wrote much of his story on cocktail napkins while bartending at the Palace Theatre. He and his roommates had purchased a Macintosh 512K; when he returned home, he would transcribe the story and notes onto the computer, forming a basis from which he wrote many drafts for A Few Good Men. In 1988, Sorkin sold the film rights for A Few Good Men to producer David Brown before it premiered, in a deal that was reportedly "well into six figures". Brown had read an article in The New York Times about Sorkin's one-act play Hidden in This Picture, and found out Sorkin had a play called A Few Good Men that was having Off Broadway readings. Brown produced A Few Good Men on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. It starred Tom Hulce and was directed by Don Scardino. After opening in late 1989, it ran for 497 performances. Sorkin continued writing Making Movies and in 1990 it debuted Off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre, produced by John A. McQuiggan, and again directed by Don Scardino. Meanwhile, Brown was producing for TriStar Pictures, and tried to interest them in adapting A Few Good Men into a film, but his proposal was declined due to the lack of star actor involvement. Brown later received a phone call from Alan Horn at Castle Rock Entertainment who was anxious to make the film. Rob Reiner, a Castle Rock producing partner, opted to direct. 1991–1997: Writing for Castle Rock Entertainment Sorkin worked under contract for Castle Rock Entertainment, where he befriended colleagues William Goldman and Rob Reiner, and met his future wife Julia Bingham, who was one of Castle Rock's business affairs lawyers. Sorkin wrote several drafts of the script for A Few Good Men in his Manhattan apartment, learning the craft from a book about screenplay format. He then spent several months at the Los Angeles offices of Castle Rock, working on the script with director Rob Reiner. William Goldman (who regularly worked under contract at Castle Rock) became his mentor and helped him to adapt his stage play into a screenplay. The film, directed by Reiner, starred Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon, and was produced by Brown. A Few Good Men was released in 1992 and was a box office success, grossing $243 million worldwide. Goldman also approached Sorkin with a story premise, which Sorkin developed into the script for the thriller Malice. Goldman oversaw the project as creative consultant while Sorkin wrote the first two drafts. However, he had to leave the project to finish the script for A Few Good Men, so screenwriter Scott Frank stepped in and wrote two drafts of the Malice screenplay. When production on A Few Good Men was completed, Sorkin resumed working on Malice right through the final shooting script. Harold Becker directed the 1993 thriller, which starred Nicole Kidman and Alec Baldwin. Malice had mixed reviews; Vincent Canby in The New York Times described the film as "deviously entertaining from its start through its finish". Critic Roger Ebert gave it 2 out of 4 stars, and Peter Travers in a 2000 Rolling Stone review summarized it as having "suspense but no staying power". Sorkin's last screenplay under Castle Rock was The American President; once again he worked with William Goldman who served as a creative consultant. It took Sorkin several years to write the screenplay for The American President, which started off at 385-pages; it was eventually reduced to a standard shooting script of around 120 pages. The film, also directed by Reiner, was critically acclaimed; Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times described it as "genial and entertaining if not notably inspired", and believed its most interesting aspects were the "pipe dreams about the American political system and where it could theoretically be headed". A Few Good Men, Malice and The American President grossed approximately $400 million worldwide. In the second half of the 1990s, Sorkin worked as a script doctor. He wrote some quips for Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in 1996's The Rock. He worked on Excess Baggage, a 1997 comedy about a girl who stages her own kidnapping to get her father's attention, and rewrote some of Will Smith's scenes in Enemy of the State. Sorkin collaborated with Warren Beatty on several scripts, one of which was 1998's Bulworth. Beatty, known for occasionally personally financing his film projects through pre-production, also hired Sorkin to rewrite a script titled Ocean of Storms which never went into production. At one point, Sorkin sued Beatty for proper compensation for his work on the Ocean of Storms script; once the matter was settled, he resumed working on the script. 1998–2006: Television series and theatre work Sports Night Sorkin conceived the idea to write about the behind-the-scenes happenings on a sports show while residing at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles writing the screenplay for The American President. He would work late, with the television tuned into ESPN, watching continuous replays of SportsCenter. The show inspired him to try to write a feature film about a sports show but he was unable to structure the story for film, so instead he turned his idea into a television comedy series. Sports Night was produced by Disney and debuted on the ABC network in fall of 1998. Sorkin fought with ABC during the first season over the use of a laugh track and a live studio audience. The laugh track was widely decried by critics as jarring, with Joyce Millman of Salon magazine describing it as "the most unconvincing laugh track you've ever heard". Sorkin commented that: "Once you do shoot in front of a live audience, you have no choice but to use the laugh track. Oftentimes [enhancing the laughs] is the right thing to do. Sometimes you do need a cymbal crash. Other times, it alienates me." The laugh track was gradually dialed down and was removed by the end of the first season. Sorkin was triumphant in the second season when ABC agreed to his demands, unburdening the crew of the difficulties of staging a scene for a live audience and leaving the cast with more time to rehearse. Although Sports Night was critically acclaimed, ABC canceled the show after two seasons due to low ratings. Sorkin entertained offers to continue the show on other television channels, but declined all the offers because they were dependent on his involvement and he was already working on The West Wing. The West Wing Sorkin conceived the political drama The West Wing in 1997 when he went unprepared to a lunch with producer John Wells; in a panic he pitched to Wells a series centered on the senior staff of the White House, using leftover ideas from his script for The American President. He told Wells about his visits to the White House while doing research for The American President, and they found themselves discussing public service and the passion of the people who serve. Wells took the concept and pitched it to NBC, but was told to wait due to the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. There was a concern that television audiences would not be able to take a series about the White House seriously. A year later, other networks started showing interest in The West Wing. NBC decided to give the project the green-light despite their previous reluctance. The pilot debuted in the fall of 1999 and was produced by Warner Bros. Television. The West Wing garnered nine Primetime Emmy Awards for its debut season, making the series a record holder for most Emmys won by a series in a single season at the time. Following the awards ceremony, there was a dispute about the acceptance speech for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. The West Wing episode "In Excelsis Deo" won, which was awarded to Sorkin and Rick Cleveland, but The New York Times reported that Sorkin ushered Cleveland off the stage before he could say a few words. The story behind "In Excelsis Deo" is based on Cleveland's father, a Korean War veteran who spent the last years of his life on the street, as Cleveland explained in an essay titled "I Was the Dumb Looking Guy with the Wire-Rimmed Glasses". Sorkin and Cleveland continued their dispute in a public web forum at Mighty Big TV in which Sorkin explained that he gives his writers "Story By" credit on a rotating basis "by way of a gratuity" and that he had thrown out Cleveland's script and started from scratch. Sorkin eventually apologized to Cleveland. Cleveland and Sorkin also won the Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Episodic Drama at the 53rd Writer Guild of America Awards for "In Excelsis Deo". In 2001, after completing the second season of The West Wing, Sorkin had a drug relapse, and was arrested at Hollywood Burbank Airport for possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana, and crack cocaine. He was ordered by a court to attend a drug diversion program. There was huge media interest but he did make a successful recovery. In 2002, Sorkin criticized NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's television special about a day in the life of a president, "The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing", comparing it to the act of sending a valentine to President George W. Bush instead of real news reporting. The West Wing aired on the same network, and so at the request of NBC's Entertainment President Jeff Zucker, Sorkin apologized, but later said, "there should be a difference between what NBC News does and what The West Wing TV series does." Sorkin wrote 87 screenplays for The West Wing, which is nearly every episode during the show's first four Emmy-winning seasons. Sorkin described his role in the creative process as "not so much [that of] a showrunner or a producer. I'm really a writer." He admitted that this approach can have its drawbacks, saying "Out of 88 [West Wing] episodes that I did we were on time and on budget never, not once." In 2003, at the end of the fourth season, Sorkin and fellow executive producer Thomas Schlamme left the show due to internal conflicts at Warner Bros. Television, causing John Wells to serve as showrunner. Sorkin never watched any episodes beyond his writing tenure apart from a minute of the fifth season's first episode, describing the experience as "like watching somebody make out with my girlfriend." Sorkin later returned in the series finale for a cameo appearance as a guest at the inauguration of Matthew Santos. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip In 2005, Sorkin returned to theatre; he revised his play A Few Good Men for a production at London's West End. The play opened at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the fall of the same year and was directed by David Esbjornson, with Rob Lowe of The West Wing in the lead role. Sorkin told The Charlie Rose Show that he was developing a television series based on a late-night sketch comedy show similar to Saturday Night Live. In October 2005, a pilot script dubbed Studio 7 on the Sunset Strip, written by him and Schlamme as producer, started circulating in Hollywood and online. In that same month, NBC bought the rights from Warner Bros. Television to air the series on their network for a near-record license fee after a bidding war with CBS. The show's name was later changed to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Sorkin described the show as having "autobiographical elements" to it and "characters that are based on actual people" but said that it departs from those beginnings to look at the backstage maneuverings at a late night sketch comedy show. On September 18, 2006, the pilot for Studio 60 aired on NBC, directed by Schlamme. The pilot was critically acclaimed and viewed by an audience of over 12 million, but the show experienced a significant drop in viewership mid-season. Even before the first episode aired, there was a large amount of thoughtful and scrupulous criticism in the press, as well as negative analysis from bloggers. In January 2007, Sorkin spoke out against the press for reporting heavily on the low ratings, and for using blogs and unemployed comedy writers as sources. After two months hiatus, Studio 60 resumed airing the last episodes of season one, which would be its only season. The Farnsworth Invention As early as 2003, Sorkin was writing a spec script about inventor Philo Farnsworth; he was approached by producer Fred Zollo in the 1990s about adapting Elma Farnsworth's memoir into a biographical film. The following year, he completed the film screenplay, The Farnsworth Invention, which was acquired by New Line Cinema with Schlamme as director. The story is about the patent battle between Farnsworth and RCA tycoon David Sarnoff for the technology that allowed the first television transmissions in the United States. No additional details were released about the film. Shortly, Sorkin was contacted by Jocelyn Clarke of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, requesting he write a play for them, a commission which he accepted. Sorkin decided to rewrite The Farnsworth Invention as a play. He delivered a first draft of the play to the Abbey Theatre in early 2005, and a production was planned for 2007 with La Jolla Playhouse deciding to stage a workshop production of the play in collaboration with the Abbey Theatre. In 2006, Abbey Theatre's new management quit involvement with The Farnsworth Invention. Despite this, La Jolla Playhouse carried on with Steven Spielberg serving as a producer. The production opened under La Jolla's signature Page To Stage program which allowed Sorkin and director Des McAnuff to develop the play from show-to-show according to audience reactions and feedback; the play ran from February 20, 2007, through March 25, 2007. A Broadway production followed soon after, beginning in previews, and opening on November 14, 2007; however, the play was delayed by the 2007 Broadway stagehand strike. The Farnsworth Invention eventually opened at the Music Box Theatre on December 3, 2007, and closed on March 2, 2008. 2007–2015: Return to film and The Newsroom In 2007, Sorkin was commissioned by Universal Pictures to adapt George Crile's non-fiction book Charlie Wilson's War for Tom Hanks' production company Playtone. The biographical comedy, Charlie Wilson's War, is about the colorful Texas congressman Charlie Wilson who funded the CIA's secret war against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Directed by Mike Nichols, and written by Sorkin, the film was released in 2007 and starred Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The film earned five nominations at the Golden Globes, including Best Screenplay for Sorkin. In August 2008, Sorkin announced that he had agreed to write a script for Sony Pictures and producer Scott Rudin about the beginnings of Facebook. David Fincher's The Social Network, based on Ben Mezrich's novel The Accidental Billionaires, was released on October 1, 2010. It was a critical and commercial success; Sorkin won an Academy Award, BAFTA and a Golden Globe for the screenplay. A year later, Sorkin received nominations in the same award categories for co-writing Moneyball. It is based on Michael Lewis's 2003 non-fiction book of the same name, an account of the Oakland Athletics baseball team's 2002 season and their general manager Billy Beane's attempts to assemble a competitive team. The film was directed by Bennett Miller, and starred Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called the script "dynamite", in which Sorkin's "sharply witty touch is everywhere". In 2011, Sorkin played himself on the series 30 Rock, episode "Plan B", where he did a "walk and talk" with Liz Lemon played by Tina Fey. While still working on the screenplay for The Social Network, Sorkin was contemplating a television drama about the behind-the-scenes events at a cable news program. Talks had been ongoing between Sorkin and HBO since 2010. To research the news industry, Sorkin observed the production crew at MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and quizzed Parker Spitzers staff. He also spent time shadowing Hardball with Chris Matthews, as well as other programs on Fox News and CNN. Sorkin told TV Guide that he intended to take a less cynical view of the media: "They're going to be trying to do well in a context where it's very difficult to do well when there are commercial concerns and political concerns and corporate concerns." Sorkin decided that rather than have his characters react to fictional news events as on his earlier series, it would be set in the recent past and track real-world stories largely as they unfolded, to give a greater sense of realism.HBO ordered a pilot episode in January 2011 with the working title More as This Story Develops, with Scott Rudin serving as an executive producer. In September, HBO ordered a 10-episode series of The Newsroom with a premiere date of June 2012. A day after the second episode aired, HBO renewed the series for a second season. Sorkin said The Newsroom "is meant to be an idealistic, romantic, swashbuckling, sometimes comedic but very optimistic, upward-looking look at a group of people who are often looked at cynically. The same as with The West Wing, where ordinarily in popular culture our leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or dumb; I wanted to do something different and show a highly competent group of people." The series concluded after its third season. In 2015, Danny Boyle's biographical drama Steve Jobs was released. The screenplay by Sorkin was based on Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, and starred Michael Fassbender as Jobs, Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman, Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, and Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak. Sorkin expressed hesitation for tackling the film, saying "it was a little like writing about the Beatles—that there are so many people out there who know so much about him [Jobs] and who revere him that I just saw a minefield of disappointment. [...] Hopefully, when I'm done with my research, I'll be in the same ball park of knowledge about Steve Jobs". He won a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, although some journalists were surprised that he did not receive an Academy Award nomination in the same category. 2016–present: Film directing debut and Broadway work To Kill a Mockingbird In February 2016, it was announced that Sorkin would adapt Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird for the stage reuniting with Jeff Daniels who would portray Atticus Finch. This would be Sorkin's first collaboration with director Bartlett Sher. His Broadway adaptation opened on December 13, 2018, to positive reviews at the Shubert Theatre. The play received nine Tony Award nominations although notably not for Best Play. Despite initial legal disputes with the Harper Lee estate and controversy regarding actions by producer Scott Rudin, the play was a financial success where it transferred to the West End and embarked on a national tour. The play returned to Broadway following the Covid-19 pandemic with Daniels returning to the role. Film directorial debut Next, Sorkin made his directorial debut with Molly's Game, an adaptation of entrepreneur Molly Bloom's memoir. He also wrote the script for it, which starred Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba. Production began in 2016 and the film was released in December 2017 to mostly positive reviews; Sorkin received his third Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Molly's Game garnered an approval rating of 81% based on 297 reviews, with an average rating of 7.07/10. Sorkin told Vanity Fair in July 2020 that Steven Spielberg offered him a job in 2006 about "a movie about the riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention and the trial that followed". However, after meeting at Spielberg's home, Sorkin said, "I left not knowing what the hell he was talking about." On July 12, 2007, Variety magazine reported that Sorkin had signed a deal with DreamWorks to write three scripts. The first was The Trial of the Chicago 7, which Sorkin was already developing with Spielberg, Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald. In March 2010, Sorkin's agent, Ari Emanuel, had stated that the project was proving "tough to get together". In late July 2013, it was announced that Paul Greengrass would be directing, but Sorkin eventually both wrote and directed the film. Focusing on the Chicago Seven (and Bobby Seale), the film began a limited release on September 25, 2020, before streaming on Netflix. At the 78th Golden Globes, Sorkin won Best Screenplay, and was nominated for Best Director. In September 2015, Entertainment Weekly reported that Sorkin was writing a biopic that will focus on the twenty-year marriage of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and their work on a comedy series, I Love Lucy. Cate Blanchett was originally to star as Ball. In 2017, Amazon Studios acquired the rights to the film. In January 2021, it was announced that Blanchett had been replaced by Nicole Kidman, and Javier Bardem had been cast as Desi Arnaz. Titled Being the Ricardos (2021), it was directed by Sorkin and received a limited release on December 10, 2021, followed by a wide release on Prime Video on December 21. Paul Byrnes of The Sydney Morning Herald praised the film's dialogue, while the critic from The Irish Times opined that the film lacked "spark or insight". Camelot It was announced that Sorkin would be reuniting with director Bartlett Sher to revive the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot on Broadway starring Phillipa Soo and Andrew Burnap. The production was set to begin at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater on November 3, 2022. but was moved back to April 13, 2023. Prospective projects In March 2007, it was reported that Sorkin had signed on to write a musical adaptation of the hit 2002 record Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by psychedelic-rock band The Flaming Lips, collaborating with director Des McAnuff who had been developing the project. In August 2008, McAnuff announced that Sorkin had been commissioned by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival to write an adaptation of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. In 2010, Sorkin reportedly obtained the film rights to Andrew Young's book The Politician (about Senator John Edwards), and announced that he would make his debut as a film director while adapting the book for the screen. In November 2010, it was reported that Sorkin will write a musical based on the life of Houdini, with music by Danny Elfman. In January 2012, Stephen Schwartz was reported to be writing the music and lyrics, with Sorkin making his debut as a librettist. The musical was expected for release in 2013–14; Sorkin said: "The chance to collaborate with Stephen Schwartz [the director], Jack O'Brien, and Hugh Jackman on a new Broadway musical is a huge gift." In January 2013, he quit the project, citing film and television commitments. In March 2016, it was announced that Sorkin would adapt A Few Good Men for a live production on NBC, originally slated to air in 2017; , "Sorkin is still mulling the project". Writing process and style Sorkin has written for the theater, film, and television, and in each medium his level of collaboration with other creators has varied. He began in theater, which involved a largely solitary writing process, then moved into film, where he collaborated with director Rob Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman, and eventually worked in television, where he collaborated very closely with director Thomas Schlamme for nearly a decade on the shows Sports Night, The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip; he now moves between all three media. He had a habit of chain smoking while he spent long hours plotting out scripts in his office, though he quit smoking after having a stroke in 2022. He describes his writing process as physical because he will often stand up and speak the dialogue he is developing. A New York Times article by Peter de Jonge explained that "The West Wing is never plotted out for more than a few weeks ahead and has no major story lines", which De Jonge believed was because "with characters who have no flaws, it is impossible to give them significant arcs". Sorkin has stated: "I seldom plan ahead, not because I don't think it's good to plan ahead, there just isn't time." Sorkin has also said, "As a writer, I don't like to answer questions until the very moment that I have to." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV critic John Levesque has commented that Sorkin's writing process "can make for ill-advised plot developments". Further complicating the matter, in television, Sorkin will have a hand in writing every episode, rarely letting other writers earn full credit on a script. De Jonge reported that ex-writers of The West Wing have claimed that "even by the spotlight-hogging standards of Hollywood, Sorkin has been exceptionally ungenerous in his sharing of writing credit". In a comment to GQ magazine in 2008, Sorkin said, "I'm helped by a staff of people who have great ideas, but the scripts aren't written by committee." Sorkin's long-term collaboration with Schlamme began in early 1998 when they found they shared common creative ground on the soon to be produced Sports Night. Their successful partnership in television is one in which Sorkin focuses on writing the scripts while Schlamme executive produces and occasionally directs; they have worked together on Sports Night, The West Wing, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Schlamme will create the look of the shows, work with the other directors, discuss the scripts with Sorkin as soon as they are turned in, make design and casting decisions, and attend the budget meetings; Sorkin tends to stick strictly to writing. In response to what he perceived as unfair criticism of The Newsroom, Jacob Drum of Digital Americana wrote, "The essential truth that the critics miss is that The Newsroom is Sorkin being Sorkin as he always has been and always will be: one part pioneer; one part self-conscious romantic; two parts actual Lewis & Clark-style pioneer, trapping his way across an old, old idea of an America that can always stand to raise its game—but most importantly, spinning a good yarn while he does so." As a writer, Sorkin is recognized for his trademark fast-paced dialogue and extended monologues, complemented by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's storytelling technique called the "walk and talk". These sequences consist of single tracking shots of long duration involving multiple characters engaging in conversation as they move through the set; characters enter and exit the conversation as the shot continues without any cuts. Sorkin is also known for writing memorable lines and fast-paced dialogue, such as "You can't handle the truth!" from A Few Good Men and the partly Latin tirade against God in The West Wing episode "Two Cathedrals". For television, one hallmark of Sorkin's writer's voice is the repartee that his characters engage in as they small talk and banter about whimsical events taking place within an episode, and interject obscure popular culture references into conversation. Although his scripts are lauded for being literate, Sorkin has been criticized for often turning in scripts that are overwrought. His mentor William Goldman has commented that normally in visual media speeches are avoided, but that Sorkin has a talent for dialogue and gets away with breaking this rule. His portrayal of women has been criticized by several commentators, with female characters in his works often subordinate, written to support the main male characters, ditzy and incompetent or ostensibly professional while still being depicted as overly emotional and needing to be rescued by men. Personal life Sorkin married Julia Bingham in 1996 and divorced in 2005, with his workaholic habits and drug abuse reported to be a partial cause. Sorkin and Bingham have one daughter, Roxy. He dated Kristin Chenoweth, who played Annabeth Schott on The West Wing, for several years (after Sorkin had left the show). He has also reportedly dated columnist Maureen Dowd and actress Kristin Davis. In 2021, Sorkin and Paulina Porizkova dated for a few months. A consistent supporter of the Democratic Party, Sorkin has made substantial political campaign contributions to candidates between 1999 and 2011, according to CampaignMoney.com. During the 2004 US presidential election campaign, the liberal advocacy group MoveOn's political action committee enlisted Sorkin and Rob Reiner to create one of their anti-Bush campaign advertisements. In August 2008, Sorkin was involved in a Generation Obama event at the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills, California, participating in a panel discussion subsequent to a screening of Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. However, Sorkin does not consider himself a political activist: "I've met political activists, and they're for real. I've never marched anyplace or done anything that takes more effort than writing a check in terms of activism". In 2016, after President Donald Trump won the election, Sorkin wrote an open letter to his daughter Roxy and her mother Julia. In 1987, Sorkin started using marijuana and cocaine. He said cocaine gave him relief from certain nervous tensions that occur on a regular basis. In 1995, he sought rehabilitation at the Hazelden Institute in Minnesota, on the advice of Bingham to combat his addiction. In early 2001, Sorkin and his colleagues John Spencer and Martin Sheen received the Phoenix Rising Award for overcoming their drug abuse. However, on April 15, 2001, Sorkin was arrested when security guards at Hollywood Burbank Airport found that he was in possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana, crack cocaine, and a metal crack pipe. He was court-ordered to a drug diversion program, while still working on The West Wing. In a commencement speech for Syracuse University on May 13, 2012, Sorkin said he has not used cocaine for eleven years. In November 2022, Sorkin had a stroke which was caused by hypertension. He later called it "a loud wake-up call" to improve his health, and said he quit smoking, changed his diet, and began exercising daily as a result. Filmography Films Television Plays Playwright Acting credits Awards and nominations Sorkin has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following films: 83rd Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, win, The Social Network (2010) 84th Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, nomination, Moneyball (2011) 90th Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, nomination, Molly's Game (2017) 93rd Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay, nomination, The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) Sorkin has been nominated for ten Golden Globe Awards, winning three for Best Screenplay for: The Social Network (2011), Steve Jobs (2015), and The Trial of the Chicago Seven (2020). He has also received five British Academy Film Awards nominations, winning one for The Social Network (2010). He has also received fourteen Writers Guild of America Award nominations winning twice for The West Wing, and The Social Network (2010). He has received seven Critics' Choice Movie Awards nominations winning consecutively for Best Screenplay for The Social Network and Moneyball. For his work on television Sorkin has received nine Primetime Emmy Award nominations winning four awards for Outstanding Drama Series for The West Wing in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. He also won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for The West Wing episode: "In Excelsis Deo" in 2000. References Further reading External links Aaron Sorkin at Moviefone Blog Entries by Aaron Sorkin at HuffPost Aaron Sorkin, on Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc Aaron Sorkin, on Open Library, Internet Archive Aaron Sorkin, on AllMovie, All Media Network Aaron Sorkin, on TV.com, Red Ventures (archived 1º January 2012) Aaron Sorkin, on Internet Broadway Database, The Broadway League Category:1961 births Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American screenwriters Category:21st-century American Jews Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century American screenwriters Category:American male dramatists and playwrights Category:American male film actors Category:American male screenwriters Category:American male television writers Category:American television writers Category:Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award winners Category:Best Adapted Screenplay BAFTA Award winners Category:Best Screenplay Golden Globe winners Category:Film directors from New York City Category:Jewish American writers Category:Living people Category:People from Scarsdale, New York Category:Primetime Emmy Award winners Category:Scarsdale High School alumni Category:Screenwriters from New York (state) Category:Screenwriting instructors Category:Showrunners Category:Syracuse University alumni Category:Television producers from New York City Category:Writers from Manhattan Category:Writers Guild of America Award winners

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Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and playwright. His works include the Broadway plays A Few Good Men and The Farnsworth Invention; the television series Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and The Newsroom; and the films A Few Good Men, The American President, Charlie Wilson's War, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs. For writing The Social Network, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, among other awards. He made his feature directorial debut in 2017 with Molly's Game, which he also wrote.

A Few Good Men

Sorkin got the inspiration to write his next play, a courtroom drama called A Few Good Men, from a phone conversation with his sister Deborah (who had graduated from Boston University Law School and signed up for a three-year stint with the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps). Deborah told Sorkin that she was going to Guantanamo Bay to defend a group of Marines who came close to killing a fellow Marine in a hazing ordered by a superior officer. Sorkin took that information and wrote much of his story on cocktail napkins while bartending at the Palace Theatre. He and his roommates had purchased a Macintosh 512K so when he returned home he would empty his pockets of the cocktail napkins and type them into the computer, forming a basis from which he wrote many drafts for A Few Good Men. In 1988, Sorkin sold the film rights for A Few Good Men to producer David Brown before it premiered, in a deal that was reportedly "well into six figures". Brown had read an article in The New York Times about Sorkin's one-act play Hidden in This Picture and found out Sorkin also had a play called A Few Good Men that was having Off Broadway readings. Brown produced A Few Good Men on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. It starred Tom Hulce and was directed by Don Scardino. After opening in late 1989, it ran for 497 performances. Sorkin continued writing Making Movies and in 1990 it debuted Off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre, produced by John A. McQuiggan, and again directed by Don Scardino. Meanwhile, David Brown was producing a few projects at TriStar Pictures and tried to interest them in making A Few Good Men into a film but his proposal was declined due to the lack of star actor involvement. Brown later got a call from Alan Horn at Castle Rock Entertainment who was anxious to make the film. Rob Reiner, a Castle Rock producing partner, opted to direct it. CANNOTANSWER

Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American playwright, screenwriter and film director. Born in New York City, he developed a passion for writing at an early age. As a writer for stage, television and film, Sorkin is recognized for his trademark fast-paced dialogue and extended monologues, complemented by frequent use of the storytelling technique called the "walk and talk". Sorkin has earned numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, five Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globes. Sorkin rose to prominence as a writer-creator and showrunner of the television series Sports Night (1998–2000), The West Wing (1999–2006), Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006–07), and The Newsroom (2012–14). He is also known for his work on Broadway including the plays A Few Good Men (1989), The Farnsworth Invention (2007), and To Kill a Mockingbird (2018) as well as the revival of Lerner and Loewe's Camelot (2023). He wrote the film screenplays for A Few Good Men (1992), The American President (1995), and several biopics including Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Moneyball (2011), and Steve Jobs (2015). For writing 2010's The Social Network, he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He made his directorial film debut with Molly's Game (2017), followed by The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), and Being the Ricardos (2021). Early life Sorkin was born in Manhattan, New York City, to a Jewish family, and was raised in the New York suburb of Scarsdale. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father a copyright lawyer who had fought in WWII and went to college on the G.I. Bill; both his older sister and brother went on to become lawyers. His paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). Sorkin took an early interest in acting. During childhood, his parents took him to the theatre to see shows such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and That Championship Season. Sorkin attended Scarsdale High School where he became involved in the drama and theatre club. In the eighth grade, he played General Bullmoose in the musical Li'l Abner. At Scarsdale High, he served as vice president of the drama club in his junior and senior years, and graduated in 1979. In 1979, Sorkin attended Syracuse University. In his freshman year, he failed a class that was a core requirement, which caused a setback because he wanted to be an actor, and the drama department did not allow students to take the stage until they completed the core classes. Determined to do better, he returned for his sophomore year, and graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre. Recalling the influence of theatre teacher Arthur Storch, Sorkin said: "Arthur's reputation as a director, and as a disciple of Lee Strasberg, was a big reason why a lot of us went to S.U. [Syracuse University]... 'You have the capacity to be so much better than you are', he started saying to me in September of my senior year. He was still saying it in May. On the last day of classes, he said it again, and I said, 'How?', and he answered, 'Dare to fail'. I've been coming through on his admonition ever since". Career 1983–1990: Early work and breakthrough Sorkin moved to New York City where he spent much of the 1980s as a struggling, sporadically-employed actor who worked odd jobs, such as delivering singing telegrams, driving a limousine, touring Alabama with the children's theatre company Traveling Playhouse, handing out fliers promoting a hunting-and-fishing show, and bartending at Broadway's Palace Theatre. One weekend, while house-sitting for a friend, he found an IBM Selectric typewriter, started typing, and "felt a phenomenal confidence and a kind of joy that [he] had never experienced before in [his] life". He continued writing and eventually put together his first play, Removing All Doubt, which he sent to his former theatre teacher, Arthur Storch, who was impressed. In 1984, Removing All Doubt was staged for drama students at his alma mater, Syracuse University. After that, he wrote Hidden in This Picture which debuted off-off-Broadway at Steve Olsen's West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar in New York City in 1988. The quality of his first two plays earned him a theatrical agent. Producer John A. McQuiggan saw the production of Hidden in This Picture and commissioned Sorkin to turn the one-act into a full-length play called Making Movies. Sorkin was inspired to write his next play, a courtroom drama called A Few Good Men, from a phone conversation with his sister Deborah, who had graduated from Boston University Law School and signed up for a three-year stint with the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. Deborah told Sorkin that she was going to Guantanamo Bay to defend a group of Marines who came close to killing a fellow Marine in a hazing ordered by a superior officer. Sorkin took that information and wrote much of his story on cocktail napkins while bartending at the Palace Theatre. He and his roommates had purchased a Macintosh 512K; when he returned home, he would transcribe the story and notes onto the computer, forming a basis from which he wrote many drafts for A Few Good Men. In 1988, Sorkin sold the film rights for A Few Good Men to producer David Brown before it premiered, in a deal that was reportedly "well into six figures". Brown had read an article in The New York Times about Sorkin's one-act play Hidden in This Picture, and found out Sorkin had a play called A Few Good Men that was having Off Broadway readings. Brown produced A Few Good Men on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. It starred Tom Hulce and was directed by Don Scardino. After opening in late 1989, it ran for 497 performances. Sorkin continued writing Making Movies and in 1990 it debuted Off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre, produced by John A. McQuiggan, and again directed by Don Scardino. Meanwhile, Brown was producing for TriStar Pictures, and tried to interest them in adapting A Few Good Men into a film, but his proposal was declined due to the lack of star actor involvement. Brown later received a phone call from Alan Horn at Castle Rock Entertainment who was anxious to make the film. Rob Reiner, a Castle Rock producing partner, opted to direct. 1991–1997: Writing for Castle Rock Entertainment Sorkin worked under contract for Castle Rock Entertainment, where he befriended colleagues William Goldman and Rob Reiner, and met his future wife Julia Bingham, who was one of Castle Rock's business affairs lawyers. Sorkin wrote several drafts of the script for A Few Good Men in his Manhattan apartment, learning the craft from a book about screenplay format. He then spent several months at the Los Angeles offices of Castle Rock, working on the script with director Rob Reiner. William Goldman (who regularly worked under contract at Castle Rock) became his mentor and helped him to adapt his stage play into a screenplay. The film, directed by Reiner, starred Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon, and was produced by Brown. A Few Good Men was released in 1992 and was a box office success, grossing $243 million worldwide. Goldman also approached Sorkin with a story premise, which Sorkin developed into the script for the thriller Malice. Goldman oversaw the project as creative consultant while Sorkin wrote the first two drafts. However, he had to leave the project to finish the script for A Few Good Men, so screenwriter Scott Frank stepped in and wrote two drafts of the Malice screenplay. When production on A Few Good Men was completed, Sorkin resumed working on Malice right through the final shooting script. Harold Becker directed the 1993 thriller, which starred Nicole Kidman and Alec Baldwin. Malice had mixed reviews; Vincent Canby in The New York Times described the film as "deviously entertaining from its start through its finish". Critic Roger Ebert gave it 2 out of 4 stars, and Peter Travers in a 2000 Rolling Stone review summarized it as having "suspense but no staying power". Sorkin's last screenplay under Castle Rock was The American President; once again he worked with William Goldman who served as a creative consultant. It took Sorkin several years to write the screenplay for The American President, which started off at 385-pages; it was eventually reduced to a standard shooting script of around 120 pages. The film, also directed by Reiner, was critically acclaimed; Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times described it as "genial and entertaining if not notably inspired", and believed its most interesting aspects were the "pipe dreams about the American political system and where it could theoretically be headed". A Few Good Men, Malice and The American President grossed approximately $400 million worldwide. In the second half of the 1990s, Sorkin worked as a script doctor. He wrote some quips for Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in 1996's The Rock. He worked on Excess Baggage, a 1997 comedy about a girl who stages her own kidnapping to get her father's attention, and rewrote some of Will Smith's scenes in Enemy of the State. Sorkin collaborated with Warren Beatty on several scripts, one of which was 1998's Bulworth. Beatty, known for occasionally personally financing his film projects through pre-production, also hired Sorkin to rewrite a script titled Ocean of Storms which never went into production. At one point, Sorkin sued Beatty for proper compensation for his work on the Ocean of Storms script; once the matter was settled, he resumed working on the script. 1998–2006: Television series and theatre work Sports Night Sorkin conceived the idea to write about the behind-the-scenes happenings on a sports show while residing at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles writing the screenplay for The American President. He would work late, with the television tuned into ESPN, watching continuous replays of SportsCenter. The show inspired him to try to write a feature film about a sports show but he was unable to structure the story for film, so instead he turned his idea into a television comedy series. Sports Night was produced by Disney and debuted on the ABC network in fall of 1998. Sorkin fought with ABC during the first season over the use of a laugh track and a live studio audience. The laugh track was widely decried by critics as jarring, with Joyce Millman of Salon magazine describing it as "the most unconvincing laugh track you've ever heard". Sorkin commented that: "Once you do shoot in front of a live audience, you have no choice but to use the laugh track. Oftentimes [enhancing the laughs] is the right thing to do. Sometimes you do need a cymbal crash. Other times, it alienates me." The laugh track was gradually dialed down and was removed by the end of the first season. Sorkin was triumphant in the second season when ABC agreed to his demands, unburdening the crew of the difficulties of staging a scene for a live audience and leaving the cast with more time to rehearse. Although Sports Night was critically acclaimed, ABC canceled the show after two seasons due to low ratings. Sorkin entertained offers to continue the show on other television channels, but declined all the offers because they were dependent on his involvement and he was already working on The West Wing. The West Wing Sorkin conceived the political drama The West Wing in 1997 when he went unprepared to a lunch with producer John Wells; in a panic he pitched to Wells a series centered on the senior staff of the White House, using leftover ideas from his script for The American President. He told Wells about his visits to the White House while doing research for The American President, and they found themselves discussing public service and the passion of the people who serve. Wells took the concept and pitched it to NBC, but was told to wait due to the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. There was a concern that television audiences would not be able to take a series about the White House seriously. A year later, other networks started showing interest in The West Wing. NBC decided to give the project the green-light despite their previous reluctance. The pilot debuted in the fall of 1999 and was produced by Warner Bros. Television. The West Wing garnered nine Primetime Emmy Awards for its debut season, making the series a record holder for most Emmys won by a series in a single season at the time. Following the awards ceremony, there was a dispute about the acceptance speech for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. The West Wing episode "In Excelsis Deo" won, which was awarded to Sorkin and Rick Cleveland, but The New York Times reported that Sorkin ushered Cleveland off the stage before he could say a few words. The story behind "In Excelsis Deo" is based on Cleveland's father, a Korean War veteran who spent the last years of his life on the street, as Cleveland explained in an essay titled "I Was the Dumb Looking Guy with the Wire-Rimmed Glasses". Sorkin and Cleveland continued their dispute in a public web forum at Mighty Big TV in which Sorkin explained that he gives his writers "Story By" credit on a rotating basis "by way of a gratuity" and that he had thrown out Cleveland's script and started from scratch. Sorkin eventually apologized to Cleveland. Cleveland and Sorkin also won the Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Episodic Drama at the 53rd Writer Guild of America Awards for "In Excelsis Deo". In 2001, after completing the second season of The West Wing, Sorkin had a drug relapse, and was arrested at Hollywood Burbank Airport for possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana, and crack cocaine. He was ordered by a court to attend a drug diversion program. There was huge media interest but he did make a successful recovery. In 2002, Sorkin criticized NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's television special about a day in the life of a president, "The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing", comparing it to the act of sending a valentine to President George W. Bush instead of real news reporting. The West Wing aired on the same network, and so at the request of NBC's Entertainment President Jeff Zucker, Sorkin apologized, but later said, "there should be a difference between what NBC News does and what The West Wing TV series does." Sorkin wrote 87 screenplays for The West Wing, which is nearly every episode during the show's first four Emmy-winning seasons. Sorkin described his role in the creative process as "not so much [that of] a showrunner or a producer. I'm really a writer." He admitted that this approach can have its drawbacks, saying "Out of 88 [West Wing] episodes that I did we were on time and on budget never, not once." In 2003, at the end of the fourth season, Sorkin and fellow executive producer Thomas Schlamme left the show due to internal conflicts at Warner Bros. Television, causing John Wells to serve as showrunner. Sorkin never watched any episodes beyond his writing tenure apart from a minute of the fifth season's first episode, describing the experience as "like watching somebody make out with my girlfriend." Sorkin later returned in the series finale for a cameo appearance as a guest at the inauguration of Matthew Santos. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip In 2005, Sorkin returned to theatre; he revised his play A Few Good Men for a production at London's West End. The play opened at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the fall of the same year and was directed by David Esbjornson, with Rob Lowe of The West Wing in the lead role. Sorkin told The Charlie Rose Show that he was developing a television series based on a late-night sketch comedy show similar to Saturday Night Live. In October 2005, a pilot script dubbed Studio 7 on the Sunset Strip, written by him and Schlamme as producer, started circulating in Hollywood and online. In that same month, NBC bought the rights from Warner Bros. Television to air the series on their network for a near-record license fee after a bidding war with CBS. The show's name was later changed to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Sorkin described the show as having "autobiographical elements" to it and "characters that are based on actual people" but said that it departs from those beginnings to look at the backstage maneuverings at a late night sketch comedy show. On September 18, 2006, the pilot for Studio 60 aired on NBC, directed by Schlamme. The pilot was critically acclaimed and viewed by an audience of over 12 million, but the show experienced a significant drop in viewership mid-season. Even before the first episode aired, there was a large amount of thoughtful and scrupulous criticism in the press, as well as negative analysis from bloggers. In January 2007, Sorkin spoke out against the press for reporting heavily on the low ratings, and for using blogs and unemployed comedy writers as sources. After two months hiatus, Studio 60 resumed airing the last episodes of season one, which would be its only season. The Farnsworth Invention As early as 2003, Sorkin was writing a spec script about inventor Philo Farnsworth; he was approached by producer Fred Zollo in the 1990s about adapting Elma Farnsworth's memoir into a biographical film. The following year, he completed the film screenplay, The Farnsworth Invention, which was acquired by New Line Cinema with Schlamme as director. The story is about the patent battle between Farnsworth and RCA tycoon David Sarnoff for the technology that allowed the first television transmissions in the United States. No additional details were released about the film. Shortly, Sorkin was contacted by Jocelyn Clarke of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, requesting he write a play for them, a commission which he accepted. Sorkin decided to rewrite The Farnsworth Invention as a play. He delivered a first draft of the play to the Abbey Theatre in early 2005, and a production was planned for 2007 with La Jolla Playhouse deciding to stage a workshop production of the play in collaboration with the Abbey Theatre. In 2006, Abbey Theatre's new management quit involvement with The Farnsworth Invention. Despite this, La Jolla Playhouse carried on with Steven Spielberg serving as a producer. The production opened under La Jolla's signature Page To Stage program which allowed Sorkin and director Des McAnuff to develop the play from show-to-show according to audience reactions and feedback; the play ran from February 20, 2007, through March 25, 2007. A Broadway production followed soon after, beginning in previews, and opening on November 14, 2007; however, the play was delayed by the 2007 Broadway stagehand strike. The Farnsworth Invention eventually opened at the Music Box Theatre on December 3, 2007, and closed on March 2, 2008. 2007–2015: Return to film and The Newsroom In 2007, Sorkin was commissioned by Universal Pictures to adapt George Crile's non-fiction book Charlie Wilson's War for Tom Hanks' production company Playtone. The biographical comedy, Charlie Wilson's War, is about the colorful Texas congressman Charlie Wilson who funded the CIA's secret war against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Directed by Mike Nichols, and written by Sorkin, the film was released in 2007 and starred Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The film earned five nominations at the Golden Globes, including Best Screenplay for Sorkin. In August 2008, Sorkin announced that he had agreed to write a script for Sony Pictures and producer Scott Rudin about the beginnings of Facebook. David Fincher's The Social Network, based on Ben Mezrich's novel The Accidental Billionaires, was released on October 1, 2010. It was a critical and commercial success; Sorkin won an Academy Award, BAFTA and a Golden Globe for the screenplay. A year later, Sorkin received nominations in the same award categories for co-writing Moneyball. It is based on Michael Lewis's 2003 non-fiction book of the same name, an account of the Oakland Athletics baseball team's 2002 season and their general manager Billy Beane's attempts to assemble a competitive team. The film was directed by Bennett Miller, and starred Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called the script "dynamite", in which Sorkin's "sharply witty touch is everywhere". In 2011, Sorkin played himself on the series 30 Rock, episode "Plan B", where he did a "walk and talk" with Liz Lemon played by Tina Fey. While still working on the screenplay for The Social Network, Sorkin was contemplating a television drama about the behind-the-scenes events at a cable news program. Talks had been ongoing between Sorkin and HBO since 2010. To research the news industry, Sorkin observed the production crew at MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and quizzed Parker Spitzers staff. He also spent time shadowing Hardball with Chris Matthews, as well as other programs on Fox News and CNN. Sorkin told TV Guide that he intended to take a less cynical view of the media: "They're going to be trying to do well in a context where it's very difficult to do well when there are commercial concerns and political concerns and corporate concerns." Sorkin decided that rather than have his characters react to fictional news events as on his earlier series, it would be set in the recent past and track real-world stories largely as they unfolded, to give a greater sense of realism.HBO ordered a pilot episode in January 2011 with the working title More as This Story Develops, with Scott Rudin serving as an executive producer. In September, HBO ordered a 10-episode series of The Newsroom with a premiere date of June 2012. A day after the second episode aired, HBO renewed the series for a second season. Sorkin said The Newsroom "is meant to be an idealistic, romantic, swashbuckling, sometimes comedic but very optimistic, upward-looking look at a group of people who are often looked at cynically. The same as with The West Wing, where ordinarily in popular culture our leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or dumb; I wanted to do something different and show a highly competent group of people." The series concluded after its third season. In 2015, Danny Boyle's biographical drama Steve Jobs was released. The screenplay by Sorkin was based on Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, and starred Michael Fassbender as Jobs, Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman, Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, and Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak. Sorkin expressed hesitation for tackling the film, saying "it was a little like writing about the Beatles—that there are so many people out there who know so much about him [Jobs] and who revere him that I just saw a minefield of disappointment. [...] Hopefully, when I'm done with my research, I'll be in the same ball park of knowledge about Steve Jobs". He won a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, although some journalists were surprised that he did not receive an Academy Award nomination in the same category. 2016–present: Film directing debut and Broadway work To Kill a Mockingbird In February 2016, it was announced that Sorkin would adapt Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird for the stage reuniting with Jeff Daniels who would portray Atticus Finch. This would be Sorkin's first collaboration with director Bartlett Sher. His Broadway adaptation opened on December 13, 2018, to positive reviews at the Shubert Theatre. The play received nine Tony Award nominations although notably not for Best Play. Despite initial legal disputes with the Harper Lee estate and controversy regarding actions by producer Scott Rudin, the play was a financial success where it transferred to the West End and embarked on a national tour. The play returned to Broadway following the Covid-19 pandemic with Daniels returning to the role. Film directorial debut Next, Sorkin made his directorial debut with Molly's Game, an adaptation of entrepreneur Molly Bloom's memoir. He also wrote the script for it, which starred Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba. Production began in 2016 and the film was released in December 2017 to mostly positive reviews; Sorkin received his third Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Molly's Game garnered an approval rating of 81% based on 297 reviews, with an average rating of 7.07/10. Sorkin told Vanity Fair in July 2020 that Steven Spielberg offered him a job in 2006 about "a movie about the riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention and the trial that followed". However, after meeting at Spielberg's home, Sorkin said, "I left not knowing what the hell he was talking about." On July 12, 2007, Variety magazine reported that Sorkin had signed a deal with DreamWorks to write three scripts. The first was The Trial of the Chicago 7, which Sorkin was already developing with Spielberg, Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald. In March 2010, Sorkin's agent, Ari Emanuel, had stated that the project was proving "tough to get together". In late July 2013, it was announced that Paul Greengrass would be directing, but Sorkin eventually both wrote and directed the film. Focusing on the Chicago Seven (and Bobby Seale), the film began a limited release on September 25, 2020, before streaming on Netflix. At the 78th Golden Globes, Sorkin won Best Screenplay, and was nominated for Best Director. In September 2015, Entertainment Weekly reported that Sorkin was writing a biopic that will focus on the twenty-year marriage of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and their work on a comedy series, I Love Lucy. Cate Blanchett was originally to star as Ball. In 2017, Amazon Studios acquired the rights to the film. In January 2021, it was announced that Blanchett had been replaced by Nicole Kidman, and Javier Bardem had been cast as Desi Arnaz. Titled Being the Ricardos (2021), it was directed by Sorkin and received a limited release on December 10, 2021, followed by a wide release on Prime Video on December 21. Paul Byrnes of The Sydney Morning Herald praised the film's dialogue, while the critic from The Irish Times opined that the film lacked "spark or insight". Camelot It was announced that Sorkin would be reuniting with director Bartlett Sher to revive the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot on Broadway starring Phillipa Soo and Andrew Burnap. The production was set to begin at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater on November 3, 2022. but was moved back to April 13, 2023. Prospective projects In March 2007, it was reported that Sorkin had signed on to write a musical adaptation of the hit 2002 record Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by psychedelic-rock band The Flaming Lips, collaborating with director Des McAnuff who had been developing the project. In August 2008, McAnuff announced that Sorkin had been commissioned by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival to write an adaptation of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. In 2010, Sorkin reportedly obtained the film rights to Andrew Young's book The Politician (about Senator John Edwards), and announced that he would make his debut as a film director while adapting the book for the screen. In November 2010, it was reported that Sorkin will write a musical based on the life of Houdini, with music by Danny Elfman. In January 2012, Stephen Schwartz was reported to be writing the music and lyrics, with Sorkin making his debut as a librettist. The musical was expected for release in 2013–14; Sorkin said: "The chance to collaborate with Stephen Schwartz [the director], Jack O'Brien, and Hugh Jackman on a new Broadway musical is a huge gift." In January 2013, he quit the project, citing film and television commitments. In March 2016, it was announced that Sorkin would adapt A Few Good Men for a live production on NBC, originally slated to air in 2017; , "Sorkin is still mulling the project". Writing process and style Sorkin has written for the theater, film, and television, and in each medium his level of collaboration with other creators has varied. He began in theater, which involved a largely solitary writing process, then moved into film, where he collaborated with director Rob Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman, and eventually worked in television, where he collaborated very closely with director Thomas Schlamme for nearly a decade on the shows Sports Night, The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip; he now moves between all three media. He had a habit of chain smoking while he spent long hours plotting out scripts in his office, though he quit smoking after having a stroke in 2022. He describes his writing process as physical because he will often stand up and speak the dialogue he is developing. A New York Times article by Peter de Jonge explained that "The West Wing is never plotted out for more than a few weeks ahead and has no major story lines", which De Jonge believed was because "with characters who have no flaws, it is impossible to give them significant arcs". Sorkin has stated: "I seldom plan ahead, not because I don't think it's good to plan ahead, there just isn't time." Sorkin has also said, "As a writer, I don't like to answer questions until the very moment that I have to." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV critic John Levesque has commented that Sorkin's writing process "can make for ill-advised plot developments". Further complicating the matter, in television, Sorkin will have a hand in writing every episode, rarely letting other writers earn full credit on a script. De Jonge reported that ex-writers of The West Wing have claimed that "even by the spotlight-hogging standards of Hollywood, Sorkin has been exceptionally ungenerous in his sharing of writing credit". In a comment to GQ magazine in 2008, Sorkin said, "I'm helped by a staff of people who have great ideas, but the scripts aren't written by committee." Sorkin's long-term collaboration with Schlamme began in early 1998 when they found they shared common creative ground on the soon to be produced Sports Night. Their successful partnership in television is one in which Sorkin focuses on writing the scripts while Schlamme executive produces and occasionally directs; they have worked together on Sports Night, The West Wing, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Schlamme will create the look of the shows, work with the other directors, discuss the scripts with Sorkin as soon as they are turned in, make design and casting decisions, and attend the budget meetings; Sorkin tends to stick strictly to writing. In response to what he perceived as unfair criticism of The Newsroom, Jacob Drum of Digital Americana wrote, "The essential truth that the critics miss is that The Newsroom is Sorkin being Sorkin as he always has been and always will be: one part pioneer; one part self-conscious romantic; two parts actual Lewis & Clark-style pioneer, trapping his way across an old, old idea of an America that can always stand to raise its game—but most importantly, spinning a good yarn while he does so." As a writer, Sorkin is recognized for his trademark fast-paced dialogue and extended monologues, complemented by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's storytelling technique called the "walk and talk". These sequences consist of single tracking shots of long duration involving multiple characters engaging in conversation as they move through the set; characters enter and exit the conversation as the shot continues without any cuts. Sorkin is also known for writing memorable lines and fast-paced dialogue, such as "You can't handle the truth!" from A Few Good Men and the partly Latin tirade against God in The West Wing episode "Two Cathedrals". For television, one hallmark of Sorkin's writer's voice is the repartee that his characters engage in as they small talk and banter about whimsical events taking place within an episode, and interject obscure popular culture references into conversation. Although his scripts are lauded for being literate, Sorkin has been criticized for often turning in scripts that are overwrought. His mentor William Goldman has commented that normally in visual media speeches are avoided, but that Sorkin has a talent for dialogue and gets away with breaking this rule. His portrayal of women has been criticized by several commentators, with female characters in his works often subordinate, written to support the main male characters, ditzy and incompetent or ostensibly professional while still being depicted as overly emotional and needing to be rescued by men. Personal life Sorkin married Julia Bingham in 1996 and divorced in 2005, with his workaholic habits and drug abuse reported to be a partial cause. Sorkin and Bingham have one daughter, Roxy. He dated Kristin Chenoweth, who played Annabeth Schott on The West Wing, for several years (after Sorkin had left the show). He has also reportedly dated columnist Maureen Dowd and actress Kristin Davis. In 2021, Sorkin and Paulina Porizkova dated for a few months. A consistent supporter of the Democratic Party, Sorkin has made substantial political campaign contributions to candidates between 1999 and 2011, according to CampaignMoney.com. During the 2004 US presidential election campaign, the liberal advocacy group MoveOn's political action committee enlisted Sorkin and Rob Reiner to create one of their anti-Bush campaign advertisements. In August 2008, Sorkin was involved in a Generation Obama event at the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills, California, participating in a panel discussion subsequent to a screening of Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. However, Sorkin does not consider himself a political activist: "I've met political activists, and they're for real. I've never marched anyplace or done anything that takes more effort than writing a check in terms of activism". In 2016, after President Donald Trump won the election, Sorkin wrote an open letter to his daughter Roxy and her mother Julia. In 1987, Sorkin started using marijuana and cocaine. He said cocaine gave him relief from certain nervous tensions that occur on a regular basis. In 1995, he sought rehabilitation at the Hazelden Institute in Minnesota, on the advice of Bingham to combat his addiction. In early 2001, Sorkin and his colleagues John Spencer and Martin Sheen received the Phoenix Rising Award for overcoming their drug abuse. However, on April 15, 2001, Sorkin was arrested when security guards at Hollywood Burbank Airport found that he was in possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana, crack cocaine, and a metal crack pipe. He was court-ordered to a drug diversion program, while still working on The West Wing. In a commencement speech for Syracuse University on May 13, 2012, Sorkin said he has not used cocaine for eleven years. In November 2022, Sorkin had a stroke which was caused by hypertension. He later called it "a loud wake-up call" to improve his health, and said he quit smoking, changed his diet, and began exercising daily as a result. Filmography Films Television Plays Playwright Acting credits Awards and nominations Sorkin has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following films: 83rd Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, win, The Social Network (2010) 84th Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, nomination, Moneyball (2011) 90th Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, nomination, Molly's Game (2017) 93rd Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay, nomination, The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) Sorkin has been nominated for ten Golden Globe Awards, winning three for Best Screenplay for: The Social Network (2011), Steve Jobs (2015), and The Trial of the Chicago Seven (2020). He has also received five British Academy Film Awards nominations, winning one for The Social Network (2010). He has also received fourteen Writers Guild of America Award nominations winning twice for The West Wing, and The Social Network (2010). He has received seven Critics' Choice Movie Awards nominations winning consecutively for Best Screenplay for The Social Network and Moneyball. For his work on television Sorkin has received nine Primetime Emmy Award nominations winning four awards for Outstanding Drama Series for The West Wing in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. He also won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for The West Wing episode: "In Excelsis Deo" in 2000. References Further reading External links Aaron Sorkin at Moviefone Blog Entries by Aaron Sorkin at HuffPost Aaron Sorkin, on Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc Aaron Sorkin, on Open Library, Internet Archive Aaron Sorkin, on AllMovie, All Media Network Aaron Sorkin, on TV.com, Red Ventures (archived 1º January 2012) Aaron Sorkin, on Internet Broadway Database, The Broadway League Category:1961 births Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American screenwriters Category:21st-century American Jews Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century American screenwriters Category:American male dramatists and playwrights Category:American male film actors Category:American male screenwriters Category:American male television writers Category:American television writers Category:Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award winners Category:Best Adapted Screenplay BAFTA Award winners Category:Best Screenplay Golden Globe winners Category:Film directors from New York City Category:Jewish American writers Category:Living people Category:People from Scarsdale, New York Category:Primetime Emmy Award winners Category:Scarsdale High School alumni Category:Screenwriters from New York (state) Category:Screenwriting instructors Category:Showrunners Category:Syracuse University alumni Category:Television producers from New York City Category:Writers from Manhattan Category:Writers Guild of America Award winners

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Karen Horney

Karen Horney was born Karen Danielsen on 16 September 1885 in Blankenese, Germany, near Hamburg. Her father, Berndt Wackels Danielsen (1836-1910), was Norwegian but had German citizenship. He was a ship's captain in the merchant marine, and a Protestant traditionalist (his children nicknamed him "the Bible-thrower", as he did indeed throw Bibles). Her mother, Clotilde, nee van Ronzelen (1853-1911), known as "Sonni", was also Protestant, of Dutch origin.

Theory of the self

Horney also shared Abraham Maslow's view that self-actualization is something that all people strive for. By "self" she understood the core of one's own being and potential. Horney believed that if we have an accurate conception of our own self, then we are free to realize our potential and achieve what we wish, within reasonable boundaries. Thus, she believed that self-actualization is the healthy person's aim through life--as opposed to the neurotic's clinging to a set of key needs. According to Horney we can have two views of our self: the "real self" and the "ideal self". The real self is who and what we actually are. The ideal self is the type of person we feel that we should be. The real self has the potential for growth, happiness, will power, realization of gifts, etc., but it also has deficiencies. The ideal self is used as a model to assist the real self in developing its potential and achieving self-actualization. (Engler 125) But it is important to know the differences between our ideal and real self. The neurotic person's self is split between an idealized self and a real self. As a result, neurotic individuals feel that they somehow do not live up to the ideal self. They feel that there is a flaw somewhere in comparison to what they "should" be. The goals set out by the neurotic are not realistic, or indeed possible. The real self then degenerates into a "despised self", and the neurotic person assumes that this is the "true" self. Thus, the neurotic is like a clock's pendulum, oscillating between a fallacious "perfection" and a manifestation of self-hate. Horney referred to this phenomenon as the "tyranny of the shoulds" and the neurotic's hopeless "search for glory". She concluded that these ingrained traits of the psyche forever prevent an individual's potential from being actualized unless the cycle of neurosis is somehow broken, through treatment or, in less severe cases, life lessons. CANNOTANSWER

Karen Horney (; ; 16 September 1885 – 4 December 1952) was a German psychoanalyst who practised in the United States during her later career. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views. This was particularly true of her theories of sexuality and of the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis. She is credited with founding feminist psychology in response to Freud's theory of penis envy. She disagreed with Freud about inherent differences in the psychology of men and women, and she traced such differences to society and culture rather than biology. Theoretical orientation Those in The Cultural School of thought are Horney, Erich Fromm, Harry Stack Sullivan, Clara Thompson, and Abraham Kardiner. Horney is often classified as neo-Freudian but may also be seen as neo-Adlerian (Ansbacher, 1979), although it is contended neither Horney nor Adler directly influenced one another (Mosak, 1989). Early life Horney was born Karen Danielsen on 16 September 1885 in Blankenese, Germany, near Hamburg. Her father, Berndt Wackels Danielsen (1836–1910), was Norwegian but had German citizenship. He was a ship's captain in the merchant marine, and a Protestant traditionalist (his children nicknamed him "the Bible-thrower", as he did indeed throw Bibles). Her mother, Clotilde, née van Ronzelen (1853–1911), known as "Sonni", was also Protestant, of Dutch origin. She was said to be more open-minded than Berndt, and yet she was "depressed, irritable, and domineering toward Karen". Karen's elder brother was also named Berndt, and Karen cared for him deeply. She also had four elder half-siblings from her father's previous marriage. However, there was no contact between the children of her father's two marriages. Horney kept diaries beginning at the age of thirteen. These journals showed Horney's confidence in her path for the future. She considered becoming a doctor, even though, at that time, women were not allowed to attend universities. According to Horney's adolescent diaries her father was "a cruel disciplinary figure," who also held his son Berndt in higher regard than Karen. Instead of being offended or feeling indignation over Karen's perceptions of him, her father brought her gifts from far-away countries. Despite this, Karen always felt deprived of her father's affection and instead became attached to her mother. From roughly the age of nine Karen became ambitious and somewhat rebellious. She felt she could not become pretty, and instead decided to vest her energies into her intellectual qualities — despite the fact she was seen by most as pretty. At this time she developed a crush on her older brother, who became embarrassed by her attentions — soon pushing her away. She suffered the first of several bouts of depression — an issue that would plague her for the rest of her life. In 1904, when Karen was 19, her mother left her father (without divorcing him), taking the children with her. Education Against her parents' wishes, Horney entered medical school in 1906. The University of Freiburg was in fact one of the first institutions in Germany to enroll women in medical courses—with higher education only becoming available to women in Germany in 1900. By 1908, Horney had transferred to the University of Göttingen, and would transfer once more to the University of Berlin before graduating with an M.D. in 1913. Attending several universities was common at the time to gain a basic medical education. Through her fellow student Carl Müller-Braunschweig—who later became a psychoanalyst—she met the business student Oskar Horney. They married in 1909. The couple moved to Berlin together, where Oskar worked in industry while Karen continued her studies at the Charité. Within the space of one year, Karen gave birth to her first child and lost both of her parents. She entered psychoanalysis to help herself cope. Her first analyst was Karl Abraham in 1910, then she moved to Hanns Sachs. Karen and Oskar had three daughters. The first, born in 1911, was Brigitte Horney, who became a famous actress. Career and works In 1920, Horney was a founding member of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. She then took up a teaching position within the Institute. She helped design and eventually directed the Society's training program, taught students, and conducted psychoanalytic research. She also saw patients for private psychoanalytic sessions, and continued to work at the hospital. By 1923, Oskar Horney's firm became insolvent, and Oskar developed meningitis soon after. He rapidly became embittered, morose and argumentative. That same year, Horney's brother died of a pulmonary infection. Both events contributed to a worsening of Horney's mental health. She entered into a second period of deep depression; she swam out to sea during a vacation and considered committing suicide. In 1926, Horney and her husband separated; they would divorce in 1937. She and their three daughters moved out of Oskar's house. Oskar had proven to be very similar to Horney's father, with an authoritarian personality. After studying more psychoanalytic theory, Horney regretted not objecting to her husband ruling over their children when they were younger. Despite her increasing deviation from orthodox Freudian doctrine, she practised and taught at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society until 1932. Freud's increasing coolness toward her and her concern over the rise of Nazism in Germany motivated her to accept an invitation by Franz Alexander to become his assistant at the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis, and in 1932, she and her daughters moved to the United States. Two years after moving to Chicago, Horney relocated to Brooklyn. Brooklyn was home to a large Jewish community, including a growing number of refugees from Nazi Germany, and psychoanalysis thrived there. It was in Brooklyn Horney became friends with analysts such as Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm. She had a sexual relationship with Fromm that ended bitterly. While living in Brooklyn, Horney taught and trained psychoanalysts in New York City, working both at the New School for Social Research and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. It was in Brooklyn Horney developed and advanced her composite theories regarding neurosis and personality, based on experiences gained from working in psychotherapy. In 1937 she published The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, which had wide popular readership. By 1941, Horney was Dean of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis, a training institute for those who were interested in Horney's own organization, the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. She founded this organization after becoming dissatisfied with the generally strict, orthodox nature of the prevailing psychoanalytic community. Horney's deviation from Freudian psychology led to her resigning from her post, and she soon took up teaching in the New York Medical College. She also founded a journal, the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. She taught at the New York Medical College and continued practising as a psychiatrist until her death in 1952. Theory of neurosis Horney looked at neurosis in a different light from other psychoanalysts of the time. Her expansive interest in the subject led her to compile a detailed theory of neurosis, with data from her patients. Horney believed neurosis to be a continuous process—with neuroses commonly occurring sporadically in a person's lifetime. This was in contrast to the opinions of her contemporaries who believed neurosis was, like more severe mental conditions, a negative malfunction of the mind in response to external stimuli, such as bereavement, divorce or negative experiences during childhood and adolescence. This has been debated widely by contemporary psychologists. Horney believed these stimuli to be less important, except for influences during childhood. Rather, she placed significant emphasis on parental indifference towards the child, believing a child's perception of events, as opposed to the parent's intentions, is the key to understanding a person's neurosis. For instance, a child might feel a lack of warmth and affection should a parent make fun of the child's feelings. The parent may also casually neglect to fulfill promises, which in turn could have a detrimental effect on the child's mental state. From her experiences as a psychiatrist, Horney named ten patterns of neurotic needs. These ten needs are based upon things which she thought all humans require to succeed in life. Horney modified these needs somewhat to correspond with what she believed were individuals' neuroses. A neurotic person could theoretically exhibit all of these needs, though in practice fewer than the ten here need to be present for a person to be considered a neurotic. Ten neurotic needs The ten needs, as set out by Horney, (classified according to her so-called coping strategies) are as follows: Moving Toward People (Compliance) 1. The need for affection and approval; pleasing others and being liked by them. 2. The need for a partner; one whom they can love and who will solve all problems. 3. The need for social recognition; prestige and limelight. 4. The need for personal admiration; for both inner and outer qualities—to be valued. Moving Against People (Aggression) 5. The need for power; the ability to bend wills and achieve control over others—while most persons seek strength, the neurotic may be desperate for it. 6. The need to exploit others; to get the better of them. To become manipulative, fostering the belief that people are there simply to be used. Moving Away from People (Withdrawal) 7. The need for personal achievement; though virtually all persons wish to make achievements, as with No. 3, the neurotic may be desperate for achievement. 8. The need for self-sufficiency and independence; while most desire some autonomy, the neurotic may simply wish to discard other individuals entirely. 9. The need for perfection; while many are driven to perfect their lives in the form of well being, the neurotic may display a fear of being slightly flawed. 10. Lastly, the need to restrict life practices to within narrow borders; to live as inconspicuous a life as possible. Three categories of needs Upon investigating the ten needs further, Horney found she was able to condense them into three broad categories: Horney delves into a detailed explanation of the above needs (and their corresponding neurotic solutions) in her book 'Neurosis and Human Growth'. Narcissism Horney saw narcissism quite differently from Freud, Kohut, and other mainstream psychoanalytic theorists in that she did not posit a primary narcissism but saw the narcissistic personality as the product of a certain kind of early environment acting on a certain kind of temperament. For her, narcissistic needs and tendencies are not inherent in human nature. Narcissism is different from Horney's other major defensive strategies or solutions in that it is not compensatory. Self-idealization is compensatory in her theory, but it differs from narcissism. All the defensive strategies involve self-idealization, but in the narcissistic solution, it tends to be the product of indulgence rather than deprivation. The narcissist's self-esteem is not strong, however, because it is not based on genuine accomplishments. Neo-psychoanalytic theories Mosak (1989) states that while there is no direct evidence Alfred Adler and Horney influenced one another, they landed at similar theoretical understandings. While Horney acknowledged and agreed with Freud on many issues, she was also critical of him on several key beliefs. Like others whose views differed from that of Freud, Horney felt sex and aggression were not the primary factors that shape personality. Horney, along with Adler, believed there were greater influences on personality, including social relationship factors during childhood, rather than just repressed sexual passions. The two focused more on how the conscious mind plays a role in human personality, not just subconscious repression. Freud's notion of "penis envy" was particularly subject to criticism, as well. She thought Freud had merely stumbled upon women's jealousy of men's generic power in the world. Horney accepted penis envy might occur occasionally in neurotic women, but stated that "womb envy" occurs just as much in men: Horney felt men were envious of a woman's ability to bear children. The degree to which men are driven to success may be merely a substitute for the fact they cannot carry, bear, and nurture children. Horney also thought men were envious of women because they fulfill their position in society by simply "being", whereas men achieve their manhood according to their ability to provide and succeed. Horney was bewildered by psychiatrists' tendency to place so much emphasis on the male sexual organ. Horney also reworked the Freudian Oedipal complex of the sexual elements, claiming the clinging to one parent and jealousy of the other was simply the result of anxiety, caused by a disturbance in the parent-child relationship. Despite these variances with the prevalent Freudian view, Horney strove to reformulate Freudian thought, presenting a holistic, humanistic view of the individual psyche which placed much emphasis on cultural and social differences worldwide. Feminine psychology Horney was also a pioneer in the discipline of feminine psychiatry. As one of the first female psychiatrists, she was the first known woman to present a paper regarding feminine psychiatry. Fourteen of the papers she wrote between 1922 and 1937 were amalgamated into a single volume titled Feminine Psychology (1967). As a woman, she felt the mapping out of trends in female behaviour was a neglected issue. Women were regarded as objects of charm and beauty—at variance with every human being's ultimate purpose of self-actualization. Women, according to Horney, traditionally gain value only through their children and the wider family. She de-romanticized the Victorian concept of how a marriage bond should be. Horney explained that the "monogamous demand represents the fulfillment of narcissistic and sadistic impulses far more than it indicates the wishes of genuine love” Most notably, her work "The Problem of the Monogamous Ideal" was fixed upon marriage, as were six other of Horney's papers. Her essay "Maternal Conflicts" attempted to shed new light on the problems women experience when raising adolescents. Horney believed both men and women have a drive to be ingenious and productive. Women are able to satisfy this need normally and internally—to do this they become pregnant and give birth. Men satisfy this need only through external ways; Horney proposed that the striking accomplishments of men in work or some other field can be viewed as compensation for their inability to give birth to children. Horney developed her ideas to the extent that she released one of the first "self-help" books in 1946, entitled Are You Considering Psychoanalysis?. The book asserted that those, both male and female, with relatively minor neurotic problems could, in effect, be their own psychiatrists. She continually stressed self-awareness was a part of becoming a better, stronger, richer human being. Mature theory In the mid-1930s, Horney stopped writing on the topic of feminine psychology and never resumed. Her biographer B.J. Paris writes: Instead, she became increasingly interested in the subject of neurosis. Horney's mature theory of neurosis, according to Paris, "makes a major contribution to psychological thought—particularly the study of personality—that deserves to be more widely known and applied than it is." Self-realization Near the end of her career, Karen Horney summarized her ideas in Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, her major work published in 1950. It's in this book she summarizes her ideas regarding neurosis, clarifying her three neurotic "solutions" to the stresses of life. The expansive solution became a tripartite combination of narcissistic, perfectionistic and arrogant-vindictive approaches to life. (Horney had previously focused on the psychiatric concept of narcissism in a book published in 1939, New Ways in Psychoanalysis.) Her other two neurotic "solutions" were also a refinement of her previous views: self-effacement, or submission to others, and resignation, or detachment from others. She described case studies of symbiotic relationships between arrogant-vindictive and self-effacing individuals, labeling such a relationship bordering on sadomasochism as a morbid dependency. She believed individuals in the neurotic categories of narcissism and resignation were much less susceptible to such relationships of co-dependency with an arrogant-vindictive neurotic. While non-neurotic individuals may strive for these needs, neurotics exhibit a much deeper, more willful and concentrated desire to fulfill the said needs. Theory of the self Horney also shared Abraham Maslow's view that self-actualization is something that all people strive for. By "self" she understood the core of one's own being and potential. Horney believed that if we have an accurate conception of our own self, then we are free to realize our potential and achieve what we wish, within reasonable boundaries. Thus, she believed self-actualization is the healthy person's aim through life—as opposed to the neurotic's clinging to a set of key needs. According to Horney we can have two views of our self: the "real self" and the "ideal self". The real self is who and what we actually are. The ideal self is the type of person we feel we should be. The real self has the potential for growth, happiness, will power, realization of gifts, etc., but it also has deficiencies. The ideal self is used as a model to assist the real self in developing its potential and achieving self-actualization. (Engler 125) But it is important to know the differences between our ideal and real self. The neurotic person's self is split between an idealized self and a real self. As a result, neurotic individuals feel they somehow do not live up to the ideal self. They feel there is a flaw somewhere in comparison to what they "should" be. The goals set out by the neurotic are not realistic, or indeed possible. The real self then degenerates into a "despised self", and the neurotic person assumes this is the "true" self. Thus, the neurotic is like a clock's pendulum, oscillating between a fallacious "perfection" and a manifestation of self-hate. Horney referred to this phenomenon as the "tyranny of the shoulds" and the neurotic's hopeless "search for glory".<ref name=Horney3>Horney, Neurosis and human growth. Chaps. 1–5.</ref> She concluded these ingrained traits of the psyche forever prevent an individual's potential from being actualized unless the cycle of neurosis is somehow broken, through treatment or, in less severe cases, life lesson. Karen Horney Clinic The Karen Horney Clinic opened on May 6, 1955 in New York City, in honor of Horney's achievements. The institution seeks to research and train medical professionals, particularly in the psychiatric fields, as well as serving as a low-cost treatment center. Some patients are not suitable for psychoanalysis and are treated with psychotherapeutic modalities such as supportive psychotherapy, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, all based on Horney's ideas. Works The following are all still in print: Neurosis and Human Growth, Norton, New York, 1950. Are You Considering Psychoanalysis? Norton, 1946. Our Inner Conflicts, Norton, 1945. Self-analysis, Norton, 1942. New Ways in Psychoanalysis, Norton, 1939. (alternate link) The Neurotic Personality of our Time, Norton, 1937. Feminine Psychology (reprint of papers written between 1922 and 1937), Norton, 1967. The Collected Works of Karen Horney (2 vols.), Norton, 1950. The Adolescent Diaries of Karen Horney, Basic Books, New York, 1980. The Therapeutic Process: Essays and Lectures, ed. Bernard J. Paris, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1999. The Unknown Karen Horney: Essays on Gender, Culture, and Psychoanalysis, ed. Bernard J. Paris, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000. Final Lectures, ed. Douglas H. Ingram, Norton, 1991. 128 pp.  See also Further reading Notes References Further reading Carlson, N.R. & Heth, C.D. (2007). Psychology the science of behaviour. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc., 459. DeMartino, R. (1991). Karen Horney, Daisetz T. Suzuki, and Zen Buddhism. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, September, 51(3), 267–83. Kondo, A. (1961). The therapist-patient relationship in psychotherapy: On Horney's school and Morita therapy. Seishin Bunseki Kenyu. (Japanese Journal of Psychoanalytic Research), (7), 30–35. LeVine, P. (1994). Impressions of Karen Horney's final lectures. Australian Psychologist. 29 (1), 153–57. Paris, Bernard J. Karen Horney: a Psychoanalyst's Search for Self-understanding, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1994. Quinn, Susan. Mind of Her Own: the Life of Karen Horney, Summit Books, New York, 1987. Rubins, Jack L. Karen Horney: Gentle Rebel of Psychoanalysis, Summit Books, New York, 1978. Westkott, Marcia. The Feminist Legacy of Karen Horney, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1986. Dr. C. George Boeree (Psychology Department, Shippensburg University) Personality Theories. Karen Horney (HTML) The same article in PDF format Lead Article: Health and Growth (The article is devoted to Karen Horney's Neurosis and Human Growth) // MANAS Journal Volume XXIII, 1970 No. 16 April 22. External links Psychoanalytic Social Theory – Karen Horney The Dynamic Self Searching for Growth and Authenticity: Karen Horney's Contribution to Humanistic Psychology The American Institute for Psychoanalysis International Karen Horney Society NYC Municipal Archives / WNYC audio recording of Karen Horney Biography at Webster.edu. Lecture notes alongside psychological opinions at Sonoma.edu Our Inner Conflicts: excerpts Commentary on Our Inner Conflicts from 50 Psychology Classics'' (2007) Books by Karen Horney at the Internet Archive Karen Horney Papers (MS 1604). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library Category:German women psychologists Category:American women psychologists Category:20th-century American psychologists Category:Ego psychology Category:Narcissism writers Category:German emigrants to the United States Category:German people of Dutch descent Category:German people of Norwegian descent Category:Women and psychology Category:History of psychiatry Category:Analysands of Karl Abraham Category:1885 births Category:1952 deaths Category:American women psychiatrists Category:American psychiatrists Category:German women psychiatrists Category:German psychiatrists

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Cultural impact of the Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential act of the rock era. In the early 1960s, their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania", but as the group's music grew in sophistication, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the band were integral to pop music's evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s. Their continued commercial and critical success assisted many cultural movements--including a shift from American artists' global dominance of rock and roll to British acts (British Invasion), the proliferation of young musicians in the 1960s who formed new bands, the album as the dominant form of record consumption over singles, the term "Beatlesque" used to describe similar-sounding artists, and several fashion trends.

Growth of rock bands

The Beatles' impact on the US was particularly strong, where a garage rock phenomenon had already begun, with hits such as "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen. The movement received a major lift following the group's historic appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show watched by a record-breaking viewing audience of a nation mourning the recent death of President John F. Kennedy. Bill Dean writes: "It's impossible to say just how many of America's young people began playing guitars and forming bands in the wake of The Beatles' appearance on the Sullivan show. But the anecdotal evidence suggests thousands - if not hundreds of thousands or even more - young musicians across the country formed bands and proceeded to play." Tom Petty, who played in two garage bands in Gainesville, Florida during the 1960s, is quoted mentioning the Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and how it influenced him to be in a band. According to him: "Within weeks of that, you could drive through literally any neighborhood in Gainesville and you would hear the strains of garage bands playing ... I mean everywhere. And I'd say by a year from that time, Gainesville probably had 50 bands." For many, particularly young baby boomers, the Beatles' visit reignited the sense of excitement and possibility that had been momentarily taken by Kennedy's assassination. Much of this new excitement would be expressed in music, sometimes much to the chagrin of parents and elders, as kids raced to start bands by thousands, and this proliferation of new groups was not limited to the United States. While the Beatles are often credited for sparking a musical revolution, research conducted by the Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College London suggests that the changes sparked by the band were already developing long before they entered the US. The study, which looks at shifts in chord progressions, beats, lyrics and vocals, shows that American music in the beginning of the 1960s was already moving away from mellow sounds like doo-wop and into more energetic rock styles. Professor Armand Lero argues that the Beatles' innovations have been overstated by music historians: "They didn't make a revolution or spark a revolution, they joined one. The trend is already emerging and they rode that wave, which accounts for their incredible success." Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn disagreed with the research by Queen Mary University, saying it "[doesn't] stack up ... Speak to anyone who was a young person in the US when The Beatles arrived and they will tell you how much of a revolution it was. They were there and they will tell you that the Beatles revolutionised everything." CANNOTANSWER

The English rock band the Beatles are commonly regarded as the foremost and most influential band in popular music history. With a line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they sparked the "Beatlemania" phenomenon in 1963, gained international superstardom in 1964, and remained active until their break-up in 1970. Over the latter half of the decade, they were often viewed as orchestrators of society's developments. Their recognition concerns their effect on the era's youth and counterculture, British identity, popular music's evolution into an art form, and their unprecedented following. Many cultural movements of the 1960s were assisted or inspired by the Beatles. In Britain, their rise to national prominence signalled the youth-driven changes in postwar society, with respect to social mobility, teenagers' commercial influence, and informality. They spearheaded the shift from American artists' global dominance of rock and roll to British acts (known in the US as the British Invasion) and inspired many young people to pursue music careers. From 1964 to 1970, the group had the top-selling US single one out of every six weeks, and the top-selling US album one out of every three weeks. In 1965, they were awarded MBEs, the first time such an honour was bestowed on a British pop act. A year later, Lennon controversially remarked that the band were "more popular than Jesus now". The Beatles often incorporated classical elements, traditional pop forms and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways, especially with the albums Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Many of their advances in production, writing, and artistic presentation were soon widespread. Other cultural changes initiated by the group include the elevation of the album to become the dominant form of record consumption over singles, a wider interest in psychedelic drugs and Eastern spirituality, and several fashion trends. The band also pioneered with their record sleeves and music videos, as well as informed music styles such as jangle, folk rock, power pop, psychedelia, progressive rock and heavy metal. By the end of the decade, the group were seen as an embodiment of the era's sociocultural movements, exemplified by the sentiment of their 1967 song "All You Need Is Love". Over the 1960s as a whole, the Beatles were the dominant youth-centred pop act on the sales charts. They broke numerous sales and attendance records, many of which they have or had maintained for decades, and continue to enjoy a canonised status unprecedented for popular musicians. Their songs are among the most recorded in history, with cover versions of "Yesterday" exceeding thousands. As of 2009, they were the best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 600 million records worldwide. Time included them in its list of the twentieth century's 100 most important people. Scope The Beatles formed in Liverpool in 1960; as a foursome comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they gained international stardom in 1964, and remained active until their break-up in 1970. Throughout the band's career, they expanded collective notions regarding the limits of commercial and artistic achievement. In Rolling Stone magazine's Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (2001), the editors define their "incalculable" influence as encompassing "all of Western culture". The writers state that the group's discography held the precedent for "virtually every rock experiment ... Although many of their sales and attendance records have since been surpassed, no group has so radically transformed the sound and significance of rock & roll." Writing for AllMusic, critic Richie Unterberger recognises the Beatles as both "the greatest and most influential act of the rock era" and a group that "introduced more innovations into popular music than any other rock band of the 20th century". He adds: Many contemporary listeners viewed the Beatles as orchestrators of society's developments over the second half of the 1960s. Musicologist Allan F. Moore states that there have been occasions when "audiences gravitate towards a centre" of pop music culture, the most prominent of which was in the early to mid 1960s, a period in which it "seems that almost everyone, irrespective of age, class or cultural background, listened to the Beatles". Music critic Greil Marcus described the Beatles' impact as the second "pop explosion", after Elvis Presley's emergence in the 1950s, and defined the term as "an irresistible cultural explosion that cuts across lines of class and race, and, most crucially, divides society itself by age". In such a phenomenon, he continued, "The surface of daily life (walk, talk, dress, symbolism, heroes, family affairs) is affected with such force that deep and substantive changes in the way large numbers of people think and act take place." According to author and film-maker Hanif Kureishi, the Beatles are "the only mere pop group you could remove from history and suggest that culturally, without them, things would have been significantly different". Detractors of the Beatles' legacy argue that the band are overrated and are often credited for innovations that other acts were the first to achieve. Music historian Bill Martin cites such notions as part of modern culture's inability to fully "understand them as a force", and says that although rock music has been defined by "synthesis and transmutation" since it began, "what was original about the Beatles is that they synthesized and transmuted more or less everything, they did this in a way that reflected their time, they reflected their time in a way that spoke to a great part of humanity, and they did all of this really, really well." Ian MacDonald states that the band were keen observers who discovered trends in their infancy and were adept at mirroring the era's "social and psychological changes". He said that their connection with the times was such that the Beatles "did far more mind-liberating" than Bob Dylan, through their greater record sales and "because they worked in simpler, less essentially sceptical ways". Sales and attendance records Over the 1960s as a whole, the Beatles were the dominant youth-centred pop act on the sales charts. "She Loves You", the band's second number-one single on the Record Retailer chart (subsequently adopted as the UK Singles Chart), became the best-selling single in UK chart history, a position it retained until 1978. The band's first two albums, Please Please Me and With the Beatles, each topped Record Retailers LPs chart, for a combined run of 51 consecutive weeks. Beginning with "From Me to You" in 1963, the Beatles had a four-year run of eleven consecutive chart-topping singles in Record Retailer, ending when the double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" peaked at number two. On 4 April 1964, the Beatles occupied the top five US chart positions – with "Can't Buy Me Love", "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Please Please Me" – as well as 11 other positions on the Billboard Hot 100. For nine consecutive weeks, they held the top two places on the Billboard Top LPs chart (subsequently the Billboard 200) with reconfigured versions of their first two albums. Until 2018, they were the only act to have filled the top five of the Billboard Hot 100. They also broke 11 other chart records on Billboards singles and albums charts at that time. Their chart domination was commonplace in countries around the world during 1964. In Australia, in late March, the band's songs filled the top six chart positions; during one week, they held nine positions in Canada's top ten. On 15 August 1965, the Beatles became the first entertainment act to stage a concert in a sports stadium when they performed at Shea Stadium in New York City before an audience of 55,600. The event set records for attendance and revenue generation, with takings of $304,000 (equivalent to $ in ). The band's record run of six consecutive number-ones on the Billboard Hot 100 from January 1965 to January 1966 – with the songs "I Feel Fine", "Eight Days a Week", "Ticket to Ride", "Help!", "Yesterday" and "We Can Work It Out" – remained unbeaten until Whitney Houston achieved a seventh in 1988. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) was the top-selling album of the 1960s in the UK, and on four occasions they had the best-selling album of the year there. As of 2019, with certified sales of 5.1 million copies in the UK, Sgt. Pepper is the all-time third best-selling album there and the best-selling studio album. The 1968 double LP The Beatles (also known as the "White Album") became the fastest-selling album in history; Capitol Records reported advance orders of 2 million in the US, with many stores selling their entire stock in one day. In the UK, the Beatles are beaten only by Presley for their amount of number-one singles and combined weeks at number one. As of December 2018, the Beatles held the record for the most Christmas number-one hits there, with four, of which three were achieved in successive years between 1963 and 1965. In the list of the UK's top sellers for the decade, the band's albums filled the top ten, apart from the soundtracks to The Sound of Music, South Pacific and West Side Story. The Beatles took the next three positions, meaning that all ten of their UK number-one albums were among the thirteen best-selling albums of the 1960s. In the case of US sales for the 1960s, the Beatles were the top artist, ahead of Presley, in both singles and albums. Between February 1964 and July 1970, the band maintained the number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 for a total of 59 weeks and topped Billboards LPs chart for 116 weeks. In other words, they had the top-selling single one out of every six weeks, and the top-selling album one out of every three weeks. Breakthrough and role in Britain's cultural resurgence Merseybeat and British rock 'n' roll As the Beatles rose in popularity in 1963, the terms "Mersey sound" and "Merseybeat" were applied to bands and singers from Liverpool, making it the first time in British pop music that a sound and a location were linked together. The city had the cultural advantages of being the UK's main transatlantic port and having an ethnically diverse population; local musicians were able to access records by American musicians through the Cunard Yanks working on the shipping routes. Like many Liverpool bands, the Beatles formed their sound from skiffle and a combination of American influences, especially rhythm and blues and girl groups, and honed their live act through seasons performing in the red-light district of Hamburg in West Germany. The music was performed with an emphasis on beat and guitars, at the expense of saxophones or other instruments commonly heard on the American records. Under pressure from Liverpool venues such as the Cavern, manager Brian Epstein persuaded the Beatles to swap their favoured look of black leather jackets and pants for more presentable stage suits. The group's emergence as leaders of the Liverpool beat scene represented a departure from the London-focused tradition of the UK music industry. Released in October 1962, "Love Me Do", the band's debut single as EMI recording artists, contrasted with the polished style of contemporary UK hit songs. According to author Peter Doggett, the January 1963 follow-up, "Please Please Me", represented "the real birth of the new" as, aided by Lennon's impassioned vocal, the song was "more driven than any previous British pop record". As musicians and songwriters, the Beatles established working-class authenticity and informality as key aspects in British rock 'n' roll. Doggett adds that "Most of all, the Beatles sounded like a gang: forceful, persuasive and sexually potent." Starting in 1963, according to music historian David Simonelli, the Beatles initiated the "original golden age" of British rock 'n' roll and reversed a tradition whereby domestic acts were a "pale imitation" of the original American purveyors of the style. During the first half of that year, the band usurped American acts including Roy Orbison to become the headline performers on their joint UK tours, something no previous British act accomplished while touring with artists from the US. Their initial success opened the way for many other Liverpool groups to achieve national success and encouraged the country's four main, London-based record companies to seek out talent in other areas of northern England. As a result, the Beatles and other British acts dominated the charts in 1963 at the expense of American artists. Sociocultural influence The Beatles' emergence overlapped with the decline in British conservatism. In the description of author and musician Bob Stanley, their domestic breakthrough represented "a final liberation for Britain's teenagers" and, by coinciding with the end of National Service, the group "effectively signaled the end of World War II in Britain". For sociologists, the band typified new developments in postwar Britain such as social mobility, teenagers' commercial influence, and informality in society. In their 1965 book Generation X, Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson said the Beatles had supplied British youth culture with a unifying and liberating influence that departed from the usual American-inspired model and, together with other groups from outside London, had fostered a sense of celebration of provincial England. The authors commented that resistance to the Beatles' progressive social influence from establishment figures was because the band were "knocking the stuffing – and the stuffiness – out of the neo-Victorians". The band's appeal registered with members of the royal family when the Beatles played a toned-down selection of songs at the Royal Variety Performance on 4 November 1963. The show was watched by a television audience of 26 million, around half the population of the UK, and helped establish the group as one of the first "spectacles" of the 1960s. Reluctant to play at such a formal event, Lennon told Epstein that he planned to sabotage the occasion. He instead charmed the theatre audience with his final comment: "For our last number ['Twist and Shout'], I'd like to ask your help. The people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you'd just rattle your jewellery." Political significance and awarding of MBEs The Beatles' international success created an export market for British pop for the first time and provided a boon to the UK government's balance of payments deficit. This unexpected development led to approval from politicians and an eagerness on their part to be associated with the band. In the run-up to the 1964 general election, the Beatles became a political football for the two major political parties; the New Statesman reported that Conservative candidates were told to "mention the Beatles whenever possible in their speeches", while a cartoon in the Daily Express showed the Conservative prime minister, Alec Douglas-Home, and Labour's leader of the opposition, Harold Wilson, consulting the Beatles over the Profumo affair. During the election campaign, both parties accused the other of trying to use the band's popularity for political gain. In March 1964, Wilson, who was contesting the outer Liverpool seat of Huyton, engineered a photo opportunity with the group as they received their Variety Club "Show Business Personality of the Year" awards. The association endured in the public's mind, securing Wilson the youth vote and aiding in his election win. The Beatles' international success also benefited the country's tourism and fashion industries, and entertainment generally. In early 1965, Melody Maker initiated a campaign for the Beatles to be awarded MBEs, a move that Wilson supported and set in motion. When the band received their MBEs from Queen Elizabeth II in October, it was unprecedented recognition for pop musicians, anticipating the honours (including knighthoods) that were regularly bestowed on the country's entertainers in subsequent decades. The award was in acknowledgement of the Beatles' contribution to the national economy and reflected the value of their popularity to the Labour government. Wilson's Cabinet minister Tony Benn, who opposed the award, thought it was equally indicative of the royal family's wish to appeal to the masses in the new era of egalitarianism and meritocracy. Britain's leadership of international culture In his book on the 1960s, social historian Arthur Marwick identifies the Beatles' US breakthrough as the "single critical event" that established "the hegemony of youth-inspired British popular culture". With other countries succumbing to the Beatles' influence, according to Simonelli, the band "virtually redefined what it meant to be British", and British culture became "the most exciting culture on earth" for the first time since the start of the industrial age. The surge in exports revenue extended to film and other commercial artistic pursuits, and recognition of London as the "Swinging City" of international culture. With the Beatles having moved to London in 1963, in Simonelli's description, they served as the "maypole" at the centre of the city's cultural influence throughout the 1960s. Marwick says they represented the popular image of a phenomenon in which "hitherto invisible swathes of British society became visible and assertive" and their 1966 single "Paperback Writer" was the song that best conveyed "the new class-defying tide of individualistic enterprise". Liverpool poet Roger McGough credited the Beatles with establishing the "mythology of Liverpool" through their 1967 songs "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", in the manner that American rock 'n' roll songs had traditionally done for US cities and roads. Beatlemania In late 1963, the British press coined the term "Beatlemania" to describe the phenomenal and increasingly hysterical interest in the Beatles. The word was first widely used following the band's 13 October appearance on Sunday Night at the London Palladium; amid reports of wild crowd scenes outside the venue, and after 15 million viewers watched the broadcast, Britain was said to be "in the grip of Beatlemania". The "yeah, yeah, yeah!" refrain of "She Loves You" was a signature hook for their European audiences. Its falsetto "ooh!"s elicited further fan delirium when accompanied by McCartney and Harrison's exaggerated shaking of their moptop hair. Once it became an international phenomenon in 1964, Beatlemania surpassed in its intensity and reach any previous examples of fan worship, including those afforded to Presley and Frank Sinatra. Displays of mania were repeated wherever the band played. When the group toured Australia in June 1964, the population afforded the visit the status of a national event. A crowd of 300,000 – the largest recorded gathering of Australians in one place – welcomed the Beatles to Adelaide. Sid Bernstein, the US promoter who arranged the band's Shea Stadium concerts, said that only Adolf Hitler had had such power over the masses. Bernstein was sure that the group "could sway a presidential election if they wanted to". Around 4,000 fans gathered outside Buckingham Palace in central London when the Beatles received their MBEs from the Queen. As the crowd chanted "God save the Beatles" and "Yeah, yeah, yeah!", some fans jostled with police officers and scaled the palace gates. Referring to this spectacle, journalist Robert Sandall later commented that "Never had a ruling monarch been so thoroughly upstaged by a group of her subjects as was Elizabeth II on [26 October 1965]." The Beatles became bored with all aspects of touring – including fans offering themselves sexually to the band, and the high-pitched screaming that rendered their performances inaudible. Beatlemania continued on a reduced scale after the band retired from touring, and after the members became solo artists. In their book Encyclopedia of Classic Rock, David Luhrssen and Michael Larson write that while boy bands such as One Direction have continued to attract audiences of screaming girls, no act has "moved pop culture forward or achieved the breadth and depth of the Beatles' fandom". US breakthrough and British Invasion Most Americans were introduced to the Beatles' music with the single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" backed with "I Saw Her Standing There", rising to the top of US charts on 1 February 1964. Both songs featured a harder-edged guitar sound that stood out as a revival of the "rebellious" spirit absent from newer rock and roll acts and as a rejection of the regular assortment of novelty songs, teen idols, folk singers and girl groups that occupied US charts in the weeks and months previous. MacDonald wrote: "every American artist, black or white, asked about 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' has said much the same: it altered everything, ushering in a new era and changing their lives." On 9 February, the Beatles gave their first live US television performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by approximately 73 million viewers in over 23 million households, or 34 per cent of the US population. The Nielsen rating service reported that it was the largest audience number ever recorded for an American television . Music journalist Neil McCormick, writing in 2015, described the Beatles' debut on the show as pop music's "big bang moment", while Stanley calls it "arguably the most significant postwar cultural event in America", adding that "Their rise, the scale of it and their impact on society, was completely unprecedented." Their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, on 16 February, was watched by around 70 million viewers. Eleven weeks before the Beatles' arrival in the US, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a source of profound national mourning that American commentators at the time linked to young people's embrace of the Beatles and their music. For many Americans, particularly young baby boomers, the Beatles' visit reignited the sense of excitement and possibility that had been taken by Kennedy's assassination. A teenage New Yorker in early 1964, author Nicholas Schaffner later wrote that the Kennedy link was "an exaggeration, perhaps", but the Beatles "more than filled the energy gap" left by the demise of 1950s rock 'n' roll for an audience accustomed to the "vacuous" music that had replaced it. For decades, the US had dominated popular entertainment culture throughout much of the world, via Hollywood films, jazz, and the music of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. In early 1964, Life magazine declared: "In [1776] England lost her American colonies. Last week the Beatles took them back." The Beatles subsequently sparked the British Invasion of the US and became a globally influential phenomenon. Recalling the Beatles' sudden popularity, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys felt that the Beatles had "eclipsed ... the whole music world". Bob Dylan recalled that, by April 1964, "a definite line was being drawn. This was something that had never happened before ... I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go." The Beatles' success in the US established the popularity of British groups and affected the musical style of American bands. In doing so, however, the Beatles inadvertently caused a sharp decrease in sales for black artists and the decline of many of the girl groups they admired. By mid 1964, several more UK acts arrived in the US, including the Dave Clark Five, the Rolling Stones, Billy J. Kramer and Gerry & the Pacemakers. Confirming the British Invasion of the US pop market, one-third of all top ten hits there in 1964 were performed by British acts. The depth of the Beatles' US impact was also reflected in a wave of easy listening adaptations of their songs, aimed at the adult market. This trend was led by the Boston Pops Orchestra recording "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and the Hollyridge Strings covering "All My Loving", after which the latter orchestra released the 1964 album The Beatles Song Book. The extent of the Beatles' impact on American music was disputed in a 2015 study conducted by the Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College London. By analysing shifts in chord progressions, beats, lyrics and vocals, the study indicated that American music was moving away from mellow sounds like doo-wop and into more energetic rock styles since the beginning of the 1960s. Professor Armand Leroi, who led the study on behalf of Imperial College, said: "They didn't make a revolution or spark a revolution, they joined one. The trend is already emerging and they rode that wave, which accounts for their incredible success." Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn said in response: "anyone who was a young person in the US when the Beatles arrived ... will tell you that the Beatles revolutionised everything." McCormick dismissed the study as "sensationalist". Personality and fashion Attitude and sensibility In the description of Rolling Stones editors, the Beatles "defined and incarnated Sixties style: smart, idealistic, playful, irreverent, eclectic". They helped popularise Northern English accents on British radio and television, reversing the preference for BBC English, and their humour and irreverence combined to mock social conventions. Writer Sean O'Hagan recalled in 2016: "Everything about them – the clothes they wore, the way they spoke, the songs they created with an effortlessness that seemed almost alchemical – suggested new ways of being. More than any of their contemporaries, they challenged the tired conventions that defined class-bound, insular, early-60s Britain." According to author Jonathan Gould, in conveying "Youthfulness, stylishness, unpretentiousness, and nonchalance", their early image defied the widely held stereotype of Britishness, and through their presentation as Liverpudlians, "the Beatles personified an iconoclastic version of their national character that proved to be as compelling to the youth of North America, Europe, Australia and parts of Asia as it was to their British fans." In his book Revolution in the Head, MacDonald describes the band members as "perfect McLuhanites" who "felt their way through life". He says of the group's initial impact: Unlike previous pop stars – programmed to recite their future itineraries and favourite colours – The Beatles replied to the press in facetious ad-libs provoked by whatever was going on in the immediate present ... Before them, pop acts had been neatly presented as soloists or well-drilled units each with its clearly identified leader. With their uncanny clone-like similarity and by all talking chattily at once, The Beatles introduced to the cultural lexicon several key Sixties motifs in one go: "mass"-ness, "working class" informality, cheery street scepticism, and – most challenging to the status quo – a simultaneity which subverted conventions of precedence in every way. Lou Christie recalled that the Beatles' emergence underlined the staidness of the US music scene, saying: "We were, in many respects, just these goofy white boys. We weren't allowed to be seen with a cigarette in our hands ... [The Beatles] were more aggressive, they were funny and they were articulate. The minute they came to America, they literally put a halt to everything that was previously happening." Hair length and clothing The Beatles' emergence coincided with a new consideration for the concept of male beauty and its elevation in importance beside feminine attractiveness. According to Marwick, the group's appearance and Kennedy's provided "the two great points of reference in this respect". The Beatles were dubbed "moptops" by some British tabloids in reference to their haircut, a mid-length hairstyle that was widely mocked by adults. It was unusually long for the era and became an emblem of rebellion to the burgeoning youth culture. In their 1986 book Re-making Love: The Feminization of Sex, authors Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs said that the Beatles' haircuts signalled androgyny and thus presented a less threatening version of male sexuality to teenage girls, while their presentable suits meant they seemed less "sleazy" than Presley to middle-class whites. Russian historian Mikhail Safonov wrote in 2003 that in the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union, mimicking the Beatles' hairstyle was seen as highly rebellious. Young people were called "hairies" by their elders, and were arrested and forced to have their hair cut in police stations. As a result of the Beatles, the traditional American male look of crewcuts or combed-back hair was replaced by a preference for long hair. Clothing styles were similarly influenced, firstly by the band's Pierre Cardin suits and Cuban-heeled Beatle boots, and later by the Carnaby Street mod fashions they wore. Along with the Rolling Stones, Dylan and the Who, the Beatles inspired thousands of young men to wear pop art-themed designs. In the late 1960s, the band's adoption of Nehru jackets and other Indian-style clothing was highly influential on Western fashion. In his 1970 "Lennon Remembers" interview, Lennon complained: "When we got here [to the US], you were all walking around in fuckin' Bermuda shorts with Boston crew cuts and stuff on your teeth ... The chicks looked like 1940's horses. There was no conception of dress or any of that jazz." Writing in 2002, music journalist David Fricke said Lennon was "right" in his withering assessment of American youth, adding that Americans were "psychologically stuck in the surface white-bread calm of the 1950s" and "ripe for blindsiding". Image and caricatures The Beatles differed from previous musical acts in their presentation as a group in which each of the individual personalities was seen as indispensable to the whole, and each member attracted fanatical devotion. According to cultural commentator Steven D. Stark, their lack of a designated leader aligned with a more typically feminine approach to collaboration, an aspect that increased their resonance among the female audience and subsequently influenced men's self-perception and cultural views on masculinity. The intensity of the Beatles' appeal as live performers was such that they were often presented with people who were physically impaired, in the assumption that the band had healing powers. When the band assumed a mystical image in the late 1960s, fans increasingly identified them as the four elements, in which each member presented a complementary and essential contribution to the alchemical whole. In 1964, the Beatles starred in the film A Hard Day's Night as fictionalised versions of themselves, which created a lasting impression of their individual personas. Lennon became known as "the smart one", McCartney "the cute one", Harrison "the quiet one", and Starr "the lucky one". Starr's personality as the band's affable, self-deprecating drummer proved especially popular with fans and the press in the US. In 1964, as coverage of the Beatles matched that of the Johnson–Goldwater presidential race, Starr was the subject of bumper stickers proclaiming "Ringo for President", as well as several tribute songs. Their Hard Day's Night characterisations were adopted again for the children's cartoon series The Beatles, which was made by King Features and broadcast weekly on ABC in the US from September 1965 to April 1969. It was the first animated TV series to depict living people and featured the Beatles (voiced by actors) having adventures while touring the world. The series was highly successful, although its focus on the pre-1967 era ensured that audiences were presented with an increasingly outdated image of the band. Towards the end of 1966, by which point the Beatles' artistic maturity had left many younger listeners yearning for their innocent, "mop-top" image, the Monkees were assembled by a pair of Hollywood-based television executives as a four-piece band in the Beatles' mould. An immediate commercial success, the Monkees' self-titled television show evoked the Beatles' personalities from Dick Lester's feature films A Hard Day's Night and Help!, with the characters of the individual Monkees developed to reflect those of the Beatles. In Marwick's view, the Monkees' creation represented "the most remarkable sign of direct British influence" on American pop culture during the 1960s. At this time, the Beatles grew moustaches, a look that defied pop convention by implying maturation and artistry over youthfulness. Their appearance was the source of confusion for some of their young fans. A Daily Mail writer complained that after emerging as "heroes of a social revolution" in 1963 and "the boys whom everybody could identify with", the Beatles had become austere and exclusive. The producers of the 1967 Disney animated film The Jungle Book hoped to include the Beatles in a scene featuring four vultures with mop-top hairstyles singing "That's What Friends Are For". After the band declined to take part, the scene was voiced by actors adopting Liverpudlian accents and the song was given a barbershop quartet arrangement. Merchandise Along with Beatles-themed wallpaper and jewellery, "Beatles wigs" were popular and widely available in UK stores from 1963. In the US, their merchandise was extensive, and marketed through Seltaeb, a local subsidiary of a company owned by Epstein's NEMS Enterprises. Among what Schaffner estimated to be "several hundred" items authorised by Seltaeb were toys, clothing, stationery, alarm clocks, pillowcases, bath products, junk food and lunchboxes, while Beatles wigs "became the best-selling novelty since yo-yo's". Beatles-brand chewing gum alone netted millions of dollars in the US. Beatle boots were also sanctioned as official merchandise by NEMS. According to Doggett, while Presley's image had similarly been exploited, "the onslaught of ephemeral artefacts aimed at Beatles fans between 1963 and 1969 dwarfed every previous campaign." The commercial exploitation extended to novelty records such as The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits and an early version of a Beatles karaoke disc. King Features' The Beatles led to a range of cartoon-style products and marketing by companies such as Nestlé, with their "Beatles' Yeah Yeah Yeah" confectionery, and Lux soap. A major merchandising campaign accompanied the release of the band's 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine, containing products that captured their psychedelic look. Growth of musicians, scenes and rock bands According to Gould, the Beatles served as the "archetype" of a rock band, in contrast to the vocal and harmony groups with which listeners were most familiar in 1964. In the US, thousands of bands sought to imitate the Beatles, some adopting English-sounding names to capitalise on the British Invasion. While the country already had a vibrant garage rock scene, the movement surged following the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Commentator Bill Dean writes that the exact figures are impossible to determine, but "the anecdotal evidence suggests thousands – if not hundreds of thousands or even more – young musicians across the country" responded by forming bands. This was sometimes to the chagrin of their parents and other adults. Tom Petty, who joined the Sundowners in Gainesville, Florida, after seeing the Beatles' US television debut, recalled: "Within weeks of that, you could drive through literally any neighborhood in Gainesville and you would hear the strains of garage bands playing ... I mean everywhere. And I'd say by a year from that time, Gainesville probably had 50 bands." The Byrds and Creedence Clearwater Revival are among the American groups said to have formed as a result of the show. Accompanying this phenomenon, the musicians typically abandoned their crewcut look and allowed their hair to grow. Joe Walsh, Nancy Wilson and Billy Joel also credited the show as the impetus for them to pursue musical careers. The proliferation of new groups was evident in many other countries. In Spain, Los Estudiantes and Los Brincos modelled themselves on the Beatles, as did the Uruguayan band Los Shakers, who were one of many groups around the world that formed as a result of A Hard Day's Night. Following the Beatles' concerts there on the 1964 world tour, new bands sprung up in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong, while some existing acts, such as the Bee Gees, instantly changed their style to match the Beatles'. The Daily Express reported in 1965 that a band known as the Candid Lads had started in the Soviet Union, with a sound and look identical to the Beatles'. Bands there were forced to play in secret due to the communist authorities' ban on rock music, and Beatles records had to be smuggled into the country. Russian musician Sasha Lipnitsky later recalled: "The Beatles brought us the idea of democracy ... For many of us, it was the first hole in the Iron Curtain." In Japan, the Beatles influenced what was dubbed the "Group Sounds" era, before which Japanese bands were mainly imitations of acts such as Presley and Pat Boone. According to music-industry executive Aki Tanaka, the Beatles' 1966 concerts in Tokyo inspired "the birth of a real Japanese rock music scene", in which local artists wrote their material rather than merely covering Western rock songs. Artistry and recognition of popular music Songwriting Through the Beatles' early success, the Lennon–McCartney partnership revolutionised songwriting in Britain by usurping the Denmark Street tradition of in-house songwriters. In the US, they similarly inspired changes to the music industry, as did the British Invasion songwriters they influenced, by combining the roles of writer and performer. This trend threatened the Brill Building writers and other professional songwriters that dominated the American music industry. According to Rolling Stones editors, the Beatles thereby "inaugurated the era of self-contained bands and forever centralized pop". Lennon and McCartney also supplied hit songs for several other artists up to 1966, including Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer, the Fourmost and the Rolling Stones, and they opened up opportunities in the US that were previously unavailable for non-performing British songwriters, such as Tony Hatch. Direct collaboration between Lennon and McCartney was limited from 1964, but their songs continued to be credited to the partnership. From 1963 to 1967, the Beatles increasingly broke with established rock and pop conventions. Adding to their sophistication as composers was the application of modal mixture, wider chord palettes, and extended form. One of the hallmarks of the Beatles' experimental period is their use of the flattened subtonic chord (VII). Although it was already a staple of rock 'n' roll, the Beatles further developed and popularised the chord's function in popular music. Another is their subversions of pop's standard AABA form. Few electric beat artists wrote songs with bridge sections until the group's breakthrough, after which the practice became ubiquitous. MacDonald describes Lennon and McCartney's growing articulacy and ambition from 1962 to 1967 as "quite vertiginous" and says that, with Harrison and Starr's collaboration in the recording studio, they "led a revolution in the very ethos of songwriting which consisted in seeing the song as a part of something larger: the record". Luhrssen and Larson describe the pair's songwriting as "more melodically and harmonically unpredictable than that of their peers", and say that the Beatles' sound "struck many ears as outrageous, especially the falsetto leaps in songs such as 'She Loves You,' which might have been inspired by Little Richard but sounded unprecedented". "A Hard Day's Night", written primarily by Lennon, begins with a ringing chord most commonly identified as G7sus4. The specifics of its harmonic construction are often scrutinised, with many writers offering different interpretations of the chord. In 2001, Rolling Stone referred to the "Hard Day's Night" chord as the most famous in rock history. Another chord described as among the "most famous" in history is the sustained E major heard at the end of "A Day in the Life" from Sgt. Pepper. Principally through McCartney's melody writing, the Beatles created many songs that became the most widely recorded of all time, including "And I Love Her", "Yesterday", "Michelle", "Eleanor Rigby", "Here, There and Everywhere", "The Fool on the Hill", "Hey Jude", "Blackbird", "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road". According to Doggett, these mainly McCartney-written songs provided contemporary relevance for "light orchestras and crooners" in the easy listening category, persuaded adults that the new generation's musical tastes had merit, and "ensured that Lennon and McCartney would become the highest-earning composers in history". Harrison's songwriting widened the Beatles' range further, although his level of contribution remained limited by Lennon and McCartney's dominance throughout the band's career. His song "Something" was also widely covered, and earned rare praise from Sinatra, who described it as "the greatest love song of the past fifty years". Competition Before the mid-1960s, competition between popular recording artists was typically measured by popularity and record sales, with artistic rivalries usually only occurring between jazz or classical musicians. Comparing its effect on 1960s popular music to Charlie Chaplin's on 1920s filmmaking, Gould credits the Beatles' increasing ambition "to write better songs" with inspiring "intense creative rivalries" between themselves and other acts who "felt a need to validate their success by experimenting with songwriting and record-making in ways that would have seemed unimaginable only a few years before." Author Robert Rodriguez writes that "The Beatles, Dylan, and the Rolling Stones have long been viewed as the Holy Trinity of 1960s rock, from whom every important development and innovation flowed." Author Carys Wyn Jones states that the "competition, interaction, and influence" between those acts (plus the Beach Boys) became "central to histories of rock". The Byrds also figured highly in their importance, to the extent that they were widely celebrated as the American answer to the Beatles. Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones were symbolic of the nascent youth revolt against institutional authority, something that was not immediately recognisable within the Beatles until 1966. The Beatles' initial clean-cut personas contrasted with the Rolling Stones' "bad boy" image, and so the music press forged a rivalry between the two acts. From 1964 onwards, the Beatles and Dylan partook in a mutual dialogue and exchange of ideas. Their engagement is referred to by Chris Smith, author of 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, as the "single phenomenon that defined the tone of 1960s popular music and the future of music in America". In August 1964, at the Delmonico Hotel in New York City, the Beatles met Dylan in person and were introduced to cannabis. Many commentators have referenced this meeting as a cultural turning point. Gould explains that, before then, the musicians' respective fanbases were "perceived as inhabiting two separate subcultural worlds": Dylan's audience of "college kids with artistic or intellectual leanings, a dawning political and social idealism, and a mildly bohemian style" contrasted with their fans, "veritable 'teenyboppers' – kids in high school or grade school whose lives were totally wrapped up in the commercialised popular culture of television, radio, pop records, fan magazines, and teen fashion. They were seen as idolaters, not idealists." He writes that within a year of the Beatles' first meeting with Dylan, "the distinctions between the folk and rock audiences would have nearly evaporated", as the Beatles' fanbase began to grow in sophistication and Dylan's audience re-engaged with adolescent concerns presented in the "newly energized and autonomous pop culture". In July 1966, Dylan suffered a motorcycle accident and spent a period in convalescence, and principally for McCartney, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys subsequently took his place as the Beatles' chief artistic rival. The two bands inspired and endeavoured to top each other with their artistry and recording techniques, but the Beach Boys failed to maintain their career momentum after 1967. According to Jones, the interplay between the two bands during the Pet Sounds era remains one of the most noteworthy episodes in rock history. Cultural legitimisation of pop music In Britain, music journalists started including pop and rock music in serious discussion as a direct consequence of the Beatles' 1964 breakthrough. Pop gained its first exposure in the arts section of one of the country's broadsheet newspapers when William Mann, The Timess classical music critic, wrote an appreciation of the Beatles in December 1963. In the United States, the Beatles were the main beneficiaries of a new widespread appreciation for pop and rock over 1966–67 among journalists and intellectuals, coinciding with the emergence there of a dedicated rock press and serious coverage of the genre in the cultural mainstream. Music critic Tim Riley identifies the Beatles as pop music's "first recording artists", whose body of work represents "very intricate art". Luhrssen and Larson say the Beatles "[made] it mandatory that serious rock bands aspire to be artists, not merely entertainers". With A Hard Day's Night in July 1964, the band became the first pop act since Buddy Holly to issue an album consisting entirely of original compositions. The accompanying feature film endeared the Beatles to intellectuals in Britain. Lennon's artistic standing was furthered by the critical and commercial success of his book of prose In His Own Write and its 1965 sequel, A Spaniard in the Works. Now feted by London society, Lennon and McCartney found inspiration among a network of non-mainstream writers, poets, comedians, film-makers and other arts-related individuals. According to Doggett, their social milieu in 1964 represented "new territory for pop" and a challenge to British class delineation as the Beatles introduced an "arty middle-class" sensibility to pop music. The albums Beatles for Sale and Help! (issued in December 1964 and August 1965, respectively) each marked a progression in the band's development, in terms of lyrical content and recording sophistication. With Help!, the Beatles became the first rock group to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Recording for Rubber Soul took place over a four-week period uninterrupted by touring, filming or radio engagements, making its creation highly unusual for the time. By the time of the album's release in December 1965, according to author Michael Frontani, each new Beatles record was received as "an expansion of the parameters of popular music, and the [group's] image reflected and promoted notions of the Beatles' artistry and importance". Simonelli describes Rubber Soul as "the first serious effort by a rock and roll act to produce an LP as an artistic statement", while author Christopher Bray deems it "the first long-playing pop record to really merit the term 'album'" and the LP that "turned pop music into high art". The standard of its all-original compositions was also responsible for a widespread shift in focus from singles to creating albums without the usual filler tracks. The Beatles incorporated influences from the English counterculture (or London underground) more readily than any of their pop rivals. Led by McCartney's absorption in the London arts scene and interest in the work of Stockhausen and Bach, this resulted in what musicologist Walter Everett terms a "revolution in the expressive capacity of mainstream rock music". The band's August 1966 album Revolver was viewed as avant-garde and, in MacDonald's description, "initiated a second pop revolution ... galvanising their existing rivals and inspiring many new ones". According to music historian Simon Philo, Revolver announced "underground London"'s arrival in pop, supplanting the sound associated with Swinging London. Released in May 1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is described by Doggett as "the biggest pop happening" to take place between the Beatles' debut on American television in February 1964 and Lennon's murder in December 1980. The album was a major critical and commercial success; through the level of attention it received from the rock press and more culturally elite publications, Sgt. Pepper achieved full cultural legitimisation for pop music and recognition for the medium as a genuine art form. Its win in the Album of the Year category at the 1968 Grammys Awards marked the first time that a rock LP had received this award. According to author Doyle Greene, the album provided "a crucial locus in the assemblage of popular music and avant-garde/experimental music – and popular culture and modernism". Chris Smith highlights Sgt. Pepper as one of the most "obvious" choices for inclusion in 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, due to its continued commercial success, the wealth of imitative works it inspired, and its ongoing recognition as "a defining moment in the history of music". The Beatles represented a diverse collection of musical styles that one critic likened to a history of Western music, and its November 1968 release was viewed as a major cultural event. The album failed to inspire the level of creative writing that Sgt. Pepper had introduced to rock criticism, as reviewers were unable to locate it within the Beatles' canon. Music critic John Harris wrote of the White Album: "it was these 30 songs that decisively opened the way for musicians to extend their horizons beyond the standard LP format." Social movements Generational awareness From 1963, the Beatles provided one of the first opportunities for female teenagers to exhibit spending power and publicly express sexual desire, while the group's image suggested a disregard for adults' opinions and parents' ideas of morality. Simonelli writes of the Beatles' emergence and its impact on 1960s youth: "British young people experimented with music, art, politics, sexual morality, fashion and the like, and the rest of the Western world watched, absorbed the changes and contributed to the process." The band's sociocultural impact in the US began with their February 1964 visit, which served as a key moment in the development of generational awareness. Writing that same month, American sociologist David Riesman said the Beatles' success was "a form of protest against the adult world"; later in 1964, The New York Times Magazine described Beatlemania as a "religion of teenage culture" that was indicative of how American youth now looked to their own age group for social values and role models. According to historian Michael James Roberts, even though their early songs avoided such issues, the band represented "cultural change and the oppositional stance of the youth culture against the establishment". The group's popularity subsequently grew into what was seen as an embodiment of sociocultural movements of the decade, and their artistic maturation reflected the era's social developments. They were widely viewed as leaders of the youth culture and such a sentiment was echoed by the mainstream press. Their 1966 songs "Paperback Writer", "Rain", "Taxman" and "Eleanor Rigby" provided social commentary, with the lyrics of "Rain" making explicit the delineation between the socially aware and those who were not. By contrast, Sgt. Pepper achieved a cross-generational appeal; in "She's Leaving Home", McCartney and Lennon sang of a real-life teenage runaway but gave an unusually sympathetic perspective on the parents' sense of loss. According to Stark, the social unity conveyed by the Beatles from the start of their career inspired the framework for the collectivist thinking that distinguished the 1960s and the emergence of the counterculture movement. He sees their English sense of humour as a defining trait of the counterculture and an inspiration for Yippie activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Gould similarly writes that, from the band's arrival in the US, teenagers were aware of the "social dimension" implicit in the group's camaraderie, matching clothes and hair, and ensemble playing. In Gould's view, as icons of the 1960s counterculture, the band became a catalyst for bohemianism and activism in various social and political arenas, fuelling movements such as women's liberation, gay liberation and environmentalism. According to documentary filmmaker Leslie Woodhead, a former Cold War spy, the Beatles' music helped persuade young Russians to defy communist ideology and begin the process that led to the fall of communism throughout Eastern Europe. He said the extent of the band's influence became apparent in the 1990s when local rock musicians told him that "not only were the Beatles colossal from the Berlin Wall to Vladivostok but that they'd played a really significant part in helping to wash away totalitarianism ... They liberated a certain spiritual energy so that two generations of Soviet kids simply gave up on building socialism and started to realise that the Cold War enemy, instead of being a threat, made wonderful music." Many young Russians learnt to speak English through the Beatles' lyrics, and the band's songs helped spread the English language throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Civil rights and support for African-American musicians Marwick writes that while American folk singers Dylan and Joan Baez were more identifiable with civil rights issues, in Beatles songs, "it was a case of music and lyrics together constructing – constantly changing – moods which never failed, it seemed, to evoke responses in large numbers of listeners of the day." Roberts highlights the significance of their US breakthrough occurring in the same year that the Civil Rights Act was passed, and also that their first US LP, Introducing ... The Beatles, was released by the African-American–owned label Vee-Jay Records. Through the album's preponderance of cover versions of recordings by black R&B artists, Roberts continues, the Beatles introduced this music to a new audience of white Americans and helped to "relegitimate" an aspect of African-American musical history. During the Beatles' US tour in August–September 1964, the group spoke out against racial segregation in the country at the time, particularly in the South. When informed that the venue for their 11 September concert, the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, was segregated, the Beatles said they would refuse to perform unless the audience was integrated. City officials relented and agreed to allow an integrated show. Although the group held their press conference there before the concert, they cancelled their reservations at the whites-only Hotel George Washington in Jacksonville. According to music journalist Bill DeMain, the Beatles' stand "gave pop music a new-found social conscience"; American singer Brian Hyland recalled of the episode: "They were really the first group to have the power to do that. They used that platform really well ... It took a lot of courage." During the tour, the band repeatedly voiced their admiration of Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, and particularly soul artists such as the Miracles, Marvin Gaye and Chuck Jackson. Miracles leader Smokey Robinson said he was especially grateful for the Beatles' championing of Motown music and their choosing to cover songs by Motown artists. He added that they "were the first white artists to ever admit that they grew up and honed themselves on black music. I loved the fact that they did that, that they were honest". The Beatles subsequently invited Mary Wells to be their support act on a UK tour and in 1965 arranged for Esther Phillips to give her first performances outside the US. According to Lewisohn, documents reveal that for their tours in 1965 and 1966, the Beatles included clauses in contracts stipulating that shows be integrated. In 1966, McCartney said they had avoided performing in South Africa "or any places where blacks would be separated", adding, "It wasn't out of any goody-goody thing; we just thought, 'Why should you separate black people from white?'" According to Moore, the Beatles and the British Invasion bands that followed them to the US initiated the process whereby Americans "gradually encountered and accepted the return of their black heritage". Opposition from conservatives The Beatles were widely condemned by conservative elements of society, as Presley and other symbols of rock and roll had been during the 1950s. Israel refused to let the band perform there in early 1964, wary of "attacks of mass hysteria" being inflicted on the country's youth. In August 1965, the Indonesian government burned the group's records in order to "preserve the national identity in the field of culture" as part of that country's twentieth anniversary celebrations of independence. In East Germany, the Beatles were blamed for a "cultural crisis" that saw artists and intellectuals pushing for more leniency from the state; by April 1966, however, the government were supportive of the Beatles and instead targeted the Rolling Stones. The US Labor Department attempted to ban the Beatles from performing in the country, motivated by cultural conservatism and after lobbying from the American Federation of Musicians. The government sought to ban all British acts in 1965, but the financial opportunities presented by the Beatles ensured that their second North American tour went ahead. From that year onwards, right-wing Christian leaders such as Bob Larson and David Noebel were vocal in their condemnation of the Beatles' influence in the US. As a spokesman for the anti-communist Christian Crusade, Noebel denounced the band as "four mop-headed anti-Christ beatniks", and published pamphlets warning that they were destroying the morals of America's youth to facilitate a communist takeover orchestrated from Moscow. By contrast, Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, said the Beatles represented "a plot by the ruling classes to distract ... youngsters from politics and bitter pondering over disgraced and shattered hopes". In the UK, criticism largely faded with the band's international breakthrough, as commentators recognised the Beatles' value to the economy. Some traditionalists were nevertheless outraged by the group being awarded MBEs, and the Beatles, as with rock music in general, remained the target of figures such as Daily Mail columnist Monica Furlong and conservative activist Mary Whitehouse. In 1967, Whitehouse campaigned against the lyric "Boy, you've been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down" in the Beatles' song "I Am the Walrus" after the BBC had aired the song as part of the band's TV film Magical Mystery Tour. The BBC duly banned the song. The following year, Lennon's relationship with Japanese avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, for whom he abandoned his wife and son, was met with strong public disapproval and racial abuse. Lennon received further condemnation from conservatives when he returned his MBE to the Queen in November 1969. He cited his opposition to the British government's support of both US involvement in the Vietnam War and Nigeria's role in the Biafra conflict, in addition to the poor chart performance of his and Ono's second Plastic Ono Band single, "Cold Turkey". Budokan, Manila and "Jesus" controversies The Japanese authorities viewed the band as subversive before they were appointed as MBEs in 1965. In the lead-up to the Beatles' concerts in Tokyo the following year, the visit was the subject of national debate as traditionalists were opposed to the group's influence and the decision to allow them to perform at the Nippon Budokan, a venue reserved for martial arts and a shrine to Japan's war dead. The Beatles received death threats and ultranationalist students demonstrated outside the Budokan during their stay. Shortly afterwards, the band played in Manila in the Philippines, at a time when the country was keen to project a pro-Western image with the recent inauguration of President Ferdinand Marcos. There, the Beatles' nonattendance at an official function organised by Imelda Marcos was perceived as an insult to the nation's first family; it led to recrimination in the local press, the band's security detail being withdrawn, and mob violence against them as they attempted to leave the country. Filipino writer Nick Joaquin said the situation was indicative of how the Philippines had been attracted to the Beatles' image without appreciating that their message was one advocating individuality, adventurousness and originality over the qualities that still defined the country: tradition and order. Joaquin likened the group's presence in Manila to Batman being transplanted to Thebes in Ancient Greece. The band enjoyed what Epstein termed a "special relationship" with the US until late July 1966, when Datebook magazine published an interview that Lennon gave for the London Evening Standard "How Does a Beatle Live?" series. In the interview, Lennon said the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus", such was the decline of Christianity. His comments caused no significant reaction in the UK, but radio stations in the US Bible Belt soon launched a boycott of Beatles music and organised bonfires of the band's records and merchandise. For some Southern commentators, the furore over Lennon's alleged blasphemy allowed them to air their suppressed grievances regarding the Beatles' long hair and the group's support for African-American musicians. Spain and South Africa joined in the radio ban, as did other stations in the US, and the Vatican issued a statement condemning Lennon's remark. At Epstein's insistence, Lennon apologised during a press conference at the start of the band's US tour. Members of the Ku Klux Klan threatened reprisals against the Beatles, particularly when they were due to play in Memphis, but the tour passed without major incident. Further to their experiences in Tokyo and Manila, the "Jesus" controversy confirmed the Beatles' decision to retire as live performers in 1966. Another religious controversy ensued in the US in reaction to the band's 1969 single "The Ballad of John and Yoko", due to Lennon's use of the word "Christ" and reference to crucifixion. Idealism and the counterculture Rubber Soul included Lennon's "The Word", the lyrics of which anticipated the ethos behind the counterculture's 1967 Summer of Love, while Revolver included a number of songs whose lyrics address themes of death, isolation and transcendence from material concerns. Of "Tomorrow Never Knows", Lennon's evocation of an LSD trip, MacDonald writes that the song's message "launched the till-then élite-preserved concept of mind-expansion into pop, simultaneously drawing attention to consciousness-enhancing drugs and the ancient religious philosophies of the Orient, utterly alien to Western thought in their anti-materialism, rapt passivity, and world-sceptical focus on visionary consciousness". In author Shawn Levy's description, Revolver presented the Beatles as "the world's first household psychedelics, avatars of something wilder and more revolutionary than anything pop culture had ever delivered before". From 1966, the Beatles began to promulgate a world view espousing LSD-inspired higher consciousness, led by Lennon and Harrison defying Epstein's insistence that the group refrain from commenting on political issues such as the Vietnam War. The controversy surrounding Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" remark reinforced their determination to speak out and furthered their standing in the emerging counterculture. Cultural commentator Mark Hertsgaard writes that the band did not directly address racism, war or social justice in their songs from this period, yet a "sensibility ... permeated their music" and "The essence of the Beatles' message was not simply that the world had to change, but, more importantly, that it could change." He sees this best exemplified in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and says that Harrison's song "Within You Without You" "contained the album's most overt expression of the Beatles' shared belief in spiritual awareness and social change". Abbie Hoffman likened Sgt. Pepper to "Beethoven coming to the supermarket", adding: "It summed up so much of what we were saying politically, culturally, artistically, expressing our inner feelings and our view of the world in a way that was so revolutionary." On 25 June 1967, the Beatles premiered "All You Need Is Love" live on the BBC's Our World satellite broadcast before an international audience estimated at 400 million. In his feature on the song in Rolling Stone, Gavin Edwards writes that when "All You Need Is Love" was issued as a single weeks later, it reached "Number One all over the world, providing the sing-song anthem for the Summer of Love, with a sentiment that was simple but profound". Simonelli credits the song with formally announcing the arrival of flower power ideology as a mainstream concept. Psychiatrist R.D. Laing, who incorporated the Beatles' and Dylan's music and LSD in his treatment at his Kingsley Hall practice, recalled of the song's relevance: "Everyone was getting the feel of the world as a global village – as us, one species ... One of the most heartening things about the Beatles was that they gave expression to a shared sense of celebration around the world, a sense of the same sensibility." In response to the political events and more turbulent atmosphere of 1968, the Beatles released "Revolution", in the lyrics to which Lennon espoused a pacifist agenda over violent confrontation. The song inspired the first in-depth debate regarding the connection between rock music and politics, where beforehand music journalists and political radicals in the US had mostly viewed their respective fields in isolation. Lennon's stance drew heavy criticism from New Left writers as the single's release coincided with the violent subjugation of Vietnam War protestors at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and condemnation in the West of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and its crushing of attempts to introduce democratic reforms there. With its more universal message, McCartney's "Hey Jude", the A-side of the single, was adopted as an anthem by Czech citizens in their struggle. The Beatles was similarly attacked by the radical left. While the counterculture adopted "Piggies" as an anti-establishment anthem, many radicals viewed the band's use of parody and satire throughout the album as evidence of their disengagement with pressing political issues. The Beatles' influence on the more radicalised sectors of the counterculture and the New Left declined as the band refused to engage in direct activism against the establishment. Lennon furthered his stance by campaigning for world peace with Ono in 1969 and, in Simonelli's description, remained the "most popular political voice in rock music" until 1972. The Beatles retained their social influence through to the band's break-up, and their idealism continued to resonate in the politics of the Vietnam War era. Released in September 1969, Abbey Road included "Come Together", which Lennon began writing as a campaign song for Timothy Leary's bid to become governor of California. Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" was adopted by George McGovern in his campaign for the US presidency, the initial success of which, according to Schaffner, was a "triumph for the counterculture's attempt to wield power via conventional electoral politics". Manson, "Paul is dead" and break-up From Revolver onwards, analysing the Beatles' lyrics for hidden meaning became a popular trend in the US. The lyrics on the band's 1968 double album progressed from being vague to open-ended and prone to misinterpretation, such as "Glass Onion" (the line "the walrus was Paul") and "Piggies" ("what they need's a damn good whacking"). In August 1969, Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and six other individuals were murdered by members of the Manson Family, acting on Charles Manson's interpretation of White Album songs such as "Helter Skelter", "Piggies" and "Revolution 9". Within weeks, unrelated rumours of McCartney's death began to spread, based on perceived clues left in the Beatles' lyrics and record sleeves. It was alleged that he had been replaced by a look-alike. MacDonald cites Manson's Helter Skelter scenario as an example of the many "crackpot fixations" that the Beatles inspired in their drug-influenced audience, and a dangerous escalation of the otherwise harmless obsession that encouraged rumours such as the "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory. Schaffner described the latter as "the most monumental hoax since Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast persuaded thousands of panicky New Jerseyites that Martian invaders were in the vicinity". Its escalation in 1969, particularly in the US, was informed by the counterculture's disillusionment with society and, according to American broadcaster Vin Scelsa, indicative of how songs by the Beatles, Dylan and the Rolling Stones were received as "personal message[s], worthy of endless scrutiny" and "guidelines on how to live your life". Both the Manson murders and the Beatles' break-up are often cited as marking the decade's closure. According to Burns, the break-up in April 1970 was "like the Kennedy assassination all over again, or one's parents divorcing". The event was afforded the attention of a presidential assassination or the 1969 Moon landing, as commentators analysed the causes and speculated about the possibilities of a reunion. Burns writes that, throughout the 1970s, there persisted a sense that if the Beatles re-formed, it might revive "the 'era' that had seemed to have passed. When Lennon died, that truly was the end of ... the innocent, comforting, naive belief that the world at large could, somehow, be 'together' in the 1960s sense of the term." Drug culture According to music critic Jim DeRogatis, the Beatles are seen as the "Acid Apostles of the New Age". The band's connection with recreational drugs was important to their position as leaders of the counterculture, as was their embrace of Indian religion. According to Kureishi, drugs had long been connected to music, but "the Beatles were the first to parade their particular drug use – marijuana and LSD – without shame ... The Beatles made taking drugs seem an enjoyable, fashionable and liberating experience, like them, you would see and feel in ways you hadn't imagined possible." The band's drug-taking became public knowledge with the release of Sgt. Pepper. "A Day in the Life", the album's closing track, was banned by the BBC for an alleged drug reference in the line "I'd love to turn you on"; with "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", the title was widely read as a code for LSD. Although he had long resisted Lennon and Harrison's urging before trying the drug, McCartney announced in a Life article in June 1967 that he had taken LSD. When asked to confirm his statement by an ITN reporter, McCartney repeated that he had taken the drug. In the UK, according to MacDonald, the admission "brought howls of righteous anger on their heads" in a manner similar to the 1966 Jesus controversy. As a show of support, Lennon, Harrison and Epstein announced that they too had taken LSD. In July 1967, all four Beatles added their signatures to a petition demanding the legalisation of marijuana and paid for its publication in a full-page ad in The Times. McCartney's admission formalised the link between rock music and drugs, and, as in the 1966 controversy, attracted scorn from American religious leaders and conservatives. In early August 1967, Harrison made a well-publicised visit to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, the epicentre of the counterculture during the Summer of Love, which was viewed as a further endorsement of the drug culture. Leary, an LSD advocate whose text The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead Lennon had used in his lyrics for "Tomorrow Never Knows", declared the Beatles to be "the wisest, holiest, most effective avatars (Divine Incarnate, God Agents) that the human race has ever produced". A United Nations report stated that the Beatles, along with the Rolling Stones and other rock bands, promoted drug use through their music, and that young listeners were following their lead. Bray writes that, rather than advocating drug-taking as a road to "mindless oblivion", the Beatles' espousal of LSD was focused on enlightenment and was therefore one of their "key legacies to the counterculture". In early 1967, the Beatles' elevated status as MBEs ensured that Harrison and his wife, English model Pattie Boyd, were allowed to leave a party in Sussex before Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones were arrested on drugs charges. As a result of McCartney's LSD admission, however, the British authorities' indulgence of the band started to wane significantly. According to Harris, the turning point was Magical Mystery Tour, which was broadcast on Boxing Day 1967 and earned the group their first scathing reviews. In October 1968, Lennon and Ono were arrested on charges of cannabis possession; Lennon maintained he had been warned of the raid and that the drugs were planted by the arresting officers from the London Drug Squad. The same senior officer, Norman Pilcher, arrested Harrison and Boyd for possession in March 1969. Harrison also said that the evidence, which was found on a carpet, was planted, since: "I keep my socks in the sock drawer and my stash in the stash box. Anything else they must have brought." With the release of "Cold Turkey", which the other Beatles had rejected as a possible single, Lennon made heroin addiction the subject of a pop hit for the first time. As part of an escalating national debate that had triggered an investigation by the US Congress, Vice-president Spiro Agnew launched a campaign in 1970 to address the issue of American youth being "brainwashed" into taking drugs through the music of the Beatles and other rock artists. Spirituality and Transcendental Meditation The Beatles' interest in Eastern religions is described by MacDonald as arguably the "most striking example" of the band's ability to transform a minor social trend into a world-wide phenomenon and thereby "magnify" cultural developments during the second half of the 1960s. From 1967 to 1968, the group were promoters of Transcendental Meditation and the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which resulted in Transcendental Meditation becoming a worldwide phenomenon. As a result of the coverage given to the Beatles' interest, words such as "mantra" and "guru" became commonly used in the West for the first time. While the band's new, anti-LSD message was met with approval, their championing of the Maharishi and his TM technique was often the subject of confusion and ridicule in the mainstream press, particularly in Britain. Before departing for the Maharishi's ashram in Rishikesh in February 1968, the Beatles recorded two songs that reflected their interest in TM: Lennon's "Across the Universe" and Harrison's "The Inner Light". Philip Goldberg, in his book American Veda, writes that the band's stay in Rishikesh "may have been the most momentous spiritual retreat since Jesus spent those forty days in the wilderness". Despite their later rejection of the Maharishi, the Beatles generated wider interest in Transcendental Meditation, which encouraged the study of Eastern spirituality in Western popular culture. MacDonald credits Harrison with inspiring "the West's mainstream acquaintance with Hindu religion and creat[ing] the late-'60s so-called Spiritual Revival", and he deems this "a fundamental cultural sea-change ... [and] an abiding testimony to Harrison's importance as a counter-cultural figure". Spiritual biographer Gary Tillery also recognises the Beatles, or more specifically Harrison, as having "abruptly brought Indian spirituality to everyday awareness" through their association with the Maharishi. Tillery writes that, while the influence of Indian gurus such as Vivekananda, Yogananda, the Maharishi and Prabhupada was well established by the late 1960s, it was the Beatles' endorsement of their respective philosophies that most contributed to yoga and meditation centres becoming ubiquitous in Western cities and towns over subsequent decades. According to author Andrew Grant Jackson: The Beats had promoted Buddhism since the 1950s, but it was George Harrison's songs espousing Hindu philosophy and featuring Indian musicians, and the Beatles' study of Transcendental Meditation, that truly kick-started the human potential movement of the 1970s (rebranded New Age in the 1980s). In this way, the musicians helped expand the freedom of religion the United States was founded on to encompass options outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. Artistic presentation The Beatles introduced new methods of artistic presentation for pop musicians. They were the first band to be fully marketed through television and continued to find new ways to disseminate their music through the medium. As live performers, they pioneered the world tour and stadium concerts, as sports stadiums became the primary venues for rock tours. Gould says that, aside from their influence on pop songwriting, the Beatles played "a leading role in revolutionizing the way that popular records were made, the way that popular records were listened to ... and the role that popular music itself would play in people's lives". The band's achievements were a key factor in the music industry becoming a multi-million-dollar enterprise and one that approached Hollywood film-making in terms of worldwide influence and turnover. In 1965, the Beatles' music publishing company Northern Songs was floated on the London Stock Exchange, a move that was unprecedented for a band's song catalogue. The flotation defied analysts' predictions by becoming a major financial success. Record formats Both sides of the Beatles' singles were often major US hits, an achievement that helped elevate the perception of a B-side from its role as a disposable song. The group's December 1965 single pairing "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out" was the first example of a double A-side single in Britain. Its success popularised the format and, in giving equal treatment to two songs, allowed recording artists to show their versatility. The band issued further double A-sides – "Eleanor Rigby" / "Yellow Submarine", "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" and "Something" / "Come Together" – when they thought that both songs in the pairing were equally strong. Their Magical Mystery Tour double EP, containing the six new songs from the TV film, was also the first example of that format being used in the UK. In January 1966, Billboard magazine cited the initial US sales of Rubber Soul (1.2 million copies over nine days) as evidence of teenage record-buyers increasingly moving towards the LP format. According to Gould, Sgt. Peppers impact was such that it "revolutionize[d] both the aesthetics and the economics of the record business in ways that far outstripped the earlier pop explosions triggered by the Elvis phenomenon of 1956 and the Beatlemania phenomenon of 1963". Although The Beatles was not the first rock double album, it was the longest up to that time, at close to 94 minutes. Album artwork The Beatles' album covers furthered the medium as an art form and were widely imitated. Doggett recognises the cover photos for With the Beatles and Rubber Soul as examples of the band's image being used to "test the limits of the portrait", a movement that was also reflected in the cover designs for contemporary albums by Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Robert Freeman's monochrome cover shot for With the Beatles (or Capitol's Meet the Beatles! in the US) departed from convention, and alarmed EMI, by showing the band members looking austere and unsmiling. This stance was heightened in Freeman's cover portrait for Beatles for Sale, which departed further from the standard pop LP by reducing the album title to minuscule type and otherwise making no mention of the band's name. According to Schaffner, each Beatles LP cover represented a "revolution in artwork" starting with Rubber Soul. The latter featured a distorted image of the band's faces, which were nevertheless so instantly recognisable by 1965 that no artist credit was necessary. For the US LP Yesterday and Today in 1966, the Beatles supplied Capitol with a cover showing them in butcher's white coats and clutching raw meat and dismembered dolls. Known as the "butcher cover", it was intended as a comment on the Vietnam War, although the photo was also interpreted as a criticism of Capitol's policy of altering the content of Beatles albums for the North American market. American disc jockeys and retailers were appalled by the image; KRLA Beat magazine described it as "the most nauseating album cover ever seen in the US". Capitol soon recalled all copies of the album and replaced the cover with a less provocative band portrait. The episode predated cover controversies such as those for LPs by the Rolling Stones (with Beggars Banquet) and Blind Faith in the late 1960s and by Alice Cooper, Mom's Apple Pie, Roxy Music and Golden Earring in the 1970s. Writing in their book The Art of the LP, Johnny Morgan and Ben Wardle say the Beatles were arguably the leaders in "creating identity" through album artwork, an approach they consider motivated by the group's retirement as live performers, as well as the catalyst for record company art designers to incorporate drug allusions in their LP covers following the example set by Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. The design for Revolver was markedly different from LP covers of 1966, particularly in its eschewing of vibrant psychedelic colours for black-and-white; in Gould's view, it supported the aesthetic of the music and the Beatles' determination to reinvent themselves on record. Created by Klaus Voormann, the band's friend from their years in Hamburg, the cover combined line-drawing caricatures of the Beatles' faces with a collage of older photos. In the line drawings, Voormann drew inspiration from the work of the nineteenth-century illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, who was the subject of a long-running exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum and highly influential on fashion and design themes of the time. Voormann placed the various photos within the tangle of hair connecting the four faces, thereby, in Rodriguez's description, capturing both the long hair synonymous with the band's public image and "the explosion of ideas that were pouring out of their heads". According to author Ian Inglis, the cover for Sgt. Pepper is widely recognised for demonstrating an "unprecedented correspondence between music and art, time and space", and it initiated an acceptance of album artwork as an "integral component" of the listening experience. The LP's gatefold packaging included cardboard cutouts and, for the first time in a pop album, printed lyrics. The inclusion of the lyrics infuriated sheet music publishers, who lost the revenue from sales of the songs' sheet music. In the late 1990s, the BBC included the Sgt. Pepper cover in its list of British masterpieces of twentieth-century art and design, placing it ahead of the red telephone box, Mary Quant's miniskirt, and the Mini motorcar. The cover of The Beatles contrasted with that of Sgt. Pepper by featuring a minimalist concept of plain white, with the title rendered in plain type. Each copy was individually numbered on the cover, thereby lending a uniqueness to each one and reflecting a tenet of conceptual art. Film and music videos A Hard Day's Night broke new ground in the field of British and American musical feature films, particularly in its abandoning of the genre's standard rags-to-riches premise for a comedic presentation of the artists playing themselves. Film historian Stephen Glynn describes it as "the canonical pop music film". He highlights the innovative techniques Lester uses in the sequence for "Can't Buy Me Love", as does Saul Austerlitz, who deems it the precursor to the modern music video. Lester's use of devices from the European art-house tradition, combined with the film's comedic and satirical qualities, ensured that A Hard Day's Night defied easy categorisation and won critical recognition for the rock music film. Andrew Sarris of The Village Voice called it "the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals". With Help!, Lester presented the Beatles in "one of the central surrealist texts" of the 1960s, according to Bray. The film uses pop art visuals and satirises James Bond films, particularly the latter's depiction of the British Secret Service as an efficiently run organisation, and one enjoying a level of influence equal to its US counterpart in their shared operations. In addition to inspiring The Monkees, the film influenced the Batman TV series. Starting with "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out" in late 1965, the band filmed promotional clips for their singles to circumvent the industry norm of having to make numerous personal appearances on television shows. The Beatles' promotional clips anticipated the music video and the rise of MTV in the 1980s. The clips for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" are considered pioneering works in the medium. Both avoided performance of the song in response to the 1966 Musicians' Union's ban on miming on TV; in the case of "Strawberry Fields Forever", the clip employs abstract imagery and features reverse film effects, stop motion animation, jump-cuts from day- to night-time, superimposition and close-up shots. Referring to the 1968 clip for "Hey Jude" and the sight of the Beatles engulfed by a crowd made up of "young, old, male, female, black, brown, and white" fans, Hertsgaard describes it as "a quintessential sixties moment, a touching tableau of contentment and togetherness". Yellow Submarine, the Beatles' third film for United Artists, provided a revolution in animated film and allowed animators to fully express ideas using psychedelic visuals. It marked a departure from the confines of Disney's productions and was credited with saving the feature-length animated film. Austerlitz describes the Beatles' rooftop performance of "Get Back" as "legendary". Filmed in January 1969 for the finale to the United Artists documentary film Let It Be, the clip was homaged by U2 in the video for their 1987 single "Where the Streets Have No Name" and by Red Hot Chili Peppers in the video for their 2011 single "The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie". As dedicated recording artists In Gould's description, the Beatles' career trajectory was largely self-determined and free of the show business considerations that had limited and defined the model of stardom represented by Presley and Sinatra. The band's decision to retire from live performance in 1966 and become a group focused solely on studio recording had no precedent. Given the premium placed on concerts, the press assumed the Beatles were due to break up. From that year onwards, according to Everett, their albums "each suggested ... a different set of rules and that these rules were dictated by the artists". Barry Miles, a leading figure in the 1960s London underground, described Revolver as the "step-change" that signalled "the way forward for all rock musicians who wondered if there was life after teen scream status". According to Doyle Greene, while academics disagree on whether the Beatles were modernists or postmodernists, Sgt. Pepper "arguably marked rock's music's entry into postmodernism as opposed to high-modernism". At McCartney's suggestion, the group adopted alter egos as members of the fictitious Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an approach that inspired similar practices by glam rock acts of the 1970s. McCartney assumed an unofficial leadership role of the Beatles following Epstein's death in August 1967, but his bandmates soon challenged this position after the critical failure of Magical Mystery Tour. Stark cites the TV film as the first example of the Beatles being afflicted by "Michael Jordan syndrome", in that they excelled as songwriters and recording artists but mistakenly believed that their talents would transfer effectively to film and business projects. The group recorded their 1968 double album in an often divisive atmosphere, which was partly a backlash against the level of McCartney's involvement in the band's activities. The postmodern traits of politics, parody and pastiche were the subject of adverse scrutiny on The Beatles. Everett says that for the majority of baby boomers, the White Album represents "the double album" of the era. Cultural critic Camille Paglia likened the Beatles' final recording projects – the Get Back filmed rehearsals, which subsequently produced Let It Be, and Abbey Road – to the last phase in a "tripartite pattern" that typified the early, high and late periods of painters such as Picasso and Donatello; within this final phase, just as "major artists revolt, resimplify", the band sought to abandon the studio sophistication of Sgt. Pepper. Abbey Road reflected a compromise in the diverging artistic visions of Lennon and McCartney but became the Beatles' best-selling album. In Stark's description, some critics came to view the LP as the band's "farewell to their fans and an attack on 'selfishness and self-gratification'", particularly through McCartney's closing statement in the side two "Long Medley". Apple Corps The Beatles founded Apple Corps in January 1968. The company was intended as an alternative system of cultural production and consumption, run on countercultural principles whereby artists would not have to conform to established industry practice. McCartney likened its ethos to "Western communism". Schaffner described Apple Corps as "a Pepperland of their own" and "the first multi-million dollar, multi-media conglomerate to be operated both by and for the turned-on generation without any interference from the 'men in suits'". One of several divisions within the conglomerate was Apple Records, which Burns calls "the first record label of any consequence started by a band". The EMI-distributed label allowed the band members to further their individual interests and support artists of their choice, and it was a rare example of an artist-run label that progressed beyond a vanity project. Philo writes that, with the international success of the singles "Hey Jude" and Mary Hopkin's "Those Were the Days", "Apple's launch was comfortably the most successful label launch of all time." By 1970, with Harrison and McCartney as its principal producers, it had launched the international careers of acts such as Billy Preston, James Taylor and Badfinger. Along with its subsidiary Zapple Records, Apple provided an outlet for Lennon to present himself as a fully fledged avant-garde artist in his collaborations with Ono, a direction that was at odds with the Beatles' work. In doing so, according to Schaffner, Lennon attracted ridicule and admiration alike as his work resembled "a one-way mirror that offered the world a clearer, more intimate picture of a celebrity than it had ever before known on such a scale". Harrison also issued solo albums on the label in the late 1960s, starting with the Wonderwall Music soundtrack. Author Peter Lavezzoli's describes the top 20 UK chart placing of the Radha Krishna Temple's "Hare Krishna Mantra" single, which Harrison produced in 1969, as an "astonishing achievement" that was indicative of the Beatles' ability to influence by association. Until the label's closure in the mid-1970s, Apple had the highest success rate of any British record company with regard to UK chart hits. While Apple Corps soon floundered, it provided the inspiration for corporate philosophies adopted by companies such as Ben & Jerry's, Apple Computer, Inc. and Google. Beatles historian Bruce Spizer identifies the Apple iPod as the realisation of Lennon's idea of combining music, film and electronics. Music and recording aesthetics Jangle, folk rock and power pop Music journalist Mark Kemp credits the Beatles with leading pop music's expansion into styles such as world music, psychedelia, avant-pop and electronica, and attracting a bohemian audience that had previously focused on jazz and folk. According to Luhrssen and Larson, the Beatles affected every genre of rock music except jazz rock. Together with the Byrds, they are commonly credited with launching the popularity of the "jangly" sound that defined jangle pop. Harrison was one of the first people to own a Rickenbacker 360/12, an electric guitar with twelve strings. His use of this guitar during the recording of A Hard Day's Night helped to popularise the model, and the jangly sound became so prominent that Melody Maker termed it the Beatles' "secret weapon". Roger McGuinn liked the effect so much that he made it his signature guitar sound with the Byrds. Within a year of their 1964 meeting, the Beatles and Dylan adopted elements of each other's respective genres, rock and folk, into their music. Both acts became a significant influence on the folk rock movement that followed in 1965. In Jackson's view, it was Harrison's twelve-string arpeggios at the end of the Beatles' July 1964 single, "A Hard Day's Night", that "birthed" the folk-rock sound. Dubbed for the Byrds' debut single, a cover of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", the term "folk rock" referred to "Dylanesque lyrics combined with rock rhythm and Beatlesque harmonies". In response to the Byrds, the Beatles developed the jangle-pop sound of folk rock with the treble-heavy guitars on the Rubber Soul tracks "If I Needed Someone" and "Nowhere Man". Gould describes the altered US edition of Rubber Soul as the release that encouraged "legions of folk-music enthusiasts" to embrace pop. According to The Encyclopedia of Country Music, building on the Beatles for Sale track "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party", Rubber Soul was as an early example of country rock, anticipating the Byrds' 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. According to author Carl Caferelli, while the Who have been credited for heralding the power pop genre, "the story really begins circa 1964, with the commercial ascension of the Beatles in America." He recognises the Beatles as the embodiment of the "pop band" ideal. Only a few acts continued the tradition of Beatles-style pop during the first half of the 1970s, but late in the decade, there was a renewed interest in the music and culture of the 1960s, with examples such as the Beatlemania musical and the growing mod revival. From the mid-1970s onwards, power pop bands drew inspiration from the jangle guitars, vocal harmonies and sense of "teenage innocence" that had been characteristics of the Merseybeat sound first popularised by the Beatles. In a 1991 Los Angeles Times article covering newer power pop bands, Chris Willman wrote that many of the groups were "very" influenced by the Beatles, although "not always directly", as some of the musicians said that they were instead predominately influenced by 1970s and 1980s artists who emulated the Beatles. Recording practices and electronic music In his role as the Beatles' record producer, George Martin is generally credited with helping to popularise the idea of the recording studio as an instrument used for in-studio composition. Although he was nominally the Beatles' producer, however, from 1964 he ceded control to the band, allowing them to use the studio as a workshop for their ideas and later as a sound laboratory. Musicologist Olivier Julien writes that the Beatles' "gradual integration of arranging and recording into one and the same process" began as early as 1963, but developed in earnest during the sessions for Rubber Soul and Revolver and "ultimately blossomed" during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper. In acquiring control over the recording process, whereby Martin and his engineers became facilitators of the musicians' ideas, the Beatles reversed the strict hierarchy that had long been in place at EMI. In addition to inspiring other artists, their example helped break the hold that EMI and Decca Records had on the British recording industry, leading to the growth of independent studios there, including the Beatles' own Apple Studio. In Everett's description, Revolver was both an "innovative example" of electronic music and a work that "advanced the leading edge of the rock world". The album makes full use of an assortment of studio tricks such as varispeed and backwards (or backmasked) taping; according to authors Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, artificial double tracking (ADT), backwards recording, and close-miked drums were among the nine techniques that the Revolver sessions introduced into the recording world for the first time. The 1966 B-side "Rain", recorded during the Revolver sessions, was the first pop recording to include reversed sounds, while the album track "I'm Only Sleeping" included the first example of backwards lead guitar on a pop recording. Citing composer and producer Virgil Moorefield's book The Producer as Composer, author Jay Hodgson highlights Revolver as representing a "dramatic turning point" in recording history through its dedication to studio exploration over the "performability" of the songs, as this and subsequent Beatles albums reshaped listeners' preconceptions of a pop recording. "Tomorrow Never Knows", according to author David Howard, was one of two pop recordings that ensured that the studio "was now its own instrument" (the other being Phil Spector's "River Deep – Mountain High"). ADT soon became a standard pop production technique, and led to related developments such as the artificial chorus effect. MacDonald credits the use of damping and close-miking on Starr's drums with creating a "three-dimensional" sound that, along with other Beatles innovations, engineers in the US would soon adopt as standard practice. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, according to Julien, represents the "epitome of the transformation of the recording studio into a compositional tool", marking the moment when "popular music entered the era of phonographic composition." Quoting a composer from the UCLA School of Music, Time magazine's appreciation of Sgt. Pepper recognised the Beatles as having adopted concepts first pioneered by the Cologne group, thereby making an "enormous contribution to electronic music". Musician and producer Alan Parsons believed that with Sgt. Pepper, "people then started thinking that you could spend a year making an album and they began to consider an album as a sound composition and not just a musical composition. The idea was gradually forming of a record being a performance in its own right and not just a reproduction of a live performance." Released on The Beatles, the eight-minute "Revolution 9" was an overt exercise in electronic music and the avant-garde. MacDonald identifies the track as another example of the Beatles introducing a previously elite scene to a mainstream audience and describes it as "the world's most widely distributed avant-garde artifact". In early 1969, Harrison became one of the first musicians in the UK to own a Moog synthesizer, which the Beatles went on to use on Abbey Road tracks such as "Here Comes the Sun" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". Writing in his book on electronic music, author Thom Holmes says that in this way the Beatles were "one of the first groups to effectively integrate the sounds of the Moog into their music". Psychedelia and progressive music Western classical fusion Music critics Robert Christgau and Mark Ellen each identify Rubber Soul as the album that laid the foundations for psychedelia. Citing a quantitative study of tempos in music from the era, Everett identifies it as a work that was "made more to be thought about than danced to", and an album that "began a far-reaching trend" in its slowing-down of the tempos typically used in pop and rock music. Many baroque-rock works appeared soon afterwards, particularly due to Martin's harpsichord-like solo on the track "In My Life", while the album also marked the introduction into pop of the pump organ or harmonium. Revolver ensured that psychedelic pop emerged from its underground roots and into the mainstream, while "Rain" originated British psychedelic rock. The chamber-orchestrated "Eleanor Rigby" is cited by Simonelli as an example of the Beatles' influence being such that, whatever the style of song, it helped to define the parameters of rock music. The 1967 double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" comprised two songs in which Lennon and McCartney, respectively, celebrated their Liverpool upbringing. Simonelli writes that the songs instilled the Romantic artistic tradition as a central tenet of psychedelic rock. In MacDonald's view, "Strawberry Fields Forever" launched both the "English pop-pastoral mood" typified by bands such as Pink Floyd, Family, Traffic and Fairport Convention, and English psychedelia's LSD-inspired preoccupation with "nostalgia for the innocent vision of a child". The Mellotron's appearance on the track remains the most celebrated use of the instrument on a pop or rock recording. Together with the resonant tone of Starr's drums, the cello arrangement on "Strawberry Fields Forever" (as with "I Am the Walrus" from Magical Mystery Tour) was much admired by other musicians and producers, and proved highly influential on 1970s bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard. According to Everett, the Beatles' "experimental timbres, rhythms, tonal structures, and poetic texts" on Rubber Soul and Revolver "encouraged a legion of young bands that were to create progressive rock in the early 1970s". Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (along with Pet Sounds) is largely viewed as originating the progressive rock genre due to the album's lyrical unity, extended structure, complexity, eclecticism, experimentalism and influences derived from classical music forms. For several years following its release, straightforward rock and roll was supplanted by a growing interest in extended form, and numerous English psychedelic bands developed characteristics of the Beatles' music (specifically their classical influence) further than either the Beatles or contemporaneous West Coast psychedelic bands. Art pop is often traced to the Beatles' first recording with a string quartet ("Yesterday") in conjunction with the group's mid-1960s contemporaries. AllMusic states that the first wave of art rock musicians were inspired by Sgt. Pepper and believed that for rock music to grow artistically, they should incorporate elements of European and classical music to the genre. Sgt. Pepper is also frequently cited as the first true concept album, a medium that became central to progressive rock. According to Moore, "Even though previous albums had set a unified mood (notably Sinatra's Songs for Swinging Lovers), it was on the basis of the influence of Sgt. Pepper that the penchant for the concept album was born." Progressive soul artists at the turn of the 1970s, such as Stevie Wonder, George Clinton, and War, drew on the Beatles' album-oriented approach and experimentation with non-traditional music influences. As bandleader for Parliament and Funkadelic, Clinton specifically pointed to how the Beatles "made an art out of nonsense" on songs such as "I Am the Walrus", alongside other influences from Bob Dylan's music and "Black Power" literature. Raga rock and Eastern fusion Indian culture, in the form of music and mysticism, was a significant component of the Beatles' image. Following on from the Kinks, the Yardbirds and the Beatles themselves (with "Ticket to Ride") incorporating droning guitars to mimic the qualities of the Indian sitar, Rubber Souls "Norwegian Wood" featured the first use of the instrument by a Western pop musician. Played by Harrison, the sitar part launched a craze that Indian classical musician Ravi Shankar termed "the great sitar explosion", as the instrument became a popular feature in raga rock and psychedelic music. The song is often identified as the first example of raga rock, a subgenre that was officially launched by the Byrds with their March 1966 single "Eight Miles High". Revolver featured two overtly Indian-styled songs: "Tomorrow Never Knows", with its foundation of heavy tambura drone, and "Love You To". According to the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Revolver was the first major American-derived popular music to incorporate Asian techniques and instrumentation. In his book Popular World Music, Andrew Shahriari writes that the Beatles are not usually recognised as world music artists, yet their use of Indian musical instruments, which was led by Harrison's interest, was "revolutionary" in the context of 1960s European and American popular music. While Harrison was not the only rock musician to experiment with Indian styles in the mid-1960s, the Beatles' association with the genre ensured that Indian classical music reached its widest audience, through songs such as "Within You Without You". In his 1997 book Indian Music and the West, ethnomusicologist Gerry Farrell said that "nearly thirty years on, the Beatles' 'Indian' songs remain among the most imaginative and successful examples of this type of fusion – for example, 'Blue Jay Way' and 'The Inner Light.'" Rock 'n' roll revival and heavy metal The Beatles' March 1968 single "Lady Madonna" was at the forefront of a contemporary rock 'n' roll revival, which marked the end of the psychedelic era. In the song, McCartney sought to create a boogie-woogie piece in the style of Fats Domino. Harris says that in addition to anticipating similar revival recordings by the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, "Lady Madonna" ensured that Berry and Little Richard returned to "the rarified pedestals where the British Invasion groups had originally placed them". The Beatles directly influenced the development of heavy metal in the late 1960s. "Helter Skelter" was a product of McCartney's attempt to create a sound as loud and dirty as possible, and the recording has been noted for its "proto-metal roar" by AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine. Recorded in the hard rock style with heavily distorted guitars, "Revolution" was the subject of complaints at retail level in 1968, since many listeners assumed the sound was the result of a manufacturing error. Discussing Lennon's "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", Guitar Worlds Josh Hart and Damien Fanelli called the song a "bluesy rocker" that "might have inadvertently started doom metal". Jo Kendall of Classic Rock magazine similarly commented that the song predated "Black Sabbath's creation of doom rock by several months" and noted the "Santana-like Latin blues section" in the song. James Manning, of Time Out London, describes the song as the foundation for stoner rock. Continued interest and influence Literature, academia and science In his biographical article on the Beatles for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger states, "Their supremacy as rock icons remains unchallenged to this day, decades after their breakup in 1970." Writing in 2009, Gary Burns commented that the Beatles continue to "enjoy a canonized status" unprecedented for popular musicians and that they are "canonical figures" in each of the three categories within the rock canon: sociological, literary and musicological. He identifies them as a key influence in the foundation of hundreds of organisations and publications dedicated to serious appreciation of rock music, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cambridge University Press's journal Popular Music, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and the University of Liverpool's Institute of Popular Music. Hundreds of books have been written about the Beatles' career. Jonathan Gould says that the band "represent a bibliographical phenomenon as well as a musical one", with the group's history having become a folk tale that "has been put to many different uses by its many different narrators". He comments that the range and variety of literature is "all the more remarkable considering that, prior to the Beatles, not a single significant book had been written on the subject of rock 'n' roll". Burns states that the quality and preponderance of "scholarly, quasi-scholarly, journalistic, and fan attention" given to the band far surpasses that given to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys. In her book The Rock Canon, Carys Wyn Jones affords them an elevated status akin to Shakespeare's position of eminence in Harold Bloom's canon of Western literature. Relevant scholarly studies range from discussions of the band's history and cultural impact to musicological work on such subjects as chord progressions, melody and automated analysis. In 2009, Liverpool Hope University started to offer a Master's degree in "The Beatles, Popular Music and Society". The program focuses on the political, social, and cultural aspects related to the Beatles and their music. In 2014, Thomson Reuters analyst and ScienceWatch editor Christopher King investigated 12,000 journals and books and found that 500 mentioned the Beatles in their topics or titles. A 2017 study of AllMusic's catalogue indicated the band as the most frequently cited artist influence in its database. Of the 2000 artists selected for the study, 1230 were stated to be influenced by the Beatles, ahead of Dylan, with 669. In 2019, a scientific study involving over 80,000 different chord progressions and conducted by the Max Planck Institute in Germany indicated "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" as "the perfect pop song" based on how enjoyable recipients found its chord changes. In 2021, the University of Liverpool announced a "The Beatles: Music Industry and Heritage" MA, which would examine the group's influence on popular music and culture and how the band's influence could be replicated in different places, industries and contexts around the world. That same year, Liverpool University Press announced an upcoming Journal of Beatles Studies. The first issue was released in September 2022. Since the early 2000s, historian Mark Lewisohn has been writing The Beatles: All These Years, a three-part set of Beatles biographies whose first volume exceeds 1,700 pages. The impetus for the project was his disappointment that none of the group's biographies had approached a depth or breadth comparable to Robert A. Caro's ongoing book series, The Years of Lyndon Johnson. Twenty-first-century relevance The Beatles continue to be viewed as representing the ideals of the 1960s. In Inglis's description, "their voices and faces were the most recognized symbols of the 'swinging sixties' and they became – and remain – the iconic images of the decade." In 2004, the band were the most-represented act in Rolling Stones list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time", with seven out of 23 Beatles songs making the top 30. In 2009, Global Beatles Day was founded as an international celebration of the band's music and social message. The event takes place on 25 June each year in memory of the Our World performance of "All You Need Is Love". Writing in The New York Times Magazine in 2016, cultural commentator Chuck Klosterman said that the group were "only slightly less popular now" than they were in the 1960s. He wrote that the group were "arguably" responsible for everything related to rock music, "including the very notion of a band's breaking up", and noted that no other rock group had faced unrelated assassination attempts against half its members. Klosterman concluded that, "In any reasonable world, the Beatles are the answer to the question "Who will be the Sousa of rock?" In the 2000s, Elvis Presley had been the only other defunct musical act to generate as much continued news and interest as the Beatles. His mass appeal curtailed significantly by the end of the 2010s, while the Beatles' popularity has endured with younger generations. The amount of Google searches for "Beatles" spiked by 48.59% in 2019, relative to the previous four years. That same year, the Beatles' music was streamed on Spotify 1.7 billion times; 30% of listeners were between the ages of 18 and 24, followed by 25- to 29-year-olds, at 17%. In other words, almost half of listeners were aged under 30. As of June 2019, "Yesterday" remained one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music, with over 2,200 versions. According to figures published by Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), the song was played over 7 million times on American radio during the twentieth century. See also List of awards and nominations received by the Beatles The Beatles in popular culture The Beatles in film Tributes to the Beatles Beatlesque Tomorrow Never Knows (Beatles album) Cultural impact of Elvis Presley Notes References Citations Sources External links Influence on Popular Culture Beatles, The Category:1960s in music Category:1970s in music Category:Cultural impact by musician

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Cultural impact of the Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential act of the rock era. In the early 1960s, their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania", but as the group's music grew in sophistication, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the band were integral to pop music's evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s. Their continued commercial and critical success assisted many cultural movements--including a shift from American artists' global dominance of rock and roll to British acts (British Invasion), the proliferation of young musicians in the 1960s who formed new bands, the album as the dominant form of record consumption over singles, the term "Beatlesque" used to describe similar-sounding artists, and several fashion trends.

Psychedelia and progressiveness

Progressive rock (or art rock) grew out of the classically-minded strains of British psychedelia. In 1966, the level of social and artistic correspondence among British and American rock musicians dramatically accelerated for bands like the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Byrds who fused elements of cultivated music with the vernacular traditions of rock. According to Everett, the Beatles' "experimental timbres, rhythms, tonal structures, and poetic texts" on their albums Rubber Soul and Revolver "encouraged a legion of young bands that were to create progressive rock in the early 1970s". Academics Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell identify the Beatles "not merely as precursors of prog but as essential developments of progressiveness in its early days". After the release of Rubber Soul, many "baroque-rock" works would soon appear, particularly due to its track "In My Life". Citing a quantitative study of tempos in music from the era, musicologist Walter Everett identifies Rubber Soul as a work that was "made more to be thought about than danced to", and an album that "began a far-reaching trend" in its slowing-down of the tempos typically used in pop and rock music. Although the Kinks, the Yardbirds and the Beatles themselves (with "Ticket To Ride") had incorporated droning guitars to mimic the qualities of the sitar, Rubber Soul's "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" is generally credited as sparking a musical craze for the sound of the instrument in the mid-1960s -- a trend which would later be associated with the growth of raga rock, Indian rock, and the essence of psychedelic rock. In terms of bridging the relationship between music and hallucinogens, the Beatles and the Beach Boys were the most pivotal. Revolver ensured that psychedelic pop emerged from its underground roots and into the mainstream. Author Carys Wyn Jones locates Sgt. Pepper's, along with Pet Sounds, to the beginning of art rock. Both albums are largely viewed as beginnings in the progressive rock genre due to their lyrical unity, extended structure, complexity, eclecticism, experimentalism and influences derived from classical music forms. For several years following Sgt. Pepper's release, straightforward rock and roll was supplanted by a growing interest in extended form. Several of the English psychedelic bands who followed in the wake of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's developed characteristics of the Beatles' music (specifically their classical influence) further than either the Beatles or contemporaneous West Coast psychedelic bands. AllMusic states that the first wave of art rock musicians were inspired by Sgt. Pepper's and believed that for rock music to grow artistically, they should incorporate elements of European and classical music to the genre. CANNOTANSWER

The English rock band the Beatles are commonly regarded as the foremost and most influential band in popular music history. With a line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they sparked the "Beatlemania" phenomenon in 1963, gained international superstardom in 1964, and remained active until their break-up in 1970. Over the latter half of the decade, they were often viewed as orchestrators of society's developments. Their recognition concerns their effect on the era's youth and counterculture, British identity, popular music's evolution into an art form, and their unprecedented following. Many cultural movements of the 1960s were assisted or inspired by the Beatles. In Britain, their rise to national prominence signalled the youth-driven changes in postwar society, with respect to social mobility, teenagers' commercial influence, and informality. They spearheaded the shift from American artists' global dominance of rock and roll to British acts (known in the US as the British Invasion) and inspired many young people to pursue music careers. From 1964 to 1970, the group had the top-selling US single one out of every six weeks, and the top-selling US album one out of every three weeks. In 1965, they were awarded MBEs, the first time such an honour was bestowed on a British pop act. A year later, Lennon controversially remarked that the band were "more popular than Jesus now". The Beatles often incorporated classical elements, traditional pop forms and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways, especially with the albums Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Many of their advances in production, writing, and artistic presentation were soon widespread. Other cultural changes initiated by the group include the elevation of the album to become the dominant form of record consumption over singles, a wider interest in psychedelic drugs and Eastern spirituality, and several fashion trends. The band also pioneered with their record sleeves and music videos, as well as informed music styles such as jangle, folk rock, power pop, psychedelia, progressive rock and heavy metal. By the end of the decade, the group were seen as an embodiment of the era's sociocultural movements, exemplified by the sentiment of their 1967 song "All You Need Is Love". Over the 1960s as a whole, the Beatles were the dominant youth-centred pop act on the sales charts. They broke numerous sales and attendance records, many of which they have or had maintained for decades, and continue to enjoy a canonised status unprecedented for popular musicians. Their songs are among the most recorded in history, with cover versions of "Yesterday" exceeding thousands. As of 2009, they were the best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 600 million records worldwide. Time included them in its list of the twentieth century's 100 most important people. Scope The Beatles formed in Liverpool in 1960; as a foursome comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they gained international stardom in 1964, and remained active until their break-up in 1970. Throughout the band's career, they expanded collective notions regarding the limits of commercial and artistic achievement. In Rolling Stone magazine's Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (2001), the editors define their "incalculable" influence as encompassing "all of Western culture". The writers state that the group's discography held the precedent for "virtually every rock experiment ... Although many of their sales and attendance records have since been surpassed, no group has so radically transformed the sound and significance of rock & roll." Writing for AllMusic, critic Richie Unterberger recognises the Beatles as both "the greatest and most influential act of the rock era" and a group that "introduced more innovations into popular music than any other rock band of the 20th century". He adds: Many contemporary listeners viewed the Beatles as orchestrators of society's developments over the second half of the 1960s. Musicologist Allan F. Moore states that there have been occasions when "audiences gravitate towards a centre" of pop music culture, the most prominent of which was in the early to mid 1960s, a period in which it "seems that almost everyone, irrespective of age, class or cultural background, listened to the Beatles". Music critic Greil Marcus described the Beatles' impact as the second "pop explosion", after Elvis Presley's emergence in the 1950s, and defined the term as "an irresistible cultural explosion that cuts across lines of class and race, and, most crucially, divides society itself by age". In such a phenomenon, he continued, "The surface of daily life (walk, talk, dress, symbolism, heroes, family affairs) is affected with such force that deep and substantive changes in the way large numbers of people think and act take place." According to author and film-maker Hanif Kureishi, the Beatles are "the only mere pop group you could remove from history and suggest that culturally, without them, things would have been significantly different". Detractors of the Beatles' legacy argue that the band are overrated and are often credited for innovations that other acts were the first to achieve. Music historian Bill Martin cites such notions as part of modern culture's inability to fully "understand them as a force", and says that although rock music has been defined by "synthesis and transmutation" since it began, "what was original about the Beatles is that they synthesized and transmuted more or less everything, they did this in a way that reflected their time, they reflected their time in a way that spoke to a great part of humanity, and they did all of this really, really well." Ian MacDonald states that the band were keen observers who discovered trends in their infancy and were adept at mirroring the era's "social and psychological changes". He said that their connection with the times was such that the Beatles "did far more mind-liberating" than Bob Dylan, through their greater record sales and "because they worked in simpler, less essentially sceptical ways". Sales and attendance records Over the 1960s as a whole, the Beatles were the dominant youth-centred pop act on the sales charts. "She Loves You", the band's second number-one single on the Record Retailer chart (subsequently adopted as the UK Singles Chart), became the best-selling single in UK chart history, a position it retained until 1978. The band's first two albums, Please Please Me and With the Beatles, each topped Record Retailers LPs chart, for a combined run of 51 consecutive weeks. Beginning with "From Me to You" in 1963, the Beatles had a four-year run of eleven consecutive chart-topping singles in Record Retailer, ending when the double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" peaked at number two. On 4 April 1964, the Beatles occupied the top five US chart positions – with "Can't Buy Me Love", "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Please Please Me" – as well as 11 other positions on the Billboard Hot 100. For nine consecutive weeks, they held the top two places on the Billboard Top LPs chart (subsequently the Billboard 200) with reconfigured versions of their first two albums. Until 2018, they were the only act to have filled the top five of the Billboard Hot 100. They also broke 11 other chart records on Billboards singles and albums charts at that time. Their chart domination was commonplace in countries around the world during 1964. In Australia, in late March, the band's songs filled the top six chart positions; during one week, they held nine positions in Canada's top ten. On 15 August 1965, the Beatles became the first entertainment act to stage a concert in a sports stadium when they performed at Shea Stadium in New York City before an audience of 55,600. The event set records for attendance and revenue generation, with takings of $304,000 (equivalent to $ in ). The band's record run of six consecutive number-ones on the Billboard Hot 100 from January 1965 to January 1966 – with the songs "I Feel Fine", "Eight Days a Week", "Ticket to Ride", "Help!", "Yesterday" and "We Can Work It Out" – remained unbeaten until Whitney Houston achieved a seventh in 1988. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) was the top-selling album of the 1960s in the UK, and on four occasions they had the best-selling album of the year there. As of 2019, with certified sales of 5.1 million copies in the UK, Sgt. Pepper is the all-time third best-selling album there and the best-selling studio album. The 1968 double LP The Beatles (also known as the "White Album") became the fastest-selling album in history; Capitol Records reported advance orders of 2 million in the US, with many stores selling their entire stock in one day. In the UK, the Beatles are beaten only by Presley for their amount of number-one singles and combined weeks at number one. As of December 2018, the Beatles held the record for the most Christmas number-one hits there, with four, of which three were achieved in successive years between 1963 and 1965. In the list of the UK's top sellers for the decade, the band's albums filled the top ten, apart from the soundtracks to The Sound of Music, South Pacific and West Side Story. The Beatles took the next three positions, meaning that all ten of their UK number-one albums were among the thirteen best-selling albums of the 1960s. In the case of US sales for the 1960s, the Beatles were the top artist, ahead of Presley, in both singles and albums. Between February 1964 and July 1970, the band maintained the number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 for a total of 59 weeks and topped Billboards LPs chart for 116 weeks. In other words, they had the top-selling single one out of every six weeks, and the top-selling album one out of every three weeks. Breakthrough and role in Britain's cultural resurgence Merseybeat and British rock 'n' roll As the Beatles rose in popularity in 1963, the terms "Mersey sound" and "Merseybeat" were applied to bands and singers from Liverpool, making it the first time in British pop music that a sound and a location were linked together. The city had the cultural advantages of being the UK's main transatlantic port and having an ethnically diverse population; local musicians were able to access records by American musicians through the Cunard Yanks working on the shipping routes. Like many Liverpool bands, the Beatles formed their sound from skiffle and a combination of American influences, especially rhythm and blues and girl groups, and honed their live act through seasons performing in the red-light district of Hamburg in West Germany. The music was performed with an emphasis on beat and guitars, at the expense of saxophones or other instruments commonly heard on the American records. Under pressure from Liverpool venues such as the Cavern, manager Brian Epstein persuaded the Beatles to swap their favoured look of black leather jackets and pants for more presentable stage suits. The group's emergence as leaders of the Liverpool beat scene represented a departure from the London-focused tradition of the UK music industry. Released in October 1962, "Love Me Do", the band's debut single as EMI recording artists, contrasted with the polished style of contemporary UK hit songs. According to author Peter Doggett, the January 1963 follow-up, "Please Please Me", represented "the real birth of the new" as, aided by Lennon's impassioned vocal, the song was "more driven than any previous British pop record". As musicians and songwriters, the Beatles established working-class authenticity and informality as key aspects in British rock 'n' roll. Doggett adds that "Most of all, the Beatles sounded like a gang: forceful, persuasive and sexually potent." Starting in 1963, according to music historian David Simonelli, the Beatles initiated the "original golden age" of British rock 'n' roll and reversed a tradition whereby domestic acts were a "pale imitation" of the original American purveyors of the style. During the first half of that year, the band usurped American acts including Roy Orbison to become the headline performers on their joint UK tours, something no previous British act accomplished while touring with artists from the US. Their initial success opened the way for many other Liverpool groups to achieve national success and encouraged the country's four main, London-based record companies to seek out talent in other areas of northern England. As a result, the Beatles and other British acts dominated the charts in 1963 at the expense of American artists. Sociocultural influence The Beatles' emergence overlapped with the decline in British conservatism. In the description of author and musician Bob Stanley, their domestic breakthrough represented "a final liberation for Britain's teenagers" and, by coinciding with the end of National Service, the group "effectively signaled the end of World War II in Britain". For sociologists, the band typified new developments in postwar Britain such as social mobility, teenagers' commercial influence, and informality in society. In their 1965 book Generation X, Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson said the Beatles had supplied British youth culture with a unifying and liberating influence that departed from the usual American-inspired model and, together with other groups from outside London, had fostered a sense of celebration of provincial England. The authors commented that resistance to the Beatles' progressive social influence from establishment figures was because the band were "knocking the stuffing – and the stuffiness – out of the neo-Victorians". The band's appeal registered with members of the royal family when the Beatles played a toned-down selection of songs at the Royal Variety Performance on 4 November 1963. The show was watched by a television audience of 26 million, around half the population of the UK, and helped establish the group as one of the first "spectacles" of the 1960s. Reluctant to play at such a formal event, Lennon told Epstein that he planned to sabotage the occasion. He instead charmed the theatre audience with his final comment: "For our last number ['Twist and Shout'], I'd like to ask your help. The people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you'd just rattle your jewellery." Political significance and awarding of MBEs The Beatles' international success created an export market for British pop for the first time and provided a boon to the UK government's balance of payments deficit. This unexpected development led to approval from politicians and an eagerness on their part to be associated with the band. In the run-up to the 1964 general election, the Beatles became a political football for the two major political parties; the New Statesman reported that Conservative candidates were told to "mention the Beatles whenever possible in their speeches", while a cartoon in the Daily Express showed the Conservative prime minister, Alec Douglas-Home, and Labour's leader of the opposition, Harold Wilson, consulting the Beatles over the Profumo affair. During the election campaign, both parties accused the other of trying to use the band's popularity for political gain. In March 1964, Wilson, who was contesting the outer Liverpool seat of Huyton, engineered a photo opportunity with the group as they received their Variety Club "Show Business Personality of the Year" awards. The association endured in the public's mind, securing Wilson the youth vote and aiding in his election win. The Beatles' international success also benefited the country's tourism and fashion industries, and entertainment generally. In early 1965, Melody Maker initiated a campaign for the Beatles to be awarded MBEs, a move that Wilson supported and set in motion. When the band received their MBEs from Queen Elizabeth II in October, it was unprecedented recognition for pop musicians, anticipating the honours (including knighthoods) that were regularly bestowed on the country's entertainers in subsequent decades. The award was in acknowledgement of the Beatles' contribution to the national economy and reflected the value of their popularity to the Labour government. Wilson's Cabinet minister Tony Benn, who opposed the award, thought it was equally indicative of the royal family's wish to appeal to the masses in the new era of egalitarianism and meritocracy. Britain's leadership of international culture In his book on the 1960s, social historian Arthur Marwick identifies the Beatles' US breakthrough as the "single critical event" that established "the hegemony of youth-inspired British popular culture". With other countries succumbing to the Beatles' influence, according to Simonelli, the band "virtually redefined what it meant to be British", and British culture became "the most exciting culture on earth" for the first time since the start of the industrial age. The surge in exports revenue extended to film and other commercial artistic pursuits, and recognition of London as the "Swinging City" of international culture. With the Beatles having moved to London in 1963, in Simonelli's description, they served as the "maypole" at the centre of the city's cultural influence throughout the 1960s. Marwick says they represented the popular image of a phenomenon in which "hitherto invisible swathes of British society became visible and assertive" and their 1966 single "Paperback Writer" was the song that best conveyed "the new class-defying tide of individualistic enterprise". Liverpool poet Roger McGough credited the Beatles with establishing the "mythology of Liverpool" through their 1967 songs "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", in the manner that American rock 'n' roll songs had traditionally done for US cities and roads. Beatlemania In late 1963, the British press coined the term "Beatlemania" to describe the phenomenal and increasingly hysterical interest in the Beatles. The word was first widely used following the band's 13 October appearance on Sunday Night at the London Palladium; amid reports of wild crowd scenes outside the venue, and after 15 million viewers watched the broadcast, Britain was said to be "in the grip of Beatlemania". The "yeah, yeah, yeah!" refrain of "She Loves You" was a signature hook for their European audiences. Its falsetto "ooh!"s elicited further fan delirium when accompanied by McCartney and Harrison's exaggerated shaking of their moptop hair. Once it became an international phenomenon in 1964, Beatlemania surpassed in its intensity and reach any previous examples of fan worship, including those afforded to Presley and Frank Sinatra. Displays of mania were repeated wherever the band played. When the group toured Australia in June 1964, the population afforded the visit the status of a national event. A crowd of 300,000 – the largest recorded gathering of Australians in one place – welcomed the Beatles to Adelaide. Sid Bernstein, the US promoter who arranged the band's Shea Stadium concerts, said that only Adolf Hitler had had such power over the masses. Bernstein was sure that the group "could sway a presidential election if they wanted to". Around 4,000 fans gathered outside Buckingham Palace in central London when the Beatles received their MBEs from the Queen. As the crowd chanted "God save the Beatles" and "Yeah, yeah, yeah!", some fans jostled with police officers and scaled the palace gates. Referring to this spectacle, journalist Robert Sandall later commented that "Never had a ruling monarch been so thoroughly upstaged by a group of her subjects as was Elizabeth II on [26 October 1965]." The Beatles became bored with all aspects of touring – including fans offering themselves sexually to the band, and the high-pitched screaming that rendered their performances inaudible. Beatlemania continued on a reduced scale after the band retired from touring, and after the members became solo artists. In their book Encyclopedia of Classic Rock, David Luhrssen and Michael Larson write that while boy bands such as One Direction have continued to attract audiences of screaming girls, no act has "moved pop culture forward or achieved the breadth and depth of the Beatles' fandom". US breakthrough and British Invasion Most Americans were introduced to the Beatles' music with the single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" backed with "I Saw Her Standing There", rising to the top of US charts on 1 February 1964. Both songs featured a harder-edged guitar sound that stood out as a revival of the "rebellious" spirit absent from newer rock and roll acts and as a rejection of the regular assortment of novelty songs, teen idols, folk singers and girl groups that occupied US charts in the weeks and months previous. MacDonald wrote: "every American artist, black or white, asked about 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' has said much the same: it altered everything, ushering in a new era and changing their lives." On 9 February, the Beatles gave their first live US television performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by approximately 73 million viewers in over 23 million households, or 34 per cent of the US population. The Nielsen rating service reported that it was the largest audience number ever recorded for an American television . Music journalist Neil McCormick, writing in 2015, described the Beatles' debut on the show as pop music's "big bang moment", while Stanley calls it "arguably the most significant postwar cultural event in America", adding that "Their rise, the scale of it and their impact on society, was completely unprecedented." Their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, on 16 February, was watched by around 70 million viewers. Eleven weeks before the Beatles' arrival in the US, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a source of profound national mourning that American commentators at the time linked to young people's embrace of the Beatles and their music. For many Americans, particularly young baby boomers, the Beatles' visit reignited the sense of excitement and possibility that had been taken by Kennedy's assassination. A teenage New Yorker in early 1964, author Nicholas Schaffner later wrote that the Kennedy link was "an exaggeration, perhaps", but the Beatles "more than filled the energy gap" left by the demise of 1950s rock 'n' roll for an audience accustomed to the "vacuous" music that had replaced it. For decades, the US had dominated popular entertainment culture throughout much of the world, via Hollywood films, jazz, and the music of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. In early 1964, Life magazine declared: "In [1776] England lost her American colonies. Last week the Beatles took them back." The Beatles subsequently sparked the British Invasion of the US and became a globally influential phenomenon. Recalling the Beatles' sudden popularity, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys felt that the Beatles had "eclipsed ... the whole music world". Bob Dylan recalled that, by April 1964, "a definite line was being drawn. This was something that had never happened before ... I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go." The Beatles' success in the US established the popularity of British groups and affected the musical style of American bands. In doing so, however, the Beatles inadvertently caused a sharp decrease in sales for black artists and the decline of many of the girl groups they admired. By mid 1964, several more UK acts arrived in the US, including the Dave Clark Five, the Rolling Stones, Billy J. Kramer and Gerry & the Pacemakers. Confirming the British Invasion of the US pop market, one-third of all top ten hits there in 1964 were performed by British acts. The depth of the Beatles' US impact was also reflected in a wave of easy listening adaptations of their songs, aimed at the adult market. This trend was led by the Boston Pops Orchestra recording "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and the Hollyridge Strings covering "All My Loving", after which the latter orchestra released the 1964 album The Beatles Song Book. The extent of the Beatles' impact on American music was disputed in a 2015 study conducted by the Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College London. By analysing shifts in chord progressions, beats, lyrics and vocals, the study indicated that American music was moving away from mellow sounds like doo-wop and into more energetic rock styles since the beginning of the 1960s. Professor Armand Leroi, who led the study on behalf of Imperial College, said: "They didn't make a revolution or spark a revolution, they joined one. The trend is already emerging and they rode that wave, which accounts for their incredible success." Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn said in response: "anyone who was a young person in the US when the Beatles arrived ... will tell you that the Beatles revolutionised everything." McCormick dismissed the study as "sensationalist". Personality and fashion Attitude and sensibility In the description of Rolling Stones editors, the Beatles "defined and incarnated Sixties style: smart, idealistic, playful, irreverent, eclectic". They helped popularise Northern English accents on British radio and television, reversing the preference for BBC English, and their humour and irreverence combined to mock social conventions. Writer Sean O'Hagan recalled in 2016: "Everything about them – the clothes they wore, the way they spoke, the songs they created with an effortlessness that seemed almost alchemical – suggested new ways of being. More than any of their contemporaries, they challenged the tired conventions that defined class-bound, insular, early-60s Britain." According to author Jonathan Gould, in conveying "Youthfulness, stylishness, unpretentiousness, and nonchalance", their early image defied the widely held stereotype of Britishness, and through their presentation as Liverpudlians, "the Beatles personified an iconoclastic version of their national character that proved to be as compelling to the youth of North America, Europe, Australia and parts of Asia as it was to their British fans." In his book Revolution in the Head, MacDonald describes the band members as "perfect McLuhanites" who "felt their way through life". He says of the group's initial impact: Unlike previous pop stars – programmed to recite their future itineraries and favourite colours – The Beatles replied to the press in facetious ad-libs provoked by whatever was going on in the immediate present ... Before them, pop acts had been neatly presented as soloists or well-drilled units each with its clearly identified leader. With their uncanny clone-like similarity and by all talking chattily at once, The Beatles introduced to the cultural lexicon several key Sixties motifs in one go: "mass"-ness, "working class" informality, cheery street scepticism, and – most challenging to the status quo – a simultaneity which subverted conventions of precedence in every way. Lou Christie recalled that the Beatles' emergence underlined the staidness of the US music scene, saying: "We were, in many respects, just these goofy white boys. We weren't allowed to be seen with a cigarette in our hands ... [The Beatles] were more aggressive, they were funny and they were articulate. The minute they came to America, they literally put a halt to everything that was previously happening." Hair length and clothing The Beatles' emergence coincided with a new consideration for the concept of male beauty and its elevation in importance beside feminine attractiveness. According to Marwick, the group's appearance and Kennedy's provided "the two great points of reference in this respect". The Beatles were dubbed "moptops" by some British tabloids in reference to their haircut, a mid-length hairstyle that was widely mocked by adults. It was unusually long for the era and became an emblem of rebellion to the burgeoning youth culture. In their 1986 book Re-making Love: The Feminization of Sex, authors Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs said that the Beatles' haircuts signalled androgyny and thus presented a less threatening version of male sexuality to teenage girls, while their presentable suits meant they seemed less "sleazy" than Presley to middle-class whites. Russian historian Mikhail Safonov wrote in 2003 that in the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union, mimicking the Beatles' hairstyle was seen as highly rebellious. Young people were called "hairies" by their elders, and were arrested and forced to have their hair cut in police stations. As a result of the Beatles, the traditional American male look of crewcuts or combed-back hair was replaced by a preference for long hair. Clothing styles were similarly influenced, firstly by the band's Pierre Cardin suits and Cuban-heeled Beatle boots, and later by the Carnaby Street mod fashions they wore. Along with the Rolling Stones, Dylan and the Who, the Beatles inspired thousands of young men to wear pop art-themed designs. In the late 1960s, the band's adoption of Nehru jackets and other Indian-style clothing was highly influential on Western fashion. In his 1970 "Lennon Remembers" interview, Lennon complained: "When we got here [to the US], you were all walking around in fuckin' Bermuda shorts with Boston crew cuts and stuff on your teeth ... The chicks looked like 1940's horses. There was no conception of dress or any of that jazz." Writing in 2002, music journalist David Fricke said Lennon was "right" in his withering assessment of American youth, adding that Americans were "psychologically stuck in the surface white-bread calm of the 1950s" and "ripe for blindsiding". Image and caricatures The Beatles differed from previous musical acts in their presentation as a group in which each of the individual personalities was seen as indispensable to the whole, and each member attracted fanatical devotion. According to cultural commentator Steven D. Stark, their lack of a designated leader aligned with a more typically feminine approach to collaboration, an aspect that increased their resonance among the female audience and subsequently influenced men's self-perception and cultural views on masculinity. The intensity of the Beatles' appeal as live performers was such that they were often presented with people who were physically impaired, in the assumption that the band had healing powers. When the band assumed a mystical image in the late 1960s, fans increasingly identified them as the four elements, in which each member presented a complementary and essential contribution to the alchemical whole. In 1964, the Beatles starred in the film A Hard Day's Night as fictionalised versions of themselves, which created a lasting impression of their individual personas. Lennon became known as "the smart one", McCartney "the cute one", Harrison "the quiet one", and Starr "the lucky one". Starr's personality as the band's affable, self-deprecating drummer proved especially popular with fans and the press in the US. In 1964, as coverage of the Beatles matched that of the Johnson–Goldwater presidential race, Starr was the subject of bumper stickers proclaiming "Ringo for President", as well as several tribute songs. Their Hard Day's Night characterisations were adopted again for the children's cartoon series The Beatles, which was made by King Features and broadcast weekly on ABC in the US from September 1965 to April 1969. It was the first animated TV series to depict living people and featured the Beatles (voiced by actors) having adventures while touring the world. The series was highly successful, although its focus on the pre-1967 era ensured that audiences were presented with an increasingly outdated image of the band. Towards the end of 1966, by which point the Beatles' artistic maturity had left many younger listeners yearning for their innocent, "mop-top" image, the Monkees were assembled by a pair of Hollywood-based television executives as a four-piece band in the Beatles' mould. An immediate commercial success, the Monkees' self-titled television show evoked the Beatles' personalities from Dick Lester's feature films A Hard Day's Night and Help!, with the characters of the individual Monkees developed to reflect those of the Beatles. In Marwick's view, the Monkees' creation represented "the most remarkable sign of direct British influence" on American pop culture during the 1960s. At this time, the Beatles grew moustaches, a look that defied pop convention by implying maturation and artistry over youthfulness. Their appearance was the source of confusion for some of their young fans. A Daily Mail writer complained that after emerging as "heroes of a social revolution" in 1963 and "the boys whom everybody could identify with", the Beatles had become austere and exclusive. The producers of the 1967 Disney animated film The Jungle Book hoped to include the Beatles in a scene featuring four vultures with mop-top hairstyles singing "That's What Friends Are For". After the band declined to take part, the scene was voiced by actors adopting Liverpudlian accents and the song was given a barbershop quartet arrangement. Merchandise Along with Beatles-themed wallpaper and jewellery, "Beatles wigs" were popular and widely available in UK stores from 1963. In the US, their merchandise was extensive, and marketed through Seltaeb, a local subsidiary of a company owned by Epstein's NEMS Enterprises. Among what Schaffner estimated to be "several hundred" items authorised by Seltaeb were toys, clothing, stationery, alarm clocks, pillowcases, bath products, junk food and lunchboxes, while Beatles wigs "became the best-selling novelty since yo-yo's". Beatles-brand chewing gum alone netted millions of dollars in the US. Beatle boots were also sanctioned as official merchandise by NEMS. According to Doggett, while Presley's image had similarly been exploited, "the onslaught of ephemeral artefacts aimed at Beatles fans between 1963 and 1969 dwarfed every previous campaign." The commercial exploitation extended to novelty records such as The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits and an early version of a Beatles karaoke disc. King Features' The Beatles led to a range of cartoon-style products and marketing by companies such as Nestlé, with their "Beatles' Yeah Yeah Yeah" confectionery, and Lux soap. A major merchandising campaign accompanied the release of the band's 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine, containing products that captured their psychedelic look. Growth of musicians, scenes and rock bands According to Gould, the Beatles served as the "archetype" of a rock band, in contrast to the vocal and harmony groups with which listeners were most familiar in 1964. In the US, thousands of bands sought to imitate the Beatles, some adopting English-sounding names to capitalise on the British Invasion. While the country already had a vibrant garage rock scene, the movement surged following the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Commentator Bill Dean writes that the exact figures are impossible to determine, but "the anecdotal evidence suggests thousands – if not hundreds of thousands or even more – young musicians across the country" responded by forming bands. This was sometimes to the chagrin of their parents and other adults. Tom Petty, who joined the Sundowners in Gainesville, Florida, after seeing the Beatles' US television debut, recalled: "Within weeks of that, you could drive through literally any neighborhood in Gainesville and you would hear the strains of garage bands playing ... I mean everywhere. And I'd say by a year from that time, Gainesville probably had 50 bands." The Byrds and Creedence Clearwater Revival are among the American groups said to have formed as a result of the show. Accompanying this phenomenon, the musicians typically abandoned their crewcut look and allowed their hair to grow. Joe Walsh, Nancy Wilson and Billy Joel also credited the show as the impetus for them to pursue musical careers. The proliferation of new groups was evident in many other countries. In Spain, Los Estudiantes and Los Brincos modelled themselves on the Beatles, as did the Uruguayan band Los Shakers, who were one of many groups around the world that formed as a result of A Hard Day's Night. Following the Beatles' concerts there on the 1964 world tour, new bands sprung up in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong, while some existing acts, such as the Bee Gees, instantly changed their style to match the Beatles'. The Daily Express reported in 1965 that a band known as the Candid Lads had started in the Soviet Union, with a sound and look identical to the Beatles'. Bands there were forced to play in secret due to the communist authorities' ban on rock music, and Beatles records had to be smuggled into the country. Russian musician Sasha Lipnitsky later recalled: "The Beatles brought us the idea of democracy ... For many of us, it was the first hole in the Iron Curtain." In Japan, the Beatles influenced what was dubbed the "Group Sounds" era, before which Japanese bands were mainly imitations of acts such as Presley and Pat Boone. According to music-industry executive Aki Tanaka, the Beatles' 1966 concerts in Tokyo inspired "the birth of a real Japanese rock music scene", in which local artists wrote their material rather than merely covering Western rock songs. Artistry and recognition of popular music Songwriting Through the Beatles' early success, the Lennon–McCartney partnership revolutionised songwriting in Britain by usurping the Denmark Street tradition of in-house songwriters. In the US, they similarly inspired changes to the music industry, as did the British Invasion songwriters they influenced, by combining the roles of writer and performer. This trend threatened the Brill Building writers and other professional songwriters that dominated the American music industry. According to Rolling Stones editors, the Beatles thereby "inaugurated the era of self-contained bands and forever centralized pop". Lennon and McCartney also supplied hit songs for several other artists up to 1966, including Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer, the Fourmost and the Rolling Stones, and they opened up opportunities in the US that were previously unavailable for non-performing British songwriters, such as Tony Hatch. Direct collaboration between Lennon and McCartney was limited from 1964, but their songs continued to be credited to the partnership. From 1963 to 1967, the Beatles increasingly broke with established rock and pop conventions. Adding to their sophistication as composers was the application of modal mixture, wider chord palettes, and extended form. One of the hallmarks of the Beatles' experimental period is their use of the flattened subtonic chord (VII). Although it was already a staple of rock 'n' roll, the Beatles further developed and popularised the chord's function in popular music. Another is their subversions of pop's standard AABA form. Few electric beat artists wrote songs with bridge sections until the group's breakthrough, after which the practice became ubiquitous. MacDonald describes Lennon and McCartney's growing articulacy and ambition from 1962 to 1967 as "quite vertiginous" and says that, with Harrison and Starr's collaboration in the recording studio, they "led a revolution in the very ethos of songwriting which consisted in seeing the song as a part of something larger: the record". Luhrssen and Larson describe the pair's songwriting as "more melodically and harmonically unpredictable than that of their peers", and say that the Beatles' sound "struck many ears as outrageous, especially the falsetto leaps in songs such as 'She Loves You,' which might have been inspired by Little Richard but sounded unprecedented". "A Hard Day's Night", written primarily by Lennon, begins with a ringing chord most commonly identified as G7sus4. The specifics of its harmonic construction are often scrutinised, with many writers offering different interpretations of the chord. In 2001, Rolling Stone referred to the "Hard Day's Night" chord as the most famous in rock history. Another chord described as among the "most famous" in history is the sustained E major heard at the end of "A Day in the Life" from Sgt. Pepper. Principally through McCartney's melody writing, the Beatles created many songs that became the most widely recorded of all time, including "And I Love Her", "Yesterday", "Michelle", "Eleanor Rigby", "Here, There and Everywhere", "The Fool on the Hill", "Hey Jude", "Blackbird", "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road". According to Doggett, these mainly McCartney-written songs provided contemporary relevance for "light orchestras and crooners" in the easy listening category, persuaded adults that the new generation's musical tastes had merit, and "ensured that Lennon and McCartney would become the highest-earning composers in history". Harrison's songwriting widened the Beatles' range further, although his level of contribution remained limited by Lennon and McCartney's dominance throughout the band's career. His song "Something" was also widely covered, and earned rare praise from Sinatra, who described it as "the greatest love song of the past fifty years". Competition Before the mid-1960s, competition between popular recording artists was typically measured by popularity and record sales, with artistic rivalries usually only occurring between jazz or classical musicians. Comparing its effect on 1960s popular music to Charlie Chaplin's on 1920s filmmaking, Gould credits the Beatles' increasing ambition "to write better songs" with inspiring "intense creative rivalries" between themselves and other acts who "felt a need to validate their success by experimenting with songwriting and record-making in ways that would have seemed unimaginable only a few years before." Author Robert Rodriguez writes that "The Beatles, Dylan, and the Rolling Stones have long been viewed as the Holy Trinity of 1960s rock, from whom every important development and innovation flowed." Author Carys Wyn Jones states that the "competition, interaction, and influence" between those acts (plus the Beach Boys) became "central to histories of rock". The Byrds also figured highly in their importance, to the extent that they were widely celebrated as the American answer to the Beatles. Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones were symbolic of the nascent youth revolt against institutional authority, something that was not immediately recognisable within the Beatles until 1966. The Beatles' initial clean-cut personas contrasted with the Rolling Stones' "bad boy" image, and so the music press forged a rivalry between the two acts. From 1964 onwards, the Beatles and Dylan partook in a mutual dialogue and exchange of ideas. Their engagement is referred to by Chris Smith, author of 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, as the "single phenomenon that defined the tone of 1960s popular music and the future of music in America". In August 1964, at the Delmonico Hotel in New York City, the Beatles met Dylan in person and were introduced to cannabis. Many commentators have referenced this meeting as a cultural turning point. Gould explains that, before then, the musicians' respective fanbases were "perceived as inhabiting two separate subcultural worlds": Dylan's audience of "college kids with artistic or intellectual leanings, a dawning political and social idealism, and a mildly bohemian style" contrasted with their fans, "veritable 'teenyboppers' – kids in high school or grade school whose lives were totally wrapped up in the commercialised popular culture of television, radio, pop records, fan magazines, and teen fashion. They were seen as idolaters, not idealists." He writes that within a year of the Beatles' first meeting with Dylan, "the distinctions between the folk and rock audiences would have nearly evaporated", as the Beatles' fanbase began to grow in sophistication and Dylan's audience re-engaged with adolescent concerns presented in the "newly energized and autonomous pop culture". In July 1966, Dylan suffered a motorcycle accident and spent a period in convalescence, and principally for McCartney, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys subsequently took his place as the Beatles' chief artistic rival. The two bands inspired and endeavoured to top each other with their artistry and recording techniques, but the Beach Boys failed to maintain their career momentum after 1967. According to Jones, the interplay between the two bands during the Pet Sounds era remains one of the most noteworthy episodes in rock history. Cultural legitimisation of pop music In Britain, music journalists started including pop and rock music in serious discussion as a direct consequence of the Beatles' 1964 breakthrough. Pop gained its first exposure in the arts section of one of the country's broadsheet newspapers when William Mann, The Timess classical music critic, wrote an appreciation of the Beatles in December 1963. In the United States, the Beatles were the main beneficiaries of a new widespread appreciation for pop and rock over 1966–67 among journalists and intellectuals, coinciding with the emergence there of a dedicated rock press and serious coverage of the genre in the cultural mainstream. Music critic Tim Riley identifies the Beatles as pop music's "first recording artists", whose body of work represents "very intricate art". Luhrssen and Larson say the Beatles "[made] it mandatory that serious rock bands aspire to be artists, not merely entertainers". With A Hard Day's Night in July 1964, the band became the first pop act since Buddy Holly to issue an album consisting entirely of original compositions. The accompanying feature film endeared the Beatles to intellectuals in Britain. Lennon's artistic standing was furthered by the critical and commercial success of his book of prose In His Own Write and its 1965 sequel, A Spaniard in the Works. Now feted by London society, Lennon and McCartney found inspiration among a network of non-mainstream writers, poets, comedians, film-makers and other arts-related individuals. According to Doggett, their social milieu in 1964 represented "new territory for pop" and a challenge to British class delineation as the Beatles introduced an "arty middle-class" sensibility to pop music. The albums Beatles for Sale and Help! (issued in December 1964 and August 1965, respectively) each marked a progression in the band's development, in terms of lyrical content and recording sophistication. With Help!, the Beatles became the first rock group to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Recording for Rubber Soul took place over a four-week period uninterrupted by touring, filming or radio engagements, making its creation highly unusual for the time. By the time of the album's release in December 1965, according to author Michael Frontani, each new Beatles record was received as "an expansion of the parameters of popular music, and the [group's] image reflected and promoted notions of the Beatles' artistry and importance". Simonelli describes Rubber Soul as "the first serious effort by a rock and roll act to produce an LP as an artistic statement", while author Christopher Bray deems it "the first long-playing pop record to really merit the term 'album'" and the LP that "turned pop music into high art". The standard of its all-original compositions was also responsible for a widespread shift in focus from singles to creating albums without the usual filler tracks. The Beatles incorporated influences from the English counterculture (or London underground) more readily than any of their pop rivals. Led by McCartney's absorption in the London arts scene and interest in the work of Stockhausen and Bach, this resulted in what musicologist Walter Everett terms a "revolution in the expressive capacity of mainstream rock music". The band's August 1966 album Revolver was viewed as avant-garde and, in MacDonald's description, "initiated a second pop revolution ... galvanising their existing rivals and inspiring many new ones". According to music historian Simon Philo, Revolver announced "underground London"'s arrival in pop, supplanting the sound associated with Swinging London. Released in May 1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is described by Doggett as "the biggest pop happening" to take place between the Beatles' debut on American television in February 1964 and Lennon's murder in December 1980. The album was a major critical and commercial success; through the level of attention it received from the rock press and more culturally elite publications, Sgt. Pepper achieved full cultural legitimisation for pop music and recognition for the medium as a genuine art form. Its win in the Album of the Year category at the 1968 Grammys Awards marked the first time that a rock LP had received this award. According to author Doyle Greene, the album provided "a crucial locus in the assemblage of popular music and avant-garde/experimental music – and popular culture and modernism". Chris Smith highlights Sgt. Pepper as one of the most "obvious" choices for inclusion in 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, due to its continued commercial success, the wealth of imitative works it inspired, and its ongoing recognition as "a defining moment in the history of music". The Beatles represented a diverse collection of musical styles that one critic likened to a history of Western music, and its November 1968 release was viewed as a major cultural event. The album failed to inspire the level of creative writing that Sgt. Pepper had introduced to rock criticism, as reviewers were unable to locate it within the Beatles' canon. Music critic John Harris wrote of the White Album: "it was these 30 songs that decisively opened the way for musicians to extend their horizons beyond the standard LP format." Social movements Generational awareness From 1963, the Beatles provided one of the first opportunities for female teenagers to exhibit spending power and publicly express sexual desire, while the group's image suggested a disregard for adults' opinions and parents' ideas of morality. Simonelli writes of the Beatles' emergence and its impact on 1960s youth: "British young people experimented with music, art, politics, sexual morality, fashion and the like, and the rest of the Western world watched, absorbed the changes and contributed to the process." The band's sociocultural impact in the US began with their February 1964 visit, which served as a key moment in the development of generational awareness. Writing that same month, American sociologist David Riesman said the Beatles' success was "a form of protest against the adult world"; later in 1964, The New York Times Magazine described Beatlemania as a "religion of teenage culture" that was indicative of how American youth now looked to their own age group for social values and role models. According to historian Michael James Roberts, even though their early songs avoided such issues, the band represented "cultural change and the oppositional stance of the youth culture against the establishment". The group's popularity subsequently grew into what was seen as an embodiment of sociocultural movements of the decade, and their artistic maturation reflected the era's social developments. They were widely viewed as leaders of the youth culture and such a sentiment was echoed by the mainstream press. Their 1966 songs "Paperback Writer", "Rain", "Taxman" and "Eleanor Rigby" provided social commentary, with the lyrics of "Rain" making explicit the delineation between the socially aware and those who were not. By contrast, Sgt. Pepper achieved a cross-generational appeal; in "She's Leaving Home", McCartney and Lennon sang of a real-life teenage runaway but gave an unusually sympathetic perspective on the parents' sense of loss. According to Stark, the social unity conveyed by the Beatles from the start of their career inspired the framework for the collectivist thinking that distinguished the 1960s and the emergence of the counterculture movement. He sees their English sense of humour as a defining trait of the counterculture and an inspiration for Yippie activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Gould similarly writes that, from the band's arrival in the US, teenagers were aware of the "social dimension" implicit in the group's camaraderie, matching clothes and hair, and ensemble playing. In Gould's view, as icons of the 1960s counterculture, the band became a catalyst for bohemianism and activism in various social and political arenas, fuelling movements such as women's liberation, gay liberation and environmentalism. According to documentary filmmaker Leslie Woodhead, a former Cold War spy, the Beatles' music helped persuade young Russians to defy communist ideology and begin the process that led to the fall of communism throughout Eastern Europe. He said the extent of the band's influence became apparent in the 1990s when local rock musicians told him that "not only were the Beatles colossal from the Berlin Wall to Vladivostok but that they'd played a really significant part in helping to wash away totalitarianism ... They liberated a certain spiritual energy so that two generations of Soviet kids simply gave up on building socialism and started to realise that the Cold War enemy, instead of being a threat, made wonderful music." Many young Russians learnt to speak English through the Beatles' lyrics, and the band's songs helped spread the English language throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Civil rights and support for African-American musicians Marwick writes that while American folk singers Dylan and Joan Baez were more identifiable with civil rights issues, in Beatles songs, "it was a case of music and lyrics together constructing – constantly changing – moods which never failed, it seemed, to evoke responses in large numbers of listeners of the day." Roberts highlights the significance of their US breakthrough occurring in the same year that the Civil Rights Act was passed, and also that their first US LP, Introducing ... The Beatles, was released by the African-American–owned label Vee-Jay Records. Through the album's preponderance of cover versions of recordings by black R&B artists, Roberts continues, the Beatles introduced this music to a new audience of white Americans and helped to "relegitimate" an aspect of African-American musical history. During the Beatles' US tour in August–September 1964, the group spoke out against racial segregation in the country at the time, particularly in the South. When informed that the venue for their 11 September concert, the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, was segregated, the Beatles said they would refuse to perform unless the audience was integrated. City officials relented and agreed to allow an integrated show. Although the group held their press conference there before the concert, they cancelled their reservations at the whites-only Hotel George Washington in Jacksonville. According to music journalist Bill DeMain, the Beatles' stand "gave pop music a new-found social conscience"; American singer Brian Hyland recalled of the episode: "They were really the first group to have the power to do that. They used that platform really well ... It took a lot of courage." During the tour, the band repeatedly voiced their admiration of Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, and particularly soul artists such as the Miracles, Marvin Gaye and Chuck Jackson. Miracles leader Smokey Robinson said he was especially grateful for the Beatles' championing of Motown music and their choosing to cover songs by Motown artists. He added that they "were the first white artists to ever admit that they grew up and honed themselves on black music. I loved the fact that they did that, that they were honest". The Beatles subsequently invited Mary Wells to be their support act on a UK tour and in 1965 arranged for Esther Phillips to give her first performances outside the US. According to Lewisohn, documents reveal that for their tours in 1965 and 1966, the Beatles included clauses in contracts stipulating that shows be integrated. In 1966, McCartney said they had avoided performing in South Africa "or any places where blacks would be separated", adding, "It wasn't out of any goody-goody thing; we just thought, 'Why should you separate black people from white?'" According to Moore, the Beatles and the British Invasion bands that followed them to the US initiated the process whereby Americans "gradually encountered and accepted the return of their black heritage". Opposition from conservatives The Beatles were widely condemned by conservative elements of society, as Presley and other symbols of rock and roll had been during the 1950s. Israel refused to let the band perform there in early 1964, wary of "attacks of mass hysteria" being inflicted on the country's youth. In August 1965, the Indonesian government burned the group's records in order to "preserve the national identity in the field of culture" as part of that country's twentieth anniversary celebrations of independence. In East Germany, the Beatles were blamed for a "cultural crisis" that saw artists and intellectuals pushing for more leniency from the state; by April 1966, however, the government were supportive of the Beatles and instead targeted the Rolling Stones. The US Labor Department attempted to ban the Beatles from performing in the country, motivated by cultural conservatism and after lobbying from the American Federation of Musicians. The government sought to ban all British acts in 1965, but the financial opportunities presented by the Beatles ensured that their second North American tour went ahead. From that year onwards, right-wing Christian leaders such as Bob Larson and David Noebel were vocal in their condemnation of the Beatles' influence in the US. As a spokesman for the anti-communist Christian Crusade, Noebel denounced the band as "four mop-headed anti-Christ beatniks", and published pamphlets warning that they were destroying the morals of America's youth to facilitate a communist takeover orchestrated from Moscow. By contrast, Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, said the Beatles represented "a plot by the ruling classes to distract ... youngsters from politics and bitter pondering over disgraced and shattered hopes". In the UK, criticism largely faded with the band's international breakthrough, as commentators recognised the Beatles' value to the economy. Some traditionalists were nevertheless outraged by the group being awarded MBEs, and the Beatles, as with rock music in general, remained the target of figures such as Daily Mail columnist Monica Furlong and conservative activist Mary Whitehouse. In 1967, Whitehouse campaigned against the lyric "Boy, you've been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down" in the Beatles' song "I Am the Walrus" after the BBC had aired the song as part of the band's TV film Magical Mystery Tour. The BBC duly banned the song. The following year, Lennon's relationship with Japanese avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, for whom he abandoned his wife and son, was met with strong public disapproval and racial abuse. Lennon received further condemnation from conservatives when he returned his MBE to the Queen in November 1969. He cited his opposition to the British government's support of both US involvement in the Vietnam War and Nigeria's role in the Biafra conflict, in addition to the poor chart performance of his and Ono's second Plastic Ono Band single, "Cold Turkey". Budokan, Manila and "Jesus" controversies The Japanese authorities viewed the band as subversive before they were appointed as MBEs in 1965. In the lead-up to the Beatles' concerts in Tokyo the following year, the visit was the subject of national debate as traditionalists were opposed to the group's influence and the decision to allow them to perform at the Nippon Budokan, a venue reserved for martial arts and a shrine to Japan's war dead. The Beatles received death threats and ultranationalist students demonstrated outside the Budokan during their stay. Shortly afterwards, the band played in Manila in the Philippines, at a time when the country was keen to project a pro-Western image with the recent inauguration of President Ferdinand Marcos. There, the Beatles' nonattendance at an official function organised by Imelda Marcos was perceived as an insult to the nation's first family; it led to recrimination in the local press, the band's security detail being withdrawn, and mob violence against them as they attempted to leave the country. Filipino writer Nick Joaquin said the situation was indicative of how the Philippines had been attracted to the Beatles' image without appreciating that their message was one advocating individuality, adventurousness and originality over the qualities that still defined the country: tradition and order. Joaquin likened the group's presence in Manila to Batman being transplanted to Thebes in Ancient Greece. The band enjoyed what Epstein termed a "special relationship" with the US until late July 1966, when Datebook magazine published an interview that Lennon gave for the London Evening Standard "How Does a Beatle Live?" series. In the interview, Lennon said the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus", such was the decline of Christianity. His comments caused no significant reaction in the UK, but radio stations in the US Bible Belt soon launched a boycott of Beatles music and organised bonfires of the band's records and merchandise. For some Southern commentators, the furore over Lennon's alleged blasphemy allowed them to air their suppressed grievances regarding the Beatles' long hair and the group's support for African-American musicians. Spain and South Africa joined in the radio ban, as did other stations in the US, and the Vatican issued a statement condemning Lennon's remark. At Epstein's insistence, Lennon apologised during a press conference at the start of the band's US tour. Members of the Ku Klux Klan threatened reprisals against the Beatles, particularly when they were due to play in Memphis, but the tour passed without major incident. Further to their experiences in Tokyo and Manila, the "Jesus" controversy confirmed the Beatles' decision to retire as live performers in 1966. Another religious controversy ensued in the US in reaction to the band's 1969 single "The Ballad of John and Yoko", due to Lennon's use of the word "Christ" and reference to crucifixion. Idealism and the counterculture Rubber Soul included Lennon's "The Word", the lyrics of which anticipated the ethos behind the counterculture's 1967 Summer of Love, while Revolver included a number of songs whose lyrics address themes of death, isolation and transcendence from material concerns. Of "Tomorrow Never Knows", Lennon's evocation of an LSD trip, MacDonald writes that the song's message "launched the till-then élite-preserved concept of mind-expansion into pop, simultaneously drawing attention to consciousness-enhancing drugs and the ancient religious philosophies of the Orient, utterly alien to Western thought in their anti-materialism, rapt passivity, and world-sceptical focus on visionary consciousness". In author Shawn Levy's description, Revolver presented the Beatles as "the world's first household psychedelics, avatars of something wilder and more revolutionary than anything pop culture had ever delivered before". From 1966, the Beatles began to promulgate a world view espousing LSD-inspired higher consciousness, led by Lennon and Harrison defying Epstein's insistence that the group refrain from commenting on political issues such as the Vietnam War. The controversy surrounding Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" remark reinforced their determination to speak out and furthered their standing in the emerging counterculture. Cultural commentator Mark Hertsgaard writes that the band did not directly address racism, war or social justice in their songs from this period, yet a "sensibility ... permeated their music" and "The essence of the Beatles' message was not simply that the world had to change, but, more importantly, that it could change." He sees this best exemplified in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and says that Harrison's song "Within You Without You" "contained the album's most overt expression of the Beatles' shared belief in spiritual awareness and social change". Abbie Hoffman likened Sgt. Pepper to "Beethoven coming to the supermarket", adding: "It summed up so much of what we were saying politically, culturally, artistically, expressing our inner feelings and our view of the world in a way that was so revolutionary." On 25 June 1967, the Beatles premiered "All You Need Is Love" live on the BBC's Our World satellite broadcast before an international audience estimated at 400 million. In his feature on the song in Rolling Stone, Gavin Edwards writes that when "All You Need Is Love" was issued as a single weeks later, it reached "Number One all over the world, providing the sing-song anthem for the Summer of Love, with a sentiment that was simple but profound". Simonelli credits the song with formally announcing the arrival of flower power ideology as a mainstream concept. Psychiatrist R.D. Laing, who incorporated the Beatles' and Dylan's music and LSD in his treatment at his Kingsley Hall practice, recalled of the song's relevance: "Everyone was getting the feel of the world as a global village – as us, one species ... One of the most heartening things about the Beatles was that they gave expression to a shared sense of celebration around the world, a sense of the same sensibility." In response to the political events and more turbulent atmosphere of 1968, the Beatles released "Revolution", in the lyrics to which Lennon espoused a pacifist agenda over violent confrontation. The song inspired the first in-depth debate regarding the connection between rock music and politics, where beforehand music journalists and political radicals in the US had mostly viewed their respective fields in isolation. Lennon's stance drew heavy criticism from New Left writers as the single's release coincided with the violent subjugation of Vietnam War protestors at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and condemnation in the West of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and its crushing of attempts to introduce democratic reforms there. With its more universal message, McCartney's "Hey Jude", the A-side of the single, was adopted as an anthem by Czech citizens in their struggle. The Beatles was similarly attacked by the radical left. While the counterculture adopted "Piggies" as an anti-establishment anthem, many radicals viewed the band's use of parody and satire throughout the album as evidence of their disengagement with pressing political issues. The Beatles' influence on the more radicalised sectors of the counterculture and the New Left declined as the band refused to engage in direct activism against the establishment. Lennon furthered his stance by campaigning for world peace with Ono in 1969 and, in Simonelli's description, remained the "most popular political voice in rock music" until 1972. The Beatles retained their social influence through to the band's break-up, and their idealism continued to resonate in the politics of the Vietnam War era. Released in September 1969, Abbey Road included "Come Together", which Lennon began writing as a campaign song for Timothy Leary's bid to become governor of California. Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" was adopted by George McGovern in his campaign for the US presidency, the initial success of which, according to Schaffner, was a "triumph for the counterculture's attempt to wield power via conventional electoral politics". Manson, "Paul is dead" and break-up From Revolver onwards, analysing the Beatles' lyrics for hidden meaning became a popular trend in the US. The lyrics on the band's 1968 double album progressed from being vague to open-ended and prone to misinterpretation, such as "Glass Onion" (the line "the walrus was Paul") and "Piggies" ("what they need's a damn good whacking"). In August 1969, Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and six other individuals were murdered by members of the Manson Family, acting on Charles Manson's interpretation of White Album songs such as "Helter Skelter", "Piggies" and "Revolution 9". Within weeks, unrelated rumours of McCartney's death began to spread, based on perceived clues left in the Beatles' lyrics and record sleeves. It was alleged that he had been replaced by a look-alike. MacDonald cites Manson's Helter Skelter scenario as an example of the many "crackpot fixations" that the Beatles inspired in their drug-influenced audience, and a dangerous escalation of the otherwise harmless obsession that encouraged rumours such as the "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory. Schaffner described the latter as "the most monumental hoax since Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast persuaded thousands of panicky New Jerseyites that Martian invaders were in the vicinity". Its escalation in 1969, particularly in the US, was informed by the counterculture's disillusionment with society and, according to American broadcaster Vin Scelsa, indicative of how songs by the Beatles, Dylan and the Rolling Stones were received as "personal message[s], worthy of endless scrutiny" and "guidelines on how to live your life". Both the Manson murders and the Beatles' break-up are often cited as marking the decade's closure. According to Burns, the break-up in April 1970 was "like the Kennedy assassination all over again, or one's parents divorcing". The event was afforded the attention of a presidential assassination or the 1969 Moon landing, as commentators analysed the causes and speculated about the possibilities of a reunion. Burns writes that, throughout the 1970s, there persisted a sense that if the Beatles re-formed, it might revive "the 'era' that had seemed to have passed. When Lennon died, that truly was the end of ... the innocent, comforting, naive belief that the world at large could, somehow, be 'together' in the 1960s sense of the term." Drug culture According to music critic Jim DeRogatis, the Beatles are seen as the "Acid Apostles of the New Age". The band's connection with recreational drugs was important to their position as leaders of the counterculture, as was their embrace of Indian religion. According to Kureishi, drugs had long been connected to music, but "the Beatles were the first to parade their particular drug use – marijuana and LSD – without shame ... The Beatles made taking drugs seem an enjoyable, fashionable and liberating experience, like them, you would see and feel in ways you hadn't imagined possible." The band's drug-taking became public knowledge with the release of Sgt. Pepper. "A Day in the Life", the album's closing track, was banned by the BBC for an alleged drug reference in the line "I'd love to turn you on"; with "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", the title was widely read as a code for LSD. Although he had long resisted Lennon and Harrison's urging before trying the drug, McCartney announced in a Life article in June 1967 that he had taken LSD. When asked to confirm his statement by an ITN reporter, McCartney repeated that he had taken the drug. In the UK, according to MacDonald, the admission "brought howls of righteous anger on their heads" in a manner similar to the 1966 Jesus controversy. As a show of support, Lennon, Harrison and Epstein announced that they too had taken LSD. In July 1967, all four Beatles added their signatures to a petition demanding the legalisation of marijuana and paid for its publication in a full-page ad in The Times. McCartney's admission formalised the link between rock music and drugs, and, as in the 1966 controversy, attracted scorn from American religious leaders and conservatives. In early August 1967, Harrison made a well-publicised visit to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, the epicentre of the counterculture during the Summer of Love, which was viewed as a further endorsement of the drug culture. Leary, an LSD advocate whose text The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead Lennon had used in his lyrics for "Tomorrow Never Knows", declared the Beatles to be "the wisest, holiest, most effective avatars (Divine Incarnate, God Agents) that the human race has ever produced". A United Nations report stated that the Beatles, along with the Rolling Stones and other rock bands, promoted drug use through their music, and that young listeners were following their lead. Bray writes that, rather than advocating drug-taking as a road to "mindless oblivion", the Beatles' espousal of LSD was focused on enlightenment and was therefore one of their "key legacies to the counterculture". In early 1967, the Beatles' elevated status as MBEs ensured that Harrison and his wife, English model Pattie Boyd, were allowed to leave a party in Sussex before Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones were arrested on drugs charges. As a result of McCartney's LSD admission, however, the British authorities' indulgence of the band started to wane significantly. According to Harris, the turning point was Magical Mystery Tour, which was broadcast on Boxing Day 1967 and earned the group their first scathing reviews. In October 1968, Lennon and Ono were arrested on charges of cannabis possession; Lennon maintained he had been warned of the raid and that the drugs were planted by the arresting officers from the London Drug Squad. The same senior officer, Norman Pilcher, arrested Harrison and Boyd for possession in March 1969. Harrison also said that the evidence, which was found on a carpet, was planted, since: "I keep my socks in the sock drawer and my stash in the stash box. Anything else they must have brought." With the release of "Cold Turkey", which the other Beatles had rejected as a possible single, Lennon made heroin addiction the subject of a pop hit for the first time. As part of an escalating national debate that had triggered an investigation by the US Congress, Vice-president Spiro Agnew launched a campaign in 1970 to address the issue of American youth being "brainwashed" into taking drugs through the music of the Beatles and other rock artists. Spirituality and Transcendental Meditation The Beatles' interest in Eastern religions is described by MacDonald as arguably the "most striking example" of the band's ability to transform a minor social trend into a world-wide phenomenon and thereby "magnify" cultural developments during the second half of the 1960s. From 1967 to 1968, the group were promoters of Transcendental Meditation and the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which resulted in Transcendental Meditation becoming a worldwide phenomenon. As a result of the coverage given to the Beatles' interest, words such as "mantra" and "guru" became commonly used in the West for the first time. While the band's new, anti-LSD message was met with approval, their championing of the Maharishi and his TM technique was often the subject of confusion and ridicule in the mainstream press, particularly in Britain. Before departing for the Maharishi's ashram in Rishikesh in February 1968, the Beatles recorded two songs that reflected their interest in TM: Lennon's "Across the Universe" and Harrison's "The Inner Light". Philip Goldberg, in his book American Veda, writes that the band's stay in Rishikesh "may have been the most momentous spiritual retreat since Jesus spent those forty days in the wilderness". Despite their later rejection of the Maharishi, the Beatles generated wider interest in Transcendental Meditation, which encouraged the study of Eastern spirituality in Western popular culture. MacDonald credits Harrison with inspiring "the West's mainstream acquaintance with Hindu religion and creat[ing] the late-'60s so-called Spiritual Revival", and he deems this "a fundamental cultural sea-change ... [and] an abiding testimony to Harrison's importance as a counter-cultural figure". Spiritual biographer Gary Tillery also recognises the Beatles, or more specifically Harrison, as having "abruptly brought Indian spirituality to everyday awareness" through their association with the Maharishi. Tillery writes that, while the influence of Indian gurus such as Vivekananda, Yogananda, the Maharishi and Prabhupada was well established by the late 1960s, it was the Beatles' endorsement of their respective philosophies that most contributed to yoga and meditation centres becoming ubiquitous in Western cities and towns over subsequent decades. According to author Andrew Grant Jackson: The Beats had promoted Buddhism since the 1950s, but it was George Harrison's songs espousing Hindu philosophy and featuring Indian musicians, and the Beatles' study of Transcendental Meditation, that truly kick-started the human potential movement of the 1970s (rebranded New Age in the 1980s). In this way, the musicians helped expand the freedom of religion the United States was founded on to encompass options outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. Artistic presentation The Beatles introduced new methods of artistic presentation for pop musicians. They were the first band to be fully marketed through television and continued to find new ways to disseminate their music through the medium. As live performers, they pioneered the world tour and stadium concerts, as sports stadiums became the primary venues for rock tours. Gould says that, aside from their influence on pop songwriting, the Beatles played "a leading role in revolutionizing the way that popular records were made, the way that popular records were listened to ... and the role that popular music itself would play in people's lives". The band's achievements were a key factor in the music industry becoming a multi-million-dollar enterprise and one that approached Hollywood film-making in terms of worldwide influence and turnover. In 1965, the Beatles' music publishing company Northern Songs was floated on the London Stock Exchange, a move that was unprecedented for a band's song catalogue. The flotation defied analysts' predictions by becoming a major financial success. Record formats Both sides of the Beatles' singles were often major US hits, an achievement that helped elevate the perception of a B-side from its role as a disposable song. The group's December 1965 single pairing "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out" was the first example of a double A-side single in Britain. Its success popularised the format and, in giving equal treatment to two songs, allowed recording artists to show their versatility. The band issued further double A-sides – "Eleanor Rigby" / "Yellow Submarine", "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" and "Something" / "Come Together" – when they thought that both songs in the pairing were equally strong. Their Magical Mystery Tour double EP, containing the six new songs from the TV film, was also the first example of that format being used in the UK. In January 1966, Billboard magazine cited the initial US sales of Rubber Soul (1.2 million copies over nine days) as evidence of teenage record-buyers increasingly moving towards the LP format. According to Gould, Sgt. Peppers impact was such that it "revolutionize[d] both the aesthetics and the economics of the record business in ways that far outstripped the earlier pop explosions triggered by the Elvis phenomenon of 1956 and the Beatlemania phenomenon of 1963". Although The Beatles was not the first rock double album, it was the longest up to that time, at close to 94 minutes. Album artwork The Beatles' album covers furthered the medium as an art form and were widely imitated. Doggett recognises the cover photos for With the Beatles and Rubber Soul as examples of the band's image being used to "test the limits of the portrait", a movement that was also reflected in the cover designs for contemporary albums by Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Robert Freeman's monochrome cover shot for With the Beatles (or Capitol's Meet the Beatles! in the US) departed from convention, and alarmed EMI, by showing the band members looking austere and unsmiling. This stance was heightened in Freeman's cover portrait for Beatles for Sale, which departed further from the standard pop LP by reducing the album title to minuscule type and otherwise making no mention of the band's name. According to Schaffner, each Beatles LP cover represented a "revolution in artwork" starting with Rubber Soul. The latter featured a distorted image of the band's faces, which were nevertheless so instantly recognisable by 1965 that no artist credit was necessary. For the US LP Yesterday and Today in 1966, the Beatles supplied Capitol with a cover showing them in butcher's white coats and clutching raw meat and dismembered dolls. Known as the "butcher cover", it was intended as a comment on the Vietnam War, although the photo was also interpreted as a criticism of Capitol's policy of altering the content of Beatles albums for the North American market. American disc jockeys and retailers were appalled by the image; KRLA Beat magazine described it as "the most nauseating album cover ever seen in the US". Capitol soon recalled all copies of the album and replaced the cover with a less provocative band portrait. The episode predated cover controversies such as those for LPs by the Rolling Stones (with Beggars Banquet) and Blind Faith in the late 1960s and by Alice Cooper, Mom's Apple Pie, Roxy Music and Golden Earring in the 1970s. Writing in their book The Art of the LP, Johnny Morgan and Ben Wardle say the Beatles were arguably the leaders in "creating identity" through album artwork, an approach they consider motivated by the group's retirement as live performers, as well as the catalyst for record company art designers to incorporate drug allusions in their LP covers following the example set by Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. The design for Revolver was markedly different from LP covers of 1966, particularly in its eschewing of vibrant psychedelic colours for black-and-white; in Gould's view, it supported the aesthetic of the music and the Beatles' determination to reinvent themselves on record. Created by Klaus Voormann, the band's friend from their years in Hamburg, the cover combined line-drawing caricatures of the Beatles' faces with a collage of older photos. In the line drawings, Voormann drew inspiration from the work of the nineteenth-century illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, who was the subject of a long-running exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum and highly influential on fashion and design themes of the time. Voormann placed the various photos within the tangle of hair connecting the four faces, thereby, in Rodriguez's description, capturing both the long hair synonymous with the band's public image and "the explosion of ideas that were pouring out of their heads". According to author Ian Inglis, the cover for Sgt. Pepper is widely recognised for demonstrating an "unprecedented correspondence between music and art, time and space", and it initiated an acceptance of album artwork as an "integral component" of the listening experience. The LP's gatefold packaging included cardboard cutouts and, for the first time in a pop album, printed lyrics. The inclusion of the lyrics infuriated sheet music publishers, who lost the revenue from sales of the songs' sheet music. In the late 1990s, the BBC included the Sgt. Pepper cover in its list of British masterpieces of twentieth-century art and design, placing it ahead of the red telephone box, Mary Quant's miniskirt, and the Mini motorcar. The cover of The Beatles contrasted with that of Sgt. Pepper by featuring a minimalist concept of plain white, with the title rendered in plain type. Each copy was individually numbered on the cover, thereby lending a uniqueness to each one and reflecting a tenet of conceptual art. Film and music videos A Hard Day's Night broke new ground in the field of British and American musical feature films, particularly in its abandoning of the genre's standard rags-to-riches premise for a comedic presentation of the artists playing themselves. Film historian Stephen Glynn describes it as "the canonical pop music film". He highlights the innovative techniques Lester uses in the sequence for "Can't Buy Me Love", as does Saul Austerlitz, who deems it the precursor to the modern music video. Lester's use of devices from the European art-house tradition, combined with the film's comedic and satirical qualities, ensured that A Hard Day's Night defied easy categorisation and won critical recognition for the rock music film. Andrew Sarris of The Village Voice called it "the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals". With Help!, Lester presented the Beatles in "one of the central surrealist texts" of the 1960s, according to Bray. The film uses pop art visuals and satirises James Bond films, particularly the latter's depiction of the British Secret Service as an efficiently run organisation, and one enjoying a level of influence equal to its US counterpart in their shared operations. In addition to inspiring The Monkees, the film influenced the Batman TV series. Starting with "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out" in late 1965, the band filmed promotional clips for their singles to circumvent the industry norm of having to make numerous personal appearances on television shows. The Beatles' promotional clips anticipated the music video and the rise of MTV in the 1980s. The clips for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" are considered pioneering works in the medium. Both avoided performance of the song in response to the 1966 Musicians' Union's ban on miming on TV; in the case of "Strawberry Fields Forever", the clip employs abstract imagery and features reverse film effects, stop motion animation, jump-cuts from day- to night-time, superimposition and close-up shots. Referring to the 1968 clip for "Hey Jude" and the sight of the Beatles engulfed by a crowd made up of "young, old, male, female, black, brown, and white" fans, Hertsgaard describes it as "a quintessential sixties moment, a touching tableau of contentment and togetherness". Yellow Submarine, the Beatles' third film for United Artists, provided a revolution in animated film and allowed animators to fully express ideas using psychedelic visuals. It marked a departure from the confines of Disney's productions and was credited with saving the feature-length animated film. Austerlitz describes the Beatles' rooftop performance of "Get Back" as "legendary". Filmed in January 1969 for the finale to the United Artists documentary film Let It Be, the clip was homaged by U2 in the video for their 1987 single "Where the Streets Have No Name" and by Red Hot Chili Peppers in the video for their 2011 single "The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie". As dedicated recording artists In Gould's description, the Beatles' career trajectory was largely self-determined and free of the show business considerations that had limited and defined the model of stardom represented by Presley and Sinatra. The band's decision to retire from live performance in 1966 and become a group focused solely on studio recording had no precedent. Given the premium placed on concerts, the press assumed the Beatles were due to break up. From that year onwards, according to Everett, their albums "each suggested ... a different set of rules and that these rules were dictated by the artists". Barry Miles, a leading figure in the 1960s London underground, described Revolver as the "step-change" that signalled "the way forward for all rock musicians who wondered if there was life after teen scream status". According to Doyle Greene, while academics disagree on whether the Beatles were modernists or postmodernists, Sgt. Pepper "arguably marked rock's music's entry into postmodernism as opposed to high-modernism". At McCartney's suggestion, the group adopted alter egos as members of the fictitious Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an approach that inspired similar practices by glam rock acts of the 1970s. McCartney assumed an unofficial leadership role of the Beatles following Epstein's death in August 1967, but his bandmates soon challenged this position after the critical failure of Magical Mystery Tour. Stark cites the TV film as the first example of the Beatles being afflicted by "Michael Jordan syndrome", in that they excelled as songwriters and recording artists but mistakenly believed that their talents would transfer effectively to film and business projects. The group recorded their 1968 double album in an often divisive atmosphere, which was partly a backlash against the level of McCartney's involvement in the band's activities. The postmodern traits of politics, parody and pastiche were the subject of adverse scrutiny on The Beatles. Everett says that for the majority of baby boomers, the White Album represents "the double album" of the era. Cultural critic Camille Paglia likened the Beatles' final recording projects – the Get Back filmed rehearsals, which subsequently produced Let It Be, and Abbey Road – to the last phase in a "tripartite pattern" that typified the early, high and late periods of painters such as Picasso and Donatello; within this final phase, just as "major artists revolt, resimplify", the band sought to abandon the studio sophistication of Sgt. Pepper. Abbey Road reflected a compromise in the diverging artistic visions of Lennon and McCartney but became the Beatles' best-selling album. In Stark's description, some critics came to view the LP as the band's "farewell to their fans and an attack on 'selfishness and self-gratification'", particularly through McCartney's closing statement in the side two "Long Medley". Apple Corps The Beatles founded Apple Corps in January 1968. The company was intended as an alternative system of cultural production and consumption, run on countercultural principles whereby artists would not have to conform to established industry practice. McCartney likened its ethos to "Western communism". Schaffner described Apple Corps as "a Pepperland of their own" and "the first multi-million dollar, multi-media conglomerate to be operated both by and for the turned-on generation without any interference from the 'men in suits'". One of several divisions within the conglomerate was Apple Records, which Burns calls "the first record label of any consequence started by a band". The EMI-distributed label allowed the band members to further their individual interests and support artists of their choice, and it was a rare example of an artist-run label that progressed beyond a vanity project. Philo writes that, with the international success of the singles "Hey Jude" and Mary Hopkin's "Those Were the Days", "Apple's launch was comfortably the most successful label launch of all time." By 1970, with Harrison and McCartney as its principal producers, it had launched the international careers of acts such as Billy Preston, James Taylor and Badfinger. Along with its subsidiary Zapple Records, Apple provided an outlet for Lennon to present himself as a fully fledged avant-garde artist in his collaborations with Ono, a direction that was at odds with the Beatles' work. In doing so, according to Schaffner, Lennon attracted ridicule and admiration alike as his work resembled "a one-way mirror that offered the world a clearer, more intimate picture of a celebrity than it had ever before known on such a scale". Harrison also issued solo albums on the label in the late 1960s, starting with the Wonderwall Music soundtrack. Author Peter Lavezzoli's describes the top 20 UK chart placing of the Radha Krishna Temple's "Hare Krishna Mantra" single, which Harrison produced in 1969, as an "astonishing achievement" that was indicative of the Beatles' ability to influence by association. Until the label's closure in the mid-1970s, Apple had the highest success rate of any British record company with regard to UK chart hits. While Apple Corps soon floundered, it provided the inspiration for corporate philosophies adopted by companies such as Ben & Jerry's, Apple Computer, Inc. and Google. Beatles historian Bruce Spizer identifies the Apple iPod as the realisation of Lennon's idea of combining music, film and electronics. Music and recording aesthetics Jangle, folk rock and power pop Music journalist Mark Kemp credits the Beatles with leading pop music's expansion into styles such as world music, psychedelia, avant-pop and electronica, and attracting a bohemian audience that had previously focused on jazz and folk. According to Luhrssen and Larson, the Beatles affected every genre of rock music except jazz rock. Together with the Byrds, they are commonly credited with launching the popularity of the "jangly" sound that defined jangle pop. Harrison was one of the first people to own a Rickenbacker 360/12, an electric guitar with twelve strings. His use of this guitar during the recording of A Hard Day's Night helped to popularise the model, and the jangly sound became so prominent that Melody Maker termed it the Beatles' "secret weapon". Roger McGuinn liked the effect so much that he made it his signature guitar sound with the Byrds. Within a year of their 1964 meeting, the Beatles and Dylan adopted elements of each other's respective genres, rock and folk, into their music. Both acts became a significant influence on the folk rock movement that followed in 1965. In Jackson's view, it was Harrison's twelve-string arpeggios at the end of the Beatles' July 1964 single, "A Hard Day's Night", that "birthed" the folk-rock sound. Dubbed for the Byrds' debut single, a cover of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", the term "folk rock" referred to "Dylanesque lyrics combined with rock rhythm and Beatlesque harmonies". In response to the Byrds, the Beatles developed the jangle-pop sound of folk rock with the treble-heavy guitars on the Rubber Soul tracks "If I Needed Someone" and "Nowhere Man". Gould describes the altered US edition of Rubber Soul as the release that encouraged "legions of folk-music enthusiasts" to embrace pop. According to The Encyclopedia of Country Music, building on the Beatles for Sale track "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party", Rubber Soul was as an early example of country rock, anticipating the Byrds' 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. According to author Carl Caferelli, while the Who have been credited for heralding the power pop genre, "the story really begins circa 1964, with the commercial ascension of the Beatles in America." He recognises the Beatles as the embodiment of the "pop band" ideal. Only a few acts continued the tradition of Beatles-style pop during the first half of the 1970s, but late in the decade, there was a renewed interest in the music and culture of the 1960s, with examples such as the Beatlemania musical and the growing mod revival. From the mid-1970s onwards, power pop bands drew inspiration from the jangle guitars, vocal harmonies and sense of "teenage innocence" that had been characteristics of the Merseybeat sound first popularised by the Beatles. In a 1991 Los Angeles Times article covering newer power pop bands, Chris Willman wrote that many of the groups were "very" influenced by the Beatles, although "not always directly", as some of the musicians said that they were instead predominately influenced by 1970s and 1980s artists who emulated the Beatles. Recording practices and electronic music In his role as the Beatles' record producer, George Martin is generally credited with helping to popularise the idea of the recording studio as an instrument used for in-studio composition. Although he was nominally the Beatles' producer, however, from 1964 he ceded control to the band, allowing them to use the studio as a workshop for their ideas and later as a sound laboratory. Musicologist Olivier Julien writes that the Beatles' "gradual integration of arranging and recording into one and the same process" began as early as 1963, but developed in earnest during the sessions for Rubber Soul and Revolver and "ultimately blossomed" during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper. In acquiring control over the recording process, whereby Martin and his engineers became facilitators of the musicians' ideas, the Beatles reversed the strict hierarchy that had long been in place at EMI. In addition to inspiring other artists, their example helped break the hold that EMI and Decca Records had on the British recording industry, leading to the growth of independent studios there, including the Beatles' own Apple Studio. In Everett's description, Revolver was both an "innovative example" of electronic music and a work that "advanced the leading edge of the rock world". The album makes full use of an assortment of studio tricks such as varispeed and backwards (or backmasked) taping; according to authors Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, artificial double tracking (ADT), backwards recording, and close-miked drums were among the nine techniques that the Revolver sessions introduced into the recording world for the first time. The 1966 B-side "Rain", recorded during the Revolver sessions, was the first pop recording to include reversed sounds, while the album track "I'm Only Sleeping" included the first example of backwards lead guitar on a pop recording. Citing composer and producer Virgil Moorefield's book The Producer as Composer, author Jay Hodgson highlights Revolver as representing a "dramatic turning point" in recording history through its dedication to studio exploration over the "performability" of the songs, as this and subsequent Beatles albums reshaped listeners' preconceptions of a pop recording. "Tomorrow Never Knows", according to author David Howard, was one of two pop recordings that ensured that the studio "was now its own instrument" (the other being Phil Spector's "River Deep – Mountain High"). ADT soon became a standard pop production technique, and led to related developments such as the artificial chorus effect. MacDonald credits the use of damping and close-miking on Starr's drums with creating a "three-dimensional" sound that, along with other Beatles innovations, engineers in the US would soon adopt as standard practice. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, according to Julien, represents the "epitome of the transformation of the recording studio into a compositional tool", marking the moment when "popular music entered the era of phonographic composition." Quoting a composer from the UCLA School of Music, Time magazine's appreciation of Sgt. Pepper recognised the Beatles as having adopted concepts first pioneered by the Cologne group, thereby making an "enormous contribution to electronic music". Musician and producer Alan Parsons believed that with Sgt. Pepper, "people then started thinking that you could spend a year making an album and they began to consider an album as a sound composition and not just a musical composition. The idea was gradually forming of a record being a performance in its own right and not just a reproduction of a live performance." Released on The Beatles, the eight-minute "Revolution 9" was an overt exercise in electronic music and the avant-garde. MacDonald identifies the track as another example of the Beatles introducing a previously elite scene to a mainstream audience and describes it as "the world's most widely distributed avant-garde artifact". In early 1969, Harrison became one of the first musicians in the UK to own a Moog synthesizer, which the Beatles went on to use on Abbey Road tracks such as "Here Comes the Sun" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". Writing in his book on electronic music, author Thom Holmes says that in this way the Beatles were "one of the first groups to effectively integrate the sounds of the Moog into their music". Psychedelia and progressive music Western classical fusion Music critics Robert Christgau and Mark Ellen each identify Rubber Soul as the album that laid the foundations for psychedelia. Citing a quantitative study of tempos in music from the era, Everett identifies it as a work that was "made more to be thought about than danced to", and an album that "began a far-reaching trend" in its slowing-down of the tempos typically used in pop and rock music. Many baroque-rock works appeared soon afterwards, particularly due to Martin's harpsichord-like solo on the track "In My Life", while the album also marked the introduction into pop of the pump organ or harmonium. Revolver ensured that psychedelic pop emerged from its underground roots and into the mainstream, while "Rain" originated British psychedelic rock. The chamber-orchestrated "Eleanor Rigby" is cited by Simonelli as an example of the Beatles' influence being such that, whatever the style of song, it helped to define the parameters of rock music. The 1967 double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" comprised two songs in which Lennon and McCartney, respectively, celebrated their Liverpool upbringing. Simonelli writes that the songs instilled the Romantic artistic tradition as a central tenet of psychedelic rock. In MacDonald's view, "Strawberry Fields Forever" launched both the "English pop-pastoral mood" typified by bands such as Pink Floyd, Family, Traffic and Fairport Convention, and English psychedelia's LSD-inspired preoccupation with "nostalgia for the innocent vision of a child". The Mellotron's appearance on the track remains the most celebrated use of the instrument on a pop or rock recording. Together with the resonant tone of Starr's drums, the cello arrangement on "Strawberry Fields Forever" (as with "I Am the Walrus" from Magical Mystery Tour) was much admired by other musicians and producers, and proved highly influential on 1970s bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard. According to Everett, the Beatles' "experimental timbres, rhythms, tonal structures, and poetic texts" on Rubber Soul and Revolver "encouraged a legion of young bands that were to create progressive rock in the early 1970s". Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (along with Pet Sounds) is largely viewed as originating the progressive rock genre due to the album's lyrical unity, extended structure, complexity, eclecticism, experimentalism and influences derived from classical music forms. For several years following its release, straightforward rock and roll was supplanted by a growing interest in extended form, and numerous English psychedelic bands developed characteristics of the Beatles' music (specifically their classical influence) further than either the Beatles or contemporaneous West Coast psychedelic bands. Art pop is often traced to the Beatles' first recording with a string quartet ("Yesterday") in conjunction with the group's mid-1960s contemporaries. AllMusic states that the first wave of art rock musicians were inspired by Sgt. Pepper and believed that for rock music to grow artistically, they should incorporate elements of European and classical music to the genre. Sgt. Pepper is also frequently cited as the first true concept album, a medium that became central to progressive rock. According to Moore, "Even though previous albums had set a unified mood (notably Sinatra's Songs for Swinging Lovers), it was on the basis of the influence of Sgt. Pepper that the penchant for the concept album was born." Progressive soul artists at the turn of the 1970s, such as Stevie Wonder, George Clinton, and War, drew on the Beatles' album-oriented approach and experimentation with non-traditional music influences. As bandleader for Parliament and Funkadelic, Clinton specifically pointed to how the Beatles "made an art out of nonsense" on songs such as "I Am the Walrus", alongside other influences from Bob Dylan's music and "Black Power" literature. Raga rock and Eastern fusion Indian culture, in the form of music and mysticism, was a significant component of the Beatles' image. Following on from the Kinks, the Yardbirds and the Beatles themselves (with "Ticket to Ride") incorporating droning guitars to mimic the qualities of the Indian sitar, Rubber Souls "Norwegian Wood" featured the first use of the instrument by a Western pop musician. Played by Harrison, the sitar part launched a craze that Indian classical musician Ravi Shankar termed "the great sitar explosion", as the instrument became a popular feature in raga rock and psychedelic music. The song is often identified as the first example of raga rock, a subgenre that was officially launched by the Byrds with their March 1966 single "Eight Miles High". Revolver featured two overtly Indian-styled songs: "Tomorrow Never Knows", with its foundation of heavy tambura drone, and "Love You To". According to the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Revolver was the first major American-derived popular music to incorporate Asian techniques and instrumentation. In his book Popular World Music, Andrew Shahriari writes that the Beatles are not usually recognised as world music artists, yet their use of Indian musical instruments, which was led by Harrison's interest, was "revolutionary" in the context of 1960s European and American popular music. While Harrison was not the only rock musician to experiment with Indian styles in the mid-1960s, the Beatles' association with the genre ensured that Indian classical music reached its widest audience, through songs such as "Within You Without You". In his 1997 book Indian Music and the West, ethnomusicologist Gerry Farrell said that "nearly thirty years on, the Beatles' 'Indian' songs remain among the most imaginative and successful examples of this type of fusion – for example, 'Blue Jay Way' and 'The Inner Light.'" Rock 'n' roll revival and heavy metal The Beatles' March 1968 single "Lady Madonna" was at the forefront of a contemporary rock 'n' roll revival, which marked the end of the psychedelic era. In the song, McCartney sought to create a boogie-woogie piece in the style of Fats Domino. Harris says that in addition to anticipating similar revival recordings by the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, "Lady Madonna" ensured that Berry and Little Richard returned to "the rarified pedestals where the British Invasion groups had originally placed them". The Beatles directly influenced the development of heavy metal in the late 1960s. "Helter Skelter" was a product of McCartney's attempt to create a sound as loud and dirty as possible, and the recording has been noted for its "proto-metal roar" by AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine. Recorded in the hard rock style with heavily distorted guitars, "Revolution" was the subject of complaints at retail level in 1968, since many listeners assumed the sound was the result of a manufacturing error. Discussing Lennon's "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", Guitar Worlds Josh Hart and Damien Fanelli called the song a "bluesy rocker" that "might have inadvertently started doom metal". Jo Kendall of Classic Rock magazine similarly commented that the song predated "Black Sabbath's creation of doom rock by several months" and noted the "Santana-like Latin blues section" in the song. James Manning, of Time Out London, describes the song as the foundation for stoner rock. Continued interest and influence Literature, academia and science In his biographical article on the Beatles for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger states, "Their supremacy as rock icons remains unchallenged to this day, decades after their breakup in 1970." Writing in 2009, Gary Burns commented that the Beatles continue to "enjoy a canonized status" unprecedented for popular musicians and that they are "canonical figures" in each of the three categories within the rock canon: sociological, literary and musicological. He identifies them as a key influence in the foundation of hundreds of organisations and publications dedicated to serious appreciation of rock music, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cambridge University Press's journal Popular Music, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and the University of Liverpool's Institute of Popular Music. Hundreds of books have been written about the Beatles' career. Jonathan Gould says that the band "represent a bibliographical phenomenon as well as a musical one", with the group's history having become a folk tale that "has been put to many different uses by its many different narrators". He comments that the range and variety of literature is "all the more remarkable considering that, prior to the Beatles, not a single significant book had been written on the subject of rock 'n' roll". Burns states that the quality and preponderance of "scholarly, quasi-scholarly, journalistic, and fan attention" given to the band far surpasses that given to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys. In her book The Rock Canon, Carys Wyn Jones affords them an elevated status akin to Shakespeare's position of eminence in Harold Bloom's canon of Western literature. Relevant scholarly studies range from discussions of the band's history and cultural impact to musicological work on such subjects as chord progressions, melody and automated analysis. In 2009, Liverpool Hope University started to offer a Master's degree in "The Beatles, Popular Music and Society". The program focuses on the political, social, and cultural aspects related to the Beatles and their music. In 2014, Thomson Reuters analyst and ScienceWatch editor Christopher King investigated 12,000 journals and books and found that 500 mentioned the Beatles in their topics or titles. A 2017 study of AllMusic's catalogue indicated the band as the most frequently cited artist influence in its database. Of the 2000 artists selected for the study, 1230 were stated to be influenced by the Beatles, ahead of Dylan, with 669. In 2019, a scientific study involving over 80,000 different chord progressions and conducted by the Max Planck Institute in Germany indicated "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" as "the perfect pop song" based on how enjoyable recipients found its chord changes. In 2021, the University of Liverpool announced a "The Beatles: Music Industry and Heritage" MA, which would examine the group's influence on popular music and culture and how the band's influence could be replicated in different places, industries and contexts around the world. That same year, Liverpool University Press announced an upcoming Journal of Beatles Studies. The first issue was released in September 2022. Since the early 2000s, historian Mark Lewisohn has been writing The Beatles: All These Years, a three-part set of Beatles biographies whose first volume exceeds 1,700 pages. The impetus for the project was his disappointment that none of the group's biographies had approached a depth or breadth comparable to Robert A. Caro's ongoing book series, The Years of Lyndon Johnson. Twenty-first-century relevance The Beatles continue to be viewed as representing the ideals of the 1960s. In Inglis's description, "their voices and faces were the most recognized symbols of the 'swinging sixties' and they became – and remain – the iconic images of the decade." In 2004, the band were the most-represented act in Rolling Stones list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time", with seven out of 23 Beatles songs making the top 30. In 2009, Global Beatles Day was founded as an international celebration of the band's music and social message. The event takes place on 25 June each year in memory of the Our World performance of "All You Need Is Love". Writing in The New York Times Magazine in 2016, cultural commentator Chuck Klosterman said that the group were "only slightly less popular now" than they were in the 1960s. He wrote that the group were "arguably" responsible for everything related to rock music, "including the very notion of a band's breaking up", and noted that no other rock group had faced unrelated assassination attempts against half its members. Klosterman concluded that, "In any reasonable world, the Beatles are the answer to the question "Who will be the Sousa of rock?" In the 2000s, Elvis Presley had been the only other defunct musical act to generate as much continued news and interest as the Beatles. His mass appeal curtailed significantly by the end of the 2010s, while the Beatles' popularity has endured with younger generations. The amount of Google searches for "Beatles" spiked by 48.59% in 2019, relative to the previous four years. That same year, the Beatles' music was streamed on Spotify 1.7 billion times; 30% of listeners were between the ages of 18 and 24, followed by 25- to 29-year-olds, at 17%. In other words, almost half of listeners were aged under 30. As of June 2019, "Yesterday" remained one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music, with over 2,200 versions. According to figures published by Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), the song was played over 7 million times on American radio during the twentieth century. See also List of awards and nominations received by the Beatles The Beatles in popular culture The Beatles in film Tributes to the Beatles Beatlesque Tomorrow Never Knows (Beatles album) Cultural impact of Elvis Presley Notes References Citations Sources External links Influence on Popular Culture Beatles, The Category:1960s in music Category:1970s in music Category:Cultural impact by musician

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Benigno Aquino III

Benigno Simeon "Noynoy" Cojuangco Aquino III (born February 8, 1960) is a Filipino politician who served as the 15th President of the Philippines from 2010 until 2016. Aquino is a fourth-generation politician and the chairman of the Liberal Party from 2010 to 2016. Born in Manila, Aquino finished his Bachelor of Arts (major in economics) from Ateneo de Manila University in 1981 and joined his family in their exile in the United States shortly thereafter. He returned to the Philippines in 1983 shortly after the assassination of his father and held several positions working in the private sector.

Senate (2007-10)

Barred from running for re-election to the House of Representatives of the Philippines, to represent the 2nd district of Tarlac, due to term limits, Aquino was elected to the Senate of the Philippines in the 2007 Philippine midterm election on May 15, 2007, under the banner of the Genuine Opposition (GO), a coalition comprising a number of parties, including Aquino's own Liberal Party, seeking to curb attempts by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to amend the 1986 Philippine Constitution. In Aquino's political ads, he was endorsed by his younger sister, TV host Kris Aquino, and his mother, the late former President Corazon Aquino. Although a Roman Catholic, Aquino was endorsed by the pentecostal Jesus Is Lord Church, one of the largest Protestant churches in the Philippines. With more than 14.3 million votes, Aquino's tally was the sixth highest of the 37 candidates for the 12 vacant seats elected from the nation at large. Aquino assumed his new office on June 30, 2007. During the campaign, Aquino reached out to his former enemy, Senator Gregorio Honasan, supporting his application for bail. Aquino told Job Tabada of Cebu Daily News, on March 5, 2007; "I endorse Honasan's request for bail para parehas ang laban [to even out the playing field]. I was hit by bullets from Honasan's men in the neck and hips but that's past now. The principle of my father was, 'Respect the rights even of your enemies.' Ito ang nagpatingkad ng demokrasya [This is what defines democracy]. Genuine reconciliation is democracy in action." Aquino was referring to an unsuccessful coup attempt staged by rebel soldiers led by Gregorio Honasan on August 28, 1987, in which Aquino was seriously injured. CANNOTANSWER

Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III (; February 8, 1960 – June 24, 2021), also known as Noynoy Aquino and colloquially as PNoy, was a Filipino politician who served as the 15th president of the Philippines from 2010 to 2016. The son of assassinated politician Benigno Aquino Jr. and 11th president Corazon Aquino, he was a fourth-generation politician as part of the Aquino family of Tarlac. Benigno Aquino III previously served as a member of the House of Representatives and Senate from 1998 to 2010, and also as a deputy speaker of the House of Representatives from 2004 to 2006. On September 9, 2009, shortly after the death of his mother, he announced his candidacy in the 2010 presidential election, which he eventually won. He was sworn into office as the 15th president of the Philippines on June 30, 2010, succeeding Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Under Aquino's presidency, the nation's economy grew at the highest rates in decades, and the country was dubbed a "Rising Tiger" economy. Known for his confrontational foreign policy, his administration filed an arbitration case, Philippines v. China, before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in an attempt to invalidate China's claims in the South China Sea and assert the Philippines' claims in the area; the court ruled in favor of the Philippines. His term ended on June 30, 2016, and he was succeeded by Rodrigo Duterte. After leaving office, Aquino was the subject of legal actions over his role in the Mamasapano clash and for approval of a controversial budget project; he was later acquitted of all charges filed against him regarding the Mamasapano incident. Aquino died from diabetic kidney disease on June 24, 2021, at age 61. Early life and education Noynoy Aquino was born as Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III on February 8, 1960, at Far Eastern University Hospital in Sampaloc, Manila. He is the third of the five children of Benigno Aquino Jr., who was then the vice governor of Tarlac, and Corazon Cojuangco, daughter of prominent Tarlac businessman José Cojuangco. He has four sisters, namely: Maria Elena, Aurora Corazon, Victoria Elisa, and actress Kristina Bernadette. He attended the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City for his elementary, high school, and college education. Aquino finished his Bachelor of Arts (major in economics) degree from the Ateneo in 1981. Former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, his eventual predecessor, was one of his professors at the university. In September 1972, his father, a senator and prominent opposition leader to President Ferdinand Marcos, was arrested for subversion. In August 1973, Aquino's father was brought before a military tribunal in Fort Bonifacio. In 1980, after a series of heart attacks, Aquino's father was allowed to seek medical treatment in the United States, where Aquino's family began a period of self-exile in Boston. After graduating, Aquino joined his family there in 1981. In 1983, after three years in exile in the United States, Aquino's family returned to the Philippines, shortly after the assassination of his father on August 21, 1983. He had a short tenure as a member of the Philippine Business for Social Progress, working as an assistant of the executive director. He later joined Mondragon Industries Philippines, Inc. as an assistant retail sales supervisor and Nike Philippines as an assistant promotions manager. From 1986 to 1992, during the presidency of his mother, Aquino joined the Intra-Strata Assurance Corporation, a company owned by his uncle Antolin Oreta Jr., as vice president. On August 28, 1987, eighteen months into the presidency of Aquino's mother, rebel soldiers led by Gregorio Honasan staged an unsuccessful coup attempt, attempting to lay siege to Malacañang Palace. Aquino was two blocks from the palace when he came under fire. Three of Aquino's four security escorts were killed, and the last was wounded protecting him. He himself was hit by five bullets, once in the neck. From 1993 to 1998, he worked for Central Azucarera de Tarlac, the sugar refinery in the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita. He was employed as the executive assistant for administration from 1993 to 1996 and subsequently worked as manager for field services from 1996 to 1998. Congressional career Aquino was a fourth-generation politician: his great-grandfather, Servillano "Mianong" Aquino, served as a delegate to the Malolos Congress; his paternal grandfather, Benigno Aquino Sr., served as Speaker of the National Assembly from 1943 to 1944; his maternal grandfather, José Cojuangco, was also a member of the House of Representatives; and his parents were Corazon Aquino, who served as the 11th president of the Philippines (1986–1992), and Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. Aquino was a member of the Liberal Party, where he held various positions such as secretary general and vice president for Luzon. House of Representatives (1998–2007) Aquino became a deputy speaker of the House of Representatives on November 8, 2004, but relinquished the post on February 21, 2006, when Aquino joined his Liberal Party Drilon wing members in calling for the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at the height of the Hello Garci scandal. Aquino was also Chairman of the Board of the Central Luzon Congressional Caucus. Senate (2007–2010) Barred from running for re-election to the House of Representatives of the Philippines, to represent the 2nd district of Tarlac, due to term limits, Aquino was elected to the Senate of the Philippines in the 2007 Philippine midterm election on May 15, 2007, under the banner of the Genuine Opposition (GO), a coalition comprising a number of parties, including Aquino's own Liberal Party, seeking to curb attempts by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to amend the 1987 Philippine Constitution. In Aquino's political ads, he was endorsed by his younger sister, television host Kris Aquino, and his mother, Corazon Aquino. Although a Roman Catholic, Aquino was endorsed by the pentecostal Jesus Is Lord Church, one of the largest Protestant churches in the Philippines. With more than votes, Aquino's tally was the sixth highest of the 37 candidates for the 12 vacant seats elected from the nation at large. Aquino assumed his new office on June 30, 2007. During the campaign, Aquino reached out to his former political rival, Senator Gregorio Honasan, supporting his application for bail. Aquino told Job Tabada of the Cebu Daily News, on March 5, 2007: Aquino was referring to an unsuccessful coup attempt staged by rebel soldiers led by Gregorio Honasan on August 28, 1987, in which Aquino was seriously injured. Senate bills The Budget Impoundment and Control Act (Senate Bill No. 3121), wherein "impoundment" refers to the power of the president to refuse the release of funds appropriated by the Congress of the Philippines, is another bill Aquino was proud of; he regretted, however, that such power has been used and abused by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a result of which abuse has been the significant emasculation of Congress' ability to check the president's authority. Aquino filed this bill so that the president would have to pass a measure through Congress every time that they the chief executive had the impetus to impound part of the budget. Another significant Aquino contribution to the Philippines' corruption problem was Senate Bill 2035, which is the Preservation of Public Infrastructures bill, seeking to raise standards in the construction of all public infrastructures by penalizing contractors of defective infrastructures. The bill also requires the Bureau of Maintenance under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to conduct periodic inspections of public infrastructures. Aquino also pushed for the passage of the Amending the Government Procurement Act (SB 2160), which applies to all government procurement activities regardless of source of funds whether local or foreign; only treaties or international/executive agreements entered into by the government prior to its enactment shall be exempt from coverage. The bill was filed in light of the Department of Justice (DOJ) declaration regarding the validity of the NBN–ZTE deal corruption scandal, wherein its international aspect, as well as the fact that it was an executive agreement, was cited as one reason for its exemption from the procurement process stipulated in Republic Act No. 9184. Focusing further on accountability in government appropriations and spending, Aquino filed other reform-oriented bills, among which were Philippine National Police reform; the banning of reappointment to the Judicial and Bar Council; and the prevention of reappointment and bypassing of the Commission on Appointments. 2010 presidential campaign On November 26, 2008, the Liberal Party elected Mar Roxas, president of the Liberal Party, as the standard-bearer of the Liberal Party for President of the Philippines in the then-upcoming 2010 presidential elections. Following the death and funeral of Aquino's mother, former President Corazon Aquino, many people began calling on Aquino to run for President of the Philippines. This groundswell of support became known as the "Noynoy Phenomenon". On August 27, 2009, Edgardo "Eddie" Roces, son of the late Chino Roces, publisher and owner of The Manila Times, and a group of lawyers and activists formed the Noynoy Aquino for President Movement (NAPM), a nationwide campaign to collect a million signatures in order to persuade Aquino to run for president, reminiscent of Roces' father, who on October 15, 1985, launched the Cory Aquino for President Movement (CAPM), collecting more than one million signatures nationwide and asking Aquino's mother to run against Ferdinand Marcos in the 1986 presidential snap elections. On September 1, 2009, at the Club Filipino, in a press conference, Senator Mar Roxas, president of the Liberal Party, announced his withdrawal from the 2010 presidential race and expressed his support for Aquino, as the party standard-bearer instead. Aquino later stood side by side with Roxas, but did not make a public statement at the press conference. The next day, Aquino announced that he would be going on a "spiritual retreat" over the weekend to finalize his decision for the elections, visiting the Carmelite sisters in Zamboanga City, reminiscent of his mother's own soul-searching in 1985 before deciding to run for the elections the following year. He came back on September 9 to formally announce his candidacy. Almost two weeks later, Roxas pledged to run alongside Aquino as the Liberal Party standard-bearer for vice-president. The two men filed their respective certificates of candidacy for president and vice-president on November 28, 2009. Fake psychiatric reports on Aquino's mental health began circulating online during the 90-day election campaign period from February 9 – May 8, 2010, Aquino received information that the first such report came from the wife of Nacionalista Party supporter and former National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR) president Guido Delgado, a move Aquino claimed was made with "malicious intent". A second report came from an unidentified supporter of Senator Manny Villar, the Nacionalistas' leader and presidential candidate. Later presented by Delgado at a press conference, the psychiatric report was supposedly signed by Father Jaime C. Bulatao, S.J., PhD, a Jesuit priest, a professor of Psychology and a clinical psychologist at the Ateneo de Manila University, taken when Aquino was finishing his bachelor's degree in economics at the university in 1979. It reportedly showed that Aquino suffered from depression and melancholia, the priest later denied writing the document at all. Another supposed psychiatric report that later surfaced claimed that Aquino suffered from major depressive disorder; the report's supposed author, Jesuit priest Father Carmelo A. Caluag II, denied writing any evaluations of Aquino. The university's psychology department later debunked the documents, with Aquino labelling them as another desperate effort by rivals to malign his reputation. During the campaign, Senator Francis Escudero began endorsing Aquino as president and PDP–Laban standard-bearer Jejomar Binay, for Vice President, launching the Aquino–Binay campaign. During the 2010 presidential election, held on May 10, 2010, in unofficial tallies, conducted by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), Aquino was the leading candidate in tallied votes for president, and in the official Congressional canvass, Aquino was the leading candidate in canvassed votes for president. Aquino was unofficially referred to at the time as "president-apparent" by the media. On June 9, 2010, at the Batasang Pambansa Complex, in Quezon City, the Congress of the Philippines proclaimed Aquino as the president-elect of the Philippines, following the 2010 election with 15,208,678 votes, while Jejomar Binay, the former mayor of Makati, was proclaimed as the vice president-elect of the Philippines with 14,645,574 votes, defeating runner-up for the vice presidency Mar Roxas, the standard-bearer of the Liberal Party for vice president. Presidency (2010–2016) Early years The presidency of Benigno Aquino III began at noon on June 30, 2010, when he became the fifteenth president of the Philippines, succeeding Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. From the start of his presidency on, he was also referred to in the media as PNoy. The presidential transition began on June 9, 2010, when the Congress of the Philippines proclaimed Aquino the winner of the 2010 Philippine presidential elections held on May 10, 2010, proclaiming Aquino as the president-elect of the Philippines. The transition was in charge of the new presidential residence, cabinet appointments, and cordial meetings between themselves and the outgoing administration. Aquino took residence in the Bahay Pangarap, the first president to do so, instead of the Malacañang Palace, which has been the official residence of his predecessors. Aquino also announced the formation of a truth commission that would investigate various issues including corruption allegations against his predecessor President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo with former Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. as commission head. Aquino took the oath of office on June 30, 2010, at the Quirino Grandstand in Rizal Park, Manila. The oath of office was administered by Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales, who officially accepted Aquino's request to swear him into office, reminiscent of the decision of his mother, who in 1986, was sworn into the presidency by Associate Justice Claudio Teehankee. After being sworn in as the fifteenth president of the Philippines, succeeding Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Aquino delivered his inaugural address. On July 26, 2010, at the Batasang Pambansa, in Quezon City, Aquino delivered his first State of the Nation Address (SONA). During Aquino's first State of the Nation Address (SONA), Aquino announced his intention to reform the education system in the Philippines by shifting to K–12 education, a 12-year basic education cycle. K–12 education is used in the United States, Canada, and Australia. On July 29, 2015, Aquino delivered his final SONA address, where he discussed the country's economic improvements and the benefits of social service programs, particularly the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, during the course of his presidency. Domestic policy No wang wang policy During the inaugural address, Aquino created the "no wang-wang" policy, strengthening the implementation of Presidential Decree No. 96. Wang-wang is colloquial term for blaring sirens. The decree was issued on January 13, 1973, by then President Ferdinand Marcos, regulating the use of sirens and other similar devices only to motor vehicles designated for the use of select national government officials, the police, the military, the fire department and ambulances. Despite having the privilege of using wang-wang as president, Aquino refrained from using sirens to set up an example for his policy, even if it means being stuck in traffic and being late every now and then. After the inaugural address, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority began to enforce Aquino's no wang-wang policy, confiscating wang-wang from public officials and private motorists who illegally used them. Bangsamoro peace process Aquino resumed stalled peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a rebel group in Mindanao seeking self-determination for Moros. He met with the MILF in Tokyo, Japan in August 2011 to initiate peace talks which resulted to the signing of the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro between the Philippine government and the rebel group the following year. The agreement started the process of replacing the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) with a new political entity. In 2014, the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) was signed between the Philippine government and the MILF, with the deal characterized as a "final peace agreement" between the two parties. The CAB paved way for the drafting of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL; later known as the Bangsamoro Organic Law or BOL), a charter for a proposed Bangsamoro autonomous region which would replace the ARMM. In 2015, President Aquino was accused of evading responsibility for the Mamasapano clash, a botched police operation, which resulted to the death of 44 Special Action Force officers. He was also criticized for entrusting the operation to suspended police chief Alan Purisima. This led to a decrease of public support for the BBL. Education Aquino introduced reforms on the Philippine education program by introducing the K-12 curriculum by signing into law the Enhanced Basic Education Act in 2013. This added two years to the basic education system; which became known as the Senior High School stage. The program was introduced because the Philippines was among the three countries in the world at that time still had a 10-year basic education program. Among the criticisms of the K-12 program is the associated costs to be shouldered by teachers, parents, and students for the additional two years of basic education as well as the lack of classrooms and teachers required for the implementation of the shift to K-12. Foreign policy Benigno Aquino III is noted for his confrontational foreign policy against China, especially concerning the Philippines' approach in pursuing its claims in the South China Sea. It was under his administration, that the China v. Philippines case was filed in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) which ruled in 2016 the invalidity of China's nine-dash line claim which covers the entire sea, although China continues to disregard the decision. The case was filed in 2013, after the Philippines lost control of the Scarborough Shoal after the 2012 standoff with China over the dispute feature. He is also responsible for instituting the term "West Philippine Sea" in 2012 for the eastern parts of the South China Sea which the Philippines claims to be part of its exclusive economic zone. Administration and cabinet Judicial appointments Aquino appointed the following to the Supreme Court of the Philippines: Maria Lourdes Sereno – August 13, 2010 (as Associate Justice); August 25, 2012 (as Chief Justice). Bienvenido L. Reyes – August 16, 2011 Estela M. Perlas-Bernabe – September 16, 2011 Mario Victor F. Leonen – November 21, 2012 Francis H. Jardeleza – August 19, 2014 Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa – January 22, 2016 Criticism Manila hostage crisis On August 23, 2010, in front of the Quirino Grandstand in Rizal Park, Manila, the Manila hostage crisis occurred when a gunman took hostage a bus with Hong Kong tourists. Aquino defended the actions of the police at the scene, stating that the gunman had not shown any signs of wanting to kill the hostages. Aquino ordered a "thorough investigation" into the incident, and would wait until it is completed before deciding whether anyone should lose his or her job. Aquino declared that the media may have worsened the situation by giving the gunman "a bird's-eye view of the entire situation". Aquino also made reference to the Moscow theater hostage crisis, which, according to Aquino, resulted in "more severe" casualties despite Russia's "resources and sophistication". On August 24, 2010, Aquino signed Proclamation No. 23, declaring August 25, 2010, as a national day of mourning, instructing all public institutions nationwide and all Philippine embassies and consulates overseas to lower the Philippine flag at half-mast, in honor of the eight Hong Kong residents who died during the crisis. On August 25, 2010, at a press conference in Malacañang, Aquino apologized to those offended when he was caught on television apparently smiling while being interviewed at the crime scene hours after the Manila hostage crisis. Aquino said: On September 3, 2010, Aquino took responsibility for the crisis. Aquino actually has direct supervision of the Philippine National Police, since Aquino had asked Secretary of the Interior and Local Government Jesse Robredo to address other concerns, such as coming up with a comprehensive plan on delivering social services to and relocating informal settlers in coordination with the local governments. No formal apology for the crisis was made by Aquino until President Rodrigo Duterte formally apologized in 2018 as president of the Republic of the Philippines and in behalf of the people of the Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) President Aquino's administration was criticized during and after Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) in November 2013 for the government's "slow" response to aid the victims. This criticism resulted in countries like Canada providing humanitarian aid to the victims of the typhoon through non-governmental organizations and not the Philippine government. Noynoying Noynoying (pronounced noy-noy-YING or noy-NOY-ying) was a protest tactic in the form of a neologism that Aquino's critics used to question his work ethic, alleging his inaction on the issues of disaster response and rising oil prices. A play on the term planking and Aquino's nickname, Noynoying involved posing in a lazy manner, such as sitting idly while resting his head on one hand, and doing nothing. Post-presidency (2016–2021) Following the turnover ceremonies to his successor Rodrigo Duterte at Malacañang, Aquino returned to his parents' residence along Times Street, Quezon City. After leaving office, Aquino remained silent on the Duterte administration and rarely made public appearances. However, in November 2016, Aquino attended a concert at Rizal Park and joined protests against the burial of Ferdinand Marcos. In February 2017, Aquino commemorated the 31st anniversary of the People Power Revolution by marching to the People Power Monument and joining the protests against the Ferdinand Marcos regime. Legal charges In July 2017, criminal charges were filed against Aquino for usurpation of authority under the Revised Penal Code and violating anti-graft and corruption laws. Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales cited the involvement of then suspended Philippine National Police chief Alan Purisima in the 2015 Mamasapano police operation against the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, where 44 Special Action Force members were killed. Under the Revised Penal Code, suspended public officials cannot perform their duties or interfere in government affairs. Aquino's former deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said that Aquino planned to file a motion for reconsideration to appeal the charges. In 2018, Aquino was indicted in a $1.35-billion criminal case involving a congressional approval to use state funds on major government projects. On August 22, 2019, the Sandiganbayan dropped the charges against Aquino upon request from Ombudsman Samuel Martires, citing the rule that no president can be charged of inducing subordinates to follow orders. Personal life Aquino never married and had no children, making him the Philippines' first bachelor president. Aquino previously had a relationship with Shalani Soledad, a Valenzuela metropolitan councilor and niece of former Senator Francisco Tatad. In November 2010, Aquino confirmed that he and Soledad had ended their relationship. He had previously dated Korina Sanchez, Bernadette Sembrano, and Liz Uy. He was also in a relationship with Korean television host Grace Lee. Aquino had openly stated that he preferred younger women because he wanted to have children. Aquino was an enthusiast of shooting, billiards, and video games. He was also engaged in martial arts, particularly karate and sikaran. Aquino did not drink alcoholic beverages but was a chain smoker. He said that he was not keen on being a poster boy for anti-smoking campaigns. Upon winning the election, Aquino received a phone call from U.S. President Barack Obama, who congratulated him and offered assistance to smoking cessation. Although his official residence as president was Malacañang Palace, Aquino chose to reside in the Bahay Pangarap (House of Dreams), located within the Palace grounds, while in office. Illness and death Speculation surrounding Aquino's health began circulating in August 2019 after he was unable to attend the commemoration of his late father's 36th death anniversary; however, his spokesperson Abigail Valte said that his illness then was "nothing serious". In November 2019, Aquino was reported to have suffered from pneumonia. A month after, he was confined at Makati Medical Center for an executive checkup and undisclosed routine procedures. Aquino was confined in an intensive care unit, although according to his spokesperson, he was never in critical condition and the accommodation was just to limit visitors. Senator Francis Pangilinan, who was Aquino's former food security czar, later stated that this confinement was due to a kidney malfunction. Pangilinan added that Aquino had also been suffering from hypertension and diabetes. Thereafter, Aquino regularly sought medical treatment for his condition. By May 2021, Aquino told Camille Elemia of Rappler that he was experiencing a loss of appetite and breathing difficulties. That same month, he reportedly underwent a cardiac surgery. In the early hours of June 24, 2021, Aquino was found by his maidservant lying unconscious on his recliner at his home in West Triangle, Quezon City. He was immediately transported by ambulance to the nearby Capitol Medical Center in Diliman, where he was pronounced dead at 6:30 a.m. (PHT), that day (22:30 UTC of the previous day). The cause of death was stated as renal disease, secondary to diabetes. According to his personal chauffeur, Aquino was scheduled to undergo dialysis on June 21, but refused because he felt that his body was "weak". Another dialysis was planned the day prior to his death, but Aquino again turned it down for similar reasons. Aquino's former public works secretary, Rogelio Singson, stated that he also underwent angioplasty to prepare for a scheduled kidney transplantation; Aquino was in the process of searching for donors at the time of his death. His remains were cremated on the day of his death and his ashes were buried adjacent to that of his parents at the Manila Memorial Park in Parañaque on June 26, making him the first Philippine president to have been cremated. Three Masses were held on June 25–26 at the Church of the Gesù at his alma mater, the Ateneo de Manila University, where a public viewing was also held. Manila Archbishop Jose Advincula blessed his remains, while his funeral mass was presided over by Lingayen–Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas (who also presided the requiem mass for Aquino's mother in 2009 when Villegas was Bishop of Balanga), with Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David concelebrating. A few hours after the announcement of Aquino's death, President Rodrigo Duterte declared a ten-day "period of national mourning" from June 24 to July 3. All national flags were flown at half-mast as a sign of mourning. The funeral rites of Aquino were covered by Radyo Katipunan, the radio arm of his alma mater, for the wake and Radio Television Malacañang for his burial. Approval ratings Honors and awards This is a list of honors and awards received by Benigno Aquino III. Foreign honors : Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum (June 2, 2015) : Collar of the Knightly Order pro merito Melitensi (March 4, 2015) : First Class of the Star of the Republic of Indonesia (October 10, 2014) : Collar of the Order of Mubarak the Great (March 23, 2012) : Collar of the Order of Independence (April 11, 2012) National Honors: : Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Knights of Rizal. (February 17, 2011). Honorary degrees Fordham University – Honorary doctoral degree in Economics (September 19, 2011) Centro Escolar University – Honorary doctoral degree in Economics (April 11, 2012) Kasetsart University – Honorary doctoral degree in Economics University of the Philippines Diliman – Honorary doctoral degree in Law Sophia University – Honorary doctoral degree in Law (December 13, 2014) Tarlac State University – Honorary doctoral degree in Humanities (May 14, 2015) Loyola Marymount University – Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree (February 17, 2016) Recognitions Winner of the 2021 De La Salle University Tañada-Diokno School of Law Ka Pepe Diokno Human Rights Award Named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2013 by Time United States: City Council Resolution on welcoming the President to Chicago presented by Mayor Rahm Emanuel (May 6, 2015) See also Noynoying Political positions of Benigno Aquino III Presidency of Benigno Aquino III Notes References External links Official profile in the website of the Senate of the Philippines Inaugural Address of President Benigno Aquino III | June 30, 2010 President Benigno Aquino III's First State of the Nation Address | July 26, 2010 President Benigno Aquino III's Second State of the Nation Address | July 25, 2011 President Aquino's speech before the United Nations General Assembly | September 24, 2010 Category:1960 births Category:2021 deaths Category:20th-century Roman Catholics Category:21st-century Roman Catholics Benigno Aquino 3 Category:Ateneo de Manila University alumni Category:Burials at the Manila Memorial Park – Sucat Category:Candidates in the 2010 Philippine presidential election Category:Children of presidents of the Philippines Category:Cojuangco family Category:Deaths from diabetes Category:Deaths from kidney failure Category:Deputy Speakers of the House of Representatives of the Philippines Category:Filipino Roman Catholics Category:Liberal Party (Philippines) politicians Category:Members of the House of Representatives of the Philippines from Tarlac Category:People from Manila Category:People from Quezon City Category:People from Tarlac Category:Presidents of the Philippines Category:Secretaries of the Interior and Local Government of the Philippines Category:Senators of the 14th Congress of the Philippines

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Benigno Aquino III

Benigno Simeon "Noynoy" Cojuangco Aquino III (born February 8, 1960) is a Filipino politician who served as the 15th President of the Philippines from 2010 until 2016. Aquino is a fourth-generation politician and the chairman of the Liberal Party from 2010 to 2016. Born in Manila, Aquino finished his Bachelor of Arts (major in economics) from Ateneo de Manila University in 1981 and joined his family in their exile in the United States shortly thereafter. He returned to the Philippines in 1983 shortly after the assassination of his father and held several positions working in the private sector.

Senate bills

The Budget Impoundment and Control Act (SB 3121), wherein "impoundment" refers to the power of the president to refuse the release of funds appropriated by the Congress of the Philippines, is another bill Aquino is proud of; he regretted, however, that such power has been used and abused by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, a result of which abuse has been the significant emasculation of Congress' ability to check the president's authority. Aquino filed this bill so the president would have to pass through Congress every time the president decides to impound part of the budget. Another significant Aquino contribution to the Philippines' corruption problem is Senate Bill 2035, which is the Preservation of Public Infrastructures bill, seeking to raise standards in the construction of all public infrastructures by penalizing contractors of defective infrastructures. The bill also requires the Bureau of Maintenance under the Department of Public Works and Highways to conduct periodic inspections of public infrastructures. Aquino also pushed for the passage of the Amending the Government Procurement Act (SB 2160), which applies to all government procurement activities regardless of source of funds whether local or foreign; only treaties or international/executive agreements entered into by the government prior to its enactment shall be exempt from coverage. The bill was filed in light of the Department of Justice declaration regarding the validity of the controversial NBN-ZTE scandal, wherein its international aspect, as well as the fact that it was an executive agreement, was cited as one reason for its exemption from the procurement process stipulated in Republic Act 9184. Focusing further on accountability in government appropriations and spending, Aquino filed other reform-oriented, well-thought-out types of bills, among which were for: Philippine National Police reform; an increase in penalties for corporations and work establishments not compliant with minimum wage; the banning of reappointment to the Judicial and Bar Council; the prevention of reappointment and bypassing of the Commission on Appointments; real property valuation based on international standards; and superior responsibility for senior military officers, who are ultimately responsible for their own subordinates. However, none of these bills were passed into law. CANNOTANSWER

Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III (; February 8, 1960 – June 24, 2021), also known as Noynoy Aquino and colloquially as PNoy, was a Filipino politician who served as the 15th president of the Philippines from 2010 to 2016. The son of assassinated politician Benigno Aquino Jr. and 11th president Corazon Aquino, he was a fourth-generation politician as part of the Aquino family of Tarlac. Benigno Aquino III previously served as a member of the House of Representatives and Senate from 1998 to 2010, and also as a deputy speaker of the House of Representatives from 2004 to 2006. On September 9, 2009, shortly after the death of his mother, he announced his candidacy in the 2010 presidential election, which he eventually won. He was sworn into office as the 15th president of the Philippines on June 30, 2010, succeeding Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Under Aquino's presidency, the nation's economy grew at the highest rates in decades, and the country was dubbed a "Rising Tiger" economy. Known for his confrontational foreign policy, his administration filed an arbitration case, Philippines v. China, before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in an attempt to invalidate China's claims in the South China Sea and assert the Philippines' claims in the area; the court ruled in favor of the Philippines. His term ended on June 30, 2016, and he was succeeded by Rodrigo Duterte. After leaving office, Aquino was the subject of legal actions over his role in the Mamasapano clash and for approval of a controversial budget project; he was later acquitted of all charges filed against him regarding the Mamasapano incident. Aquino died from diabetic kidney disease on June 24, 2021, at age 61. Early life and education Noynoy Aquino was born as Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III on February 8, 1960, at Far Eastern University Hospital in Sampaloc, Manila. He is the third of the five children of Benigno Aquino Jr., who was then the vice governor of Tarlac, and Corazon Cojuangco, daughter of prominent Tarlac businessman José Cojuangco. He has four sisters, namely: Maria Elena, Aurora Corazon, Victoria Elisa, and actress Kristina Bernadette. He attended the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City for his elementary, high school, and college education. Aquino finished his Bachelor of Arts (major in economics) degree from the Ateneo in 1981. Former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, his eventual predecessor, was one of his professors at the university. In September 1972, his father, a senator and prominent opposition leader to President Ferdinand Marcos, was arrested for subversion. In August 1973, Aquino's father was brought before a military tribunal in Fort Bonifacio. In 1980, after a series of heart attacks, Aquino's father was allowed to seek medical treatment in the United States, where Aquino's family began a period of self-exile in Boston. After graduating, Aquino joined his family there in 1981. In 1983, after three years in exile in the United States, Aquino's family returned to the Philippines, shortly after the assassination of his father on August 21, 1983. He had a short tenure as a member of the Philippine Business for Social Progress, working as an assistant of the executive director. He later joined Mondragon Industries Philippines, Inc. as an assistant retail sales supervisor and Nike Philippines as an assistant promotions manager. From 1986 to 1992, during the presidency of his mother, Aquino joined the Intra-Strata Assurance Corporation, a company owned by his uncle Antolin Oreta Jr., as vice president. On August 28, 1987, eighteen months into the presidency of Aquino's mother, rebel soldiers led by Gregorio Honasan staged an unsuccessful coup attempt, attempting to lay siege to Malacañang Palace. Aquino was two blocks from the palace when he came under fire. Three of Aquino's four security escorts were killed, and the last was wounded protecting him. He himself was hit by five bullets, once in the neck. From 1993 to 1998, he worked for Central Azucarera de Tarlac, the sugar refinery in the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita. He was employed as the executive assistant for administration from 1993 to 1996 and subsequently worked as manager for field services from 1996 to 1998. Congressional career Aquino was a fourth-generation politician: his great-grandfather, Servillano "Mianong" Aquino, served as a delegate to the Malolos Congress; his paternal grandfather, Benigno Aquino Sr., served as Speaker of the National Assembly from 1943 to 1944; his maternal grandfather, José Cojuangco, was also a member of the House of Representatives; and his parents were Corazon Aquino, who served as the 11th president of the Philippines (1986–1992), and Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. Aquino was a member of the Liberal Party, where he held various positions such as secretary general and vice president for Luzon. House of Representatives (1998–2007) Aquino became a deputy speaker of the House of Representatives on November 8, 2004, but relinquished the post on February 21, 2006, when Aquino joined his Liberal Party Drilon wing members in calling for the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at the height of the Hello Garci scandal. Aquino was also Chairman of the Board of the Central Luzon Congressional Caucus. Senate (2007–2010) Barred from running for re-election to the House of Representatives of the Philippines, to represent the 2nd district of Tarlac, due to term limits, Aquino was elected to the Senate of the Philippines in the 2007 Philippine midterm election on May 15, 2007, under the banner of the Genuine Opposition (GO), a coalition comprising a number of parties, including Aquino's own Liberal Party, seeking to curb attempts by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to amend the 1987 Philippine Constitution. In Aquino's political ads, he was endorsed by his younger sister, television host Kris Aquino, and his mother, Corazon Aquino. Although a Roman Catholic, Aquino was endorsed by the pentecostal Jesus Is Lord Church, one of the largest Protestant churches in the Philippines. With more than votes, Aquino's tally was the sixth highest of the 37 candidates for the 12 vacant seats elected from the nation at large. Aquino assumed his new office on June 30, 2007. During the campaign, Aquino reached out to his former political rival, Senator Gregorio Honasan, supporting his application for bail. Aquino told Job Tabada of the Cebu Daily News, on March 5, 2007: Aquino was referring to an unsuccessful coup attempt staged by rebel soldiers led by Gregorio Honasan on August 28, 1987, in which Aquino was seriously injured. Senate bills The Budget Impoundment and Control Act (Senate Bill No. 3121), wherein "impoundment" refers to the power of the president to refuse the release of funds appropriated by the Congress of the Philippines, is another bill Aquino was proud of; he regretted, however, that such power has been used and abused by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a result of which abuse has been the significant emasculation of Congress' ability to check the president's authority. Aquino filed this bill so that the president would have to pass a measure through Congress every time that they the chief executive had the impetus to impound part of the budget. Another significant Aquino contribution to the Philippines' corruption problem was Senate Bill 2035, which is the Preservation of Public Infrastructures bill, seeking to raise standards in the construction of all public infrastructures by penalizing contractors of defective infrastructures. The bill also requires the Bureau of Maintenance under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to conduct periodic inspections of public infrastructures. Aquino also pushed for the passage of the Amending the Government Procurement Act (SB 2160), which applies to all government procurement activities regardless of source of funds whether local or foreign; only treaties or international/executive agreements entered into by the government prior to its enactment shall be exempt from coverage. The bill was filed in light of the Department of Justice (DOJ) declaration regarding the validity of the NBN–ZTE deal corruption scandal, wherein its international aspect, as well as the fact that it was an executive agreement, was cited as one reason for its exemption from the procurement process stipulated in Republic Act No. 9184. Focusing further on accountability in government appropriations and spending, Aquino filed other reform-oriented bills, among which were Philippine National Police reform; the banning of reappointment to the Judicial and Bar Council; and the prevention of reappointment and bypassing of the Commission on Appointments. 2010 presidential campaign On November 26, 2008, the Liberal Party elected Mar Roxas, president of the Liberal Party, as the standard-bearer of the Liberal Party for President of the Philippines in the then-upcoming 2010 presidential elections. Following the death and funeral of Aquino's mother, former President Corazon Aquino, many people began calling on Aquino to run for President of the Philippines. This groundswell of support became known as the "Noynoy Phenomenon". On August 27, 2009, Edgardo "Eddie" Roces, son of the late Chino Roces, publisher and owner of The Manila Times, and a group of lawyers and activists formed the Noynoy Aquino for President Movement (NAPM), a nationwide campaign to collect a million signatures in order to persuade Aquino to run for president, reminiscent of Roces' father, who on October 15, 1985, launched the Cory Aquino for President Movement (CAPM), collecting more than one million signatures nationwide and asking Aquino's mother to run against Ferdinand Marcos in the 1986 presidential snap elections. On September 1, 2009, at the Club Filipino, in a press conference, Senator Mar Roxas, president of the Liberal Party, announced his withdrawal from the 2010 presidential race and expressed his support for Aquino, as the party standard-bearer instead. Aquino later stood side by side with Roxas, but did not make a public statement at the press conference. The next day, Aquino announced that he would be going on a "spiritual retreat" over the weekend to finalize his decision for the elections, visiting the Carmelite sisters in Zamboanga City, reminiscent of his mother's own soul-searching in 1985 before deciding to run for the elections the following year. He came back on September 9 to formally announce his candidacy. Almost two weeks later, Roxas pledged to run alongside Aquino as the Liberal Party standard-bearer for vice-president. The two men filed their respective certificates of candidacy for president and vice-president on November 28, 2009. Fake psychiatric reports on Aquino's mental health began circulating online during the 90-day election campaign period from February 9 – May 8, 2010, Aquino received information that the first such report came from the wife of Nacionalista Party supporter and former National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR) president Guido Delgado, a move Aquino claimed was made with "malicious intent". A second report came from an unidentified supporter of Senator Manny Villar, the Nacionalistas' leader and presidential candidate. Later presented by Delgado at a press conference, the psychiatric report was supposedly signed by Father Jaime C. Bulatao, S.J., PhD, a Jesuit priest, a professor of Psychology and a clinical psychologist at the Ateneo de Manila University, taken when Aquino was finishing his bachelor's degree in economics at the university in 1979. It reportedly showed that Aquino suffered from depression and melancholia, the priest later denied writing the document at all. Another supposed psychiatric report that later surfaced claimed that Aquino suffered from major depressive disorder; the report's supposed author, Jesuit priest Father Carmelo A. Caluag II, denied writing any evaluations of Aquino. The university's psychology department later debunked the documents, with Aquino labelling them as another desperate effort by rivals to malign his reputation. During the campaign, Senator Francis Escudero began endorsing Aquino as president and PDP–Laban standard-bearer Jejomar Binay, for Vice President, launching the Aquino–Binay campaign. During the 2010 presidential election, held on May 10, 2010, in unofficial tallies, conducted by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), Aquino was the leading candidate in tallied votes for president, and in the official Congressional canvass, Aquino was the leading candidate in canvassed votes for president. Aquino was unofficially referred to at the time as "president-apparent" by the media. On June 9, 2010, at the Batasang Pambansa Complex, in Quezon City, the Congress of the Philippines proclaimed Aquino as the president-elect of the Philippines, following the 2010 election with 15,208,678 votes, while Jejomar Binay, the former mayor of Makati, was proclaimed as the vice president-elect of the Philippines with 14,645,574 votes, defeating runner-up for the vice presidency Mar Roxas, the standard-bearer of the Liberal Party for vice president. Presidency (2010–2016) Early years The presidency of Benigno Aquino III began at noon on June 30, 2010, when he became the fifteenth president of the Philippines, succeeding Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. From the start of his presidency on, he was also referred to in the media as PNoy. The presidential transition began on June 9, 2010, when the Congress of the Philippines proclaimed Aquino the winner of the 2010 Philippine presidential elections held on May 10, 2010, proclaiming Aquino as the president-elect of the Philippines. The transition was in charge of the new presidential residence, cabinet appointments, and cordial meetings between themselves and the outgoing administration. Aquino took residence in the Bahay Pangarap, the first president to do so, instead of the Malacañang Palace, which has been the official residence of his predecessors. Aquino also announced the formation of a truth commission that would investigate various issues including corruption allegations against his predecessor President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo with former Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. as commission head. Aquino took the oath of office on June 30, 2010, at the Quirino Grandstand in Rizal Park, Manila. The oath of office was administered by Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales, who officially accepted Aquino's request to swear him into office, reminiscent of the decision of his mother, who in 1986, was sworn into the presidency by Associate Justice Claudio Teehankee. After being sworn in as the fifteenth president of the Philippines, succeeding Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Aquino delivered his inaugural address. On July 26, 2010, at the Batasang Pambansa, in Quezon City, Aquino delivered his first State of the Nation Address (SONA). During Aquino's first State of the Nation Address (SONA), Aquino announced his intention to reform the education system in the Philippines by shifting to K–12 education, a 12-year basic education cycle. K–12 education is used in the United States, Canada, and Australia. On July 29, 2015, Aquino delivered his final SONA address, where he discussed the country's economic improvements and the benefits of social service programs, particularly the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, during the course of his presidency. Domestic policy No wang wang policy During the inaugural address, Aquino created the "no wang-wang" policy, strengthening the implementation of Presidential Decree No. 96. Wang-wang is colloquial term for blaring sirens. The decree was issued on January 13, 1973, by then President Ferdinand Marcos, regulating the use of sirens and other similar devices only to motor vehicles designated for the use of select national government officials, the police, the military, the fire department and ambulances. Despite having the privilege of using wang-wang as president, Aquino refrained from using sirens to set up an example for his policy, even if it means being stuck in traffic and being late every now and then. After the inaugural address, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority began to enforce Aquino's no wang-wang policy, confiscating wang-wang from public officials and private motorists who illegally used them. Bangsamoro peace process Aquino resumed stalled peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a rebel group in Mindanao seeking self-determination for Moros. He met with the MILF in Tokyo, Japan in August 2011 to initiate peace talks which resulted to the signing of the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro between the Philippine government and the rebel group the following year. The agreement started the process of replacing the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) with a new political entity. In 2014, the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) was signed between the Philippine government and the MILF, with the deal characterized as a "final peace agreement" between the two parties. The CAB paved way for the drafting of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL; later known as the Bangsamoro Organic Law or BOL), a charter for a proposed Bangsamoro autonomous region which would replace the ARMM. In 2015, President Aquino was accused of evading responsibility for the Mamasapano clash, a botched police operation, which resulted to the death of 44 Special Action Force officers. He was also criticized for entrusting the operation to suspended police chief Alan Purisima. This led to a decrease of public support for the BBL. Education Aquino introduced reforms on the Philippine education program by introducing the K-12 curriculum by signing into law the Enhanced Basic Education Act in 2013. This added two years to the basic education system; which became known as the Senior High School stage. The program was introduced because the Philippines was among the three countries in the world at that time still had a 10-year basic education program. Among the criticisms of the K-12 program is the associated costs to be shouldered by teachers, parents, and students for the additional two years of basic education as well as the lack of classrooms and teachers required for the implementation of the shift to K-12. Foreign policy Benigno Aquino III is noted for his confrontational foreign policy against China, especially concerning the Philippines' approach in pursuing its claims in the South China Sea. It was under his administration, that the China v. Philippines case was filed in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) which ruled in 2016 the invalidity of China's nine-dash line claim which covers the entire sea, although China continues to disregard the decision. The case was filed in 2013, after the Philippines lost control of the Scarborough Shoal after the 2012 standoff with China over the dispute feature. He is also responsible for instituting the term "West Philippine Sea" in 2012 for the eastern parts of the South China Sea which the Philippines claims to be part of its exclusive economic zone. Administration and cabinet Judicial appointments Aquino appointed the following to the Supreme Court of the Philippines: Maria Lourdes Sereno – August 13, 2010 (as Associate Justice); August 25, 2012 (as Chief Justice). Bienvenido L. Reyes – August 16, 2011 Estela M. Perlas-Bernabe – September 16, 2011 Mario Victor F. Leonen – November 21, 2012 Francis H. Jardeleza – August 19, 2014 Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa – January 22, 2016 Criticism Manila hostage crisis On August 23, 2010, in front of the Quirino Grandstand in Rizal Park, Manila, the Manila hostage crisis occurred when a gunman took hostage a bus with Hong Kong tourists. Aquino defended the actions of the police at the scene, stating that the gunman had not shown any signs of wanting to kill the hostages. Aquino ordered a "thorough investigation" into the incident, and would wait until it is completed before deciding whether anyone should lose his or her job. Aquino declared that the media may have worsened the situation by giving the gunman "a bird's-eye view of the entire situation". Aquino also made reference to the Moscow theater hostage crisis, which, according to Aquino, resulted in "more severe" casualties despite Russia's "resources and sophistication". On August 24, 2010, Aquino signed Proclamation No. 23, declaring August 25, 2010, as a national day of mourning, instructing all public institutions nationwide and all Philippine embassies and consulates overseas to lower the Philippine flag at half-mast, in honor of the eight Hong Kong residents who died during the crisis. On August 25, 2010, at a press conference in Malacañang, Aquino apologized to those offended when he was caught on television apparently smiling while being interviewed at the crime scene hours after the Manila hostage crisis. Aquino said: On September 3, 2010, Aquino took responsibility for the crisis. Aquino actually has direct supervision of the Philippine National Police, since Aquino had asked Secretary of the Interior and Local Government Jesse Robredo to address other concerns, such as coming up with a comprehensive plan on delivering social services to and relocating informal settlers in coordination with the local governments. No formal apology for the crisis was made by Aquino until President Rodrigo Duterte formally apologized in 2018 as president of the Republic of the Philippines and in behalf of the people of the Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) President Aquino's administration was criticized during and after Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) in November 2013 for the government's "slow" response to aid the victims. This criticism resulted in countries like Canada providing humanitarian aid to the victims of the typhoon through non-governmental organizations and not the Philippine government. Noynoying Noynoying (pronounced noy-noy-YING or noy-NOY-ying) was a protest tactic in the form of a neologism that Aquino's critics used to question his work ethic, alleging his inaction on the issues of disaster response and rising oil prices. A play on the term planking and Aquino's nickname, Noynoying involved posing in a lazy manner, such as sitting idly while resting his head on one hand, and doing nothing. Post-presidency (2016–2021) Following the turnover ceremonies to his successor Rodrigo Duterte at Malacañang, Aquino returned to his parents' residence along Times Street, Quezon City. After leaving office, Aquino remained silent on the Duterte administration and rarely made public appearances. However, in November 2016, Aquino attended a concert at Rizal Park and joined protests against the burial of Ferdinand Marcos. In February 2017, Aquino commemorated the 31st anniversary of the People Power Revolution by marching to the People Power Monument and joining the protests against the Ferdinand Marcos regime. Legal charges In July 2017, criminal charges were filed against Aquino for usurpation of authority under the Revised Penal Code and violating anti-graft and corruption laws. Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales cited the involvement of then suspended Philippine National Police chief Alan Purisima in the 2015 Mamasapano police operation against the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, where 44 Special Action Force members were killed. Under the Revised Penal Code, suspended public officials cannot perform their duties or interfere in government affairs. Aquino's former deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said that Aquino planned to file a motion for reconsideration to appeal the charges. In 2018, Aquino was indicted in a $1.35-billion criminal case involving a congressional approval to use state funds on major government projects. On August 22, 2019, the Sandiganbayan dropped the charges against Aquino upon request from Ombudsman Samuel Martires, citing the rule that no president can be charged of inducing subordinates to follow orders. Personal life Aquino never married and had no children, making him the Philippines' first bachelor president. Aquino previously had a relationship with Shalani Soledad, a Valenzuela metropolitan councilor and niece of former Senator Francisco Tatad. In November 2010, Aquino confirmed that he and Soledad had ended their relationship. He had previously dated Korina Sanchez, Bernadette Sembrano, and Liz Uy. He was also in a relationship with Korean television host Grace Lee. Aquino had openly stated that he preferred younger women because he wanted to have children. Aquino was an enthusiast of shooting, billiards, and video games. He was also engaged in martial arts, particularly karate and sikaran. Aquino did not drink alcoholic beverages but was a chain smoker. He said that he was not keen on being a poster boy for anti-smoking campaigns. Upon winning the election, Aquino received a phone call from U.S. President Barack Obama, who congratulated him and offered assistance to smoking cessation. Although his official residence as president was Malacañang Palace, Aquino chose to reside in the Bahay Pangarap (House of Dreams), located within the Palace grounds, while in office. Illness and death Speculation surrounding Aquino's health began circulating in August 2019 after he was unable to attend the commemoration of his late father's 36th death anniversary; however, his spokesperson Abigail Valte said that his illness then was "nothing serious". In November 2019, Aquino was reported to have suffered from pneumonia. A month after, he was confined at Makati Medical Center for an executive checkup and undisclosed routine procedures. Aquino was confined in an intensive care unit, although according to his spokesperson, he was never in critical condition and the accommodation was just to limit visitors. Senator Francis Pangilinan, who was Aquino's former food security czar, later stated that this confinement was due to a kidney malfunction. Pangilinan added that Aquino had also been suffering from hypertension and diabetes. Thereafter, Aquino regularly sought medical treatment for his condition. By May 2021, Aquino told Camille Elemia of Rappler that he was experiencing a loss of appetite and breathing difficulties. That same month, he reportedly underwent a cardiac surgery. In the early hours of June 24, 2021, Aquino was found by his maidservant lying unconscious on his recliner at his home in West Triangle, Quezon City. He was immediately transported by ambulance to the nearby Capitol Medical Center in Diliman, where he was pronounced dead at 6:30 a.m. (PHT), that day (22:30 UTC of the previous day). The cause of death was stated as renal disease, secondary to diabetes. According to his personal chauffeur, Aquino was scheduled to undergo dialysis on June 21, but refused because he felt that his body was "weak". Another dialysis was planned the day prior to his death, but Aquino again turned it down for similar reasons. Aquino's former public works secretary, Rogelio Singson, stated that he also underwent angioplasty to prepare for a scheduled kidney transplantation; Aquino was in the process of searching for donors at the time of his death. His remains were cremated on the day of his death and his ashes were buried adjacent to that of his parents at the Manila Memorial Park in Parañaque on June 26, making him the first Philippine president to have been cremated. Three Masses were held on June 25–26 at the Church of the Gesù at his alma mater, the Ateneo de Manila University, where a public viewing was also held. Manila Archbishop Jose Advincula blessed his remains, while his funeral mass was presided over by Lingayen–Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas (who also presided the requiem mass for Aquino's mother in 2009 when Villegas was Bishop of Balanga), with Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David concelebrating. A few hours after the announcement of Aquino's death, President Rodrigo Duterte declared a ten-day "period of national mourning" from June 24 to July 3. All national flags were flown at half-mast as a sign of mourning. The funeral rites of Aquino were covered by Radyo Katipunan, the radio arm of his alma mater, for the wake and Radio Television Malacañang for his burial. Approval ratings Honors and awards This is a list of honors and awards received by Benigno Aquino III. Foreign honors : Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum (June 2, 2015) : Collar of the Knightly Order pro merito Melitensi (March 4, 2015) : First Class of the Star of the Republic of Indonesia (October 10, 2014) : Collar of the Order of Mubarak the Great (March 23, 2012) : Collar of the Order of Independence (April 11, 2012) National Honors: : Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Knights of Rizal. (February 17, 2011). Honorary degrees Fordham University – Honorary doctoral degree in Economics (September 19, 2011) Centro Escolar University – Honorary doctoral degree in Economics (April 11, 2012) Kasetsart University – Honorary doctoral degree in Economics University of the Philippines Diliman – Honorary doctoral degree in Law Sophia University – Honorary doctoral degree in Law (December 13, 2014) Tarlac State University – Honorary doctoral degree in Humanities (May 14, 2015) Loyola Marymount University – Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree (February 17, 2016) Recognitions Winner of the 2021 De La Salle University Tañada-Diokno School of Law Ka Pepe Diokno Human Rights Award Named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2013 by Time United States: City Council Resolution on welcoming the President to Chicago presented by Mayor Rahm Emanuel (May 6, 2015) See also Noynoying Political positions of Benigno Aquino III Presidency of Benigno Aquino III Notes References External links Official profile in the website of the Senate of the Philippines Inaugural Address of President Benigno Aquino III | June 30, 2010 President Benigno Aquino III's First State of the Nation Address | July 26, 2010 President Benigno Aquino III's Second State of the Nation Address | July 25, 2011 President Aquino's speech before the United Nations General Assembly | September 24, 2010 Category:1960 births Category:2021 deaths Category:20th-century Roman Catholics Category:21st-century Roman Catholics Benigno Aquino 3 Category:Ateneo de Manila University alumni Category:Burials at the Manila Memorial Park – Sucat Category:Candidates in the 2010 Philippine presidential election Category:Children of presidents of the Philippines Category:Cojuangco family Category:Deaths from diabetes Category:Deaths from kidney failure Category:Deputy Speakers of the House of Representatives of the Philippines Category:Filipino Roman Catholics Category:Liberal Party (Philippines) politicians Category:Members of the House of Representatives of the Philippines from Tarlac Category:People from Manila Category:People from Quezon City Category:People from Tarlac Category:Presidents of the Philippines Category:Secretaries of the Interior and Local Government of the Philippines Category:Senators of the 14th Congress of the Philippines

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Andy Bernard

Andrew Baines Bernard (born in 1973; Walter Bernard, Jr.) is a fictional character from the U.S. comedy television series, The Office. Andy is portrayed by Ed Helms. He has no counterpart in the original British version of the series. He is introduced as the Regional Director in Charge of Sales at the Stamford branch of paper distribution company Dunder Mifflin in the third-season premiere when Jim Halpert transfers, ultimately merging with the Scranton branch in the episode "The Merger" later in the season.

Season 4

With the departure of Karen after Jim dumping her off-screen, Andy becomes the only salesman from Stamford aside from Jim to stay on at the Scranton branch. A preview clip for the fourth season features Andy taking up inner-tubing. The fourth-season premiere, "Fun Run", has Andy competitively participating in Michael's superfluously named run for rabies prevention through strategically drafting Kevin, although he falls prey to "nipple chafing." Andy develops a friendship with Dwight in the second episode "Launch Party", in which he supports Dwight in beating the online sales of the company website Dunder Mifflin Infinity using a bear horn, much to the irritation of the office. He also develops a relationship with Angela, not being aware of Dwight and Angela's previous romantic interludes. He steals an elaborate ice sculpture for Angela's launch party, and serenades her later in the same episode with a rendition of the ABBA song "Take a Chance on Me", receiving a rare, yet quickly suppressed smile in return. He moonwalks in "Money" by her desk to impress her, although it takes the gift of the cat Garbage (from the previous episode) and a sentimental note to finally win her. Angela and Andy continue to date into "Local Ad", in which Andy consults Dwight on how to pursue more intimacy with Angela. Andy discusses the exclamation of "Oh, D!" Angela exclaims during intimate moments, unaware that Angela may be referring to a nickname for Dwight and not him. Andy and Kevin successfully team up in the season to recover lost parking spaces taken by renovators of another company in the business park in a meeting of the building tenants, called "The Five Families". He is rebuffed from clubbing in "Night Out" with Michael and Dwight in New York with the newly promoted Ryan by Dwight, who has a rekindled dislike for Andy considering his relationship with Angela. This is evidenced later in "Did I Stutter?" when Dwight uses pressuring negotiation tactics in order to buy Andy's Nissan Xterra at a reduced price, only to flip it for profit on eBay much to Andy's protest. In "Job Fair", Andy is invited to accompany Jim on a major sales call. However, in a deleted scene, Jim reveals Andy was invited in order to benefit Jim, as Andy's pride for Cornell would push the client- a graduate of Dartmouth- toward him. The scheme plays out as intended when the client invites Kevin to play golf with him again but denies Andy's request to join them. In "Goodbye, Toby", Andy proposes to Angela (unbeknownst to him, at the same moment Jim had been preparing to propose to Pam) with a ring that he has carried in his wallet for six years, because "You never know when you'll meet the right girl". Angela accepts his proposal with a somewhat irritated "Okay"; shortly thereafter, though, she rekindled her intimate relationship with her former lover, Dwight, which is witnessed by Phyllis and the camera crew, who walk in on them making love by her desk. CANNOTANSWER

Andrew Baines Bernard is a fictional character portrayed by Ed Helms in the NBC comedy television series The Office. He is introduced in Season 3 of the show when Jim Halpert transfers to the Stamford branch, where Andy is initially employed. Ultimately, the Stamford branch merges with the Scranton branch later in the season, leading to Andy and other employees to transfer to Scranton. Although Helms received praise for his performance, the character received a mixed reception. Andy was named one of the most annoying TV characters of 2011 by Vulture. In contrast, Nerve ranked him the second funniest character on the series, behind only Michael Scott. In the final season, Alan Sepinwall of Uproxx described Andy's personality as a "malevolent version of Michael Scott", while Erik Adams of The A.V. Club wrote "no amount of last-minute humanizing can win the audience back to [Andy's] side." Storylines Season 3 Andy is introduced in the Season 3 premiere as the Regional Director in Charge of Sales at the Stamford branch, where Jim had transferred. Following the closure of the Stamford branch and the merger with Scranton, Andy attempts to gain favor with manager Michael Scott and has a brief rivalry with co-worker Dwight Schrute. Though Michael initially takes a liking to Andy, he soon becomes agitated at Andy's sycophantic attitude and poor salesmanship. When Andy's behavior begins to irritate the office staff, Jim plays a prank on Andy by hiding his cell phone in the ceiling and repeatedly calling it. The phone's ringtone is Andy's rendition of "Rockin' Robin". Andy becomes increasingly agitated each time the phone rings, and eventually punches a hole in the office wall out of frustration. Andy is subsequently sent to anger management by corporate. Later in the season, Andy returns from anger management and accompanies Jim to meet with clients from a local high school. He unexpectedly runs into his girlfriend at the school, and is horrified to discover she is a high school student. During the penultimate episode of the season, "Beach Games", Andy captains a team alongside Jim, Dwight and Stanley Hudson in a competition for Michael's selection of the next Regional Manager of the Scranton branch, as Michael believes he is a shoo-in for a position at corporate. However, he is sabotaged by Angela Martin, who favors Dwight. When Dwight is pre-emptively named regional manager by Michael (who is confident that he will receive the promotion), Andy is named assistant regional manager. This never comes to fruition, as Michael does not receive the corporate promotion. Season 4-5 With the departure of Karen Filippelli, Andy becomes the only salesman from Stamford aside from Jim to stay at the Scranton branch. He develops a friendship with Dwight, and, unaware of Dwight and Angela's previous romantic interludes, romantic interest in Angela. He steals an elaborate ice sculpture for Angela's launch party and serenades her with a rendition of the ABBA song "Take a Chance on Me", receiving a rare smile in return. He finally wins Angela over by giving her a cat and a sentimental note. Angela and Andy's relationship sends Dwight spiralling into crushing depression, and rekindles his dislike for Andy. In "Goodbye, Toby", Andy proposes to Angela (unbeknownst to him, at the same moment Jim had been preparing to propose to Pam) with a ring that he has carried in his wallet for six years. Angela accepts his proposal with an irritated "Okay". Shortly after the proposal, however, Angela has sex with Dwight in the office, which is witnessed by Phyllis and the camera crew. At the start of season 5, Andy is still unaware of Angela and Dwight's affair, and he begins planning the wedding. However, his ideas are often rejected, and Angela eventually manipulates Andy into having the wedding take place at Dwight's farm. During the office Christmas party, Phyllis reveals Angela and Dwight's affair to the staff, except Andy. Michael later tells Andy about the affair, and Angela reluctantly confirms it. Andy confronts Dwight and challenges him to a duel, but they eventually realize that Angela has lied to them both about only sleeping with one of them. Andy cancels his wedding plans, and Dwight throws out the bobblehead in his likeness, symbolizing the end of their relationships with Angela. Angela's affair with Dwight and the broken engagement affect Andy's perspective on relationships. When Kevin seeks dating advice from others in the office, Andy gives him romantic advice that appears to reflect his own experiences with Angela -- telling him to never give compliments, push for physical contact, or be assertive to the point of rudeness. In "Heavy Competition", Andy offers bargain deals for Jim and Pam's wedding, and he mistakes Pam's rejection of Jim's ideas as Pam controlling him. Andy assumes the role of Jim's emotional rock, which Jim goes along with as a prank. After realizing Jim is messing with him, Andy confronts him. Jim tells Andy that he is very happy with Pam, and while Andy's breakup with Angela was "a bummer", he assures Andy that he will find someone else in the future. Season 6-7 As season 6 starts, Andy develops a friendship and an attraction to Erin, who is the new office secretary, but the pair are both too timid to reveal their feelings for one another. In "Secret Santa", Andy asks to be Erin's Secret Santa, and proceeds to give Erin gifts resembling the Twelve Days of Christmas. To complete his Secret Santa gift, Andy hires 12 professional drummers to perform for Erin and the rest of the staff in the parking lot; Erin is visibly pleased by the gesture. In "The Delivery," Michael arranges a date between Erin and Kevin. This pushes Andy to finally ask Erin out, which she accepts. In "Secretary's Day", Andy wants to ensure that Erin has a memorable Secretary's Day, and asks a reluctant Michael to treat Erin out to lunch. During lunch, Michael reveals that Andy was engaged to Angela, a fact that Andy had concealed from Erin to Michael's surprise. Returning to the office, Erin enters the main party, throws cake in Andy's face, and reveals her knowledge about his previous engagement with Angela. Deciding she cannot trust Andy, Erin breaks up with him, which leaves Andy distraught. During "The Cover-Up", Andy receives a call from a client claiming that their Sabre printer caught fire during a routine operation. In order to confirm his suspicions, Andy investigates and discovers that the Sabre printer indeed catches fire; he manages to record the incident on video. When the press gets word of the Sabre printers catching fire, the company's CEO Jo Bennett (Kathy Bates) goes out of her way to find the culprit. Andy initially denies sending the video, but eventually comes clean, admitting to submitting a letter and the video to a news editor. Though Andy is harassed by the sales staff over the report, he is commended by Erin for his bravery, leaving him pleased. In Season 7, Erin begins a romantic relationship with Gabe, devastating Andy. However, as the season continues, Erin gradually begins to lose interest in Gabe, eventually confiding in Michael that she may be in love with Andy again. After Erin publicly breaks up with Gabe in front of the staff, Gabe becomes venomously angry toward Andy, wrongly believing Andy had triggered Erin's brutal public breakup with him. In "Dwight K. Schrute, (Acting) Manager", Gabe breaks down and, crying, makes Andy promise not to date Erin, to which an uncomfortable Andy agrees. However, when Gabe tells Erin what Andy said about them not dating, Andy shuts Gabe up by pointing out Gabe's crying fit to Erin. In "Search Committee", Andy interviews to replace Michael's initial replacement, Deangelo, as the regional manager, which Gabe tries to sabotage. However, Andy remains a managerial candidate once Gabe's behavior gets him transferred out of Scranton. Erin asks Andy out on a date, and he eventually refuses, claiming that he has gotten over her. However, Andy later tells the camera that he thinks Erin is great. Season 8 During Season 8, Robert California, selected by the search committee, declines to become Branch Manager and convinces Jo Bennett to give him her position as CEO, thus giving Robert the authority to appoint Andy as the new manager. Upon discovering a list that divides the office into winners and losers, and being moved into the loser section after questioning Robert about it, he retaliates by hosting a pizza party for the losers and publicly confronts Robert about the positive attributes of the losers. This act earns the respect of Robert and the office. Robert eventually reveals that Andy's selection as the Regional Manager was done because he's a "simple underdog whom people will rally behind." In "The Incentive", Robert California urges the doubling of sales growth, which Andy attempts to fulfil with an incentive program. This program spirals out of control when Andy offers a tattoo on his posterior as one of the prizes, worth 5,000 points. In comedic fashion, the office pools their points and succeeds in winning this prize. Andy bravely steps up, only for the office to change the originally more-raunchy tattoo design to one that honors Andy's nickname of "The Nard Dog." During "Garden Party", Andy throws a garden party to impress Robert with his parents Walter Sr. (Stephen Collins), Ellen (Dee Wallace), and younger brother Walter, Jr. (Josh Groban) in attendance. However, Andy is also trying to prove himself to his parents, who were under the impression that he was the CEO of the company. Andy goes to great lengths to try and impress his parents, which leads Walter, Sr. to later speak with Andy. He insults Andy's job and states Andy needs to stop seeking his approval like a little kid. This conversation is overheard by some of the office staff, prompting everyone to understand why Andy feels the need to get everyone to like him. Following the garden party, a dejected Andy plans to head home himself, but Darryl and Oscar decide to cheer him up with an impromptu barbecue. In "Christmas Wishes", Andy introduces his new girlfriend Jessica to the office staff, much to the chagrin of Erin. During the office Christmas party, Erin drunkenly tells Andy that her Christmas wish is for Jessica to die, offending and angering Andy. He tells Erin to get over the fact that he turned her down for a date and storms off. Later, during the party, Andy becomes concerned when Erin gets a ride home from Robert. While driving Meredith home, Andy follows Robert to Erin's apartment, but to his relief, he sees Robert hug Erin goodbye with comforting words and instructs her to take care of her hangover. Seemingly despondent over his impending divorce, Robert hosts an impromptu "Pool Party" at his soon-to-be-sold mansion. The staff attends with Andy and Jessica, much to Erin's consternation. Andy carries around his parents' engagement ring, claiming that his parents fell in love with Jessica. Desperate for Andy's attention, Erin and Dwight engage in a series of competitive pool games with Andy and Jessica. Later on, Andy accidentally loses the ring and frantically searches for it; Erin recovers the ring in the pool and gives it to Andy, knowing the history behind the ring. Andy confides to Erin that he's confused about his relationship with Jessica, which gives Erin hope. In "Last Day in Florida", Andy learns that Erin isn't coming back to Scranton and realizes he still loves her. He decides to go to Florida to win her back. The two get back together, and Andy breaks up with Jessica. Returning to Scranton, Andy discovers that Nellie Bertram, one of the initial interviewees for Regional Manager, has claimed Andy's manager position at Scranton, with Andy subsequently demoted to a salesman. In a deliberate callback to his outburst in Season 3, Andy punches a hole in the office wall and gets fired from Dunder Mifflin. In "Turf War", Andy manages to win a major client and uses it as leverage to get David Wallace to purchase Dunder Mifflin. He also calls Robert and threatens to get him fired if David buys the company. Wallace ultimately buys back Dunder Mifflin, fires Nellie and Robert, and reinstates Andy as manager. While Andy is reinstated, Robert swindles his way into getting a million dollars from David, while Andy hires Nellie out of guilt and sorrow. Season 9 In the final season's premiere, it is revealed that Andy was sent to Outward Bound manager training by David Wallace, which caused him to revert to his previous cockier and meaner persona. Wanting revenge on Nellie, he continues to torment her. When she needs an employer's signature to verify her employment at an adoption agency, he refuses in front of the entire office, upsetting her and Erin. Andy later finds Erin crying after this, which prompts him to sign Nellie's papers. Andy discovers his father has abandoned their family, leaving them nearly penniless. He consults with Oscar and Darryl to sell enough family assets for his mother to live. They urge Andy to sell their family boat, which Andy had always wanted to drive; Andy relents and sells it to a dealer in the Bahamas. After he and Erin drive to Connecticut to see off the boat themselves, Andy discovers Walter Jr. dishevelled and hung over in one of the cabins. Andy decides to sail the boat to the Bahamas himself with Walter Jr., leaving Erin behind. Though grateful to Erin for cheering him up, he doesn't notice how hurt she is at being left behind. Upon arriving in the Bahamas, Andy decides to stay for several more weeks. This upsets Erin greatly and causes her to become closer to her friend and co-worker Pete Miller. After three months, Andy returns from the Bahamas in the episode "The Boat" and immediately alienates the staff with his behavior: ignorantly expecting the staff to take him seriously as if he never left, voiding a major sale that Dwight had with Jan Levinson, and shamelessly collecting his paychecks plus the "merit bonus" he acquired for the staff excelling their sales quota. He holds a meeting with the staff to catch up on what he missed, so as to meet with David Wallace, who has been under the impression that Andy has been at the office the entire time via phone calls and e-mails. Andy ultimately manages to get through the meeting without repercussions. Erin, feeling neglected by Andy, dumps Andy for mistreating her and for leaving her alone for three months; the conversation is heard by David Wallace on speakerphone. Distraught over their breakup, Andy's professional relationship with Erin and the rest of the staff worsens. Wallace chastises Andy but allows him to keep his job. After discovering that Pete is dating Erin, Andy impulsively fires Pete, but Toby tells Andy that he can't fire Pete over a personal grudge. When Erin and Pete lecture Andy, telling him that he needs to move on, Andy decides to hire their exes at the branch, in a bid to make Erin and Pete uncomfortable. The ploy works, and Erin and Pete's past relationship issues surface. Andy smugly states that seeing Erin and Pete unhappy has made him feel better. As in-universe promos start to circulate for the documentary series about the branch, Andy comes to realize that he's disillusioned about his job, and meets with real estate/talent agent Carla Fern (Roseanne Barr), who takes Andy on as a client. Andy pays her $5,000 to sign with her agency, and he books his first job in an industrial film about a chemical lab. Inspired to finally follow his dreams, Andy takes drastic measures to get fired, including initiating an ugly argument with David Wallace. Irritated by Andy's actions, David becomes enraged and fires Andy; Andy returns to the office to say goodbye, and performs a moving rendition of Sarah McLachlan's song "I Will Remember You". Surprised by Andy's performance, the staff embrace Andy and say goodbye, convinced that he may have some talent after all. In "A.A.R.M.", Andy auditions for a singing reality TV show, but is asked to leave before his audition due to overcrowding. Enraged, Andy bursts into the audition room, demands the judges let him audition, and throws a crying tantrum. In the series finale, Andy found a job at Cornell University's Admissions Office. The video of Andy's tantrum has become viral on YouTube, inspiring a parody on "Saturday Night Live". Andy's confidence and ease around everyone increase when he stunningly realizes that most of the crowd at the documentary reunion panel are not only there to see him, but are genuine fans of his portrayal on the show. Returning to the office after Dwight and Angela's wedding, Andy's former co-workers watch his Cornell speech and are unanimously impressed by it; Andy nearly breaks into tears as he tells the camera, "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them". Relationships Erin Hannon In season 6, Andy takes an interest in receptionist Erin Hannon, who has mutual affection, but due to miscommunication, there was a long period where the two waited for each other to make a move. However, Andy eventually asks Erin out on a date, and she graciously accepts. Three weeks later, after Erin discovers, through Michael Scott, of Andy's former engagement to accountant Angela Martin, she throws cake in Andy's face and decides that they need to take a break from one another. Over a year later, Erin, after breaking up with Gabe Lewis, asks Andy out on a date, but he dismisses her advances, because of his lingering issues with her leaving him for Gabe. When Andy introduces his girlfriend Jessica to the Office at a Christmas party, Erin becomes drunk and confesses to Andy that she wishes Jessica was dead. Greatly offended, Andy informs Erin that she needs to get over their break-up, and briskly leaves. Upon learning that Erin wishes to live in Tallahassee, Florida, Andy drives to Tallahassee to get back together with Erin. At first, he is unsuccessful, but ultimately gets her back; they make up and kiss in the middle of the street. During season 9, their relationship starts to show cracks as Andy comes back from a training seminar that has made him more confident, but seemingly more selfish to Erin. When Andy takes his parents' boat to the Bahamas for three weeks, he leaves Erin behind, who looks on disappointed. Erin later goes out with Pete, a new co-worker for drinks. When Andy decides to stay in the Bahamas for three more months, Erin becomes increasingly unhappy, and finally breaks up with Andy upon his return. Later in the season, Andy's distraught behavior affects his professional relationship with Erin and the staff. When Andy learns of Erin's relationship with Pete, he acts irrationally to where Erin and Pete lecture him that he needs to move on. In the episode Livin' the Dream, Andy and Erin are seen speaking pleasantly to each other; Erin admits her concern for Andy's well-being, saying she's worried he'll "be homeless or even starve." During Andy's goodbye song, Erin stares at Andy with a serious look of affection, making it unclear whether or not the two still have romantic feelings for each other. In the series finale, Andy, Erin, and Pete are all shown to be getting along well at the after-party, indicating the tensions from earlier have eased. Angela Martin In the fourth season, Andy begins a relationship with accountant Angela Martin, who half-heartedly began dating him on the rebound, after she had broken up with Dwight Schrute (whose relationship with her had been unknown to the majority of the staff). After dating for about seven months, Andy proposes to Angela during Toby Flenderson's farewell party, and she begrudgingly accepts. However, during their engagement, she resumes her affair with Dwight. Andy endures tremendous effort in order to prepare for Angela's dream wedding. Upon learning about the affair, both he and Dwight break up with her, and Andy is initially crushed. When Andy is leaving the office for good after he quits to seek fame, Angela tries to talk him out of it. Andy wrongly assumes she regrets ending their relationship, and says he does think about her often, but Angela is able to choke back her disgust and they part ways with a hug. Michael Scott After transferring to the Scranton branch, Andy has a strategy to become the number two of the branch by name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake first; Michael immediately likes him. In "Traveling Salesmen", Andy picks Michael as his traveling salesman partner, and during the car ride, Michael tells Andy about Dwight going behind his back and talking to Jan. When they do their joint sale pitch, Andy ruins the pitch, infuriating Michael. Andy finds the toll booth receipt that shows Dwight went to New York, and suggests that he wanted to talk with Jan again, resulting in Michael confronting Dwight; Dwight quits Dunder Muffin. In "The Return", Michael talks to Jim about Andy; Jim tells Michael that Andy is a yes man, and did the same thing with his old boss, Josh, at the Stamford branch. After Angela tells Michael why Dwight went to New York, Michael decides to leave the office to get Dwight back. Andy tries to come with him and begins telling Michael about his weekend plans for the two of them. Finally, Michael tells him to stop, realizing he made a mistake trying to replace Dwight with Andy. Following Andy's return from anger management, Michael gives him a second chance, naming him a team captain for the beach games competition and considering him as a potential replacement. For the remainder of the series, Michael is on good terms with Andy, and when Michael leaves Dunder Mifflin for Colorado, he gifts Andy all of his clients as a way of motivating him. Although he initially loses one of those clients, Andy's ability to maintain a relationship with the others greatly boosts his confidence. Dwight Schrute Since Andy's arrival, he and Dwight had a competitive professional relationship, and the two eventually duel over Angela when it is found she is cheating on Andy with Dwight. After the fight, both relationships end, and Angela is left heartbroken and alone. A few months later, the two soon begin competing for Erin's attention, but Dwight ultimately decides to cease pursuing her in order to maintain a good relationship with Andy. However, after Andy is hired as Regional Manager, Andy makes Dwight his "Enforcer" in order to stay on good terms, but Dwight later states in an interview that he will "wait for Andy's inevitable demise". During "Couples Discount", Dwight is unable to get Andy's sign-off on prices with a major sale that Dwight landed, although when Andy suddenly reappears, he chastises Dwight for not having his approval on the prices. When Dwight informs him that Andy was on a boat and unreachable, Andy tries again to maintain his authority. This backfires when Andy decides to renege on the prices with Dwight's client, thus voiding a major sale for the company and wrecking Dwight's sales record. Dwight later tells false stories to Andy when Andy asks for an update on the branch, in hopes of sabotaging Andy. When Dwight learns he's in line to become the permanent branch manager and Andy asks if his plan to quit and seek stardom is a good idea, Dwight kindly but firmly tells Andy that he should not quit, even if this denies Dwight his dream job. In the series finale, Andy returns to Scranton to attend Dwight and Angela's wedding. Jim and Pam Halpert Andy was the subject of many pranks by Jim and Pam, some of which have caused his anger issues to unfold. Andy also had a romantic interest in Pam, but due to intentionally misleading advice given to him by Jim, it did not develop into a relationship. Although the two will, at times, act considerably mean to Andy, Jim and Pam are often pleasant to him, and even give him advice when he needs it. When Andy goes through a rough breakup, he gives Jim wildly bad advice when he suspects Pam of controlling him. However, Jim uses it as an opportunity to prank Andy throughout the day before he sees through the ruse, prompting Jim to comfort him about finding someone else. Darryl Philbin Initially, Darryl and Andy were foes. Darryl states that Andy once used him as a scapegoat, nearly getting him fired from his job, for a mistake that Andy had made. Andy also attempts to order Darryl around when Sabre's "Sales is King" policy greatly affects the sales staffs' egos. However, over time, the two develop a strong friendship. When Darryl confides in Andy that he wished he had remained a member of the warehouse staff, Andy convinces him to make the most of his position and continue rising in the company. When Darryl is depressed over not winning a lottery that the warehouse staff won and shared, he demands that Andy either terminate him or give him the Manager position. Andy is blunt, but kind, as he informs Darryl the truth about his shortcomings, and Darryl subsequently rededicates himself to his job. When he meets Andy's family, Darryl overhears Andy's father berate him over his status in life, and finally understands why Andy needs to please others, and later participates in cheering Andy up, along with the rest of the staff. Darryl is also one of the few people in the office, along with Jim, Pam and Erin, who did not accept Nellie Bertram's attempt at usurping Andy's job. Darryl is not impressed with Andy's acting ability, to the point of bluntly saying Andy needs to have a job that will tolerate his inevitable and chronic mistakes. In the series finale, Darryl initially avoids Andy, but impressed with Andy's speech at Cornell, he gives Andy a hug. Gabe Lewis While initially having a neutral relationship with Gabe, Andy develops a dislike for Gabe when he begins dating Erin. After Erin breaks up with Gabe, a heartbroken and jealous Gabe begins to heavily resent Andy and threatens him not to make any advances on Erin. When Andy interviews for the Regional Manager position, Gabe displays a negative, biased opinion of him. Later, he unsuccessfully attempts to convince the CEO of Sabre, Jo Bennett, not to hire Andy as Manager. For the next year (until Gabe is written out), Andy and Gabe are generally rivals, often making snide remarks to one another. After Erin breaks up with Andy, Andy briefly hires Gabe to make Erin feel uncomfortable. Robert California After becoming the new CEO of Sabre, Robert California appointed Andy as Regional Manager of the Scranton branch. Since then, Andy has developed an awkward relationship with Robert, who he is eager to impress, and highly intimidated by. Robert states that the reason he chose Andy for the Manager position is because he is "All surface... Uncomplicated, what you see is what you get". Andy and Robert's contentious relationship climaxes when Robert allows Nellie Bertram to usurp Andy's Regional Manager position, and Andy is fired for refusing to accept Nellie as manager, only able to reclaim his managerial role by convincing David Wallace to purchase Dunder Mifflin away from Sabre and Robert. Behind the scenes The character is named after American economist Andrew Bernard, professor of international economics at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. While Andy was initially meant as a temporary character in season 3 of The Office, the character "grew" on Greg Daniels and the writers, and they decided to have Andy return to the office from anger management and become a permanent character. Reception Initially considered an abrasive addition to the show, Andy Bernard later became a fan favorite due to his character development throughout the series. Fans did not enjoy his arc in the final season, which saw Andy revert to his worst tendencies in his early seasons and treat his co-workers poorly, with some commentators wondering if the show's writers "did not know what to do" with the character. References External links Entertainment Weekly- Ed Helms No Longer an 'Office' Temp Category:The Office (American TV series) characters Category:Fictional characters from Connecticut Category:Fictional salespeople Category:Fictional musicians Category:Fictional dancers Category:Television characters introduced in 2006 Category:Fictional managers Category:American male characters in television

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Andy Bernard

Andrew Baines Bernard (born in 1973; Walter Bernard, Jr.) is a fictional character from the U.S. comedy television series, The Office. Andy is portrayed by Ed Helms. He has no counterpart in the original British version of the series. He is introduced as the Regional Director in Charge of Sales at the Stamford branch of paper distribution company Dunder Mifflin in the third-season premiere when Jim Halpert transfers, ultimately merging with the Scranton branch in the episode "The Merger" later in the season.

Season 3

Andy is introduced in the season 3 premiere as the Regional Director in Charge of Sales at the Stamford branch, where Jim has transferred to. Early season episodes reveal his anger issues, displayed when he finds his calculator encased in Jell-O and when he performs poorly due to Jim's inexperience at Call of Duty. After the closure of Stamford and merger with Scranton, Andy attempts to gain favor with manager Michael Scott through his quoted tactics of "name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake". There is rivalry with Dwight Schrute over whether his title is higher than that of Dwight's Assistant Regional Manager, fueling an intense power struggle. However, Michael becomes agitated at Andy's sycophantic attitude and poor salesmanship, as does the office at his obnoxious singing. Jim hides Andy's mobile phone that rings with Andy's rendition of "Rockin' Robin" in the ceiling, enraging him into punching a hole in the office wall. A producer's cut of the episode explains Andy's departure from subsequent episodes as due to being sent to anger management training. Andy returns a few months later to a short-lived "three-year" shunning courtesy of Dwight. He accompanies Jim to meet with clients from a local high school following an obscene watermark being vandalized onto Dunder Mifflin paper. This unexpected trip leads Andy to the discovery that his girlfriend is a high school student. At the Beach Games, Andy captains a team alongside Jim, Dwight and Stanley Hudson in a competition for Michael's selection of the next Regional Manager of the Scranton branch, as Michael believes he is a shoo-in for a position at corporate. However, he falls plight to the sabotage of Angela Martin, who favors Dwight, and ends up in a sumo wrestler costume drifting away into Lake Scranton. However, when Dwight is pre-emptively named Regional Manager by Michael (who is confident that he will receive a promotion), Andy is named Assistant Regional Manager, although never actually becomes ARM as Michael does not receive the corporate promotion. CANNOTANSWER

Andrew Baines Bernard is a fictional character portrayed by Ed Helms in the NBC comedy television series The Office. He is introduced in Season 3 of the show when Jim Halpert transfers to the Stamford branch, where Andy is initially employed. Ultimately, the Stamford branch merges with the Scranton branch later in the season, leading to Andy and other employees to transfer to Scranton. Although Helms received praise for his performance, the character received a mixed reception. Andy was named one of the most annoying TV characters of 2011 by Vulture. In contrast, Nerve ranked him the second funniest character on the series, behind only Michael Scott. In the final season, Alan Sepinwall of Uproxx described Andy's personality as a "malevolent version of Michael Scott", while Erik Adams of The A.V. Club wrote "no amount of last-minute humanizing can win the audience back to [Andy's] side." Storylines Season 3 Andy is introduced in the Season 3 premiere as the Regional Director in Charge of Sales at the Stamford branch, where Jim had transferred. Following the closure of the Stamford branch and the merger with Scranton, Andy attempts to gain favor with manager Michael Scott and has a brief rivalry with co-worker Dwight Schrute. Though Michael initially takes a liking to Andy, he soon becomes agitated at Andy's sycophantic attitude and poor salesmanship. When Andy's behavior begins to irritate the office staff, Jim plays a prank on Andy by hiding his cell phone in the ceiling and repeatedly calling it. The phone's ringtone is Andy's rendition of "Rockin' Robin". Andy becomes increasingly agitated each time the phone rings, and eventually punches a hole in the office wall out of frustration. Andy is subsequently sent to anger management by corporate. Later in the season, Andy returns from anger management and accompanies Jim to meet with clients from a local high school. He unexpectedly runs into his girlfriend at the school, and is horrified to discover she is a high school student. During the penultimate episode of the season, "Beach Games", Andy captains a team alongside Jim, Dwight and Stanley Hudson in a competition for Michael's selection of the next Regional Manager of the Scranton branch, as Michael believes he is a shoo-in for a position at corporate. However, he is sabotaged by Angela Martin, who favors Dwight. When Dwight is pre-emptively named regional manager by Michael (who is confident that he will receive the promotion), Andy is named assistant regional manager. This never comes to fruition, as Michael does not receive the corporate promotion. Season 4-5 With the departure of Karen Filippelli, Andy becomes the only salesman from Stamford aside from Jim to stay at the Scranton branch. He develops a friendship with Dwight, and, unaware of Dwight and Angela's previous romantic interludes, romantic interest in Angela. He steals an elaborate ice sculpture for Angela's launch party and serenades her with a rendition of the ABBA song "Take a Chance on Me", receiving a rare smile in return. He finally wins Angela over by giving her a cat and a sentimental note. Angela and Andy's relationship sends Dwight spiralling into crushing depression, and rekindles his dislike for Andy. In "Goodbye, Toby", Andy proposes to Angela (unbeknownst to him, at the same moment Jim had been preparing to propose to Pam) with a ring that he has carried in his wallet for six years. Angela accepts his proposal with an irritated "Okay". Shortly after the proposal, however, Angela has sex with Dwight in the office, which is witnessed by Phyllis and the camera crew. At the start of season 5, Andy is still unaware of Angela and Dwight's affair, and he begins planning the wedding. However, his ideas are often rejected, and Angela eventually manipulates Andy into having the wedding take place at Dwight's farm. During the office Christmas party, Phyllis reveals Angela and Dwight's affair to the staff, except Andy. Michael later tells Andy about the affair, and Angela reluctantly confirms it. Andy confronts Dwight and challenges him to a duel, but they eventually realize that Angela has lied to them both about only sleeping with one of them. Andy cancels his wedding plans, and Dwight throws out the bobblehead in his likeness, symbolizing the end of their relationships with Angela. Angela's affair with Dwight and the broken engagement affect Andy's perspective on relationships. When Kevin seeks dating advice from others in the office, Andy gives him romantic advice that appears to reflect his own experiences with Angela -- telling him to never give compliments, push for physical contact, or be assertive to the point of rudeness. In "Heavy Competition", Andy offers bargain deals for Jim and Pam's wedding, and he mistakes Pam's rejection of Jim's ideas as Pam controlling him. Andy assumes the role of Jim's emotional rock, which Jim goes along with as a prank. After realizing Jim is messing with him, Andy confronts him. Jim tells Andy that he is very happy with Pam, and while Andy's breakup with Angela was "a bummer", he assures Andy that he will find someone else in the future. Season 6-7 As season 6 starts, Andy develops a friendship and an attraction to Erin, who is the new office secretary, but the pair are both too timid to reveal their feelings for one another. In "Secret Santa", Andy asks to be Erin's Secret Santa, and proceeds to give Erin gifts resembling the Twelve Days of Christmas. To complete his Secret Santa gift, Andy hires 12 professional drummers to perform for Erin and the rest of the staff in the parking lot; Erin is visibly pleased by the gesture. In "The Delivery," Michael arranges a date between Erin and Kevin. This pushes Andy to finally ask Erin out, which she accepts. In "Secretary's Day", Andy wants to ensure that Erin has a memorable Secretary's Day, and asks a reluctant Michael to treat Erin out to lunch. During lunch, Michael reveals that Andy was engaged to Angela, a fact that Andy had concealed from Erin to Michael's surprise. Returning to the office, Erin enters the main party, throws cake in Andy's face, and reveals her knowledge about his previous engagement with Angela. Deciding she cannot trust Andy, Erin breaks up with him, which leaves Andy distraught. During "The Cover-Up", Andy receives a call from a client claiming that their Sabre printer caught fire during a routine operation. In order to confirm his suspicions, Andy investigates and discovers that the Sabre printer indeed catches fire; he manages to record the incident on video. When the press gets word of the Sabre printers catching fire, the company's CEO Jo Bennett (Kathy Bates) goes out of her way to find the culprit. Andy initially denies sending the video, but eventually comes clean, admitting to submitting a letter and the video to a news editor. Though Andy is harassed by the sales staff over the report, he is commended by Erin for his bravery, leaving him pleased. In Season 7, Erin begins a romantic relationship with Gabe, devastating Andy. However, as the season continues, Erin gradually begins to lose interest in Gabe, eventually confiding in Michael that she may be in love with Andy again. After Erin publicly breaks up with Gabe in front of the staff, Gabe becomes venomously angry toward Andy, wrongly believing Andy had triggered Erin's brutal public breakup with him. In "Dwight K. Schrute, (Acting) Manager", Gabe breaks down and, crying, makes Andy promise not to date Erin, to which an uncomfortable Andy agrees. However, when Gabe tells Erin what Andy said about them not dating, Andy shuts Gabe up by pointing out Gabe's crying fit to Erin. In "Search Committee", Andy interviews to replace Michael's initial replacement, Deangelo, as the regional manager, which Gabe tries to sabotage. However, Andy remains a managerial candidate once Gabe's behavior gets him transferred out of Scranton. Erin asks Andy out on a date, and he eventually refuses, claiming that he has gotten over her. However, Andy later tells the camera that he thinks Erin is great. Season 8 During Season 8, Robert California, selected by the search committee, declines to become Branch Manager and convinces Jo Bennett to give him her position as CEO, thus giving Robert the authority to appoint Andy as the new manager. Upon discovering a list that divides the office into winners and losers, and being moved into the loser section after questioning Robert about it, he retaliates by hosting a pizza party for the losers and publicly confronts Robert about the positive attributes of the losers. This act earns the respect of Robert and the office. Robert eventually reveals that Andy's selection as the Regional Manager was done because he's a "simple underdog whom people will rally behind." In "The Incentive", Robert California urges the doubling of sales growth, which Andy attempts to fulfil with an incentive program. This program spirals out of control when Andy offers a tattoo on his posterior as one of the prizes, worth 5,000 points. In comedic fashion, the office pools their points and succeeds in winning this prize. Andy bravely steps up, only for the office to change the originally more-raunchy tattoo design to one that honors Andy's nickname of "The Nard Dog." During "Garden Party", Andy throws a garden party to impress Robert with his parents Walter Sr. (Stephen Collins), Ellen (Dee Wallace), and younger brother Walter, Jr. (Josh Groban) in attendance. However, Andy is also trying to prove himself to his parents, who were under the impression that he was the CEO of the company. Andy goes to great lengths to try and impress his parents, which leads Walter, Sr. to later speak with Andy. He insults Andy's job and states Andy needs to stop seeking his approval like a little kid. This conversation is overheard by some of the office staff, prompting everyone to understand why Andy feels the need to get everyone to like him. Following the garden party, a dejected Andy plans to head home himself, but Darryl and Oscar decide to cheer him up with an impromptu barbecue. In "Christmas Wishes", Andy introduces his new girlfriend Jessica to the office staff, much to the chagrin of Erin. During the office Christmas party, Erin drunkenly tells Andy that her Christmas wish is for Jessica to die, offending and angering Andy. He tells Erin to get over the fact that he turned her down for a date and storms off. Later, during the party, Andy becomes concerned when Erin gets a ride home from Robert. While driving Meredith home, Andy follows Robert to Erin's apartment, but to his relief, he sees Robert hug Erin goodbye with comforting words and instructs her to take care of her hangover. Seemingly despondent over his impending divorce, Robert hosts an impromptu "Pool Party" at his soon-to-be-sold mansion. The staff attends with Andy and Jessica, much to Erin's consternation. Andy carries around his parents' engagement ring, claiming that his parents fell in love with Jessica. Desperate for Andy's attention, Erin and Dwight engage in a series of competitive pool games with Andy and Jessica. Later on, Andy accidentally loses the ring and frantically searches for it; Erin recovers the ring in the pool and gives it to Andy, knowing the history behind the ring. Andy confides to Erin that he's confused about his relationship with Jessica, which gives Erin hope. In "Last Day in Florida", Andy learns that Erin isn't coming back to Scranton and realizes he still loves her. He decides to go to Florida to win her back. The two get back together, and Andy breaks up with Jessica. Returning to Scranton, Andy discovers that Nellie Bertram, one of the initial interviewees for Regional Manager, has claimed Andy's manager position at Scranton, with Andy subsequently demoted to a salesman. In a deliberate callback to his outburst in Season 3, Andy punches a hole in the office wall and gets fired from Dunder Mifflin. In "Turf War", Andy manages to win a major client and uses it as leverage to get David Wallace to purchase Dunder Mifflin. He also calls Robert and threatens to get him fired if David buys the company. Wallace ultimately buys back Dunder Mifflin, fires Nellie and Robert, and reinstates Andy as manager. While Andy is reinstated, Robert swindles his way into getting a million dollars from David, while Andy hires Nellie out of guilt and sorrow. Season 9 In the final season's premiere, it is revealed that Andy was sent to Outward Bound manager training by David Wallace, which caused him to revert to his previous cockier and meaner persona. Wanting revenge on Nellie, he continues to torment her. When she needs an employer's signature to verify her employment at an adoption agency, he refuses in front of the entire office, upsetting her and Erin. Andy later finds Erin crying after this, which prompts him to sign Nellie's papers. Andy discovers his father has abandoned their family, leaving them nearly penniless. He consults with Oscar and Darryl to sell enough family assets for his mother to live. They urge Andy to sell their family boat, which Andy had always wanted to drive; Andy relents and sells it to a dealer in the Bahamas. After he and Erin drive to Connecticut to see off the boat themselves, Andy discovers Walter Jr. dishevelled and hung over in one of the cabins. Andy decides to sail the boat to the Bahamas himself with Walter Jr., leaving Erin behind. Though grateful to Erin for cheering him up, he doesn't notice how hurt she is at being left behind. Upon arriving in the Bahamas, Andy decides to stay for several more weeks. This upsets Erin greatly and causes her to become closer to her friend and co-worker Pete Miller. After three months, Andy returns from the Bahamas in the episode "The Boat" and immediately alienates the staff with his behavior: ignorantly expecting the staff to take him seriously as if he never left, voiding a major sale that Dwight had with Jan Levinson, and shamelessly collecting his paychecks plus the "merit bonus" he acquired for the staff excelling their sales quota. He holds a meeting with the staff to catch up on what he missed, so as to meet with David Wallace, who has been under the impression that Andy has been at the office the entire time via phone calls and e-mails. Andy ultimately manages to get through the meeting without repercussions. Erin, feeling neglected by Andy, dumps Andy for mistreating her and for leaving her alone for three months; the conversation is heard by David Wallace on speakerphone. Distraught over their breakup, Andy's professional relationship with Erin and the rest of the staff worsens. Wallace chastises Andy but allows him to keep his job. After discovering that Pete is dating Erin, Andy impulsively fires Pete, but Toby tells Andy that he can't fire Pete over a personal grudge. When Erin and Pete lecture Andy, telling him that he needs to move on, Andy decides to hire their exes at the branch, in a bid to make Erin and Pete uncomfortable. The ploy works, and Erin and Pete's past relationship issues surface. Andy smugly states that seeing Erin and Pete unhappy has made him feel better. As in-universe promos start to circulate for the documentary series about the branch, Andy comes to realize that he's disillusioned about his job, and meets with real estate/talent agent Carla Fern (Roseanne Barr), who takes Andy on as a client. Andy pays her $5,000 to sign with her agency, and he books his first job in an industrial film about a chemical lab. Inspired to finally follow his dreams, Andy takes drastic measures to get fired, including initiating an ugly argument with David Wallace. Irritated by Andy's actions, David becomes enraged and fires Andy; Andy returns to the office to say goodbye, and performs a moving rendition of Sarah McLachlan's song "I Will Remember You". Surprised by Andy's performance, the staff embrace Andy and say goodbye, convinced that he may have some talent after all. In "A.A.R.M.", Andy auditions for a singing reality TV show, but is asked to leave before his audition due to overcrowding. Enraged, Andy bursts into the audition room, demands the judges let him audition, and throws a crying tantrum. In the series finale, Andy found a job at Cornell University's Admissions Office. The video of Andy's tantrum has become viral on YouTube, inspiring a parody on "Saturday Night Live". Andy's confidence and ease around everyone increase when he stunningly realizes that most of the crowd at the documentary reunion panel are not only there to see him, but are genuine fans of his portrayal on the show. Returning to the office after Dwight and Angela's wedding, Andy's former co-workers watch his Cornell speech and are unanimously impressed by it; Andy nearly breaks into tears as he tells the camera, "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them". Relationships Erin Hannon In season 6, Andy takes an interest in receptionist Erin Hannon, who has mutual affection, but due to miscommunication, there was a long period where the two waited for each other to make a move. However, Andy eventually asks Erin out on a date, and she graciously accepts. Three weeks later, after Erin discovers, through Michael Scott, of Andy's former engagement to accountant Angela Martin, she throws cake in Andy's face and decides that they need to take a break from one another. Over a year later, Erin, after breaking up with Gabe Lewis, asks Andy out on a date, but he dismisses her advances, because of his lingering issues with her leaving him for Gabe. When Andy introduces his girlfriend Jessica to the Office at a Christmas party, Erin becomes drunk and confesses to Andy that she wishes Jessica was dead. Greatly offended, Andy informs Erin that she needs to get over their break-up, and briskly leaves. Upon learning that Erin wishes to live in Tallahassee, Florida, Andy drives to Tallahassee to get back together with Erin. At first, he is unsuccessful, but ultimately gets her back; they make up and kiss in the middle of the street. During season 9, their relationship starts to show cracks as Andy comes back from a training seminar that has made him more confident, but seemingly more selfish to Erin. When Andy takes his parents' boat to the Bahamas for three weeks, he leaves Erin behind, who looks on disappointed. Erin later goes out with Pete, a new co-worker for drinks. When Andy decides to stay in the Bahamas for three more months, Erin becomes increasingly unhappy, and finally breaks up with Andy upon his return. Later in the season, Andy's distraught behavior affects his professional relationship with Erin and the staff. When Andy learns of Erin's relationship with Pete, he acts irrationally to where Erin and Pete lecture him that he needs to move on. In the episode Livin' the Dream, Andy and Erin are seen speaking pleasantly to each other; Erin admits her concern for Andy's well-being, saying she's worried he'll "be homeless or even starve." During Andy's goodbye song, Erin stares at Andy with a serious look of affection, making it unclear whether or not the two still have romantic feelings for each other. In the series finale, Andy, Erin, and Pete are all shown to be getting along well at the after-party, indicating the tensions from earlier have eased. Angela Martin In the fourth season, Andy begins a relationship with accountant Angela Martin, who half-heartedly began dating him on the rebound, after she had broken up with Dwight Schrute (whose relationship with her had been unknown to the majority of the staff). After dating for about seven months, Andy proposes to Angela during Toby Flenderson's farewell party, and she begrudgingly accepts. However, during their engagement, she resumes her affair with Dwight. Andy endures tremendous effort in order to prepare for Angela's dream wedding. Upon learning about the affair, both he and Dwight break up with her, and Andy is initially crushed. When Andy is leaving the office for good after he quits to seek fame, Angela tries to talk him out of it. Andy wrongly assumes she regrets ending their relationship, and says he does think about her often, but Angela is able to choke back her disgust and they part ways with a hug. Michael Scott After transferring to the Scranton branch, Andy has a strategy to become the number two of the branch by name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake first; Michael immediately likes him. In "Traveling Salesmen", Andy picks Michael as his traveling salesman partner, and during the car ride, Michael tells Andy about Dwight going behind his back and talking to Jan. When they do their joint sale pitch, Andy ruins the pitch, infuriating Michael. Andy finds the toll booth receipt that shows Dwight went to New York, and suggests that he wanted to talk with Jan again, resulting in Michael confronting Dwight; Dwight quits Dunder Muffin. In "The Return", Michael talks to Jim about Andy; Jim tells Michael that Andy is a yes man, and did the same thing with his old boss, Josh, at the Stamford branch. After Angela tells Michael why Dwight went to New York, Michael decides to leave the office to get Dwight back. Andy tries to come with him and begins telling Michael about his weekend plans for the two of them. Finally, Michael tells him to stop, realizing he made a mistake trying to replace Dwight with Andy. Following Andy's return from anger management, Michael gives him a second chance, naming him a team captain for the beach games competition and considering him as a potential replacement. For the remainder of the series, Michael is on good terms with Andy, and when Michael leaves Dunder Mifflin for Colorado, he gifts Andy all of his clients as a way of motivating him. Although he initially loses one of those clients, Andy's ability to maintain a relationship with the others greatly boosts his confidence. Dwight Schrute Since Andy's arrival, he and Dwight had a competitive professional relationship, and the two eventually duel over Angela when it is found she is cheating on Andy with Dwight. After the fight, both relationships end, and Angela is left heartbroken and alone. A few months later, the two soon begin competing for Erin's attention, but Dwight ultimately decides to cease pursuing her in order to maintain a good relationship with Andy. However, after Andy is hired as Regional Manager, Andy makes Dwight his "Enforcer" in order to stay on good terms, but Dwight later states in an interview that he will "wait for Andy's inevitable demise". During "Couples Discount", Dwight is unable to get Andy's sign-off on prices with a major sale that Dwight landed, although when Andy suddenly reappears, he chastises Dwight for not having his approval on the prices. When Dwight informs him that Andy was on a boat and unreachable, Andy tries again to maintain his authority. This backfires when Andy decides to renege on the prices with Dwight's client, thus voiding a major sale for the company and wrecking Dwight's sales record. Dwight later tells false stories to Andy when Andy asks for an update on the branch, in hopes of sabotaging Andy. When Dwight learns he's in line to become the permanent branch manager and Andy asks if his plan to quit and seek stardom is a good idea, Dwight kindly but firmly tells Andy that he should not quit, even if this denies Dwight his dream job. In the series finale, Andy returns to Scranton to attend Dwight and Angela's wedding. Jim and Pam Halpert Andy was the subject of many pranks by Jim and Pam, some of which have caused his anger issues to unfold. Andy also had a romantic interest in Pam, but due to intentionally misleading advice given to him by Jim, it did not develop into a relationship. Although the two will, at times, act considerably mean to Andy, Jim and Pam are often pleasant to him, and even give him advice when he needs it. When Andy goes through a rough breakup, he gives Jim wildly bad advice when he suspects Pam of controlling him. However, Jim uses it as an opportunity to prank Andy throughout the day before he sees through the ruse, prompting Jim to comfort him about finding someone else. Darryl Philbin Initially, Darryl and Andy were foes. Darryl states that Andy once used him as a scapegoat, nearly getting him fired from his job, for a mistake that Andy had made. Andy also attempts to order Darryl around when Sabre's "Sales is King" policy greatly affects the sales staffs' egos. However, over time, the two develop a strong friendship. When Darryl confides in Andy that he wished he had remained a member of the warehouse staff, Andy convinces him to make the most of his position and continue rising in the company. When Darryl is depressed over not winning a lottery that the warehouse staff won and shared, he demands that Andy either terminate him or give him the Manager position. Andy is blunt, but kind, as he informs Darryl the truth about his shortcomings, and Darryl subsequently rededicates himself to his job. When he meets Andy's family, Darryl overhears Andy's father berate him over his status in life, and finally understands why Andy needs to please others, and later participates in cheering Andy up, along with the rest of the staff. Darryl is also one of the few people in the office, along with Jim, Pam and Erin, who did not accept Nellie Bertram's attempt at usurping Andy's job. Darryl is not impressed with Andy's acting ability, to the point of bluntly saying Andy needs to have a job that will tolerate his inevitable and chronic mistakes. In the series finale, Darryl initially avoids Andy, but impressed with Andy's speech at Cornell, he gives Andy a hug. Gabe Lewis While initially having a neutral relationship with Gabe, Andy develops a dislike for Gabe when he begins dating Erin. After Erin breaks up with Gabe, a heartbroken and jealous Gabe begins to heavily resent Andy and threatens him not to make any advances on Erin. When Andy interviews for the Regional Manager position, Gabe displays a negative, biased opinion of him. Later, he unsuccessfully attempts to convince the CEO of Sabre, Jo Bennett, not to hire Andy as Manager. For the next year (until Gabe is written out), Andy and Gabe are generally rivals, often making snide remarks to one another. After Erin breaks up with Andy, Andy briefly hires Gabe to make Erin feel uncomfortable. Robert California After becoming the new CEO of Sabre, Robert California appointed Andy as Regional Manager of the Scranton branch. Since then, Andy has developed an awkward relationship with Robert, who he is eager to impress, and highly intimidated by. Robert states that the reason he chose Andy for the Manager position is because he is "All surface... Uncomplicated, what you see is what you get". Andy and Robert's contentious relationship climaxes when Robert allows Nellie Bertram to usurp Andy's Regional Manager position, and Andy is fired for refusing to accept Nellie as manager, only able to reclaim his managerial role by convincing David Wallace to purchase Dunder Mifflin away from Sabre and Robert. Behind the scenes The character is named after American economist Andrew Bernard, professor of international economics at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. While Andy was initially meant as a temporary character in season 3 of The Office, the character "grew" on Greg Daniels and the writers, and they decided to have Andy return to the office from anger management and become a permanent character. Reception Initially considered an abrasive addition to the show, Andy Bernard later became a fan favorite due to his character development throughout the series. Fans did not enjoy his arc in the final season, which saw Andy revert to his worst tendencies in his early seasons and treat his co-workers poorly, with some commentators wondering if the show's writers "did not know what to do" with the character. References External links Entertainment Weekly- Ed Helms No Longer an 'Office' Temp Category:The Office (American TV series) characters Category:Fictional characters from Connecticut Category:Fictional salespeople Category:Fictional musicians Category:Fictional dancers Category:Television characters introduced in 2006 Category:Fictional managers Category:American male characters in television

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William J. Donovan

Of Irish descent, Donovan was born in Buffalo, New York, to Anna Letitia "Tish" Donovan (nee Lennon) and Timothy P. Donovan, both American-born children of Irish immigrants. The Lennons were from Ulster, the Donovans from County Cork. Donovan's grandfather Timothy O'Donovan (Sr.) was from the town of Skibbereen; raised by an uncle who was a parish priest, he married Donovan's grandmother Mary Mahoney, who belonged to a propertied family of substantial means that disapproved of him.

World War I

During World War I, Major Donovan led the 1st battalion, 165th Regiment of the 42nd Division. Serving in France, he suffered a shrapnel wound in one leg and was almost blinded by gas. After performing a rescue under fire, he was offered the Croix de Guerre, but turned it down because a Jewish soldier who had taken part in the rescue had not also been awarded the honor. When this insult was corrected, Donovan accepted the distinction. He also was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for leading an assault during the Aisne-Marne campaign, in which hundreds of members of his regiment died, including his acting adjutant, the poet Joyce Kilmer. The events of this Battle and the 69th Infantry Regiment were dramatised in the James Cagney movie, "The Fighting 69th". Donovan's remarkable level of endurance, which far exceeded that of the much younger soldiers under his command, led those men to give him the nickname "Wild Bill", which stuck with him for the rest of his life. Although he "professed annoyance with the nickname," his wife "knew that deep down he loved it." Appointed chief of staff of the 165th Regiment, Donovan fought in another battle that took place near Landres-et-Saint-Georges on October 14-15, 1918. Going into battle, Donovan "ignored the officers' custom of covering or stripping off insignia of rank (targets for snipers) and instead sallied forth wearing his medals", according to Evan Thomas. "They can't hit me and they won't hit you!" he told his men. Struck in the knee by a bullet, he "refused to be evacuated and continued to direct his men until even American tanks were turning back under withering German fire." After lobbying by his friend Father Francis Duffy, a famous and widely revered Army chaplain, Donovan was awarded an Oak Leaf Cluster of the Distinguished Service Cross (i.e., a second DSC) for his service in that battle. After the Armistice, Donovan remained in Europe as part of the occupation. On returning to New York in April 1919, Donovan, now a colonel, was widely discussed as a possible candidate for governor, but he rejected the idea, proclaiming his intention to return to Buffalo and resume the practice of law. CANNOTANSWER

William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan (January 1, 1883 – February 8, 1959) was an American soldier, lawyer, intelligence officer and diplomat. He is best known for serving as the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), during World War II. He is regarded as the founding father of the CIA, and a statue of him stands in the lobby of the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia. A decorated veteran of World War I, Donovan is believed to be the only person to have been awarded all four of the following prestigious decorations: the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Security Medal. He is also a recipient of the Silver Star and Purple Heart, as well as decorations from a number of other nations for his service during both World Wars. Early life Of Irish descent, Donovan was born in Buffalo, New York, to Anna Letitia "Tish" Donovan (née Lennon) and Timothy P. Donovan, both American-born children of Irish immigrants. The Lennons were from Ulster and the Donovans from County Cork. Donovan's grandfather, Timothy O'Donovan Sr., was from the town of Skibbereen; raised by an uncle who was a parish priest, he married Donovan's grandmother Mary Mahoney, who belonged to a propertied family of substantial means that disapproved of him. They first moved to Canada and then to Buffalo, where they dropped the "O" from their name. Donovan's father, born in 1858, worked as the superintendent of a Buffalo railroad yard, as secretary for Holy Cross Cemetery, and attempted to engage in a political career with little success. Donovan was born on New Year's Day in 1883. (Named William, he chose his middle name, Joseph, at the time of his confirmation.) He had two younger brothers and two younger sisters who survived into adulthood and several additional younger siblings who died in infancy or childhood. "From Anna's side of the family came style and etiquette and the dreams of poets," Donovan's biographer, Douglas Waller, wrote. "From Tim came toughness and duty and honor to country and clan." Donovan attended St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute, a Catholic institution at which he played football, acted in plays, and won an award for oratory. He went on to Niagara University, a Catholic university and seminary where he undertook a pre-law major. Considering the priesthood, he ultimately decided "he wasn't good enough to be a priest," although he did win another oratorical contest, this time with a speech warning of corrupt, anti-Christian forces that threatened the United States. With the expectation of studying law, Donovan eventually transferred to Columbia University, where he looked beyond "Catholic dogma" and attended Protestant and Jewish worship services to decide whether he wanted to change religions. He joined the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, rowed on varsity crew, again won a prize for oratory, was a campus football hero, and was voted the "most modest" and one of the "handsomest" members of the graduating class of 1905. After earning his bachelor of arts, Donovan spent two years at Columbia Law School, where he was a classmate of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and studied under Harlan Fiske Stone. Returning to Buffalo, he joined the respected law firm of Love & Keating in 1909 and, two years later, opened his own Buffalo firm in partnership with a Columbia classmate, Bradley Goodyear. In 1914, their firm merged with another, becoming Goodyear & O'Brien. In 1912, Donovan helped form, and became the leader of, a troop of cavalry of the New York National Guard. This unit was mobilized in 1916 and served on the U.S.–Mexico border during the American government's campaign against Pancho Villa. He studied military strategy and combat tactics. He also took acting courses in New York City from a stage star of the day, Eleanor Robson. In 1914, he married Ruth Rumsey, a Buffalo heiress who had attended Rosemary Hall. In 1916, Donovan spent several months in Berlin on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation, seeking to persuade the governments of Britain and Germany to allow the shipment of food and clothing into Belgium, Serbia, and Poland. In July of that year, at the behest of the State Department, he returned to the U.S. and took his cavalry troop to the Texas border to join Brigadier General John J. Pershing's army in the hunt for Pancho Villa. Promoted to major in the field, he returned to Buffalo, then joined the 69th Regiment, also known as the "Fighting Irish Regiment". This was the same 69th of Civil War fame, later called the 165th, which was training for America's expected entry into World War I, and which became part of the 42nd Division, also known as the "Rainbow Division". Douglas MacArthur was the 42nd Division's chief of staff. Donovan's son David was born in 1915, and a daughter, Patricia, was born in 1917. (Patricia died in an accident in 1940.) World War I During World War I, Major Donovan led the 1st battalion, 165th Infantry of the 42nd Division. Serving in France, he suffered a shrapnel wound in one leg and was almost blinded by gas. After performing a rescue under fire, he was offered the Croix de Guerre, but turned it down because a Jewish soldier who had taken part in the rescue had not also been awarded the honor. When this insult was corrected, Donovan accepted the distinction. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for leading an assault during the Aisne-Marne campaign, in which hundreds of members of his regiment died, including his acting adjutant, the poet Joyce Kilmer. The 1940 James Cagney movie, The Fighting 69th, dramatised the events of this battle and the 69th Infantry Regiment's role in it. Donovan's remarkable level of endurance, which far exceeded that of the much younger soldiers under his command, led those men to give him the nickname "Wild Bill", which stuck with him for the rest of his life. Although he "professed annoyance with the nickname", his wife "knew that deep down he loved it". Assigned commanding officer of the 165th Regiment, Donovan fought in another battle that took place near Landres-et-Saint-Georges on October 14–15, 1918. Going into battle, Donovan "ignored the officers' custom of covering or stripping off insignia of rank (targets for snipers) and instead sallied forth wearing his medals", according to Evan Thomas. "They can't hit me and they won't hit you!" he told his men. Struck in the knee by a bullet, he "refused to be evacuated and continued to direct his men until even American tanks were turning back under withering German fire". After lobbying by his friend Father Francis P. Duffy, a famous and widely revered Army chaplain, Donovan was awarded an Oak Leaf Cluster of the Distinguished Service Cross (i.e., a second DSC) for his service in that battle. After the Armistice of November 11, 1918, Donovan remained in Europe as part of the occupation. On returning to New York in April 1919, Donovan, now a colonel, was widely discussed as a possible candidate for governor, but he rejected the idea, proclaiming his intention to return to Buffalo and resume the practice of law. Interwar years Following his return to the U.S., Donovan took his wife on a combined vacation, business trip, and intelligence mission to Japan, China, and Korea, then went on alone to Siberia during the Russian Civil War. He went back to work at his law firm, but also took an extensive journey to Europe, where he did business on behalf of J. P. Morgan and gathered intelligence about international Communism. From 1922 to 1924, while maintaining his private law practice, he also served as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York. A high point came in 1923, when, as a result of continued pressure from Father Duffy, Donovan was finally awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic acts in the battle at Landres-et-Saint-Georges. Presented with the medal at a New York City ceremony that was attended by about four thousand veterans, Donovan refused to keep it, saying that it belonged not to him but "to the boys who are not here, the boys who are resting under the white crosses in France or in the cemeteries of New York, also to the boys who were lucky enough to come through. As US Attorney, he was becoming well known as a vigorous crime-fighter. He was especially famous (and, in some circles, notorious) for his energetic enforcement of Prohibition. There were a number of threats to assassinate him and to dynamite his home, but he was not deterred. The climax of his war on alcohol came in August 1923, when his agents raided Buffalo's upmarket Saturn Club (of which Donovan himself was a member) and confiscated large amounts of illegal liquor. The club's members, who formed much of the city's upper crust, were outraged, having assumed that Prohibition did not apply to people such as themselves. Some regarded Donovan as a traitor to their class, and recalled that Donovan had not, after all, been born to high station but was, in fact, an Irish Catholic who had married into the world of privileged, professional Protestants. Donovan's law partner, Goodyear, quit their firm in anger over the raid, and Donovan's own wife never forgave him for it. Many working class residents of Buffalo cheered the raid as an example of equal justice under the law, however. In 1924, when President Calvin Coolidge cleaned house at the Department of Justice in the wake of the late President Warren G. Harding's Teapot Dome scandal, he appointed Donovan's former professor Harlan Stone as Attorney General and named Donovan as Stone's assistant, in charge of the criminal division. Donovan and his wife split their time between Washington and Buffalo, where he continued to run his law firm. At the Justice Department, Donovan hired women and eschewed yes-men. He and his wife became a popular Washington couple, although Donovan's relationship with the acting Director of the Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, briefly one of his underlings, was fraught with friction. When Stone was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1925, Donovan was put in charge of the Department of Justice's antitrust division, often serving as de facto Attorney General during the frequent absences of Stone's successor, John Garibaldi Sargent. Donovan was admired for his energetic and effective arguments before the Supreme Court, and was a favorite off-the-record source for the Washington press corps. He was talked up as a possible candidate for Governor of New York in 1926 and for the Vice Presidency in 1928; Herbert Hoover promised to make him Attorney General if Hoover won the Presidency in 1928, but instead, under the influence of anti-Catholic Southerners, among others, Hoover ended up offering him the governorship of the Philippines, a post Donovan turned down. Resigning from the Department of Justice in 1929, Donovan moved to New York City and formed a new law firm, Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, in partnership with Frank Raichle. Despite the stock market crash, he made a success of handling many of the mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcies that then resulted; he also acquired celebrity clients, such as Mae West and Jane Wyman. Donovan ran on the Republican line in the 1932 state election to succeed Franklin D. Roosevelt as Governor of New York. Assisting Donovan in his campaign was journalist James J. Montague, who served as "personal adviser and campaign critic". But despite Donovan's offstage charm and force, he proved to be an uninspiring campaigner on the stump. He ran a disorganized, strategy-free campaign, and in the end lost to the Democratic nominee, Herbert Lehman. World War II During the interwar years, as "part of an informal network of American businessmen and lawyers who closely tracked and collected intelligence on foreign affairs," Donovan traveled extensively in Europe and Asia, "establishing himself as a player in international affairs – and honing his skills as an intelligence gatherer overseas." He met with such foreign leaders as Benito Mussolini, with whom he discussed World War I, the expansionist ideology of Italian Fascism, and Roosevelt's prospects for re-election in 1936. Mussolini granted Donovan permission to visit the Italian front in Ethiopia, where he found Italy's military much improved since the war and predicted an Italian victory. Donovan also made connections with leading figures in Nazi Germany. But he was no friend of the dictators, publicly assailing Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin as totalitarians and taking steps to protect his Jewish clients in Europe from the Nazis. Donovan openly believed during this time that a second major European war was inevitable. His foreign experience and realism earned him the friendship of President Roosevelt, notwithstanding their extreme differences in domestic policy and despite the fact that Donovan, during the 1932 election campaign, had harshly criticized Roosevelt's record as Governor of New York. The two men were from opposing political parties, but were similar in personality. Roosevelt respected Donovan's experience, felt that Hoover had done Donovan wrong on the Attorney General appointment, and believed that if Donovan had been a Democrat he could have been elected president. Also, Donovan's national profile had risen considerably thanks to the 1940 Warner Brothers film The Fighting 69th, in which Pat O'Brien played Father Duffy and George Brent played Donovan, and Roosevelt recognized a useful opportunity to exploit Donovan's newfound popularity. As the two men began exchanging notes about developments abroad, Roosevelt recognized that Donovan could be an important ally and adviser. Roosevelt came to place great value on Donovan's insight. Following Germany's and the USSR's invasions of Poland in September 1939 and the start of World War II in Europe, President Roosevelt began to put the United States on a war footing. This was a crisis of the sort that Donovan had predicted, and he sought out a responsible place in the wartime infrastructure. On the recommendation of Donovan's friend, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Roosevelt gave him a number of increasingly important assignments. In 1940 and 1941, Donovan traveled as an informal emissary to Britain, where he was urged by Knox and Roosevelt to gauge Britain's ability to withstand Germany's aggression. During these trips, Donovan met with key officials in the British war effort, including Winston Churchill and the directors of Britain's intelligence services. He also had lunch with King George VI. Donovan and Churchill got along famously, sharing war stories and reciting in unison the nineteenth-century poem "The Cavalier's Song" by William Motherwell. Impressed by Donovan and cheered by his eagerness to help Britain, Churchill ordered that he be given unlimited access to classified information. Donovan returned to the U.S. confident of Britain's chances and enamored of the possibility of founding an American intelligence service modeled on that of the British. He strongly urged Roosevelt to give Churchill the aid he requested. Roosevelt wanted to provide such aid, and asked Donovan to use his knowledge of the law to figure out how to skirt the congressional ban on selling armaments to the United Kingdom. British diplomats, who shared Churchill's admiration for Donovan, expressed the wish to State Department officials that Donovan replace U.S. Ambassador to Britain Joseph P. Kennedy, who favored the appeasers and was defeatist regarding British prospects. In the view of Walter Lippmann, a political columnist, Donovan's findings about Britain's fighting capability "almost singlehandedly overcame the unmitigated defeatism which was paralyzing Washington." Donovan also examined U.S. naval defenses in the Pacific (which he found wanting) and visited several countries along the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, serving as an unofficial envoy for both the U.S. and Britain and urging leaders there to stand up to the Nazis. He also met frequently in New York with William Stephenson, a spy for MI6 who was known as "Intrepid". Donovan and Stephenson, according to Thomas, "eventually became so close that they were known as 'Big Bill' and 'Little Bill'." Donovan, Waller has said, "could not have formed the OSS without the British, who provided intelligence, trainers, organizational charts and advice – all with the idea of making OSS an adjunct to British intelligence. But Donovan wanted to mount his own operations." OSS On July 11, 1941, Roosevelt signed an order naming Donovan Coordinator of Information (COI). "At the time," Thomas wrote, "the U.S. government had no formal spy agency. In 1929, the Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, had abolished the highly effective Black Chamber, a code-breaking organization left over from World War I." In Stimson's view, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." The Army, Navy, FBI, State Department, and other entities all ran their own intelligence units, but they were feeble and isolated from one another. They also saw Donovan's new operation as a threat to their turfs. Nevertheless, Donovan began to lay the groundwork for a centralized intelligence program. It was he who organized the COI's New York headquarters in Room 3603 of Rockefeller Center in October 1941 and asked Allen Dulles to head it; the offices Dulles took were on the floor immediately above the location of the operations of Britain's MI6. Thomas has described the OSS as an "informal" and "freewheeling" place where "[r]ank meant little." David Bruce later recalled: "Woe to the officer who turned down a project because, on its face, it seemed ridiculous or at least unusual  ... His [referring to the ideal officers in the OSS, contrasting with the aforementioned officers, who turned down such projects] imagination was unlimited. Ideas were his plaything. Excitement made him snort like a race horse." Throughout the war, the OSS would endure criticism by segments of the U.S. media and by many highly placed figures in the U.S. government and military. General George Marshall was an early critic but later changed his mind. Eisenhower was always supportive, as was General George Patton. On December 7, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Donovan met privately with Roosevelt and Edward R. Murrow, and FDR told Donovan, apropos of the COI, "It's a good thing you got me started on this." When Hitler gave a speech declaring war on the United States, he mentioned Donovan, whom he called "utterly unworthy". Donovan urged Roosevelt not to intern Japanese-Americans, warning that such an action would address a problem that did not exist, do harm to loyal Americans, and provide the Japanese with ammunition for their propaganda. Donovan set up espionage and sabotage schools, established front companies, arranged clandestine collaborations with international corporations and the Vatican, and oversaw the invention of new, espionage-friendly guns, cameras, and bombs. Donovan also recruited agents, selecting individuals with a wide range of backgrounds – ranging from intellectuals and artists to people with criminal backgrounds. He hired a great many female spies, dismissing criticism by those who felt women were unsuited to such work. Among his prominent recruits were film director John Ford, actor Sterling Hayden, author Stephen Vincent Benét, and Eve Curie, daughter of the scientists Marie and Pierre Curie. Other OSS recruits included poet Archibald MacLeish, banker Paul Mellon, businessman Alfred V. du Pont (son of industrialist Alfred I. du Pont), chef Julia Child, psychologist Carl Jung (who helped with the effort to analyze the psyches of Hitler and other Nazi leaders), author Walter Lord, and members of the Auchincloss and Vanderbilt families. There were so many aristocrats in the agency that the joke went around that OSS stood for "Oh So Social". In 1942, the COI ceased being a White House operation and was placed under the aegis of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Roosevelt also changed its name to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Donovan was returned to active duty in the U.S. Army in his World War I rank of colonel. He was promoted to brigadier general in March 1943 and to major general in November 1944. Under his leadership the OSS would eventually conduct successful espionage and sabotage operations in Europe and parts of Asia, but continued to be kept out of South America owing to Hoover's hostility to Donovan, which also had a deleterious impact on efforts to share information between the two agencies. In addition, the OSS was blocked from the Philippines by the antipathy of General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the Southwest Pacific Theater. OSS espionage and other on-site activities helped prepare the ground for the 1942 Allied invasion of North Africa, however, and Donovan himself took part in the Allied landing at Salerno, Italy, on September 3, 1943, and at the Anzio landing on January 22, 1944. Donovan was in fact very active in virtually every theater of World War II. He spent a good deal of time in the Balkans, to which he had urged both Roosevelt and Churchill to pay more attention. He met in Europe with highly placed anti-Nazi Germans to broker an early peace that would allow for occupation by the Western Allies, establish a democratic Germany, and leave the Soviets out in the cold. In China, he struggled with Chiang Kai-shek and his underlings for permission to carry out espionage activities in their territory. He inspected OSS operations in Burma, met with Vyacheslav Molotov in Moscow to arrange for cooperation between the OSS and NKVD, and was present for MacArthur's successful April 1944 invasion of Hollandia on the northern coast of New Guinea. Overall, the OSS was most effective in the Balkans, China, Burma, and France. By 1943, Donovan's relations with British officials were becoming increasingly strained as a result of turf wars, strategic and tactical disagreements, radical differences in style and temperament (the British accused the OSS of playing "cowboys and red Indians"), and contrasting visions of the postwar world. (The British wanted to retain their empire; Donovan saw the empire, at least in some instances, as an impediment to democracy and economic development.) MI6 chief Stewart Menzies was extremely hostile towards the idea of OSS operations anywhere in the British Empire, and categorically forbade the OSS to operate within the UK, or to deal with allied governments in exile which were based in London. Nonetheless, as of May 1944, Donovan had "some eleven thousand American officers and foreign agents scattered in every important capital." During the war he also received intelligence from a network of Catholic priests across Europe who engaged in espionage without the Pope's knowledge. On D-Day, Donovan was on one of the ships that took part in the Normandy landing. Going ashore, he and his commander of covert operations in Europe, Colonel David K. E. Bruce, were shot at by a German plane, then moved on toward the American front lines and encountered German machine-gun fire. As they lay on the ground, Bruce later recalled, Donovan said, "David, we mustn't be captured. We know too much." Donovan said that he had two suicide pills, but then discovered he didn't. "I must shoot first," Donovan said. Bruce replied, "Yes, sir, but can we do much against machine guns with our pistols?" Donovan explained: "Oh, you don't understand. I mean, if we are about to be captured, I'll shoot you first. After all, I am your commanding officer." Eventually, they found their way to General Omar Bradley's newly set-up tent headquarters on the beach. Upon returning to Washington, Donovan reported directly to Roosevelt on what he had observed. The success of the invasion, he said, showed that German naval and air forces were definitely no longer "Big League" and that "something has died in the German machine. Before the month was over, he was in Italy, implementing reforms in the OSS operation in that theater. He also met with Pope Pius XII, telling him about the activities of intelligence agents working out of the Japanese embassy at the Vatican. During the weeks leading up to the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler, Dulles, Donovan's man in Switzerland, who was in contact with the plotters, kept him abreast of developments. A particular triumph for the OSS was the role it played in conveying intelligence from southern France in the run-up to the Allied landing on the French Riviera on August 15, 1944. Thanks to Donovan's spies, said Colonel William Wilson Quinn, the invading army "knew everything about that beach and where every German was." Donovan was present for that invasion, too, after which he returned to Rome for a secret meeting with Hitler's envoy to the Vatican, Ernst von Weizsäcker. Shortly afterwards, he met with Marshal Tito to discuss OSS operations in Yugoslavia. Also in August 1944, Donovan came into conflict with Churchill over the OSS's support for Greek anti-royalists. In the closing days of the war in Europe, Donovan spent much of his time in London, where he worked out of a command center that took up an entire floor of Claridge's Hotel. He fielded reports from across the continent, where the Wehrmacht was in such chaos that he "knew their positions on the battlefield better than German generals did." In one of many initiatives, he sent out "teams of French, Danish, Norwegian, and Polish nationals" to identify Gestapo officers who had tortured them and who now were trying to blend in with civilians in Allied-controlled areas of Germany. Acting on Donovan's orders, Dulles oversaw the surrender of the remaining Nazi forces in Italy several days in advance of the final German capitulation. Postwar plans As World War II began to wind to a close in early 1945, Donovan began to focus on preserving the OSS beyond the end of the war. A February 19 article in the Washington Times-Herald revealed his plans for a postwar intelligence agency and published a secret memo he had sent to Roosevelt proposing its creation. The article compared the proposed agency to the Gestapo. Knowing that Americans wanted a smaller federal government after the war, Roosevelt was not entirely sold on Donovan's proposal, although Donovan felt reasonably confident he could talk the president into the idea. Hoover disapproved of Donovan's plan, which he saw as a direct threat to FBI authority, even though Donovan had stressed that his agency would operate only abroad, not domestically. After Roosevelt's death in April, however, Donovan's political position was substantially weakened. Although he argued forcefully for the OSS's retention, he found himself opposed by the new president, Harry S. Truman. While the OSS got "glowing reviews" from many wartime commanders, notably Eisenhower, who described its contributions as "vital", critics dismissed it as "an arm of British intelligence" and, like the Times-Herald reporter, painted dark pictures of it as an American Gestapo in the making. Nuremberg trials While British authorities and the US military and State Department were relatively indifferent to the question of trying war criminals after the war, Donovan was lobbying Roosevelt as early as October 1943 to arrange for such prosecutions. Roosevelt tasked Donovan with looking into the legalities and technicalities, and in the months that followed Donovan collected testimonies about war criminals and related information from a wide range of sources. In addition to seeking justice, Donovan wanted to exact retribution for the torture and killing of OSS agents. When Truman named Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson to serve as chief U.S. counsel in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, Jackson, discovering that the OSS was the only agency that had seriously explored the issue, invited Donovan to join his trial staff. On May 17, 1945, Donovan flew to Europe to prepare for the prosecutions, and eventually brought 172 OSS officers onto Jackson's team, interviewing Auschwitz survivors, tracking down SS and Gestapo documents, and uncovering other evidence. Donovan, whose idea it was to hold the trials in Nuremberg, also introduced Jackson to useful foreign officials and even released OSS funds to bankroll the prosecution effort. Eventually, Jackson, who had been a political rival of Donovan's in New York State, considered him a "godsend"; in return for Donovan's help, but also because the OSS had proven "vital for the prosecution team," Jackson lobbied Truman in person to approve of Donovan's plans for a permanent postwar intelligence agency. The effort was unsuccessful, however. On September 20, 1945, Truman signed an executive order abolishing the OSS. As was only revealed 60 years later, Donovan succeeded in getting the Americans to block the Soviet attempt to add the Katyn massacre to the list of German war crimes. He had been convinced by the German opponent of Hitler, Fabian von Schlabrendorff, unofficially included on his staff, that it was not the Germans but the Soviet secret service NKVD that had murdered some 4,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest. But shortly afterwards Donovan came into conflict with Jackson. In Nuremberg, Donovan interrogated many prisoners, including Hermann Göring, whom he spoke with ten times. But eventually Donovan fell out with Jackson. The latter wanted to indict the entire German High Command, not just men who had personally ordered or committed war crimes; Donovan considered this a violation of American principles of fairness. Donovan, a former prosecutor, also criticized Jackson's lack of skill and experience at putting together a strong case and at courtroom examination and cross-examination. Jackson removed him from the team, and Donovan returned to the U.S., where in January 1946 Truman presented him with the Distinguished Service Medal. CIA In 1946, Donovan resumed the practice of law and began writing a history of American intelligence since the Revolutionary War – a book he never completed. He traveled extensively in Europe and Asia and ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for the Senate. He also became chairman of the newly founded American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), which worked to counter the new Communist threat to Europe by promoting European political unity. The vice-chairman was Dulles, and Walter Bedell Smith sat on the board as well. The ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organization in the immediate postwar years. (In 1958, the ACUE provided 53.5% of the movement's funds.) In addition, the ACUE provided all of the funding for the European Youth Campaign, in which Joseph Retinger, Robert Schuman, and Paul-Henri Spaak were involved. Meanwhile, Truman moved forward with plans for a new intelligence agency, finally giving approval in 1946 for a watered-down interdepartmental "Central Intelligence Group." Donovan warned that it would be ineffectual – he compared it to a "debating society" – and he soon proved to be right. As the Cold War quickly intensified, Truman recognized the need for a far stronger intelligence service, and in February 1947 asked Congress to approve plans for a Central Intelligence Agency along the lines Donovan had proposed. Donovan himself lobbied Congress privately to pass the enabling legislation, the National Security Act of 1947. It was, in Waller's words, "a vindication of Donovan's vision". Among the OSS members who went on to become major CIA figures were Dulles, William Casey, William Colby, and James Jesus Angleton. Donovan wanted to lead the CIA, and had many supporters who urged Truman to put him in charge. Instead, the president gave the job to Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, whom Waller described as "lackluster". Meanwhile, Donovan accepted a Truman appointment to head a committee studying the country's fire departments. But he worked behind the scenes to aid in the formation of the CIA, recommending that Hillenkoetter hire Dulles and other OSS veterans, suggesting various covert operations, and sharing contacts and information from behind the Iron Curtain. After returning from abroad, U.S. businessmen and ambassadors passed information to Donovan that he shared with the CIA. Instead of being grateful for Donovan's help, Truman was furious, considering him an intrusive meddler. In the 1952 presidential election, Donovan campaigned for Eisenhower, who had become a good friend since the war. After his victory, Donovan hoped to be named CIA head, but instead Eisenhower appointed Dulles, whose brother, John Foster Dulles, was the new Secretary of State. Eisenhower offered to make Donovan the Ambassador to France, but Donovan turned down the offer, not wanting to work closely with John Foster Dulles, for whom he had little respect. In August 1953, however, he did accept the post of Ambassador to Thailand, because the country was an important Cold War front and the position was one in which he felt he could operate with relative independence from Secretary Dulles. Donovan took up that post on September 4. While in Thailand, he frequently traveled to Vietnam, which he thought could become a communist country, a possibility he felt the U.S. ambassador to that country, Donald Heath, lacked the energy and vision to prevent. One source says that he "was deeply involved in setting up C.I.A. operations in Vietnam and throughout Southeast Asia." Although his performance as ambassador received glowing reviews from the Thai government, he resigned from his position effective August 21, 1954. After returning to the U.S., he resumed his law practice and registered as a lobbyist for the Thai government. Eisenhower made him chairman of the People to People Foundation, a group that arranged international citizen exchanges; Donovan also worked with the International Rescue Committee, co-founded American Friends of Vietnam, and in 1956 raised a large sum of money for Hungarian refugees. Death and legacy Donovan had begun experiencing symptoms of dementia while in Thailand, and he was hospitalized in 1957. While in the hospital, he "imagined he saw the Red Army coming over the 59th Street bridge, into Manhattan, and in one memorable last mission, fled the hospital, wandering down the street in his pajamas." Shortly before his death, he was visited by Eisenhower, who later told a friend that Donovan was "the last hero". Donovan died at the age of 76 from complications of vascular dementia on February 8, 1959, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Upon learning of his death, the CIA sent a cable to its station chiefs: "The man more responsible than any other for the existence of the Central Intelligence Agency has passed away." He is buried in Section 2 of Arlington National Cemetery. After his death, Donovan was awarded the Freedom Award of the International Rescue Committee. The law firm he founded, Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, was dissolved in 1998. His home in Chapel Hill near Berryville, Virginia, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. In 2011, it was suggested that a new federal courthouse in Buffalo be named after Donovan, but instead, it was named after Robert H. Jackson, his rival prosecutor at Nuremberg. In 2014, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer asked the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to name an upstate New York cemetery after Donovan. In 2016, however, the VA decided against using Donovan's name. "It is outrageous that nothing has been done to honor Gen. Donovan, one of America's greatest patriots, in Buffalo or western New York," declared Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society, who had thought the naming of the cemetery after Donovan was "a done deal". Donovan is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame. He is also known as the "Father of American Intelligence" and the "Father of Central Intelligence". "The Central Intelligence Agency regards Donovan as its founding father," according to Thomas in a 2011 Vanity Fair profile. The George Bush Center for Intelligence, the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia, has a statue of Donovan in the lobby. Thomas observed that Donovan's "exploits are utterly improbable but by now well documented in declassified wartime records that portray a brave, noble, headlong, gleeful, sometimes outrageous pursuit of action and skulduggery." William J. Donovan Award The William J. Donovan Award was created by the OSS Society, which was founded by Donovan in 1947. The award is presented by the OSS Society to "someone who has exemplified the distinguishing features that characterized General Donovan's lifetime of public service to the United of States of America as a citizen and a soldier". Notable recipients include Allen W. Dulles, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Margaret Thatcher, President George H. W. Bush, and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Gina Haspel. Personal life Donovan's son, David Rumsey Donovan, was a naval officer who served with distinction in World War II. His grandson, William James Donovan, served as an enlisted soldier in Vietnam and is also buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Awards and decorations U.S. awards Foreign awards Medal of Honor citation Rank and organization: Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army, 165th Infantry, 42d Division. Place and date: Near Landres-et-St. Georges, France, 14–15 October 1918. Entered service at: Buffalo, N.Y. Born: 1 January 1883, Buffalo, N.Y. G.O., No.: 56, W.D., 1922. Lt. Col. Donovan personally led the assaulting wave in an attack upon a very strongly organized position, and when our troops were suffering heavy casualties he encouraged all near him by his example, moving among his men in exposed positions, reorganizing decimated platoons, and accompanying them forward in attacks. When he was wounded in the leg by machine-gun bullets, he refused to be evacuated and continued with his unit until it withdrew to a less exposed position. See also List of Medal of Honor recipients for World War I List of members of the American Legion List of U.S. political appointments that crossed party lines Special Activities Division Tightrope Walker (1979), sculpture on the Columbia University campus commemorating Donovan Notes References Waller, Douglas (2011). Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage. New York: Free Press. . Further reading Chalou, George C. ed. The Secrets War: The Office of Strategic Services in World War II (1992) 24 scholarly essays Duffy, Francis Patrick Fr. (1919). Father Duffy's Story, New York: George H. Doran Company. Reilly, Henry J.; Heer, F. J. (1936). Americans All, the Rainbow at War: The Official History of the 42nd Rainbow Division in the World War. Troy, Thomas F (1981). Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence. External links William J. Donovan Papers, 1913-1920: An inventory of his papers at the Buffalo History Museum, courtesy of EmpireADC.org. The OSS Society FBI FoI Act Release: File#:77-78706 William J. 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William J. Donovan

Of Irish descent, Donovan was born in Buffalo, New York, to Anna Letitia "Tish" Donovan (nee Lennon) and Timothy P. Donovan, both American-born children of Irish immigrants. The Lennons were from Ulster, the Donovans from County Cork. Donovan's grandfather Timothy O'Donovan (Sr.) was from the town of Skibbereen; raised by an uncle who was a parish priest, he married Donovan's grandmother Mary Mahoney, who belonged to a propertied family of substantial means that disapproved of him.

Nuremberg trials

While British authorities and the US military and State Department were relatively indifferent to the question of trying war criminals after the war, Donovan was lobbying Roosevelt as early as October 1943 to arrange for such prosecutions. Roosevelt tasked Donovan with looking into the legalities and technicalities, and in the months that followed Donovan collected testimonies about war criminals and related information from a wide range of sources. In addition to seeking justice, Donovan wanted to exact retribution for the torture and killing of OSS agents. When Truman named Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson to serve as chief U.S. counsel in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, Jackson, discovering that the OSS was the only agency that had seriously explored the issue, invited Donovan to join his trial staff. On May 17, 1945, Donovan flew to Europe to prepare for the prosecutions, and eventually brought 172 OSS officers onto Jackson's team, interviewing Auschwitz survivors, tracking down SS and Gestapo documents, and uncovering other evidence. Donovan, whose idea it was to hold the trials in Nuremberg, also introduced Jackson to useful foreign officials and even released OSS funds to bankroll the prosecution effort. Eventually, Jackson, who had been a political rival of Donovan's in New York State, considered him a "godsend"; in return for Donovan's help, but also because the OSS had proven "vital for the prosecution team," Jackson lobbied Truman in person to approve of Donovan's plans for a permanent postwar intelligence agency. The effort, however, was unsuccessful. On September 20, 1945, Truman signed an executive order abolishing the OSS. In Nuremberg, Donovan interrogated many prisoners, including Hermann Goring, whom he spoke with ten times. But eventually Donovan fell out with Jackson. The latter wanted to indict the entire German High Command, not just men who had personally ordered or committed war crimes; Donovan considered this a violation of American principles of fairness. Donovan, a former prosecutor, also criticized Jackson's lack of skill and experience at putting together a strong case and at courtroom examination and cross-examination. Jackson removed him from the team, and Donovan returned to the U.S., where in January 1946 Truman presented him with the Distinguished Service Medal. CANNOTANSWER

William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan (January 1, 1883 – February 8, 1959) was an American soldier, lawyer, intelligence officer and diplomat. He is best known for serving as the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), during World War II. He is regarded as the founding father of the CIA, and a statue of him stands in the lobby of the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia. A decorated veteran of World War I, Donovan is believed to be the only person to have been awarded all four of the following prestigious decorations: the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Security Medal. He is also a recipient of the Silver Star and Purple Heart, as well as decorations from a number of other nations for his service during both World Wars. Early life Of Irish descent, Donovan was born in Buffalo, New York, to Anna Letitia "Tish" Donovan (née Lennon) and Timothy P. Donovan, both American-born children of Irish immigrants. The Lennons were from Ulster and the Donovans from County Cork. Donovan's grandfather, Timothy O'Donovan Sr., was from the town of Skibbereen; raised by an uncle who was a parish priest, he married Donovan's grandmother Mary Mahoney, who belonged to a propertied family of substantial means that disapproved of him. They first moved to Canada and then to Buffalo, where they dropped the "O" from their name. Donovan's father, born in 1858, worked as the superintendent of a Buffalo railroad yard, as secretary for Holy Cross Cemetery, and attempted to engage in a political career with little success. Donovan was born on New Year's Day in 1883. (Named William, he chose his middle name, Joseph, at the time of his confirmation.) He had two younger brothers and two younger sisters who survived into adulthood and several additional younger siblings who died in infancy or childhood. "From Anna's side of the family came style and etiquette and the dreams of poets," Donovan's biographer, Douglas Waller, wrote. "From Tim came toughness and duty and honor to country and clan." Donovan attended St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute, a Catholic institution at which he played football, acted in plays, and won an award for oratory. He went on to Niagara University, a Catholic university and seminary where he undertook a pre-law major. Considering the priesthood, he ultimately decided "he wasn't good enough to be a priest," although he did win another oratorical contest, this time with a speech warning of corrupt, anti-Christian forces that threatened the United States. With the expectation of studying law, Donovan eventually transferred to Columbia University, where he looked beyond "Catholic dogma" and attended Protestant and Jewish worship services to decide whether he wanted to change religions. He joined the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, rowed on varsity crew, again won a prize for oratory, was a campus football hero, and was voted the "most modest" and one of the "handsomest" members of the graduating class of 1905. After earning his bachelor of arts, Donovan spent two years at Columbia Law School, where he was a classmate of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and studied under Harlan Fiske Stone. Returning to Buffalo, he joined the respected law firm of Love & Keating in 1909 and, two years later, opened his own Buffalo firm in partnership with a Columbia classmate, Bradley Goodyear. In 1914, their firm merged with another, becoming Goodyear & O'Brien. In 1912, Donovan helped form, and became the leader of, a troop of cavalry of the New York National Guard. This unit was mobilized in 1916 and served on the U.S.–Mexico border during the American government's campaign against Pancho Villa. He studied military strategy and combat tactics. He also took acting courses in New York City from a stage star of the day, Eleanor Robson. In 1914, he married Ruth Rumsey, a Buffalo heiress who had attended Rosemary Hall. In 1916, Donovan spent several months in Berlin on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation, seeking to persuade the governments of Britain and Germany to allow the shipment of food and clothing into Belgium, Serbia, and Poland. In July of that year, at the behest of the State Department, he returned to the U.S. and took his cavalry troop to the Texas border to join Brigadier General John J. Pershing's army in the hunt for Pancho Villa. Promoted to major in the field, he returned to Buffalo, then joined the 69th Regiment, also known as the "Fighting Irish Regiment". This was the same 69th of Civil War fame, later called the 165th, which was training for America's expected entry into World War I, and which became part of the 42nd Division, also known as the "Rainbow Division". Douglas MacArthur was the 42nd Division's chief of staff. Donovan's son David was born in 1915, and a daughter, Patricia, was born in 1917. (Patricia died in an accident in 1940.) World War I During World War I, Major Donovan led the 1st battalion, 165th Infantry of the 42nd Division. Serving in France, he suffered a shrapnel wound in one leg and was almost blinded by gas. After performing a rescue under fire, he was offered the Croix de Guerre, but turned it down because a Jewish soldier who had taken part in the rescue had not also been awarded the honor. When this insult was corrected, Donovan accepted the distinction. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for leading an assault during the Aisne-Marne campaign, in which hundreds of members of his regiment died, including his acting adjutant, the poet Joyce Kilmer. The 1940 James Cagney movie, The Fighting 69th, dramatised the events of this battle and the 69th Infantry Regiment's role in it. Donovan's remarkable level of endurance, which far exceeded that of the much younger soldiers under his command, led those men to give him the nickname "Wild Bill", which stuck with him for the rest of his life. Although he "professed annoyance with the nickname", his wife "knew that deep down he loved it". Assigned commanding officer of the 165th Regiment, Donovan fought in another battle that took place near Landres-et-Saint-Georges on October 14–15, 1918. Going into battle, Donovan "ignored the officers' custom of covering or stripping off insignia of rank (targets for snipers) and instead sallied forth wearing his medals", according to Evan Thomas. "They can't hit me and they won't hit you!" he told his men. Struck in the knee by a bullet, he "refused to be evacuated and continued to direct his men until even American tanks were turning back under withering German fire". After lobbying by his friend Father Francis P. Duffy, a famous and widely revered Army chaplain, Donovan was awarded an Oak Leaf Cluster of the Distinguished Service Cross (i.e., a second DSC) for his service in that battle. After the Armistice of November 11, 1918, Donovan remained in Europe as part of the occupation. On returning to New York in April 1919, Donovan, now a colonel, was widely discussed as a possible candidate for governor, but he rejected the idea, proclaiming his intention to return to Buffalo and resume the practice of law. Interwar years Following his return to the U.S., Donovan took his wife on a combined vacation, business trip, and intelligence mission to Japan, China, and Korea, then went on alone to Siberia during the Russian Civil War. He went back to work at his law firm, but also took an extensive journey to Europe, where he did business on behalf of J. P. Morgan and gathered intelligence about international Communism. From 1922 to 1924, while maintaining his private law practice, he also served as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York. A high point came in 1923, when, as a result of continued pressure from Father Duffy, Donovan was finally awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic acts in the battle at Landres-et-Saint-Georges. Presented with the medal at a New York City ceremony that was attended by about four thousand veterans, Donovan refused to keep it, saying that it belonged not to him but "to the boys who are not here, the boys who are resting under the white crosses in France or in the cemeteries of New York, also to the boys who were lucky enough to come through. As US Attorney, he was becoming well known as a vigorous crime-fighter. He was especially famous (and, in some circles, notorious) for his energetic enforcement of Prohibition. There were a number of threats to assassinate him and to dynamite his home, but he was not deterred. The climax of his war on alcohol came in August 1923, when his agents raided Buffalo's upmarket Saturn Club (of which Donovan himself was a member) and confiscated large amounts of illegal liquor. The club's members, who formed much of the city's upper crust, were outraged, having assumed that Prohibition did not apply to people such as themselves. Some regarded Donovan as a traitor to their class, and recalled that Donovan had not, after all, been born to high station but was, in fact, an Irish Catholic who had married into the world of privileged, professional Protestants. Donovan's law partner, Goodyear, quit their firm in anger over the raid, and Donovan's own wife never forgave him for it. Many working class residents of Buffalo cheered the raid as an example of equal justice under the law, however. In 1924, when President Calvin Coolidge cleaned house at the Department of Justice in the wake of the late President Warren G. Harding's Teapot Dome scandal, he appointed Donovan's former professor Harlan Stone as Attorney General and named Donovan as Stone's assistant, in charge of the criminal division. Donovan and his wife split their time between Washington and Buffalo, where he continued to run his law firm. At the Justice Department, Donovan hired women and eschewed yes-men. He and his wife became a popular Washington couple, although Donovan's relationship with the acting Director of the Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, briefly one of his underlings, was fraught with friction. When Stone was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1925, Donovan was put in charge of the Department of Justice's antitrust division, often serving as de facto Attorney General during the frequent absences of Stone's successor, John Garibaldi Sargent. Donovan was admired for his energetic and effective arguments before the Supreme Court, and was a favorite off-the-record source for the Washington press corps. He was talked up as a possible candidate for Governor of New York in 1926 and for the Vice Presidency in 1928; Herbert Hoover promised to make him Attorney General if Hoover won the Presidency in 1928, but instead, under the influence of anti-Catholic Southerners, among others, Hoover ended up offering him the governorship of the Philippines, a post Donovan turned down. Resigning from the Department of Justice in 1929, Donovan moved to New York City and formed a new law firm, Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, in partnership with Frank Raichle. Despite the stock market crash, he made a success of handling many of the mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcies that then resulted; he also acquired celebrity clients, such as Mae West and Jane Wyman. Donovan ran on the Republican line in the 1932 state election to succeed Franklin D. Roosevelt as Governor of New York. Assisting Donovan in his campaign was journalist James J. Montague, who served as "personal adviser and campaign critic". But despite Donovan's offstage charm and force, he proved to be an uninspiring campaigner on the stump. He ran a disorganized, strategy-free campaign, and in the end lost to the Democratic nominee, Herbert Lehman. World War II During the interwar years, as "part of an informal network of American businessmen and lawyers who closely tracked and collected intelligence on foreign affairs," Donovan traveled extensively in Europe and Asia, "establishing himself as a player in international affairs – and honing his skills as an intelligence gatherer overseas." He met with such foreign leaders as Benito Mussolini, with whom he discussed World War I, the expansionist ideology of Italian Fascism, and Roosevelt's prospects for re-election in 1936. Mussolini granted Donovan permission to visit the Italian front in Ethiopia, where he found Italy's military much improved since the war and predicted an Italian victory. Donovan also made connections with leading figures in Nazi Germany. But he was no friend of the dictators, publicly assailing Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin as totalitarians and taking steps to protect his Jewish clients in Europe from the Nazis. Donovan openly believed during this time that a second major European war was inevitable. His foreign experience and realism earned him the friendship of President Roosevelt, notwithstanding their extreme differences in domestic policy and despite the fact that Donovan, during the 1932 election campaign, had harshly criticized Roosevelt's record as Governor of New York. The two men were from opposing political parties, but were similar in personality. Roosevelt respected Donovan's experience, felt that Hoover had done Donovan wrong on the Attorney General appointment, and believed that if Donovan had been a Democrat he could have been elected president. Also, Donovan's national profile had risen considerably thanks to the 1940 Warner Brothers film The Fighting 69th, in which Pat O'Brien played Father Duffy and George Brent played Donovan, and Roosevelt recognized a useful opportunity to exploit Donovan's newfound popularity. As the two men began exchanging notes about developments abroad, Roosevelt recognized that Donovan could be an important ally and adviser. Roosevelt came to place great value on Donovan's insight. Following Germany's and the USSR's invasions of Poland in September 1939 and the start of World War II in Europe, President Roosevelt began to put the United States on a war footing. This was a crisis of the sort that Donovan had predicted, and he sought out a responsible place in the wartime infrastructure. On the recommendation of Donovan's friend, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Roosevelt gave him a number of increasingly important assignments. In 1940 and 1941, Donovan traveled as an informal emissary to Britain, where he was urged by Knox and Roosevelt to gauge Britain's ability to withstand Germany's aggression. During these trips, Donovan met with key officials in the British war effort, including Winston Churchill and the directors of Britain's intelligence services. He also had lunch with King George VI. Donovan and Churchill got along famously, sharing war stories and reciting in unison the nineteenth-century poem "The Cavalier's Song" by William Motherwell. Impressed by Donovan and cheered by his eagerness to help Britain, Churchill ordered that he be given unlimited access to classified information. Donovan returned to the U.S. confident of Britain's chances and enamored of the possibility of founding an American intelligence service modeled on that of the British. He strongly urged Roosevelt to give Churchill the aid he requested. Roosevelt wanted to provide such aid, and asked Donovan to use his knowledge of the law to figure out how to skirt the congressional ban on selling armaments to the United Kingdom. British diplomats, who shared Churchill's admiration for Donovan, expressed the wish to State Department officials that Donovan replace U.S. Ambassador to Britain Joseph P. Kennedy, who favored the appeasers and was defeatist regarding British prospects. In the view of Walter Lippmann, a political columnist, Donovan's findings about Britain's fighting capability "almost singlehandedly overcame the unmitigated defeatism which was paralyzing Washington." Donovan also examined U.S. naval defenses in the Pacific (which he found wanting) and visited several countries along the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, serving as an unofficial envoy for both the U.S. and Britain and urging leaders there to stand up to the Nazis. He also met frequently in New York with William Stephenson, a spy for MI6 who was known as "Intrepid". Donovan and Stephenson, according to Thomas, "eventually became so close that they were known as 'Big Bill' and 'Little Bill'." Donovan, Waller has said, "could not have formed the OSS without the British, who provided intelligence, trainers, organizational charts and advice – all with the idea of making OSS an adjunct to British intelligence. But Donovan wanted to mount his own operations." OSS On July 11, 1941, Roosevelt signed an order naming Donovan Coordinator of Information (COI). "At the time," Thomas wrote, "the U.S. government had no formal spy agency. In 1929, the Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, had abolished the highly effective Black Chamber, a code-breaking organization left over from World War I." In Stimson's view, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." The Army, Navy, FBI, State Department, and other entities all ran their own intelligence units, but they were feeble and isolated from one another. They also saw Donovan's new operation as a threat to their turfs. Nevertheless, Donovan began to lay the groundwork for a centralized intelligence program. It was he who organized the COI's New York headquarters in Room 3603 of Rockefeller Center in October 1941 and asked Allen Dulles to head it; the offices Dulles took were on the floor immediately above the location of the operations of Britain's MI6. Thomas has described the OSS as an "informal" and "freewheeling" place where "[r]ank meant little." David Bruce later recalled: "Woe to the officer who turned down a project because, on its face, it seemed ridiculous or at least unusual  ... His [referring to the ideal officers in the OSS, contrasting with the aforementioned officers, who turned down such projects] imagination was unlimited. Ideas were his plaything. Excitement made him snort like a race horse." Throughout the war, the OSS would endure criticism by segments of the U.S. media and by many highly placed figures in the U.S. government and military. General George Marshall was an early critic but later changed his mind. Eisenhower was always supportive, as was General George Patton. On December 7, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Donovan met privately with Roosevelt and Edward R. Murrow, and FDR told Donovan, apropos of the COI, "It's a good thing you got me started on this." When Hitler gave a speech declaring war on the United States, he mentioned Donovan, whom he called "utterly unworthy". Donovan urged Roosevelt not to intern Japanese-Americans, warning that such an action would address a problem that did not exist, do harm to loyal Americans, and provide the Japanese with ammunition for their propaganda. Donovan set up espionage and sabotage schools, established front companies, arranged clandestine collaborations with international corporations and the Vatican, and oversaw the invention of new, espionage-friendly guns, cameras, and bombs. Donovan also recruited agents, selecting individuals with a wide range of backgrounds – ranging from intellectuals and artists to people with criminal backgrounds. He hired a great many female spies, dismissing criticism by those who felt women were unsuited to such work. Among his prominent recruits were film director John Ford, actor Sterling Hayden, author Stephen Vincent Benét, and Eve Curie, daughter of the scientists Marie and Pierre Curie. Other OSS recruits included poet Archibald MacLeish, banker Paul Mellon, businessman Alfred V. du Pont (son of industrialist Alfred I. du Pont), chef Julia Child, psychologist Carl Jung (who helped with the effort to analyze the psyches of Hitler and other Nazi leaders), author Walter Lord, and members of the Auchincloss and Vanderbilt families. There were so many aristocrats in the agency that the joke went around that OSS stood for "Oh So Social". In 1942, the COI ceased being a White House operation and was placed under the aegis of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Roosevelt also changed its name to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Donovan was returned to active duty in the U.S. Army in his World War I rank of colonel. He was promoted to brigadier general in March 1943 and to major general in November 1944. Under his leadership the OSS would eventually conduct successful espionage and sabotage operations in Europe and parts of Asia, but continued to be kept out of South America owing to Hoover's hostility to Donovan, which also had a deleterious impact on efforts to share information between the two agencies. In addition, the OSS was blocked from the Philippines by the antipathy of General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the Southwest Pacific Theater. OSS espionage and other on-site activities helped prepare the ground for the 1942 Allied invasion of North Africa, however, and Donovan himself took part in the Allied landing at Salerno, Italy, on September 3, 1943, and at the Anzio landing on January 22, 1944. Donovan was in fact very active in virtually every theater of World War II. He spent a good deal of time in the Balkans, to which he had urged both Roosevelt and Churchill to pay more attention. He met in Europe with highly placed anti-Nazi Germans to broker an early peace that would allow for occupation by the Western Allies, establish a democratic Germany, and leave the Soviets out in the cold. In China, he struggled with Chiang Kai-shek and his underlings for permission to carry out espionage activities in their territory. He inspected OSS operations in Burma, met with Vyacheslav Molotov in Moscow to arrange for cooperation between the OSS and NKVD, and was present for MacArthur's successful April 1944 invasion of Hollandia on the northern coast of New Guinea. Overall, the OSS was most effective in the Balkans, China, Burma, and France. By 1943, Donovan's relations with British officials were becoming increasingly strained as a result of turf wars, strategic and tactical disagreements, radical differences in style and temperament (the British accused the OSS of playing "cowboys and red Indians"), and contrasting visions of the postwar world. (The British wanted to retain their empire; Donovan saw the empire, at least in some instances, as an impediment to democracy and economic development.) MI6 chief Stewart Menzies was extremely hostile towards the idea of OSS operations anywhere in the British Empire, and categorically forbade the OSS to operate within the UK, or to deal with allied governments in exile which were based in London. Nonetheless, as of May 1944, Donovan had "some eleven thousand American officers and foreign agents scattered in every important capital." During the war he also received intelligence from a network of Catholic priests across Europe who engaged in espionage without the Pope's knowledge. On D-Day, Donovan was on one of the ships that took part in the Normandy landing. Going ashore, he and his commander of covert operations in Europe, Colonel David K. E. Bruce, were shot at by a German plane, then moved on toward the American front lines and encountered German machine-gun fire. As they lay on the ground, Bruce later recalled, Donovan said, "David, we mustn't be captured. We know too much." Donovan said that he had two suicide pills, but then discovered he didn't. "I must shoot first," Donovan said. Bruce replied, "Yes, sir, but can we do much against machine guns with our pistols?" Donovan explained: "Oh, you don't understand. I mean, if we are about to be captured, I'll shoot you first. After all, I am your commanding officer." Eventually, they found their way to General Omar Bradley's newly set-up tent headquarters on the beach. Upon returning to Washington, Donovan reported directly to Roosevelt on what he had observed. The success of the invasion, he said, showed that German naval and air forces were definitely no longer "Big League" and that "something has died in the German machine. Before the month was over, he was in Italy, implementing reforms in the OSS operation in that theater. He also met with Pope Pius XII, telling him about the activities of intelligence agents working out of the Japanese embassy at the Vatican. During the weeks leading up to the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler, Dulles, Donovan's man in Switzerland, who was in contact with the plotters, kept him abreast of developments. A particular triumph for the OSS was the role it played in conveying intelligence from southern France in the run-up to the Allied landing on the French Riviera on August 15, 1944. Thanks to Donovan's spies, said Colonel William Wilson Quinn, the invading army "knew everything about that beach and where every German was." Donovan was present for that invasion, too, after which he returned to Rome for a secret meeting with Hitler's envoy to the Vatican, Ernst von Weizsäcker. Shortly afterwards, he met with Marshal Tito to discuss OSS operations in Yugoslavia. Also in August 1944, Donovan came into conflict with Churchill over the OSS's support for Greek anti-royalists. In the closing days of the war in Europe, Donovan spent much of his time in London, where he worked out of a command center that took up an entire floor of Claridge's Hotel. He fielded reports from across the continent, where the Wehrmacht was in such chaos that he "knew their positions on the battlefield better than German generals did." In one of many initiatives, he sent out "teams of French, Danish, Norwegian, and Polish nationals" to identify Gestapo officers who had tortured them and who now were trying to blend in with civilians in Allied-controlled areas of Germany. Acting on Donovan's orders, Dulles oversaw the surrender of the remaining Nazi forces in Italy several days in advance of the final German capitulation. Postwar plans As World War II began to wind to a close in early 1945, Donovan began to focus on preserving the OSS beyond the end of the war. A February 19 article in the Washington Times-Herald revealed his plans for a postwar intelligence agency and published a secret memo he had sent to Roosevelt proposing its creation. The article compared the proposed agency to the Gestapo. Knowing that Americans wanted a smaller federal government after the war, Roosevelt was not entirely sold on Donovan's proposal, although Donovan felt reasonably confident he could talk the president into the idea. Hoover disapproved of Donovan's plan, which he saw as a direct threat to FBI authority, even though Donovan had stressed that his agency would operate only abroad, not domestically. After Roosevelt's death in April, however, Donovan's political position was substantially weakened. Although he argued forcefully for the OSS's retention, he found himself opposed by the new president, Harry S. Truman. While the OSS got "glowing reviews" from many wartime commanders, notably Eisenhower, who described its contributions as "vital", critics dismissed it as "an arm of British intelligence" and, like the Times-Herald reporter, painted dark pictures of it as an American Gestapo in the making. Nuremberg trials While British authorities and the US military and State Department were relatively indifferent to the question of trying war criminals after the war, Donovan was lobbying Roosevelt as early as October 1943 to arrange for such prosecutions. Roosevelt tasked Donovan with looking into the legalities and technicalities, and in the months that followed Donovan collected testimonies about war criminals and related information from a wide range of sources. In addition to seeking justice, Donovan wanted to exact retribution for the torture and killing of OSS agents. When Truman named Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson to serve as chief U.S. counsel in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, Jackson, discovering that the OSS was the only agency that had seriously explored the issue, invited Donovan to join his trial staff. On May 17, 1945, Donovan flew to Europe to prepare for the prosecutions, and eventually brought 172 OSS officers onto Jackson's team, interviewing Auschwitz survivors, tracking down SS and Gestapo documents, and uncovering other evidence. Donovan, whose idea it was to hold the trials in Nuremberg, also introduced Jackson to useful foreign officials and even released OSS funds to bankroll the prosecution effort. Eventually, Jackson, who had been a political rival of Donovan's in New York State, considered him a "godsend"; in return for Donovan's help, but also because the OSS had proven "vital for the prosecution team," Jackson lobbied Truman in person to approve of Donovan's plans for a permanent postwar intelligence agency. The effort was unsuccessful, however. On September 20, 1945, Truman signed an executive order abolishing the OSS. As was only revealed 60 years later, Donovan succeeded in getting the Americans to block the Soviet attempt to add the Katyn massacre to the list of German war crimes. He had been convinced by the German opponent of Hitler, Fabian von Schlabrendorff, unofficially included on his staff, that it was not the Germans but the Soviet secret service NKVD that had murdered some 4,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest. But shortly afterwards Donovan came into conflict with Jackson. In Nuremberg, Donovan interrogated many prisoners, including Hermann Göring, whom he spoke with ten times. But eventually Donovan fell out with Jackson. The latter wanted to indict the entire German High Command, not just men who had personally ordered or committed war crimes; Donovan considered this a violation of American principles of fairness. Donovan, a former prosecutor, also criticized Jackson's lack of skill and experience at putting together a strong case and at courtroom examination and cross-examination. Jackson removed him from the team, and Donovan returned to the U.S., where in January 1946 Truman presented him with the Distinguished Service Medal. CIA In 1946, Donovan resumed the practice of law and began writing a history of American intelligence since the Revolutionary War – a book he never completed. He traveled extensively in Europe and Asia and ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for the Senate. He also became chairman of the newly founded American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), which worked to counter the new Communist threat to Europe by promoting European political unity. The vice-chairman was Dulles, and Walter Bedell Smith sat on the board as well. The ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organization in the immediate postwar years. (In 1958, the ACUE provided 53.5% of the movement's funds.) In addition, the ACUE provided all of the funding for the European Youth Campaign, in which Joseph Retinger, Robert Schuman, and Paul-Henri Spaak were involved. Meanwhile, Truman moved forward with plans for a new intelligence agency, finally giving approval in 1946 for a watered-down interdepartmental "Central Intelligence Group." Donovan warned that it would be ineffectual – he compared it to a "debating society" – and he soon proved to be right. As the Cold War quickly intensified, Truman recognized the need for a far stronger intelligence service, and in February 1947 asked Congress to approve plans for a Central Intelligence Agency along the lines Donovan had proposed. Donovan himself lobbied Congress privately to pass the enabling legislation, the National Security Act of 1947. It was, in Waller's words, "a vindication of Donovan's vision". Among the OSS members who went on to become major CIA figures were Dulles, William Casey, William Colby, and James Jesus Angleton. Donovan wanted to lead the CIA, and had many supporters who urged Truman to put him in charge. Instead, the president gave the job to Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, whom Waller described as "lackluster". Meanwhile, Donovan accepted a Truman appointment to head a committee studying the country's fire departments. But he worked behind the scenes to aid in the formation of the CIA, recommending that Hillenkoetter hire Dulles and other OSS veterans, suggesting various covert operations, and sharing contacts and information from behind the Iron Curtain. After returning from abroad, U.S. businessmen and ambassadors passed information to Donovan that he shared with the CIA. Instead of being grateful for Donovan's help, Truman was furious, considering him an intrusive meddler. In the 1952 presidential election, Donovan campaigned for Eisenhower, who had become a good friend since the war. After his victory, Donovan hoped to be named CIA head, but instead Eisenhower appointed Dulles, whose brother, John Foster Dulles, was the new Secretary of State. Eisenhower offered to make Donovan the Ambassador to France, but Donovan turned down the offer, not wanting to work closely with John Foster Dulles, for whom he had little respect. In August 1953, however, he did accept the post of Ambassador to Thailand, because the country was an important Cold War front and the position was one in which he felt he could operate with relative independence from Secretary Dulles. Donovan took up that post on September 4. While in Thailand, he frequently traveled to Vietnam, which he thought could become a communist country, a possibility he felt the U.S. ambassador to that country, Donald Heath, lacked the energy and vision to prevent. One source says that he "was deeply involved in setting up C.I.A. operations in Vietnam and throughout Southeast Asia." Although his performance as ambassador received glowing reviews from the Thai government, he resigned from his position effective August 21, 1954. After returning to the U.S., he resumed his law practice and registered as a lobbyist for the Thai government. Eisenhower made him chairman of the People to People Foundation, a group that arranged international citizen exchanges; Donovan also worked with the International Rescue Committee, co-founded American Friends of Vietnam, and in 1956 raised a large sum of money for Hungarian refugees. Death and legacy Donovan had begun experiencing symptoms of dementia while in Thailand, and he was hospitalized in 1957. While in the hospital, he "imagined he saw the Red Army coming over the 59th Street bridge, into Manhattan, and in one memorable last mission, fled the hospital, wandering down the street in his pajamas." Shortly before his death, he was visited by Eisenhower, who later told a friend that Donovan was "the last hero". Donovan died at the age of 76 from complications of vascular dementia on February 8, 1959, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Upon learning of his death, the CIA sent a cable to its station chiefs: "The man more responsible than any other for the existence of the Central Intelligence Agency has passed away." He is buried in Section 2 of Arlington National Cemetery. After his death, Donovan was awarded the Freedom Award of the International Rescue Committee. The law firm he founded, Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, was dissolved in 1998. His home in Chapel Hill near Berryville, Virginia, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. In 2011, it was suggested that a new federal courthouse in Buffalo be named after Donovan, but instead, it was named after Robert H. Jackson, his rival prosecutor at Nuremberg. In 2014, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer asked the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to name an upstate New York cemetery after Donovan. In 2016, however, the VA decided against using Donovan's name. "It is outrageous that nothing has been done to honor Gen. Donovan, one of America's greatest patriots, in Buffalo or western New York," declared Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society, who had thought the naming of the cemetery after Donovan was "a done deal". Donovan is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame. He is also known as the "Father of American Intelligence" and the "Father of Central Intelligence". "The Central Intelligence Agency regards Donovan as its founding father," according to Thomas in a 2011 Vanity Fair profile. The George Bush Center for Intelligence, the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia, has a statue of Donovan in the lobby. Thomas observed that Donovan's "exploits are utterly improbable but by now well documented in declassified wartime records that portray a brave, noble, headlong, gleeful, sometimes outrageous pursuit of action and skulduggery." William J. Donovan Award The William J. Donovan Award was created by the OSS Society, which was founded by Donovan in 1947. The award is presented by the OSS Society to "someone who has exemplified the distinguishing features that characterized General Donovan's lifetime of public service to the United of States of America as a citizen and a soldier". Notable recipients include Allen W. Dulles, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Margaret Thatcher, President George H. W. Bush, and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Gina Haspel. Personal life Donovan's son, David Rumsey Donovan, was a naval officer who served with distinction in World War II. His grandson, William James Donovan, served as an enlisted soldier in Vietnam and is also buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Awards and decorations U.S. awards Foreign awards Medal of Honor citation Rank and organization: Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army, 165th Infantry, 42d Division. Place and date: Near Landres-et-St. Georges, France, 14–15 October 1918. Entered service at: Buffalo, N.Y. Born: 1 January 1883, Buffalo, N.Y. G.O., No.: 56, W.D., 1922. Lt. Col. Donovan personally led the assaulting wave in an attack upon a very strongly organized position, and when our troops were suffering heavy casualties he encouraged all near him by his example, moving among his men in exposed positions, reorganizing decimated platoons, and accompanying them forward in attacks. When he was wounded in the leg by machine-gun bullets, he refused to be evacuated and continued with his unit until it withdrew to a less exposed position. See also List of Medal of Honor recipients for World War I List of members of the American Legion List of U.S. political appointments that crossed party lines Special Activities Division Tightrope Walker (1979), sculpture on the Columbia University campus commemorating Donovan Notes References Waller, Douglas (2011). Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage. New York: Free Press. . Further reading Chalou, George C. ed. The Secrets War: The Office of Strategic Services in World War II (1992) 24 scholarly essays Duffy, Francis Patrick Fr. (1919). Father Duffy's Story, New York: George H. Doran Company. Reilly, Henry J.; Heer, F. J. (1936). Americans All, the Rainbow at War: The Official History of the 42nd Rainbow Division in the World War. Troy, Thomas F (1981). Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence. External links William J. Donovan Papers, 1913-1920: An inventory of his papers at the Buffalo History Museum, courtesy of EmpireADC.org. The OSS Society FBI FoI Act Release: File#:77-78706 William J. 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George M. Cohan

George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878 - November 5, 1942), known professionally as George M. Cohan, was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudeville act known as "The Four Cohans." Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag".

Early life and education

Cohan was born in 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal certificate from St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church (which gave the wrong first name for his mother) indicated that he was born on July 3, but Cohan and his family always insisted that George had been "born on the Fourth of July!" George's parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, first as a prop, learning to dance and sing soon after he could walk and talk. Cohan started as a child performer at age 8, first on the violin and then as a dancer. He was the fourth member of the family vaudeville act called The Four Cohans, which included his father Jeremiah "Jere" (Keohane) Cohan (1848-1917), mother Helen "Nellie" Costigan Cohan (1854-1928) and sister Josephine "Josie" Cohan Niblo (1876-1916). In 1890, he toured as the star of a show called Peck's Bad Boy and then joined the family act; The Four Cohans mostly toured together from 1890 to 1901. He and his sister made their Broadway debut in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack. Temperamental in his early years, Cohan later learned to control his frustrations. During these years, Cohan originated his famous curtain speech: "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you." As a child, Cohan and his family toured most of the year and spent summer vacations from the vaudeville circuit at his grandmother's home in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, where Cohan befriended baseball player Connie Mack. The family generally gave a performance at the town hall there each summer, and Cohan had a chance to gain some more normal childhood experiences, like riding his bike and playing sandlot baseball. Cohan's memories of those happy summers inspired his 1907 musical 50 Miles from Boston, which is set in North Brookfield and contains one of his most famous songs, "Harrigan". As Cohan matured through his teens, he used the quiet summers there to write. When he returned to the town in the cast of Ah, Wilderness! in 1934, he told a reporter, "I've knocked around everywhere, but there's no place like North Brookfield." CANNOTANSWER

George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878November 5, 1942) was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudeville act known as "The Four Cohans". Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan wrote more than 50 shows and published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag". As a composer, he was one of the early members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). He displayed remarkable theatrical longevity, appearing in films until the 1930s and continuing to perform as a headline artist until 1940. Known in the decade before World War I as "the man who owned Broadway", he is considered the father of American musical comedy. His life and music were depicted in the Oscar-winning film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and the 1968 musical George M!. A statue of Cohan in Times Square, New York City, commemorates his contributions to American musical theatre. Early life Cohan was born in 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal certificate from St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church (which gave the wrong first name for his mother) indicated that Cohan was born on July 3, but he and his family always insisted that he had been "born on the Fourth of July!" His parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, first as a prop, learning to dance and sing soon after he could walk and talk. Cohan started as a child performer at age 8, first on the violin and then as a dancer. He was the fourth member of the family vaudeville act called The Four Cohans, which included his father Jeremiah "Jere" (Keohane) Cohan (1848–1917), mother Helen "Nellie" Costigan Cohan (1854–1928) and sister Josephine "Josie" Cohan Niblo (1876–1916). In 1890, he toured as the star of a show called Peck's Bad Boy and then joined the family act. The Four Cohans mostly toured together from 1890 to 1901. Cohan and his sister made their Broadway debuts in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack. Temperamental in his early years, he later learned to control his frustrations. During these years, he originated his famous curtain speech: "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you." As a child, Cohan and his family toured most of the year and spent summer vacations from the vaudeville circuit at his grandmother's home in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, where he befriended baseball player Connie Mack. The family generally gave a performance at the town hall there each summer, and Cohan had a chance to gain some more normal childhood experiences, like riding his bike and playing sandlot baseball. His memories of those happy summers inspired his 1907 musical 50 Miles from Boston, which is set in North Brookfield and contains one of his most famous songs, "Harrigan". As he matured through his teens, he used the quiet summers there to write. When he returned to the town in the cast of Ah, Wilderness! in 1934, he told a reporter "I've knocked around everywhere, but there's no place like North Brookfield." Career Early career Cohan began writing original skits (over 150 of them) and songs for the family act in both vaudeville and minstrel shows while in his teens. Soon he was writing professionally, selling his first songs to a national publisher in 1893. In 1901 he wrote, directed and produced his first Broadway musical, The Governor's Son, for The Four Cohans. His first big Broadway hit in 1904 was the show Little Johnny Jones, which introduced his tunes "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy". Cohan became one of the leading Tin Pan Alley songwriters, publishing upwards of 300 original songs noted for their catchy melodies and clever lyrics. His major hit songs included: "Give My Regards to Broadway" "You're a Grand Old Flag" "Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway" "Mary Is a Grand Old Name" "The Warmest Baby in the Bunch" "Life's a Funny Proposition After All" "I Want To Hear a Yankee Doodle Tune" "You Won't Do Any Business if You Haven't Got a Band" "The Small Town Gal" "I'm Mighty Glad I'm Living, That's All" "That Haunting Melody" "Always Leave Them Laughing When You Say Goodbye" "Over There", America's most popular World War I song, was recorded by Nora Bayes, Enrico Caruso, and others. The song reached such currency among troops and shipyard workers that a ship was named "Costigan" after Cohan's grandfather, Dennis Costigan. During the christening, "Over There" was played. From 1904 to 1920, Cohan created and produced over 50 musicals, plays and revues on Broadway together with his friend Sam H. Harris. Aside from the plays Cohan wrote or composed, he produced with Harris, among others, many of which were adapted for film, It Pays to Advertise (1914) and the successful Going Up in 1917, which became a smash hit in London the following year. His shows ran simultaneously in as many as five theatres. One of Cohan's most innovative plays was a dramatization of the mystery Seven Keys to Baldpate in 1913, which baffled some audiences and critics but became a hit. Cohan further adapted it as a film in 1917, and it was adapted for film six more times, as well as for TV and radio. He dropped out of acting for some years after his 1919 dispute with Actors' Equity Association. In 1925, he published his autobiography Twenty Years on Broadway and the Years It Took to Get There. Later career Cohan appeared in 1930 in The Song and Dance Man, a revival of his tribute to vaudeville and his father. In 1932, he starred in a dual role as a cold, corrupt politician and his charming, idealistic campaign double in the Hollywood musical film The Phantom President. The film co-starred Claudette Colbert and Jimmy Durante, with songs by Rodgers and Hart, and was released by Paramount Pictures. He appeared in some earlier silent films but he disliked Hollywood production methods and only made one other sound film, Gambling (1934), based on his own 1929 play and shot in New York City. A critic called Gambling a "stodgy adaptation of a definitely dated play directed in obsolete theatrical technique". It is considered a lost film. By the 1930s, Cohan walked in and out of retirement. He earned acclaim as a serious actor in Eugene O'Neill's only comedy Ah, Wilderness! (1933) and in the role of a song-and-dance President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Rodgers and Hart's musical I'd Rather Be Right (1937). The same year, he reunited with Harris to produce a play titled Fulton of Oak Falls, starring Cohan. His final play, The Return of the Vagabond (1940), featured a young Celeste Holm in the cast. In 1940, Judy Garland played the title role in a film version of his 1922 musical Little Nellie Kelly. Cohan's mystery play Seven Keys to Baldpate was first filmed in 1916 and has been remade seven times, most recently as House of the Long Shadows (1983), starring Vincent Price. In 1942, a musical biopic of Cohan, Yankee Doodle Dandy, was released, and James Cagney's performance in the title role earned the Best Actor Academy Award. The film was privately screened for Cohan as he battled the last stages of abdominal cancer, and he commented on Cagney's performance: "My God, what an act to follow!" Cohan's 1920 play The Meanest Man in the World was filmed in 1943 with Jack Benny. Legacy Although Cohan is mainly remembered for his songs, he became an early pioneer in the development of the "book musical", using his engaging libretti to bridge the gaps between drama and music. More than three decades before Agnes de Mille choreographed Oklahoma! Cohan used dance not merely as razzle-dazzle, but to advance the plot. Cohan's main characters were "average Joes and Janes" who appealed to a wide American audience. In 1914, Cohan became one of the founding members of ASCAP. Although Cohan was known as generous to his fellow actors in need, in 1919, he unsuccessfully opposed a historic strike by Actors' Equity Association, for which many in the theatrical professions never forgave him. Cohan opposed the strike because in addition to being an actor in his productions, he was also the producer of the musical that set the terms and conditions of the actors' employment. During the strike, he donated $100,000 to finance the Actors' Retirement Fund in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. After Actors' Equity was recognized, Cohan refused to join the union as an actor, which hampered his ability to appear in his own productions. Cohan sought a waiver from Equity allowing him to act in any theatrical production. In 1930, he won a law case against the Internal Revenue Service that allowed the deduction, for federal income tax purposes, of his business travel and entertainment expenses, even though he was not able to document them with certainty. This became known as the "Cohan rule" and frequently is cited in tax cases. Cohan wrote numerous Broadway musicals and straight plays in addition to contributing material to shows written by others – more than 50 in all – many of which were made into films. His shows included: Running for Office (1903) Little Johnny Jones (1904) Forty-five Minutes from Broadway (1905) George Washington, Jr. (1906) The Honeymooners (1907) The Talk of New York (1907) The Yankee Prince (1908) Cohan and Harris Minstrels (1908) The Man Who Owns Broadway (1909) The Little Millionaire (1911) Broadway Jones (1912) Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913) The Miracle Man (1914) Hello, Broadway! (1914) Hit-the-Trail-Holiday (1915) The Cohan Revue of 1916 (and 1918; co-written with Irving Berlin) Honest John O'Brien (1916) A Prince There Was (1919) The Tavern (1920) The O'Brien Girl (1921) Little Nellie Kelly (1922) The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly (1923, featuring a 13-year-old Ruby Keeler among the chorus girls) The Song and Dance Man (1923) Yellow (1926) Baby Cyclone (1927, one of Spencer Tracy's early roles) The Merry Malones (1927) Whispering Friends (1928) Billie (1928) Gambling (1929) George M! (1968) Cohan was called "the greatest single figure the American theatre ever produced – as a player, playwright, actor, composer and producer". On May 1, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented him with the Congressional Gold Medal for his contributions to World War I morale, in particular with the songs "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "Over There". Cohan was the first person in any artistic field selected for this honor, which previously had gone only to military and political leaders, philanthropists, scientists, inventors, and explorers. In 1959, at the behest of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, a $100,000 bronze statue of Cohan was dedicated in Duffy Square (the northern portion of Times Square) at Broadway and 46th Street in Manhattan. The 8-foot bronze remains the only statue of an actor on Broadway. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6734 Hollywood Boulevard. Cohan was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame on October 15, 2006. The United States Postal Service issued a 15-cent commemorative stamp honoring Cohan on the anniversary of his centenary, July 3, 1978. The stamp depicts both the older Cohan and his younger self as a dancer, with the tag line "Yankee Doodle Dandy". It was designed by Jim Sharpe. On July 3, 2009, a bronze bust of Cohan, by artist Robert Shure, was unveiled at the corner of Wickenden and Governor Streets in Fox Point, Providence, a few blocks from his birthplace. The city renamed the corner the George M. Cohan Plaza and announced an annual George M. Cohan Award for Excellence in Art & Culture. The first award went to Curt Columbus, the artistic director of Trinity Repertory Company. Personal life From 1899 to 1907, Cohan was married to Ethel Levey (1881–1955; born Grace Ethelia Fowler), a musical comedy actress and dancer. Levey and Cohan had a daughter, actress Georgette Cohan Souther Rowse (1900–1988). Levey joined the Four Cohans when Cohan's sister Josie married, and she starred in Little Johnny Jones and other Cohan works. In 1907, Levey divorced Cohan on grounds of adultery. In 1908, Cohan married Agnes Mary Nolan (1883–1972), who had been a dancer in his early shows; they remained married until his death. They had two daughters and a son. The eldest was Mary Cohan Ronkin, a cabaret singer in the 1930s, who composed incidental music for her father's play The Tavern. In 1968, Mary supervised musical and lyric revisions for the musical George M! Their second daughter was Helen Cohan Carola, a film actress, who performed on Broadway with her father in Friendship in 1931. Their youngest child was George Michael Cohan, Jr. (1914–2000), who graduated from Georgetown University and served in the entertainment corps during World War II. In the 1950s, George Jr. reinterpreted his father's songs on recordings, in a nightclub act, and in television appearances on the Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle shows. George Jr.'s only child, Michaela Marie Cohan (1943–1999), was the last descendant named Cohan. She graduated with a theater degree from Marywood College in Pennsylvania in 1965. From 1966 to 1968, she served in a civilian Special Services unit in Vietnam and Korea. In 1996, she stood in for her ailing father at the ceremony marking her grandfather's induction into the Musical Theatre Hall of Fame at New York University. Cohan was a devoted baseball fan, regularly attending games of the former New York Giants. Death Cohan died of cancer at the age of 64 on November 5, 1942, at his Manhattan apartment on Fifth Avenue, surrounded by family and friends. His funeral was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, and was attended by thousands of people, including five governors of New York, two mayors of New York City and the Postmaster General. The honorary pallbearers included Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Frank Crowninshield, Sol Bloom, Brooks Atkinson, Rube Goldberg, Walter Huston, George Jessel, Connie Mack, Joseph McCarthy, Eugene O'Neill, Sigmund Romberg, Lee Shubert and Fred Waring. Cohan was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City, in a private family mausoleum he had erected a quarter century earlier for his sister and parents. In popular culture James Cagney played Cohan in the 1942 biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy and in the 1955 film The Seven Little Foys. Cagney won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Dandy. Mickey Rooney played Cohan in Mr. Broadway, a television special broadcast on May 11, 1957. The same month, Rooney released a 78 RPM record featuring Rooney singing Cohan's best-known songs on the A-side. Joel Grey starred on Broadway as Cohan in the musical George M! (1968), which was adapted into a television special in 1970. Allan Sherman sang a parody-medley of three Cohan tunes on an early album: "Barry (That'll Be the Baby's Name)"; "H-o-r-o-w-i-t-z"; and "Get on the Garden Freeway" to the tune of "Mary's a Grand Old Name", "Harrigan" and "Give My Regards to Broadway", respectively. Chip Deffaa created a one-man show about the life of Cohan called George M. Cohan Tonight!, which first ran Off-Broadway at the Irish Repertory Theatre in 2006 with Jon Peterson as Cohan. Deffaa has written and directed five other plays about Cohan. Filmography Cohan acted in the following films: Gallery See also Broadway theater List of playwrights from the United States List of Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Musical theater Tin Pan Alley References Notes Bibliography McCabe, John: George M. Cohan. The Man Who Owned Broadway (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1973) Further reading Cohan, George M.: Twenty Years on Broadway (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924) Gilbert, Douglas: American Vaudeville. Its Life and Times (New York: Dover Publications, 1963) Jones, John Bush: Our Musicals, Ourselves. A Social History of the American Musical Theatre (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2003) Morehouse, Ward: George M. Cohan. Prince of the American Theater (Philadelphia & New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1943) External links George M. Cohan at Internet off-Broadway Database George M. Cohan In America's Theater George M. Cohan on musicals101.com F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, "Dancing after retirement: Cohan plays Roosevelt, 1937", New York Daily News, March 20, 2004. Chip Deffaa's extensive George M. Cohan site George M. Cohan; PeriodPaper.com c. 1910 Finding aid for the Edward B. Marks Music Co. Collection on George M. Cohan, 1901–1968 at the Museum of the City of New York George M. Cohan recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings Category:1878 births Category:1942 deaths Category:19th-century American dramatists and playwrights Category:19th-century American male actors Category:19th-century American male writers Category:19th-century American singers Category:20th-century American dramatists and playwrights Category:20th-century American male actors Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American singers Category:Actors from Providence, Rhode Island Category:American male child actors Category:American male dancers Category:American male dramatists and playwrights Category:American male film actors Category:American male musical theatre actors Category:American male silent film actors Category:American male singers Category:American male songwriters Category:American male stage actors Category:American musical theatre composers Category:American musical theatre directors Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American tap dancers Category:American theatre directors Category:Broadway composers and lyricists Category:Broadway theatre directors Category:Broadway theatre producers Category:Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York) Category:Catholics from Massachusetts Category:Catholics from Rhode Island George M. Category:Congressional Gold Medal recipients Category:Deaths from cancer in New York (state) Category:Eccentric dancers Category:Male actors from Rhode Island Category:Male musical theatre composers Category:Musicians from Providence, Rhode Island Category:People from North Brookfield, Massachusetts Category:Vaudeville performers Category:Writers from Providence, Rhode Island Category:Members of The Lambs Club

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George M. Cohan

George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878 - November 5, 1942), known professionally as George M. Cohan, was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudeville act known as "The Four Cohans." Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag".

Early career

Cohan began writing original skits (over 150 of them) and songs for the family act in both vaudeville and minstrel shows while in his teens. Soon he was writing professionally, selling his first songs to a national publisher in 1893. In 1901 he wrote, directed and produced his first Broadway musical, The Governor's Son, for The Four Cohans. His first big Broadway hit in 1904 was the show Little Johnny Jones, which introduced his tunes "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy." Cohan became one of the leading Tin Pan Alley songwriters, publishing upwards of 300 original songs noted for their catchy melodies and clever lyrics. His major hit songs included "You're a Grand Old Flag," "Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway," "Mary Is a Grand Old Name," "The Warmest Baby in the Bunch," "Life's a Funny Proposition After All," "I Want To Hear a Yankee Doodle Tune," "You Won't Do Any Business If You Haven't Got a Band," "The Small Town Gal," "I'm Mighty Glad I'm Living, That's All," "That Haunting Melody," "Always Leave Them Laughing When You Say Goodbye", and America's most popular World War I song "Over There", which was recorded by Enrico Caruso among others. The latter song reached such currency among troops and shipyard workers that a ship was named "Costigan" after Cohan's grandfather, Dennis Costigan. During the christening, "Over There" was played. From 1904 to 1920, Cohan created and produced over 50 musicals, plays and revues on Broadway together with his friend Sam H. Harris, including Give My Regards to Broadway and the successful Going Up in 1917, which became a smash hit in London the following year. His shows ran simultaneously in as many as five theatres. One of Cohan's most innovative plays was a dramatization of the mystery Seven Keys to Baldpate in 1913, which baffled some audiences and critics but became a hit. Cohan further adapted it as a film in 1917, and it was adapted for film six more times, as well as for TV and radio. He dropped out of acting for some years after his 1919 dispute with Actors' Equity Association. In 1925, he published his autobiography, Twenty Years on Broadway and the Years It Took To Get There. CANNOTANSWER

George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878November 5, 1942) was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudeville act known as "The Four Cohans". Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan wrote more than 50 shows and published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag". As a composer, he was one of the early members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). He displayed remarkable theatrical longevity, appearing in films until the 1930s and continuing to perform as a headline artist until 1940. Known in the decade before World War I as "the man who owned Broadway", he is considered the father of American musical comedy. His life and music were depicted in the Oscar-winning film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and the 1968 musical George M!. A statue of Cohan in Times Square, New York City, commemorates his contributions to American musical theatre. Early life Cohan was born in 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal certificate from St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church (which gave the wrong first name for his mother) indicated that Cohan was born on July 3, but he and his family always insisted that he had been "born on the Fourth of July!" His parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, first as a prop, learning to dance and sing soon after he could walk and talk. Cohan started as a child performer at age 8, first on the violin and then as a dancer. He was the fourth member of the family vaudeville act called The Four Cohans, which included his father Jeremiah "Jere" (Keohane) Cohan (1848–1917), mother Helen "Nellie" Costigan Cohan (1854–1928) and sister Josephine "Josie" Cohan Niblo (1876–1916). In 1890, he toured as the star of a show called Peck's Bad Boy and then joined the family act. The Four Cohans mostly toured together from 1890 to 1901. Cohan and his sister made their Broadway debuts in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack. Temperamental in his early years, he later learned to control his frustrations. During these years, he originated his famous curtain speech: "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you." As a child, Cohan and his family toured most of the year and spent summer vacations from the vaudeville circuit at his grandmother's home in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, where he befriended baseball player Connie Mack. The family generally gave a performance at the town hall there each summer, and Cohan had a chance to gain some more normal childhood experiences, like riding his bike and playing sandlot baseball. His memories of those happy summers inspired his 1907 musical 50 Miles from Boston, which is set in North Brookfield and contains one of his most famous songs, "Harrigan". As he matured through his teens, he used the quiet summers there to write. When he returned to the town in the cast of Ah, Wilderness! in 1934, he told a reporter "I've knocked around everywhere, but there's no place like North Brookfield." Career Early career Cohan began writing original skits (over 150 of them) and songs for the family act in both vaudeville and minstrel shows while in his teens. Soon he was writing professionally, selling his first songs to a national publisher in 1893. In 1901 he wrote, directed and produced his first Broadway musical, The Governor's Son, for The Four Cohans. His first big Broadway hit in 1904 was the show Little Johnny Jones, which introduced his tunes "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy". Cohan became one of the leading Tin Pan Alley songwriters, publishing upwards of 300 original songs noted for their catchy melodies and clever lyrics. His major hit songs included: "Give My Regards to Broadway" "You're a Grand Old Flag" "Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway" "Mary Is a Grand Old Name" "The Warmest Baby in the Bunch" "Life's a Funny Proposition After All" "I Want To Hear a Yankee Doodle Tune" "You Won't Do Any Business if You Haven't Got a Band" "The Small Town Gal" "I'm Mighty Glad I'm Living, That's All" "That Haunting Melody" "Always Leave Them Laughing When You Say Goodbye" "Over There", America's most popular World War I song, was recorded by Nora Bayes, Enrico Caruso, and others. The song reached such currency among troops and shipyard workers that a ship was named "Costigan" after Cohan's grandfather, Dennis Costigan. During the christening, "Over There" was played. From 1904 to 1920, Cohan created and produced over 50 musicals, plays and revues on Broadway together with his friend Sam H. Harris. Aside from the plays Cohan wrote or composed, he produced with Harris, among others, many of which were adapted for film, It Pays to Advertise (1914) and the successful Going Up in 1917, which became a smash hit in London the following year. His shows ran simultaneously in as many as five theatres. One of Cohan's most innovative plays was a dramatization of the mystery Seven Keys to Baldpate in 1913, which baffled some audiences and critics but became a hit. Cohan further adapted it as a film in 1917, and it was adapted for film six more times, as well as for TV and radio. He dropped out of acting for some years after his 1919 dispute with Actors' Equity Association. In 1925, he published his autobiography Twenty Years on Broadway and the Years It Took to Get There. Later career Cohan appeared in 1930 in The Song and Dance Man, a revival of his tribute to vaudeville and his father. In 1932, he starred in a dual role as a cold, corrupt politician and his charming, idealistic campaign double in the Hollywood musical film The Phantom President. The film co-starred Claudette Colbert and Jimmy Durante, with songs by Rodgers and Hart, and was released by Paramount Pictures. He appeared in some earlier silent films but he disliked Hollywood production methods and only made one other sound film, Gambling (1934), based on his own 1929 play and shot in New York City. A critic called Gambling a "stodgy adaptation of a definitely dated play directed in obsolete theatrical technique". It is considered a lost film. By the 1930s, Cohan walked in and out of retirement. He earned acclaim as a serious actor in Eugene O'Neill's only comedy Ah, Wilderness! (1933) and in the role of a song-and-dance President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Rodgers and Hart's musical I'd Rather Be Right (1937). The same year, he reunited with Harris to produce a play titled Fulton of Oak Falls, starring Cohan. His final play, The Return of the Vagabond (1940), featured a young Celeste Holm in the cast. In 1940, Judy Garland played the title role in a film version of his 1922 musical Little Nellie Kelly. Cohan's mystery play Seven Keys to Baldpate was first filmed in 1916 and has been remade seven times, most recently as House of the Long Shadows (1983), starring Vincent Price. In 1942, a musical biopic of Cohan, Yankee Doodle Dandy, was released, and James Cagney's performance in the title role earned the Best Actor Academy Award. The film was privately screened for Cohan as he battled the last stages of abdominal cancer, and he commented on Cagney's performance: "My God, what an act to follow!" Cohan's 1920 play The Meanest Man in the World was filmed in 1943 with Jack Benny. Legacy Although Cohan is mainly remembered for his songs, he became an early pioneer in the development of the "book musical", using his engaging libretti to bridge the gaps between drama and music. More than three decades before Agnes de Mille choreographed Oklahoma! Cohan used dance not merely as razzle-dazzle, but to advance the plot. Cohan's main characters were "average Joes and Janes" who appealed to a wide American audience. In 1914, Cohan became one of the founding members of ASCAP. Although Cohan was known as generous to his fellow actors in need, in 1919, he unsuccessfully opposed a historic strike by Actors' Equity Association, for which many in the theatrical professions never forgave him. Cohan opposed the strike because in addition to being an actor in his productions, he was also the producer of the musical that set the terms and conditions of the actors' employment. During the strike, he donated $100,000 to finance the Actors' Retirement Fund in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. After Actors' Equity was recognized, Cohan refused to join the union as an actor, which hampered his ability to appear in his own productions. Cohan sought a waiver from Equity allowing him to act in any theatrical production. In 1930, he won a law case against the Internal Revenue Service that allowed the deduction, for federal income tax purposes, of his business travel and entertainment expenses, even though he was not able to document them with certainty. This became known as the "Cohan rule" and frequently is cited in tax cases. Cohan wrote numerous Broadway musicals and straight plays in addition to contributing material to shows written by others – more than 50 in all – many of which were made into films. His shows included: Running for Office (1903) Little Johnny Jones (1904) Forty-five Minutes from Broadway (1905) George Washington, Jr. (1906) The Honeymooners (1907) The Talk of New York (1907) The Yankee Prince (1908) Cohan and Harris Minstrels (1908) The Man Who Owns Broadway (1909) The Little Millionaire (1911) Broadway Jones (1912) Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913) The Miracle Man (1914) Hello, Broadway! (1914) Hit-the-Trail-Holiday (1915) The Cohan Revue of 1916 (and 1918; co-written with Irving Berlin) Honest John O'Brien (1916) A Prince There Was (1919) The Tavern (1920) The O'Brien Girl (1921) Little Nellie Kelly (1922) The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly (1923, featuring a 13-year-old Ruby Keeler among the chorus girls) The Song and Dance Man (1923) Yellow (1926) Baby Cyclone (1927, one of Spencer Tracy's early roles) The Merry Malones (1927) Whispering Friends (1928) Billie (1928) Gambling (1929) George M! (1968) Cohan was called "the greatest single figure the American theatre ever produced – as a player, playwright, actor, composer and producer". On May 1, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented him with the Congressional Gold Medal for his contributions to World War I morale, in particular with the songs "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "Over There". Cohan was the first person in any artistic field selected for this honor, which previously had gone only to military and political leaders, philanthropists, scientists, inventors, and explorers. In 1959, at the behest of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, a $100,000 bronze statue of Cohan was dedicated in Duffy Square (the northern portion of Times Square) at Broadway and 46th Street in Manhattan. The 8-foot bronze remains the only statue of an actor on Broadway. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6734 Hollywood Boulevard. Cohan was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame on October 15, 2006. The United States Postal Service issued a 15-cent commemorative stamp honoring Cohan on the anniversary of his centenary, July 3, 1978. The stamp depicts both the older Cohan and his younger self as a dancer, with the tag line "Yankee Doodle Dandy". It was designed by Jim Sharpe. On July 3, 2009, a bronze bust of Cohan, by artist Robert Shure, was unveiled at the corner of Wickenden and Governor Streets in Fox Point, Providence, a few blocks from his birthplace. The city renamed the corner the George M. Cohan Plaza and announced an annual George M. Cohan Award for Excellence in Art & Culture. The first award went to Curt Columbus, the artistic director of Trinity Repertory Company. Personal life From 1899 to 1907, Cohan was married to Ethel Levey (1881–1955; born Grace Ethelia Fowler), a musical comedy actress and dancer. Levey and Cohan had a daughter, actress Georgette Cohan Souther Rowse (1900–1988). Levey joined the Four Cohans when Cohan's sister Josie married, and she starred in Little Johnny Jones and other Cohan works. In 1907, Levey divorced Cohan on grounds of adultery. In 1908, Cohan married Agnes Mary Nolan (1883–1972), who had been a dancer in his early shows; they remained married until his death. They had two daughters and a son. The eldest was Mary Cohan Ronkin, a cabaret singer in the 1930s, who composed incidental music for her father's play The Tavern. In 1968, Mary supervised musical and lyric revisions for the musical George M! Their second daughter was Helen Cohan Carola, a film actress, who performed on Broadway with her father in Friendship in 1931. Their youngest child was George Michael Cohan, Jr. (1914–2000), who graduated from Georgetown University and served in the entertainment corps during World War II. In the 1950s, George Jr. reinterpreted his father's songs on recordings, in a nightclub act, and in television appearances on the Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle shows. George Jr.'s only child, Michaela Marie Cohan (1943–1999), was the last descendant named Cohan. She graduated with a theater degree from Marywood College in Pennsylvania in 1965. From 1966 to 1968, she served in a civilian Special Services unit in Vietnam and Korea. In 1996, she stood in for her ailing father at the ceremony marking her grandfather's induction into the Musical Theatre Hall of Fame at New York University. Cohan was a devoted baseball fan, regularly attending games of the former New York Giants. Death Cohan died of cancer at the age of 64 on November 5, 1942, at his Manhattan apartment on Fifth Avenue, surrounded by family and friends. His funeral was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, and was attended by thousands of people, including five governors of New York, two mayors of New York City and the Postmaster General. The honorary pallbearers included Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Frank Crowninshield, Sol Bloom, Brooks Atkinson, Rube Goldberg, Walter Huston, George Jessel, Connie Mack, Joseph McCarthy, Eugene O'Neill, Sigmund Romberg, Lee Shubert and Fred Waring. Cohan was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City, in a private family mausoleum he had erected a quarter century earlier for his sister and parents. In popular culture James Cagney played Cohan in the 1942 biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy and in the 1955 film The Seven Little Foys. Cagney won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Dandy. Mickey Rooney played Cohan in Mr. Broadway, a television special broadcast on May 11, 1957. The same month, Rooney released a 78 RPM record featuring Rooney singing Cohan's best-known songs on the A-side. Joel Grey starred on Broadway as Cohan in the musical George M! (1968), which was adapted into a television special in 1970. Allan Sherman sang a parody-medley of three Cohan tunes on an early album: "Barry (That'll Be the Baby's Name)"; "H-o-r-o-w-i-t-z"; and "Get on the Garden Freeway" to the tune of "Mary's a Grand Old Name", "Harrigan" and "Give My Regards to Broadway", respectively. Chip Deffaa created a one-man show about the life of Cohan called George M. Cohan Tonight!, which first ran Off-Broadway at the Irish Repertory Theatre in 2006 with Jon Peterson as Cohan. Deffaa has written and directed five other plays about Cohan. Filmography Cohan acted in the following films: Gallery See also Broadway theater List of playwrights from the United States List of Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Musical theater Tin Pan Alley References Notes Bibliography McCabe, John: George M. Cohan. The Man Who Owned Broadway (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1973) Further reading Cohan, George M.: Twenty Years on Broadway (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924) Gilbert, Douglas: American Vaudeville. Its Life and Times (New York: Dover Publications, 1963) Jones, John Bush: Our Musicals, Ourselves. A Social History of the American Musical Theatre (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2003) Morehouse, Ward: George M. Cohan. Prince of the American Theater (Philadelphia & New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1943) External links George M. Cohan at Internet off-Broadway Database George M. Cohan In America's Theater George M. Cohan on musicals101.com F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, "Dancing after retirement: Cohan plays Roosevelt, 1937", New York Daily News, March 20, 2004. Chip Deffaa's extensive George M. Cohan site George M. Cohan; PeriodPaper.com c. 1910 Finding aid for the Edward B. Marks Music Co. Collection on George M. Cohan, 1901–1968 at the Museum of the City of New York George M. Cohan recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings Category:1878 births Category:1942 deaths Category:19th-century American dramatists and playwrights Category:19th-century American male actors Category:19th-century American male writers Category:19th-century American singers Category:20th-century American dramatists and playwrights Category:20th-century American male actors Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American singers Category:Actors from Providence, Rhode Island Category:American male child actors Category:American male dancers Category:American male dramatists and playwrights Category:American male film actors Category:American male musical theatre actors Category:American male silent film actors Category:American male singers Category:American male songwriters Category:American male stage actors Category:American musical theatre composers Category:American musical theatre directors Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American tap dancers Category:American theatre directors Category:Broadway composers and lyricists Category:Broadway theatre directors Category:Broadway theatre producers Category:Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York) Category:Catholics from Massachusetts Category:Catholics from Rhode Island George M. Category:Congressional Gold Medal recipients Category:Deaths from cancer in New York (state) Category:Eccentric dancers Category:Male actors from Rhode Island Category:Male musical theatre composers Category:Musicians from Providence, Rhode Island Category:People from North Brookfield, Massachusetts Category:Vaudeville performers Category:Writers from Providence, Rhode Island Category:Members of The Lambs Club

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The Wallflowers

The Wallflowers are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1989 by singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan and guitarist Tobi Miller. The band has gone through a number of personnel changes but has remained centered on Dylan. After releasing their eponymous debut album in 1992, the Wallflowers released what would become their best-known and highest-selling album, Bringing Down the Horse in 1996, which featured songs such as "One Headlight" and "6th Avenue Heartache". They went on to release an additional three albums before going on a seven-year hiatus, beginning in 2006.

2004-2005: Rebel, Sweetheart

In July 2004, the Wallflowers returned to the studio to record their fifth album, Rebel, Sweetheart. This time the band decided to record in Atlanta, Georgia, which is where their producer for this album, Brendan O'Brien, is based. O'Brien also contributed on guitar. Fred Eltringham joined the Wallflowers as their new drummer. Jakob Dylan wrote the songs, of which keyboardist Rami Jaffee has said: "What I did notice is that kind of upbeat song with some pretty scary lyrics." Dylan painted the album's cover art himself. On October 14, 2004, the Warren Zevon tribute album Enjoy Every Sandwich: The Songs of Warren Zevon was released, on which the Wallflowers covered Zevon's 1978 song "Lawyers, Guns and Money." In promotion of the album, the Wallflowers performed "Lawyers, Guns and Money" on the Late Show with David Letterman with Zevon's son, Jordan, on October 12, 2004. On October 31, 2004, the Wallflowers were flown via military transport plane to the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to perform for the returning troops. Rebel, Sweetheart was released on May 24, 2005, and was met with positive reviews. Despite widespread critical acclaim, Rebel, Sweetheart performed relatively poorly commercially, peaking at No. 40 on the Billboard 200. However, the first single from the album, "The Beautiful Side of Somewhere", hit No. 5 on AAA radio. The second single was "God Says Nothing Back". This was the first Wallflowers album to be released on DualDisc. On one side was the album, and on the other was a DVD that included exclusive performances and arrangements of some of the band's songs, as well as an interview with comedian Jon Lovitz. In promotion of the album, the Wallflowers did concerts for the Oxygen Custom Concert Series and PBS Soundstage. Around the time of the album's release, the band set out on what would be their last tour for two years. They were joined by Stuart Mathis on lead guitar. After 2005, the Wallflowers ended their relationship with Interscope Records. CANNOTANSWER

The Wallflowers is an American rock solo project of American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jakob Dylan. The Wallflowers were originally a roots rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1989 by Dylan and guitarist Tobi Miller. The band has gone through a number of personnel changes but has remained centered on Dylan. Members of The Wallflowers have gone on to be in the Foo Fighters, Ozomatli, and Gogol Bordello. Two former members have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Following their eponymous debut album in 1992, the Wallflowers released what would become their best-known and highest-selling album, Bringing Down the Horse (1996), which included the hit songs "One Headlight," "6th Avenue Heartache," "The Difference," and "Three Marlenas." Their next album, (Breach) (2000), contained "Sleepwalker"; their only single to chart the Billboard Hot 100 at number 76. ("One Headlight" was not released as a single in the U.S.) The group released an additional two critically acclaimed albums before going on hiatus. In 2012, the Wallflowers reunited to release their sixth studio album, Glad All Over. Nearly ten years later they released their seventh studio album, Exit Wounds (2021), which peaked on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart at No. 3, making it the band’s highest-charting album yet. The Wallflowers have sold over five million albums. The Wallflowers have won two Grammy Awards: Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Best Rock Song for "One Headlight" in 1998. "One Headlight" is also listed at #58 in Rolling Stones list of the 100 Greatest Pop Songs. The Wallflowers have been nominated six times for "Best Rock Song" and "Best Rock Performance." Billboard named "One Headlight" as the #1 Greatest of All Time Adult Alternative Song. As of 2022, the band has three 'No. 1' hits and has thirteen songs that have reached the 'Top 10' on Billboard's Adult Alternative Airplay list. History 1988–1990: Early history The Wallflowers' inception came in 1988/1989 when singer-guitarist Jakob Dylan called his childhood friend, Tobi Miller, also a guitarist, about starting a band. Dylan and Miller had been in several bands together in high school but went their separate ways upon graduation. Dylan had moved to New York City to go to art school while Miller had started his own band called the 45's. After the 45's broke up in 1989, Miller regained contact with Dylan and they began forming a new band called the Apples. Barrie Maguire, who was in the 45's with Miller, joined the band as their bass player. In 1990, Peter Yanowitz was added as the drummer. The final member to join the group was keyboardist Rami Jaffee. Jaffee was an active member of the Los Angeles music scene and had been playing with multiple bands in the area. He met Dylan in 1990 in the Kibitz Room, a bar located in the back of Canter's; a Jewish deli located on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. He had heard the Apples were looking for an organ player and after meeting and talking with Dylan in the Kibitz Room, the two headed for Dylan's car to listen to the band's demo tape. Jaffee was impressed by the songs and asked to join in on the band's next rehearsal. After a long rehearsal session, Jaffee joined the band on the spot. 1991–1994: Debut album The Apples changed their name to the Wallflowers and began playing clubs around Los Angeles, specifically the Sunset Strip, such as the Whisky a Go Go, Gazzarri's and the Viper Room. While they were playing clubs the band was also sending their demo tape to record companies and figures within the music industry. One of those tapes caught the attention of Andrew Slater, who would eventually become the Wallflowers' manager. Slater brought the Wallflowers to Virgin Records, who signed the band to a record contract. The Wallflowers then set out to make their first album. However, finding a producer who was willing to work with them proved to be difficult. The band was intent on recording live and few producers were willing to produce that way. Paul Fox eventually stepped in and agreed to produce the album. By the time the Wallflowers got into the studio in 1991, they had a small catalog of songs they had been performing live which they wanted to record for their debut album. All of the songs were written by Dylan with the rest of the band members contributing input on the music. When in the studio, the band were intent on using as little recording equipment as possible. Dylan explained: "If I could have had it my way I would not have seen a microphone or a cable anywhere." When it came to recording, the songs were drawn out past the 3 to 4 minute norm; many songs were close to 5 minutes in length with two exceeding 7 minutes. The Wallflowers finished recording and released their self-titled debut album on August 25, 1992. After the release they began touring nationwide as an opening act for bands such as Spin Doctors and 10,000 Maniacs. The Wallflowers continued to tour through the first half of 1993 but despite this sales of the album were slow. In total, 40,000 copies were sold. Reviews for the album, however, were mostly positive. Rolling Stone gave the album 4 stars calling it, "one sweet debut" and describing Dylan's songwriting as "impressive." Great reviews notwithstanding, executives at Virgin Records were reportedly not pleased with the album's lack of commercial success. Around this time, the company was going through a shift in management which led to the removal of Jeff Ayeroff and Jordan Harris, the two people who initially brought the Wallflowers to Virgin. After Ayeroff and Harris left the company the Wallflowers began to feel that they had no future with Virgin and asked to be released from their contract. The split with Virgin has been regarded as mutual. By mid-1993 the Wallflowers were without a record label. After leaving Virgin, the Wallflowers went back to playing Los Angeles clubs in hopes of getting signed with another label. The band found it difficult to even get label representatives to come to their shows. In the year it took to get another record deal the Wallflowers gained and lost several band members. Bass player Barrie Maguire was asked to leave for undisclosed reasons in early 1993. The Wallflowers continued playing shows with replacement bass player Jimmie Snider until May 1993 when the band hired Greg Richling. Dylan and Richling went to high school together. The Wallflowers continued to play club shows in Los Angeles through early 1994 when drummer Peter Yanowitz left the band to join his girlfriend Natalie Merchant's band. Yanowitz brought in Barrie Maguire to help record Merchant's debut solo album, Tigerlily. Around the time of Yanowitz's departure the Wallflowers caught the attention of Jimmy Iovine and Tom Whalley of Interscope Records, who then signed the band to their label in 1994. 1995–1998: Bringing Down the Horse After signing with Interscope Records, the Wallflowers began preparations for their second album, Bringing Down the Horse. They again had trouble finding a producer that was willing to work with them. The Wallflowers began sending demo tapes to producers and one of the tapes landed in the hands of T Bone Burnett. Burnett was impressed by the songs and agreed to produce the band. However, just as they were getting ready to record, the band's guitarist Tobi Miller quit. This left the Wallflowers without a permanent drummer or guitarist while they were in the studio. Matt Chamberlain filled in on drums throughout the recording sessions and several guitarists were brought in to fill Miller's role including Mike Campbell, Fred Tackett, Jay Joyce and Michael Ward, who would go on to become a permanent member of the Wallflowers. The Wallflowers released Bringing Down the Horse on May 21, 1996. The band began touring for the album soon after the release. Album sales were slow to start but after the first single, "6th Avenue Heartache" (featuring Adam Duritz of Counting Crows) was released on August 19, interest in the Wallflowers began picking up as the song began getting more radio play. The David Fincher-directed music video for "6th Avenue Heartache" was also receiving attention on MTV and VH1. The Wallflowers continued to tour through the rest of 1996 and were featured as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live that November. On December 1, Bringing Down the Horse received Gold certification from the RIAA by selling 500,000 copies of their album. In January 1997, the Wallflowers were nominated for two Grammy awards, both for "6th Avenue Heartache". Dylan was a presenter at the 1997 Grammy Awards though he and the Wallflowers did not win either of the awards they were nominated for. The band continued to tour and gain popularity. In February 1997, the Wallflowers completed a tour opening for Sheryl Crow before beginning a string of their own headlining shows beginning at the end of February and running through May. On February 24, the second single from Bringing Down the Horse, "One Headlight", was released. "One Headlight" received heavy radio play, which propelled Bringing Down the Horse to Platinum certification on March 4 by selling one million copies of the album. Within six weeks, sales for Bringing Down the Horse doubled and on April 16, the album received Double-Platinum status by selling two million copies. In mid-May, the Wallflowers crossed over to Europe for a three-week-long tour. Upon return in mid-June, the Wallflowers continued to tour the United States. On June 12, Dylan received his first Rolling Stone magazine cover. In the accompanying interview, Dylan spoke both candidly and at length about his lineage for the first time. Five days later, album sales for Bringing Down the Horse reached the three million mark, qualifying the album for Triple-Platinum status. On June 21, the Wallflowers co-headlined a festival at Texas Motor Speedway called Rock Fest. The day-long festival drew upwards of 400,000 people, making it one of the largest concerts in US history. On July 2, 1997, the Wallflowers kicked off a co-headlining tour with Counting Crows that continued through September. This tour included opening acts by Bettie Serveert, Engine 88, Gigolo Aunts, and That Dog, with each opening band touring for a three-week stretch. The Wallflowers took over full-headlining duties for several shows in July when Counting Crows were unable to perform due to Duritz's swollen vocal cords. On September 22, the Wallflowers released their third single from Bringing Down the Horse, "The Difference". On October 30, Bringing Down the Horse hit another milestone by receiving Quadruple-Platinum status by selling four million copies. After taking the month of October off from touring, the Wallflowers hit the road again in November. On November 9 and 10, the Wallflowers broke from their headlining tour to open for the Rolling Stones at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Less than a week later, the Wallflowers again broke from their tour to co-headline a private show at an arena in San Jose, California with Bob Dylan on November 14. The Wallflowers continued to tour through the end of December. By the end of 1997, Bringing Down the Horse had become the most played album on rock radio and peaked at Number 4 on the Billboard 200 while "One Headlight" had received some 209,000 radio spins across all formats. On January 6, 1998, the Wallflowers received three Grammy nominations; "One Headlight" and "The Difference" were both nominated for Best Rock Song while "One Headlight" received an additional nomination for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. At the 1998 Grammy Award ceremony on February 25, the Wallflowers walked away with two Grammy Awards; "One Headlight" won for Best Rock Song as well as Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Despite the fact that Bringing Down the Horse was released nearly two years previously, the Wallflowers released an additional single from that album on March 23, "Three Marlenas". "Three Marlenas" would be the fourth and final single to be released from Bringing Down the Horse. By 1998 the Wallflowers had begun declining on the Billboard charts and receiving fewer spins on the radio. That changed, however, when the soundtrack for the 1998 film Godzilla was released on May 19. The Wallflowers had recorded a version of David Bowie's "Heroes" which was chosen as the lead single for the soundtrack. The album peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and the Wallflowers' version of "Heroes" received heavy radio play. Though the Wallflowers did not tour in 1998 they did play a series of one-off shows including the Tibetan Freedom Concert in June at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. and the Bridge School Benefit in September in Mountain View, California, which was hosted by Neil Young and his wife Pegi. 1999–2001: (Breach) After taking a five-month break from writing and touring, the Wallflowers set out to make their third album, (Breach). Dylan was very diligent in the songwriting process; he rented a studio near his home and would routinely go there to write songs for the album. However, Dylan was not satisfied with the first batch of songs he came up with. He decided to scrap them and start over. The songs that did make it to the studio were considered to be far more personal than any of the songs the Wallflowers had released in the past. Dylan explained; "I think all my songs are personal, but I just made them a little more dense before, made 'em real thick so that I didn't feel exposed. A lot of younger writers do that. Before, I haven't really wanted anybody buying my records looking for information about myself or my family, but at this point, the group has a lot of people buying the records who aren't interested in that, so it gives me more freedom." By the end of 1999, the Wallflowers were ready to begin recording. The bulk of the album was recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles. The Wallflowers' longtime manager, Andrew Slater co-produced the album with Michael Penn. The band took their time in the studio. Like Bringing Down the Horse, (Breach) took about eight months to record. (Breach) also featured an array of guest artists including Elvis Costello, Mike Campbell and Frank Black. Four years after the release of Bringing Down the Horse in 1996, (Breach) was released on October 10, 2000. The album was met with generally positive critical reception but underwhelming sales. Rolling Stone gave (Breach) four stars, calling the band "more muscular" than they used to be. However, (Breach) commercially floundered in comparison to its high-selling predecessor. The album peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and took almost a year to receive the Gold certification, which is the highest certification (Breach) has received to date. A month before the official release of (Breach), the album was leaked in its entirety to file-sharing giant Napster, where a reported 25 million users had the ability to listen to and download the Wallflowers' third album. With regard to the impact of leaks for big recording artists, former Capitol Records senior vice president and general manager, Lou Mann stated: "For the Wallflowers or any major superstar band, the problems are major. In fact they're Herculean, because people already want it and you don't want to dilute your audience." Jakob Dylan also explained his feelings about (Breach) being leaked: "[Album sales are] one of the ways that we have of making a living really. It's not about record companies, it's not about people's right to trade, you know, it's also how we put food on the table." Despite the disappointing release, the Wallflowers set out on another tour beginning in early October 2000. After one show in Atlanta on October 2, the Wallflowers traveled to New York to open for the Who for four nights at Madison Square Garden. Later that month, Jakob Dylan was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone for a second time. The Wallflowers continued to tour throughout the U.S. through mid-December before heading to Japan in February 2001 for their first tour there. The Wallflowers covered the Bee Gees' 1968 hit song "I Started a Joke" for the 2001 film, Zoolander. The band continued to tour the U.S. for the remainder of 2001 until it was announced in early October that guitarist Michael Ward had left the Wallflowers due to creative differences. 2002–2003: Red Letter Days In 2001, Jakob Dylan began writing for the Wallflowers' fourth album, Red Letter Days. Later that year while on tour with John Mellencamp, the band began recording using portable equipment. Some recording was also done at keyboardist Rami Jaffee's house. Once the band was finished touring for the year they began recording the bulk of the new record at Jackson Browne's studio in Santa Monica. By the time the Wallflowers had gotten into Browne's studio, Michael Ward had left the band, leaving them without a lead guitarist for the recording process. Dylan took on much of the lead guitar duties with Mike McCready, Rusty Anderson and Val McCallum also contributing on guitar. Moe Z M.D., who had been touring with Mellencamp, contributed additional percussion and background vocals to the album. Red Letter Days was produced by founding Wallflowers member Tobi Miller along with Bill Appleberry. Recording continued through the new year and was completed on April 12, 2002. The album was mixed by Tom Lord-Alge, who had mixed the band's previous two albums. Mixing was completed on May 15, 2002. While the Wallflowers were working on Red Letter Days, they recorded a cover of the Beatles' 1965 song "I'm Looking Through You" for the soundtrack to the 2001 film I Am Sam. The soundtrack was released on January 8, 2002. The first single from the Red Letter Days, "When You're On Top," was released to radio on August 16, 2002. A music video directed by Marc Webb followed. After a few false starts, Red Letter Days was released on November 5, 2002. The album was met with mixed to positive reviews. Many critics noted the harder rock sound and catchy melodies used throughout the album. Commercial performance was relatively mixed as well, peaking at No.32 on the Billboard 200. Around the time of Red Letter Days release the Wallflowers embarked on a monthlong U.S. tour stretching into early December. After another U.S. tour in January 2003, the Wallflowers toured in several European countries in February including Spain, Italy, Germany and Great Britain. After this tour, the Wallflowers' drummer since 1995, Mario Calire announced he was parting ways with the band. In 2003, the Wallflowers were featured on the soundtrack for the film American Wedding. The band recorded a cover of Van Morrison's 1970 song "Into the Mystic". The film's music department weren't able to secure the licensing rights to use Morrison's version so they enlisted the Wallflowers to cover the song. Both versions of the song were, however, featured in the film. 2004–2005: Rebel, Sweetheart In July 2004, the Wallflowers returned to the studio to record their fifth album, Rebel, Sweetheart. This time the band decided to record in Atlanta, Georgia, which is where their producer for this album, Brendan O'Brien, is based. O'Brien also contributed on guitar. Fred Eltringham joined the Wallflowers as their new drummer. Jakob Dylan wrote the songs, of which keyboardist Rami Jaffee has said: "What I did notice is that kind of upbeat song with some pretty scary lyrics." Dylan painted the album's cover art himself. On October 14, 2004, the Warren Zevon tribute album Enjoy Every Sandwich: The Songs of Warren Zevon was released, on which the Wallflowers covered Zevon's 1978 song "Lawyers, Guns and Money." In promotion of the album, the Wallflowers performed "Lawyers, Guns and Money" on the Late Show with David Letterman with Zevon's son, Jordan, on October 12, 2004. On October 31, 2004, the Wallflowers were flown via military transport plane to the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to perform for the returning troops. Rebel, Sweetheart was released on May 24, 2005, and was met with positive reviews. Despite widespread critical acclaim, Rebel, Sweetheart performed relatively poorly commercially, peaking at No. 40 on the Billboard 200. However, the first single from the album, "The Beautiful Side of Somewhere", hit No. 5 on AAA radio. The second single was "God Says Nothing Back". This was the first Wallflowers album to be released on DualDisc. On one side was the album, and on the other was a DVD that included exclusive performances and arrangements of some of the band's songs, as well as an interview with comedian Jon Lovitz. In promotion of the album, the Wallflowers did concerts for the Oxygen Custom Concert Series and PBS Soundstage. Around the time of the album's release, the band set out on what would be their last tour for two years. They were joined by Stuart Mathis on lead guitar. After 2005, the Wallflowers ended their relationship with Interscope Records. 2006–2010: Hiatus 2006 was the first year in over a decade that the Wallflowers did not tour. Instead, band members embarked on other projects. Jakob Dylan toured with former Wallflowers producer T-Bone Burnett in the early summer, performing a solo acoustic opening set with a keyboard player. Later that year, he signed a contract with Columbia Records as a solo artist. He also wrote and recorded a song called "Here Comes Now", which was featured as the theme song for the ABC television drama Six Degrees. The show premiered in the fall of 2006. Meanwhile, keyboardist Rami Jaffee joined the Foo Fighters as a touring and session member. Jaffee had previously contributed keyboards to the Foo Fighters' 2005 album In Your Honor. In 2006, he also contributed on albums for Willie Nile and Pete Yorn. On August 31, 2007, the Wallflowers announced they would be touring for the first time in over two years. They toured in the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. in October and November. Before the tour, Jaffee announced that he was leaving the Wallflowers. This left Dylan, Greg Richling and Fred Eltringham as the remaining members and a guitar player, Stuart Mathis, as a touring member. In 2008, the Wallflowers toured on-and-off throughout the summer. Touring for the Wallflowers was limited as Dylan had released his first solo album, Seeing Things, on June 10, 2008. Eltringham joined Dylan on tour in promotion for the album. On March 31, 2009, the Wallflowers released a greatest-hits album called Collected: 1996–2005. The album featured every single released from the four albums the Wallflowers released between 1996 and 2005. It also featured several non-single songs from those four albums, a demo version of "God Says Nothing Back" and an unreleased song called "Eat You Sleeping". That summer, the Wallflowers embarked on a U.S. tour in support of the album. In addition to Dylan, Richling, Eltringham and Mathis, Bill Appleberry joined the band on this tour as a keyboard player. The Wallflowers did not tour in 2010 as Dylan had released his second solo album, Women + Country, on April 6, 2010, and was touring in support of that album. 2011–2012: Glad All Over On November 1, 2011, Jakob Dylan announced that the Wallflowers would be reuniting to release an album, explaining: "I never suggested we were breaking up. We all felt we were losing the plot a bit and we needed a break. And that year break becomes two years, then becomes three years, and before you know it five or six years go by pretty quickly. I can't do what I do in the Wallflowers without them. I miss it." In an interview with the St. Joseph News-Press, Dylan stated that the Wallflowers would be getting into the studio in January and the lineup would include Greg Richling on bass, Rami Jaffee on keys, Stuart Mathis on guitar and Fred Eltringham on drums. However, weeks before the Wallflowers began recording, Eltringham left the band to pursue other projects. The band quickly got former Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam drummer Jack Irons to join the band. Irons was previously involved in a side project with Wallflowers bassist Richling. On January 20, 2012, the Wallflowers began recording their sixth studio album, Glad All Over, at the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye studio in Nashville. Jay Joyce, who had played guitar on the Wallflowers' Bringing Down the Horse agreed to produce the album. Before going to the studio, the band had decided have a more collaborative writing process than they had in the past. Instead of Dylan bringing in fully completed songs like he had done in the past, he only brought lyrics. Dylan and the rest of the band wrote the music for the songs together in the studio. Joyce explained: "Jakob came to Nashville and we sat down and I asked him to play me a song, but instead he pulled out this 2-inch-thick notebook. ‘This is what I’ve got. Let’s play some grooves and throw it around.’ I thought, ‘Wow, that’s kind of scary, but it’s exciting.’ So we didn't really know going in what we were going to do. We had no songs, no demos. It was all developed in the studio. The band finished recording on February 20, 2012. At a private solo performance in New York on April 19, 2012, Dylan announced that the new the Wallflowers album was expected to be released in fall later that year. On July 14, 2012, the band announced that the title of their new album would be Glad All Over. They also announced that the album's first single, "Reboot the Mission", would be available for free download from their website. Following several one-off shows in the summer of 2012, the Wallflowers kicked off a fall tour in San Diego on September 8, 2012. From there, they continued to tour the U.S. and Canada through mid-November, playing a mix of clubs and festivals, with an additional four East Coast dates at the end of December. Glad All Over was released on October 9, 2012, on Columbia Records and was met with generally positive reviews. Leading up to the album's release, the Wallflowers promoted the album on various television shows including Good Morning America, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Late Show with David Letterman and Ellen. 2013–2020: Tours and roster changes Beginning in the spring of 2013, the band toured with Eric Clapton on his arena tour. The tour with Clapton began on March 14, 2013, in Phoenix, Arizona, at the US Airways Center and continued through the South and East Coast, eventually coming to an end on April 6, 2013, in Pittsburgh at the Consol Energy Center. After the Clapton tour, the Wallflowers played several additional shows of their own in May 2013. On May 12 in Napa, California, the band's longtime keyboardist Rami Jaffee played what would be his final show with the Wallflowers to date. Jaffee has yet to say whether he has officially quit the Wallflowers but has continued to record and tour with the Foo Fighters. Jimmy Wallace has subbed in his spot ever since. The Wallflowers continued to tour through the summer of 2013 and played their final show of the summer on August 17 at the River Roots Live Festival in Davenport, Iowa, to a crowd of 17,000 people. This show would turn out to be longtime bassist Greg Richling's and drummer Jack Irons' final show with the band. On September 8, Richling officially announced that he was leaving the Wallflowers after 20 years with the band. He left to pursue other interests. Irons announced he was leaving soon after, on September 15. Irons reportedly left to focus on his band project, Arthur Channel, who released their debut album on October 15, 2013. The Wallflowers have continued to play shows since 2013 with a new drummer, bass player, guitar player, and keyboardist filling in for Irons, Richling, Mathis, and Jaffee. Dylan stated later he would be continuing making music under name The Wallflowers as a solo project: "The Wallflowers is me, and if I go under my own name, it's me. It's the same thing, ultimately. It's really dictated on the songs I have and how I want to record them and would they sound better with a full-band sound. In many ways it's the same person. It's just what outfit do I want to put on". As of 2017, the touring lineup consisted of Stanton Adcock on lead guitar, Steve Mackey on bass, keyboardist Jimmy Wallace and Lynn Williams on drums. In May 2016, the Wallflowers' 1996 album Bringing Down the Horse was issued on vinyl for the first time in honor of the 20th anniversary of the album's release. The Wallflowers was among hundreds of artists whose material was destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire, although later research showed the master tapes for Bringing Down the Horse were not actually destroyed in the fire. The band was set to undertake a North American summer tour in 2020 alongside Matchbox Twenty prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2021–present: Exit Wounds The band's seventh studio album, Exit Wounds, was released on July 9, 2021, on New West Records. With the release of the new album, Dylan would reiterate that the band's sound is an extension of his solo work, saying "There's never been one lineup that's made two records. So the constant is myself. If you think there's a sound of the Wallflowers, I'm making that with my choices in the studio and with my songs and voice". It was produced by Butch Walker and the band announced a 53-date arena tour to promote the album (which was postponed to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic). About writing the album, Dylan says, "I was just also writing during a time when the world felt like it was falling apart. That changes the way you address even the simplest things, because you have panic in your mind all the time. You have anxiety. And you also have hope. And it’s all in there". Band membersCurrent members Jakob Dylan – lead vocals, rhythm guitar (1989–present); keyboards, piano (1989–1990, 2005–2012, 2013–present); bass (1989, 1993, 2013–present); drums, percussion (1989–1990, 1994–1995, 2003, 2011–2012, 2013–present); lead guitar (1995, 2001–2005, 2014–present)Touring musicians Stanton Adcock – guitars (2017–present) Aaron Embry - keyboards (2021–present) Whynot Jansveld - bass, backing vocals (2021–present) Ben Peeler - guitars (2021–present) Mark Stepro - drums, backing vocals (2021–present)Former members Tobi Miller – lead guitar (1989–1995) Barrie Maguire – bass (1989–1993) Peter Yanowitz – drums (1990–1994) Rami Jaffee – keyboards (1990–2005, 2012–2013) Greg Richling – bass (1993–2013) Mario Calire – drums (1995–2003, 2012) Michael Ward – lead guitar (1995–2001) Fred Eltringham – drums (2003–2011) Jack Irons – drums (2012–2013) Stuart Mathis – lead guitar (2005–2014)Former touring musicians Jimmy Wallace – keyboards, vocals (2013–2019) Steve Mackey – bass (2017–2019) Lynn Williams – drums, percussion (2017–2019) Timeline DiscographyStudio albums'''The Wallflowers (1992)Bringing Down the Horse (1996)(Breach) (2000)Red Letter Days (2002)Rebel, Sweetheart (2005)Glad All Over (2012)Exit Wounds'' (2021) References External links Trouser Press entry Category:Alternative rock groups from California Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Interscope Records artists Category:Musical groups established in 1989 Category:Musical groups from Los Angeles Category:Musical quintets Category:Virgin Records artists

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The Wallflowers

The Wallflowers are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1989 by singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan and guitarist Tobi Miller. The band has gone through a number of personnel changes but has remained centered on Dylan. After releasing their eponymous debut album in 1992, the Wallflowers released what would become their best-known and highest-selling album, Bringing Down the Horse in 1996, which featured songs such as "One Headlight" and "6th Avenue Heartache". They went on to release an additional three albums before going on a seven-year hiatus, beginning in 2006.

2002-2003: Red Letter Days

In 2001, Jakob Dylan began writing for the Wallflowers' fourth album, Red Letter Days. Later that year while on tour with John Mellencamp, the band began recording using portable equipment. Some recording was also done at keyboardist Rami Jaffee's house. Once the band was finished touring for the year they began recording the bulk of the new record at Jackson Browne's studio in Santa Monica. By the time the Wallflowers had gotten into Browne's studio, Michael Ward had left the band, leaving them without a lead guitarist for the recording process. Dylan took on much of the lead guitar duties with Mike McCready, Rusty Anderson and Val McCallum also contributing on guitar. Moe Z M.D., who had been touring with Mellencamp, contributed additional percussion and background vocals to the album.Red Letter Days was produced by founding Wallflowers member Tobi Miller along with Bill Appleberry. Recording continued through the new year and was completed on April 12, 2002. The album was mixed by Tom Lord-Alge, who had mixed the band's previous two albums. Mixing was completed on May 15, 2002. While the Wallflowers were working on Red Letter Days, they recorded a cover of the Beatles' 1965 song "I'm Looking Through You" for the soundtrack to the 2001 film I Am Sam. The soundtrack was released on January 8, 2002. The first single from the Red Letter Days, "When You're On Top," was released to radio on August 16, 2002. A music video directed by Marc Webb followed. After a few false starts, Red Letter Days was released on November 5, 2002. The album was met with mixed to positive reviews. Many critics noted the harder rock sound and catchy melodies used throughout the album. Commercial performance was relatively mixed as well, peaking at No.32 on the Billboard 200. Around the time of Red Letter Days' release the Wallflowers embarked on a monthlong U.S. tour stretching into early December. After another U.S. tour in January 2003, the Wallflowers toured in several European countries in February including Spain, Italy, Germany and Great Britain. After this tour, the Wallflowers' drummer since 1995, Mario Calire announced he was parting ways with the band. In 2003, the Wallflowers were featured on the soundtrack for the film American Wedding. The band recorded a cover of Van Morrison's 1970 song "Into the Mystic". The film's music department weren't able to secure the licensing rights to use Morrison's version so they enlisted the Wallflowers to cover the song. Both versions of the song were, however, featured in the film. CANNOTANSWER

The Wallflowers is an American rock solo project of American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jakob Dylan. The Wallflowers were originally a roots rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1989 by Dylan and guitarist Tobi Miller. The band has gone through a number of personnel changes but has remained centered on Dylan. Members of The Wallflowers have gone on to be in the Foo Fighters, Ozomatli, and Gogol Bordello. Two former members have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Following their eponymous debut album in 1992, the Wallflowers released what would become their best-known and highest-selling album, Bringing Down the Horse (1996), which included the hit songs "One Headlight," "6th Avenue Heartache," "The Difference," and "Three Marlenas." Their next album, (Breach) (2000), contained "Sleepwalker"; their only single to chart the Billboard Hot 100 at number 76. ("One Headlight" was not released as a single in the U.S.) The group released an additional two critically acclaimed albums before going on hiatus. In 2012, the Wallflowers reunited to release their sixth studio album, Glad All Over. Nearly ten years later they released their seventh studio album, Exit Wounds (2021), which peaked on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart at No. 3, making it the band’s highest-charting album yet. The Wallflowers have sold over five million albums. The Wallflowers have won two Grammy Awards: Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Best Rock Song for "One Headlight" in 1998. "One Headlight" is also listed at #58 in Rolling Stones list of the 100 Greatest Pop Songs. The Wallflowers have been nominated six times for "Best Rock Song" and "Best Rock Performance." Billboard named "One Headlight" as the #1 Greatest of All Time Adult Alternative Song. As of 2022, the band has three 'No. 1' hits and has thirteen songs that have reached the 'Top 10' on Billboard's Adult Alternative Airplay list. History 1988–1990: Early history The Wallflowers' inception came in 1988/1989 when singer-guitarist Jakob Dylan called his childhood friend, Tobi Miller, also a guitarist, about starting a band. Dylan and Miller had been in several bands together in high school but went their separate ways upon graduation. Dylan had moved to New York City to go to art school while Miller had started his own band called the 45's. After the 45's broke up in 1989, Miller regained contact with Dylan and they began forming a new band called the Apples. Barrie Maguire, who was in the 45's with Miller, joined the band as their bass player. In 1990, Peter Yanowitz was added as the drummer. The final member to join the group was keyboardist Rami Jaffee. Jaffee was an active member of the Los Angeles music scene and had been playing with multiple bands in the area. He met Dylan in 1990 in the Kibitz Room, a bar located in the back of Canter's; a Jewish deli located on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. He had heard the Apples were looking for an organ player and after meeting and talking with Dylan in the Kibitz Room, the two headed for Dylan's car to listen to the band's demo tape. Jaffee was impressed by the songs and asked to join in on the band's next rehearsal. After a long rehearsal session, Jaffee joined the band on the spot. 1991–1994: Debut album The Apples changed their name to the Wallflowers and began playing clubs around Los Angeles, specifically the Sunset Strip, such as the Whisky a Go Go, Gazzarri's and the Viper Room. While they were playing clubs the band was also sending their demo tape to record companies and figures within the music industry. One of those tapes caught the attention of Andrew Slater, who would eventually become the Wallflowers' manager. Slater brought the Wallflowers to Virgin Records, who signed the band to a record contract. The Wallflowers then set out to make their first album. However, finding a producer who was willing to work with them proved to be difficult. The band was intent on recording live and few producers were willing to produce that way. Paul Fox eventually stepped in and agreed to produce the album. By the time the Wallflowers got into the studio in 1991, they had a small catalog of songs they had been performing live which they wanted to record for their debut album. All of the songs were written by Dylan with the rest of the band members contributing input on the music. When in the studio, the band were intent on using as little recording equipment as possible. Dylan explained: "If I could have had it my way I would not have seen a microphone or a cable anywhere." When it came to recording, the songs were drawn out past the 3 to 4 minute norm; many songs were close to 5 minutes in length with two exceeding 7 minutes. The Wallflowers finished recording and released their self-titled debut album on August 25, 1992. After the release they began touring nationwide as an opening act for bands such as Spin Doctors and 10,000 Maniacs. The Wallflowers continued to tour through the first half of 1993 but despite this sales of the album were slow. In total, 40,000 copies were sold. Reviews for the album, however, were mostly positive. Rolling Stone gave the album 4 stars calling it, "one sweet debut" and describing Dylan's songwriting as "impressive." Great reviews notwithstanding, executives at Virgin Records were reportedly not pleased with the album's lack of commercial success. Around this time, the company was going through a shift in management which led to the removal of Jeff Ayeroff and Jordan Harris, the two people who initially brought the Wallflowers to Virgin. After Ayeroff and Harris left the company the Wallflowers began to feel that they had no future with Virgin and asked to be released from their contract. The split with Virgin has been regarded as mutual. By mid-1993 the Wallflowers were without a record label. After leaving Virgin, the Wallflowers went back to playing Los Angeles clubs in hopes of getting signed with another label. The band found it difficult to even get label representatives to come to their shows. In the year it took to get another record deal the Wallflowers gained and lost several band members. Bass player Barrie Maguire was asked to leave for undisclosed reasons in early 1993. The Wallflowers continued playing shows with replacement bass player Jimmie Snider until May 1993 when the band hired Greg Richling. Dylan and Richling went to high school together. The Wallflowers continued to play club shows in Los Angeles through early 1994 when drummer Peter Yanowitz left the band to join his girlfriend Natalie Merchant's band. Yanowitz brought in Barrie Maguire to help record Merchant's debut solo album, Tigerlily. Around the time of Yanowitz's departure the Wallflowers caught the attention of Jimmy Iovine and Tom Whalley of Interscope Records, who then signed the band to their label in 1994. 1995–1998: Bringing Down the Horse After signing with Interscope Records, the Wallflowers began preparations for their second album, Bringing Down the Horse. They again had trouble finding a producer that was willing to work with them. The Wallflowers began sending demo tapes to producers and one of the tapes landed in the hands of T Bone Burnett. Burnett was impressed by the songs and agreed to produce the band. However, just as they were getting ready to record, the band's guitarist Tobi Miller quit. This left the Wallflowers without a permanent drummer or guitarist while they were in the studio. Matt Chamberlain filled in on drums throughout the recording sessions and several guitarists were brought in to fill Miller's role including Mike Campbell, Fred Tackett, Jay Joyce and Michael Ward, who would go on to become a permanent member of the Wallflowers. The Wallflowers released Bringing Down the Horse on May 21, 1996. The band began touring for the album soon after the release. Album sales were slow to start but after the first single, "6th Avenue Heartache" (featuring Adam Duritz of Counting Crows) was released on August 19, interest in the Wallflowers began picking up as the song began getting more radio play. The David Fincher-directed music video for "6th Avenue Heartache" was also receiving attention on MTV and VH1. The Wallflowers continued to tour through the rest of 1996 and were featured as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live that November. On December 1, Bringing Down the Horse received Gold certification from the RIAA by selling 500,000 copies of their album. In January 1997, the Wallflowers were nominated for two Grammy awards, both for "6th Avenue Heartache". Dylan was a presenter at the 1997 Grammy Awards though he and the Wallflowers did not win either of the awards they were nominated for. The band continued to tour and gain popularity. In February 1997, the Wallflowers completed a tour opening for Sheryl Crow before beginning a string of their own headlining shows beginning at the end of February and running through May. On February 24, the second single from Bringing Down the Horse, "One Headlight", was released. "One Headlight" received heavy radio play, which propelled Bringing Down the Horse to Platinum certification on March 4 by selling one million copies of the album. Within six weeks, sales for Bringing Down the Horse doubled and on April 16, the album received Double-Platinum status by selling two million copies. In mid-May, the Wallflowers crossed over to Europe for a three-week-long tour. Upon return in mid-June, the Wallflowers continued to tour the United States. On June 12, Dylan received his first Rolling Stone magazine cover. In the accompanying interview, Dylan spoke both candidly and at length about his lineage for the first time. Five days later, album sales for Bringing Down the Horse reached the three million mark, qualifying the album for Triple-Platinum status. On June 21, the Wallflowers co-headlined a festival at Texas Motor Speedway called Rock Fest. The day-long festival drew upwards of 400,000 people, making it one of the largest concerts in US history. On July 2, 1997, the Wallflowers kicked off a co-headlining tour with Counting Crows that continued through September. This tour included opening acts by Bettie Serveert, Engine 88, Gigolo Aunts, and That Dog, with each opening band touring for a three-week stretch. The Wallflowers took over full-headlining duties for several shows in July when Counting Crows were unable to perform due to Duritz's swollen vocal cords. On September 22, the Wallflowers released their third single from Bringing Down the Horse, "The Difference". On October 30, Bringing Down the Horse hit another milestone by receiving Quadruple-Platinum status by selling four million copies. After taking the month of October off from touring, the Wallflowers hit the road again in November. On November 9 and 10, the Wallflowers broke from their headlining tour to open for the Rolling Stones at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Less than a week later, the Wallflowers again broke from their tour to co-headline a private show at an arena in San Jose, California with Bob Dylan on November 14. The Wallflowers continued to tour through the end of December. By the end of 1997, Bringing Down the Horse had become the most played album on rock radio and peaked at Number 4 on the Billboard 200 while "One Headlight" had received some 209,000 radio spins across all formats. On January 6, 1998, the Wallflowers received three Grammy nominations; "One Headlight" and "The Difference" were both nominated for Best Rock Song while "One Headlight" received an additional nomination for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. At the 1998 Grammy Award ceremony on February 25, the Wallflowers walked away with two Grammy Awards; "One Headlight" won for Best Rock Song as well as Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Despite the fact that Bringing Down the Horse was released nearly two years previously, the Wallflowers released an additional single from that album on March 23, "Three Marlenas". "Three Marlenas" would be the fourth and final single to be released from Bringing Down the Horse. By 1998 the Wallflowers had begun declining on the Billboard charts and receiving fewer spins on the radio. That changed, however, when the soundtrack for the 1998 film Godzilla was released on May 19. The Wallflowers had recorded a version of David Bowie's "Heroes" which was chosen as the lead single for the soundtrack. The album peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and the Wallflowers' version of "Heroes" received heavy radio play. Though the Wallflowers did not tour in 1998 they did play a series of one-off shows including the Tibetan Freedom Concert in June at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. and the Bridge School Benefit in September in Mountain View, California, which was hosted by Neil Young and his wife Pegi. 1999–2001: (Breach) After taking a five-month break from writing and touring, the Wallflowers set out to make their third album, (Breach). Dylan was very diligent in the songwriting process; he rented a studio near his home and would routinely go there to write songs for the album. However, Dylan was not satisfied with the first batch of songs he came up with. He decided to scrap them and start over. The songs that did make it to the studio were considered to be far more personal than any of the songs the Wallflowers had released in the past. Dylan explained; "I think all my songs are personal, but I just made them a little more dense before, made 'em real thick so that I didn't feel exposed. A lot of younger writers do that. Before, I haven't really wanted anybody buying my records looking for information about myself or my family, but at this point, the group has a lot of people buying the records who aren't interested in that, so it gives me more freedom." By the end of 1999, the Wallflowers were ready to begin recording. The bulk of the album was recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles. The Wallflowers' longtime manager, Andrew Slater co-produced the album with Michael Penn. The band took their time in the studio. Like Bringing Down the Horse, (Breach) took about eight months to record. (Breach) also featured an array of guest artists including Elvis Costello, Mike Campbell and Frank Black. Four years after the release of Bringing Down the Horse in 1996, (Breach) was released on October 10, 2000. The album was met with generally positive critical reception but underwhelming sales. Rolling Stone gave (Breach) four stars, calling the band "more muscular" than they used to be. However, (Breach) commercially floundered in comparison to its high-selling predecessor. The album peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and took almost a year to receive the Gold certification, which is the highest certification (Breach) has received to date. A month before the official release of (Breach), the album was leaked in its entirety to file-sharing giant Napster, where a reported 25 million users had the ability to listen to and download the Wallflowers' third album. With regard to the impact of leaks for big recording artists, former Capitol Records senior vice president and general manager, Lou Mann stated: "For the Wallflowers or any major superstar band, the problems are major. In fact they're Herculean, because people already want it and you don't want to dilute your audience." Jakob Dylan also explained his feelings about (Breach) being leaked: "[Album sales are] one of the ways that we have of making a living really. It's not about record companies, it's not about people's right to trade, you know, it's also how we put food on the table." Despite the disappointing release, the Wallflowers set out on another tour beginning in early October 2000. After one show in Atlanta on October 2, the Wallflowers traveled to New York to open for the Who for four nights at Madison Square Garden. Later that month, Jakob Dylan was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone for a second time. The Wallflowers continued to tour throughout the U.S. through mid-December before heading to Japan in February 2001 for their first tour there. The Wallflowers covered the Bee Gees' 1968 hit song "I Started a Joke" for the 2001 film, Zoolander. The band continued to tour the U.S. for the remainder of 2001 until it was announced in early October that guitarist Michael Ward had left the Wallflowers due to creative differences. 2002–2003: Red Letter Days In 2001, Jakob Dylan began writing for the Wallflowers' fourth album, Red Letter Days. Later that year while on tour with John Mellencamp, the band began recording using portable equipment. Some recording was also done at keyboardist Rami Jaffee's house. Once the band was finished touring for the year they began recording the bulk of the new record at Jackson Browne's studio in Santa Monica. By the time the Wallflowers had gotten into Browne's studio, Michael Ward had left the band, leaving them without a lead guitarist for the recording process. Dylan took on much of the lead guitar duties with Mike McCready, Rusty Anderson and Val McCallum also contributing on guitar. Moe Z M.D., who had been touring with Mellencamp, contributed additional percussion and background vocals to the album. Red Letter Days was produced by founding Wallflowers member Tobi Miller along with Bill Appleberry. Recording continued through the new year and was completed on April 12, 2002. The album was mixed by Tom Lord-Alge, who had mixed the band's previous two albums. Mixing was completed on May 15, 2002. While the Wallflowers were working on Red Letter Days, they recorded a cover of the Beatles' 1965 song "I'm Looking Through You" for the soundtrack to the 2001 film I Am Sam. The soundtrack was released on January 8, 2002. The first single from the Red Letter Days, "When You're On Top," was released to radio on August 16, 2002. A music video directed by Marc Webb followed. After a few false starts, Red Letter Days was released on November 5, 2002. The album was met with mixed to positive reviews. Many critics noted the harder rock sound and catchy melodies used throughout the album. Commercial performance was relatively mixed as well, peaking at No.32 on the Billboard 200. Around the time of Red Letter Days release the Wallflowers embarked on a monthlong U.S. tour stretching into early December. After another U.S. tour in January 2003, the Wallflowers toured in several European countries in February including Spain, Italy, Germany and Great Britain. After this tour, the Wallflowers' drummer since 1995, Mario Calire announced he was parting ways with the band. In 2003, the Wallflowers were featured on the soundtrack for the film American Wedding. The band recorded a cover of Van Morrison's 1970 song "Into the Mystic". The film's music department weren't able to secure the licensing rights to use Morrison's version so they enlisted the Wallflowers to cover the song. Both versions of the song were, however, featured in the film. 2004–2005: Rebel, Sweetheart In July 2004, the Wallflowers returned to the studio to record their fifth album, Rebel, Sweetheart. This time the band decided to record in Atlanta, Georgia, which is where their producer for this album, Brendan O'Brien, is based. O'Brien also contributed on guitar. Fred Eltringham joined the Wallflowers as their new drummer. Jakob Dylan wrote the songs, of which keyboardist Rami Jaffee has said: "What I did notice is that kind of upbeat song with some pretty scary lyrics." Dylan painted the album's cover art himself. On October 14, 2004, the Warren Zevon tribute album Enjoy Every Sandwich: The Songs of Warren Zevon was released, on which the Wallflowers covered Zevon's 1978 song "Lawyers, Guns and Money." In promotion of the album, the Wallflowers performed "Lawyers, Guns and Money" on the Late Show with David Letterman with Zevon's son, Jordan, on October 12, 2004. On October 31, 2004, the Wallflowers were flown via military transport plane to the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to perform for the returning troops. Rebel, Sweetheart was released on May 24, 2005, and was met with positive reviews. Despite widespread critical acclaim, Rebel, Sweetheart performed relatively poorly commercially, peaking at No. 40 on the Billboard 200. However, the first single from the album, "The Beautiful Side of Somewhere", hit No. 5 on AAA radio. The second single was "God Says Nothing Back". This was the first Wallflowers album to be released on DualDisc. On one side was the album, and on the other was a DVD that included exclusive performances and arrangements of some of the band's songs, as well as an interview with comedian Jon Lovitz. In promotion of the album, the Wallflowers did concerts for the Oxygen Custom Concert Series and PBS Soundstage. Around the time of the album's release, the band set out on what would be their last tour for two years. They were joined by Stuart Mathis on lead guitar. After 2005, the Wallflowers ended their relationship with Interscope Records. 2006–2010: Hiatus 2006 was the first year in over a decade that the Wallflowers did not tour. Instead, band members embarked on other projects. Jakob Dylan toured with former Wallflowers producer T-Bone Burnett in the early summer, performing a solo acoustic opening set with a keyboard player. Later that year, he signed a contract with Columbia Records as a solo artist. He also wrote and recorded a song called "Here Comes Now", which was featured as the theme song for the ABC television drama Six Degrees. The show premiered in the fall of 2006. Meanwhile, keyboardist Rami Jaffee joined the Foo Fighters as a touring and session member. Jaffee had previously contributed keyboards to the Foo Fighters' 2005 album In Your Honor. In 2006, he also contributed on albums for Willie Nile and Pete Yorn. On August 31, 2007, the Wallflowers announced they would be touring for the first time in over two years. They toured in the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. in October and November. Before the tour, Jaffee announced that he was leaving the Wallflowers. This left Dylan, Greg Richling and Fred Eltringham as the remaining members and a guitar player, Stuart Mathis, as a touring member. In 2008, the Wallflowers toured on-and-off throughout the summer. Touring for the Wallflowers was limited as Dylan had released his first solo album, Seeing Things, on June 10, 2008. Eltringham joined Dylan on tour in promotion for the album. On March 31, 2009, the Wallflowers released a greatest-hits album called Collected: 1996–2005. The album featured every single released from the four albums the Wallflowers released between 1996 and 2005. It also featured several non-single songs from those four albums, a demo version of "God Says Nothing Back" and an unreleased song called "Eat You Sleeping". That summer, the Wallflowers embarked on a U.S. tour in support of the album. In addition to Dylan, Richling, Eltringham and Mathis, Bill Appleberry joined the band on this tour as a keyboard player. The Wallflowers did not tour in 2010 as Dylan had released his second solo album, Women + Country, on April 6, 2010, and was touring in support of that album. 2011–2012: Glad All Over On November 1, 2011, Jakob Dylan announced that the Wallflowers would be reuniting to release an album, explaining: "I never suggested we were breaking up. We all felt we were losing the plot a bit and we needed a break. And that year break becomes two years, then becomes three years, and before you know it five or six years go by pretty quickly. I can't do what I do in the Wallflowers without them. I miss it." In an interview with the St. Joseph News-Press, Dylan stated that the Wallflowers would be getting into the studio in January and the lineup would include Greg Richling on bass, Rami Jaffee on keys, Stuart Mathis on guitar and Fred Eltringham on drums. However, weeks before the Wallflowers began recording, Eltringham left the band to pursue other projects. The band quickly got former Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam drummer Jack Irons to join the band. Irons was previously involved in a side project with Wallflowers bassist Richling. On January 20, 2012, the Wallflowers began recording their sixth studio album, Glad All Over, at the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye studio in Nashville. Jay Joyce, who had played guitar on the Wallflowers' Bringing Down the Horse agreed to produce the album. Before going to the studio, the band had decided have a more collaborative writing process than they had in the past. Instead of Dylan bringing in fully completed songs like he had done in the past, he only brought lyrics. Dylan and the rest of the band wrote the music for the songs together in the studio. Joyce explained: "Jakob came to Nashville and we sat down and I asked him to play me a song, but instead he pulled out this 2-inch-thick notebook. ‘This is what I’ve got. Let’s play some grooves and throw it around.’ I thought, ‘Wow, that’s kind of scary, but it’s exciting.’ So we didn't really know going in what we were going to do. We had no songs, no demos. It was all developed in the studio. The band finished recording on February 20, 2012. At a private solo performance in New York on April 19, 2012, Dylan announced that the new the Wallflowers album was expected to be released in fall later that year. On July 14, 2012, the band announced that the title of their new album would be Glad All Over. They also announced that the album's first single, "Reboot the Mission", would be available for free download from their website. Following several one-off shows in the summer of 2012, the Wallflowers kicked off a fall tour in San Diego on September 8, 2012. From there, they continued to tour the U.S. and Canada through mid-November, playing a mix of clubs and festivals, with an additional four East Coast dates at the end of December. Glad All Over was released on October 9, 2012, on Columbia Records and was met with generally positive reviews. Leading up to the album's release, the Wallflowers promoted the album on various television shows including Good Morning America, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Late Show with David Letterman and Ellen. 2013–2020: Tours and roster changes Beginning in the spring of 2013, the band toured with Eric Clapton on his arena tour. The tour with Clapton began on March 14, 2013, in Phoenix, Arizona, at the US Airways Center and continued through the South and East Coast, eventually coming to an end on April 6, 2013, in Pittsburgh at the Consol Energy Center. After the Clapton tour, the Wallflowers played several additional shows of their own in May 2013. On May 12 in Napa, California, the band's longtime keyboardist Rami Jaffee played what would be his final show with the Wallflowers to date. Jaffee has yet to say whether he has officially quit the Wallflowers but has continued to record and tour with the Foo Fighters. Jimmy Wallace has subbed in his spot ever since. The Wallflowers continued to tour through the summer of 2013 and played their final show of the summer on August 17 at the River Roots Live Festival in Davenport, Iowa, to a crowd of 17,000 people. This show would turn out to be longtime bassist Greg Richling's and drummer Jack Irons' final show with the band. On September 8, Richling officially announced that he was leaving the Wallflowers after 20 years with the band. He left to pursue other interests. Irons announced he was leaving soon after, on September 15. Irons reportedly left to focus on his band project, Arthur Channel, who released their debut album on October 15, 2013. The Wallflowers have continued to play shows since 2013 with a new drummer, bass player, guitar player, and keyboardist filling in for Irons, Richling, Mathis, and Jaffee. Dylan stated later he would be continuing making music under name The Wallflowers as a solo project: "The Wallflowers is me, and if I go under my own name, it's me. It's the same thing, ultimately. It's really dictated on the songs I have and how I want to record them and would they sound better with a full-band sound. In many ways it's the same person. It's just what outfit do I want to put on". As of 2017, the touring lineup consisted of Stanton Adcock on lead guitar, Steve Mackey on bass, keyboardist Jimmy Wallace and Lynn Williams on drums. In May 2016, the Wallflowers' 1996 album Bringing Down the Horse was issued on vinyl for the first time in honor of the 20th anniversary of the album's release. The Wallflowers was among hundreds of artists whose material was destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire, although later research showed the master tapes for Bringing Down the Horse were not actually destroyed in the fire. The band was set to undertake a North American summer tour in 2020 alongside Matchbox Twenty prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2021–present: Exit Wounds The band's seventh studio album, Exit Wounds, was released on July 9, 2021, on New West Records. With the release of the new album, Dylan would reiterate that the band's sound is an extension of his solo work, saying "There's never been one lineup that's made two records. So the constant is myself. If you think there's a sound of the Wallflowers, I'm making that with my choices in the studio and with my songs and voice". It was produced by Butch Walker and the band announced a 53-date arena tour to promote the album (which was postponed to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic). About writing the album, Dylan says, "I was just also writing during a time when the world felt like it was falling apart. That changes the way you address even the simplest things, because you have panic in your mind all the time. You have anxiety. And you also have hope. And it’s all in there". Band membersCurrent members Jakob Dylan – lead vocals, rhythm guitar (1989–present); keyboards, piano (1989–1990, 2005–2012, 2013–present); bass (1989, 1993, 2013–present); drums, percussion (1989–1990, 1994–1995, 2003, 2011–2012, 2013–present); lead guitar (1995, 2001–2005, 2014–present)Touring musicians Stanton Adcock – guitars (2017–present) Aaron Embry - keyboards (2021–present) Whynot Jansveld - bass, backing vocals (2021–present) Ben Peeler - guitars (2021–present) Mark Stepro - drums, backing vocals (2021–present)Former members Tobi Miller – lead guitar (1989–1995) Barrie Maguire – bass (1989–1993) Peter Yanowitz – drums (1990–1994) Rami Jaffee – keyboards (1990–2005, 2012–2013) Greg Richling – bass (1993–2013) Mario Calire – drums (1995–2003, 2012) Michael Ward – lead guitar (1995–2001) Fred Eltringham – drums (2003–2011) Jack Irons – drums (2012–2013) Stuart Mathis – lead guitar (2005–2014)Former touring musicians Jimmy Wallace – keyboards, vocals (2013–2019) Steve Mackey – bass (2017–2019) Lynn Williams – drums, percussion (2017–2019) Timeline DiscographyStudio albums'''The Wallflowers (1992)Bringing Down the Horse (1996)(Breach) (2000)Red Letter Days (2002)Rebel, Sweetheart (2005)Glad All Over (2012)Exit Wounds'' (2021) References External links Trouser Press entry Category:Alternative rock groups from California Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Interscope Records artists Category:Musical groups established in 1989 Category:Musical groups from Los Angeles Category:Musical quintets Category:Virgin Records artists

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Linkin Park

Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California. Formed in 1996, the band rose to international fame with their debut album Hybrid Theory (2000), which was certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2005 and multi-Platinum in several other countries. Their following studio album Meteora continued the band's success, topping the Billboard 200 album chart in 2003, and was followed by extensive touring and charity work. Having adapted nu metal and rap metal to a radio-friendly yet densely layered style in Hybrid Theory and Meteora, the band explored other genres on their next studio album, Minutes to Midnight (2007).

2013-2015: The Hunting Party

In an interview with Fuse, Shinoda confirmed that Linkin Park had begun recording their sixth studio album in May 2013. The band released the first single from their upcoming album, titled, "Guilty All the Same" on March 6, 2014 through Shazam. The single was later released on the following day by Warner Bros. Records and debut at No. 28 on the US Billboard Rock Airplay charts before peaking at No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock charts in the following weeks. Shortly after the single's release, the band revealed their sixth album would be titled The Hunting Party. The album was produced by Shinoda and Delson, who wanted to explore musical elements from Hybrid Theory and the band's earlier material. Shinoda commented the album is a "90s style of rock record". He elaborated, "It's a rock record. It's loud and it's rock, but not in the sense of what you've heard before, which is more like '90s hardcore-punk-thrash.' The album includes musical contributions from rapper Rakim, Page Hamilton of Helmet, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and Daron Malakian of System of a Down. The Hunting Party was released on June 13, 2014, in most countries, and later released in the United States on June 17. Linkin Park performed at Download Festival on June 14, 2014, where they played their debut album, Hybrid Theory, in its entirety. Linkin Park headlined Rock am Ring and Rock im Park in 2014, along with Metallica, Kings of Leon, and Iron Maiden. They also headlined with Iron Maiden again at the Greenfield Festival in July. On June 22, Linkin Park made an unscheduled headline appearance at the Vans Warped Tour, where they played with members of Issues, The Devil Wears Prada, A Day To Remember, Yellowcard, Breathe Carolina, Finch, and Machine Gun Kelly. In January 2015, the band embarked on a tour to promote the release of The Hunting Party, consisting of 17 concerts across the United States and Canada. The tour was canceled after only three concerts when Bennington injured his ankle. On May 9, Linkin Park performed at the first edition of Rock in Rio USA, in direct support for Metallica. On November 9, 2014, MTV Europe named Linkin Park the "Best Rock" act of 2014 at their annual music awards ceremony. The band won the 'Best Rock Band' and 'Best Live Act' titles of 2014 on Loudwire's Music Awards. Revolver ranked The Hunting Party as the fourth best album of 2014. In an interview with AltWire on May 4, Shinoda reflected on The Hunting Party and commented on Linkin Park's future, stating; "I'm really happy with the reaction from The Hunting Party, and I think we're ready to move somewhere new on the next album, which will be coming [in 2016]". Linkin Park collaborated with Steve Aoki on the song "Darker Than Blood" for Aoki's album Neon Future II, which was released in May 2015. The first preview of the song came during Aoki's performance on February 28, 2015 at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, Illinois. The song was debuted on Twitch.tv on April 13 and released on April 14. Linkin Park performed at the closing ceremony of Blizzcon 2015, Blizzard's video game convention. CANNOTANSWER

Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California. The band's current lineup comprises vocalist/rhythm guitarist/keyboardist Mike Shinoda, lead guitarist Brad Delson, bassist Dave Farrell, DJ/turntablist Joe Hahn and drummer Rob Bourdon, all of whom are founding members. Vocalists Mark Wakefield and Chester Bennington are former members of the band. Categorized as alternative rock, Linkin Park's earlier music spanned a fusion of heavy metal and hip hop, while their later music features more electronica and pop elements. Formed in 1996, Linkin Park rose to international fame with their debut studio album, Hybrid Theory (2000), which became certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Released during the peak of the nu metal scene, the album's singles' heavy airplay on MTV led the singles "One Step Closer", "Crawling" and "In the End" all to chart highly on the US Mainstream Rock chart. The lattermost also crossed over to the nation's Billboard Hot 100. Their second album, Meteora (2003), continued the band's success. The band explored experimental sounds on their third album, Minutes to Midnight (2007). By the end of the decade, Linkin Park was among the most successful and popular rock acts. The band continued to explore a wider variation of musical types on their fourth album, A Thousand Suns (2010), layering their music with more electronic sounds. The band's fifth album, Living Things (2012), combined musical elements from all of their previous records. Their sixth album, The Hunting Party (2014), returned to a heavier rock sound, and their seventh album, One More Light (2017), was a substantially more pop-oriented record. Linkin Park went on a hiatus when longtime lead vocalist Bennington died in July 2017. In April 2022, Shinoda revealed the band was neither working on new music nor planning on touring for the foreseeable future, and have only released 20th anniversary editions of their first two studio albums since Bennington's death. Linkin Park is among the best-selling bands of the 21st century and the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 100 million records worldwide. They have won two Grammy Awards, six American Music Awards, two Billboard Music Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, 10 MTV Europe Music Awards and three World Music Awards. In 2003, MTV2 named Linkin Park the sixth-greatest band of the music video era and the third-best of the new millennium. Billboard ranked Linkin Park No. 19 on the Best Artists of the Decade list. In 2012, the band was voted as the greatest artist of the 2000s in a Bracket Madness poll on VH1. In 2014, the band was declared as "The Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now" by Kerrang!. History 1996–2000: Early years Linkin Park was founded by three high school friends: Mike Shinoda, Rob Bourdon, and Brad Delson. The three attended Agoura High School in Agoura Hills, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. After graduating from high school, the three began to take their musical interests more seriously, recruiting Joe Hahn, Dave "Phoenix" Farrell, and Mark Wakefield to perform in their band, then called Xero. Though limited in resources, the band began recording and producing songs within Shinoda's makeshift bedroom studio in 1996, resulting in a four-track demo album, entitled Xero, released in November 1997. Delson introduced the band to Jeff Blue, the vice president of A&R for Zomba Music, whom he had interned for in college. Blue offered the band constructive criticism to catch the attention of record labels. Blue himself was impressed with Xero after watching them play a live show in 1998, but believed the band needed a different vocalist. Tensions and frustration within the band grew after they failed to land a record deal. The lack of success and stalemate in progress prompted Wakefield, at that time the band's vocalist, to leave the band in search of other projects. Farrell also left to tour with Tasty Snax, a Christian punk and ska band. After spending a considerable time searching for Wakefield's replacement, Xero recruited Arizona vocalist Chester Bennington, who was recommended by Jeff Blue in March 1999. Bennington, formerly of a post-grunge band Grey Daze, became a standout among applicants because of the dynamic in his singing style. The band then agreed on changing their name from Xero to Hybrid Theory; the newborn vocal chemistry between Shinoda and Bennington helped revive the band, inciting them to work on new material. In 1999, the band released a self-titled extended play, which they circulated across internet chat-rooms and forums with the help of an online "street team". The band still struggled to sign a record deal. They turned to Jeff Blue for additional help after facing numerous rejections from several major record labels. After failing to catch Warner Bros. Records on three previous reviews, Blue, who was now the vice president of Warner Bros. Records, helped the band sign a deal with the company as a developing artist in 1999. However, the label advised the band to change their name to avoid confusion with Hybrid. The band considered the names "Plear" and "Platinum Lotus Foundation" before deciding on "Linkin Park", a play on and homage to Santa Monica's Lincoln Park, now called Christine Emerson Reed Park. They initially wanted to use the name "Lincoln Park", however they changed it to "Linkin" to acquire the internet domain "linkinpark.com". Bennington and Shinoda both reported that Warner Bros. Records was skeptical of Linkin Park's initial recordings. The label's A&R was not pleased with the band's hip-hop and rock-style approach. An A&R representative suggested that Bennington should demote or fire Shinoda and exclusively focus on making a rock record. Bennington supported Shinoda and refused to compromise Linkin Park's vision for the album. Farrell returned in late 2000, and the band released their breakthrough album, Hybrid Theory, that same year. 2000–2002: Hybrid Theory and Reanimation Linkin Park released Hybrid Theory on October 24, 2000. The album, which represented half a decade's worth of the band's work, was edited by Don Gilmore. Hybrid Theory was a massive commercial success; it sold more than 4.8 million copies during its debut year, earning it the status of best-selling album of 2001, while singles such as "Crawling" and "One Step Closer" established themselves as staples among alternative rock radio play lists during the year. Additionally, other singles from the album were featured in films such as Dracula 2000, Little Nicky, and Valentine. Hybrid Theory won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance for the song "Crawling" and was nominated for two other Grammy Awards: Best New Artist and Best Rock Album. MTV awarded the band their Best Rock Video and Best Direction awards for "In the End". Through the winning of the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance, Hybrid Theorys overall success had catapulted the band into mainstream success. During this time, Linkin Park received many invitations to perform on many high-profile tours and concerts including Ozzfest, Family Values Tour, and KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas. The band worked with Jessica Sklar to found their official fan club and street team, "Linkin Park Underground", in November 2001. Linkin Park also formed their own tour, Projekt Revolution, which featured other notable artists such as Cypress Hill, Adema, and Snoop Dogg. Within a year's stretch, Linkin Park had performed at over 320 concerts. The experiences and performances of the precocious band were documented in their first DVD, Frat Party at the Pankake Festival, which debuted in November 2001. Now reunited with former bassist Phoenix, the band began work on a remix album, dubbed Reanimation, which would include works from Hybrid Theory and non-album tracks. Reanimation debuted on July 30, 2002, featuring the likes of Black Thought, Jonathan Davis, Aaron Lewis, and many others. Reanimation claimed the second spot on the Billboard 200, and sold nearly 270,000 copies during its debut week. Hybrid Theory is also in the RIAA's Top 100 Albums. 2002–2004: Meteora Following the success of Hybrid Theory and Reanimation, Linkin Park spent a significant amount of time touring around the United States. The band members began to work on new material amidst their saturated schedule, spending a sliver of their free time in their tour bus's studio. The band officially announced the production of a new studio album in December 2002, revealing their new work was inspired by the rocky region of Meteora in Greece, where numerous monasteries have been built on top of the rocks. Meteora features a mixture of the band's nu metal and rap metal style with newer innovative effects, including the induction of a shakuhachi (a Japanese flute made of bamboo) and other instruments. Linkin Park's second album debuted on March 25, 2003, and instantly earned worldwide recognition, going to No. 1 in the US and UK, and No. 2 in Australia. Meteora sold more than 800,000 copies during its first week, and it ranked as the best selling album on the Billboard charts at the time. The album's singles, including "Somewhere I Belong", "Breaking the Habit", "Faint", and "Numb", received significant radio attention. By October 2003, Meteora sold nearly three million copies. The album's success allowed Linkin Park to form another Projekt Revolution, which featured other bands and artists including Mudvayne, Blindside, and Xzibit. Additionally, Metallica invited Linkin Park to play at the Summer Sanitarium Tour 2003, which included well-known acts such as Limp Bizkit, Mudvayne and Deftones. The band released an album and DVD, titled Live in Texas, which featured some audio and video tracks from the band's performances in Texas during the tour. In early 2004, Linkin Park started a world tour titled the Meteora World Tour. Supporting bands on the tour included Hoobastank, P.O.D., Story of the Year and Pia. Meteora earned the band multiple awards and honors. The band won the MTV awards for Best Rock Video for "Somewhere I Belong" and the Viewer's Choice Award for "Breaking the Habit". Linkin Park also received significant recognition during the 2004 Radio Music Awards, winning the Artist of the Year and Song of the Year ("Numb") awards. Although Meteora was not nearly as successful as Hybrid Theory, it was the third best selling album in the United States during 2003. The band spent the first few months of 2004 touring around the world, first with the third Projekt Revolution tour, and later several European concerts. At the same time, the band's relationship with Warner Bros. Records was deteriorating rapidly on account of several trust and financial issues. After months of feuding, the band finally negotiated a deal in December 2005. 2004–2006: Side projects Following Meteoras success, the band worked on many side projects. Bennington appeared on DJ Lethal's "State of the Art" and other work with Dead by Sunrise, while Shinoda did work with Depeche Mode. In 2004, the band began to work with Jay-Z to produce another remix album, titled Collision Course. The album, which featured intermixed lyrics and background tracks from both artists' previous albums, debuted in November 2004. Shinoda also formed Fort Minor as a side project. With the aid of Jay-Z, Fort Minor released their debut album, The Rising Tied, to critical acclaim. Linkin Park also participated in numerous charitable events, most notably raised money to benefit victims of Hurricane Charley in 2004 and later Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The band donated $75,000 to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in March 2004. They also helped relief efforts for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami victims by staging several charity concerts and setting up an additional fund called Music for Relief. Most notably, however, the band participated at Live 8, a series of charitable benefit concerts set up to raise global awareness. Alongside Jay-Z, the band performed on Live 8's stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a global audience. The band would later be reunited with Jay-Z at the Grammy Award Ceremony 2006, during which they performed "Numb/Encore", en route to winning a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. They were joined on stage by Paul McCartney who added verses from the song "Yesterday". They would later go on to play at the 2006 Summer Sonic music festival, which was hosted by Metallica in Japan. 2006–2008: Minutes to Midnight Linkin Park returned to the recording studios in 2006 to work on new material. To produce the album, the band chose producer Rick Rubin. Despite initially stating the album would debut sometime in 2006, the album was delayed until 2007. The band had recorded thirty to fifty songs in August 2006, when Shinoda stated the album was halfway completed. Bennington later added that the new album would stray away from their previous nu metal sound. Warner Bros. Records officially announced that the band's third studio album, titled Minutes to Midnight, would be released on May 15, 2007, in the United States. After spending fourteen months working on the album, the band members opted to further refine their album by removing five of the original seventeen tracks. The album's title, a reference to the Doomsday Clock, foreshadowed the band's new lyrical themes. Minutes to Midnight sold over 625,000 copies in its first week, making it one of the most successful debut week albums in recent years. The album also took the top spot on the Billboard Charts. The album's first single, "What I've Done", was released on April 2, and premiered on MTV and Fuse within the same week. The single was acclaimed by listeners, becoming the top-ranked song on the Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks and Mainstream Rock Tracks charts. The song is also used in soundtrack for the 2007 action film, Transformers. Mike Shinoda was also featured on the Styles of Beyond song "Second to None", which was also included in the film. Later in the year, the band won the "Favorite Alternative Artist" in the American Music Awards. The band also saw success with the rest of the album's singles, "Bleed It Out", "Shadow of the Day", "Given Up", and "Leave Out All the Rest", which were released throughout 2007 and early 2008. The band also collaborated with Busta Rhymes on his single "We Made It", which was released on April 29. Linkin Park embarked on a large world tour titled "Minutes to Midnight World Tour". The band promoted the album's release by forming their fourth Projekt Revolution tour in the United States which included many musical acts like My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, HIM, Placebo, and many others. They also played numerous shows in Europe, Asia, and Australia which included a performance at Live Earth Japan on July 7, 2007. and headlining Download Festival in Donington Park, England and Edgefest in Downsview Park, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The band completed touring on their fourth Projekt Revolution tour before taking up an Arena tour around the United Kingdom, visiting Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester, before finishing on a double night at the O2 arena in London. Bennington stated that Linkin Park plans to release a follow-up album to Minutes to Midnight. However, he stated the band will first embark on a United States tour to gather inspiration for the album. Linkin Park embarked on another Projekt Revolution tour in 2008. This was the first time a Projekt Revolution tour was held in Europe with three shows in Germany and one in the United Kingdom. A Projekt Revolution tour was also held in the United States which featured Chris Cornell, the Bravery, Ashes Divide, Street Drum Corps and many others. Linkin Park finished the tour with a final show in Texas. Mike Shinoda announced a live CD/DVD titled Road to Revolution: Live at Milton Keynes, which is a live video recording from the Projekt Revolution gig at the Milton Keynes Bowl on June 29, 2008, which was officially released on November 24, 2008. 2008–2011: A Thousand Suns In May 2009, Linkin Park announced they were working on a fourth studio album, which was planned to be released in 2010. Shinoda told IGN that the new album would be 'genre-busting,' while building off of elements in Minutes to Midnight. He also mentioned that the album would be more experimental and "hopefully more cutting-edge". Bennington also addressed the media to confirm that Rick Rubin would return to produce the new album. The band later revealed the album would be called A Thousand Suns. While working on the new album, Linkin Park worked with successful film composer Hans Zimmer to produce the score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The band released a single for the movie, titled "New Divide". Joe Hahn created a music video for the song, which featured clips from the film. On June 22, Linkin Park played a short set in Westwood Village after the premier of the movie. After completing work for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the band returned to the studio to finalize their album. On April 26, the band released an app for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, a game called 8-Bit Rebellion! It featured the band as playable characters, and a new song called "Blackbirds" which was unlockable by beating the game. The song was also later released as an iTunes bonus track on A Thousand Suns. A Thousand Suns was released on September 14. The album's first single, "The Catalyst", was released on August 2. The band promoted their new album by launching a concert tour, which started in Los Angeles on September 7. Linkin Park also relied on MySpace to promote their album, releasing two additional songs, "Waiting for the End" and "Blackout" on September 8. Furthermore, a documentary about the album's production, titled Meeting of A Thousand Suns, was available for streaming on the band's MySpace page. On August 31, 2010, it was announced that the band would perform the single live for the first time at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, 2010. The venue of the debut live performance of the single was Griffith Observatory, an iconic location used in Hollywood movies. "Waiting for the End" was released as the second single of A Thousand Suns. Linkin Park reached No.8 in Billboard Social 50, a chart of the most active artists on the world's leading social networking sites. In other Billboard Year-End charts, the band reached No.92 in the "Top Artists" chart, as well as A Thousand Suns reaching No.53 in the Year-End chart of the Billboard Top 200 albums and No.7 in the 2010 Year-End Rock Albums, and "The Catalyst" reaching No.40 in the Year-End Rock Songs chart. The band was nominated for six Billboard Awards in 2011 for Top Duo or Group, Best Rock Album for A Thousand Suns, Top Rock Artist, Top Alternative Artist, Top Alternative Song for "Waiting for the End" and Top Alternative Album for A Thousand Suns, but did not win any award. The band charted in numerous Billboard Year-End charts in 2011. The band was No.39 in the Top Artists Chart, No.84 in the Billboard 200 Artists chart, No.11 in the Social 50 Chart, No.6 in the Top Rock Artists Chart, No.9 in the Rock Songs Artists Chart, No.16 in the Rock Albums Chart, No.4 in the Hard Rock Albums Chart, and No.7 in the Alternative Songs Chart. 2011–2013: Living Things and Recharged In July 2011, Bennington told Rolling Stone that Linkin Park aims to produce a new album every eighteen months, and that he would be shocked if a new album did not come out in 2012. He later revealed in another interview in September 2011 that the band was still in the beginning phases of the next album, saying "We just kind of began. We like to keep the creative juices flowing, so we try to keep that going all the time ... we like the direction that we're going in". Later, on March 28, 2012, Shinoda confirmed that the band is filming a music video for "Burn It Down". Joe Hahn directed the video. Shinoda spoke to Co.Create about the album's art, saying that it will "blow them [the fans] away ... the average person is not going to be able to look at it and go, I understand that that's completely new, like not just the image but the way they made the image is totally new. So there's going to be that". On April 15, 2012, Shinoda announced that Living Things would be the title of Linkin Park's fifth album. Shinoda stated that they chose the title Living Things because the album is more about people, personal interactions, and it is far more personal than their previous albums. The band promoted the album on the 2012 edition of the Honda Civic Tour, with co-headliners Incubus. The band performed "Burn It Down" at 2012 Billboard Music Awards. On May 24, the band released the music video for "Burn It Down" and debuted "Lies Greed Misery", another song from Living Things, on BBC Radio 1. "Powerless", the twelfth and closing track of the album, was featured in the closing credits of the film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Living Things sold over 223,000 copies during its debut week, ranking No. 1 on the US Albums Charts. Linkin Park's single "Castle of Glass" was nominated for 'Best Song in a Game' at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards. The band also performed at the award ceremony on December 7, but lost the award to "Cities" by Beck. Linkin Park also played at the Soundwave music festival in Australia, where they shared the stage with Metallica, Paramore, Slayer and Sum 41. On August 10, 2013, the band collaborated with American musician Steve Aoki to record the song "A Light That Never Comes" for Linkin Park's online puzzle-action game LP Recharge (short for Linkin Park Recharge), which was launched on Facebook and the official LP Recharge website on September 12, 2013. On the day of the game's release, Linkin Park made a post on their Facebook explaining that the song used to promote the game would be included on a new remix album, entitled Recharged, which was released on October 29, 2013, on CD, vinyl, and digital download. Similar to Reanimation, the album features remixes of ten of the songs from Living Things, with contributions from other artists, such as Ryu of Styles of Beyond, Pusha T, Datsik, KillSonik, Bun B, Money Mark, and Rick Rubin. The band also worked on the soundtrack for the film Mall, which was directed by Joe Hahn. 2013–2015: The Hunting Party In an interview with Fuse, Shinoda confirmed that Linkin Park had begun recording their sixth studio album in May 2013. The band released the first single from their upcoming album, titled, "Guilty All the Same" on March 6, 2014, through Shazam. The single was later released on the following day by Warner Bros. Records and debut at No. 28 on the US Billboard Rock Airplay charts before peaking at No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock charts in the following weeks. Shortly after the single's release, the band revealed their sixth album would be titled The Hunting Party. The album was produced by Shinoda and Delson, who wanted to explore musical elements from Hybrid Theory and the band's earlier material. Shinoda commented the album is a "90s style of rock record". He elaborated, "It's a rock record. It's loud and it's rock, but not in the sense of what you've heard before, which is more like '90s hardcore-punk-thrash.' The album includes musical contributions from rapper Rakim, Page Hamilton of Helmet, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and Daron Malakian of System of a Down. The Hunting Party was released on June 13, 2014, in most countries, and later released in the United States on June 17. thumb|Bennington and Shinoda performing live in Montreal on August 23, 2014|alt= Linkin Park performed at Download Festival on June 14, 2014, where they played their debut album, Hybrid Theory, in its entirety. Linkin Park headlined Rock am Ring and Rock im Park in 2014, along with Metallica, Kings of Leon, and Iron Maiden. They also headlined with Iron Maiden again at the Greenfield Festival in July. On June 22, Linkin Park made an unscheduled headline appearance at the Vans Warped Tour, where they played with members of Issues, the Devil Wears Prada, A Day To Remember, Yellowcard, Breathe Carolina, Finch, and Machine Gun Kelly. In January 2015, the band embarked on a tour to promote the release of The Hunting Party, consisting of 17 concerts across the United States and Canada. The tour was canceled after only three concerts when Bennington injured his ankle. On May 9, Linkin Park performed at the first edition of Rock in Rio USA, in direct support for Metallica. On November 9, 2014, MTV Europe named Linkin Park the "Best Rock" act of 2014 at their annual music awards ceremony. The band won the 'Best Rock Band' and 'Best Live Act' titles of 2014 on Loudwire's Music Awards. Revolver ranked The Hunting Party as the fourth best album of 2014. In an interview with AltWire on May 4, Shinoda reflected on The Hunting Party and commented on Linkin Park's future, stating; "I'm really happy with the reaction from The Hunting Party, and I think we're ready to move somewhere new on the next album, which will be coming [in 2016]". Linkin Park collaborated with Steve Aoki on the song "Darker Than Blood" for Aoki's album Neon Future II, which was released in May 2015. The first preview of the song came during Aoki's performance on February 28, 2015, at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, Illinois. The song was debuted on Twitch on April 13 and released on April 14. Linkin Park performed at the closing ceremony of BlizzCon 2015, Blizzard's video game convention. 2015–2017: One More Light and Bennington's death Linkin Park began working on new material for a seventh studio album in November 2015. Chester Bennington commented on the album's direction by stating, "We've got a lot of great material that I hope challenges our fanbase as well as inspires them as much as it has us." In February 2017, Linkin Park released promotional videos on their social network accounts, which featured Shinoda and Bennington preparing new material for the album. Mike Shinoda stated the band was following a new process when producing the album. Brad Delson elaborated: "We've made so many records and we clearly know how to make a record and we definitely didn't take the easy way out this time." The first single from the new album was revealed to be titled "Heavy" and features pop singer Kiiara, the first time the band has featured a female vocalist on an original song for a studio album. The lyrics for the song were co-written by Linkin Park with Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter. The single was released for download on February 16. As they have done in the past, Linkin Park had cryptic messages online in relation to the new album. The album cover was revealed through digital puzzles across social media; the cover features six kids playing in the ocean. The band's seventh album, One More Light, was released on May 19, 2017. Bennington died on July 20, 2017; his death was ruled a suicide by hanging. Shinoda confirmed Bennington's death on Twitter, writing, "Shocked and heartbroken, but it's true. An official statement will come out as soon as we have one". The band had released a music video for their single "Talking to Myself" earlier that day. One day after Bennington's death, the band canceled the North American leg of their One More Light World Tour. On the morning of July 24, Linkin Park released an official statement on their website as a tribute to Bennington. On July 28, Shinoda announced that donations made to the band's Music for Relief charity would be redirected to the One More Light Fund, which had been set up in Bennington's memory. On August 4, when the band was initially scheduled to play on Good Morning America, Chris Cornell's twelve-year-old daughter Toni appeared with OneRepublic to perform "Hallelujah" as a tribute to Bennington (who was the godfather to her younger brother, Christopher) and her father. Bennington had previously performed the song at the funeral for Cornell, who had also died from a suicide by hanging two months earlier. On August 22, Linkin Park announced plans to host a tribute concert in Los Angeles to honor Bennington. The band thanked fans for their support, stating, "The five of us are so grateful for all of your support as we heal and build the future of Linkin Park". The band later confirmed that the concert, titled Linkin Park and Friends: Celebrate Life in Honor of Chester Bennington, would take place on October 27 at the Hollywood Bowl. The event included Linkin Park's first performance following Bennington's death. The event featured multiple guests performing Linkin Park songs along with the band. The event was over three hours long and was streamed live via YouTube. It has been streamed 22.7 million times as of September 2022. In November 2017, the band announced that a live album compiled from their final tour with Bennington, titled One More Light Live, would be released on December 15. On November 19, Linkin Park received an American Music Award for Favorite Alternative Artist and dedicated the award to Bennington. 2017–present: Hiatus and 20th anniversary reissues Linkin Park has remained on hiatus since Bennington's death. During an Instagram live chat on December 17, 2017, Shinoda was asked whether Linkin Park would perform with a hologram version of Bennington in the future. He replied, "Can we not do a holographic Chester? I can't even wrap my head around the idea of a holographic Chester. I've actually heard other people outside the band suggest that, and there's absolutely no way. I cannot fuck with that." On January 28, 2018, Shinoda replied to a tweet from a fan inquiring about his future with Linkin Park, writing "I have every intention on continuing with LP, and the guys feel the same. We have a lot of rebuilding to do, and questions to answer, so it'll take time." On March 29, however, Shinoda stated that he was uncertain of Linkin Park's future when being interviewed by Vulture. On April 17, Linkin Park was nominated for three awards at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards, but did not win any of them. The band was presented with The George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement at UCLA on May 18. On February 18, 2019, Shinoda said in an interview that the band is open to the idea of continuing though what form that takes has yet to be decided. Shinoda stated "I know the other guys, they love to be onstage, they love to be in a studio, and so to not do that would be like, I don't know, almost like unhealthy." When asked about the band's future minus Bennington, Shinoda stated, "It's not my goal to look for a new singer. If it does happen, it has to happen naturally. If we find someone that is a great person and good stylistic fit, I could see trying to do some stuff with somebody. I would never want to feel like we are replacing Chester." On April 28, 2020, bassist Dave Farrell revealed the band is working on new music. On August 13, the band released "She Couldn't", a track that was originally recorded in 1999, and it was included on a 20th anniversary edition of their debut album Hybrid Theory, released on October 9. On January 8, 2021, Linkin Park released a remix of "One Step Closer" by American electronic duo 100 gecs. The band revealed it was the first of many new remixes inspired by Reanimation to come. On October 29, when asked about the band playing live shows again, Shinoda stated that "Now is not the time [for the band's return]. We don't have the focus on it. We don't have the math worked out. And I don't mean that by financially math, I mean that like emotional and creative math." In April 2022, Shinoda reiterated that the band was not working on a new album, new music, or touring. In February 2023, the band started an interactive game on their website teasing the 20th anniversary of Meteora. On February 6, they revealed a previously unreleased demo "Lost" that was formally released on February 10, as the lead single from the reissue of the album, released on April 7. Philanthropy On January 19, 2010, Linkin Park released a new song titled "Not Alone" as part of a compilation from Music for Relief called Download to Donate for Haiti in support of the Haiti Earthquake crisis. On February 10, 2010, Linkin Park released the official music video for the song on their homepage. The single itself was released on October 21, 2011. On January 11, 2011, an updated version of Download to Donate for Haiti was launched, called Download to Donate for Haiti V2.0, with more songs to download. For the updated compilation, the band released Keaton Hashimoto's remix of "The Catalyst" from the "Linkin Park featuring YOU" contest. Shinoda designed two T-shirts, in which the proceeds would go to Music for Relief to help the victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami disasters. Music for Relief released Download to Donate: Tsunami Relief Japan, another compilation of songs, in which the proceeds would go to Save the Children. The band released the song titled as "Issho Ni", meaning "we're in this together", on March 22, 2011, via Download to Donate: Tsunami Relief Japan. In the wake of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, Linkin Park played at Club Nokia during the "Music for Relief: Concert for the Philippines" in Los Angeles, and raised donations for victims. The show was broadcast on AXS TV on February 15. Other artists during the show included the Offspring, Bad Religion, Heart, and the Filharmonic. Musical style and influences Linkin Park combines elements of rock music, hip hop and electronica, and have been categorized as alternative rock, nu metal, rap rock, , , , hard rock, hip hop, rap metal, pop, and industrial rock. Despite being considered nu metal, the band never considered themselves as such. Both Hybrid Theory and Meteora combine the alternative metal, nu metal, rap rock, rap metal, and alternative rock sound with influences and elements from hip hop, and electronica, utilizing programming and synthesizers. William Ruhlmann from AllMusic regarded it as "a Johnny-come-lately to an already overdone musical style," whereas Rolling Stone described their song "Breaking the Habit" as "risky, beautiful art". In Minutes to Midnight the band experimented with their established sound and drew influences from a wider and more varied range of genres and styles, a process Los Angeles Times compares to a stage in U2's work. Only two songs on the album's tracklist feature rap vocals and the majority of the album can be considered alternative rock.Metacritic, Minutes To Midnight . Retrieved January 27, 2008. The vocal interplay between Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda plays as a major part within Linkin Park's music, with Bennington being the lead vocalist and Shinoda as the rapping vocalist. On Linkin Park's third album, Minutes to Midnight, Shinoda sings lead vocals on "In Between", "Hands Held High", and on the B-side "No Roads Left". On numerous songs from band's fourth album, A Thousand Suns, such as the album's singles ("The Catalyst", "Burning in the Skies", "Iridescent"), both Shinoda and Bennington sing. The album has been regarded as a turning point in the band's musical career, having a stronger emphasis on electronica. James Montgomery, of MTV, compared the record to Radiohead's Kid A, while Jordy Kasko of Review, Rinse, Repeat likened the album to both Kid A and Pink Floyd's landmark album The Dark Side of the Moon. Shinoda stated that he and the other band members were deeply influenced by Chuck D and Public Enemy. He elaborated: "Public Enemy were very three-dimensional with their records because although they seemed political, there was a whole lot of other stuff going on in there too. It made me think how three-dimensional I wanted our record to be without imitating them of course, and show where we were at creatively". One of the record's political elements is its samples of notable speeches by American political figures. A Thousand Suns was described as trip hop, electronic rock, ambient, alternative rock, industrial rock, experimental rock, rap rock, and progressive rock. Their fifth album, Living Things, is also an electronic-heavy album, but includes other influences, resulting in a harder sound by comparison. The band returned to a heavier sound compared to their last three albums on The Hunting Party, which was described as an alternative metal, nu metal, hard rock, rap rock, and rap metal album. Their seventh album, One More Light, was described as pop, pop rock and electropop. Linkin Park's influences include Limp Bizkit, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Jane's Addiction, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Machines of Loving Grace, Metallica, Refused, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Descendents, Misfits, Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, A Tribe Called Quest, Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock, N.W.A, Public Enemy, KRS-One, Boogie Down Productions, Led Zeppelin, Rage Against the Machine, and the Beatles. Legacy and influence Linkin Park has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.Linkin Park's Brad Delson talks One More Light: 'There really is a ton of guitar on this album' MusicRadar April 3, 2017. Retrieved May 9, 2017. The group's first studio album Hybrid Theory is one of the best-selling albums in the US (12 million copies shipped) and worldwide (30 million copies sold). Billboard estimates that Linkin Park earned US$5 million between May 2011 and May 2012, making them the 40th-highest-paid musical artist. 11 of the band's singles have reached the number one position on Billboard Alternative Songs chart, the second-most for any artist. In 2003, MTV2 named Linkin Park the sixth-greatest band of the music video era and the third-best of the new millennium. Billboard ranked Linkin Park No. 19 on the Best Artists of the Decade chart. The band was recently voted as the greatest artist of the 2000s in a Bracket Madness poll on VH1. In 2014, the band was declared as the Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now by Kerrang!.Linkin Park Are the 'Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now' Ultimate Guitar August 28, 2014. Retrieved October 20, 2014. In 2015, Kerrang! gave "In the End" and "Final Masquerade" the top two positions on Kerrang!s Rock 100 list. Linkin Park became the first rock band to achieve more than one billion YouTube hits. Linkin Park also became the fifteenth most liked page on Facebook, tenth most liked artist, and most liked group followed by the Black Eyed Peas. Linkin Park's "Numb" is the third and "In the End" is the sixth "timeless song" on Spotify. The two songs making Linkin Park the only artist to have two timeless songs in top ten. Hybrid Theory by the group was listed in the 2005 edition of the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, It was also ranked at #11 on Billboard Hot 200 Albums of the Decade. In addition the album was included in Best of 2001 by Record Collector, The top 150 Albums of the Generation by Rock Sound and 50 Best Rock Albums of the 2000s by Kerrang!. The album Meteora was included in Top 200 Albums of the Decade by Billboard at No. 36. The album sold 20 million copies worldwide. The collaborative EP Collision Course with Jay-Z became the second ever EP to top the Billboard 200, going on to sell over 300,000 copies in its first week after Alice in Chains' Jar of Flies in 1994. The album Minutes to Midnight, in the United States, had the biggest first week sales of 2007 at the time, with 625,000 albums sold. In Canada, the album sold over 50,000 copies in its first week and debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart. Worldwide, the album shipped over 3.3 million copies in its first four weeks of release. The New York Times Jon Caramanica commented Linkin Park "brought the collision of hard rock and hip-hop to its commercial and aesthetic peak" at the beginning of the 2000s. Several rock and non-rock artists have cited Linkin Park as an influence, including Of Mice & Men, One OK Rock, Kutless, My Heart to Fear, Ill Niño, Bishop Nehru, Misono, From Ashes to New, Bring Me the Horizon, Coldrain, Red, Girl on Fire, Alt-j, Manafest, Spyair, Hardy, Silentó, 3OH!3, The Prom Kings, I Prevail, Crossfaith, AJ Tracey, Kiiara, the Chainsmokers, Lupe Fiasco,Lupe says that his favourite album ever is by linkin park Genius The Devil Wears Prada, Kevin Rudolf, Steve Aoki, Blackbear, Halsey, Amber Liu, Machine Gun Kelly, Billie Eilish, Starset, Tokio Hotel, the Weeknd, Duki, Stormzy and Imagine Dragons. On August 20, 2020, their 20th anniversary, Linkin Park collaborated with virtual reality rhythm game Beat Saber to release 11 maps based on their songs. Band membersCurrent members Mike Shinoda – vocals, rapping, rhythm guitar, keyboards, samples , Brad Delson – lead guitar , backing vocals Rob Bourdon – drums, percussion , occasional backing vocals Joe Hahn – turntables, samples, programming , backing vocals Dave Farrell – bass , backing vocals Former members Mark Wakefield – lead vocals Chester Bennington – lead vocals , occasional rhythm guitar Session and touring musicians Kyle Christner – bass Scott Koziol – bass Ian Hornbeck – bass Timeline Gallery Discography Hybrid Theory (2000) Meteora (2003) Minutes to Midnight (2007) A Thousand Suns (2010) Living Things (2012) The Hunting Party (2014) One More Light (2017) Awards and nominations Concert toursHeadlining Hybrid Theory World Tour (2001) Projekt Revolution (2002–2008, 2011) LP Underground Tour (2003) Meteora World Tour (2004) Minutes to Midnight World Tour (2007–08) International Tour (2009) A Thousand Suns World Tour (2010–11) Living Things World Tour (2012–13) The Hunting Party Tour (2014–15) One More Light World Tour (2017) Linkin Park and Friends: Celebrate Life in Honor of Chester Bennington (2017)Co-headlining 11th Annual Honda Civic Tour (2012) Carnivores Tour (2014) See also List of best-selling music artists List of best-selling albums List of best-selling remix albums List of best-selling singles List of best-selling albums in the United States List of songs recorded by Linkin Park List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. alternative rock chart Notes ReferencesWorks cited''' Saulmon, Greg. Linkin Park. Contemporary Musicians and Their Music. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 2007. . Baltin, Steve. From The Inside: Linkin Park's Meteora. California: Bradson Press, 2004. . Blue, Jeff. One Step Closer: From Xero to #1: Becoming Linkin Park''. Tennessee: Permuted Press, 2020. . External links musicforrelief.org Category:1996 establishments in California Category:Alternative rock groups from California Category:American alternative metal musical groups Category:American electronic rock musical groups Category:American nu metal musical groups Category:American pop rock music groups Category:American rap rock groups Category:Echo (music award) winners Category:Grammy Award winners for rap music Category:Kerrang! Awards winners Category:MTV Europe Music Award winners Category:MTV Video Music Award winners Category:Musical groups established in 1996 Category:Musicians from Los Angeles County, California Category:Nu metal musical groups from California Category:People from Agoura Hills, California Category:Rap metal musical groups Category:Warner Records artists Category:World Music Awards winners Category:YouTube channels launched in 2006

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Linkin Park

Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California. Formed in 1996, the band rose to international fame with their debut album Hybrid Theory (2000), which was certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2005 and multi-Platinum in several other countries. Their following studio album Meteora continued the band's success, topping the Billboard 200 album chart in 2003, and was followed by extensive touring and charity work. Having adapted nu metal and rap metal to a radio-friendly yet densely layered style in Hybrid Theory and Meteora, the band explored other genres on their next studio album, Minutes to Midnight (2007).

Legacy and influence

Linkin Park has sold more than 70 million records. The group's first studio album Hybrid Theory is one of the best-selling albums in the US (10 million copies shipped) and worldwide (27 million copies sold). Billboard estimates that Linkin Park earned US$5 million between May 2011 and May 2012, making them the 40th-highest-paid musical artist. 11 of the band's singles have reached the number one position on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart, the second-most for any artist. In 2003, MTV2 named Linkin Park the sixth-greatest band of the music video era and the third-best of the new millennium. Billboard ranked Linkin Park No. 19 on the Best Artists of the Decade chart. The band was recently voted as the greatest artist of the 2000s in a Bracket Madness poll on VH1. In 2014, the band was declared as the Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now by Kerrang!. In 2015, Kerrang! gave "In the End" and "Final Masquerade" the top two positions on Kerrang!'s Rock 100 list. Linkin Park became the first rock band to achieve more than one billion YouTube hits. Linkin Park also became the fifteenth most liked page on Facebook, tenth most liked artist, and most liked group followed by the Black Eyed Peas. Linkin Park's "Numb" is the third and "In the End" is the sixth "timeless song" on Spotify. The two songs making Linkin Park the only artist to have two timeless songs in top ten. Hybrid Theory by the group is listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, It was also ranked at #11 on Billboard's Hot 200 Albums of the Decade. In addition the album was included in Best of 2001 by Record Collector, The top 150 Albums of the Generation by Rock Sound and 50 Best Rock Albums of the 2000's by Kerrang!. The album Meteora was included in Top 200 Albums of the Decade by Billboard at #36. The album sold 20 million copies worldwide. The collaborated EP Collision Course with Jay-Z, became the second ever EP to top the Billboard 200, going on to sell over 300,000 copies in its first week after Alice in Chains' Jar of Flies in 1994. The album Minutes to Midnight in the United States, the album had the biggest first week sales of 2007 at the time, with 625,000 albums sold. In Canada, the album sold over 50,000 copies in its first week and debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart. Worldwide, the album shipped over 3.3 million copies in its first four weeks of release. The New York Times' Jon Caramanica commented Linkin Park "brought the collision of hard rock and hip-hop to its commercial and aesthetic peak" at the beginning of the 2000s. Several rock and non-rock artists have cited Linkin Park as an influence, including Proyecto Eskhata, Of Mice & Men, One Ok Rock, Bishop Nehru, Misono, From Ashes to New, Bring Me the Horizon, Red, Girl on Fire, Manafest, Silento, 3OH!3, The Prom Kings, AJ Tracey, Kiiara, The Chainsmokers, Kevin Rudolf, blackbear, Tokio Hotel, and Stormzy. CANNOTANSWER

Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California. The band's current lineup comprises vocalist/rhythm guitarist/keyboardist Mike Shinoda, lead guitarist Brad Delson, bassist Dave Farrell, DJ/turntablist Joe Hahn and drummer Rob Bourdon, all of whom are founding members. Vocalists Mark Wakefield and Chester Bennington are former members of the band. Categorized as alternative rock, Linkin Park's earlier music spanned a fusion of heavy metal and hip hop, while their later music features more electronica and pop elements. Formed in 1996, Linkin Park rose to international fame with their debut studio album, Hybrid Theory (2000), which became certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Released during the peak of the nu metal scene, the album's singles' heavy airplay on MTV led the singles "One Step Closer", "Crawling" and "In the End" all to chart highly on the US Mainstream Rock chart. The lattermost also crossed over to the nation's Billboard Hot 100. Their second album, Meteora (2003), continued the band's success. The band explored experimental sounds on their third album, Minutes to Midnight (2007). By the end of the decade, Linkin Park was among the most successful and popular rock acts. The band continued to explore a wider variation of musical types on their fourth album, A Thousand Suns (2010), layering their music with more electronic sounds. The band's fifth album, Living Things (2012), combined musical elements from all of their previous records. Their sixth album, The Hunting Party (2014), returned to a heavier rock sound, and their seventh album, One More Light (2017), was a substantially more pop-oriented record. Linkin Park went on a hiatus when longtime lead vocalist Bennington died in July 2017. In April 2022, Shinoda revealed the band was neither working on new music nor planning on touring for the foreseeable future, and have only released 20th anniversary editions of their first two studio albums since Bennington's death. Linkin Park is among the best-selling bands of the 21st century and the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 100 million records worldwide. They have won two Grammy Awards, six American Music Awards, two Billboard Music Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, 10 MTV Europe Music Awards and three World Music Awards. In 2003, MTV2 named Linkin Park the sixth-greatest band of the music video era and the third-best of the new millennium. Billboard ranked Linkin Park No. 19 on the Best Artists of the Decade list. In 2012, the band was voted as the greatest artist of the 2000s in a Bracket Madness poll on VH1. In 2014, the band was declared as "The Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now" by Kerrang!. History 1996–2000: Early years Linkin Park was founded by three high school friends: Mike Shinoda, Rob Bourdon, and Brad Delson. The three attended Agoura High School in Agoura Hills, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. After graduating from high school, the three began to take their musical interests more seriously, recruiting Joe Hahn, Dave "Phoenix" Farrell, and Mark Wakefield to perform in their band, then called Xero. Though limited in resources, the band began recording and producing songs within Shinoda's makeshift bedroom studio in 1996, resulting in a four-track demo album, entitled Xero, released in November 1997. Delson introduced the band to Jeff Blue, the vice president of A&R for Zomba Music, whom he had interned for in college. Blue offered the band constructive criticism to catch the attention of record labels. Blue himself was impressed with Xero after watching them play a live show in 1998, but believed the band needed a different vocalist. Tensions and frustration within the band grew after they failed to land a record deal. The lack of success and stalemate in progress prompted Wakefield, at that time the band's vocalist, to leave the band in search of other projects. Farrell also left to tour with Tasty Snax, a Christian punk and ska band. After spending a considerable time searching for Wakefield's replacement, Xero recruited Arizona vocalist Chester Bennington, who was recommended by Jeff Blue in March 1999. Bennington, formerly of a post-grunge band Grey Daze, became a standout among applicants because of the dynamic in his singing style. The band then agreed on changing their name from Xero to Hybrid Theory; the newborn vocal chemistry between Shinoda and Bennington helped revive the band, inciting them to work on new material. In 1999, the band released a self-titled extended play, which they circulated across internet chat-rooms and forums with the help of an online "street team". The band still struggled to sign a record deal. They turned to Jeff Blue for additional help after facing numerous rejections from several major record labels. After failing to catch Warner Bros. Records on three previous reviews, Blue, who was now the vice president of Warner Bros. Records, helped the band sign a deal with the company as a developing artist in 1999. However, the label advised the band to change their name to avoid confusion with Hybrid. The band considered the names "Plear" and "Platinum Lotus Foundation" before deciding on "Linkin Park", a play on and homage to Santa Monica's Lincoln Park, now called Christine Emerson Reed Park. They initially wanted to use the name "Lincoln Park", however they changed it to "Linkin" to acquire the internet domain "linkinpark.com". Bennington and Shinoda both reported that Warner Bros. Records was skeptical of Linkin Park's initial recordings. The label's A&R was not pleased with the band's hip-hop and rock-style approach. An A&R representative suggested that Bennington should demote or fire Shinoda and exclusively focus on making a rock record. Bennington supported Shinoda and refused to compromise Linkin Park's vision for the album. Farrell returned in late 2000, and the band released their breakthrough album, Hybrid Theory, that same year. 2000–2002: Hybrid Theory and Reanimation Linkin Park released Hybrid Theory on October 24, 2000. The album, which represented half a decade's worth of the band's work, was edited by Don Gilmore. Hybrid Theory was a massive commercial success; it sold more than 4.8 million copies during its debut year, earning it the status of best-selling album of 2001, while singles such as "Crawling" and "One Step Closer" established themselves as staples among alternative rock radio play lists during the year. Additionally, other singles from the album were featured in films such as Dracula 2000, Little Nicky, and Valentine. Hybrid Theory won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance for the song "Crawling" and was nominated for two other Grammy Awards: Best New Artist and Best Rock Album. MTV awarded the band their Best Rock Video and Best Direction awards for "In the End". Through the winning of the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance, Hybrid Theorys overall success had catapulted the band into mainstream success. During this time, Linkin Park received many invitations to perform on many high-profile tours and concerts including Ozzfest, Family Values Tour, and KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas. The band worked with Jessica Sklar to found their official fan club and street team, "Linkin Park Underground", in November 2001. Linkin Park also formed their own tour, Projekt Revolution, which featured other notable artists such as Cypress Hill, Adema, and Snoop Dogg. Within a year's stretch, Linkin Park had performed at over 320 concerts. The experiences and performances of the precocious band were documented in their first DVD, Frat Party at the Pankake Festival, which debuted in November 2001. Now reunited with former bassist Phoenix, the band began work on a remix album, dubbed Reanimation, which would include works from Hybrid Theory and non-album tracks. Reanimation debuted on July 30, 2002, featuring the likes of Black Thought, Jonathan Davis, Aaron Lewis, and many others. Reanimation claimed the second spot on the Billboard 200, and sold nearly 270,000 copies during its debut week. Hybrid Theory is also in the RIAA's Top 100 Albums. 2002–2004: Meteora Following the success of Hybrid Theory and Reanimation, Linkin Park spent a significant amount of time touring around the United States. The band members began to work on new material amidst their saturated schedule, spending a sliver of their free time in their tour bus's studio. The band officially announced the production of a new studio album in December 2002, revealing their new work was inspired by the rocky region of Meteora in Greece, where numerous monasteries have been built on top of the rocks. Meteora features a mixture of the band's nu metal and rap metal style with newer innovative effects, including the induction of a shakuhachi (a Japanese flute made of bamboo) and other instruments. Linkin Park's second album debuted on March 25, 2003, and instantly earned worldwide recognition, going to No. 1 in the US and UK, and No. 2 in Australia. Meteora sold more than 800,000 copies during its first week, and it ranked as the best selling album on the Billboard charts at the time. The album's singles, including "Somewhere I Belong", "Breaking the Habit", "Faint", and "Numb", received significant radio attention. By October 2003, Meteora sold nearly three million copies. The album's success allowed Linkin Park to form another Projekt Revolution, which featured other bands and artists including Mudvayne, Blindside, and Xzibit. Additionally, Metallica invited Linkin Park to play at the Summer Sanitarium Tour 2003, which included well-known acts such as Limp Bizkit, Mudvayne and Deftones. The band released an album and DVD, titled Live in Texas, which featured some audio and video tracks from the band's performances in Texas during the tour. In early 2004, Linkin Park started a world tour titled the Meteora World Tour. Supporting bands on the tour included Hoobastank, P.O.D., Story of the Year and Pia. Meteora earned the band multiple awards and honors. The band won the MTV awards for Best Rock Video for "Somewhere I Belong" and the Viewer's Choice Award for "Breaking the Habit". Linkin Park also received significant recognition during the 2004 Radio Music Awards, winning the Artist of the Year and Song of the Year ("Numb") awards. Although Meteora was not nearly as successful as Hybrid Theory, it was the third best selling album in the United States during 2003. The band spent the first few months of 2004 touring around the world, first with the third Projekt Revolution tour, and later several European concerts. At the same time, the band's relationship with Warner Bros. Records was deteriorating rapidly on account of several trust and financial issues. After months of feuding, the band finally negotiated a deal in December 2005. 2004–2006: Side projects Following Meteoras success, the band worked on many side projects. Bennington appeared on DJ Lethal's "State of the Art" and other work with Dead by Sunrise, while Shinoda did work with Depeche Mode. In 2004, the band began to work with Jay-Z to produce another remix album, titled Collision Course. The album, which featured intermixed lyrics and background tracks from both artists' previous albums, debuted in November 2004. Shinoda also formed Fort Minor as a side project. With the aid of Jay-Z, Fort Minor released their debut album, The Rising Tied, to critical acclaim. Linkin Park also participated in numerous charitable events, most notably raised money to benefit victims of Hurricane Charley in 2004 and later Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The band donated $75,000 to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in March 2004. They also helped relief efforts for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami victims by staging several charity concerts and setting up an additional fund called Music for Relief. Most notably, however, the band participated at Live 8, a series of charitable benefit concerts set up to raise global awareness. Alongside Jay-Z, the band performed on Live 8's stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a global audience. The band would later be reunited with Jay-Z at the Grammy Award Ceremony 2006, during which they performed "Numb/Encore", en route to winning a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. They were joined on stage by Paul McCartney who added verses from the song "Yesterday". They would later go on to play at the 2006 Summer Sonic music festival, which was hosted by Metallica in Japan. 2006–2008: Minutes to Midnight Linkin Park returned to the recording studios in 2006 to work on new material. To produce the album, the band chose producer Rick Rubin. Despite initially stating the album would debut sometime in 2006, the album was delayed until 2007. The band had recorded thirty to fifty songs in August 2006, when Shinoda stated the album was halfway completed. Bennington later added that the new album would stray away from their previous nu metal sound. Warner Bros. Records officially announced that the band's third studio album, titled Minutes to Midnight, would be released on May 15, 2007, in the United States. After spending fourteen months working on the album, the band members opted to further refine their album by removing five of the original seventeen tracks. The album's title, a reference to the Doomsday Clock, foreshadowed the band's new lyrical themes. Minutes to Midnight sold over 625,000 copies in its first week, making it one of the most successful debut week albums in recent years. The album also took the top spot on the Billboard Charts. The album's first single, "What I've Done", was released on April 2, and premiered on MTV and Fuse within the same week. The single was acclaimed by listeners, becoming the top-ranked song on the Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks and Mainstream Rock Tracks charts. The song is also used in soundtrack for the 2007 action film, Transformers. Mike Shinoda was also featured on the Styles of Beyond song "Second to None", which was also included in the film. Later in the year, the band won the "Favorite Alternative Artist" in the American Music Awards. The band also saw success with the rest of the album's singles, "Bleed It Out", "Shadow of the Day", "Given Up", and "Leave Out All the Rest", which were released throughout 2007 and early 2008. The band also collaborated with Busta Rhymes on his single "We Made It", which was released on April 29. Linkin Park embarked on a large world tour titled "Minutes to Midnight World Tour". The band promoted the album's release by forming their fourth Projekt Revolution tour in the United States which included many musical acts like My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, HIM, Placebo, and many others. They also played numerous shows in Europe, Asia, and Australia which included a performance at Live Earth Japan on July 7, 2007. and headlining Download Festival in Donington Park, England and Edgefest in Downsview Park, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The band completed touring on their fourth Projekt Revolution tour before taking up an Arena tour around the United Kingdom, visiting Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester, before finishing on a double night at the O2 arena in London. Bennington stated that Linkin Park plans to release a follow-up album to Minutes to Midnight. However, he stated the band will first embark on a United States tour to gather inspiration for the album. Linkin Park embarked on another Projekt Revolution tour in 2008. This was the first time a Projekt Revolution tour was held in Europe with three shows in Germany and one in the United Kingdom. A Projekt Revolution tour was also held in the United States which featured Chris Cornell, the Bravery, Ashes Divide, Street Drum Corps and many others. Linkin Park finished the tour with a final show in Texas. Mike Shinoda announced a live CD/DVD titled Road to Revolution: Live at Milton Keynes, which is a live video recording from the Projekt Revolution gig at the Milton Keynes Bowl on June 29, 2008, which was officially released on November 24, 2008. 2008–2011: A Thousand Suns In May 2009, Linkin Park announced they were working on a fourth studio album, which was planned to be released in 2010. Shinoda told IGN that the new album would be 'genre-busting,' while building off of elements in Minutes to Midnight. He also mentioned that the album would be more experimental and "hopefully more cutting-edge". Bennington also addressed the media to confirm that Rick Rubin would return to produce the new album. The band later revealed the album would be called A Thousand Suns. While working on the new album, Linkin Park worked with successful film composer Hans Zimmer to produce the score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The band released a single for the movie, titled "New Divide". Joe Hahn created a music video for the song, which featured clips from the film. On June 22, Linkin Park played a short set in Westwood Village after the premier of the movie. After completing work for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the band returned to the studio to finalize their album. On April 26, the band released an app for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, a game called 8-Bit Rebellion! It featured the band as playable characters, and a new song called "Blackbirds" which was unlockable by beating the game. The song was also later released as an iTunes bonus track on A Thousand Suns. A Thousand Suns was released on September 14. The album's first single, "The Catalyst", was released on August 2. The band promoted their new album by launching a concert tour, which started in Los Angeles on September 7. Linkin Park also relied on MySpace to promote their album, releasing two additional songs, "Waiting for the End" and "Blackout" on September 8. Furthermore, a documentary about the album's production, titled Meeting of A Thousand Suns, was available for streaming on the band's MySpace page. On August 31, 2010, it was announced that the band would perform the single live for the first time at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, 2010. The venue of the debut live performance of the single was Griffith Observatory, an iconic location used in Hollywood movies. "Waiting for the End" was released as the second single of A Thousand Suns. Linkin Park reached No.8 in Billboard Social 50, a chart of the most active artists on the world's leading social networking sites. In other Billboard Year-End charts, the band reached No.92 in the "Top Artists" chart, as well as A Thousand Suns reaching No.53 in the Year-End chart of the Billboard Top 200 albums and No.7 in the 2010 Year-End Rock Albums, and "The Catalyst" reaching No.40 in the Year-End Rock Songs chart. The band was nominated for six Billboard Awards in 2011 for Top Duo or Group, Best Rock Album for A Thousand Suns, Top Rock Artist, Top Alternative Artist, Top Alternative Song for "Waiting for the End" and Top Alternative Album for A Thousand Suns, but did not win any award. The band charted in numerous Billboard Year-End charts in 2011. The band was No.39 in the Top Artists Chart, No.84 in the Billboard 200 Artists chart, No.11 in the Social 50 Chart, No.6 in the Top Rock Artists Chart, No.9 in the Rock Songs Artists Chart, No.16 in the Rock Albums Chart, No.4 in the Hard Rock Albums Chart, and No.7 in the Alternative Songs Chart. 2011–2013: Living Things and Recharged In July 2011, Bennington told Rolling Stone that Linkin Park aims to produce a new album every eighteen months, and that he would be shocked if a new album did not come out in 2012. He later revealed in another interview in September 2011 that the band was still in the beginning phases of the next album, saying "We just kind of began. We like to keep the creative juices flowing, so we try to keep that going all the time ... we like the direction that we're going in". Later, on March 28, 2012, Shinoda confirmed that the band is filming a music video for "Burn It Down". Joe Hahn directed the video. Shinoda spoke to Co.Create about the album's art, saying that it will "blow them [the fans] away ... the average person is not going to be able to look at it and go, I understand that that's completely new, like not just the image but the way they made the image is totally new. So there's going to be that". On April 15, 2012, Shinoda announced that Living Things would be the title of Linkin Park's fifth album. Shinoda stated that they chose the title Living Things because the album is more about people, personal interactions, and it is far more personal than their previous albums. The band promoted the album on the 2012 edition of the Honda Civic Tour, with co-headliners Incubus. The band performed "Burn It Down" at 2012 Billboard Music Awards. On May 24, the band released the music video for "Burn It Down" and debuted "Lies Greed Misery", another song from Living Things, on BBC Radio 1. "Powerless", the twelfth and closing track of the album, was featured in the closing credits of the film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Living Things sold over 223,000 copies during its debut week, ranking No. 1 on the US Albums Charts. Linkin Park's single "Castle of Glass" was nominated for 'Best Song in a Game' at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards. The band also performed at the award ceremony on December 7, but lost the award to "Cities" by Beck. Linkin Park also played at the Soundwave music festival in Australia, where they shared the stage with Metallica, Paramore, Slayer and Sum 41. On August 10, 2013, the band collaborated with American musician Steve Aoki to record the song "A Light That Never Comes" for Linkin Park's online puzzle-action game LP Recharge (short for Linkin Park Recharge), which was launched on Facebook and the official LP Recharge website on September 12, 2013. On the day of the game's release, Linkin Park made a post on their Facebook explaining that the song used to promote the game would be included on a new remix album, entitled Recharged, which was released on October 29, 2013, on CD, vinyl, and digital download. Similar to Reanimation, the album features remixes of ten of the songs from Living Things, with contributions from other artists, such as Ryu of Styles of Beyond, Pusha T, Datsik, KillSonik, Bun B, Money Mark, and Rick Rubin. The band also worked on the soundtrack for the film Mall, which was directed by Joe Hahn. 2013–2015: The Hunting Party In an interview with Fuse, Shinoda confirmed that Linkin Park had begun recording their sixth studio album in May 2013. The band released the first single from their upcoming album, titled, "Guilty All the Same" on March 6, 2014, through Shazam. The single was later released on the following day by Warner Bros. Records and debut at No. 28 on the US Billboard Rock Airplay charts before peaking at No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock charts in the following weeks. Shortly after the single's release, the band revealed their sixth album would be titled The Hunting Party. The album was produced by Shinoda and Delson, who wanted to explore musical elements from Hybrid Theory and the band's earlier material. Shinoda commented the album is a "90s style of rock record". He elaborated, "It's a rock record. It's loud and it's rock, but not in the sense of what you've heard before, which is more like '90s hardcore-punk-thrash.' The album includes musical contributions from rapper Rakim, Page Hamilton of Helmet, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and Daron Malakian of System of a Down. The Hunting Party was released on June 13, 2014, in most countries, and later released in the United States on June 17. thumb|Bennington and Shinoda performing live in Montreal on August 23, 2014|alt= Linkin Park performed at Download Festival on June 14, 2014, where they played their debut album, Hybrid Theory, in its entirety. Linkin Park headlined Rock am Ring and Rock im Park in 2014, along with Metallica, Kings of Leon, and Iron Maiden. They also headlined with Iron Maiden again at the Greenfield Festival in July. On June 22, Linkin Park made an unscheduled headline appearance at the Vans Warped Tour, where they played with members of Issues, the Devil Wears Prada, A Day To Remember, Yellowcard, Breathe Carolina, Finch, and Machine Gun Kelly. In January 2015, the band embarked on a tour to promote the release of The Hunting Party, consisting of 17 concerts across the United States and Canada. The tour was canceled after only three concerts when Bennington injured his ankle. On May 9, Linkin Park performed at the first edition of Rock in Rio USA, in direct support for Metallica. On November 9, 2014, MTV Europe named Linkin Park the "Best Rock" act of 2014 at their annual music awards ceremony. The band won the 'Best Rock Band' and 'Best Live Act' titles of 2014 on Loudwire's Music Awards. Revolver ranked The Hunting Party as the fourth best album of 2014. In an interview with AltWire on May 4, Shinoda reflected on The Hunting Party and commented on Linkin Park's future, stating; "I'm really happy with the reaction from The Hunting Party, and I think we're ready to move somewhere new on the next album, which will be coming [in 2016]". Linkin Park collaborated with Steve Aoki on the song "Darker Than Blood" for Aoki's album Neon Future II, which was released in May 2015. The first preview of the song came during Aoki's performance on February 28, 2015, at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, Illinois. The song was debuted on Twitch on April 13 and released on April 14. Linkin Park performed at the closing ceremony of BlizzCon 2015, Blizzard's video game convention. 2015–2017: One More Light and Bennington's death Linkin Park began working on new material for a seventh studio album in November 2015. Chester Bennington commented on the album's direction by stating, "We've got a lot of great material that I hope challenges our fanbase as well as inspires them as much as it has us." In February 2017, Linkin Park released promotional videos on their social network accounts, which featured Shinoda and Bennington preparing new material for the album. Mike Shinoda stated the band was following a new process when producing the album. Brad Delson elaborated: "We've made so many records and we clearly know how to make a record and we definitely didn't take the easy way out this time." The first single from the new album was revealed to be titled "Heavy" and features pop singer Kiiara, the first time the band has featured a female vocalist on an original song for a studio album. The lyrics for the song were co-written by Linkin Park with Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter. The single was released for download on February 16. As they have done in the past, Linkin Park had cryptic messages online in relation to the new album. The album cover was revealed through digital puzzles across social media; the cover features six kids playing in the ocean. The band's seventh album, One More Light, was released on May 19, 2017. Bennington died on July 20, 2017; his death was ruled a suicide by hanging. Shinoda confirmed Bennington's death on Twitter, writing, "Shocked and heartbroken, but it's true. An official statement will come out as soon as we have one". The band had released a music video for their single "Talking to Myself" earlier that day. One day after Bennington's death, the band canceled the North American leg of their One More Light World Tour. On the morning of July 24, Linkin Park released an official statement on their website as a tribute to Bennington. On July 28, Shinoda announced that donations made to the band's Music for Relief charity would be redirected to the One More Light Fund, which had been set up in Bennington's memory. On August 4, when the band was initially scheduled to play on Good Morning America, Chris Cornell's twelve-year-old daughter Toni appeared with OneRepublic to perform "Hallelujah" as a tribute to Bennington (who was the godfather to her younger brother, Christopher) and her father. Bennington had previously performed the song at the funeral for Cornell, who had also died from a suicide by hanging two months earlier. On August 22, Linkin Park announced plans to host a tribute concert in Los Angeles to honor Bennington. The band thanked fans for their support, stating, "The five of us are so grateful for all of your support as we heal and build the future of Linkin Park". The band later confirmed that the concert, titled Linkin Park and Friends: Celebrate Life in Honor of Chester Bennington, would take place on October 27 at the Hollywood Bowl. The event included Linkin Park's first performance following Bennington's death. The event featured multiple guests performing Linkin Park songs along with the band. The event was over three hours long and was streamed live via YouTube. It has been streamed 22.7 million times as of September 2022. In November 2017, the band announced that a live album compiled from their final tour with Bennington, titled One More Light Live, would be released on December 15. On November 19, Linkin Park received an American Music Award for Favorite Alternative Artist and dedicated the award to Bennington. 2017–present: Hiatus and 20th anniversary reissues Linkin Park has remained on hiatus since Bennington's death. During an Instagram live chat on December 17, 2017, Shinoda was asked whether Linkin Park would perform with a hologram version of Bennington in the future. He replied, "Can we not do a holographic Chester? I can't even wrap my head around the idea of a holographic Chester. I've actually heard other people outside the band suggest that, and there's absolutely no way. I cannot fuck with that." On January 28, 2018, Shinoda replied to a tweet from a fan inquiring about his future with Linkin Park, writing "I have every intention on continuing with LP, and the guys feel the same. We have a lot of rebuilding to do, and questions to answer, so it'll take time." On March 29, however, Shinoda stated that he was uncertain of Linkin Park's future when being interviewed by Vulture. On April 17, Linkin Park was nominated for three awards at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards, but did not win any of them. The band was presented with The George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement at UCLA on May 18. On February 18, 2019, Shinoda said in an interview that the band is open to the idea of continuing though what form that takes has yet to be decided. Shinoda stated "I know the other guys, they love to be onstage, they love to be in a studio, and so to not do that would be like, I don't know, almost like unhealthy." When asked about the band's future minus Bennington, Shinoda stated, "It's not my goal to look for a new singer. If it does happen, it has to happen naturally. If we find someone that is a great person and good stylistic fit, I could see trying to do some stuff with somebody. I would never want to feel like we are replacing Chester." On April 28, 2020, bassist Dave Farrell revealed the band is working on new music. On August 13, the band released "She Couldn't", a track that was originally recorded in 1999, and it was included on a 20th anniversary edition of their debut album Hybrid Theory, released on October 9. On January 8, 2021, Linkin Park released a remix of "One Step Closer" by American electronic duo 100 gecs. The band revealed it was the first of many new remixes inspired by Reanimation to come. On October 29, when asked about the band playing live shows again, Shinoda stated that "Now is not the time [for the band's return]. We don't have the focus on it. We don't have the math worked out. And I don't mean that by financially math, I mean that like emotional and creative math." In April 2022, Shinoda reiterated that the band was not working on a new album, new music, or touring. In February 2023, the band started an interactive game on their website teasing the 20th anniversary of Meteora. On February 6, they revealed a previously unreleased demo "Lost" that was formally released on February 10, as the lead single from the reissue of the album, released on April 7. Philanthropy On January 19, 2010, Linkin Park released a new song titled "Not Alone" as part of a compilation from Music for Relief called Download to Donate for Haiti in support of the Haiti Earthquake crisis. On February 10, 2010, Linkin Park released the official music video for the song on their homepage. The single itself was released on October 21, 2011. On January 11, 2011, an updated version of Download to Donate for Haiti was launched, called Download to Donate for Haiti V2.0, with more songs to download. For the updated compilation, the band released Keaton Hashimoto's remix of "The Catalyst" from the "Linkin Park featuring YOU" contest. Shinoda designed two T-shirts, in which the proceeds would go to Music for Relief to help the victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami disasters. Music for Relief released Download to Donate: Tsunami Relief Japan, another compilation of songs, in which the proceeds would go to Save the Children. The band released the song titled as "Issho Ni", meaning "we're in this together", on March 22, 2011, via Download to Donate: Tsunami Relief Japan. In the wake of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, Linkin Park played at Club Nokia during the "Music for Relief: Concert for the Philippines" in Los Angeles, and raised donations for victims. The show was broadcast on AXS TV on February 15. Other artists during the show included the Offspring, Bad Religion, Heart, and the Filharmonic. Musical style and influences Linkin Park combines elements of rock music, hip hop and electronica, and have been categorized as alternative rock, nu metal, rap rock, , , , hard rock, hip hop, rap metal, pop, and industrial rock. Despite being considered nu metal, the band never considered themselves as such. Both Hybrid Theory and Meteora combine the alternative metal, nu metal, rap rock, rap metal, and alternative rock sound with influences and elements from hip hop, and electronica, utilizing programming and synthesizers. William Ruhlmann from AllMusic regarded it as "a Johnny-come-lately to an already overdone musical style," whereas Rolling Stone described their song "Breaking the Habit" as "risky, beautiful art". In Minutes to Midnight the band experimented with their established sound and drew influences from a wider and more varied range of genres and styles, a process Los Angeles Times compares to a stage in U2's work. Only two songs on the album's tracklist feature rap vocals and the majority of the album can be considered alternative rock.Metacritic, Minutes To Midnight . Retrieved January 27, 2008. The vocal interplay between Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda plays as a major part within Linkin Park's music, with Bennington being the lead vocalist and Shinoda as the rapping vocalist. On Linkin Park's third album, Minutes to Midnight, Shinoda sings lead vocals on "In Between", "Hands Held High", and on the B-side "No Roads Left". On numerous songs from band's fourth album, A Thousand Suns, such as the album's singles ("The Catalyst", "Burning in the Skies", "Iridescent"), both Shinoda and Bennington sing. The album has been regarded as a turning point in the band's musical career, having a stronger emphasis on electronica. James Montgomery, of MTV, compared the record to Radiohead's Kid A, while Jordy Kasko of Review, Rinse, Repeat likened the album to both Kid A and Pink Floyd's landmark album The Dark Side of the Moon. Shinoda stated that he and the other band members were deeply influenced by Chuck D and Public Enemy. He elaborated: "Public Enemy were very three-dimensional with their records because although they seemed political, there was a whole lot of other stuff going on in there too. It made me think how three-dimensional I wanted our record to be without imitating them of course, and show where we were at creatively". One of the record's political elements is its samples of notable speeches by American political figures. A Thousand Suns was described as trip hop, electronic rock, ambient, alternative rock, industrial rock, experimental rock, rap rock, and progressive rock. Their fifth album, Living Things, is also an electronic-heavy album, but includes other influences, resulting in a harder sound by comparison. The band returned to a heavier sound compared to their last three albums on The Hunting Party, which was described as an alternative metal, nu metal, hard rock, rap rock, and rap metal album. Their seventh album, One More Light, was described as pop, pop rock and electropop. Linkin Park's influences include Limp Bizkit, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Jane's Addiction, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Machines of Loving Grace, Metallica, Refused, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Descendents, Misfits, Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, A Tribe Called Quest, Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock, N.W.A, Public Enemy, KRS-One, Boogie Down Productions, Led Zeppelin, Rage Against the Machine, and the Beatles. Legacy and influence Linkin Park has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.Linkin Park's Brad Delson talks One More Light: 'There really is a ton of guitar on this album' MusicRadar April 3, 2017. Retrieved May 9, 2017. The group's first studio album Hybrid Theory is one of the best-selling albums in the US (12 million copies shipped) and worldwide (30 million copies sold). Billboard estimates that Linkin Park earned US$5 million between May 2011 and May 2012, making them the 40th-highest-paid musical artist. 11 of the band's singles have reached the number one position on Billboard Alternative Songs chart, the second-most for any artist. In 2003, MTV2 named Linkin Park the sixth-greatest band of the music video era and the third-best of the new millennium. Billboard ranked Linkin Park No. 19 on the Best Artists of the Decade chart. The band was recently voted as the greatest artist of the 2000s in a Bracket Madness poll on VH1. In 2014, the band was declared as the Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now by Kerrang!.Linkin Park Are the 'Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now' Ultimate Guitar August 28, 2014. Retrieved October 20, 2014. In 2015, Kerrang! gave "In the End" and "Final Masquerade" the top two positions on Kerrang!s Rock 100 list. Linkin Park became the first rock band to achieve more than one billion YouTube hits. Linkin Park also became the fifteenth most liked page on Facebook, tenth most liked artist, and most liked group followed by the Black Eyed Peas. Linkin Park's "Numb" is the third and "In the End" is the sixth "timeless song" on Spotify. The two songs making Linkin Park the only artist to have two timeless songs in top ten. Hybrid Theory by the group was listed in the 2005 edition of the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, It was also ranked at #11 on Billboard Hot 200 Albums of the Decade. In addition the album was included in Best of 2001 by Record Collector, The top 150 Albums of the Generation by Rock Sound and 50 Best Rock Albums of the 2000s by Kerrang!. The album Meteora was included in Top 200 Albums of the Decade by Billboard at No. 36. The album sold 20 million copies worldwide. The collaborative EP Collision Course with Jay-Z became the second ever EP to top the Billboard 200, going on to sell over 300,000 copies in its first week after Alice in Chains' Jar of Flies in 1994. The album Minutes to Midnight, in the United States, had the biggest first week sales of 2007 at the time, with 625,000 albums sold. In Canada, the album sold over 50,000 copies in its first week and debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart. Worldwide, the album shipped over 3.3 million copies in its first four weeks of release. The New York Times Jon Caramanica commented Linkin Park "brought the collision of hard rock and hip-hop to its commercial and aesthetic peak" at the beginning of the 2000s. Several rock and non-rock artists have cited Linkin Park as an influence, including Of Mice & Men, One OK Rock, Kutless, My Heart to Fear, Ill Niño, Bishop Nehru, Misono, From Ashes to New, Bring Me the Horizon, Coldrain, Red, Girl on Fire, Alt-j, Manafest, Spyair, Hardy, Silentó, 3OH!3, The Prom Kings, I Prevail, Crossfaith, AJ Tracey, Kiiara, the Chainsmokers, Lupe Fiasco,Lupe says that his favourite album ever is by linkin park Genius The Devil Wears Prada, Kevin Rudolf, Steve Aoki, Blackbear, Halsey, Amber Liu, Machine Gun Kelly, Billie Eilish, Starset, Tokio Hotel, the Weeknd, Duki, Stormzy and Imagine Dragons. On August 20, 2020, their 20th anniversary, Linkin Park collaborated with virtual reality rhythm game Beat Saber to release 11 maps based on their songs. Band membersCurrent members Mike Shinoda – vocals, rapping, rhythm guitar, keyboards, samples , Brad Delson – lead guitar , backing vocals Rob Bourdon – drums, percussion , occasional backing vocals Joe Hahn – turntables, samples, programming , backing vocals Dave Farrell – bass , backing vocals Former members Mark Wakefield – lead vocals Chester Bennington – lead vocals , occasional rhythm guitar Session and touring musicians Kyle Christner – bass Scott Koziol – bass Ian Hornbeck – bass Timeline Gallery Discography Hybrid Theory (2000) Meteora (2003) Minutes to Midnight (2007) A Thousand Suns (2010) Living Things (2012) The Hunting Party (2014) One More Light (2017) Awards and nominations Concert toursHeadlining Hybrid Theory World Tour (2001) Projekt Revolution (2002–2008, 2011) LP Underground Tour (2003) Meteora World Tour (2004) Minutes to Midnight World Tour (2007–08) International Tour (2009) A Thousand Suns World Tour (2010–11) Living Things World Tour (2012–13) The Hunting Party Tour (2014–15) One More Light World Tour (2017) Linkin Park and Friends: Celebrate Life in Honor of Chester Bennington (2017)Co-headlining 11th Annual Honda Civic Tour (2012) Carnivores Tour (2014) See also List of best-selling music artists List of best-selling albums List of best-selling remix albums List of best-selling singles List of best-selling albums in the United States List of songs recorded by Linkin Park List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. alternative rock chart Notes ReferencesWorks cited''' Saulmon, Greg. Linkin Park. Contemporary Musicians and Their Music. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 2007. . Baltin, Steve. From The Inside: Linkin Park's Meteora. California: Bradson Press, 2004. . Blue, Jeff. One Step Closer: From Xero to #1: Becoming Linkin Park''. Tennessee: Permuted Press, 2020. . External links musicforrelief.org Category:1996 establishments in California Category:Alternative rock groups from California Category:American alternative metal musical groups Category:American electronic rock musical groups Category:American nu metal musical groups Category:American pop rock music groups Category:American rap rock groups Category:Echo (music award) winners Category:Grammy Award winners for rap music Category:Kerrang! Awards winners Category:MTV Europe Music Award winners Category:MTV Video Music Award winners Category:Musical groups established in 1996 Category:Musicians from Los Angeles County, California Category:Nu metal musical groups from California Category:People from Agoura Hills, California Category:Rap metal musical groups Category:Warner Records artists Category:World Music Awards winners Category:YouTube channels launched in 2006

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Jim Thorpe

Information about Thorpe's birth, name and ethnic background varies widely. He was baptized "Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe" in the Catholic Church. Thorpe was born in Indian Territory of the United States (later Oklahoma), but no birth certificate has been found. He was generally considered to have been born on May 22, 1887, near the town of Prague, Oklahoma.

Honors

Thorpe's monument, featuring the quote from Gustav V ("You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world."), still stands near the town named for him, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. The grave rests on mounds of soil from Thorpe's native Oklahoma and from the stadium in which he won his Olympic medals. Thorpe's achievements received great acclaim from sports journalists, both during his lifetime and since his death. In 1950, an Associated Press poll of almost 400 sportswriters and broadcasters voted Thorpe the "greatest athlete" of the first half of the 20th century. That same year, the Associated Press named Thorpe the "greatest American football player" of the first half of the century. In 1999, the Associated Press placed him third on its list of the top athletes of the century, following Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan. ESPN ranked Thorpe seventh on their list of best North American athletes of the century. Thorpe was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, one of seventeen players in the charter class. Thorpe is memorialized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame rotunda with a larger-than-life statue. He was also inducted into halls of fame for college football, American Olympic teams, and the national track and field competition. President Richard Nixon, as authorized by U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 73, proclaimed Monday, April 16, 1973, as "Jim Thorpe Day" to promote the nationwide recognition of Thorpe. In 1986, the Jim Thorpe Association established an award with Thorpe's name. The Jim Thorpe Award is given annually to the best defensive back in college football. The annual Thorpe Cup athletics meeting is named in his honor. The United States Postal Service issued a 32C/ stamp on February 3, 1998 as part of the Celebrate the Century stamp sheet series. In a poll of sports fans conducted by ABC Sports, Thorpe was voted the Greatest Athlete of the Twentieth Century out of 15 other athletes including Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth, Jesse Owens, Wayne Gretzky, Jack Nicklaus, and Michael Jordan. In 2015, proposed designs for the 2018 Native American dollar coin featuring Thorpe were released. CANNOTANSWER

James Francis Thorpe (Sac and Fox (Sauk): Wa-Tho-Huk, translated as "Bright Path"; May 22 or 28, 1887March 28, 1953) was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics. Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won two Olympic gold medals in the 1912 Summer Olympics (one in classic pentathlon and the other in decathlon). He also played football (collegiate and professional), professional baseball, and basketball. He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he had been paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the contemporary amateurism rules. In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals with replicas, after ruling that the decision to strip him of his medals fell outside of the required 30 days. Official IOC records still listed Thorpe as co-champion in decathlon and pentathlon until 2022, when it was decided to restore him as the sole champion in both events. Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox Nation in Indian Territory (what is now the U.S. state of Oklahoma). As a youth, he attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was a two-time All-American for the school's football team under coach Pop Warner. After his Olympic success in 1912, which included a record score in the decathlon, he added a victory in the All-Around Championship of the Amateur Athletic Union. In 1913, he played for the Pine Village Pros in Indiana. Later in 1913, Thorpe signed with the New York Giants, and he played six seasons in Major League Baseball between 1913 and 1919. Thorpe joined the Canton Bulldogs American football team in 1915, helping them win three professional championships. He later played for six teams in the National Football League (NFL). He played as part of several all-American Indian teams throughout his career, and barnstormed as a professional basketball player with a team composed entirely of American Indians. From 1920 to 1921, Thorpe was nominally the first president of the American Professional Football Association, which became the NFL in 1922. He played professional sports until age 41, the end of his sports career coinciding with the start of the Great Depression. He struggled to earn a living after that, working several odd jobs. He suffered from alcoholism, and lived his last years in failing health and poverty. He was married three times and had eight children, including Grace Thorpe, an environmentalist and Native rights activist, before suffering from heart failure and dying in 1953. Thorpe has received numerous accolades for his athletic accomplishments. The Associated Press ranked him as the "greatest athlete" from the first 50 years of the 20th century, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted him as part of its inaugural class in 1963. The town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania was named in his honor. It has a monument site that contains his remains, which were the subject of legal action. Thorpe appeared in several films and was portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the 1951 film Jim Thorpe – All-American. Early life Information about Thorpe's birth, name and ethnic background varies widely. He was baptized "Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe" in the Catholic Church. Thorpe was born in Indian Territory of the United States (later Oklahoma), but no birth certificate has been found. He was generally considered to have been born on May 22, 1887, near the town of Prague. Thorpe said in a note to The Shawnee News-Star in 1943 that he was born May 28, 1888, "near and south of Bellemont – Pottawatomie County – along the banks of the North Fork River ... hope this will clear up the inquiries as to my birthplace." Most biographers believe that he was born on May 22, 1887, the date listed on his baptismal certificate. Thorpe referred to Shawnee as his birthplace in his 1943 note to the newspaper. Thorpe's parents were both of mixed-race ancestry. His father, Hiram Thorpe, had an Irish father and a Sac and Fox Indian mother. His mother, Charlotte Vieux, had a French father and a Potawatomi mother, a descendant of Chief Louis Vieux. Thorpe was raised as a Sac and Fox, and his native name, Wa-Tho-Huk, is translated as "path lit by great flash of lightning" or, more simply, "Bright Path". As was the custom for Sac and Fox, he was named for something occurring around the time of his birth, in this case the light brightening the path to the cabin where he was born. Thorpe's parents were both Roman Catholic, a faith which Thorpe observed throughout his adult life. Thorpe attended the Sac and Fox Indian Agency school in Stroud, with his twin brother, Charlie. Charlie helped him through school until he died of pneumonia when they were nine years old. Thorpe ran away from school several times. His father sent him to the Haskell Institute, an Indian boarding school in Lawrence, Kansas, so that he would not run away again. When Thorpe's mother died of childbirth complications two years later, the youth became depressed. After several arguments with his father, he left home to work on a horse ranch. In 1904, the sixteen-year-old Thorpe returned to his father and decided to attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There his athletic ability was recognized and he was coached by Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner, one of the most influential coaches of early American football history. Later that year the youth was orphaned after his father Hiram Thorpe died from gangrene poisoning, after being wounded in a hunting accident. The young Thorpe again dropped out of school. He resumed farm work for a few years before returning to Carlisle School. Amateur career College career Thorpe began his athletic career at Carlisle in 1907 when he walked past the track and, still in street clothes, beat all the school's high jumpers with an impromptu 5-ft 9-in jump. His earliest recorded track and field results come from 1907. He also competed in football, baseball, lacrosse, and ballroom dancing, winning the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship. Pop Warner was hesitant to allow Thorpe, his best track and field athlete, to compete in such a physical game as football. Thorpe, however, convinced Warner to let him try some rushing plays in practice against the school team's defense; Warner assumed he would be tackled easily and give up the idea. Thorpe "ran around past and through them not once, but twice". He walked over to Warner and said, "Nobody is going to tackle Jim", while flipping him the ball. Thorpe first gained nationwide notice in 1911 for his athletic ability. As a running back, defensive back, placekicker and punter, Thorpe scored all of his team's four field goals in an 18–15 upset of Harvard, a top-ranked team in the early days of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). His team finished the season 11–1. In 1912 Carlisle won the national collegiate championship largely as a result of Thorpe's efforts: he scored 25 touchdowns and 198 points during the season, according to CNN's Greg Botelho. Steve Boda, a researcher for the NCAA, credits Thorpe with 27 touchdowns and 224 points. Thorpe rushed 191 times for 1,869 yards, according to Boda; the figures do not include statistics from two of Carlisle's 14 games in 1912 because full records are not available. Carlisle's 1912 record included a 27–6 victory over the West Point Army team. In that game, Thorpe's 92-yard touchdown was nullified by a teammate's penalty, but on the next play Thorpe rushed for a 97-yard touchdown. Future President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played against him in that game, recalled of Thorpe in a 1961 speech: Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw. Thorpe was awarded third-team All-American honors in 1908, and named a first-team All-American in 1911 and 1912. Football was – and remained – Thorpe's favorite sport. He did not compete in track and field in 1910 or 1911, although this turned out to be the sport in which he gained his greatest fame. In the spring of 1912, he started training for the Olympics. He had confined his efforts to jumps, hurdles and shot-puts, but now added pole vaulting, javelin, discus, hammer and 56 lb weight. In the Olympic trials held at Celtic Park in New York, his all-round ability stood out in all these events and so he earned a place on the team that went to Sweden. Olympic career For the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, two new multi-event disciplines were included, the pentathlon and the decathlon. A pentathlon, based on the ancient Greek event, had been introduced at the 1906 Intercalated Games. The 1912 version consisted of the long jump, javelin throw, 200-meter dash, discus throw, and 1500-meter run. The decathlon was a relatively new event in modern athletics, although a similar competition known as the all-around championship had been part of American track meets since the 1880s. A men's version had been featured on the program of the 1904 St. Louis Olympics. The events of the new decathlon differed slightly from the American version. Both events seemed appropriate for Thorpe, who was so versatile that he served as Carlisle's one-man team in several track meets. According to his obituary in The New York Times, he could run the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat; the 220 in 21.8 seconds; the 440 in 51.8 seconds; the 880 in 1:57, the mile in 4:35; the 120-yard high hurdles in 15 seconds; and the 220-yard low hurdles in 24 seconds. He could long jump 23 ft 6 in and high-jump 6 ft 5 in. He could pole vault 11 feet; put the shot 47 ft 9 in; throw the javelin 163 feet; and throw the discus 136 feet. Thorpe entered the U.S. Olympic trials for both the pentathlon and the decathlon. He easily earned a place on the pentathlon team, winning three events. The decathlon trial was subsequently cancelled, and Thorpe was chosen to represent the U.S. in the event. The pentathlon and decathlon teams also included Avery Brundage, a future International Olympic Committee president. Thorpe was extremely busy in the Olympics. Along with the decathlon and pentathlon, he competed in the long jump and high jump. The first competition was the pentathlon on July 7. He won four of the five events and placed third in the javelin, an event he had not competed in before 1912. Although the pentathlon was primarily decided on place points, points were also earned for the marks achieved in the individual events. Thorpe won the gold medal. That same day, he qualified for the high jump final, in which he finished in a tie for fourth. On July 12, Thorpe placed seventh in the long jump. Thorpe's final event was the decathlon, his first (and as it turned out, his only) decathlon. Strong competition from local favorite Hugo Wieslander was expected. Thorpe, however, defeated Wieslander by 688 points. He placed in the top four in all ten events, and his Olympic record of 8,413 points stood for nearly two decades. Even more remarkably, because someone had stolen his shoes just before he was due to compete, he found a mismatched pair of replacements, including one from a trash can, and won the gold medal wearing them. Overall, Thorpe won eight of the 15 individual events comprising the pentathlon and decathlon. As was the custom of the day, the medals were presented to the athletes during the closing ceremonies of the games. Along with the two gold medals, Thorpe also received two challenge prizes, which were donated by King Gustav V of Sweden for the decathlon and Czar Nicholas II of Russia for the pentathlon. Several sources recount that, when awarding Thorpe his prize, King Gustav said, "You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world", to which Thorpe replied, "Thanks, King". Thorpe biographer Kate Buford suggests that the story is apocryphal, as she believes that such a comment "would have been out of character for a man who was highly uncomfortable in public ceremonies and hated to stand out." The anecdote appeared in newspapers by 1948, 36 years after his appearance in the Olympics and time for myth making, and in books as early as 1952. Thorpe's successes were followed in the United States. On the Olympic team's return, Thorpe was the star attraction in a ticker-tape parade on Broadway. He remembered later, "I heard people yelling my name, and I couldn't realize how one fellow could have so many friends." Apart from his track and field appearances, Thorpe also played in one of two exhibition baseball games at the 1912 Olympics, which featured two teams composed mostly of U.S. track and field athletes. Thorpe had previous experience in the sport, as the public soon learned. All-Around champion After his victories at the Olympic Games in Sweden, on September 2, 1912, Thorpe returned to Celtic Park, the home of the Irish American Athletic Club, in Queens, New York (where he had qualified four months earlier for the Olympic Games), to compete in the Amateur Athletic Union's All-Around Championship. Competing against Bruno Brodd of the Irish American Athletic Club and John L. Bredemus of Princeton University, he won seven of the ten events contested and came in second in the remaining three. With a total point score of 7,476 points, Thorpe broke the previous record of 7,385 points set in 1909 (also at Celtic Park), by Martin Sheridan, the champion athlete of the Irish American Athletic Club. Sheridan, a five-time Olympic gold medalist, was present to watch his record broken. He approached Thorpe after the event and shook his hand saying, "Jim, my boy, you're a great man. I never expect to look upon a finer athlete." He told a reporter from New York World, "Thorpe is the greatest athlete that ever lived. He has me beaten fifty ways. Even when I was in my prime, I could not do what he did today." Controversy In 1912, strict rules regarding amateurism were in effect for athletes participating in the Olympics. Athletes who received money prizes for competitions, were sports teachers, or had competed previously against professionals were not considered amateurs. They were barred from competition. In late January 1913, the Worcester Telegram reported that Thorpe had played professional baseball before the Olympics, and other U.S. newspapers followed up the story. Thorpe had played professional baseball in the Eastern Carolina League for Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 1909 and 1910, receiving meager pay; reportedly as little as US$2 ($ today) per game and as much as US$35 ($ today) per week. College players, in fact, regularly spent summers playing professionally in order to earn some money, but most used aliases, unlike Thorpe. Although the public did not seem to care much about Thorpe's past, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), and especially its secretary James Edward Sullivan, took the case very seriously. Thorpe wrote a letter to Sullivan, in which he admitted playing professional baseball: His letter did not help. The AAU decided to withdraw Thorpe's amateur status retroactively. Later that year, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) unanimously decided to strip Thorpe of his Olympic titles, medals and awards, and declare him a professional. Although Thorpe had played for money, the AAU and IOC did not follow their own rules for disqualification. The rulebook for the 1912 Olympics stated that protests had to be made "within 30 days from the closing ceremonies of the games." The first newspaper reports did not appear until January 1913, about six months after the Stockholm Games had concluded. There is also some evidence that Thorpe was known to have played professional baseball before the Olympics, but the AAU had ignored the issue until being confronted with it in 1913. The only positive aspect of this affair for Thorpe was that, as soon as the news was reported that he had been declared a professional, he received offers from professional sports clubs. Professional career Baseball free agent Because the minor league team that last held Jim Thorpe's contract had disbanded in 1910, the athlete had the unusual status as a sought-after free agent at the major league level during the era of the reserve clause. He could choose the baseball team for which to play. In January 1913, he turned down a starting position with the St. Louis Browns, then at the bottom of the American League. He chose to join the 1912 National League champion New York Giants. With Thorpe playing in 19 of their 151 games, they repeated as the 1913 National League champions. Immediately following the Giants' October loss in the 1913 World Series, Thorpe and the Giants joined the Chicago White Sox for a world tour. Barnstorming across the United States and around the world, Thorpe was the celebrity of the tour. Thorpe's presence increased the publicity, attendance and gate receipts for the tour. He met with Pope Pius X and Abbas II Hilmi Bey (the last Khedive of Egypt), and played before 20,000 people in London including King George V. Thorpe was the last man to compete in both the Olympics (in a non-baseball sport) and Major League Baseball before Eddy Alvarez did the same in 2020. Baseball, football, and other sports Thorpe signed with the New York Giants baseball club in 1913 and played sporadically with them as an outfielder for three seasons. After playing in the minor leagues with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1916, he returned to the Giants in 1917. He was sold to the Cincinnati Reds early in the season. In the "double no-hitter" between Fred Toney of the Reds and Hippo Vaughn of the Chicago Cubs, Thorpe drove in the winning run in the 10th inning. Late in the season, he was sold back to the Giants. Again, he played sporadically for them in 1918 before being traded to the Boston Braves on May 21, 1919, for Pat Ragan. In his career, he amassed 91 runs scored, 82 runs batted in and a .252 batting average over 289 games. He continued to play minor league baseball until 1922, and once played for the minor league Toledo Mud Hens. But Thorpe had not abandoned football either. He first played professional football in 1913 as a member of the Indiana-based Pine Village Pros, a team that had a several-season winning streak against local teams during the 1910s. He signed with the Canton Bulldogs in 1915. They paid him $250 ($ today) a game, a tremendous wage at the time. Before signing him Canton was averaging 1,200 fans a game, but 8,000 showed up for Thorpe's debut against the Massillon Tigers. The team won titles in 1916, 1917, and 1919. Thorpe reportedly ended the 1919 championship game by kicking a wind-assisted 95-yard punt from his team's own 5-yard line, effectively putting the game out of reach. In 1920, the Bulldogs were one of 14 teams to form the American Professional Football Association, which became the National Football League (NFL) two years later. Thorpe was nominally their first president, but spent most of the year playing for Canton; a year later, he was replaced as president by Joseph Carr. He continued to play for Canton, coaching the team as well. Between 1921 and 1923, he helped organize and played for the Oorang Indians (LaRue, Ohio), an all-Native American team. Although the team's record was 3–6 in 1922, and 1–10 in 1923, Thorpe played well and was selected for the Green Bay Press-Gazette first All-NFL team in 1923. This was later formally recognized in 1931 by the NFL as the league's official All-NFL team). Thorpe never played for an NFL championship team. He retired from professional football at age 41, having played 52 games for six teams from 1920 to 1928. Most of Thorpe's biographers were unaware of his basketball career until a ticket that documented his time in professional basketball was discovered in an old book in 2005. By 1926, he was the main feature of the "World Famous Indians" of LaRue, a traveling basketball team. "Jim Thorpe's world famous Indians" barnstormed for at least two years (1927–28) in multiple states. Although stories about Thorpe's team were published in some local newspapers at the time, his basketball career is not well-documented. For a brief time in 1913, he was considering going into professional hockey for the Tecumseh Hockey Club in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Marriage and family Thorpe married three times and had a total of eight children. In 1913, Thorpe married Iva M. Miller, whom he had met at Carlisle. In 1917, Iva and Thorpe bought a house now known as the Jim Thorpe House in Yale, Oklahoma, and lived there until 1923. They had four children: James F., Gale, Charlotte, and Grace Frances, an environmentalist and Native rights activist. Miller filed for divorce from Thorpe in 1925, claiming desertion. In 1926, Thorpe married Freeda Verona Kirkpatrick (September 19, 1905 – March 2, 2007). She was working for the manager of the baseball team for which he was playing at the time. They had four sons: Phillip, William, Richard, and John Thorpe. Kirkpatrick divorced Thorpe in 1941, after they had been married for 15 years. Lastly, Thorpe married Patricia Gladys Askew on June 2, 1945. She was with him when he died. Later life, film career, and death After his athletic career, Thorpe struggled to provide for his family. He found it difficult to work a non-sports-related job and never held a job for an extended period of time. During the Great Depression in particular, he had various jobs, among others as an extra for several movies, usually playing an American Indian chief in Westerns. In the 1932 comedy Always Kickin, Thorpe was prominently cast in a speaking part as himself, a kicking coach teaching young football players to drop-kick. In 1931, during the Great Depression, he sold the film rights to his life story to MGM for $1,500 ($ today). Thorpe portrayed an umpire in the 1940 film Knute Rockne, All American. He played a member of the Navajo Nation in the 1950 film Wagon Master. Thorpe was memorialized in the Warner Bros. film Jim Thorpe – All-American (1951), starring Burt Lancaster. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz. Although there were rumors that Thorpe received no money, he was paid $15,000 by Warner Bros. plus a $2,500 donation toward an annuity for him by the studio head of publicity. The movie included archival footage of the 1912 and 1932 Olympics. Thorpe was seen in one scene as a coaching assistant. It was also distributed in the United Kingdom, where it was called Man of Bronze. Apart from his career in films, he worked as a construction worker, a doorman/bouncer, a security guard, and a ditchdigger. He briefly joined the United States Merchant Marine in 1945, during World War II. Thorpe was a chronic alcoholic during his later life. He ran out of money sometime in the early 1950s. When hospitalized for lip cancer in 1950, Thorpe was admitted as a charity case. At a press conference announcing the procedure, his wife, Patricia, wept and pleaded for help, saying, "We're broke ... Jim has nothing but his name and his memories. He has spent money on his own people and has given it away. He has often been exploited." In early 1953, Thorpe went into heart failure for the third time while dining with Patricia in their home in Lomita, California. He was briefly revived by artificial respiration and spoke to those around him, but lost consciousness shortly afterward. He died on March 28 at the age of 65. Victim of racism Thorpe, whose parents were both mixed-race, was raised as a Native American. He accomplished his athletic feats despite the severe racial inequality of the United States. It has often been suggested that his Olympic medals were stripped by the athletic officials because of his ethnicity. While it is difficult to prove this, the public comment at the time largely reflected this view. At the time Thorpe won his gold medals, not all Native Americans were recognized as U.S. citizens (the U.S. government had frequently demanded that they make concessions to adopt European-American ways to receive such recognition). Citizenship was not granted to all American Indians until 1924. When Thorpe attended Carlisle, the students' ethnicity was used for marketing purposes. The football team was called the Indians. To create headlines, the school and journalists often portrayed sporting competitions as conflicts of Indians against whites. The first notice of Thorpe in The New York Times was headlined "Indian Thorpe in Olympiad; Redskin from Carlisle Will Strive for Place on American Team." Throughout his life, Thorpe's accomplishments were described in a similar racial context by other newspapers and sportswriters, which reflected the era. Legacy Olympic awards reinstated Over the years, supporters of Thorpe attempted to have his Olympic titles reinstated. US Olympic officials, including former teammate and later president of the IOC Avery Brundage, rebuffed several attempts. Brundage once said, "Ignorance is no excuse." Most persistent were the author Robert Wheeler and his wife, Florence Ridlon. They succeeded in having the AAU and United States Olympic Committee overturn its decision and restore Thorpe's amateur status before 1913. In 1982, Wheeler and Ridlon established the Jim Thorpe Foundation and gained support from the U.S. Congress. Armed with this support and evidence from 1912 proving that Thorpe's disqualification had occurred after the 30-day time period allowed by Olympics rules, they succeeded in making the case to the IOC. In October 1982, the IOC Executive Committee approved Thorpe's reinstatement. In an unusual ruling, they declared that Thorpe was co-champion with Ferdinand Bie and Wieslander, although both of these athletes had always said they considered Thorpe to be the only champion. In a ceremony on January 18, 1983, the IOC presented two of Thorpe's children, Gale and Bill, with commemorative medals. Thorpe's original medals had been held in museums, but they were stolen and have never been recovered. The IOC listed Thorpe as a co-gold medalist. In July 2020, a petition from Bright Path Strong began circulating that called upon the IOC to reinstate Thorpe as the sole winner in his events in the 1912 Olympics. It was backed by Pictureworks Entertainment, which is making a film about Thorpe. The petition was supported by Olympian Billy Mills, who won a gold medal in the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Games. The IOC voted to reinstate Thorpe as the sole winner of both events on July 14, 2022. Honors Thorpe's monument, featuring the quote from Gustav V ("You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world."), still stands near the town named for him, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. The grave rests on mounds of soil from Thorpe's native Oklahoma and from the stadium in which he won his Olympic medals. Thorpe's achievements received great acclaim from sports journalists, both during his lifetime and since his death. In 1950, an Associated Press poll of almost 400 sportswriters and broadcasters voted Thorpe the "greatest athlete" of the first half of the 20th century. That same year, the Associated Press ranked Thorpe as the "greatest American football player" of the first half of the century. Pro Football Hall of Fame voters selected him for the NFL 50th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1967. In 1999, the Associated Press placed him third on its list of the top athletes of the century, following Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan. ESPN ranked Thorpe seventh on their list of best North American athletes of the century. Thorpe was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, one of seventeen players in the charter class. Thorpe is memorialized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame rotunda with a larger-than-life statue. He was also inducted into halls of fame for college football, American Olympic teams, and the national track and field competition. In 2018, Thorpe became one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony held by the National Native American Hall of Fame. The fitness center and a hall at Haskell Indian Nations University are named in honor of Thorpe. President Richard Nixon, as authorized by U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 73, proclaimed Monday, April 16, 1973, as "Jim Thorpe Day" to promote nationwide recognition of Thorpe's life. In 1986, the Jim Thorpe Association established an award with Thorpe's name. The Jim Thorpe Award is given annually to the best defensive back in college football. The annual Thorpe Cup athletics meeting is named in his honor. The United States Postal Service issued a 32¢ stamp on February 3, 1998, as part of the Celebrate the Century stamp sheet series. In a poll of sports fans published in 2000 by ABC Sports, Thorpe was voted the Greatest Athlete of the Twentieth Century; the pool of 15 other top athletes included Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth, Jesse Owens, Wayne Gretzky, Jack Nicklaus, and Michael Jordan. In 2018, Thorpe was honored on the Native American dollar coin; proposed designs were released in 2015. Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania After Thorpe's funeral was held at St. Benedict's Catholic Church in Shawnee, Oklahoma, his body lay in state at Fairview Cemetery. Residents had paid to have it returned to Shawnee by train from California. The people began a fund-raising effort to erect a memorial for Thorpe at the town's athletic park. Local officials had asked state legislators for funding, but a bill that included $25,000 for their proposal was vetoed by Governor Johnston Murray. Meanwhile, Thorpe's third wife, unbeknownst to the rest of his family, took Thorpe's body and had it shipped to Pennsylvania when she heard that the small Pennsylvania towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk were seeking to attract business. She made a deal with officials which, according to Thorpe's son Jack, was made by the widowed Patricia for monetary considerations. The towns "bought" Thorpe's remains, erected a monument to him at the grave, merged, and renamed the newly united town in his honor as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Thorpe had never been there. The monument site contains his tomb, two statues of him in athletic poses, and historical markers recounting his life story. In June 2010, Jack Thorpe filed a federal lawsuit against the borough of Jim Thorpe, seeking to have his father's remains returned to his homeland and re-interred near other family members in Oklahoma. Citing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Jack was arguing to bring his father's remains to the reservation in Oklahoma, to be buried near those of his father, sisters and brother, a mile from the place he was born. He claimed that the agreement between his stepmother and Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, borough officials was made against the wishes of other family members, who want him buried in Native American land. Jack Thorpe died at 73 on February 22, 2011. In April 2013, U.S. District Judge Richard Caputo ruled that Jim Thorpe borough amounts to a museum under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act ("NAGPRA"), and therefore is bound by that law. A lawyer for Bill and Richard Thorpe said the men would pursue the legal process to have their father's remains returned to Sac and Fox land in central Oklahoma. On October 23, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed Judge Caputo's ruling. The appeals court held that Jim Thorpe borough is not a "museum", as that term is used in NAGPRA, and that the plaintiffs therefore could not invoke that federal statute to seek reinterment of Thorpe's remains. In NAGPRA language, "'museum' means any institution or State or local government agency (including any institution of higher learning) that receives Federal funds and has possession of, or control over, Native American cultural items." The Court of Appeals directed the trial court to enter a judgment in favor of the borough. The appeals court said Pennsylvania law allows the plaintiffs to ask a state court to order reburial of Thorpe's remains, but noted, "once a body is interred there is great reluctance in permitting same to be moved, absent clear and compelling reasons for such a move." On October 5, 2015, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the matter, effectively bringing the legal process to an end. Jim Thorpe Marathon The Jim Thorpe Area Running Festival is a series of races started in 2019 in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. It includes a marathon, a 26.2 mile footrace that features a steady elevation drop from start to finish. See also Citations General and cited sources Bird, Elizabeth S. Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. . Bloom, John. There is a Madness in the Air: The 1926 Haskell Homecoming and Popular Representations of Sports in Federal and Indian Boarding Schools. ed. in Bird. Boulder: Westview Press. 1996. . Buford, Kate. Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. Cava, Pete (Summer 1992). "Baseball in the Olympics" . Citius, Altius, Fortius. 1 (1): 7–15. Retrieved May 4, 2017. Cook, William A. Jim Thorpe: A Biography. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2011. . Dodge, Robert. Which Chosen People? Manifest Destiny Meets the Sioux: As Seen by Frank Fiske, Frontier Photographer. New York: Algora Publishing, 2013. . Dyreson, Mark. Making the American Team: Sport, Culture, and the Olympic Experience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. . Elfers, James E. The Tour to End All Tours. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. . Findling, John E. and Pelle, Kimberly D., eds. Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004. . Gerasimo, Luisa and Whiteley, Sandra. The Teacher's Calendar of Famous Birthdays. McGraw-Hill, 2003. . Hilger, Michael. Native Americans in the Movies: Portrayals from Silent Films to the Present. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. . Hoxie, Frederick E. Encyclopedia of North American Indians. New York: Houghton Mifflin Books, 1996. . Jeansonne, Glen. A Time of Paradox: America Since 1890. Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. . Landrum, Dr. Gene. Empowerment: The Competitive Edge in Sports, Business & Life. Brendan Kelly Publishing Incorporated, 2006. . Lincoln, Kenneth and Slagle, Al Logan. The Good Red Road: Passages into Native America. University of Nebraska Press, 1997. . Magill, Frank Northern. Great Lives from History. New York: Salem Press, 1987. . Neft, David S., Cohen, Richard M., and Korch, Rick. The Complete History of Professional Football from 1892 to the Present. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. . O'Hanlon-Lincoln, Ceane. Chronicles: A Vivid Collection of Fayette County, Pennsylvania Histories. Mechling Bookbindery, 2006. . Quirk, Charles E., ed. Sports and the Law: Major Legal Cases. London: Routledge, 2014. . Rogge, M. Jacque, Johnson, Michael, and Rendell, Matt. The Olympics: Athens to Athens 1896–2004. Sterling Publishing, 2004. . Schaffer, Kay and Smith, Sidonie. The Olympics at the Millennium: Power, Politics and the Games. Rutger University Press, 2000. . Watterson, John Sayle. College Football: history, spectacle, controversy. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. . Wheeler, Robert W. Jim Thorpe, World's Greatest Athlete. University of Oklahoma Press, 1979. . Williams, Randy. Sports Cinema 100 Movies: The Best of Hollywood's Athletic Heroes, Losers, Myths, and Misfits. Pompton Plains: Limelight Editions, 2006. . Zarnowski, Frank. All-Around Men: Heroes of a Forgotten Sport. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2005. Zarnowski, Frank. The Pentathlon of the Ancient World. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2013. . Further reading Benjey, Tom. Doctors, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs. Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Tuxedo Press, 2008. . "In the Matter of Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe" in Bill Mallon and Ture Widlund, The 1912 Olympic Games: Results for All Competitors in All Events, with Commentary. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2002. . Newcombe, Jack. The Best of the Athletic Boys: The White Man's Impact on Jim Thorpe. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1975. . Updyke, Rosemary Kissinger. Jim Thorpe, the Legend Remembered. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican, 1997. . Wallechinsky, David. The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 2000. . 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Jim Thorpe

Information about Thorpe's birth, name and ethnic background varies widely. He was baptized "Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe" in the Catholic Church. Thorpe was born in Indian Territory of the United States (later Oklahoma), but no birth certificate has been found. He was generally considered to have been born on May 22, 1887, near the town of Prague, Oklahoma.

Baseball, football, and basketball

Thorpe signed with the New York Giants baseball club in 1913 and played sporadically with them as an outfielder for three seasons. After playing in the minor leagues with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1916, he returned to the Giants in 1917 but was sold to the Cincinnati Reds early in the season. In the "double no-hitter" between Fred Toney of the Reds and Hippo Vaughn of the Chicago Cubs, Thorpe drove in the winning run in the 10th inning. Late in the season, he was sold back to the Giants. Again, he played sporadically for them in 1918 before being traded to the Boston Braves on May 21, 1919, for Pat Ragan. In his career, he amassed 91 runs scored, 82 runs batted in and a .252 batting average over 289 games. He continued to play minor league baseball until 1922. But Thorpe had not abandoned football either. He first played professional football in 1913 as a member of the Indiana-based Pine Village Pros, a team that had a several-season winning streak against local teams during the 1910s. He then signed with the Canton Bulldogs in 1915. They paid him $250 ($6,048 today) a game, a tremendous wage at the time. Before signing him Canton was averaging 1,200 fans a game, but 8,000 showed up for his debut against the Massillon Tigers. The team won titles in 1916, 1917, and 1919. He reportedly ended the 1919 championship game by kicking a wind-assisted 95-yard punt from his team's own 5-yard line, effectively putting the game out of reach. In 1920, the Bulldogs were one of 14 teams to form the American Professional Football Association (APFA), which would become the National Football League (NFL) two years later. Thorpe was nominally the APFA's first president, but spent most of the year playing for Canton and a year later was replaced as president by Joseph Carr. He continued to play for Canton, coaching the team as well. Between 1921 and 1923, he helped organize and played for the Oorang Indians (LaRue, Ohio), an all-Native American team. Although the team's record was 3-6 in 1922, and 1-10 in 1923, he played well and was selected for the Green Bay Press-Gazette's first All-NFL team in 1923, which would later be formally recognized by the NFL as the league's official All-NFL team in 1931). Thorpe never played for an NFL championship team. He retired from professional football at age 41, having played 52 NFL games for six teams from 1920 to 1928. Until 2005, most of Thorpe's biographers were unaware of his basketball career until a ticket that documented his time in professional basketball was discovered in an old book that year. By 1926, he was the main feature of the "World Famous Indians" of LaRue, a traveling basketball team. "Jim Thorpe's world famous Indians" barnstormed for at least two years (1927-28) in multiple states. Although stories about Thorpe's team were published in some local newspapers at the time, his basketball career had not been well-documented afterwards. CANNOTANSWER

James Francis Thorpe (Sac and Fox (Sauk): Wa-Tho-Huk, translated as "Bright Path"; May 22 or 28, 1887March 28, 1953) was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics. Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won two Olympic gold medals in the 1912 Summer Olympics (one in classic pentathlon and the other in decathlon). He also played football (collegiate and professional), professional baseball, and basketball. He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he had been paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the contemporary amateurism rules. In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals with replicas, after ruling that the decision to strip him of his medals fell outside of the required 30 days. Official IOC records still listed Thorpe as co-champion in decathlon and pentathlon until 2022, when it was decided to restore him as the sole champion in both events. Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox Nation in Indian Territory (what is now the U.S. state of Oklahoma). As a youth, he attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was a two-time All-American for the school's football team under coach Pop Warner. After his Olympic success in 1912, which included a record score in the decathlon, he added a victory in the All-Around Championship of the Amateur Athletic Union. In 1913, he played for the Pine Village Pros in Indiana. Later in 1913, Thorpe signed with the New York Giants, and he played six seasons in Major League Baseball between 1913 and 1919. Thorpe joined the Canton Bulldogs American football team in 1915, helping them win three professional championships. He later played for six teams in the National Football League (NFL). He played as part of several all-American Indian teams throughout his career, and barnstormed as a professional basketball player with a team composed entirely of American Indians. From 1920 to 1921, Thorpe was nominally the first president of the American Professional Football Association, which became the NFL in 1922. He played professional sports until age 41, the end of his sports career coinciding with the start of the Great Depression. He struggled to earn a living after that, working several odd jobs. He suffered from alcoholism, and lived his last years in failing health and poverty. He was married three times and had eight children, including Grace Thorpe, an environmentalist and Native rights activist, before suffering from heart failure and dying in 1953. Thorpe has received numerous accolades for his athletic accomplishments. The Associated Press ranked him as the "greatest athlete" from the first 50 years of the 20th century, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted him as part of its inaugural class in 1963. The town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania was named in his honor. It has a monument site that contains his remains, which were the subject of legal action. Thorpe appeared in several films and was portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the 1951 film Jim Thorpe – All-American. Early life Information about Thorpe's birth, name and ethnic background varies widely. He was baptized "Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe" in the Catholic Church. Thorpe was born in Indian Territory of the United States (later Oklahoma), but no birth certificate has been found. He was generally considered to have been born on May 22, 1887, near the town of Prague. Thorpe said in a note to The Shawnee News-Star in 1943 that he was born May 28, 1888, "near and south of Bellemont – Pottawatomie County – along the banks of the North Fork River ... hope this will clear up the inquiries as to my birthplace." Most biographers believe that he was born on May 22, 1887, the date listed on his baptismal certificate. Thorpe referred to Shawnee as his birthplace in his 1943 note to the newspaper. Thorpe's parents were both of mixed-race ancestry. His father, Hiram Thorpe, had an Irish father and a Sac and Fox Indian mother. His mother, Charlotte Vieux, had a French father and a Potawatomi mother, a descendant of Chief Louis Vieux. Thorpe was raised as a Sac and Fox, and his native name, Wa-Tho-Huk, is translated as "path lit by great flash of lightning" or, more simply, "Bright Path". As was the custom for Sac and Fox, he was named for something occurring around the time of his birth, in this case the light brightening the path to the cabin where he was born. Thorpe's parents were both Roman Catholic, a faith which Thorpe observed throughout his adult life. Thorpe attended the Sac and Fox Indian Agency school in Stroud, with his twin brother, Charlie. Charlie helped him through school until he died of pneumonia when they were nine years old. Thorpe ran away from school several times. His father sent him to the Haskell Institute, an Indian boarding school in Lawrence, Kansas, so that he would not run away again. When Thorpe's mother died of childbirth complications two years later, the youth became depressed. After several arguments with his father, he left home to work on a horse ranch. In 1904, the sixteen-year-old Thorpe returned to his father and decided to attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There his athletic ability was recognized and he was coached by Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner, one of the most influential coaches of early American football history. Later that year the youth was orphaned after his father Hiram Thorpe died from gangrene poisoning, after being wounded in a hunting accident. The young Thorpe again dropped out of school. He resumed farm work for a few years before returning to Carlisle School. Amateur career College career Thorpe began his athletic career at Carlisle in 1907 when he walked past the track and, still in street clothes, beat all the school's high jumpers with an impromptu 5-ft 9-in jump. His earliest recorded track and field results come from 1907. He also competed in football, baseball, lacrosse, and ballroom dancing, winning the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship. Pop Warner was hesitant to allow Thorpe, his best track and field athlete, to compete in such a physical game as football. Thorpe, however, convinced Warner to let him try some rushing plays in practice against the school team's defense; Warner assumed he would be tackled easily and give up the idea. Thorpe "ran around past and through them not once, but twice". He walked over to Warner and said, "Nobody is going to tackle Jim", while flipping him the ball. Thorpe first gained nationwide notice in 1911 for his athletic ability. As a running back, defensive back, placekicker and punter, Thorpe scored all of his team's four field goals in an 18–15 upset of Harvard, a top-ranked team in the early days of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). His team finished the season 11–1. In 1912 Carlisle won the national collegiate championship largely as a result of Thorpe's efforts: he scored 25 touchdowns and 198 points during the season, according to CNN's Greg Botelho. Steve Boda, a researcher for the NCAA, credits Thorpe with 27 touchdowns and 224 points. Thorpe rushed 191 times for 1,869 yards, according to Boda; the figures do not include statistics from two of Carlisle's 14 games in 1912 because full records are not available. Carlisle's 1912 record included a 27–6 victory over the West Point Army team. In that game, Thorpe's 92-yard touchdown was nullified by a teammate's penalty, but on the next play Thorpe rushed for a 97-yard touchdown. Future President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played against him in that game, recalled of Thorpe in a 1961 speech: Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw. Thorpe was awarded third-team All-American honors in 1908, and named a first-team All-American in 1911 and 1912. Football was – and remained – Thorpe's favorite sport. He did not compete in track and field in 1910 or 1911, although this turned out to be the sport in which he gained his greatest fame. In the spring of 1912, he started training for the Olympics. He had confined his efforts to jumps, hurdles and shot-puts, but now added pole vaulting, javelin, discus, hammer and 56 lb weight. In the Olympic trials held at Celtic Park in New York, his all-round ability stood out in all these events and so he earned a place on the team that went to Sweden. Olympic career For the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, two new multi-event disciplines were included, the pentathlon and the decathlon. A pentathlon, based on the ancient Greek event, had been introduced at the 1906 Intercalated Games. The 1912 version consisted of the long jump, javelin throw, 200-meter dash, discus throw, and 1500-meter run. The decathlon was a relatively new event in modern athletics, although a similar competition known as the all-around championship had been part of American track meets since the 1880s. A men's version had been featured on the program of the 1904 St. Louis Olympics. The events of the new decathlon differed slightly from the American version. Both events seemed appropriate for Thorpe, who was so versatile that he served as Carlisle's one-man team in several track meets. According to his obituary in The New York Times, he could run the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat; the 220 in 21.8 seconds; the 440 in 51.8 seconds; the 880 in 1:57, the mile in 4:35; the 120-yard high hurdles in 15 seconds; and the 220-yard low hurdles in 24 seconds. He could long jump 23 ft 6 in and high-jump 6 ft 5 in. He could pole vault 11 feet; put the shot 47 ft 9 in; throw the javelin 163 feet; and throw the discus 136 feet. Thorpe entered the U.S. Olympic trials for both the pentathlon and the decathlon. He easily earned a place on the pentathlon team, winning three events. The decathlon trial was subsequently cancelled, and Thorpe was chosen to represent the U.S. in the event. The pentathlon and decathlon teams also included Avery Brundage, a future International Olympic Committee president. Thorpe was extremely busy in the Olympics. Along with the decathlon and pentathlon, he competed in the long jump and high jump. The first competition was the pentathlon on July 7. He won four of the five events and placed third in the javelin, an event he had not competed in before 1912. Although the pentathlon was primarily decided on place points, points were also earned for the marks achieved in the individual events. Thorpe won the gold medal. That same day, he qualified for the high jump final, in which he finished in a tie for fourth. On July 12, Thorpe placed seventh in the long jump. Thorpe's final event was the decathlon, his first (and as it turned out, his only) decathlon. Strong competition from local favorite Hugo Wieslander was expected. Thorpe, however, defeated Wieslander by 688 points. He placed in the top four in all ten events, and his Olympic record of 8,413 points stood for nearly two decades. Even more remarkably, because someone had stolen his shoes just before he was due to compete, he found a mismatched pair of replacements, including one from a trash can, and won the gold medal wearing them. Overall, Thorpe won eight of the 15 individual events comprising the pentathlon and decathlon. As was the custom of the day, the medals were presented to the athletes during the closing ceremonies of the games. Along with the two gold medals, Thorpe also received two challenge prizes, which were donated by King Gustav V of Sweden for the decathlon and Czar Nicholas II of Russia for the pentathlon. Several sources recount that, when awarding Thorpe his prize, King Gustav said, "You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world", to which Thorpe replied, "Thanks, King". Thorpe biographer Kate Buford suggests that the story is apocryphal, as she believes that such a comment "would have been out of character for a man who was highly uncomfortable in public ceremonies and hated to stand out." The anecdote appeared in newspapers by 1948, 36 years after his appearance in the Olympics and time for myth making, and in books as early as 1952. Thorpe's successes were followed in the United States. On the Olympic team's return, Thorpe was the star attraction in a ticker-tape parade on Broadway. He remembered later, "I heard people yelling my name, and I couldn't realize how one fellow could have so many friends." Apart from his track and field appearances, Thorpe also played in one of two exhibition baseball games at the 1912 Olympics, which featured two teams composed mostly of U.S. track and field athletes. Thorpe had previous experience in the sport, as the public soon learned. All-Around champion After his victories at the Olympic Games in Sweden, on September 2, 1912, Thorpe returned to Celtic Park, the home of the Irish American Athletic Club, in Queens, New York (where he had qualified four months earlier for the Olympic Games), to compete in the Amateur Athletic Union's All-Around Championship. Competing against Bruno Brodd of the Irish American Athletic Club and John L. Bredemus of Princeton University, he won seven of the ten events contested and came in second in the remaining three. With a total point score of 7,476 points, Thorpe broke the previous record of 7,385 points set in 1909 (also at Celtic Park), by Martin Sheridan, the champion athlete of the Irish American Athletic Club. Sheridan, a five-time Olympic gold medalist, was present to watch his record broken. He approached Thorpe after the event and shook his hand saying, "Jim, my boy, you're a great man. I never expect to look upon a finer athlete." He told a reporter from New York World, "Thorpe is the greatest athlete that ever lived. He has me beaten fifty ways. Even when I was in my prime, I could not do what he did today." Controversy In 1912, strict rules regarding amateurism were in effect for athletes participating in the Olympics. Athletes who received money prizes for competitions, were sports teachers, or had competed previously against professionals were not considered amateurs. They were barred from competition. In late January 1913, the Worcester Telegram reported that Thorpe had played professional baseball before the Olympics, and other U.S. newspapers followed up the story. Thorpe had played professional baseball in the Eastern Carolina League for Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 1909 and 1910, receiving meager pay; reportedly as little as US$2 ($ today) per game and as much as US$35 ($ today) per week. College players, in fact, regularly spent summers playing professionally in order to earn some money, but most used aliases, unlike Thorpe. Although the public did not seem to care much about Thorpe's past, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), and especially its secretary James Edward Sullivan, took the case very seriously. Thorpe wrote a letter to Sullivan, in which he admitted playing professional baseball: His letter did not help. The AAU decided to withdraw Thorpe's amateur status retroactively. Later that year, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) unanimously decided to strip Thorpe of his Olympic titles, medals and awards, and declare him a professional. Although Thorpe had played for money, the AAU and IOC did not follow their own rules for disqualification. The rulebook for the 1912 Olympics stated that protests had to be made "within 30 days from the closing ceremonies of the games." The first newspaper reports did not appear until January 1913, about six months after the Stockholm Games had concluded. There is also some evidence that Thorpe was known to have played professional baseball before the Olympics, but the AAU had ignored the issue until being confronted with it in 1913. The only positive aspect of this affair for Thorpe was that, as soon as the news was reported that he had been declared a professional, he received offers from professional sports clubs. Professional career Baseball free agent Because the minor league team that last held Jim Thorpe's contract had disbanded in 1910, the athlete had the unusual status as a sought-after free agent at the major league level during the era of the reserve clause. He could choose the baseball team for which to play. In January 1913, he turned down a starting position with the St. Louis Browns, then at the bottom of the American League. He chose to join the 1912 National League champion New York Giants. With Thorpe playing in 19 of their 151 games, they repeated as the 1913 National League champions. Immediately following the Giants' October loss in the 1913 World Series, Thorpe and the Giants joined the Chicago White Sox for a world tour. Barnstorming across the United States and around the world, Thorpe was the celebrity of the tour. Thorpe's presence increased the publicity, attendance and gate receipts for the tour. He met with Pope Pius X and Abbas II Hilmi Bey (the last Khedive of Egypt), and played before 20,000 people in London including King George V. Thorpe was the last man to compete in both the Olympics (in a non-baseball sport) and Major League Baseball before Eddy Alvarez did the same in 2020. Baseball, football, and other sports Thorpe signed with the New York Giants baseball club in 1913 and played sporadically with them as an outfielder for three seasons. After playing in the minor leagues with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1916, he returned to the Giants in 1917. He was sold to the Cincinnati Reds early in the season. In the "double no-hitter" between Fred Toney of the Reds and Hippo Vaughn of the Chicago Cubs, Thorpe drove in the winning run in the 10th inning. Late in the season, he was sold back to the Giants. Again, he played sporadically for them in 1918 before being traded to the Boston Braves on May 21, 1919, for Pat Ragan. In his career, he amassed 91 runs scored, 82 runs batted in and a .252 batting average over 289 games. He continued to play minor league baseball until 1922, and once played for the minor league Toledo Mud Hens. But Thorpe had not abandoned football either. He first played professional football in 1913 as a member of the Indiana-based Pine Village Pros, a team that had a several-season winning streak against local teams during the 1910s. He signed with the Canton Bulldogs in 1915. They paid him $250 ($ today) a game, a tremendous wage at the time. Before signing him Canton was averaging 1,200 fans a game, but 8,000 showed up for Thorpe's debut against the Massillon Tigers. The team won titles in 1916, 1917, and 1919. Thorpe reportedly ended the 1919 championship game by kicking a wind-assisted 95-yard punt from his team's own 5-yard line, effectively putting the game out of reach. In 1920, the Bulldogs were one of 14 teams to form the American Professional Football Association, which became the National Football League (NFL) two years later. Thorpe was nominally their first president, but spent most of the year playing for Canton; a year later, he was replaced as president by Joseph Carr. He continued to play for Canton, coaching the team as well. Between 1921 and 1923, he helped organize and played for the Oorang Indians (LaRue, Ohio), an all-Native American team. Although the team's record was 3–6 in 1922, and 1–10 in 1923, Thorpe played well and was selected for the Green Bay Press-Gazette first All-NFL team in 1923. This was later formally recognized in 1931 by the NFL as the league's official All-NFL team). Thorpe never played for an NFL championship team. He retired from professional football at age 41, having played 52 games for six teams from 1920 to 1928. Most of Thorpe's biographers were unaware of his basketball career until a ticket that documented his time in professional basketball was discovered in an old book in 2005. By 1926, he was the main feature of the "World Famous Indians" of LaRue, a traveling basketball team. "Jim Thorpe's world famous Indians" barnstormed for at least two years (1927–28) in multiple states. Although stories about Thorpe's team were published in some local newspapers at the time, his basketball career is not well-documented. For a brief time in 1913, he was considering going into professional hockey for the Tecumseh Hockey Club in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Marriage and family Thorpe married three times and had a total of eight children. In 1913, Thorpe married Iva M. Miller, whom he had met at Carlisle. In 1917, Iva and Thorpe bought a house now known as the Jim Thorpe House in Yale, Oklahoma, and lived there until 1923. They had four children: James F., Gale, Charlotte, and Grace Frances, an environmentalist and Native rights activist. Miller filed for divorce from Thorpe in 1925, claiming desertion. In 1926, Thorpe married Freeda Verona Kirkpatrick (September 19, 1905 – March 2, 2007). She was working for the manager of the baseball team for which he was playing at the time. They had four sons: Phillip, William, Richard, and John Thorpe. Kirkpatrick divorced Thorpe in 1941, after they had been married for 15 years. Lastly, Thorpe married Patricia Gladys Askew on June 2, 1945. She was with him when he died. Later life, film career, and death After his athletic career, Thorpe struggled to provide for his family. He found it difficult to work a non-sports-related job and never held a job for an extended period of time. During the Great Depression in particular, he had various jobs, among others as an extra for several movies, usually playing an American Indian chief in Westerns. In the 1932 comedy Always Kickin, Thorpe was prominently cast in a speaking part as himself, a kicking coach teaching young football players to drop-kick. In 1931, during the Great Depression, he sold the film rights to his life story to MGM for $1,500 ($ today). Thorpe portrayed an umpire in the 1940 film Knute Rockne, All American. He played a member of the Navajo Nation in the 1950 film Wagon Master. Thorpe was memorialized in the Warner Bros. film Jim Thorpe – All-American (1951), starring Burt Lancaster. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz. Although there were rumors that Thorpe received no money, he was paid $15,000 by Warner Bros. plus a $2,500 donation toward an annuity for him by the studio head of publicity. The movie included archival footage of the 1912 and 1932 Olympics. Thorpe was seen in one scene as a coaching assistant. It was also distributed in the United Kingdom, where it was called Man of Bronze. Apart from his career in films, he worked as a construction worker, a doorman/bouncer, a security guard, and a ditchdigger. He briefly joined the United States Merchant Marine in 1945, during World War II. Thorpe was a chronic alcoholic during his later life. He ran out of money sometime in the early 1950s. When hospitalized for lip cancer in 1950, Thorpe was admitted as a charity case. At a press conference announcing the procedure, his wife, Patricia, wept and pleaded for help, saying, "We're broke ... Jim has nothing but his name and his memories. He has spent money on his own people and has given it away. He has often been exploited." In early 1953, Thorpe went into heart failure for the third time while dining with Patricia in their home in Lomita, California. He was briefly revived by artificial respiration and spoke to those around him, but lost consciousness shortly afterward. He died on March 28 at the age of 65. Victim of racism Thorpe, whose parents were both mixed-race, was raised as a Native American. He accomplished his athletic feats despite the severe racial inequality of the United States. It has often been suggested that his Olympic medals were stripped by the athletic officials because of his ethnicity. While it is difficult to prove this, the public comment at the time largely reflected this view. At the time Thorpe won his gold medals, not all Native Americans were recognized as U.S. citizens (the U.S. government had frequently demanded that they make concessions to adopt European-American ways to receive such recognition). Citizenship was not granted to all American Indians until 1924. When Thorpe attended Carlisle, the students' ethnicity was used for marketing purposes. The football team was called the Indians. To create headlines, the school and journalists often portrayed sporting competitions as conflicts of Indians against whites. The first notice of Thorpe in The New York Times was headlined "Indian Thorpe in Olympiad; Redskin from Carlisle Will Strive for Place on American Team." Throughout his life, Thorpe's accomplishments were described in a similar racial context by other newspapers and sportswriters, which reflected the era. Legacy Olympic awards reinstated Over the years, supporters of Thorpe attempted to have his Olympic titles reinstated. US Olympic officials, including former teammate and later president of the IOC Avery Brundage, rebuffed several attempts. Brundage once said, "Ignorance is no excuse." Most persistent were the author Robert Wheeler and his wife, Florence Ridlon. They succeeded in having the AAU and United States Olympic Committee overturn its decision and restore Thorpe's amateur status before 1913. In 1982, Wheeler and Ridlon established the Jim Thorpe Foundation and gained support from the U.S. Congress. Armed with this support and evidence from 1912 proving that Thorpe's disqualification had occurred after the 30-day time period allowed by Olympics rules, they succeeded in making the case to the IOC. In October 1982, the IOC Executive Committee approved Thorpe's reinstatement. In an unusual ruling, they declared that Thorpe was co-champion with Ferdinand Bie and Wieslander, although both of these athletes had always said they considered Thorpe to be the only champion. In a ceremony on January 18, 1983, the IOC presented two of Thorpe's children, Gale and Bill, with commemorative medals. Thorpe's original medals had been held in museums, but they were stolen and have never been recovered. The IOC listed Thorpe as a co-gold medalist. In July 2020, a petition from Bright Path Strong began circulating that called upon the IOC to reinstate Thorpe as the sole winner in his events in the 1912 Olympics. It was backed by Pictureworks Entertainment, which is making a film about Thorpe. The petition was supported by Olympian Billy Mills, who won a gold medal in the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Games. The IOC voted to reinstate Thorpe as the sole winner of both events on July 14, 2022. Honors Thorpe's monument, featuring the quote from Gustav V ("You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world."), still stands near the town named for him, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. The grave rests on mounds of soil from Thorpe's native Oklahoma and from the stadium in which he won his Olympic medals. Thorpe's achievements received great acclaim from sports journalists, both during his lifetime and since his death. In 1950, an Associated Press poll of almost 400 sportswriters and broadcasters voted Thorpe the "greatest athlete" of the first half of the 20th century. That same year, the Associated Press ranked Thorpe as the "greatest American football player" of the first half of the century. Pro Football Hall of Fame voters selected him for the NFL 50th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1967. In 1999, the Associated Press placed him third on its list of the top athletes of the century, following Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan. ESPN ranked Thorpe seventh on their list of best North American athletes of the century. Thorpe was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, one of seventeen players in the charter class. Thorpe is memorialized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame rotunda with a larger-than-life statue. He was also inducted into halls of fame for college football, American Olympic teams, and the national track and field competition. In 2018, Thorpe became one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony held by the National Native American Hall of Fame. The fitness center and a hall at Haskell Indian Nations University are named in honor of Thorpe. President Richard Nixon, as authorized by U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 73, proclaimed Monday, April 16, 1973, as "Jim Thorpe Day" to promote nationwide recognition of Thorpe's life. In 1986, the Jim Thorpe Association established an award with Thorpe's name. The Jim Thorpe Award is given annually to the best defensive back in college football. The annual Thorpe Cup athletics meeting is named in his honor. The United States Postal Service issued a 32¢ stamp on February 3, 1998, as part of the Celebrate the Century stamp sheet series. In a poll of sports fans published in 2000 by ABC Sports, Thorpe was voted the Greatest Athlete of the Twentieth Century; the pool of 15 other top athletes included Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth, Jesse Owens, Wayne Gretzky, Jack Nicklaus, and Michael Jordan. In 2018, Thorpe was honored on the Native American dollar coin; proposed designs were released in 2015. Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania After Thorpe's funeral was held at St. Benedict's Catholic Church in Shawnee, Oklahoma, his body lay in state at Fairview Cemetery. Residents had paid to have it returned to Shawnee by train from California. The people began a fund-raising effort to erect a memorial for Thorpe at the town's athletic park. Local officials had asked state legislators for funding, but a bill that included $25,000 for their proposal was vetoed by Governor Johnston Murray. Meanwhile, Thorpe's third wife, unbeknownst to the rest of his family, took Thorpe's body and had it shipped to Pennsylvania when she heard that the small Pennsylvania towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk were seeking to attract business. She made a deal with officials which, according to Thorpe's son Jack, was made by the widowed Patricia for monetary considerations. The towns "bought" Thorpe's remains, erected a monument to him at the grave, merged, and renamed the newly united town in his honor as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Thorpe had never been there. The monument site contains his tomb, two statues of him in athletic poses, and historical markers recounting his life story. In June 2010, Jack Thorpe filed a federal lawsuit against the borough of Jim Thorpe, seeking to have his father's remains returned to his homeland and re-interred near other family members in Oklahoma. Citing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Jack was arguing to bring his father's remains to the reservation in Oklahoma, to be buried near those of his father, sisters and brother, a mile from the place he was born. He claimed that the agreement between his stepmother and Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, borough officials was made against the wishes of other family members, who want him buried in Native American land. Jack Thorpe died at 73 on February 22, 2011. In April 2013, U.S. District Judge Richard Caputo ruled that Jim Thorpe borough amounts to a museum under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act ("NAGPRA"), and therefore is bound by that law. A lawyer for Bill and Richard Thorpe said the men would pursue the legal process to have their father's remains returned to Sac and Fox land in central Oklahoma. On October 23, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed Judge Caputo's ruling. The appeals court held that Jim Thorpe borough is not a "museum", as that term is used in NAGPRA, and that the plaintiffs therefore could not invoke that federal statute to seek reinterment of Thorpe's remains. In NAGPRA language, "'museum' means any institution or State or local government agency (including any institution of higher learning) that receives Federal funds and has possession of, or control over, Native American cultural items." The Court of Appeals directed the trial court to enter a judgment in favor of the borough. The appeals court said Pennsylvania law allows the plaintiffs to ask a state court to order reburial of Thorpe's remains, but noted, "once a body is interred there is great reluctance in permitting same to be moved, absent clear and compelling reasons for such a move." On October 5, 2015, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the matter, effectively bringing the legal process to an end. Jim Thorpe Marathon The Jim Thorpe Area Running Festival is a series of races started in 2019 in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. It includes a marathon, a 26.2 mile footrace that features a steady elevation drop from start to finish. See also Citations General and cited sources Bird, Elizabeth S. Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. . Bloom, John. There is a Madness in the Air: The 1926 Haskell Homecoming and Popular Representations of Sports in Federal and Indian Boarding Schools. ed. in Bird. Boulder: Westview Press. 1996. . Buford, Kate. Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. Cava, Pete (Summer 1992). "Baseball in the Olympics" . Citius, Altius, Fortius. 1 (1): 7–15. Retrieved May 4, 2017. Cook, William A. Jim Thorpe: A Biography. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2011. . Dodge, Robert. Which Chosen People? Manifest Destiny Meets the Sioux: As Seen by Frank Fiske, Frontier Photographer. New York: Algora Publishing, 2013. . Dyreson, Mark. Making the American Team: Sport, Culture, and the Olympic Experience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. . Elfers, James E. The Tour to End All Tours. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. . Findling, John E. and Pelle, Kimberly D., eds. Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004. . Gerasimo, Luisa and Whiteley, Sandra. The Teacher's Calendar of Famous Birthdays. McGraw-Hill, 2003. . Hilger, Michael. Native Americans in the Movies: Portrayals from Silent Films to the Present. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. . Hoxie, Frederick E. Encyclopedia of North American Indians. New York: Houghton Mifflin Books, 1996. . Jeansonne, Glen. A Time of Paradox: America Since 1890. Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. . Landrum, Dr. Gene. Empowerment: The Competitive Edge in Sports, Business & Life. Brendan Kelly Publishing Incorporated, 2006. . Lincoln, Kenneth and Slagle, Al Logan. The Good Red Road: Passages into Native America. University of Nebraska Press, 1997. . Magill, Frank Northern. Great Lives from History. New York: Salem Press, 1987. . Neft, David S., Cohen, Richard M., and Korch, Rick. The Complete History of Professional Football from 1892 to the Present. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. . O'Hanlon-Lincoln, Ceane. Chronicles: A Vivid Collection of Fayette County, Pennsylvania Histories. Mechling Bookbindery, 2006. . Quirk, Charles E., ed. Sports and the Law: Major Legal Cases. London: Routledge, 2014. . Rogge, M. Jacque, Johnson, Michael, and Rendell, Matt. The Olympics: Athens to Athens 1896–2004. Sterling Publishing, 2004. . Schaffer, Kay and Smith, Sidonie. The Olympics at the Millennium: Power, Politics and the Games. Rutger University Press, 2000. . Watterson, John Sayle. College Football: history, spectacle, controversy. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. . Wheeler, Robert W. Jim Thorpe, World's Greatest Athlete. University of Oklahoma Press, 1979. . Williams, Randy. Sports Cinema 100 Movies: The Best of Hollywood's Athletic Heroes, Losers, Myths, and Misfits. Pompton Plains: Limelight Editions, 2006. . Zarnowski, Frank. All-Around Men: Heroes of a Forgotten Sport. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2005. Zarnowski, Frank. The Pentathlon of the Ancient World. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2013. . Further reading Benjey, Tom. Doctors, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs. Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Tuxedo Press, 2008. . "In the Matter of Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe" in Bill Mallon and Ture Widlund, The 1912 Olympic Games: Results for All Competitors in All Events, with Commentary. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2002. . Newcombe, Jack. The Best of the Athletic Boys: The White Man's Impact on Jim Thorpe. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1975. . Updyke, Rosemary Kissinger. Jim Thorpe, the Legend Remembered. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican, 1997. . Wallechinsky, David. The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 2000. . 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Alice in Chains

Alice in Chains is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1987 by guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney, who then recruited bassist Mike Starr and lead vocalist Layne Staley. Mike Starr was replaced in 1993 by Mike Inez. The band took its name from Staley's previous group, the glam metal band Alice N' Chains. Although widely associated with grunge music, the band's sound incorporates heavy metal elements.

Dirt (1992-1993)

In March 1992, the band returned to the studio. With new songs written primarily on the road, the material has an overall darker feel than Facelift, with six of the album's thirteen songs dealing with the subject of addiction. "We did a lot of soul searching on this album. There's a lot of intense feelings." Cantrell said, "We deal with our daily demons through music. All of the poison that builds up during the day we cleanse when we play". On September 29, 1992, Alice in Chains released its second album, Dirt. The album peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 and since its release has been certified quadruple platinum by the RIAA, making Dirt the band's highest selling album to date. The album was a critical success, with Steve Huey of Allmusic praising the album as a "major artistic statement, and the closest they ever came to recording a flat-out masterpiece". Chris Gill of Guitar World called Dirt "huge and foreboding, yet eerie and intimate", and "sublimely dark and brutally honest". Dirt spawned five top 30 singles, "Would?", "Rooster", "Them Bones", "Angry Chair", and "Down in a Hole", and remained on the charts for nearly two years. Alice in Chains was added as openers to Ozzy Osbourne's No More Tours tour. Days before the tour began, Layne Staley broke his foot in an ATV accident, forcing him to use crutches on stage. Starr left the band shortly after the Hollywood Rock concert in Rio de Janeiro in January 1993, stating that he wanted to spend more time with his family. Staley told Rolling Stone in 1994 about Starr leaving the band, "It was just a difference in priorities. We wanted to continue intense touring and press. Mike was ready to go home." Years later, Starr claimed that he was fired due to his drug addiction. Starr was replaced by former Ozzy Osbourne bassist Mike Inez. In 1993, the band recorded two songs with Inez, "What the Hell Have I" and "A Little Bitter", for the Last Action Hero soundtrack. During the summer of 1993, Alice in Chains toured with the alternative music festival Lollapalooza, their last major tour with Staley. CANNOTANSWER

Alice in Chains (often abbreviated as AIC) is an American rock band from Seattle, Washington, formed in 1987 by guitarist and vocalist Jerry Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney, who later recruited bassist Mike Starr and lead vocalist Layne Staley. Starr was replaced by Mike Inez in 1993. William DuVall joined the band in 2006 as co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, replacing Staley, who died in 2002. The band took its name from Staley's previous group, the glam metal band Alice N' Chains. Often associated with grunge music, Alice in Chains' sound incorporates heavy metal elements. The band is known for its distinctive vocal style, which often included the harmonized vocals between Staley and Cantrell (and later Cantrell and DuVall). Cantrell started to sing lead vocals on the 1992 acoustic EP Sap, and his role continued to grow in the following albums, making Alice in Chains a two-vocal band. Alice in Chains rose to international fame as part of the grunge movement of the early 1990s, along with other Seattle bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. They achieved success during the era with the albums Facelift (1990), Dirt (1992) and Alice in Chains (1995), as well as the EP Jar of Flies (1994). Although never officially disbanding, Alice in Chains was plagued by extended inactivity from 1996 onward, due to Staley's substance abuse, which resulted in his death in 2002. The band regrouped in 2006, with DuVall taking over as lead vocalist full-time, and they have since released three more albums: Black Gives Way to Blue (2009), The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here (2013), and Rainier Fog (2018). Since its formation, Alice in Chains has released six studio albums, three EPs, three live albums, four compilations, two DVDs, 43 music videos, and 32 singles. They have sold more than 30 million records worldwide, and over 19 million records in the US alone. The band has had 18 Top 10 songs on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, 5 No. 1 hits, and received 11 Grammy Award nominations. They were ranked number 34 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock and as the 15th greatest live band by Hit Parader. History 1984–1989: Formation and early years Before the formation of Alice in Chains, Layne Staley, a drummer at the time, landed his first gig as a vocalist when he auditioned to sing for a local glam metal band known as Sleze after receiving some encouragement from his stepbrother Ken Elmer. Other members of this group at that time were guitarists Johnny Bacolas and Zoli Semanate, drummer James Bergstrom, and bassist Byron Hansen. This band went through several lineup changes culminating with Nick Pollock as their sole guitarist and Bacolas switching to bass before discussions arose about changing their name to Alice in Chains. This was prompted by a conversation that Bacolas had with Russ Klatt, the lead singer of Slaughter Haus 5, about backstage passes. One of the passes said "Welcome to Wonderland", and they started talking about that being a reference to Alice in Wonderland, until Klatt said, "What about Alice in Chains? Put her in bondage and stuff like that." Bacolas thought the name "Alice in Chains" was cool and brought it up to his Sleze bandmates and everyone liked it, so they decided to change the name of the band. Due to concerns over the reference to female bondage, the group ultimately chose to spell it differently as Alice N' Chains to allay any parental concerns, though Staley's mother Nancy McCallum has said she was still not happy with this name at first. According to Bacolas, the decision to use the apostrophe-N combination in their name had nothing to do with the Los Angeles band Guns N' Roses. The name change happened in 1986, a year before Guns N' Roses became a household name with their first album Appetite for Destruction, released in July 1987. Staley met guitarist Jerry Cantrell at a party in Seattle around August 1987. A few months prior, Cantrell had watched a concert of Alice N' Chains in his hometown at the Tacoma Little Theatre, and was impressed by Staley's voice. Cantrell was homeless after being kicked out of his family's house, so Staley invited Cantrell to live with him at the rehearsal studio Music Bank, and the two struggling musicians became roommates. Alice N' Chains soon disbanded, and Staley joined a funk band. Cantrell's band, Diamond Lie, broke up and he wanted to form a new band, so Staley gave him the phone number of Melinda Starr, the girlfriend of drummer Sean Kinney, so that Cantrell could talk to him. Cantrell called the number and set up a meeting with Kinney. Kinney and his girlfriend went to the Music Bank and listened to Cantrell's demos, who mentioned that they needed a bass player to jam with them, and he had someone in mind: Mike Starr, with whom Cantrell had played in a band in Burien called Gypsy Rose. Kinney then mentioned that his girlfriend was actually Mike Starr's sister, and that he had been playing in bands together with Starr since they were kids. Kinney called Starr and a few days later he started jamming with him and Cantrell at the Music Bank, but they didn't have a singer. Staley's funk band also required a guitarist at the time, and Staley asked Cantrell to join as a sideman. Cantrell agreed on condition that Staley join his band. Because Cantrell, Starr and Kinney wanted Staley to be their lead singer, they started auditioning terrible lead singers in front of Staley to send a hint. The last straw for Staley was when they auditioned a male stripper – he decided to join the band after that. Eventually the funk project broke up, and in 1987 Staley joined Cantrell's band on a full-time basis. Two weeks after the band's formation, they were playing a gig at Washington State University, trying to fill out a 40-minute set with a couple of original songs along with Hanoi Rocks and David Bowie covers. The band played a couple of gigs in clubs around the Pacific Northwest, calling themselves different monikers, including Diamond Lie, the name of Cantrell's previous band, and "Fuck", before eventually adopting the name that Staley's previous band had initially flirted with, Alice in Chains. Staley contacted his former bandmates and asked for permission to use the name. Nick Pollock was not particularly thrilled about it at the time, and thought he should come up with a different name; both he and James Bergstrom ultimately gave Staley their blessing to use the name. Local promoter Randy Hauser became aware of the band at a concert and offered to pay for demo recordings. However, one day before the band was due to record at the Music Bank studio in Washington, police shut down the studio during the biggest cannabis raid in the history of the state. The final demo, completed in 1988, was named The Treehouse Tapes and found its way to music managers Kelly Curtis and Susan Silver, who also managed the Seattle-based band Soundgarden. Curtis and Silver passed the demo on to Columbia Records' A&R representative Nick Terzo, who set up an appointment with label president Don Ienner. Based on The Treehouse Tapes, Terzo signed Alice in Chains to Columbia in 1989. The band also recorded another untitled demo over a three-month period in 1989. This recording can be found on the bootleg release Sweet Alice. 1990–1992: Facelift and Sap Alice in Chains soon became a top priority of the label, which released the band's first official recording in July 1990, a promotional EP called We Die Young. The EP's lead single, "We Die Young", became a hit on metal radio. After its success, the label rushed Alice in Chains' debut album into production with producer Dave Jerden. Cantrell stated the album was intended to have a "moody aura" that was a "direct result of the brooding atmosphere and feel of Seattle." The resulting album, Facelift, was released on August 21, 1990, peaking at number 42 in the summer of 1991 on the Billboard 200 chart. Facelift was not an instant success, selling under 40,000 copies in the first six months of release, until MTV added "Man in the Box" to regular daytime rotation. The single hit number 18 on the Mainstream rock charts, with the album's follow up single, "Sea of Sorrow", reaching number 27, and in six weeks Facelift sold 400,000 copies in the US. The album was a critical success, with Steve Huey of AllMusic citing Facelift as "one of the most important records in establishing an audience for grunge and alternative rock among hard rock and heavy metal listeners." Sammy Hagar claimed he invited the band to tour with Van Halen after he saw the music video for "Man In The Box" on MTV. Facelift was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling a half-million copies on September 11, 1991, becoming the first album from Seattle's Grunge movement to be certified gold. The band continued to hone its audience, opening for such artists as Iggy Pop, Van Halen, Poison, and Extreme. Facelift has since been certified triple-platinum by the RIAA, for shipments of three million copies in the United States. The concert at the Moore Theatre in Seattle on December 22, 1990, was recorded and released on VHS on July 30, 1991, as Live Facelift. It features five live songs and three music videos. The home video has been certified gold by the RIAA for sales exceeding 50,000 copies. In early 1991, Alice in Chains landed the opening slot for the Clash of the Titans tour with Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer, exposing the band to a wide metal audience but receiving mainly poor reception. Alice in Chains was nominated for a Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy Award in 1992 for "Man in the Box" but lost to Van Halen for their 1991 album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. Following the tour, Alice in Chains entered the studio to record demos for its next album, but ended up recording five acoustic songs instead. While in the studio, drummer Sean Kinney had a dream about "making an EP called Sap". The band decided "not to mess with fate", and on February 4, 1992, Alice in Chains released their second EP, Sap. The EP was released while Nirvana's Nevermind was at the top of the Billboard 200 charts, resulting in a rising popularity of Seattle-based bands, and of the term "grunge music". Sap was certified gold within two weeks. The EP features Cantrell on lead vocals on the opening track, "Brother", and guest vocals by Ann Wilson from the band Heart, who joined Staley and Cantrell for the choruses of "Brother" and "Am I Inside". The EP also features Mark Arm of Mudhoney and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, who shared vocals with Staley and Cantrell on the song "Right Turn", credited to "Alice Mudgarden" in the liner notes. In 1992, Alice in Chains appeared in the Cameron Crowe film Singles, performing as a "bar band". The band also contributed the song "Would?" to the film's soundtrack, whose video received an award for Best Video from a Film at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards. 1992–1993: Dirt In March 1992, the band returned to the studio. With new songs written primarily on the road, the material has an overall darker feel than Facelift, with six of the album's thirteen songs dealing with the subject of addiction. "We did a lot of soul searching on this album. There's a lot of intense feelings." Cantrell said, "We deal with our daily demons through music. All of the poison that builds up during the day we cleanse when we play." On September 29, 1992, Alice in Chains released its second album, Dirt. The album peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 and since its release has been certified 5x platinum by the RIAA, making Dirt the band's highest selling album to date. The album was a critical success, with Steve Huey of Allmusic praising the album as a "major artistic statement, and the closest they ever came to recording a flat-out masterpiece." Chris Gill of Guitar World called Dirt "huge and foreboding, yet eerie and intimate", and "sublimely dark and brutally honest." Dirt spawned five singles that reached the top 30 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart: "Would?", "Rooster", "Them Bones", "Angry Chair", and "Down in a Hole", and remained on the charts for nearly two years. Alice in Chains was added as openers to Ozzy Osbourne's No More Tours tour. Days before the tour began, Layne Staley broke his foot in an ATV accident, forcing him to use crutches on stage. Starr left the band shortly after the Hollywood Rock concert in Rio de Janeiro on January 22, 1993, stating that he wanted to spend more time with his family. Staley told Rolling Stone in 1994 about Starr leaving the band, "It was just a difference in priorities. We wanted to continue intense touring and press. Mike was ready to go home." Years later, Starr claimed that he was fired due to his drug addiction. Starr was replaced by former Ozzy Osbourne bassist Mike Inez. Inez had met Alice in Chains during Ozzy Osbourne's No More Tours tour and became friends with them. When the band was in Brazil, they called Inez to join them and he accepted. Inez wanted to do the shows in Brazil and even got his immunization shots, but the band called him back telling that Starr wanted to do the last two shows in Brazil, so they would meet Inez in London instead. Inez ended up getting sick with his vaccination shots for a couple of days. Inez played his first concert with Alice in Chains on January 27, 1993, at the Camden Underworld in London. In April 1993, the band recorded two songs with Inez, "What the Hell Have I" and "A Little Bitter", for the Last Action Hero soundtrack. During the summer of 1993, Alice in Chains toured with the alternative music festival Lollapalooza, their last major tour with Staley. 1993–1994: Jar of Flies Following Alice in Chains' extensive 1993 world tour, Staley said the band "just wanted to go into the studio for a few days with our acoustic guitars and see what happened." "We never really planned on the music we made at that time to be released. But the record label heard it and they really liked it. For us, it was just the experience of four guys getting together in the studio and making some music." Columbia Records released Alice in Chains' second acoustic-based EP, Jar of Flies, on January 25, 1994. Written and recorded in one week, Jar of Flies debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, becoming the first EP—and first Alice in Chains release—to top the charts. Paul Evans of Rolling Stone called the EP "darkly gorgeous", and Steve Huey said, "'Jar of Flies' is a low-key stunner, achingly gorgeous and harrowingly sorrowful all at once." Jar of Flies features Alice in Chains' first number-one single on the Mainstream Rock charts, "No Excuses". The second single, "I Stay Away", reached number ten on the Mainstream rock charts, while the final single "Don't Follow", reached number 25. Jar of Flies has been certified triple platinum by the RIAA, with over 2 million copies sold in the United States during its first year. Jar of Flies received two Grammy nominations, Best Hard Rock Performance for "I Stay Away", and Best Recording Package. After the release of Jar of Flies, Staley entered rehab for heroin addiction. The band was scheduled to tour during the summer of 1994 with Metallica, Suicidal Tendencies, Danzig, and Fight, as well as a slot during Woodstock '94, but while in rehearsal for the tour, Staley began using heroin again. Staley's condition prompted the other band members to cancel all scheduled dates one day before the start of the tour, putting the band on hiatus. Alice in Chains was replaced by Candlebox on the tour. Susan Silver's management office sent out a statement saying that the decision to withdraw from the Metallica tour and Woodstock was "due to health problems within the band." The band broke up for six months. Kinney told Rolling Stone in 1996, "Nobody was being honest with each other back then. If we had kept going, there was a good chance we would have self-destructed on the road, and we definitely didn't want that to happen in public." 1995–1996: Alice in Chains While Alice in Chains was inactive during 1995, Staley joined the "grunge supergroup" Mad Season, which also featured Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, bassist John Baker Saunders from The Walkabouts, and Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin. Mad Season released one album, Above, for which Staley provided lead vocals and the album artwork. The album spawned a number-two Mainstream Rock chart single, "River of Deceit", as well as a home video release of Live at the Moore. In April 1995, Alice in Chains entered Bad Animals Studio in Seattle with producer Toby Wright, who had previously worked with Corrosion of Conformity and Slayer. While in the studio, an inferior version of the song "Grind" was leaked to radio, and received major airplay. On October 6, 1995, the band released the studio version of the song to radio via satellite uplink to stem excessive spread of taped copies of the song. On November 7, 1995, Columbia Records released the eponymous album, Alice in Chains, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and has since been certified triple platinum. Of the album's four singles, "Grind", "Again", "Over Now", and "Heaven Beside You", three feature Cantrell on lead vocals. Jon Wiederhorn of Rolling Stone called the album "liberating and enlightening, the songs achieve a startling, staggering and palpable impact." On December 12, 1995, the band released the home video The Nona Tapes, a mockumentary featuring interviews with the band members conducted by journalist Nona Weisbaum (played by Jerry Cantrell), and the music video for "Grind". The song "Got Me Wrong" unexpectedly charted three years after its release on the Sap EP. The song was re-released as a single on the soundtrack for the independent film Clerks in 1994, reaching number seven on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The band opted not to tour in support of Alice in Chains, adding to the rumors of drug abuse. Alice in Chains resurfaced on April 10, 1996, to perform their first concert in two and a half years for MTV Unplugged, a program featuring all-acoustic set lists. The performance featured some of the band's highest-charting singles, including "Rooster", "Down in a Hole", "Heaven Beside You", "No Excuses" and "Would?", and introduced a new song, "Killer Is Me", with Cantrell on lead vocals. The show marked Alice in Chains' only appearance as a five-piece band, adding second guitarist Scott Olson. A live album of the performance was released in July 1996, debuting at number three on the Billboard 200, and was accompanied by a home video release, both of which received platinum certification by the RIAA. The band also made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman on May 10, 1996, performing the songs "Again" and "We Die Young". Alice in Chains performed four shows supporting the reunited original Kiss lineup on their 1996–97 Alive/Worldwide Tour, including the final live appearance of Layne Staley on July 3, 1996, in Kansas City, Missouri. Shortly after the show, Staley was found unresponsive after he overdosed on heroin and was taken to the hospital. Although he recovered, the band was forced to go on hiatus. 1996–2004: Hiatus, side projects and death of Layne Staley Although Alice in Chains never officially disbanded, Staley became a recluse, rarely leaving his Seattle condominium following the death of his ex-fiancée Demri Parrott due to a drug overdose on October 29, 1996. "Drugs worked for me for years," Staley told Rolling Stone in February 1996, "and now they're turning against me ... now I'm walking through hell and this sucks. I didn't want my fans to think that heroin was cool. But then I've had fans come up to me and give me the thumbs up, telling me they're high. That's exactly what I didn't want to happen.." Unable to continue with new Alice in Chains material, Cantrell released his first solo album, Boggy Depot, in 1998, also featuring Sean Kinney and Mike Inez. Cantrell and Kinney were also featured on Metallica's 1998 album Garage Inc., both were guest musicians in the track "Tuesday's Gone", a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover. In October 1998, Staley reunited with Alice in Chains to record two new songs, "Get Born Again" and "Died". Originally intended for Cantrell's second solo album, the songs were reworked by Alice in Chains and were released in the fall of 1999 on the box set, Music Bank. The set contains 48 songs, including rarities, demos, and previously released album tracks and singles. The band also released a 15-track compilation titled Nothing Safe: Best of the Box, serving as a sampler for Music Bank, as well as the band's first compilation album; a live album, simply titled Live, released on December 5, 2000; and a second compilation, titled Greatest Hits in 2001. In November 1998, Layne Staley recorded a cover of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" with the supergroup Class of '99, formed by guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, bassist Martyn LeNoble, drummer Stephen Perkins, both from Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros, and keyboardist Matt Serletic. The song was featured on the soundtrack to the 1998 horror/sci-fi film, The Faculty. After they toured as part of Cantrell's solo band in 1998, Sean Kinney and Queensrÿche guitarist Chris DeGarmo formed a new band called Spys4Darwin. Mike Inez and Sponge lead vocalist Vin Dombroski joined the supergroup soon after. The band released their first and only album in 2001, a 6-track EP entitled Microfish. In June 2001, Mike Inez joined Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society for the remaining dates of Ozzfest, following the departure of bassist Steve Gibb due to medical reasons. Inez joined the band again for their West Coast and Japanese tour in 2003. By 2002, Cantrell had finished work on his second solo album, Degradation Trip. Written in 1998, the album's lyrical content focused heavily on what Cantrell regarded as the demise of Alice in Chains, which still remained evident as the album approached its June 2002 release. However, in March that year, Cantrell commented, "We're all still around, so it's possible [Alice in Chains] could all do something someday, and I fully hope someday we will." Reflecting on the band's hiatus in a 2011 interview, Kinney said that Staley wasn't the only one battling addiction. "He was the focal point, like singers are. So they'd single him out. But the truth was, it was pretty much everybody. I definitely had my hand firmly on the wheel going off the cliff. And the reason we pulled back – you know when you stop when you have two #1 records, it's not really the greatest career move – but we did that because we love each other and we didn't want to die in public. And I know for a fact in my heart that if we were to continue that I wouldn't be on the phone right now talking to you. I wouldn't have made it. I just wouldn't have." After a decade of battling drug addiction, Layne Staley was found dead in his condominium in Seattle on April 19, 2002. The autopsy and toxicology report on Staley's body revealed that he died from a mixture of heroin and cocaine, known as "speedball". The autopsy concluded that Staley died on April 5, two weeks before his body was found. Cantrell dedicated his 2002 solo album, Degradation Trip, released two months after Staley's death, to his memory. Mike Starr later claimed on Celebrity Rehab that he was the last person to see Staley alive, and admitted to feeling guilty about not calling 911 after Staley had warned him against it. "I wish I hadn't been high on benzodiazepine [that night], I wouldn't have just walked out the door," Starr said. Following Staley's death, Mike Inez joined Heart and toured and recorded with the band from 2002 through 2006. Jerry Cantrell collaborated with several artists such as Heart, Ozzy Osbourne, and Damageplan. In 2004, Cantrell formed the band Cardboard Vampyres along with The Cult guitarist Billy Duffy, Mötley Crüe and Ratt vocalist John Corabi, The Cult bassist Chris Wyse and drummer Josh Howser. On October 22, 2004, Sony BMG terminated their contract with Alice in Chains, 15 years after the band signed with the label, in 1989. 2005–2008: Reunion shows and reformation In 2005, Sean Kinney came up with the idea of doing a benefit concert for the victims of the tsunami disaster that struck South Asia in 2004. Kinney made calls to his former bandmates, as well as friends in the music community, such as former Alice in Chains manager Susan Silver. Kinney was surprised by the enthusiastic response to his idea. On February 18, 2005, Jerry Cantrell, Mike Inez, and Sean Kinney reunited to perform for the first time in nine years at K-Rock Tsunami Continued Care Relief Concert in Seattle. The band featured Damageplan vocalist Pat Lachman, as well as other special guests including Maynard James Keenan of Tool and Ann Wilson of Heart. A few months after that experience, the band called Susan Silver and Cantrell's manager Bill Siddons and said they wanted to tour as Alice in Chains again. Alice in Chains was approached by the producers of the CBS reality show Rock Star about being featured on its second season, but the band turned the offer down. In the show, aspiring singers competed to become the lead vocalist of a featured group. On March 10, 2006, the surviving members performed at VH1's Decades Rock Live concert, honoring fellow Seattle musicians Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart. They played "Would?" with vocalist Phil Anselmo of Pantera and Down and bass player Duff McKagan of Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver, and at the end of the performance Cantrell dedicated the show to Layne Staley and the late Pantera and Damageplan guitarist Dimebag Darrell. They also played "Rooster" with Comes with the Fall vocalist William DuVall and Ann Wilson. The band followed the concert with a short United States club tour named "Finish What We Started", several festival dates in Europe, and a brief tour in Japan. Duff McKagan again joined the band for the reunion tour, playing rhythm guitar on selected songs. During the tour, the band played a 5-minute video tribute to Staley during the changeover from the electric to acoustic set. To coincide with the band's reunion, Sony Music released the long-delayed third Alice in Chains compilation, The Essential Alice in Chains, a double album that includes 28 songs. Jerry Cantrell met William DuVall in Los Angeles in 2000 through a mutual acquaintance who introduced Cantrell to Comes with the Fall's first album. Cantrell started hanging out with the band and occasionally joined them onstage. Between 2001 and 2002, Comes with the Fall was both the opening act on Cantrell's tour for his second solo album, Degradation Trip, and also his backing band, with DuVall singing Staley's parts at the concerts. DuVall joined Alice in Chains as lead singer during the band's reunion concerts in 2006, and made his first public performance with the band at VH1's Decades Rock Live concert. According to Cantrell, it only took one audition for DuVall to get the gig. For his first rehearsal with the band, DuVall sang "Love, Hate, Love". After they finished, Sean Kinney looked at his bandmates and said, "I think the search is pretty much over." According to Mike Inez, DuVall didn't try to emulate Staley, and that's what drew them to him. Cantrell revealed that before he suggested DuVall for the band, Sean Kinney and Mike Inez invited Sponge and Spys4Darwin lead vocalist Vin Dombroski to jam with the band in their rehearsal space. Dombroski jammed with them to a couple of songs but they did not feel he was right for the band. According to Cantrell, Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver lead singer Scott Weiland was also interested in joining the band. Cantrell explained the reunion saying, "We want to celebrate what we did and the memory of our friend. We have played with some [singers] who can actually bring it and add their own thing to it without being a Layne clone. We're not interested in stepping on [Staley's] rich legacy. It's a tough thing to go through. Do you take the Led Zeppelin approach and never play again, because the guy was that important? That's the approach we've taken for a lot of years. Or, do you give it a shot, try something? We're willing to take a chance on it. It's completely a reunion because the three of us who're left are back together. But it's not about separating and forgetting—it's about remembering and moving on." Before the tour, Kinney mentioned in an interview that he would be interested in writing new material, but not as Alice in Chains. During the VH1 Rock Honors concert honoring Heart on May 12, 2007, Alice in Chains performed Heart's "Barracuda" fronted by country singer Gretchen Wilson. Heart's guitarist Nancy Wilson also joined them onstage. Alice in Chains joined Velvet Revolver for a run of U.S. and Canadian gigs from August through October 2007. During that tour, the band also performed four special acoustic-only shows, named as "The Acoustic Hour". The acoustic performance at The Rave/Eagles Club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on August 31, 2007, was recorded for an upcoming live album. On November 2, 2007, Alice in Chains performed a four-song set at Benaroya Hall in Seattle for Matt Messina and the Symphony Guild's 10th anniversary benefit concert for the Seattle Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center. In addition to the band's original material, they also played a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" while backed by over 200 musicians, including the Northwest Symphony Orchestra and the Northwest Girlchoir. Sean Kinney said about the band's reunion: "I never called Jerry; he never called me, and said, 'Hey, let's get the band back together,' you know? We had been taking every step extremely cautious and slow, and just doing whatever feels right: If it's genuine and we're doing it for genuine reasons and we're all okay with it then we take a little step. None of us is broke. Nobody needs to be a rock dork, and you know, stroke their ego. I mean, we don't really operate like that. So as long as it felt good and from the right place and it's about making music and carrying on…." About the pressure being put on DuVall for replacing Staley as lead vocalist, Cantrell said, "To put all that weight on Will's shoulders is unfair. We're just figuring out how we work as a team. Although the band has changed, we've lost Layne, we've added Will, and there was no master plan. Playing again in 2005 felt right, so we did the next thing and toured. We did it step by step. It's more than just making music, and it always has been. We've been friends a long time. We've been more of a family than most, and it had to be okay from here," Cantrell said pointing to his heart. Former The Doors manager Bill Siddons and his management company, Core Entertainment, co-managed Alice in Chains with original manager Susan Silver from 2005 to 2007. The band started writing and demoing songs for a new album with DuVall in April 2007. But the band did not show further signs of progress until October 2008, when they announced that they had begun recording with producer Nick Raskulinecz in the studio. 2008–2011: Black Gives Way to Blue and death of Mike Starr Blabbermouth.net reported on September 5, 2008, that Alice in Chains would enter the studio that October to begin recording a new album for a summer 2009 release. On September 14, 2008, Alice in Chains performed at halftime during the Seattle Seahawks vs San Francisco 49ers game at the CenturyLink Field (then-named Qwest Field) in Seattle. The 12-minute performance for a crowd of 67,000 people featured a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" accompanied by the Northwest Symphony Orchestra. In October 2008, Alice in Chains began recording its fourth studio album at the Foo Fighters' Studio 606 in Los Angeles with producer Nick Raskulinecz. The band did not have a record label at the time and the album was funded by Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney. At the Revolver Golden God Awards, Cantrell said that the group had finished recording on March 18, 2009, and were mixing the album for a September release. The recording process was completed on Cantrell's 43rd birthday and also the same day that William DuVall's son was born. In April 2009, it was reported that the new Alice in Chains album would be released by Virgin/EMI, making it the band's first label change in its 20-plus year career. Susan Silver, who started managing Alice in Chains in 1988, now co-manages the band with David Benveniste and his Velvet Hammer firm. On June 11, 2009, Blabbermouth.net reported that the new album would be titled Black Gives Way to Blue and was officially set to be released on September 29, 2009. The title first appeared on Amazon.com without any prior announcement from the band. In addition, it was announced that Elton John plays piano on the title track, a tribute to Layne Staley written and sung by Cantrell. The album features new vocalist and rhythm guitarist William DuVall sharing vocal duties with lead guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell, who sings lead vocals on most of the songs. DuVall sings lead vocals on the song "Last of My Kind". On June 30, 2009, the song "A Looking in View" was made available for purchase via iTunes and Amazon, and for a limited time it was available as a free download through the official Alice in Chains website in early July. Although it was not the album's first radio single, Rock stations across the U.S. started playing the song. The music video for "A Looking in View" debuted via the band's official website on July 7, 2009. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. "Check My Brain" was released to radio stations as the first official single from the album on August 14, 2009, and was made available for purchase on August 17, 2009. The music video for "Check My Brain" premiered on September 14, 2009. The song was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. To promote the album, the band released an EPK featuring all four of the members being interviewed while the Kiss makeup is being applied on them. An app for iPhone was released on October 27, 2009, featuring songs, music videos, news, photos and networking. Sean Kinney said about the new album and the fans' mixed reactions about the band moving on after Staley's death: "Look, it's a big move to fucking stand up and move on. Some people, the music connected with them so strongly, their opinions, how they feel about it ... It's amazing that they have such a connection but they seem to act like it happened to them. This happened to us and Layne's family, not them. This is actually our lives. If we're okay with it, why can't you be? This happened to us, this didn't happen to you. But this album isn't about that, it's a bigger universal point. We're all going to fucking die, we're all going to lose somebody, and it fucking hurts. How do you move on? This record is us moving on, and hurting. That, to me, is a victory. I already feel like I've won." "Sometimes people ask us, 'Wouldn't Layne have been pissed off that we did this?' And I tell them it would have been the opposite: he would have been pissed off that it took us so long to do this. We're not doing this for money; there is no money in the music business anymore. Jerry and I funded the whole album, and we spent lots of our own money, because we believe in this. And one of the reasons I'm doing this is so more light is turned on to something where the light was turned off." And Cantrell added: "We've toured around the world, we've lost some friends, we buried a dear friend, and somebody that you just can't fucking replace, and then we've chosen by circumstance to get together again. That turned into 'maybe we can fucking do this.' And that turned into this." In September 2008, it was announced that Alice in Chains would headline Australia's Soundwave Festival in 2009, alongside Nine Inch Nails and Lamb of God. In February 2009, it was also announced that Alice in Chains would play at the third annual Rock on the Range festival. On August 1, 2009, Alice in Chains performed, along with Mastodon, Avenged Sevenfold, and Glyder, at Marlay Park, Dublin as direct support to Metallica. The band made an appearance on Later... with Jools Holland on November 10, 2009, performing "Lesson Learned", "Black Gives Way to Blue", and "Check My Brain" as the final performance of the episode. To coincide with the band's European tour, Alice in Chains released its next single, "Your Decision", on November 16, 2009, in the UK and on December 1 in the US. The last single from the album was "Lesson Learned", and it was released to rock radio on June 22, 2010. Black Gives Way to Blue debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200. On May 18, 2010, the album was certified gold by the RIAA for selling over 500,000 copies in the U.S. The singles "Check My Brain" and "Your Decision" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks, while "Lesson Learned" reached No. 4. "Check My Brain" was also the band's first #1 song on the Alternative Songs chart, and on the Hot Rock Songs chart, it also reached No. 92 on Billboard's Hot 100, becoming the band's first single to appear on the chart. Along with Mastodon and Deftones, Alice in Chains toured the United States and Canada in late 2010 on the Blackdiamondskye tour, an amalgam of the three bands' latest album titles (Black Gives Way to Blue, Diamond Eyes, and Crack the Skye). On March 8, 2011, former Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr was found dead at his home in Salt Lake City. Police told Reuters they were called to Starr's home at 1:42 pm and found his body; Starr was 44. Reports later surfaced that Starr's roommate had seen him mixing methadone and anxiety medication hours before he was found dead. Later reports indicated Starr's death may have been linked to two different types of antidepressants prescribed to him by his doctor. A public memorial was held for Starr at the Seattle Center's International Fountain on March 20, 2011. A private memorial was also held, which Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney attended according to Mike Inez. 2011–2016: The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here On March 21, 2011, Alice in Chains announced that they were working on a fifth studio album, and both Cantrell and Inez later made statements that they had begun the recording process. The album was expected to be finished by summer of 2012 and released by the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013. While Alice in Chains were writing for the album in 2011, Cantrell underwent surgery on his right shoulder, which delayed recording the new material. In an interview published in May 2012, Cantrell explained, "The thing that set me back is I had some bone spurs [and] cartilage issues in my shoulders. I had the same issue in the other shoulder about six years ago so I've had them both done now. It's a repetitive motion injury from playing." Cantrell could not play guitar for eight months while he was recovering from surgery. While recuperating at home in a sling, Cantrell heard a riff in his head and sang it into his phone. The riff later became the song "Stone". Alice in Chains played their first concert in nearly 10 months and their first concert after Cantrell's shoulder surgery at the Winstar Casino in Thackerville, Oklahoma on August 13, 2011. The band's only concert in 2012 was a five-song acoustic set on May 31 at the eighth annual MusiCares MAP Fund Benefit Concert honoring Jerry Cantrell. On December 4, 2012, Cantrell confirmed that the new album had been completed. The first single, "Hollow", debuted online on December 18, available for digital download in January 2013, along with an official music video. On February 13, 2013, Alice in Chains posted on Facebook that their new album title would be an anagram of the letters H V L E N T P S U S D A H I E E O E D T I U R R. The next day they announced that the album would be called The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, which was released on May 28, 2013, and debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. To promote the album, Alice in Chains teamed up with Funny or Die for an 11-minute mockumentary titled AIC 23, in which Film Studies professor Alan Poole McLard (played by W. Earl Brown) attempts to make a documentary on Alice in Chains without any help from the actual band, interviewing other musicians instead. Among them are country singer Donnie 'Skeeter' Dollarhide Jr. (played by Jerry Cantrell), Reggae singer Nesta Cleveland (played by William DuVall), Black Metal musician Unta Gleeben Glabben Globben Globin (played by Mike Inez) and the hipster Stanley Eisen (played by Sean Kinney). The video was released on April 3, 2013, and also features cameos by Ann and Nancy Wilson from Heart, Mike McCready from Pearl Jam, Kim Thayil from Soundgarden, Duff McKagan from Guns N' Roses, Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher from Mastodon, and Lars Ulrich and Robert Trujillo from Metallica. In June 2013, the band released a pinball game app for iOS as part of Pinball Rocks HD compilation, featuring the single "Hollow", the band's logo and the album artwork, as well as references to the band's previous albums such as Jar of Flies and the self-titled record. The band released videos for the songs "Hollow", "Stone", "Voices", the title track and "Phantom Limb". "Hollow" and "Stone" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks, while "Voices" reached No. 3, and each one of the three songs stayed on the chart for 20 weeks. The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical in 2014. Alice in Chains toured extensively in the U.S., Canada, and Europe in 2013 and 2014. In May 2013, the band co-headlined the annual MMRBQ festival with Soundgarden in Camden, New Jersey. Asked in September 2013 if Alice in Chains would make another album, Cantrell replied, "It'll be a while. It's [been] four years since we put the last one out, but at least it's not the gap that was between the last one, so that's about right - about three to four years." On January 18, 2015, Alice in Chains performed in the halftime show of the NFC Championship Game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers at CenturyLink Field in Seattle. Cantrell is a lifelong Seahawks fan and often attends their games. In August 2015, Bassist Mike Inez said that the band had been "throwing around riffs for a new record" and "taking it nice and slow". The band toured in the summer of 2015 and the summer of 2016, including select shows opening for Guns N' Roses as part of the Not in This Lifetime... Tour. The band finished their 2016 tour with a concert at the Grand Sierra Resort and Casino in Reno, Nevada on October 8, 2016. In November 2016, Alice in Chains released a cover of the Rush song "Tears", which was included in the 40th anniversary release of the album 2112. The home video Live Facelift was released on vinyl for the first time on November 25, 2016, as part of Record Store Day's Black Friday event. The album features six songs and only 5000 copies were issued. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Record Store Day, on April 22, 2017, Legacy Recordings released "Get Born Again"/"What the Hell Have I", a special 45 RPM double 7" single featuring four tracks remastered and available on vinyl for the first time, "What the Hell Have I", "A Little Bitter", "Get Born Again" and "Died". 2017–2021: Rainier Fog In January 2017, Mike Inez stated in an interview that the band had begun work on a new album. In June 2017, it was reported that the band would return to Studio X (formerly Bad Animals Studios) in Seattle to record a new album later that month, for a tentative early 2018 release. The sessions were helmed by Nick Raskulinecz, who produced the band's last two albums. Studio X was the studio where Alice in Chains recorded its 1995 self-titled album. According to Inez, the band was not signed to a label, having completed its previous two-record contract with the Universal Music Group. "This [upcoming album], we're not sure where it's gonna land ... I mean, we financed ['Black Gives Way To Blue'] on our own too, so we're not too worried about that stuff. We've just gotta get it out to ... a significant label [with worldwide distribution]." The band started recording their sixth studio album on June 12, 2017. On January 11, 2018, producer Nick Raskulinecz announced via Instagram that the album was nearly finished and that there was only one more day left of recording. During an interview with Guitar World published on April 11, 2018, Jerry Cantrell said that the album was recorded at four studios. After recording at Studio X in Seattle, the band went to Nashville to record vocals and lead guitars at Nick Raskulinecz's home studio. But Cantrell had to take an unexpected break from work for a couple of weeks after getting sick on a trip to Cabo for Sammy Hagar's birthday. Cantrell had the band's engineer, Paul Figueroa, come in to his house and record a lot of his vocals and solos there. The band finished recording the album at the Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles. Cantrell also said he expected the album to be released "probably sometime this summer." At the press room of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on April 14, 2018, Cantrell revealed that Alice in Chains had just signed with BMG, and that they had finished mixing their new album. Alice in Chains did not perform live in 2017. The band performed their first concert since October 2016 at the House of Blues in Boston on April 28, 2018. In May 2018, Alice in Chains headlined the festivals Carolina Rebellion, Lunatic Luau, Pointfest, Northern Invasion, the WMMR BBQ festival in Philadelphia, and the Rock on the Range festival in Columbus, Ohio on May 18, 2018, in which they paid tribute to Chris Cornell on the first anniversary of his death covering two Soundgarden songs to close their set, "Hunted Down" and "Boot Camp", respectively. At the end of the show, the lights on stage spelled out "CC" for Chris Cornell and "SG" for Soundgarden as feedback rang out. The band started their European tour in June 2018, and headlined the Tons Of Rock Festival in Norway alongside Ozzy Osbourne and Helloween. Alice in Chains are also scheduled to headline KISW's Pain in the Grass festival in August 2018. The band released a new single, "The One You Know", via Spotify, Amazon and iTunes on May 3, 2018. A music video directed by Adam Mason was released on YouTube the same day. "The One You Know" peaked at No. 9 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart. During an interview with Eddie Trunk on Trunk Nation on May 7, 2018, Jerry Cantrell said that the new album would be released at the end of August 2018. The band also revealed that they talked to director Adam Mason, who is making a dark sci-film, about doing two separate pieces of art and maybe molding them together, and that the music video for "The One You Know" is the first chapter of molding Mason's film and the band's music videos together. The second single, "So Far Under", was released on Alice in Chains' YouTube channel and on streaming platforms on June 27, 2018. It was also announced that the album would be titled Rainier Fog, with the release date scheduled for August 24, 2018. The album's artwork and the track listing were also revealed on the same day. Jerry Cantrell told Rolling Stone that the title Rainier Fog was inspired by the Mount Rainier in Seattle, and the title track is a tribute to the Seattle music scene. "This song is a little homage to all of that: where we come from, who we are, all of the triumphs, all of the tragedies, lives lived." The album's third single, "Never Fade", was released on August 10, 2018, through digital and streaming services. The song is a tribute dedicated to frontman William DuVall's grandmother, Chris Cornell, and Alice in Chains' original singer Layne Staley. "Never Fade" peaked at No. 10 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart. A music video directed by Adam Mason was released on November 1, 2018, and continued the storyline from the music video of "The One You Know". In June 2018, William DuVall said in an interview with Swedish website Rocksverige that the music video for "The One You Know" is the first chapter of what the band is hoping will be visuals for all ten songs from the album Rainier Fog, and in addition to that, will be a companion piece to the film that director Adam Mason was shooting. On August 20, 2018, the baseball team Seattle Mariners hosted a special "Alice in Chains Night" at the Safeco Field in Seattle to promote Rainier Fog, with the team offering the fans a package that included a Safeco Field terrace club ticket, access to a pre-game listening party of the album, an Alice in Chains T-shirt and a Rainier Fog CD. Jerry Cantrell also threw out the ceremonial first pitch and delivered a strike before the Seattle Mariners vs. Houston Astros game. To mark the launch of the album, on August 21, 2018, Alice in Chains performed an acoustic set at the top of Seattle's Space Needle and debuted the song "Fly". Alice in Chains were the first band to perform on the Space Needle's new "Loupe" glass floor, the world's first and only revolving glass floor 500 feet high. The concert was exclusive for an audience of SiriusXM subscribers. SiriusXM broadcast the concert on their channel Lithium on August 31, 2018. On August 22, 2018, Alice in Chains sent fans on a Scavenger hunt to access a secret gig that the band would be performing in Seattle on August 24. Ten signed CD copies of Rainier Fog were hidden around the city as a ticket into the show, and the band asked the fans to keep an eye on their Instagram story for details on the 10 hidden locations. Once all 10 albums were found, the band revealed that the secret gig would be at the rock club The Crocodile, with limited tickets available with the purchase of their album at a pop-up event at the same venue the next day. Preview clips of each of the album tracks were posted on the band's Instagram. The band also commemorated the release of the album with a pop-up museum installation at The Crocodile in Seattle on August 23 and 24. The museum featured rare Alice in Chains photos, limited-edition merchandise and memorabilia that showcased the band's 30+ year career. Rainier Fog debuted at No. 12 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 31,000 copies (29,000 in traditional album sales), in its first week of release. The album also debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Rock Albums, Alternative Albums and Hard Rock Albums charts, and at No. 3 on the Vinyl Albums chart. Rainier Fog became Alice in Chains' first top 10 in the UK, peaking at No. 9, and topping UK's Rock & Metal Albums chart. The album has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. On December 13, 2018, the teaser of the film Black Antenna featuring the song "Rainier Fog" was released on Alice in Chains' official YouTube channel, with drummer Sean Kinney stating; "We've always toyed with the idea of creating videos for every song on one of our albums. Not only did we do that for Rainier Fog, it got totally out of hand and we made a whole goddamn movie. Everything that will be seen in the videos will be footage from Black Antenna to preface the complete film's release." "Rainier Fog" was released as a single on February 26, 2019. The official trailer for Black Antenna was released on Alice In Chains' YouTube Channel on February 28, 2019. Besides a 90-minute film, a 10-part web-series focused on each track from the album will also be released. Episodes 1 and 2, "The One You Know" and "Rainier Fog", respectively, were released on March 7, 2019. The tenth and last episode, "All I Am", was released on July 17, 2019. The official music video for "Rainier Fog" was released on YouTube on May 15, 2019, and was co-directed by Alice in Chains and Peter Darley Miller, who also directed the band's 2013 mockumentary, AIC 23. On December 1, 2020, Alice in Chains was honored with the Founders Award from Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture. The benefit concert featured tribute performances from artists such as Ann Wilson, Korn, Metallica, Fishbone, Dallas Green, Billy Corgan, Tad Doyle, members of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, among others. The event was made available for streaming for free and raised more than $600,000 for the museum in its first night. A compilation featuring highlights from the tribute was made available for streaming on Amazon Music. 2022–present: Upcoming seventh studio album In an April 2022 interview, vocalist William DuVall revealed that he was "sure" Alice in Chains will begin working on their seventh studio album later in the year: "We had a lot of time imposed on us and I think we're going through this period of catching up on things that we had planned for 2020 [and] 2021, and we're all finally getting to do that now. So, it's kind of like a stopgap and we're just dealing with all of these stockpiled projects that we had planned a few years back. So once we get back up to speed with things and we get these dates underway in late summer, I'm sure it will spark a whole bunch of ideas for the next Alice in Chains studio album." Musical style Although Alice in Chains has been labeled grunge by the mainstream media, Jerry Cantrell identifies the band as primarily heavy metal. He told Guitar World in 1996, "We're a lot of different things  ... I don't quite know what the mixture is, but there's definitely metal, blues, rock and roll, maybe a touch of punk. The metal part will never leave, and I never want it to." The Edmonton Journal has stated, "Living and playing in Seattle might have got them the grunge tag, but they've always pretty much been a classic metal band to the core." Over the course of their career, the band's sound has also been described as alternative metal, sludge metal, doom metal, drone rock, hard rock, and alternative rock. Regarding the band's constant categorization by the media, Cantrell stated "When we first came out we were metal. Then we started being called alternative metal. Then grunge came out and then we were hard rock. And now, since we've started doing this again I've seen us listed as: hard rock, alternative, alternative metal and just straight metal. I walked into an HMV the other day to check out the placement and see what's on and they've got us relegated back into the metal section. Right back where we started!" Drummer Sean Kinney rejects the grunge label, stating in a 2013 interview "I mean, before we first came out there was no grunge, they hadn't invented that word. Before they invented the word grunge we were alternative rock and alternative metal and metal and rock, and we didn't give a shit whatever, we were a rock and roll band!." According to Mike Inez, they were always the metal stepchildren of the Seattle scene. The band are influenced to a great extent by English metal music; in 2018, Jerry Cantrell proclaimed Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi as "one of his biggest" inspirations, whilst Layne Staley named his "first influences" as Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Cantrell adjudged English rock singer Elton John as "the artist that made me want to be a musician." In addition, members of Alice in Chains have cited artists including AC/DC, Accept, Aerosmith, The Beatles, Black Flag, David Bowie, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dio, Funkadelic, Hanoi Rocks, Heart, Jimi Hendrix, Iron Maiden, King's X, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Motörhead, Mudhoney, Pink Floyd, Queensrÿche, the Rolling Stones, Rush, Scorpions, Soundgarden, The Stooges, Television, Thin Lizzy, U2, UFO, Van Halen, The Velvet Underground, Hank Williams, and ZZ Top as influential or inspirational. Jerry Cantrell's guitar style combines "pummeling riffs and expansive guitar textures" to create "slow, brooding minor-key grinds". He is also recognized for his natural ability to blend acoustic and electric guitars. While down-tuned, distorted guitars mixed with Staley's distinctive "snarl-to-a-scream" vocals appealed to heavy metal fans, the band also had "a sense of melody that was undeniable," which introduced Alice in Chains to a much wider audience outside of the heavy metal underground. According to Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic, Alice in Chains' sound has a "Black Sabbath-style riffing and an unconventional vocal style." The band has been described by Erlewine as "hard enough for metal fans, yet their dark subject matter and punky attack placed them among the front ranks of the Seattle-based grunge bands." Three of the band's releases feature acoustic music, and while the band initially kept these releases separate, Alice in Chains' self-titled album combined the styles to form "a bleak, nihilistic sound that balanced grinding hard rock with subtly textured acoustic numbers." Alice in Chains is also noted for the unique vocal harmonies of Staley (or DuVall) and Cantrell, which included overlapping passages, dual lead vocals, and trademark harmonies typically separated by a major third. Cantrell said it was Staley who gave him the self-assurance to sing his own songs. Alyssa Burrows said the band's distinctive sound "came from Staley's vocal style and his lyrics dealing with personal struggles and addiction." Staley's songs were often considered "dark", with themes such as drug abuse, depression, and suicide, while Cantrell's lyrics often dealt with personal relationships. Legacy Rankings Alice in Chains has sold over 19 million records in the United States, and over 30 million records worldwide, released two number-one albums, had 23 top 40 singles, and has received eleven Grammy Award nominations. The band was ranked number 34 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. Alice in Chains was named 15th greatest live band by Hit Parader, with Staley placing as 27th-greatest heavy metal vocalist of all time. The band's second album, Dirt, was named 5th-best album in the last two decades by Close-Up magazine in 2008. In October 2008, Guitar World ranked Cantrell's solo in "Man in the Box" at No. 77 on their list of "100 Greatest Guitar Solos". In August 2009, Alice in Chains won the Kerrang! Icon Award. In November 2011, Jar of Flies was ranked number four on Guitar World magazine's top ten list of guitar albums of 1994. It was also featured in Guitar World magazine's "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994" list, and in May 2014, the EP was placed at number five on Loudwire's "10 Best Hard Rock Albums of 1994" list. In June 2017, Metal Injection ranked Alice in Chains at number 1 on their list of "10 Heaviest Grunge Bands". Ozzy Osbourne ranked Facelift among his list of "10 Favorite Metal Albums". Influence Pantera and Damageplan guitarist Dimebag Darrell had expressed his admiration for Cantrell's guitar work in an interview for Guitar International in 1995, saying that "the layering and the honest feel that Jerry Cantrell gets on [Alice in Chains' Dirt] record is worth a lot more than someone who plays five million notes." Street musician Wesley Willis wrote a song about the band entitled "Alice in Chains", featured on his 1996 album Feel The Power. Billy Corgan revealed that the song "Bleeding The Orchid" from The Smashing Pumpkins' 2007 album Zeitgeist has a bit of an homage to Alice in Chains in the harmonies and was indirectly inspired by the death of Staley. Elton John stated that he is a fan of Alice in Chains and a big admirer of Cantrell. According to Jon Wiederhorn of MTV, Godsmack has "sonically followed Alice in Chains' lead while adding their own distinctive edge." Godsmack singer and founder Sully Erna has also cited Staley as his primary influence. Godsmack was named after the Alice in Chains song "God Smack" from the album Dirt. Staind has covered Alice in Chains' song "Nutshell" live, which appears on the compilation The Singles: 1996-2006, and also wrote a song entitled "Layne", dedicated to Staley, on the album 14 Shades of Grey. Three Days Grace also performs a cover of "Rooster", which can be seen on the DVD Live at the Palace. Other bands that have been influenced by Alice in Chains include 10 Years, Avenged Sevenfold, Breaking Benjamin, Creed, Dallas Green, Days of the New, Disturbed, Hoobastank, Incubus, Korn, Manic Street Preachers, Mudvayne, Nickelback, A Pale Horse Named Death, Puddle of Mudd, Queens of the Stone Age, Rains, Seether, Smile Empty Soul, Stone Sour, Tantric, Taproot, and Theory of a Deadman. Metallica said they have always wanted to tour with the band, citing Alice in Chains as a major inspiration for their 2008 release, Death Magnetic. Alice in Chains has also had a significant influence on modern heavy metal. Their songs were covered by various metal bands such as In Flames, Opeth, Dream Theater, Secrets of the Moon, Suicide Silence, 36 Crazyfists, Cane Hill, Ektomorf, Dritt Skitt, Grave and Thou, who described their 2018 EP Rhea Sylvia as "a melodic grunge, Alice in Chains homage." In 2009, Anders Fridén of Swedish melodic death metal band In Flames cited Layne Staley as an inspiration for his vocals on the band's later albums. In addition to fellow musicians, the band has also received praise from critics, with Steve Huey of AllMusic calling them "one of the best metal bands of the '90s" upon reviewing the 1999 compilation Nothing Safe. In 2009, the Vitamin String Quartet released the album The String Quartet Tribute to Alice in Chains, featuring instrumental versions on viola, violin and cello of 12 of the band's biggest hits. Media An internal memo at Clear Channel Communications three days after the September 11th, 2001 attack suggestively listed 164 songs to be banned from being aired on the company's radio stations, known as the Clear Channel memorandum. The list included four Alice in Chains songs - Down in a Hole, Rooster, Sea of Sorrow, and Them Bones. In August 2015, journalist David de Sola published the biography Alice in Chains: The Untold Story. An updated version covering the period from 2014 to 2017 was published in November 2018. Neither the band nor their management had any involvement with the book. Sources tied directly to the band were interviewed instead. The claymation dolls of the band members used in the music video for "I Stay Away" are on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland, Ohio. Members Current members Jerry Cantrell – lead and rhythm guitar, lead and backing vocals (1987–2002, 2005–present) Sean Kinney – drums, backing vocals (1987–2002, 2005–present) Mike Inez – bass, backing vocals (1993–2002, 2005–present) William DuVall – rhythm and lead guitar, lead and backing vocals (2006–present) Former members Layne Staley – lead and backing vocals (1987–2002; died 2002), occasional rhythm guitar (1992–2002) Mike Starr – bass, backing vocals (1987–1993; died 2011) Timeline Discography Studio albums Facelift (1990) Dirt (1992) Alice in Chains (1995) Black Gives Way to Blue (2009) The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here (2013) Rainier Fog (2018) Awards and nominations References External links VH1 Classic: Alice In Chains Category:1987 establishments in Washington (state) Category:2002 disestablishments in Washington (state) Category:2005 establishments in Washington (state) Category:American alternative metal musical groups Category:Columbia Records artists Category:EMI Records artists Category:American grunge groups Category:Heavy metal musical groups from Washington (state) Category:Kerrang! Awards winners Category:Musical groups established in 1987 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 2002 Category:Musical groups reestablished in 2005 Category:Musical groups from Seattle Category:Musical quartets Category:Virgin Records artists Category:Capitol Records artists Category:American sludge metal musical groups

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Alice in Chains

Alice in Chains is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1987 by guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney, who then recruited bassist Mike Starr and lead vocalist Layne Staley. Mike Starr was replaced in 1993 by Mike Inez. The band took its name from Staley's previous group, the glam metal band Alice N' Chains. Although widely associated with grunge music, the band's sound incorporates heavy metal elements.

Jar of Flies (1993-1994)

Following Alice in Chains' extensive 1993 world tour, Staley said the band "just wanted to go into the studio for a few days with our acoustic guitars and see what happened". "We never really planned on the music we made at that time to be released. But the record label heard it and they really liked it. For us, it was just the experience of four guys getting together in the studio and making some music." Columbia Records released Alice in Chains' second acoustic-based EP, Jar of Flies, on January 25, 1994. Written and recorded in one week, Jar of Flies debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, becoming the first EP--and first Alice in Chains release--to top the charts. Paul Evans of Rolling Stone called the EP "darkly gorgeous", and Steve Huey said, "'Jar of Flies' is a low-key stunner, achingly gorgeous and harrowingly sorrowful all at once". Jar of Flies features Alice in Chains' first number-one single on the Mainstream Rock charts, "No Excuses". The second single, "I Stay Away", reached number ten on the Mainstream rock charts, while the final single "Don't Follow", reached number 25. Jar of Flies has been certified triple platinum by the RIAA, with over 2 million copies sold in the United States during its first year. After the release of Jar of Flies, Staley entered rehab for heroin addiction. The band was scheduled to tour during the summer of 1994 with Metallica, Suicidal Tendencies, Danzig, and Fight, as well as a slot during Woodstock '94, but while in rehearsal for the tour, Staley began using heroin again. Staley's condition prompted the other band members to cancel all scheduled dates one day before the start of the tour, putting the band on hiatus. Alice in Chains was replaced by Candlebox on the tour. Susan Silver's management office sent out a statement saying that the decision to withdraw from the Metallica tour and Woodstock was "due to health problems within the band." The band broke up for six months. Kinney told Rolling Stone in 1996, "Nobody was being honest with each other back then. If we had kept going, there was a good chance we would have self-destructed on the road, and we definitely didn't want that to happen in public." CANNOTANSWER

Alice in Chains (often abbreviated as AIC) is an American rock band from Seattle, Washington, formed in 1987 by guitarist and vocalist Jerry Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney, who later recruited bassist Mike Starr and lead vocalist Layne Staley. Starr was replaced by Mike Inez in 1993. William DuVall joined the band in 2006 as co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, replacing Staley, who died in 2002. The band took its name from Staley's previous group, the glam metal band Alice N' Chains. Often associated with grunge music, Alice in Chains' sound incorporates heavy metal elements. The band is known for its distinctive vocal style, which often included the harmonized vocals between Staley and Cantrell (and later Cantrell and DuVall). Cantrell started to sing lead vocals on the 1992 acoustic EP Sap, and his role continued to grow in the following albums, making Alice in Chains a two-vocal band. Alice in Chains rose to international fame as part of the grunge movement of the early 1990s, along with other Seattle bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. They achieved success during the era with the albums Facelift (1990), Dirt (1992) and Alice in Chains (1995), as well as the EP Jar of Flies (1994). Although never officially disbanding, Alice in Chains was plagued by extended inactivity from 1996 onward, due to Staley's substance abuse, which resulted in his death in 2002. The band regrouped in 2006, with DuVall taking over as lead vocalist full-time, and they have since released three more albums: Black Gives Way to Blue (2009), The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here (2013), and Rainier Fog (2018). Since its formation, Alice in Chains has released six studio albums, three EPs, three live albums, four compilations, two DVDs, 43 music videos, and 32 singles. They have sold more than 30 million records worldwide, and over 19 million records in the US alone. The band has had 18 Top 10 songs on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, 5 No. 1 hits, and received 11 Grammy Award nominations. They were ranked number 34 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock and as the 15th greatest live band by Hit Parader. History 1984–1989: Formation and early years Before the formation of Alice in Chains, Layne Staley, a drummer at the time, landed his first gig as a vocalist when he auditioned to sing for a local glam metal band known as Sleze after receiving some encouragement from his stepbrother Ken Elmer. Other members of this group at that time were guitarists Johnny Bacolas and Zoli Semanate, drummer James Bergstrom, and bassist Byron Hansen. This band went through several lineup changes culminating with Nick Pollock as their sole guitarist and Bacolas switching to bass before discussions arose about changing their name to Alice in Chains. This was prompted by a conversation that Bacolas had with Russ Klatt, the lead singer of Slaughter Haus 5, about backstage passes. One of the passes said "Welcome to Wonderland", and they started talking about that being a reference to Alice in Wonderland, until Klatt said, "What about Alice in Chains? Put her in bondage and stuff like that." Bacolas thought the name "Alice in Chains" was cool and brought it up to his Sleze bandmates and everyone liked it, so they decided to change the name of the band. Due to concerns over the reference to female bondage, the group ultimately chose to spell it differently as Alice N' Chains to allay any parental concerns, though Staley's mother Nancy McCallum has said she was still not happy with this name at first. According to Bacolas, the decision to use the apostrophe-N combination in their name had nothing to do with the Los Angeles band Guns N' Roses. The name change happened in 1986, a year before Guns N' Roses became a household name with their first album Appetite for Destruction, released in July 1987. Staley met guitarist Jerry Cantrell at a party in Seattle around August 1987. A few months prior, Cantrell had watched a concert of Alice N' Chains in his hometown at the Tacoma Little Theatre, and was impressed by Staley's voice. Cantrell was homeless after being kicked out of his family's house, so Staley invited Cantrell to live with him at the rehearsal studio Music Bank, and the two struggling musicians became roommates. Alice N' Chains soon disbanded, and Staley joined a funk band. Cantrell's band, Diamond Lie, broke up and he wanted to form a new band, so Staley gave him the phone number of Melinda Starr, the girlfriend of drummer Sean Kinney, so that Cantrell could talk to him. Cantrell called the number and set up a meeting with Kinney. Kinney and his girlfriend went to the Music Bank and listened to Cantrell's demos, who mentioned that they needed a bass player to jam with them, and he had someone in mind: Mike Starr, with whom Cantrell had played in a band in Burien called Gypsy Rose. Kinney then mentioned that his girlfriend was actually Mike Starr's sister, and that he had been playing in bands together with Starr since they were kids. Kinney called Starr and a few days later he started jamming with him and Cantrell at the Music Bank, but they didn't have a singer. Staley's funk band also required a guitarist at the time, and Staley asked Cantrell to join as a sideman. Cantrell agreed on condition that Staley join his band. Because Cantrell, Starr and Kinney wanted Staley to be their lead singer, they started auditioning terrible lead singers in front of Staley to send a hint. The last straw for Staley was when they auditioned a male stripper – he decided to join the band after that. Eventually the funk project broke up, and in 1987 Staley joined Cantrell's band on a full-time basis. Two weeks after the band's formation, they were playing a gig at Washington State University, trying to fill out a 40-minute set with a couple of original songs along with Hanoi Rocks and David Bowie covers. The band played a couple of gigs in clubs around the Pacific Northwest, calling themselves different monikers, including Diamond Lie, the name of Cantrell's previous band, and "Fuck", before eventually adopting the name that Staley's previous band had initially flirted with, Alice in Chains. Staley contacted his former bandmates and asked for permission to use the name. Nick Pollock was not particularly thrilled about it at the time, and thought he should come up with a different name; both he and James Bergstrom ultimately gave Staley their blessing to use the name. Local promoter Randy Hauser became aware of the band at a concert and offered to pay for demo recordings. However, one day before the band was due to record at the Music Bank studio in Washington, police shut down the studio during the biggest cannabis raid in the history of the state. The final demo, completed in 1988, was named The Treehouse Tapes and found its way to music managers Kelly Curtis and Susan Silver, who also managed the Seattle-based band Soundgarden. Curtis and Silver passed the demo on to Columbia Records' A&R representative Nick Terzo, who set up an appointment with label president Don Ienner. Based on The Treehouse Tapes, Terzo signed Alice in Chains to Columbia in 1989. The band also recorded another untitled demo over a three-month period in 1989. This recording can be found on the bootleg release Sweet Alice. 1990–1992: Facelift and Sap Alice in Chains soon became a top priority of the label, which released the band's first official recording in July 1990, a promotional EP called We Die Young. The EP's lead single, "We Die Young", became a hit on metal radio. After its success, the label rushed Alice in Chains' debut album into production with producer Dave Jerden. Cantrell stated the album was intended to have a "moody aura" that was a "direct result of the brooding atmosphere and feel of Seattle." The resulting album, Facelift, was released on August 21, 1990, peaking at number 42 in the summer of 1991 on the Billboard 200 chart. Facelift was not an instant success, selling under 40,000 copies in the first six months of release, until MTV added "Man in the Box" to regular daytime rotation. The single hit number 18 on the Mainstream rock charts, with the album's follow up single, "Sea of Sorrow", reaching number 27, and in six weeks Facelift sold 400,000 copies in the US. The album was a critical success, with Steve Huey of AllMusic citing Facelift as "one of the most important records in establishing an audience for grunge and alternative rock among hard rock and heavy metal listeners." Sammy Hagar claimed he invited the band to tour with Van Halen after he saw the music video for "Man In The Box" on MTV. Facelift was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling a half-million copies on September 11, 1991, becoming the first album from Seattle's Grunge movement to be certified gold. The band continued to hone its audience, opening for such artists as Iggy Pop, Van Halen, Poison, and Extreme. Facelift has since been certified triple-platinum by the RIAA, for shipments of three million copies in the United States. The concert at the Moore Theatre in Seattle on December 22, 1990, was recorded and released on VHS on July 30, 1991, as Live Facelift. It features five live songs and three music videos. The home video has been certified gold by the RIAA for sales exceeding 50,000 copies. In early 1991, Alice in Chains landed the opening slot for the Clash of the Titans tour with Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer, exposing the band to a wide metal audience but receiving mainly poor reception. Alice in Chains was nominated for a Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy Award in 1992 for "Man in the Box" but lost to Van Halen for their 1991 album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. Following the tour, Alice in Chains entered the studio to record demos for its next album, but ended up recording five acoustic songs instead. While in the studio, drummer Sean Kinney had a dream about "making an EP called Sap". The band decided "not to mess with fate", and on February 4, 1992, Alice in Chains released their second EP, Sap. The EP was released while Nirvana's Nevermind was at the top of the Billboard 200 charts, resulting in a rising popularity of Seattle-based bands, and of the term "grunge music". Sap was certified gold within two weeks. The EP features Cantrell on lead vocals on the opening track, "Brother", and guest vocals by Ann Wilson from the band Heart, who joined Staley and Cantrell for the choruses of "Brother" and "Am I Inside". The EP also features Mark Arm of Mudhoney and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, who shared vocals with Staley and Cantrell on the song "Right Turn", credited to "Alice Mudgarden" in the liner notes. In 1992, Alice in Chains appeared in the Cameron Crowe film Singles, performing as a "bar band". The band also contributed the song "Would?" to the film's soundtrack, whose video received an award for Best Video from a Film at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards. 1992–1993: Dirt In March 1992, the band returned to the studio. With new songs written primarily on the road, the material has an overall darker feel than Facelift, with six of the album's thirteen songs dealing with the subject of addiction. "We did a lot of soul searching on this album. There's a lot of intense feelings." Cantrell said, "We deal with our daily demons through music. All of the poison that builds up during the day we cleanse when we play." On September 29, 1992, Alice in Chains released its second album, Dirt. The album peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 and since its release has been certified 5x platinum by the RIAA, making Dirt the band's highest selling album to date. The album was a critical success, with Steve Huey of Allmusic praising the album as a "major artistic statement, and the closest they ever came to recording a flat-out masterpiece." Chris Gill of Guitar World called Dirt "huge and foreboding, yet eerie and intimate", and "sublimely dark and brutally honest." Dirt spawned five singles that reached the top 30 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart: "Would?", "Rooster", "Them Bones", "Angry Chair", and "Down in a Hole", and remained on the charts for nearly two years. Alice in Chains was added as openers to Ozzy Osbourne's No More Tours tour. Days before the tour began, Layne Staley broke his foot in an ATV accident, forcing him to use crutches on stage. Starr left the band shortly after the Hollywood Rock concert in Rio de Janeiro on January 22, 1993, stating that he wanted to spend more time with his family. Staley told Rolling Stone in 1994 about Starr leaving the band, "It was just a difference in priorities. We wanted to continue intense touring and press. Mike was ready to go home." Years later, Starr claimed that he was fired due to his drug addiction. Starr was replaced by former Ozzy Osbourne bassist Mike Inez. Inez had met Alice in Chains during Ozzy Osbourne's No More Tours tour and became friends with them. When the band was in Brazil, they called Inez to join them and he accepted. Inez wanted to do the shows in Brazil and even got his immunization shots, but the band called him back telling that Starr wanted to do the last two shows in Brazil, so they would meet Inez in London instead. Inez ended up getting sick with his vaccination shots for a couple of days. Inez played his first concert with Alice in Chains on January 27, 1993, at the Camden Underworld in London. In April 1993, the band recorded two songs with Inez, "What the Hell Have I" and "A Little Bitter", for the Last Action Hero soundtrack. During the summer of 1993, Alice in Chains toured with the alternative music festival Lollapalooza, their last major tour with Staley. 1993–1994: Jar of Flies Following Alice in Chains' extensive 1993 world tour, Staley said the band "just wanted to go into the studio for a few days with our acoustic guitars and see what happened." "We never really planned on the music we made at that time to be released. But the record label heard it and they really liked it. For us, it was just the experience of four guys getting together in the studio and making some music." Columbia Records released Alice in Chains' second acoustic-based EP, Jar of Flies, on January 25, 1994. Written and recorded in one week, Jar of Flies debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, becoming the first EP—and first Alice in Chains release—to top the charts. Paul Evans of Rolling Stone called the EP "darkly gorgeous", and Steve Huey said, "'Jar of Flies' is a low-key stunner, achingly gorgeous and harrowingly sorrowful all at once." Jar of Flies features Alice in Chains' first number-one single on the Mainstream Rock charts, "No Excuses". The second single, "I Stay Away", reached number ten on the Mainstream rock charts, while the final single "Don't Follow", reached number 25. Jar of Flies has been certified triple platinum by the RIAA, with over 2 million copies sold in the United States during its first year. Jar of Flies received two Grammy nominations, Best Hard Rock Performance for "I Stay Away", and Best Recording Package. After the release of Jar of Flies, Staley entered rehab for heroin addiction. The band was scheduled to tour during the summer of 1994 with Metallica, Suicidal Tendencies, Danzig, and Fight, as well as a slot during Woodstock '94, but while in rehearsal for the tour, Staley began using heroin again. Staley's condition prompted the other band members to cancel all scheduled dates one day before the start of the tour, putting the band on hiatus. Alice in Chains was replaced by Candlebox on the tour. Susan Silver's management office sent out a statement saying that the decision to withdraw from the Metallica tour and Woodstock was "due to health problems within the band." The band broke up for six months. Kinney told Rolling Stone in 1996, "Nobody was being honest with each other back then. If we had kept going, there was a good chance we would have self-destructed on the road, and we definitely didn't want that to happen in public." 1995–1996: Alice in Chains While Alice in Chains was inactive during 1995, Staley joined the "grunge supergroup" Mad Season, which also featured Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, bassist John Baker Saunders from The Walkabouts, and Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin. Mad Season released one album, Above, for which Staley provided lead vocals and the album artwork. The album spawned a number-two Mainstream Rock chart single, "River of Deceit", as well as a home video release of Live at the Moore. In April 1995, Alice in Chains entered Bad Animals Studio in Seattle with producer Toby Wright, who had previously worked with Corrosion of Conformity and Slayer. While in the studio, an inferior version of the song "Grind" was leaked to radio, and received major airplay. On October 6, 1995, the band released the studio version of the song to radio via satellite uplink to stem excessive spread of taped copies of the song. On November 7, 1995, Columbia Records released the eponymous album, Alice in Chains, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and has since been certified triple platinum. Of the album's four singles, "Grind", "Again", "Over Now", and "Heaven Beside You", three feature Cantrell on lead vocals. Jon Wiederhorn of Rolling Stone called the album "liberating and enlightening, the songs achieve a startling, staggering and palpable impact." On December 12, 1995, the band released the home video The Nona Tapes, a mockumentary featuring interviews with the band members conducted by journalist Nona Weisbaum (played by Jerry Cantrell), and the music video for "Grind". The song "Got Me Wrong" unexpectedly charted three years after its release on the Sap EP. The song was re-released as a single on the soundtrack for the independent film Clerks in 1994, reaching number seven on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The band opted not to tour in support of Alice in Chains, adding to the rumors of drug abuse. Alice in Chains resurfaced on April 10, 1996, to perform their first concert in two and a half years for MTV Unplugged, a program featuring all-acoustic set lists. The performance featured some of the band's highest-charting singles, including "Rooster", "Down in a Hole", "Heaven Beside You", "No Excuses" and "Would?", and introduced a new song, "Killer Is Me", with Cantrell on lead vocals. The show marked Alice in Chains' only appearance as a five-piece band, adding second guitarist Scott Olson. A live album of the performance was released in July 1996, debuting at number three on the Billboard 200, and was accompanied by a home video release, both of which received platinum certification by the RIAA. The band also made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman on May 10, 1996, performing the songs "Again" and "We Die Young". Alice in Chains performed four shows supporting the reunited original Kiss lineup on their 1996–97 Alive/Worldwide Tour, including the final live appearance of Layne Staley on July 3, 1996, in Kansas City, Missouri. Shortly after the show, Staley was found unresponsive after he overdosed on heroin and was taken to the hospital. Although he recovered, the band was forced to go on hiatus. 1996–2004: Hiatus, side projects and death of Layne Staley Although Alice in Chains never officially disbanded, Staley became a recluse, rarely leaving his Seattle condominium following the death of his ex-fiancée Demri Parrott due to a drug overdose on October 29, 1996. "Drugs worked for me for years," Staley told Rolling Stone in February 1996, "and now they're turning against me ... now I'm walking through hell and this sucks. I didn't want my fans to think that heroin was cool. But then I've had fans come up to me and give me the thumbs up, telling me they're high. That's exactly what I didn't want to happen.." Unable to continue with new Alice in Chains material, Cantrell released his first solo album, Boggy Depot, in 1998, also featuring Sean Kinney and Mike Inez. Cantrell and Kinney were also featured on Metallica's 1998 album Garage Inc., both were guest musicians in the track "Tuesday's Gone", a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover. In October 1998, Staley reunited with Alice in Chains to record two new songs, "Get Born Again" and "Died". Originally intended for Cantrell's second solo album, the songs were reworked by Alice in Chains and were released in the fall of 1999 on the box set, Music Bank. The set contains 48 songs, including rarities, demos, and previously released album tracks and singles. The band also released a 15-track compilation titled Nothing Safe: Best of the Box, serving as a sampler for Music Bank, as well as the band's first compilation album; a live album, simply titled Live, released on December 5, 2000; and a second compilation, titled Greatest Hits in 2001. In November 1998, Layne Staley recorded a cover of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" with the supergroup Class of '99, formed by guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, bassist Martyn LeNoble, drummer Stephen Perkins, both from Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros, and keyboardist Matt Serletic. The song was featured on the soundtrack to the 1998 horror/sci-fi film, The Faculty. After they toured as part of Cantrell's solo band in 1998, Sean Kinney and Queensrÿche guitarist Chris DeGarmo formed a new band called Spys4Darwin. Mike Inez and Sponge lead vocalist Vin Dombroski joined the supergroup soon after. The band released their first and only album in 2001, a 6-track EP entitled Microfish. In June 2001, Mike Inez joined Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society for the remaining dates of Ozzfest, following the departure of bassist Steve Gibb due to medical reasons. Inez joined the band again for their West Coast and Japanese tour in 2003. By 2002, Cantrell had finished work on his second solo album, Degradation Trip. Written in 1998, the album's lyrical content focused heavily on what Cantrell regarded as the demise of Alice in Chains, which still remained evident as the album approached its June 2002 release. However, in March that year, Cantrell commented, "We're all still around, so it's possible [Alice in Chains] could all do something someday, and I fully hope someday we will." Reflecting on the band's hiatus in a 2011 interview, Kinney said that Staley wasn't the only one battling addiction. "He was the focal point, like singers are. So they'd single him out. But the truth was, it was pretty much everybody. I definitely had my hand firmly on the wheel going off the cliff. And the reason we pulled back – you know when you stop when you have two #1 records, it's not really the greatest career move – but we did that because we love each other and we didn't want to die in public. And I know for a fact in my heart that if we were to continue that I wouldn't be on the phone right now talking to you. I wouldn't have made it. I just wouldn't have." After a decade of battling drug addiction, Layne Staley was found dead in his condominium in Seattle on April 19, 2002. The autopsy and toxicology report on Staley's body revealed that he died from a mixture of heroin and cocaine, known as "speedball". The autopsy concluded that Staley died on April 5, two weeks before his body was found. Cantrell dedicated his 2002 solo album, Degradation Trip, released two months after Staley's death, to his memory. Mike Starr later claimed on Celebrity Rehab that he was the last person to see Staley alive, and admitted to feeling guilty about not calling 911 after Staley had warned him against it. "I wish I hadn't been high on benzodiazepine [that night], I wouldn't have just walked out the door," Starr said. Following Staley's death, Mike Inez joined Heart and toured and recorded with the band from 2002 through 2006. Jerry Cantrell collaborated with several artists such as Heart, Ozzy Osbourne, and Damageplan. In 2004, Cantrell formed the band Cardboard Vampyres along with The Cult guitarist Billy Duffy, Mötley Crüe and Ratt vocalist John Corabi, The Cult bassist Chris Wyse and drummer Josh Howser. On October 22, 2004, Sony BMG terminated their contract with Alice in Chains, 15 years after the band signed with the label, in 1989. 2005–2008: Reunion shows and reformation In 2005, Sean Kinney came up with the idea of doing a benefit concert for the victims of the tsunami disaster that struck South Asia in 2004. Kinney made calls to his former bandmates, as well as friends in the music community, such as former Alice in Chains manager Susan Silver. Kinney was surprised by the enthusiastic response to his idea. On February 18, 2005, Jerry Cantrell, Mike Inez, and Sean Kinney reunited to perform for the first time in nine years at K-Rock Tsunami Continued Care Relief Concert in Seattle. The band featured Damageplan vocalist Pat Lachman, as well as other special guests including Maynard James Keenan of Tool and Ann Wilson of Heart. A few months after that experience, the band called Susan Silver and Cantrell's manager Bill Siddons and said they wanted to tour as Alice in Chains again. Alice in Chains was approached by the producers of the CBS reality show Rock Star about being featured on its second season, but the band turned the offer down. In the show, aspiring singers competed to become the lead vocalist of a featured group. On March 10, 2006, the surviving members performed at VH1's Decades Rock Live concert, honoring fellow Seattle musicians Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart. They played "Would?" with vocalist Phil Anselmo of Pantera and Down and bass player Duff McKagan of Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver, and at the end of the performance Cantrell dedicated the show to Layne Staley and the late Pantera and Damageplan guitarist Dimebag Darrell. They also played "Rooster" with Comes with the Fall vocalist William DuVall and Ann Wilson. The band followed the concert with a short United States club tour named "Finish What We Started", several festival dates in Europe, and a brief tour in Japan. Duff McKagan again joined the band for the reunion tour, playing rhythm guitar on selected songs. During the tour, the band played a 5-minute video tribute to Staley during the changeover from the electric to acoustic set. To coincide with the band's reunion, Sony Music released the long-delayed third Alice in Chains compilation, The Essential Alice in Chains, a double album that includes 28 songs. Jerry Cantrell met William DuVall in Los Angeles in 2000 through a mutual acquaintance who introduced Cantrell to Comes with the Fall's first album. Cantrell started hanging out with the band and occasionally joined them onstage. Between 2001 and 2002, Comes with the Fall was both the opening act on Cantrell's tour for his second solo album, Degradation Trip, and also his backing band, with DuVall singing Staley's parts at the concerts. DuVall joined Alice in Chains as lead singer during the band's reunion concerts in 2006, and made his first public performance with the band at VH1's Decades Rock Live concert. According to Cantrell, it only took one audition for DuVall to get the gig. For his first rehearsal with the band, DuVall sang "Love, Hate, Love". After they finished, Sean Kinney looked at his bandmates and said, "I think the search is pretty much over." According to Mike Inez, DuVall didn't try to emulate Staley, and that's what drew them to him. Cantrell revealed that before he suggested DuVall for the band, Sean Kinney and Mike Inez invited Sponge and Spys4Darwin lead vocalist Vin Dombroski to jam with the band in their rehearsal space. Dombroski jammed with them to a couple of songs but they did not feel he was right for the band. According to Cantrell, Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver lead singer Scott Weiland was also interested in joining the band. Cantrell explained the reunion saying, "We want to celebrate what we did and the memory of our friend. We have played with some [singers] who can actually bring it and add their own thing to it without being a Layne clone. We're not interested in stepping on [Staley's] rich legacy. It's a tough thing to go through. Do you take the Led Zeppelin approach and never play again, because the guy was that important? That's the approach we've taken for a lot of years. Or, do you give it a shot, try something? We're willing to take a chance on it. It's completely a reunion because the three of us who're left are back together. But it's not about separating and forgetting—it's about remembering and moving on." Before the tour, Kinney mentioned in an interview that he would be interested in writing new material, but not as Alice in Chains. During the VH1 Rock Honors concert honoring Heart on May 12, 2007, Alice in Chains performed Heart's "Barracuda" fronted by country singer Gretchen Wilson. Heart's guitarist Nancy Wilson also joined them onstage. Alice in Chains joined Velvet Revolver for a run of U.S. and Canadian gigs from August through October 2007. During that tour, the band also performed four special acoustic-only shows, named as "The Acoustic Hour". The acoustic performance at The Rave/Eagles Club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on August 31, 2007, was recorded for an upcoming live album. On November 2, 2007, Alice in Chains performed a four-song set at Benaroya Hall in Seattle for Matt Messina and the Symphony Guild's 10th anniversary benefit concert for the Seattle Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center. In addition to the band's original material, they also played a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" while backed by over 200 musicians, including the Northwest Symphony Orchestra and the Northwest Girlchoir. Sean Kinney said about the band's reunion: "I never called Jerry; he never called me, and said, 'Hey, let's get the band back together,' you know? We had been taking every step extremely cautious and slow, and just doing whatever feels right: If it's genuine and we're doing it for genuine reasons and we're all okay with it then we take a little step. None of us is broke. Nobody needs to be a rock dork, and you know, stroke their ego. I mean, we don't really operate like that. So as long as it felt good and from the right place and it's about making music and carrying on…." About the pressure being put on DuVall for replacing Staley as lead vocalist, Cantrell said, "To put all that weight on Will's shoulders is unfair. We're just figuring out how we work as a team. Although the band has changed, we've lost Layne, we've added Will, and there was no master plan. Playing again in 2005 felt right, so we did the next thing and toured. We did it step by step. It's more than just making music, and it always has been. We've been friends a long time. We've been more of a family than most, and it had to be okay from here," Cantrell said pointing to his heart. Former The Doors manager Bill Siddons and his management company, Core Entertainment, co-managed Alice in Chains with original manager Susan Silver from 2005 to 2007. The band started writing and demoing songs for a new album with DuVall in April 2007. But the band did not show further signs of progress until October 2008, when they announced that they had begun recording with producer Nick Raskulinecz in the studio. 2008–2011: Black Gives Way to Blue and death of Mike Starr Blabbermouth.net reported on September 5, 2008, that Alice in Chains would enter the studio that October to begin recording a new album for a summer 2009 release. On September 14, 2008, Alice in Chains performed at halftime during the Seattle Seahawks vs San Francisco 49ers game at the CenturyLink Field (then-named Qwest Field) in Seattle. The 12-minute performance for a crowd of 67,000 people featured a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" accompanied by the Northwest Symphony Orchestra. In October 2008, Alice in Chains began recording its fourth studio album at the Foo Fighters' Studio 606 in Los Angeles with producer Nick Raskulinecz. The band did not have a record label at the time and the album was funded by Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney. At the Revolver Golden God Awards, Cantrell said that the group had finished recording on March 18, 2009, and were mixing the album for a September release. The recording process was completed on Cantrell's 43rd birthday and also the same day that William DuVall's son was born. In April 2009, it was reported that the new Alice in Chains album would be released by Virgin/EMI, making it the band's first label change in its 20-plus year career. Susan Silver, who started managing Alice in Chains in 1988, now co-manages the band with David Benveniste and his Velvet Hammer firm. On June 11, 2009, Blabbermouth.net reported that the new album would be titled Black Gives Way to Blue and was officially set to be released on September 29, 2009. The title first appeared on Amazon.com without any prior announcement from the band. In addition, it was announced that Elton John plays piano on the title track, a tribute to Layne Staley written and sung by Cantrell. The album features new vocalist and rhythm guitarist William DuVall sharing vocal duties with lead guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell, who sings lead vocals on most of the songs. DuVall sings lead vocals on the song "Last of My Kind". On June 30, 2009, the song "A Looking in View" was made available for purchase via iTunes and Amazon, and for a limited time it was available as a free download through the official Alice in Chains website in early July. Although it was not the album's first radio single, Rock stations across the U.S. started playing the song. The music video for "A Looking in View" debuted via the band's official website on July 7, 2009. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. "Check My Brain" was released to radio stations as the first official single from the album on August 14, 2009, and was made available for purchase on August 17, 2009. The music video for "Check My Brain" premiered on September 14, 2009. The song was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. To promote the album, the band released an EPK featuring all four of the members being interviewed while the Kiss makeup is being applied on them. An app for iPhone was released on October 27, 2009, featuring songs, music videos, news, photos and networking. Sean Kinney said about the new album and the fans' mixed reactions about the band moving on after Staley's death: "Look, it's a big move to fucking stand up and move on. Some people, the music connected with them so strongly, their opinions, how they feel about it ... It's amazing that they have such a connection but they seem to act like it happened to them. This happened to us and Layne's family, not them. This is actually our lives. If we're okay with it, why can't you be? This happened to us, this didn't happen to you. But this album isn't about that, it's a bigger universal point. We're all going to fucking die, we're all going to lose somebody, and it fucking hurts. How do you move on? This record is us moving on, and hurting. That, to me, is a victory. I already feel like I've won." "Sometimes people ask us, 'Wouldn't Layne have been pissed off that we did this?' And I tell them it would have been the opposite: he would have been pissed off that it took us so long to do this. We're not doing this for money; there is no money in the music business anymore. Jerry and I funded the whole album, and we spent lots of our own money, because we believe in this. And one of the reasons I'm doing this is so more light is turned on to something where the light was turned off." And Cantrell added: "We've toured around the world, we've lost some friends, we buried a dear friend, and somebody that you just can't fucking replace, and then we've chosen by circumstance to get together again. That turned into 'maybe we can fucking do this.' And that turned into this." In September 2008, it was announced that Alice in Chains would headline Australia's Soundwave Festival in 2009, alongside Nine Inch Nails and Lamb of God. In February 2009, it was also announced that Alice in Chains would play at the third annual Rock on the Range festival. On August 1, 2009, Alice in Chains performed, along with Mastodon, Avenged Sevenfold, and Glyder, at Marlay Park, Dublin as direct support to Metallica. The band made an appearance on Later... with Jools Holland on November 10, 2009, performing "Lesson Learned", "Black Gives Way to Blue", and "Check My Brain" as the final performance of the episode. To coincide with the band's European tour, Alice in Chains released its next single, "Your Decision", on November 16, 2009, in the UK and on December 1 in the US. The last single from the album was "Lesson Learned", and it was released to rock radio on June 22, 2010. Black Gives Way to Blue debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200. On May 18, 2010, the album was certified gold by the RIAA for selling over 500,000 copies in the U.S. The singles "Check My Brain" and "Your Decision" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks, while "Lesson Learned" reached No. 4. "Check My Brain" was also the band's first #1 song on the Alternative Songs chart, and on the Hot Rock Songs chart, it also reached No. 92 on Billboard's Hot 100, becoming the band's first single to appear on the chart. Along with Mastodon and Deftones, Alice in Chains toured the United States and Canada in late 2010 on the Blackdiamondskye tour, an amalgam of the three bands' latest album titles (Black Gives Way to Blue, Diamond Eyes, and Crack the Skye). On March 8, 2011, former Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr was found dead at his home in Salt Lake City. Police told Reuters they were called to Starr's home at 1:42 pm and found his body; Starr was 44. Reports later surfaced that Starr's roommate had seen him mixing methadone and anxiety medication hours before he was found dead. Later reports indicated Starr's death may have been linked to two different types of antidepressants prescribed to him by his doctor. A public memorial was held for Starr at the Seattle Center's International Fountain on March 20, 2011. A private memorial was also held, which Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney attended according to Mike Inez. 2011–2016: The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here On March 21, 2011, Alice in Chains announced that they were working on a fifth studio album, and both Cantrell and Inez later made statements that they had begun the recording process. The album was expected to be finished by summer of 2012 and released by the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013. While Alice in Chains were writing for the album in 2011, Cantrell underwent surgery on his right shoulder, which delayed recording the new material. In an interview published in May 2012, Cantrell explained, "The thing that set me back is I had some bone spurs [and] cartilage issues in my shoulders. I had the same issue in the other shoulder about six years ago so I've had them both done now. It's a repetitive motion injury from playing." Cantrell could not play guitar for eight months while he was recovering from surgery. While recuperating at home in a sling, Cantrell heard a riff in his head and sang it into his phone. The riff later became the song "Stone". Alice in Chains played their first concert in nearly 10 months and their first concert after Cantrell's shoulder surgery at the Winstar Casino in Thackerville, Oklahoma on August 13, 2011. The band's only concert in 2012 was a five-song acoustic set on May 31 at the eighth annual MusiCares MAP Fund Benefit Concert honoring Jerry Cantrell. On December 4, 2012, Cantrell confirmed that the new album had been completed. The first single, "Hollow", debuted online on December 18, available for digital download in January 2013, along with an official music video. On February 13, 2013, Alice in Chains posted on Facebook that their new album title would be an anagram of the letters H V L E N T P S U S D A H I E E O E D T I U R R. The next day they announced that the album would be called The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, which was released on May 28, 2013, and debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. To promote the album, Alice in Chains teamed up with Funny or Die for an 11-minute mockumentary titled AIC 23, in which Film Studies professor Alan Poole McLard (played by W. Earl Brown) attempts to make a documentary on Alice in Chains without any help from the actual band, interviewing other musicians instead. Among them are country singer Donnie 'Skeeter' Dollarhide Jr. (played by Jerry Cantrell), Reggae singer Nesta Cleveland (played by William DuVall), Black Metal musician Unta Gleeben Glabben Globben Globin (played by Mike Inez) and the hipster Stanley Eisen (played by Sean Kinney). The video was released on April 3, 2013, and also features cameos by Ann and Nancy Wilson from Heart, Mike McCready from Pearl Jam, Kim Thayil from Soundgarden, Duff McKagan from Guns N' Roses, Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher from Mastodon, and Lars Ulrich and Robert Trujillo from Metallica. In June 2013, the band released a pinball game app for iOS as part of Pinball Rocks HD compilation, featuring the single "Hollow", the band's logo and the album artwork, as well as references to the band's previous albums such as Jar of Flies and the self-titled record. The band released videos for the songs "Hollow", "Stone", "Voices", the title track and "Phantom Limb". "Hollow" and "Stone" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks, while "Voices" reached No. 3, and each one of the three songs stayed on the chart for 20 weeks. The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical in 2014. Alice in Chains toured extensively in the U.S., Canada, and Europe in 2013 and 2014. In May 2013, the band co-headlined the annual MMRBQ festival with Soundgarden in Camden, New Jersey. Asked in September 2013 if Alice in Chains would make another album, Cantrell replied, "It'll be a while. It's [been] four years since we put the last one out, but at least it's not the gap that was between the last one, so that's about right - about three to four years." On January 18, 2015, Alice in Chains performed in the halftime show of the NFC Championship Game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers at CenturyLink Field in Seattle. Cantrell is a lifelong Seahawks fan and often attends their games. In August 2015, Bassist Mike Inez said that the band had been "throwing around riffs for a new record" and "taking it nice and slow". The band toured in the summer of 2015 and the summer of 2016, including select shows opening for Guns N' Roses as part of the Not in This Lifetime... Tour. The band finished their 2016 tour with a concert at the Grand Sierra Resort and Casino in Reno, Nevada on October 8, 2016. In November 2016, Alice in Chains released a cover of the Rush song "Tears", which was included in the 40th anniversary release of the album 2112. The home video Live Facelift was released on vinyl for the first time on November 25, 2016, as part of Record Store Day's Black Friday event. The album features six songs and only 5000 copies were issued. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Record Store Day, on April 22, 2017, Legacy Recordings released "Get Born Again"/"What the Hell Have I", a special 45 RPM double 7" single featuring four tracks remastered and available on vinyl for the first time, "What the Hell Have I", "A Little Bitter", "Get Born Again" and "Died". 2017–2021: Rainier Fog In January 2017, Mike Inez stated in an interview that the band had begun work on a new album. In June 2017, it was reported that the band would return to Studio X (formerly Bad Animals Studios) in Seattle to record a new album later that month, for a tentative early 2018 release. The sessions were helmed by Nick Raskulinecz, who produced the band's last two albums. Studio X was the studio where Alice in Chains recorded its 1995 self-titled album. According to Inez, the band was not signed to a label, having completed its previous two-record contract with the Universal Music Group. "This [upcoming album], we're not sure where it's gonna land ... I mean, we financed ['Black Gives Way To Blue'] on our own too, so we're not too worried about that stuff. We've just gotta get it out to ... a significant label [with worldwide distribution]." The band started recording their sixth studio album on June 12, 2017. On January 11, 2018, producer Nick Raskulinecz announced via Instagram that the album was nearly finished and that there was only one more day left of recording. During an interview with Guitar World published on April 11, 2018, Jerry Cantrell said that the album was recorded at four studios. After recording at Studio X in Seattle, the band went to Nashville to record vocals and lead guitars at Nick Raskulinecz's home studio. But Cantrell had to take an unexpected break from work for a couple of weeks after getting sick on a trip to Cabo for Sammy Hagar's birthday. Cantrell had the band's engineer, Paul Figueroa, come in to his house and record a lot of his vocals and solos there. The band finished recording the album at the Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles. Cantrell also said he expected the album to be released "probably sometime this summer." At the press room of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on April 14, 2018, Cantrell revealed that Alice in Chains had just signed with BMG, and that they had finished mixing their new album. Alice in Chains did not perform live in 2017. The band performed their first concert since October 2016 at the House of Blues in Boston on April 28, 2018. In May 2018, Alice in Chains headlined the festivals Carolina Rebellion, Lunatic Luau, Pointfest, Northern Invasion, the WMMR BBQ festival in Philadelphia, and the Rock on the Range festival in Columbus, Ohio on May 18, 2018, in which they paid tribute to Chris Cornell on the first anniversary of his death covering two Soundgarden songs to close their set, "Hunted Down" and "Boot Camp", respectively. At the end of the show, the lights on stage spelled out "CC" for Chris Cornell and "SG" for Soundgarden as feedback rang out. The band started their European tour in June 2018, and headlined the Tons Of Rock Festival in Norway alongside Ozzy Osbourne and Helloween. Alice in Chains are also scheduled to headline KISW's Pain in the Grass festival in August 2018. The band released a new single, "The One You Know", via Spotify, Amazon and iTunes on May 3, 2018. A music video directed by Adam Mason was released on YouTube the same day. "The One You Know" peaked at No. 9 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart. During an interview with Eddie Trunk on Trunk Nation on May 7, 2018, Jerry Cantrell said that the new album would be released at the end of August 2018. The band also revealed that they talked to director Adam Mason, who is making a dark sci-film, about doing two separate pieces of art and maybe molding them together, and that the music video for "The One You Know" is the first chapter of molding Mason's film and the band's music videos together. The second single, "So Far Under", was released on Alice in Chains' YouTube channel and on streaming platforms on June 27, 2018. It was also announced that the album would be titled Rainier Fog, with the release date scheduled for August 24, 2018. The album's artwork and the track listing were also revealed on the same day. Jerry Cantrell told Rolling Stone that the title Rainier Fog was inspired by the Mount Rainier in Seattle, and the title track is a tribute to the Seattle music scene. "This song is a little homage to all of that: where we come from, who we are, all of the triumphs, all of the tragedies, lives lived." The album's third single, "Never Fade", was released on August 10, 2018, through digital and streaming services. The song is a tribute dedicated to frontman William DuVall's grandmother, Chris Cornell, and Alice in Chains' original singer Layne Staley. "Never Fade" peaked at No. 10 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart. A music video directed by Adam Mason was released on November 1, 2018, and continued the storyline from the music video of "The One You Know". In June 2018, William DuVall said in an interview with Swedish website Rocksverige that the music video for "The One You Know" is the first chapter of what the band is hoping will be visuals for all ten songs from the album Rainier Fog, and in addition to that, will be a companion piece to the film that director Adam Mason was shooting. On August 20, 2018, the baseball team Seattle Mariners hosted a special "Alice in Chains Night" at the Safeco Field in Seattle to promote Rainier Fog, with the team offering the fans a package that included a Safeco Field terrace club ticket, access to a pre-game listening party of the album, an Alice in Chains T-shirt and a Rainier Fog CD. Jerry Cantrell also threw out the ceremonial first pitch and delivered a strike before the Seattle Mariners vs. Houston Astros game. To mark the launch of the album, on August 21, 2018, Alice in Chains performed an acoustic set at the top of Seattle's Space Needle and debuted the song "Fly". Alice in Chains were the first band to perform on the Space Needle's new "Loupe" glass floor, the world's first and only revolving glass floor 500 feet high. The concert was exclusive for an audience of SiriusXM subscribers. SiriusXM broadcast the concert on their channel Lithium on August 31, 2018. On August 22, 2018, Alice in Chains sent fans on a Scavenger hunt to access a secret gig that the band would be performing in Seattle on August 24. Ten signed CD copies of Rainier Fog were hidden around the city as a ticket into the show, and the band asked the fans to keep an eye on their Instagram story for details on the 10 hidden locations. Once all 10 albums were found, the band revealed that the secret gig would be at the rock club The Crocodile, with limited tickets available with the purchase of their album at a pop-up event at the same venue the next day. Preview clips of each of the album tracks were posted on the band's Instagram. The band also commemorated the release of the album with a pop-up museum installation at The Crocodile in Seattle on August 23 and 24. The museum featured rare Alice in Chains photos, limited-edition merchandise and memorabilia that showcased the band's 30+ year career. Rainier Fog debuted at No. 12 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 31,000 copies (29,000 in traditional album sales), in its first week of release. The album also debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Rock Albums, Alternative Albums and Hard Rock Albums charts, and at No. 3 on the Vinyl Albums chart. Rainier Fog became Alice in Chains' first top 10 in the UK, peaking at No. 9, and topping UK's Rock & Metal Albums chart. The album has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. On December 13, 2018, the teaser of the film Black Antenna featuring the song "Rainier Fog" was released on Alice in Chains' official YouTube channel, with drummer Sean Kinney stating; "We've always toyed with the idea of creating videos for every song on one of our albums. Not only did we do that for Rainier Fog, it got totally out of hand and we made a whole goddamn movie. Everything that will be seen in the videos will be footage from Black Antenna to preface the complete film's release." "Rainier Fog" was released as a single on February 26, 2019. The official trailer for Black Antenna was released on Alice In Chains' YouTube Channel on February 28, 2019. Besides a 90-minute film, a 10-part web-series focused on each track from the album will also be released. Episodes 1 and 2, "The One You Know" and "Rainier Fog", respectively, were released on March 7, 2019. The tenth and last episode, "All I Am", was released on July 17, 2019. The official music video for "Rainier Fog" was released on YouTube on May 15, 2019, and was co-directed by Alice in Chains and Peter Darley Miller, who also directed the band's 2013 mockumentary, AIC 23. On December 1, 2020, Alice in Chains was honored with the Founders Award from Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture. The benefit concert featured tribute performances from artists such as Ann Wilson, Korn, Metallica, Fishbone, Dallas Green, Billy Corgan, Tad Doyle, members of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, among others. The event was made available for streaming for free and raised more than $600,000 for the museum in its first night. A compilation featuring highlights from the tribute was made available for streaming on Amazon Music. 2022–present: Upcoming seventh studio album In an April 2022 interview, vocalist William DuVall revealed that he was "sure" Alice in Chains will begin working on their seventh studio album later in the year: "We had a lot of time imposed on us and I think we're going through this period of catching up on things that we had planned for 2020 [and] 2021, and we're all finally getting to do that now. So, it's kind of like a stopgap and we're just dealing with all of these stockpiled projects that we had planned a few years back. So once we get back up to speed with things and we get these dates underway in late summer, I'm sure it will spark a whole bunch of ideas for the next Alice in Chains studio album." Musical style Although Alice in Chains has been labeled grunge by the mainstream media, Jerry Cantrell identifies the band as primarily heavy metal. He told Guitar World in 1996, "We're a lot of different things  ... I don't quite know what the mixture is, but there's definitely metal, blues, rock and roll, maybe a touch of punk. The metal part will never leave, and I never want it to." The Edmonton Journal has stated, "Living and playing in Seattle might have got them the grunge tag, but they've always pretty much been a classic metal band to the core." Over the course of their career, the band's sound has also been described as alternative metal, sludge metal, doom metal, drone rock, hard rock, and alternative rock. Regarding the band's constant categorization by the media, Cantrell stated "When we first came out we were metal. Then we started being called alternative metal. Then grunge came out and then we were hard rock. And now, since we've started doing this again I've seen us listed as: hard rock, alternative, alternative metal and just straight metal. I walked into an HMV the other day to check out the placement and see what's on and they've got us relegated back into the metal section. Right back where we started!" Drummer Sean Kinney rejects the grunge label, stating in a 2013 interview "I mean, before we first came out there was no grunge, they hadn't invented that word. Before they invented the word grunge we were alternative rock and alternative metal and metal and rock, and we didn't give a shit whatever, we were a rock and roll band!." According to Mike Inez, they were always the metal stepchildren of the Seattle scene. The band are influenced to a great extent by English metal music; in 2018, Jerry Cantrell proclaimed Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi as "one of his biggest" inspirations, whilst Layne Staley named his "first influences" as Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Cantrell adjudged English rock singer Elton John as "the artist that made me want to be a musician." In addition, members of Alice in Chains have cited artists including AC/DC, Accept, Aerosmith, The Beatles, Black Flag, David Bowie, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dio, Funkadelic, Hanoi Rocks, Heart, Jimi Hendrix, Iron Maiden, King's X, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Motörhead, Mudhoney, Pink Floyd, Queensrÿche, the Rolling Stones, Rush, Scorpions, Soundgarden, The Stooges, Television, Thin Lizzy, U2, UFO, Van Halen, The Velvet Underground, Hank Williams, and ZZ Top as influential or inspirational. Jerry Cantrell's guitar style combines "pummeling riffs and expansive guitar textures" to create "slow, brooding minor-key grinds". He is also recognized for his natural ability to blend acoustic and electric guitars. While down-tuned, distorted guitars mixed with Staley's distinctive "snarl-to-a-scream" vocals appealed to heavy metal fans, the band also had "a sense of melody that was undeniable," which introduced Alice in Chains to a much wider audience outside of the heavy metal underground. According to Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic, Alice in Chains' sound has a "Black Sabbath-style riffing and an unconventional vocal style." The band has been described by Erlewine as "hard enough for metal fans, yet their dark subject matter and punky attack placed them among the front ranks of the Seattle-based grunge bands." Three of the band's releases feature acoustic music, and while the band initially kept these releases separate, Alice in Chains' self-titled album combined the styles to form "a bleak, nihilistic sound that balanced grinding hard rock with subtly textured acoustic numbers." Alice in Chains is also noted for the unique vocal harmonies of Staley (or DuVall) and Cantrell, which included overlapping passages, dual lead vocals, and trademark harmonies typically separated by a major third. Cantrell said it was Staley who gave him the self-assurance to sing his own songs. Alyssa Burrows said the band's distinctive sound "came from Staley's vocal style and his lyrics dealing with personal struggles and addiction." Staley's songs were often considered "dark", with themes such as drug abuse, depression, and suicide, while Cantrell's lyrics often dealt with personal relationships. Legacy Rankings Alice in Chains has sold over 19 million records in the United States, and over 30 million records worldwide, released two number-one albums, had 23 top 40 singles, and has received eleven Grammy Award nominations. The band was ranked number 34 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. Alice in Chains was named 15th greatest live band by Hit Parader, with Staley placing as 27th-greatest heavy metal vocalist of all time. The band's second album, Dirt, was named 5th-best album in the last two decades by Close-Up magazine in 2008. In October 2008, Guitar World ranked Cantrell's solo in "Man in the Box" at No. 77 on their list of "100 Greatest Guitar Solos". In August 2009, Alice in Chains won the Kerrang! Icon Award. In November 2011, Jar of Flies was ranked number four on Guitar World magazine's top ten list of guitar albums of 1994. It was also featured in Guitar World magazine's "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994" list, and in May 2014, the EP was placed at number five on Loudwire's "10 Best Hard Rock Albums of 1994" list. In June 2017, Metal Injection ranked Alice in Chains at number 1 on their list of "10 Heaviest Grunge Bands". Ozzy Osbourne ranked Facelift among his list of "10 Favorite Metal Albums". Influence Pantera and Damageplan guitarist Dimebag Darrell had expressed his admiration for Cantrell's guitar work in an interview for Guitar International in 1995, saying that "the layering and the honest feel that Jerry Cantrell gets on [Alice in Chains' Dirt] record is worth a lot more than someone who plays five million notes." Street musician Wesley Willis wrote a song about the band entitled "Alice in Chains", featured on his 1996 album Feel The Power. Billy Corgan revealed that the song "Bleeding The Orchid" from The Smashing Pumpkins' 2007 album Zeitgeist has a bit of an homage to Alice in Chains in the harmonies and was indirectly inspired by the death of Staley. Elton John stated that he is a fan of Alice in Chains and a big admirer of Cantrell. According to Jon Wiederhorn of MTV, Godsmack has "sonically followed Alice in Chains' lead while adding their own distinctive edge." Godsmack singer and founder Sully Erna has also cited Staley as his primary influence. Godsmack was named after the Alice in Chains song "God Smack" from the album Dirt. Staind has covered Alice in Chains' song "Nutshell" live, which appears on the compilation The Singles: 1996-2006, and also wrote a song entitled "Layne", dedicated to Staley, on the album 14 Shades of Grey. Three Days Grace also performs a cover of "Rooster", which can be seen on the DVD Live at the Palace. Other bands that have been influenced by Alice in Chains include 10 Years, Avenged Sevenfold, Breaking Benjamin, Creed, Dallas Green, Days of the New, Disturbed, Hoobastank, Incubus, Korn, Manic Street Preachers, Mudvayne, Nickelback, A Pale Horse Named Death, Puddle of Mudd, Queens of the Stone Age, Rains, Seether, Smile Empty Soul, Stone Sour, Tantric, Taproot, and Theory of a Deadman. Metallica said they have always wanted to tour with the band, citing Alice in Chains as a major inspiration for their 2008 release, Death Magnetic. Alice in Chains has also had a significant influence on modern heavy metal. Their songs were covered by various metal bands such as In Flames, Opeth, Dream Theater, Secrets of the Moon, Suicide Silence, 36 Crazyfists, Cane Hill, Ektomorf, Dritt Skitt, Grave and Thou, who described their 2018 EP Rhea Sylvia as "a melodic grunge, Alice in Chains homage." In 2009, Anders Fridén of Swedish melodic death metal band In Flames cited Layne Staley as an inspiration for his vocals on the band's later albums. In addition to fellow musicians, the band has also received praise from critics, with Steve Huey of AllMusic calling them "one of the best metal bands of the '90s" upon reviewing the 1999 compilation Nothing Safe. In 2009, the Vitamin String Quartet released the album The String Quartet Tribute to Alice in Chains, featuring instrumental versions on viola, violin and cello of 12 of the band's biggest hits. Media An internal memo at Clear Channel Communications three days after the September 11th, 2001 attack suggestively listed 164 songs to be banned from being aired on the company's radio stations, known as the Clear Channel memorandum. The list included four Alice in Chains songs - Down in a Hole, Rooster, Sea of Sorrow, and Them Bones. In August 2015, journalist David de Sola published the biography Alice in Chains: The Untold Story. An updated version covering the period from 2014 to 2017 was published in November 2018. Neither the band nor their management had any involvement with the book. Sources tied directly to the band were interviewed instead. The claymation dolls of the band members used in the music video for "I Stay Away" are on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland, Ohio. Members Current members Jerry Cantrell – lead and rhythm guitar, lead and backing vocals (1987–2002, 2005–present) Sean Kinney – drums, backing vocals (1987–2002, 2005–present) Mike Inez – bass, backing vocals (1993–2002, 2005–present) William DuVall – rhythm and lead guitar, lead and backing vocals (2006–present) Former members Layne Staley – lead and backing vocals (1987–2002; died 2002), occasional rhythm guitar (1992–2002) Mike Starr – bass, backing vocals (1987–1993; died 2011) Timeline Discography Studio albums Facelift (1990) Dirt (1992) Alice in Chains (1995) Black Gives Way to Blue (2009) The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here (2013) Rainier Fog (2018) Awards and nominations References External links VH1 Classic: Alice In Chains Category:1987 establishments in Washington (state) Category:2002 disestablishments in Washington (state) Category:2005 establishments in Washington (state) Category:American alternative metal musical groups Category:Columbia Records artists Category:EMI Records artists Category:American grunge groups Category:Heavy metal musical groups from Washington (state) Category:Kerrang! Awards winners Category:Musical groups established in 1987 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 2002 Category:Musical groups reestablished in 2005 Category:Musical groups from Seattle Category:Musical quartets Category:Virgin Records artists Category:Capitol Records artists Category:American sludge metal musical groups

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Glenn Curtiss

Glenn Hammond Curtiss (May 21, 1878 - July 23, 1930) was an American aviation and motorcycling pioneer, and a founder of the U.S. aircraft industry. He began his career as a bicycle racer and builder before moving on to motorcycles. As early as 1904, he began to manufacture engines for airships. In 1908, Curtiss joined the Aerial Experiment Association, a pioneering research group, founded by Alexander Graham Bell at Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, to build flying machines.

World War I

With the start of World War I, Porte returned to service in the Royal Navy, which subsequently purchased several models of the America, now called the H-4, from Curtiss. Porte licensed and further developed the designs, constructing a range of Felixstowe long-range patrol aircraft, and from his experience passed along improvements to the hull to Curtiss. The later British designs were sold to the U.S. forces, or built by Curtiss as the F5L. The Curtiss factory also built a total of 68 "Large Americas", which evolved into the H-12, the only American-designed and -built aircraft to see combat in World War I. As 1916 approached, the United States was feared to be drawn into the conflict. The Army's Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps ordered the development of a simple, easy-to-fly-and-maintain, two-seat trainer. Curtiss created the JN-4 "Jenny" for the Army, and the N-9 seaplane version for the Navy. They were some of the most famous products of the Curtiss company, and thousands were sold to the militaries of the United States, Canada, and Britain. Civilian and military aircraft demand boomed, and the company grew to employ 18,000 workers in Buffalo and 3,000 workers in Hammondsport. In 1917, the U.S. Navy commissioned Curtiss to design a long-range, four-engined flying boat large enough to hold a crew of five, which became known as the Curtiss NC. The four NC flying boats attempted a transatlantic crossing in 1919, and the NC-4 successfully crossed. It is now on permanent display in the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida. CANNOTANSWER

Glenn Hammond Curtiss (May 21, 1878 – July 23, 1930) was an American aviation and motorcycling pioneer, and a founder of the U.S. aircraft industry. He began his career as a bicycle racer and builder before moving on to motorcycles. As early as 1904, he began to manufacture engines for airships. In 1908, Curtiss joined the Aerial Experiment Association, a pioneering research group, founded by Alexander Graham Bell at Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, to build flying machines. Curtiss won a race at the world's first international air meet in France and made the first long-distance flight in the U.S. His contributions in designing and building aircraft led to the formation of the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, which later merged into the Curtiss-Wright Corporation. His company built aircraft for the U.S. Army and Navy, and, during the years leading up to World War I, his experiments with seaplanes led to advances in naval aviation. Curtiss civil and military aircraft were some of the most important types in the interwar and World War II eras. Birth and early career Glenn Curtiss was born in Hammondsport in the Finger Lakes region of New York in 1878. His mother was Lua Curtiss née Andrews and his father was Frank Richmond Curtiss a harness maker who had arrived in Hammondsport with Glenn's grandparents in 1876. Glenn's paternal grandparents were Claudius G. Curtiss, a Methodist Episcopal clergyman, and Ruth Bramble. Glenn Curtiss had a younger sister, Rutha Luella, also born in Hammondsport. Although his formal education extended only to eighth grade, his early interest in mechanics and inventions was evident at his first job at the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company (later Eastman Kodak Company) in Rochester, New York. He invented a stencil machine adopted at the plant and later built a rudimentary camera to study photography. Marriage and family On March 7, 1898, Curtiss married Lena Pearl Neff (1879–1951), daughter of Guy L. Neff and Jenny M. Potter, in Hammondsport, New York. They had two children: Carlton N. Curtiss (1901–1902) and Glenn Hammond Curtiss (1912–1969) Bicycles and motorcycles Curtiss began his career as a Western Union bicycle messenger, a bicycle racer, and bicycle-shop owner. In 1901, he developed an interest in motorcycles when internal-combustion engines became more available. In 1902, Curtiss began manufacturing motorcycles with his own single-cylinder engines. His first motorcycle's carburetor was adapted from a tomato soup can containing a gauze screen to pull the gasoline up by capillary action. In 1903, he set a motorcycle land speed record at for one mile (1.6 km). When E.H. Corson of the Hendee Mfg Co (manufacturers of Indian motorcycles) visited Hammondsport in July 1904, he was amazed that the entire Curtiss motorcycle enterprise was located in the back room of the modest "shop". Corson's motorcycles had just been trounced the week before by "Hell Rider" Curtiss in an endurance race from New York to Cambridge, Maryland. On January 24, 1907, Curtiss set an unofficial world record of , on a V-8-powered motorcycle of his own design and construction in Ormond Beach, Florida. The air-cooled F-head engine was intended for use in aircraft. He remained "the fastest man in the world", the title the newspapers gave him, until 1911, and his motorcycle record was not broken until 1930. This motorcycle is now in the Smithsonian Institution. Curtiss's success at racing strengthened his reputation as a leading maker of high-performance motorcycles and engines. Aviation pioneer Curtiss, motor expert In 1904, Curtiss became a supplier of engines for the California "aeronaut" Tom Baldwin. In that same year, Baldwin's California Arrow, powered by a Curtiss 9 HP V-twin motorcycle engine, became the first successful dirigible in America. In 1907, Alexander Graham Bell invited Curtiss to develop a suitable engine for heavier-than-air flight experimentation. Bell regarded Curtiss as "the greatest motor expert in the country" and invited Curtiss to join his Aerial Experiment Association (AEA). AEA aircraft experiments Between 1908 and 1910, the AEA produced four aircraft, each one an improvement over the last. Curtiss primarily designed the AEA's third aircraft, Aerodrome #3, the famous June Bug, and became its test pilot, undertaking most of the proving flights. On July 4, 1908, he flew to win the Scientific American Trophy and its $2,500 prize. This was considered to be the first pre-announced public flight of a heavier-than-air flying machine in America. The flight of the June Bug propelled Curtiss and aviation firmly into public awareness. On June 8, 1911, Curtiss received U.S. Pilot's License #1 from the Aero Club of America, because the first batch of licenses were issued in alphabetical order; Wilbur Wright received license #5. At the culmination of the Aerial Experiment Association's experiments, Curtiss offered to purchase the rights to Aerodrome #3, essentially using it as the basis of his Curtiss No. 1, the first of his production series of pusher aircraft. The pre-war years Aviation competitions After a 1909 fall-out with the AEA, Curtiss joined with A. M. Herring (and backers from the Aero Club of America) to found the Herring-Curtiss Company in Hammondsport. During the 1909–1910 period, Curtiss employed a number of demonstration pilots, including Eugene Ely, Charles K. Hamilton, J.A.D. McCurdy, Augustus Post, and Hugh Robinson. Aerial competitions and demonstration flights across North America helped to introduce aviation to a curious public; Curtiss took full advantage of these occasions to promote his products. This was a busy period for Glenn Curtiss. In August 1909, Curtiss took part in the Grande Semaine d'Aviation aviation meeting at Reims, France, organized by the Aéro-Club de France. The Wrights, who were selling their machines to customers in Germany at the time, decided not to compete in person. Two Wright aircraft (modified with a landing gear) were at the meet, but they did not win any events. On August 28, 1909, flying his No. 2 biplane, Curtiss won the overall speed event, the Gordon Bennett Cup, completing the 20-km (12.5-mile) course in just under 16 minutes at a speed of , six seconds faster than runner-up Louis Blériot. On May 29, 1910, Curtiss flew from Albany to New York City to make the first long-distance flight between two major cities in the U.S. For this flight, which he completed in just under four hours including two stops to refuel, he won a $10,000 prize offered by publisher Joseph Pulitzer and was awarded permanent possession of the Scientific American Trophy. In June 1910, Curtiss provided a simulated bombing demonstration to naval officers at Hammondsport. Two months later, Lt. Jacob E. Fickel demonstrated the feasibility of shooting at targets on the ground from an aircraft with Curtiss serving as pilot. One month later, in September, he trained Blanche Stuart Scott, who was possibly the first American woman pilot. The fictional character Tom Swift, who first appeared in 1910 in Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle and Tom Swift and His Airship, has been said to have been based on Glenn Curtiss. The Tom Swift books are set in a small town on a lake in upstate New York. Patent dispute A patent lawsuit by the Wright brothers against Curtiss in 1909 continued until it was resolved during World War I. Since the last Wright aircraft, the Wright Model L, was a single prototype of a "scouting" aircraft, made in 1916, the U.S. government, desperately short of combat aircraft, pressured both firms to resolve the dispute. Of nine suits Wright brought against Curtiss and others and the three suits brought against them, the Wright Brothers eventually won every case in courts in the United States. Naval aviation On November 14, 1910, Curtiss demonstration pilot Eugene Ely took off from a temporary platform mounted on the forward deck of the cruiser USS Birmingham. His successful takeoff and ensuing flight to shore marked the beginning of a relationship between Curtiss and the Navy that remained significant for decades. At the end of 1910, Curtiss established a winter encampment at San Diego to teach flying to Army and Naval personnel. Here, he trained Lt. Theodore Ellyson, who became U.S. Naval Aviator #1, and three Army officers, 1st Lt. Paul W. Beck, 2nd Lt. George E. M. Kelly, and 2nd Lt. John C. Walker, Jr., in the first military aviation school. (Chikuhei Nakajima, founder of Nakajima Aircraft Company, was a 1912 graduate.) The original site of this winter encampment is now part of Naval Air Station North Island and is referred to by the Navy as "The Birthplace of Naval Aviation". Through the course of that winter, Curtiss was able to develop a float (pontoon) design that enabled him to take off and land on water. On January 26, 1911, he flew the first seaplane from the water in the United States. Demonstrations of this advanced design were of great interest to the Navy, but more significant, as far as the Navy was concerned, was Eugene Ely successfully landing his Curtiss pusher (the same aircraft used to take off from the Birmingham) on a makeshift platform mounted on the rear deck of the battleship USS Pennsylvania. This was the first arrester-cable landing on a ship and the precursor of modern-day carrier operations. On January 28, 1911, Ellyson took off in a Curtiss "grass cutter" to become the first Naval aviator. Curtiss custom built floats and adapted them onto a Model D so it could take off and land on water to prove the concept. On February 24, 1911, Curtiss made his first amphibious demonstration at North Island by taking off and alighting on both land and water. Back in Hammondsport, six months later in July 1911, Curtiss sold the U.S. Navy their first aircraft, the A-1 Triad. The A-1, which was primarily a seaplane, was equipped with retractable wheels, also making it the first amphibious aircraft. Curtiss trained the Navy's first pilots and built their first aircraft. For this, he is considered in the US to be "The Father of Naval Aviation". The Triad was immediately recognized as so obviously useful, it was purchased by the U.S. Navy, Russia, Japan, Germany, and Britain. Curtiss won the Collier Trophy for designing this aircraft. Around this time, Curtiss met retired British naval officer John Cyril Porte, who was looking for a partner to produce an aircraft with him to win the Daily Mail prize for the first transatlantic crossing. In 1912, Curtiss produced the two-seat Flying Fish, a larger craft that became classified as a flying boat because the hull sat in the water; it featured an innovative notch (known as a "step") in the hull that Porte recommended for breaking clear of the water at takeoff. Curtiss correctly surmised that this configuration was more suited to building a larger long-distance craft that could operate from water, and was also more stable when operating from a choppy surface. With the backing of Rodman Wanamaker, Porte and Curtiss produced the America in 1914, a larger flying boat with two engines, for the transatlantic crossing. World War I and later World War I With the start of World War I, Porte returned to service in the Royal Navy, which subsequently purchased several models of the America, now called the H-4, from Curtiss. Porte licensed and further developed the designs, constructing a range of Felixstowe long-range patrol aircraft, and from his experience passed along improvements to the hull to Curtiss. The later British designs were sold to the U.S. forces, or built by Curtiss as the F5L. The Curtiss factory also built a total of 68 "Large Americas", which evolved into the H-12, the only American designed and built aircraft to see combat in World War I. As 1916 approached, the United States was feared to be drawn into the conflict. The Army's Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps ordered the development of a simple, easy-to-fly-and-maintain, two-seat trainer. Curtiss created the JN-4 "Jenny" for the Army, and the N-9 seaplane version for the Navy. They were some of the most famous products of the Curtiss company, and thousands were sold to the militaries of the United States, Canada, and Britain. Civilian and military aircraft demand boomed, and the company grew to employ 18,000 workers in Buffalo and 3,000 workers in Hammondsport. In 1917, the U.S. Navy commissioned Curtiss to design a long-range, four-engined flying boat large enough to hold a crew of five, which became known as the Curtiss NC. Three of the four NC flying boats built attempted a transatlantic crossing in 1919. Thus NC-4 became the first aircraft to be flown across the Atlantic Ocean, (a feat quickly overshadowed by the first non-stop atlantic crossing by Alcock and Brown,) while NC-1 and NC-3 were unable to continue past the Azores. NC-4 is now on permanent display in the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida. Post-World War I Peace brought cancellation of wartime contracts. In September 1920, the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company underwent a financial reorganization. Glenn Curtiss cashed out his stock in the company for $32 million and retired to Florida. He continued on as a director of the company, but served only as an adviser on design. Clement M. Keys gained control of the company, which later became the nucleus of a large group of aviation companies. Later years Curtiss and his family moved to Florida in the 1920s, where he founded 18 corporations, served on civic commissions, and donated extensive land and water rights. He co-developed the city of Hialeah with James Bright and developed the cities of Opa-locka and Miami Springs, where he built a family home, known variously as the Miami Springs Villas House, Dar-Err-Aha, MSTR No. 2, or Glenn Curtiss House. The Glenn Curtiss House, after years of disrepair and frequent vandalism, is being refurbished to serve as a museum in his honor. His frequent hunting trips into the Florida Everglades led to a final invention, the Adams Motor "Bungalo", a forerunner of the modern recreational vehicle trailer (named after his business partner and half-brother, G. Carl Adams). Curtiss later developed this into a larger, more elaborate fifth-wheel vehicle, which he manufactured and sold under the name Aerocar. Shortly before his death, he designed a tailless aircraft with a V-shaped wing and tricycle landing gear that he hoped could be sold in the price range of a family car. The Wright Aeronautical Corporation, a successor to the original Wright Company, ultimately merged with the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company on July 5, 1929, forming the Curtiss-Wright company, shortly before Curtiss's death. Controversies Curtiss, working with the head of the Smithsonian Institution Charles Walcott, sought to discredit the Wrights and rehabilitate the reputation of Samuel Langley, a former head of the Smithsonian, who failed in his attempt at powered flight. Secretly, Curtiss extensively modified Langley's 1903 aerodrome (aircraft) then demonstrated in 1914 that it could fly. In turn, the Smithsonian endorsed the false statement that "Professor Samuel P. Langley had actually designed and built the first man-carrying flying machine capable of sustained flight." Walcott ordered the plane modified by Curtiss to be returned to its original 1903 condition before going on display at the Smithsonian to cover up the deception. In 1928 the Smithsonian Board of Regents reversed its position and acknowledged that the Wright Brothers deserved the credit for the first flight. Death Traveling to Rochester to contest a lawsuit brought by former business partner August Herring, Curtiss suffered an attack of appendicitis in court. He died on July 23, 1930, in Buffalo, New York, of complications from an appendectomy. His funeral service was held at St. James Episcopal Church in his home town, Hammondsport, with interment in the family plot at Pleasant Valley Cemetery in Hammondsport. Awards and honors By an act of Congress on March 1, 1933, Curtiss was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, which now resides in the Smithsonian Institution. Curtiss was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1964, the International Aerospace Hall of Fame in 1965, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1990, the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998, and the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2003. The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum has a collection of Curtiss's original documents as well as a collection of airplanes, motorcycles and motors. LaGuardia Airport was originally called Glenn H. Curtiss Airport when it began operation in 1929. Other Curtiss honors include: Naval Aviation Hall of Honor; OX-5 Aviation Pioneers Hall of Fame; Empire State Aviation Hall of Fame; Niagara Frontier Aviation and Space Hall of Fame; International Air & Space Hall of Fame; Long Island Air & Space Hall of Fame; Great Floridians 2000; Steuben County (NY) Hall of Fame; Hammondsport School Lifetime Achievements Wall of Fame; Florida Aviation Hall of Fame; Smithsonian Institution Langley Medal; Top 100 Stars of Aerospace and Aviation; Doctor of Science (honoris causa), University of Miami. The Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport is dedicated to Curtiss's life and work. There is a Curtiss Avenue in Hammondsport, NY, along with the Glenn Curtiss Elementary School. Carson, CA has Glenn Hammond Curtiss Middle School and Glenn Curtiss Street. Glenn H. Curtiss Road is in San Diego, CA, and Glenn Curtiss Boulevard in East Meadow/Uniondale, NY (Long Island). Glenn Curtiss Drive is in Addison, TX, and Curtiss Parkway in Miami Springs, FL. Buffalo, NY has a Curtiss Park and a Curtis Parkway (named for Glenn despite the incorrect spelling). The Curtiss E-Library in Hialeah, FL was originally the Lua A. Curtiss Branch Library, named for Glenn's mother. Curtiss appeared on the cover of Time in 1924, on a U. S. airmail stamp, and on a Micronesian stamp. Curtiss airplanes appear on 15 U. S. stamps (including the first air mail stamps), and on the stamps of at least 17 other countries. Timeline 1878 Birth in Hammondsport, New York 1898 Marriage 1900 Manufactures Hercules bicycles 1901 Motorcycle designer and racer 1903 American motorcycle champion 1903 Unofficial one-mile motorcycle land speed record on Hercules V8 at Yonkers, New York 1904 Thomas Scott Baldwin mounts Curtiss motorcycle engine on a hydrogen-filled dirigible 1904 Set 10-mile world speed record 1904 Invented handlebar throttle control; also credited to the 1867–1869 Roper steam velocipede 1905 Created G.H. Curtiss Manufacturing Company, Inc. 1906 Curtiss writes the Wright brothers offering them an aeronautical motor 1907 Curtiss joins Alexander Graham Bell in experimenting in aircraft 1907 Set world motorcycle land speed record of 1907 Set world motorcycle land speed record at in his V8 motorcycle in Ormond Beach, Florida 1908 First Army dirigible flight with Curtiss as flight engineer 1908 One of several claimants for the first flight of a powered aircraft controlled by ailerons (manned glider flights with ailerons having been accomplished in 1904, unmanned flights even earlier) 1908 Lead designer and pilot of "June Bug" on July 4 1909 Sale of Curtiss's "Golden Flyer" to the New York Aeronautic Society for US$5,000.00, marks the first sale of any aircraft in the U.S., triggers Wright Brothers lawsuits. 1909 Won first international air speed record with in Rheims, France 1909 First U.S. licensed aircraft manufacturer. 1909 Established first flying school in United States and exhibition company 1910 Long distance flying record of from Albany, New York to New York City 1910 First simulated bombing runs from an aircraft at Keuka Lake 1910 First firearm use from aircraft, piloted by Curtiss 1910 First radio communication with aircraft in flight in a Curtiss biplane 1910 Curtiss moved to California and set up a shop and flight school at the Los Angeles Motordrome, using the facility for sea plane experiments 1910 Trained Blanche Stuart Scott, the first American female pilot 1910 First successful takeoff from a United States Navy ship (Eugene Burton Ely, using Curtiss Plane) 1911 First landing on a ship (Eugene Burton Ely, using Curtiss Plane) (2 Months later) 1911 The Curtiss School of Aviation, established at Rockwell Field in February 1911 Pilot license #1 issued for his June Bug flight 1911 Ailerons patented 1911 Developed first successful pontoon aircraft in US 1911 Hydroplane A-1 Triad purchased by US. Navy (US Navy's first aircraft) 1911 Developed first retractable landing gear on his hydroaeroplane 1911 His first aircraft sold to U.S. Army on April 27 1911 Created first military flying school 1912 Developed and flew the first flying boat on Lake Keuka 1912 First ship catapult launching on October 12 (Lt. Ellyson) 1912 Created the first flying school in Florida at Miami Beach 1914 Curtiss made a few short flights in the Langley Aerodrome, as part of an unsuccessful attempt to bypass the Wright Brothers' patent on aircraft 1915 Start production run of "Jennys" and many other models including flying boats 1915 Curtiss started the Atlantic Coast Aeronautical Station on a 20-acre tract east of Newport News (VA) Boat Harbor in the Fall of 1915 with Captain Thomas Scott Baldwin as head. 1917 Opens "Experimental Airplane Factory" in Garden City, Long Island 1919 Curtiss NC-4 flying boat crosses the Atlantic 1919 Commenced private aircraft production with the Oriole 1921 Developed Hialeah, Florida, including Hialeah Park Race Track 1921 Donated his World War I training field to the Navy 1922 Opened Hialeah Park Race Track with his business partner James H. Bright 1923 Developed Miami Springs, Florida and created a flying school and airport 1923 (circa) Created first airboats 1925 Built his Miami Springs mansion 1926 Developed Opa-locka, Florida and airport facility 1928 Created the Curtiss Aerocar Company in Opa-locka, Florida. 1928 Curtiss towed an Aerocar from Miami to New York City in 39 hours 1930 Death in Buffalo, New York 1930 Buried in Pleasant Valley Cemetery in Hammondsport, New York 1964 Inducted in the National Aviation Hall of Fame 1990 Inducted in the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in the air-racing category See also Charles M. Olmsted American Trans-Oceanic Company Curtiss Model T Curtiss Autoplane Schneider Trophy Curtiss & Bright Opa-locka Company References Notes Citations Bibliography "At Dayton". Time, October 13, 1924. Casey, Louis S. Curtiss: The Hammondsport Era, 1907–1915. New York: Crown Publishers, 1981. . Curtiss, Glenn and Augustus Post. The Curtiss Aviation Book. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912. de Cet, Mirco. The Illustrated Directory of Motorcycles. St. Paul: Minnesota: MotorBooks/MBI Publishing Company, 2002. . Dizer, John T. Tom Swift & Company. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishing, 1982. . FitzGerald-Bush, Frank S. A Dream of Araby: Glenn Curtiss and the Founding of Opa-locka. Opa-locka, Florida: South Florida Archaeological Museum, 1976. Harvey, Steve. It Started with a Steamboat: An American Saga. Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse, 2005. . Hatch, Alden. Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Aviation. Guilford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press, 2007. . House, Kirk W. Hell-Rider to King of the Air. Warrendale, Pennsylvania: SAE International, 2003. . Mitchell, Charles R. and Kirk W. House. Glenn H. Curtiss: Aviation Pioneer. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2001. . Roseberry, C.R. Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Flight. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1972. . Shulman, Seth. Unlocking the Sky: Glenn Hammond Curtiss and the Race to Invent the Airplane. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. . "Speed Limit". Time, October 29, 1923. Studer, Clara. Sky Storming Yankee: The Life of Glenn Curtiss. New York: Stackpole Sons, 1937. Trimble, William F. Hero of the Air: Glenn Curtiss and the Birth of Naval Aviation. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2010. . External links The Curtiss Aviation Book by Glenn Curtiss and Augustus Post U.S. Government Centennial of Flight – Glenn Curtiss Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, NY National Aviation Hall of Fame: Glenn Curtiss Retrieved May 26, 2011 Category:1878 births Category:1930 deaths Category:19th-century American inventors Category:20th-century American inventors Category:Aircraft designers Category:Alexander Graham Bell Category:American aerospace engineers Category:American aviation record holders Category:American male cyclists Category:American motorcycle designers Category:Aviation history of the United States Category:Aviation pioneers Category:Aviators from New York (state) Category:Bicycle messengers Category:Collier Trophy recipients Category:Deaths from appendicitis Category:International Motorsports Hall of Fame inductees Category:Members of the Early Birds of Aviation Category:Motorcycle land speed record people Category:National Aviation Hall of Fame inductees Category:People from Hammondsport, New York Category:Cyclists from New York (state)

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The Monkees

The Monkees were an American rock and pop band originally active between 1966 and 1971, with subsequent reunion albums and tours in the decades that followed. They were formed in Los Angeles in 1965 by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider for the American television series The Monkees which aired from 1966 to 1968. The musical acting quartet was composed of Americans Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork; and British actor and singer Davy Jones.

On tour

Pleased with their initial efforts, Columbia (over Kirshner's objections) planned to send the Monkees out to play live concerts. The massive success of the series--and its spin-off records--created intense pressure to mount a touring version of the group. Against the initial wishes of the producers, the band went out on the road and made their debut live performance in December 1966 in Hawaii. They had no time to rehearse a live performance except between takes on set. They worked on the TV series all day, recorded in the studio at night and slept very little. The weekends were usually filled with special appearances or filming of special sequences. These performances were sometimes used during the actual series. The episode "Too Many Girls (Fern and Davy)" opens with a live version of "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" being performed as the scene was shot. One entire episode was filmed featuring live music. The last show of the premiere season, "Monkees on Tour", was shot in a documentary style by filming a concert in Phoenix, Arizona, on January 21, 1967. Bob Rafelson wrote and directed the episode. In DVD commentary tracks included in the Season One release, Nesmith admitted that Tork was better at playing guitar than bass. In Tork's commentary he stated that Jones was a good drummer, and had the live performance lineups been based solely on playing ability, it should have been Tork on guitar, Nesmith on bass and Jones on drums, with Dolenz taking the fronting role. The four Monkees performed all the instruments and vocals for most of the live set. The most notable exceptions were during each member's solo sections where, during the December 1966 - May 1967 tour, they were backed by the Candy Store Prophets. During the summer 1967 tour of the United States and the UK (from which the Live 1967 recordings are taken), they were backed by a band called the Sundowners. The Monkees toured Australia and Japan in 1968. The results were far better than expected. Wherever they went, the group was greeted by scenes of fan adulation reminiscent of Beatlemania. This gave the singers increased confidence in their fight for control over the musical material chosen for the series. With Jones sticking primarily to vocals and tambourine (except when filling in on the drums when Dolenz came forward to sing a lead vocal), the Monkees' live act constituted a classic power trio of electric guitar, electric bass and drums (except when Tork passed the bass part to Jones or one of the Sundowners in order to take up the banjo or electric keyboards). CANNOTANSWER

The Monkees were an American pop rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1966, comprising Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Davy Jones. They were conceived in 1965 as a fictional band for the sitcom The Monkees by the television producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider. Music credited to the Monkees appeared in the sitcom, which aired from 1966 to 1968, and was released on LP. While the sitcom was a mostly straightforward affair, the music production generated tension and controversy almost from the beginning. Music supervisor Don Kirshner was dissatisfied with the quartet's musical abilities, and he limited their involvement during the recording process, relying instead on professional songwriters and studio musicians. This arrangement yielded multiple hit albums and singles, but it did not sit well with the band members, who were facing a public backlash for not playing on the recordings. After a brief power struggle, the band members gained full control over the recording process. For two albums, the Monkees mostly performed as a group, but, within a year, each member was pursuing his own interests under the Monkees name. By the end of 1968, they were once again a group in name only, the show had been canceled, and their motion picture, Head, had flopped. Tork left the band soon after, followed by Nesmith a year later, and the Monkees officially broke up in 1970. A revival of interest in the television show came in 1986, and over the following 35 years the group periodically reunited for official reunion tours, a major-network television special, and four new full-length studio albums, though these efforts rarely featured all four members performing together. With Jones' death in 2012 and Tork's in 2019, Dolenz and Nesmith were left to embark on a farewell tour in 2021, finishing shortly before Nesmith's death at the end of the year. Spurred by the success of the show, the Monkees were one of the most successful bands of the 1960s. With international hits, including "Last Train to Clarksville", "I'm a Believer", "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You", "Pleasant Valley Sunday", and "Daydream Believer", four chart-topping albums and three chart-topping songs ("Last Train to Clarksville", "I'm a Believer", and "Daydream Believer"), they sold more than 75 million records worldwide, making them one of the biggest-selling groups of all time. However, claims from newspapers and magazines that the Monkees in 1967 outsold the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined are false and originated from Nesmith in a 1977 interview. History Conception and casting (1962–1965) Aspiring filmmaker Bob Rafelson developed the initial idea for The Monkees in 1962 and tried selling it to Revue, the television division of Universal Pictures, but was unsuccessful. In May 1964, while working at Screen Gems, Rafelson teamed up with Bert Schneider, whose father, Abraham Schneider, headed the Colpix Records and Screen Gems Television units of Columbia Pictures. Rafelson and Schneider ultimately formed Raybert Productions. The Beatles' films A Hard Day's Night and Help! inspired Rafelson and Schneider to revive Rafelson's idea for The Monkees. As "The Raybert Producers", they sold the show to Screen Gems Television on April 16, 1965. Rafelson and Schneider's original idea was to cast an existing New York folk rock group, the Lovin' Spoonful, who were not widely known at the time. However, John Sebastian had already signed the band to a record contract, which would have denied Screen Gems the right to market music from the show. After those plans fell through, Rafelson and Schneider focused on Davy Jones who, in September 1964, had signed to a long-term contract to appear in TV programs for Screen Gems, to make feature films for Columbia Pictures and to record music for the Colpix label. His involvement with The Monkees was publicly announced on July 14, 1965, when The Hollywood Reporter stated that he was expected to return to the United States in September (after a trip to England) "to prepare for [a] TV pilot for Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson". Jones had previously starred as the Artful Dodger in the Broadway theater show Oliver!, which debuted on December 17, 1962, and his performance was later seen on The Ed Sullivan Show the same night as the Beatles' first appearance on that show, February 9, 1964. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1963. On September 8–10, 1965, Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter ran an ad to cast the remainder of the band/cast members for the TV show: Out of 437 applicants, the other three chosen for the cast of the TV show were Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz. Nesmith had been working as a musician since early 1963 and had been recording and releasing music under various names, including Michael Blessing and "Mike & John & Bill", and he had studied drama in college. Of the final three, Nesmith was the only one who actually saw the ad in Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Tork, the last to be chosen, had been working the Greenwich Village scene as a musician and had shared the stage with Pete Seeger; he learned of The Monkees from Stephen Stills, whom Rafelson and Schneider had rejected as a songwriter. Dolenz was an actor (his father was veteran character actor George Dolenz) who had starred in the Screen Gems-produced TV series Circus Boy as a child, using the stage name Mickey Braddock. He had also played guitar and sung in a band called the Missing Links, which released one single, "Don't Do It". By that time he was using his real name; he found out about The Monkees through his agent. In a TV interview years later, Tork stated that the last condition in the ad referred to not being under the influence of illegal substances at the time of auditioning. During his audition, Tork was asked if he smoked (cigarettes), to which he replied, "Well, I don't smoke those." Early years (1966–1967) Developing the music for their debut album During the casting process, Don Kirshner, Screen Gems' head of music, was contacted to secure music for The Monkees pilot. Kirshner's Brill Building firm Aldon Music had an extensive portfolio of songwriters, many in need of work after the British Invasion had reorganized the American music scene; while several Aldon writers contributed songs to the Monkees during their existence, the bulk of the songwriting for the group fell upon Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, two songwriters who were only beginning to break through to success at the time. Boyce and Hart contributed four demo recordings for the pilot. One of these recordings was "(Theme From) The Monkees" which helped get the series the green light. When The Monkees was picked up as a series, development of the musical side of the project accelerated. Columbia-Screen Gems and RCA Victor entered into a joint venture called Colgems Records primarily to distribute Monkees records. Raybert set up a rehearsal space and rented instruments for the group to practice playing in April 1966, but it quickly became apparent they would not be in shape in time for the series debut. The producers called upon Kirshner to recruit a producer for the Monkees sessions. Kirshner called on Snuff Garrett, composer of several hits by Gary Lewis & the Playboys, to produce the initial musical cuts for the show. Garrett, upon meeting the four Monkees in June 1966, decided that Jones would sing lead, a choice that was unpopular with the group. This cool reception led Kirshner to drop Garrett and buy out his contract. Kirshner next allowed Nesmith to produce sessions, provided he did not play on any tracks he produced. Nesmith did, however, start using the other Monkees on his sessions, particularly Tork as a guitarist. Kirshner came back to the enthusiastic Boyce and Hart to be the regular producers, but he brought in one of his top East Coast associates, Jack Keller, to lend some production experience to the sessions. Boyce and Hart observed quickly that when brought into the studio together, the four actors fooled around and tried to crack each other up. Because of this, they often brought in each singer individually. According to Nesmith, it was Dolenz's voice that made the Monkees' sound distinctive, and even during tension-filled times Nesmith and Tork sometimes turned over lead vocal duties to Dolenz on their own compositions, such as Tork's "For Pete's Sake", which became the closing title theme for the second season of the television show. The Monkees' debut and second albums were meant to be a soundtrack to the first season of the TV show, to cash in on the audience. In the 2006 Rhino Deluxe Edition re-issue of their second album, More of the Monkees, Mike Nesmith stated, "The first album shows up and I look at it with horror because it makes [us] appear as if we are a rock 'n' roll band. There's no credit for the other musicians. I go completely ballistic, and I say, 'What are you people thinking?' [The powers that be say], 'Well, you know, it's the fantasy.' I say, 'It's not the fantasy. You've crossed the line here! You are now duping the public. They know when they look at the television series that we're not a rock 'n' roll band; it's a show about a rock 'n' roll band. ... nobody for a minute believes that we are somehow this accomplished rock 'n' roll band that got their own television show. ... you putting the record out like this is just beyond the pale." Within a few months of their debut album, Music Supervisor Don Kirshner was forcibly dismissed and the Monkees took control as a real band. The Monkees' first single, "Last Train to Clarksville" b/w "Take a Giant Step", was released in August 1966, just weeks prior to the TV broadcast debut. In conjunction with the first broadcast of the television show on September 12, 1966, on the NBC television network, NBC and Columbia had a major hit on their hands. The first long-playing album, The Monkees, was released a month later; it spent 13 weeks at No. 1 and stayed on the Billboard charts for 78 weeks. Twenty years later, during their reunion, it spent another 24 weeks on the Billboard charts. The album included Nesmith on lead vocals on "Papa Gene's Blues", a folk-rock and country-rock fusion that Nesmith also wrote. Lineup configuration In assigning instruments for purposes of the television show, a dilemma arose as to which of the four would be the drummer. Both Nesmith (a skilled guitarist and bassist) and Tork (who could play several stringed and keyboard instruments) were peripherally familiar with the instrument but both declined to give the drum set a try. Jones knew how to play the drums and tested well enough initially on the instrument, but the producers felt that, behind a drum kit, the camera would exaggerate his short stature and make him virtually hidden from view. Thus, Dolenz (who only knew how to play the guitar) was assigned to become the drummer. Tork taught Dolenz his first few beats on the drums, enough for him to fake his way through filming the pilot, but he was soon taught how to play properly. Thus, the lineup for the TV show most frequently featured Nesmith on guitar, Tork on bass, Dolenz on drums and Jones as a frontman, singer and percussionist, although this lineup did not correspond to the members' musical strengths. Tork was a more experienced guitar player than Nesmith, while Nesmith had trained on the bass. While Jones had a strong lead voice and did sing lead on several Monkees recordings, Dolenz's voice is regarded, particularly by Nesmith, as distinctive and a hallmark of the Monkees' sound. This theoretical lineup was actually depicted once, in the music video for the band's song "Words", which shows Jones on drums, Tork playing lead guitar, Nesmith on bass and Dolenz fronting the group. In concert appearances Tork also took much of the guitar duties, even in appearances with Nesmith, and Dolenz often plays rhythm guitar on stage. Unlike most television shows of the time, The Monkees episodes were written with many setups, requiring frequent breaks to prepare the set and cameras for short bursts of filming. Some of the "bursts" are considered proto-music videos, inasmuch as they were produced to sell the records. The Monkees Tale author Eric Lefcowitz noted that the Monkees were—first and foremost—a video group. The four actors spent 12-hour days on the set, many of them waiting for the production crew to do their jobs. Noticing that their instruments were left on the set unplugged, the four decided to turn them on and start playing. After working on the set all day, the Monkees (usually Dolenz or Jones) would be called into the recording studio to cut vocal tracks. As the band was essential to this aspect of the recording process, there were few limits on how long they could spend in the recording studio, and the result was an extensive catalog of unreleased recordings. Live performances and touring Pleased with their initial efforts, Columbia (over Kirshner's objections) planned to send the Monkees out to play live concerts. The massive success of the series—and its spin-off records—created intense pressure to mount a touring version of the group. Against the initial wishes of the producers, the band went out on the road and made their debut live performance in December 1966 in Hawaii. They had no time to rehearse a live performance except between takes on set. They worked on the TV series all day, recorded in the studio at night and slept very little. The weekends were usually filled with special appearances or filming of special sequences. These performances were sometimes used during the actual series. The episode "Too Many Girls (Fern and Davy)" opens with a live version of "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" being performed as the scene was shot. One entire episode was filmed featuring live music. The last show of the premiere season, "Monkees on Tour", was shot in a documentary style by filming a concert in Phoenix, Arizona, on January 21, 1967. Bob Rafelson wrote and directed the episode. In DVD commentary tracks included in the Season One release, Nesmith admitted that Tork was better at playing guitar than bass. In Tork's commentary he stated that Jones was a good drummer, and had the live performance lineups been based solely on playing ability, it should have been Tork on guitar, Nesmith on bass and Jones on drums, with Dolenz taking the fronting role. The four Monkees performed all the instruments and vocals for most of the live set. The most notable exceptions were during each member's solo sections where, during the December 1966 – May 1967 tour, they were backed by the Candy Store Prophets. During the summer, 1967 tour of the United States and the UK (from which the Live 1967 recordings are taken), they were backed by a band called the Sundowners. The Monkees toured Australia and Japan in 1968. The results of these live performances were far better than expected. Wherever they went, the group was greeted by scenes of fan adulation reminiscent of Beatlemania. This gave the singers increased confidence in their fight for control over the musical material chosen for the series. Kirshner and More of the Monkees Andrew Sandoval noted in Rhino's 2006 Deluxe Edition CD reissue of More of the Monkees that album sales were outstripping Nielsen ratings, meaning that more people were buying the music than watching the television show, prompting the producers to create more music for more albums. Sandoval also noted that their second album, More of the Monkees, propelled by their second single, "I'm a Believer" b/w "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone", became the biggest-selling LP of their career, spending 70 weeks on the Billboard charts, staying No. 1 for 18 weeks, becoming the third-highest-selling album of the 1960s. (The album also returned to the charts in 1986 for another 26 weeks.) At the time songwriters Boyce and Hart considered the Monkees to be their project, with Tommy Boyce stating in the 2006 Rhino reissue of More of the Monkees that he considered the Monkees to be actors in the television show, while Boyce and Hart were the songwriters and producers doing the records. They wanted Micky to sing the faster songs and have Davy sing the ballads. He also stated in the liner notes that he felt that Michael's country leanings did not fit in with the Monkees' image; and, although he thought that Peter was a great musician, Peter had a different process of thinking about songs that was not right for the Monkees. Music Coordinator Kirshner, though, realizing how important the music was, wanted to move the music in a newer direction than Boyce and Hart, and so he decided to move the production to New York where his A-list of writers/producers resided. However, the Monkees had already been complaining that the music publishing company would not allow them to play their own instruments on their records or to use more of their own material. These complaints intensified when Kirshner moved track recording from California to New York, leaving the band out of the musical process entirely until they were called upon to add their vocals to the completed tracks. Kirshner told Sandoval in 2006, "[I controlled the group] because I had a contract. I kicked them out of the studio because I had a TV show that I had to put songs in, and to me it was a business and I had to knock off the songs." Dolenz recounted to Sandoval: "To me, these were the soundtrack albums to the show, and it wasn't my job. My job was to be an actor and to come in and to sing the stuff when I was asked to do so. I had no problem with that . . . It wasn't until Mike and Peter started getting so upset that Davy and I started defending them ... they were upset because it wasn't the way they were used to making music. The artist is the bottom line. The artist decides what songs are gonna go on and in what order and who writes 'em and who produces 'em." Nesmith, when asked about the situation, in Rolling Stone magazine, said, "... We were confused, especially me. But all of us shared the desire to play the songs we were singing. Everyone was accomplished--the notion [that] I was the only musician is one of those rumors that got started and won't stop--but it was not true ... We were also kids with our own taste in music and were happier performing songs we liked--and/or wrote--than songs that were handed to us ... The [TV show's] producers [in Hollywood] backed us and David went along. None of us could have fought the battles we did [with the music publishers] without the explicit support of the show's producers." Eventually the group's efforts paid off, gaining them more participation in the recording process and laying the groundwork for Kirshner's departure.Four months after their debut single was released in September 1966, on January 16, 1967, the Monkees held their first recording session as a fully functioning, self-contained band, recording an early version of Nesmith's self-composed top 40 hit single "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", along with "All of Your Toys" and "She's So Far Out, She's In". The same month, Kirshner released their second album of songs that used session musicians, More of the Monkees, without the band's knowledge. Nesmith and Tork were particularly upset when they were on tour in January 1967 and discovered this second album. The Monkees were annoyed at not having even been told of the release in advance, at having their opinions on the track selection ignored, at Kirshner's self-congratulatory liner notes and also because of the amateurish-looking cover art, which was merely a composite of pictures of the four taken for a J.C. Penney clothing advertisement. Indeed, the Monkees had not even been given a copy of the album; they had to buy it from a record store. The climax of the rivalry between Kirshner and the band was an intense argument among Nesmith, Kirshner and Colgems lawyer Herb Moelis, which took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel in January 1967. Kirshner had presented the group with royalty checks and gold records. Nesmith had responded with an ultimatum, demanding a change in the way the Monkees' music was chosen and recorded. Moelis reminded Nesmith that he was under contract. The confrontation ended with Nesmith punching a hole in a wall and saying, "That could have been your face!" However, each of the members, including Nesmith, accepted the $250,000 royalty checks (equivalent to approximately $ in today's funds). Kirshner was reported to have been incensed by the group's unexpected rebellion, especially when he felt they had a "modicum" of talent when compared to the superstars of the day like John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Soon after, Colgems and the Monkees reached an agreement not to release material directly created by the group together with unrelated Kirshner-produced material. Kirshner immediately violated this agreement in early February 1967, when he released "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", composed and written by Neil Diamond, as a single with an early version of "She Hangs Out", a song recorded in New York with Davy Jones' vocals, as the B-side. (This single was only released in Canada and was withdrawn after a couple of weeks.) As a result, Kirshner was fired from the project, leaving the Monkees in charge of their own musical direction. Indeed, their musical opportunities were open beyond their ability to capitalize. Screen Gems held the publishing rights to a wealth of material, with the Monkees being offered the first choice of many new songs. Due to the abundance of material numerous tracks were recorded, but dozens were left unreleased until Rhino Records started releasing them through the Missing Links series of albums starting in the late 1980s. (A rumor persists that the Monkees were offered "Sugar, Sugar" in 1967, but declined to record it. Producer and songwriter Jeff Barry, joint writer and composer of "Sugar, Sugar" with Andy Kim, has denied this, saying that the song had not even been written at the time.) Independence (1967–1968) Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones The Monkees wanted to pick the songs they sang and played on, the songs they recorded, and to be the Monkees. With Kirshner dismissed as musical supervisor, in late February 1967 Nesmith hired former Turtles bassist Douglas Farthing Hatlelid, who was better known by his stage name Chip Douglas, to produce the next Monkees album, which was to be the first Monkees album where they were the only musicians, outside of most of the bass, and the horns. Douglas was responsible for both music presentation—actually leading the band and engineering recordings—and playing bass on most of Headquarters. This album, along with their next, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., served as the soundtrack to the second season of the television show. In March 1967 "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", composed by Nesmith and performed by Dolenz, Nesmith, Tork and bassist John London, was issued as the B-side to the Monkees' third single, "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You", and it rose to No. 39 on the charts. The A-side rose to No. 2. Issued in May 1967, Headquarters had no songs released as singles in the United States, but it was still their third No. 1 album in a row, with many of its songs played on the second season of the television show. Having a more country-folk-rock sound than the pop outings under Kirshner, Sandoval notes in the 2007 Deluxe Edition reissue from Rhino that the album rose to No. 1 on May 24, 1967, with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper released the following week, which moved Headquarters to the #2 spot on the charts for the next 11 weeks—the same weeks which became known by the counterculture as the "Summer of Love". A selection that Dolenz wrote and composed, "Randy Scouse Git", was issued under the title "Alternate Title" (owing to the controversial nature of its original title) as a single internationally, where it rose to No. 2 on the charts in the UK and Norway, and in the top 10 in other parts of the world. Tork's "For Pete's Sake" was used as the closing theme for the television show. Nesmith continued in his country-rock leanings, adding the pedal steel guitar to three of the songs, along with contributing his self-composed countrified-rock song "Sunny Girlfriend". Tork added the banjo to the Nesmith-composed rocker "You Told Me", a song whose introduction was satirical of the Beatles' "Taxman". Other notable songs are the Nesmith-composed straightforward pop-rock song "You Just May Be the One" (the only track from their peak years to feature the Monkees playing the same instruments they were shown to play on the television show), used on the television series during both seasons, along with "Shades of Gray" (with piano introduction written by Tork), "Forget that Girl", and "No Time", used in the television show. The Monkees wrote five of the 12 songs on the album, plus the two tracks "Band 6" and "Zilch". The Los Angeles Times, when reviewing Headquarters, stated that "The Monkees Upgrade Album Quality" and that "The Monkees are getting better. Headquarters has more interesting songs and a better quality level [than previous albums]... None of the tracks is a throwaway... The improvement trend is laudable." The high of Headquarters was short-lived, however. Recording and producing as a group was Tork's major interest and he hoped that the four would continue working together as a band on future recordings, according to the liner notes of the 2007 Rhino reissue of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.. "Cuddly Toy" on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. marked the last time Dolenz, who originally played guitar before the Monkees, made a solo stand as a studio drummer. In commentary for the DVD release of the second season of the show, Tork said that Dolenz was "incapable of repeating a triumph." Having been a drummer for one album, Dolenz lost interest in being a drummer and, indeed, he largely gave up playing instruments on Monkees recordings to session musicians like "Fast" Eddie Hoh. (Producer Chip Douglas also had identified Dolenz's drumming as the weak point in the collective musicianship of the quartet, having to splice together multiple takes of Dolenz's "shaky" drumming for final use.) By this point, the four did not have a common vision regarding their musical interests, with Nesmith and Jones also moving in different directions—Nesmith following his country/folk instincts and Jones reaching for Broadway-style numbers. The next three albums featured a diverse mixture of musical style influences, including country-rock, folk-rock, psychedelic rock, soul/R&B, guitar rock, Broadway and English music hall sensibilities. At the height of their fame in 1967, they also suffered from a media backlash. Nesmith states in the 2007 Rhino reissue of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., "Everybody in the press and in the hippie movement had got us into their target window as being illegitimate and not worthy of consideration as a musical force [or] certainly any kind of cultural force. We were under siege; wherever we went there was such resentment for us. We were constantly mocked and humiliated by the press. We were really gettin' beat up pretty good. We all knew what was going on inside. Kirshner had been purged. We'd gone to try to make Headquarters and found out that it was only marginally okay and that our better move was to just go back to the original songwriting and song-making strategy of the first albums except with a clear indication of how [the music] came to be... The rabid element and the hatred that was engendered is almost impossible to describe. It lingers to this day among people my own age." Tork disagreed with Nesmith's assessment of Headquarters, stating, "I don't think the Pisces album was as groovy to listen to as Headquarters. Technically it was much better, but I think it suffers for that reason." With Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., the Monkees' fourth album, they went back to making music for the television show, except that they had control over the music and which songs would be chosen. They used a mixture of themselves and session musicians on the album, including the Wrecking Crew, Louie Shelton, Glen Campbell, members of the Byrds and the Association, drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh, Lowell George, Stephen Stills, Buddy Miles, and Neil Young—a practice that continued for all their studio albums except Justus. Using Chip Douglas again to produce, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., released in November 1967 was the Monkees' fourth No. 1 album in a row, staying at No. 1 for 5 weeks, and was also their last No. 1 album. It featured the hit single "Pleasant Valley Sunday" (#3 on charts) b/w "Words" (#11 on charts), the A-side had Nesmith on electric guitar/backing vocals, Tork on piano/backing vocals, Dolenz on lead vocals and possibly guitar and Jones on backing vocals; the B-side had Micky and Peter alternating lead vocals, Peter played organ, Mike played guitar, percussion, and provided backing vocals, and Davy provided percussion and backing vocals. Other notable items about this album is that it features an early use of the Moog synthesizer on two tracks, the Nesmith-penned "Daily Nightly", along with "Star Collector". All of its songs, except for two, were featured on the Monkees' television show during the second season. The song "What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?", recorded in June 1967 and featured on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., is seen as a landmark in the fusion of country and rock despite Nesmith's prior country-flavored rock songs for the Monkees. Nesmith stated, "One of the things that I really felt was honest was country-rock. I wanted to move the Monkees more into that because ... if we get closer to country music, we'll get closer to blues, and country blues, and so forth. ... It had a lot of un-country things in it: a familiar change from a I major to a VI minor—those kinds of things. So it was a little kind of a new wave country song. It didn't sound like the country songs of the time, which was Buck Owens." Their next single, "Daydream Believer" (with a piano intro written by Tork), shot to No. 1 on the charts, letting the Monkees hold the No. 1 position in the singles chart and the album chart with Pisces simultaneously. "Daydream Believer" used the non-album track "Goin' Down" as its B-side, which featured Nesmith and Tork on guitar with Micky on lead vocals. During their 1986 reunion, both Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. returned to the charts for 17 weeks. The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees No longer desiring to work as a group, the Monkees dropped Chip Douglas as a producer, and starting in November 1967, they largely produced their own sessions. Although credited to the whole band, the songs were mostly solo efforts. In a couple of cases, Boyce and Hart had returned from the first two albums to produce, but credit was given to the Monkees due to contractual requirements. Propelled by the hit singles "Daydream Believer" and "Valleri", along with Nesmith's self-penned top 40 hit "Tapioca Tundra", The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts shortly after it was released in April 1968. It was the first album released after NBC announced they were not renewing The Monkees for a third season. The album cover—a quaint collage of items in a knickknack shelf—was chosen over the Monkees' objections. It was the last Monkees' album to be released in separate, dedicated mono and stereo mixes. During the 1986 reunion, it returned to the Billboard charts for 11 weeks. Beyond television and Head During the filming of the second season, the band became tired of scripts which they deemed monotonous and stale. They had already succeeded in eliminating the laugh track (a then-standard on American sitcoms), with the bulk of Season 2 episodes airing minus the canned chuckles. They proposed switching the format of the series to become more like a variety show, with musical guests and live performances. This desire was partially fulfilled within some second-season episodes, with guest stars like musicians Frank Zappa, Tim Buckley, and Charlie Smalls (composer of The Wiz) performing on the show. However, NBC was not interested in eliminating the existing format, and the group (except for Peter) had little desire to continue for a third season. Tork said in DVD commentary that everyone had developed such difficult personalities that the big-name stars invited as guests on the show invariably left the experience "hating everybody". Screen Gems and NBC went ahead with the existing format anyway, commissioning Monkees writers Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso to create a straight-comedy, no-music half-hour in the Monkees mold; a pilot episode was filmed with the then-popular nightclub act the Pickle Brothers. The pilot had the same energy and pace of The Monkees, but never became a series. In June 1968, Music Supervisor Lester Sill chose to release the two non-album tracks "D.W. Washburn" b/w "It's Nice To Be With You" as the Monkees' next single. The Leiber/Stoller-penned A-side broke into the Top 20, peaking at No. 19 on the charts and No. 2 on the Canadian RPM charts. After The Monkees was canceled in February 1968, Rafelson directed the four Monkees in a feature film, Head. Schneider was executive producer, and the project was co-written and co-produced by Bob Rafelson with a then-relatively unknown Jack Nicholson. The film, conceived and edited in a stream of consciousness style, featured oddball cameo appearances by movie stars Victor Mature, Annette Funicello, a young Teri Garr, boxer Sonny Liston, famous stripper Carol Doda, Green Bay Packers linebacker Ray Nitschke, and musician Frank Zappa. It was filmed at Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems studios and on location in California, Utah, and the Bahamas between February 19 and May 17, 1968, and premiered in New York City on November 6 of that year (the film later debuted in Hollywood on November 20). The film was not a commercial success, in part because it was the antithesis of The Monkees television show, intended to comprehensively demolish the group's carefully groomed public image. Rafelson and Nicholson's "Ditty Diego-War Chant" (recited at the start of the film by the group) ruthlessly parodies Boyce and Hart's "Monkees Theme". A sparse advertising campaign (with no mention of the Monkees) hurt any chances of the film doing well, and it played briefly in half-filled theaters. In the DVD commentary, Nesmith said that everyone associated with the Monkees "had gone crazy" by this time. They were each using the platform of the Monkees to push their own disparate career goals, to the detriment of the Monkees project. Nesmith added that Head was Rafelson and Nicholson's intentional effort to "kill" the Monkees, so that they would no longer be bothered with the matter. Indeed, Rafelson and Schneider severed all ties to the band amid the bitterness that ensued over the commercial failure of Head. At the time, Rafelson told the press, "I grooved on those four in very special ways while at the same time thinking they had absolutely no talent." Released in October 1968, the single from the album, "The Porpoise Song", is a psychedelic pop song written by Goffin and King, with lead vocals from Micky Dolenz and backing vocals from Davy Jones, and it reached No. 62 on the Billboard charts and No. 26 on the Canadian RPM charts. The soundtrack album to the movie, Head, reached No. 45 on the Billboard charts and No. 24 in Canada. Jack Nicholson assembled the film's soundtrack album, weaving dialogue and sound effects from the film in between the songs from the film. The six (plus "Ditty Diego") Monkees songs on the album range from psychedelic pop to straightforward rockers to Broadway rock to eastern-influenced pop to a folk-rock ballad. Although the Monkees performed "Circle Sky" live in the film, the studio version is chosen for the soundtrack album. The live version was later released on various compilations, including Rhino's Missing Links series of Monkees albums. The soundtrack album also includes a song from the film's composer, Ken Thorne. The album had a mylar cover, to give it a mirror-like appearance, so that the person looking at the cover would see his own head, a play on the album title Head. Peter Tork said, "That was something special... [Jack] Nicholson coordinated the record, made it up from the soundtrack. He made it different from the movie. There's a line in the movie where [Frank] Zappa says, 'That's pretty white.' Then there's another line in the movie that was not juxtaposed in the movie, but Nicholson put them together in the [soundtrack album], when Mike says, 'And the same thing goes for Christmas'... that's funny... very different from the movie... that was very important and wonderful that he assembled the record differently from the movie... It was a different artistic experience." Over the intervening years Head has developed a cult following for its innovative style and anarchic humor. Members of the Monkees, Nesmith in particular, cite the soundtrack album as one of the crowning achievements of the band. Later years and separation (1969–1971) Tork's resignation, Instant Replay and The Monkees Present Tensions within the group were increasing. Peter Tork, citing exhaustion, quit by buying out the last four years of his Monkees contract at $150,000 per year, equal to about $ per year today. This was shortly after the band's Far East tour in December 1968, after completing work on their 1969 NBC television special, 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee, which rehashed many of the ideas from Head, only with the Monkees playing a strangely second-string role. In the DVD commentary for the television special, Dolenz noted that after filming was complete, Nesmith gave Tork a gold watch as a going-away present, engraved "From the guys down at work." (Tork kept the back, but replaced the watch several times in later years.) Most of the songs from the 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee TV Special were not officially released until over 40 years later, on the 2010 and 2011 Rhino Handmade Deluxe boxed sets of Head and Instant Replay. Since the Monkees at this point were producing their own songs with very little of the other band members' involvement, they planned a future double album (eventually to be reduced to The Monkees Present) on which each Monkee would separately produce one side of a disc. In February 1969, the Monkees' seventh album, Instant Replay, without Tork's involvement beyond playing guitar on "I Won't Be the Same Without Her", was released, which reached No. 32 on the charts. and No. 45 in Canada. The single from the album was "Tear Drop City", which peaked at No. 56 on the U.S. Billboard chart, No. 27 on the Canadian chart, and No. 34 on the Australian chart. According to Rhino Handmade's 2011 Deluxe Edition reissue of this album, Davy Jones told Melody Maker, "Half of the songs were recorded over the last three years, but there are also about six new ones." The Monkees wanted to please the original 1966 fans by offering up new recordings of some previously unreleased older styled songs, as well as gain a new audience with what they considered a more mature sound. Nesmith continued in his country-rock vein after offering straight ahead rock and experimental songs on the two prior albums. Nesmith stated in Rhino Handmade's 2011 Deluxe Edition reissue, "I guess it was the same embryo beating in me that was somewhere in Don Henley and Glenn Frey and Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young. Everybody who was hanging out in those times. I could just feel this happening that there was this thing. So, I headed off to Nashville to see if I couldn't get some of the Nashville country thing into the rock 'n' roll or vice versa. What I found was that Nashville country was not the country that was going to be the basis of country-rock and that it was Western, Southwest country. It was coming much more out of the Southern California scene. I ended up with a lot of Dobro, mandolin, banjo, and things that were hard-core mountain music stuff ... the Nashville cats were so blown out by playin' this kind of music. They loved it, for one thing." Dolenz contributed the biggest and longest Monkees' production, "Shorty Blackwell", a song inspired by his cat of the same name. Dolenz called it his "feeble attempt at something to do with Sgt. Pepper." Jones contributed an electric guitar rocker, "You and I". Both Jones and Dolenz continued their role of singing on the pop songs. Lyrically, it has a theme of being one of the Monkees' most melancholy albums. Throughout 1969 the trio appeared as guests on television programs such as The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, The Johnny Cash Show, Hollywood Squares, and Laugh-In (Jones had also appeared on Laugh-In separate from the group). The Monkees also had a contractual obligation to appear in several television commercials with Bugs Bunny for Kool-Aid drink mix as well as Post cereal box singles. In April 1969, the single "Someday Man" b/w "Listen to the Band" was released, which had the unique distinction of the B-side, a Nesmith composed country-rock song, charting higher (No. 63) than the Jones-sung A-side (No. 81). In Canada, "Someday Man" was No. 74 and "Listen to the Band" reached No. 53. The final album with Michael Nesmith from the Monkees' original incarnation was their eighth album, The Monkees Present, released in October 1969, which peaked at No. 100 on the Billboard charts. It included the Nesmith composed country-rock singles "Listen to the Band" and "Good Clean Fun" (released in September 1969)(No. 80 Canada) Other notable songs include the Dolenz composition "Little Girl", which featured Louie Shelton on electric guitar, joining Micky on acoustic guitar, along with "Mommy and Daddy" (B-side to the "Good Clean Fun" single) in which he sang about America's treatment of the Native Americans and drug abuse, and in an earlier take, released on Rhino Handmade's 2011 Deluxe Edition of Instant Replay, sang about JFK's assassination and the Vietnam war. Jones collaborated with Bill Chadwick on some slower ballads, along with releasing a couple of older upbeat songs from 1966. In the summer of 1969 the three Monkees embarked on a tour with the backing of the soul band Sam and the Goodtimers. Concerts for this tour were longer sets than their earlier performances tours, with many shows running over two hours. Although the tour was met with some positive critical reception (Billboard in particular praised it), other critics were not favorable of the mixing of the Monkees' pop music with the Goodtimers' R&B approach. Toward the end of the tour, some dates were canceled due to poor ticket sales, and the tour failed to re-establish the band commercially, with no single entering the Top 40 in 1969. Dolenz remarked that the tour "was like kicking a dead horse. The phenomenon had peaked." Nesmith's resignation, Changes and disbandment On April 14, 1970, Nesmith joined Dolenz and Jones for the last time as part of the original incarnation of the Monkees to film a Kool-Aid commercial (with the then-newly introduced Nerf balls, thrown around a mock living room by the trio, available as a premium for Kool-Aid labels), with Nesmith leaving the group to continue recording songs with his own country-rock group called Michael Nesmith & The First National Band, which he had started recording with on February 10, 1970. His first album, Magnetic South, was released in June, 1970. At the time he left the Monkees in April, he was recording songs for his second, Loose Salute. This left Dolenz and Jones to record the bubblegum pop album Changes as the ninth and final album by the Monkees released during its original incarnation. By this time, Colgems was hardly putting any effort into the project, and they sent Dolenz and Jones to New York for the Changes sessions, to be produced by Jeff Barry. In comments for the liner notes of the 1994 re-release of Changes, Jones said that he felt they had been tricked into recording an "Andy Kim album" under the Monkees name. Except for the two singers' vocal performances, Changes is the only album that fails to win any significant praise from critics looking back 40 years to the Monkees' recording output. The album spawned the single "Oh My My", which was accompanied by a music film promo (produced/directed by Dolenz). Dolenz contributed one of his own compositions, "Midnight Train", which was used in the re-runs of the Monkees TV series. The "Oh My My" b/w "I Love You Better" single from the Changes album was the last single issued under the Monkees name in the United States until 1986. Originally released in June 1970, Changes first charted in Billboard's Top 200 during the Monkees' 1986 reunion, staying on the charts for 4 weeks. September 22, 1970 marked the final recording session by the Monkees in their original incarnation, when Jones and Dolenz recorded "Do It in the Name of Love" and "Lady Jane". Not mixed until February 19, 1971, and released later that year as a single, the two remaining Monkees then lost the rights to use the name in several countries, the U.S. included. The single was not credited to the Monkees in the U.S., but to a misspelled "Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones", although in Japan it was issued under the Monkees' name. Jones released a solo album in 1971, titled Davy Jones, featuring the single "Rainy Jane" / "Welcome to My Love". Both Jones and Dolenz released multiple singles as solo artists in the years following the original breakup of the Monkees. The duo continued to tour throughout most of the 1970s. Reunions and revivals (1976–2021) Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart Partly because of repeats of the television series The Monkees on Saturday mornings and in syndication, The Monkees Greatest Hits charted in 1976. The LP, issued by Arista Records, who by this time had possession of the Monkees' master tapes, courtesy of their corporate owner, Screen Gems, was actually a re-packaging of an earlier (1972) compilation LP called Refocus that had been issued by Arista's previous label imprint, Bell Records, also owned by Screen Gems. Dolenz and Jones took advantage of this, joining ex-Monkees songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to tour the United States. From 1975 to 1977, as the "Golden Hits of the Monkees" show ("The Guys who Wrote 'Em and the Guys who Sang 'Em!"), they successfully performed in smaller venues such as state fairs and amusement parks, as well as making stops in Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore. They also released an album of new material as Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. Nesmith had not been interested in a reunion. Tork claimed later that he had not been asked, although a Christmas single (credited to Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Peter Tork due to legal reasons) was produced by Chip Douglas and released on his own label in 1976. The single featured Douglas' and Howard Kaylan's "Christmas Is My Time of Year" (originally recorded by a 1960s group Christmas Spirit), with a B-side of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" (Douglas released a remixed version of the single, with additional overdubbed instruments, in 1986). This was the first (albeit unofficial) Monkees single since 1971. Tork also joined Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart on stage at Disneyland in Anaheim, California on July 4, 1976, and also joined Dolenz and Jones on stage at the Starwood in Hollywood in 1977. Other semi-reunions occurred between 1970 and 1986. Tork helped produce a Dolenz single, "Easy on You"/"Oh Someone" in 1971. Tork also recorded some unreleased tracks for Nesmith's Countryside label during the 1970s, and Dolenz (by then a successful television director in the United Kingdom) directed a segment of Nesmith's TV series Television Parts, although his segment was ultimately not included when the series' six episodes were broadcast by NBC during the summer of 1985. MTV and Nickelodeon reignite Monkeemania Brushed off by critics during their heyday in the late 1960s as manufactured and lacking talent, the Monkees experienced a critical and commercial renaissance two decades later. A Monkees TV show marathon ("Pleasant Valley Sunday") was broadcast on February 23, 1986, on the then five-year-old MTV video music channel. In February and March, Tork and Jones played together in Australia. Then in May, Dolenz, Jones, and Tork announced a "20th Anniversary Tour" produced by David Fishof and they began playing North America in June. Their original albums began selling again as Nickelodeon began to run their old series daily. MTV promotion also helped to resurrect a smaller version of Monkeemania, and tour dates grew from smaller to larger venues and became one of the biggest live acts of 1986 and 1987. A new greatest hits collection was issued, reaching platinum status. By this point, Nesmith was more amenable to a reunion, but forced to sit out most projects because of prior commitments to his Pacific Arts video production company. However, he did appear with the band in a 1986 Christmas medley music video for MTV, and appeared on stage with Dolenz, Jones, and Tork at the Greek Theatre, in Los Angeles, on September 7, 1986. In September 1988, the three rejoined to play Australia again, Europe and then North America, with that string of tours ending in September 1989. Nesmith again returned at the Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, show on July 10, 1989, and took part in a dedication ceremony at the Hollywood Walk of Fame, when the Monkees received a TV star there in 1989. The sudden revival of the Monkees in 1986 helped move the first official Monkees single since 1971, "That Was Then, This Is Now", to the No. 20 position in Billboard Magazine. The success, however, was not without controversy. Jones had declined to sing on the track, recorded along with two other new songs included in a compilation album, Then & Now... The Best of The Monkees. Some copies of the single and album credit the new songs to "the Monkees", others as "Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork (of the Monkees)". Reportedly, these recordings were the source of some personal friction between Jones and the others during the 1986 tour; Jones typically left the stage when the new songs were performed. However, Jones did participate in the follow-up album, 1987's Pool It!. New Monkees In 1987, a new television series called New Monkees appeared. Other than being centered around a boy band quartet, it bore no resemblance to the earlier series or group. The New Monkees left the air after 13 episodes. (Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider were involved in the production of the series, although it was primarily produced by "Straybert Productions" headed by Steve Blauner, Rafelson and Schneider's partner in BBS Productions.) 1990s reunions In the 1990s, the Monkees continued to record new material. The band also re-issued all the original LPs on CD, each of which included between three and six bonus tracks of previously unreleased songs or alternate takes; the first editions came with collectable trading cards. Dolenz, Jones and Tork appeared in a 1995 episode of Boy Meets World, but not as themselves; Tork appeared in two episodes as Topanga Lawrence's father Jedediah. The trio also appeared together, as themselves, in the 1995 film The Brady Bunch Movie. Their eleventh album Justus was released in 1996. It was the first since 1968 on which all four original members performed and produced. Justus was produced by the Monkees, all songs were written by one of the four Monkees, and it was recorded using only the four Monkees for all instruments and vocals, which was the inspiration for the album title and spelling (Justus = Just Us). The trio of Dolenz, Jones, and Tork reunited again for a successful 30th anniversary tour of American amphitheaters in 1996, while Nesmith joined them onstage in Los Angeles to promote the new songs from Justus. For the first time since the brief 1986 reunion, Nesmith returned to the concert stage for a tour of the United Kingdom in 1997, highlighted by two sold-out concerts at Wembley Arena in Wembley Park, London. This was a very fitting venue, as from 30 June to 2 July 1967 the Monkees had been the first group to headline on their own at the Empire Pool, as the Arena was then called. The full quartet also appeared in an ABC television special titled Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees, which was written and directed by Nesmith and spoofed the original series that had made them famous. Following the UK tour, Nesmith declined to continue future performances with the Monkees, having faced harsh criticism from the British music press for his deteriorating musicianship. Tork noted in DVD commentary that "In 1966, Nesmith had learned a reasonably good version of the famous 'Last Train to Clarksville' guitar lick, but in 1996, Mike was no longer able to play it" and so Tork took over the lead guitar parts. Nesmith's departure from the tour was acrimonious. Jones was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as complaining that Nesmith "made a new album with us. He toured Great Britain with us. Then all of a sudden, he's not here. Later, I hear rumors he's writing a script for our next movie. Oh, really? That's bloody news to me. He's always been this aloof, inaccessible person... the fourth part of the jigsaw puzzle that never quite fit in." 2000s reunions Tork, Jones, and Dolenz toured the United States in 1997, after which the group took another hiatus until 2001 when they once again reunited to tour the United States. However, this tour was also accompanied by public sniping. Dolenz and Jones had announced that they had "fired" Tork for his constant complaining and threatening to quit. Tork was quoted as confirming this, as well as stating that he wanted to tour with his own band, Shoe Suede Blues. Tork told WENN News he was troubled by the overindulgence in alcohol by other members of the tour crew: Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones fired me just before the last two shows of our 35th anniversary tour. I'm both happy and sad over the whole thing. I always loved the work onstage—but I just couldn't handle the backstage problems. I'd given them 30 days notice that I was leaving so my position is that I resigned first and then they dropped me. Thank God I don't need the Monkees anymore...I'm a recovering alcoholic and haven't had a drink in several years. I'm not against people drinking—just when they get mean and abusive. I went on the anniversary tour with the agreement that I didn't have to put up with drinking and difficult behavior offstage. When things weren't getting better, I gave the guys notice that I was leaving in 30 days for good. Tork later stated in 2011 that the alcohol played only a small role and Tork then said, "I take full responsibility for the backstage problems on the 2001 tour. We were getting along pretty well until I had a meltdown. I ticked the other guys off good and proper and it was a serious mistake on my part. I was not in charge of myself to the best of my ability – the way I hope I have become since. I really just behaved inappropriately, honestly. I apologized to them." Jones and Dolenz went on to tour the United Kingdom in 2002, but Tork declined to participate. Jones and Dolenz toured the United States one more time as a duo in 2002, and then split to concentrate on their own individual projects. With different Monkees citing different reasons, the group chose not to mark their 40th anniversary in 2006. 2010–2011: 45th anniversary tour and Jones' death In October 2010, Jones stated that a reunion marking the band's 45th anniversary was a possibility. Monkees biographer Andrew Sandoval commented in The Hollywood Reporter that he "spent three years cajoling them to look beyond their recent differences (which included putting aside solo projects to fully commit to the Monkees)." An Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary Tour commenced on May 12, 2011, in Liverpool, England, before moving to North America in June and July for a total of 43 performances. Sandoval noted, "Their mixed feelings on the music business and their long and winding relationship weighed heavily, but once they hit the stage, the old magic was apparent. For the next three months...[they brought] the music and memories to fans in the band's grandest stage show in decades. Images from their series and films flashed on a huge screen behind them; even Rolling Stone, whose owner, Jann Wenner, has vowed to keep them out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, gushed." Nesmith did not take part in the tour, which grossed approximately $4 million. On August 8, 2011, the band canceled ten last-minute shows due to what was initially reported as "internal group issues and conflicts", though Tork later confirmed "there were some business affairs that couldn't be coordinated correctly. We hit a glitch and there was just this weird dislocation at one point." Jones clarified that "the (45th Anniversary) tour was only supposed to go until July. And it was great, the best time we've had because we're all on the same page now. We jelled onstage and off. But then more dates were being added. And more. And then the next thing we knew, they were talking about Japan, Australia, Brazil, and we were like, 'Wait a second. This is turning into something more than a tour.' We were doing 40 songs a night, plus other material. Some of these shows were 2 hours long. Then there was the travel, getting to the next venue with no time to revive. The audiences were great. But, let's face it, we're not kids." The 45th anniversary tour was the last with Jones, who died of a heart attack at age 66 on February 29, 2012. 2012–2014: Reunion with Nesmith In the wake of Jones' death, rumors began to circulate that Nesmith would reunite with Dolenz and Tork. This was confirmed on August 8, 2012, when the surviving trio announced a series of U.S. shows for November and December, commencing in Escondido, California and concluding in New York City. The brief tour marked the first time Nesmith performed with the Monkees since 1997, as well as the first without Jones. Jones's memory was honored throughout the shows via recordings and video. During one point, the band went quiet and a recording of Jones singing "I Wanna Be Free" played while footage of him was screening behind the band. For Jones's signature song, "Daydream Believer", Dolenz said that the band had discussed who should sing the song and had concluded that it should be the fans, saying "It doesn't belong to us anymore. It belongs to you." The Fall 2012 tour was very well received by both fans and critics, resulting in the band's scheduling a 24-date summer tour for 2013. Dubbed "A Midsummer's Night With the Monkees", concerts also featured Nesmith, Dolenz, and Tork. "The reaction to the last tour was euphoric", Dolenz told Rolling Stone magazine. "It was pretty apparent there was a demand for another one." A third tour with Nesmith followed in 2014. In 2014, the Monkees were inducted into the Pop Music Hall of Fame at the 2014 Monkees Convention. At the convention the band announced a 2014 tour of the Eastern and Midwestern US. 2015–2017: Good Times! and 50th anniversary Dolenz and Tork toured as the Monkees in 2015 without Nesmith's participation. Nesmith stated that he was busy with other ventures, although Dolenz said that "He's always invited." In February 2016, Dolenz announced that the Monkees would be releasing a new album, titled Good Times!, as a celebration of their 50th anniversary. Good Times!, produced by Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, features contributions by all three surviving members, as well as a posthumous contribution from Jones through vocals he had recorded in the 60s. The album was released in May 2016 to considerable success, reaching No. 14 on the Billboard 200 and generally favorable reviews. With the release of the album, the band, featuring Dolenz and Tork, commenced their 50th anniversary tour. Nesmith did not participate in most of the tour, again citing other commitments. He did, however, make a few appearances throughout the summer of 2016, appearing virtually via Skype to perform "Papa Gene's Blues" at one concert and in person for a four-song encore at another. In September, he replaced Tork on the tour for two dates while Tork attended to a family emergency. After Tork returned to the tour, Nesmith performed with the band for a concert at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood on September 16, which he stated would likely be his final concert appearance with the Monkees. Dolenz and Tork's tour announced dates to the end of the year, including concerts in Australia and New Zealand. After the end of the 50th anniversary tour, Dolenz, Tork, and Nesmith spent 2017 engaging in solo activities. 2018–2021: The Mike and Micky Show, Christmas Party, Tork's death, farewell tour, and Nesmith's death In 2018, Nesmith toured with a revived version of the First National Band and stated that he was in negotiations with promoters to tour again with Dolenz later in the summer. On February 20, the tour was announced as "The Monkees Present: The Mike and Micky Show", their first tour as a duo; Tork declined to participate. Though the pair played Monkees music and promoted the tour under the Monkees banner, Nesmith stated that "there's no pretense there about Micky and I being the Monkees. We're not." The tour was cut short in June 2018, with four shows left unplayed, due to Nesmith having a health issue. He and Dolenz announced March 2019 as make-up dates for the missed shows. In an interview with Rolling Stone published on July 26, 2018, Nesmith revealed he had undergone quadruple bypass heart surgery. He was in the hospital for over a month and the health issue had persisted since early in the tour. Nesmith resumed live touring with his First National Band Redux shows in September 2018. In November 2018, Nesmith and Dolenz announced an additional eight shows had been added to the Mike and Micky Show tour. In June 2019, Nesmith and Dolenz toured the Mike and Micky Show in Australia and New Zealand. The Monkees released a Christmas album, Christmas Party, on October 12, 2018. The Adam Schlesinger-produced album features several holiday standards and new songwriting contributions from Andy Partridge, Scott McCaughey, Peter Buck, Rivers Cuomo and author Michael Chabon. In addition to newly recorded material from the three surviving Monkees, two songs feature vocals from Davy Jones. The cover art is provided by the comic book artists Mike and Laura Allred. Tork died of cancer on February 21, 2019. After Tork's death, Dolenz and Nesmith revealed that Tork had informed them that he would not be well enough to join them on tour, which led Dolenz and Nesmith to demand that the Mike and Mickey Show dates in 2018 were a separate duo, and not Monkees dates without Tork. However, after Tork's death, all future dates were credited to the Monkees. Following the success of the Mike and Micky Show, Dolenz and Nesmith announced a follow-up tour, An Evening with the Monkees, to begin in early 2020. The tour was delayed, however, due the COVID-19 pandemic. It was announced on May 4, 2021, that the rescheduled dates will be billed as a farewell tour. "The Monkees Farewell Tour" consisted of over 40 dates in the US from September to November; because of restrictions due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, they were unable to play shows in Canada, the UK or Australia. The final date and final show for the Monkees Farewell Tour was held on November 14, 2021, at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. In interviews, Dolenz did not rule out the possibility of the duo playing future one-off dates after the tour had concluded. However, he emphasized that as both members of the duo would be rapidly approaching their eighties by 2022–2023, the physical demands of touring meant that the Monkees would not be mounting any further tours after 2021. The duo had been scheduled to perform at least one more traditional concert (postponed due to coronavirus regulations) as well as perform on a cruise headlined Mike Love and Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys, the latter of which Dolenz agreed to honor as part of his subsequent solo tour. In May 2021, Dolenz released a solo album, Dolenz Sings Nesmith, featuring songs written by Nesmith and produced by Christian Nesmith. Nesmith died of heart failure on December 10, 2021, less than a month after the final date of the 2021 tour. Nesmith's passing leaves Dolenz as the only surviving member of the Monkees. Tributes to Nesmith from other musicians, fans, and Dolenz were posted on social media. Micky Dolenz (2022–present) 2022: "The Monkees Celebrated by Micky Dolenz" tour In early 2022, Dolenz announced that he would embark on a "special series of concert dates in April 2022. Honoring the contributions of his bandmates – the late Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith & Peter Tork – in song and with personal multimedia footage of the legendary performers". Monkees manager and tour manager Andrew Sandoval stated that "We will be fully delving into The Monkees' songbook, as well as Micky's personal archive of films and photos to create a unique evening of memories ... It will give Micky and the band an opportunity to share the music he made alongside Davy, Peter & Michael and reminisce on their journey as brothers for five decades. We have also been talking about Micky singing some songs he's never done on stage before, as well as pulling out older Monkees album tracks that have not been performed in many years ... it is unclear if we will be doing anything beyond these shows in this format, but we are truly looking forward to being together again to celebrate the Monkees in song." The official tour was set to start on April 5, 2022, with a pre-tour performance on "The Beach Boys Good Vibrations Cruise". Impact and legacy The Monkees, selected specifically to appeal to the youth market as American television's response to the Beatles with their manufactured personae and carefully produced singles, are seen as an original precursor to the modern proliferation of studio and corporation-created bands. But this critical reputation has softened somewhat, with the recognition that the Monkees were neither the first manufactured group nor unusual in this respect. The Monkees also frequently contributed their own songwriting efforts on their albums and saw their musical skills improve. They ultimately became a self-directed group, playing their own instruments and writing many of their own songs. Monkees and 1960s music historian Andrew Sandoval wrote in The Hollywood Reporter The Chicago Tribune interviewed Davy Jones, who said, "We touched a lot of musicians, you know. I can't tell you the amount of people that have come up and said, 'I wouldn't have been a musician if it hadn't been for the Monkees.' It baffles me even now", Jones added. "I met a guy from Guns N' Roses, and he was overwhelmed by the meeting, and was just so complimentary." The Monkees found unlikely fans among musicians of the punk rock period of the mid-1970s. Many of these punk performers had grown up on TV reruns of the series, and sympathized with the anti-industry, anti-establishment trend of their career. Sex Pistols and Minor Threat both recorded versions of "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and it was often played live by Toy Love. Japanese new wave pop group the Plastics recorded a synthesizer and drum-machine version of "Last Train to Clarksville" for their 1979 album Welcome Back. Glenn A. Baker, author of Monkeemania: The True Story of the Monkees, described the Monkees as "rock's first great embarrassment" in 1986: Like an illegitimate child in a respectable family, the Monkees are destined to be regarded forever as rock's first great embarrassment; misunderstood and maligned like a mongrel at a ritzy dog show, or a test tube baby at the Vatican. The rise of the pre-fab four coincided with rock's desperate desire to cloak itself with the trappings of respectability, credibility and irreproachable heritage. The fact was ignored that session players were being heavily employed by the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Mamas and the Papas, the Byrds and other titans of the age. However, what could not be ignored, as rock disdained its pubescent past, was a group of middle-aged Hollywood businessmen had actually assembled their concept of a profitable rock group and foisted it upon the world. What mattered was that the Monkees had success handed to them on a silver plate. Indeed, it was not so much righteous indignation but thinly disguised jealousy which motivated the scornful dismissal of what must, in retrospect, be seen as entertaining, imaginative and highly memorable exercise in pop culture. Mediaite columnist Paul Levinson noted that "The Monkees were the first example of something created in a medium—in this case, a rock group on television—that jumped off the screen to have big impact in the real world." When commenting on the death of Jones on February 29, 2012, Time magazine contributor James Poniewozik praised the television show, saying that ... even if the show never meant to be more than entertainment and a hit-single generator, we shouldn't sell The Monkees short. It was far better TV than it had to be; during an era of formulaic domestic sitcoms and wacky comedies, it was a stylistically ambitious show, with a distinctive visual style, absurdist sense of humor and unusual story structure. Whatever Jones and the Monkees were meant to be, they became creative artists in their own right, and Jones' chipper Brit-pop presence was a big reason they were able to produce work that was commercial, wholesome and yet impressively weird. Both the style and substance of the Monkees were imitated by American boy band Big Time Rush (BTR), who performed in their own television series which—by admission of series creator Scott Fellows—was heavily influenced by the Monkees. Similarly to the Monkees, Big Time Rush featured a "made-for-TV" boy band often caught in a series of misadventures, hijinks, and somewhat slapstick comedy. The show, now in reruns but still hugely popular on Teen Nick, is highly stylized and patterned after the Monkees, even capped with similar cartoonish sound effects. Like the Monkees, BTR has also seen critical and commercial success in America and worldwide through album, singles and high TV ratings worldwide." In popular culture The Criterion Collection, which has a stated goal to release "a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, [and] has been dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements" recognized the Monkees' film Head as meeting their criteria when they fully restored and released it on DVD and Blu-ray in 2010. They stated that Head was "way, way ahead of its time" and "arguably the most authentically psychedelic film made in 1960s Hollywood". Head dodged commercial success on its release but has since been reclaimed as one of the great cult objects of its era." In the book Hey, Hey We're The Monkees, Rafelson wrote that "[Head] explored techniques on film that hadn't been used before. The first shot of Micky under water is a perfect example. Now you see it on MTV all the time, but it was invented for the movie [...] I got two long-haired kids out of UCLA who created the effects that the established laboratory guys said couldn't be done. We invented double-matted experiences. Polarization hadn't been used in movies before. ... When it was shown in France, the head of the Cinematheque overly praised the movie as a cinematic masterpiece, and from that point on, this movie began to acquire an underground reputation." In 2010, Nick Vernier Band created a digital "Monkees reunion" through the release of Mister Bob (featuring the Monkees), a new song produced under license from Rhino Entertainment, containing vocal samples from the band's recording "Zilch". The contract bridge convention known as either Last Train or Last Train to Clarksville was so named by its inventor, Jeff Meckstroth, after the Monkees' song. Comic books A comic book series, The Monkees, was published in the United States by Dell Comics, which ran for 17 issues from 1967 to 1969. In the United Kingdom, a Daily Mirror "Crazy Cartoon Book" featured four comic stories as well as four photos of the Monkees, all in black and white; it was published in 1967. Biopic In 2000, VH-1 produced the television biopic Daydream Believers: The Monkees' Story. In 2002, the movie was released on DVD and featured both commentaries and interviews with Dolenz, Jones and Tork. The aired version did differ from the DVD release, as the TV version had an extended scene with all four Monkees meeting the Beatles, but with a shortened Cleveland concert segment. It was also available on VHS. Musical A stage musical opened in the UK at the Manchester Opera House on Friday March 30, 2012, and was dedicated to Davy Jones (the Jones family attended the official opening on April 3). The production is a Jukebox musical and starred Stephen Kirwan, Ben Evans, Tom Parsons and Oliver Savile as actors playing the parts of the Monkees (respectively Dolenz, Jones, Nesmith, Tork) who are hired by an unscrupulous businessman to go on a world tour pretending to be the real band. The show includes 18 Monkees songs plus numbers by other 60s artists. It ran in Manchester as part of the "Manchester Gets it First" program until April 14, 2012, before a UK tour. Following its Manchester run, the show appeared in the Glasgow King's Theatre and the Sunderland Empire Theatre. Awards and achievements Grammy Awards The Grammy Awards is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry. It shares recognition of the music industry as that of the other performance arts: Emmy Awards (television), the Tony Awards (stage performance), and the Academy Awards (motion pictures). Notable achievements Gave the Jimi Hendrix Experience their first U.S. concert tour exposure as an opening act in July 1967. Jimi Hendrix's heavy psychedelic guitar and sexual overtones did not go over well with the teenage girls in the audience, which eventually led to his leaving the tour early. The band inspired Gene Roddenberry to introduce the character of Chekov in his Star Trek TV series in response to the popularity of Davy Jones, complete with hairstyle and appearance mimicking that of Jones. Inducted into America's Pop Music Hall of Fame in 2014. Honored by the Music Business Association (Music Biz) with an Outstanding Achievement Award celebrating the band's 50th anniversary on May 16, 2016. Inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2007. Controversies Studio recordings controversy In early 1967, controversy concerning the Monkees' studio abilities arose. Dolenz told a reporter that the Wrecking Crew provided the backing tracks for the first two Monkees albums, and that his position as drummer was simply because a Monkee had to learn to play the drums, and he only knew the guitar. In the January 28, 1967 issue of Saturday Evening Post an article quoted Nesmith railing against the music creation process. "Do you know how debilitating it is to sit up and have to duplicate somebody else's records?" he asked. "Tell the world we don't record our own music." The whistle-blowing on themselves created a rift between the Monkees and producer Don Kirshner, ultimately resulting in his being fired from the project, and in the band taking creative control for the Monkees' third album. The Monkees' UK tour in 1967 received a chilly reception; the front pages of several UK and international music papers proclaimed that the group members did not always play their own instruments or sing the backing vocals in the studio. They were derisively dubbed the "Pre-Fab Four" and the Sunday Mirror called them a "disgrace to the pop world." Jimi Hendrix was their tour-opener that year, and he told Melody Maker magazine, "Oh God, I hate them! Dishwater... You can't knock anybody for making it, but people like the Monkees?" Dealing with the controversy proved challenging on the TV series. In an interview segment that closed episode No. 31, "Monkees at the Movies," first broadcast on April 17, 1967, Bob Rafelson asked the group about accusations that they did not play their instruments in concert. Nesmith responded, "I'm fixin' to walk out there in front of fifteen thousand people, man! If I don't play my own instrument, I'm in a lot of trouble!" But the "Devil and Peter Tork" episode serves as a parable, as a Kirshner-like entrepreneur has Tork sign over his soul to be a success as a musician. In November 1967, the wave of anti-Monkees sentiment was reaching its peak while they released their fourth album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones Ltd. The liner notes for the 1995 re-release of this album quote Nesmith: "The press went into a full-scale war against us, talking about how 'The Monkees are four guys who have no credits, no credibility whatsoever and have been trying to trick us into believing they are a rock band.' Number 1, not only was this not the case; the reverse was true. Number 2, for the press to report with genuine alarm that the Monkees were not a real rock band was looney tunes! It was one of the great goofball moments of the media, but it stuck." Jones stated in 1969 to Tiger Beat, "I get so angry when musicians say, 'Oh, your music is so bad,' because it's not bad to the kids. Those people who talk about 'doing their own thing' are groups that go and play in the clubs that hold 50 people while we're playing to 10,000 kids. You know, it hurts me to think that anybody thinks we're phony, because we're not. We're only doing what we think is our own thing." Rolling Stone reported on October 11, 2011, that Tork believed the Monkees did not receive the respect they deserve. "The Monkees' songbook is one of the better songbooks in pop history", he said. "Certainly in the top five in terms of breadth and depth. It was revealed that we didn't play our own instruments on the records much at the very moment when the idealism of early Beatlemania in rock was at its peak. So we became the ultimate betrayers." Timeline for the studio recordings controversy 1965: At the end of the year, the four Monkees are cast in the TV show. April 1966: The Monkees begin rehearsing as a band to produce music for the upcoming TV show and records. Nesmith, Dolenz, and Tork were all experienced guitar players, and Nesmith and Tork were a little familiar with drums, but no one was a real expert in drumming. Jones was an able drummer and percussionist, but his experience from Broadway made him more known as a singer. Producer Ward Sylvester tells Tork that he would have signed the band even without a TV show. May 1966: Filming for the TV show starts, taking 12 hours a day for the cast of the Monkees. The public is informed in the beginning that the Monkees are "manufactured", as seen in this Washington Post report: "The series stars a fearsome foursome in the Monkees, a wholly manufactured singing group of attractive young men who come off as a combination of the Beatles, the Dead End Kids and the Marx Brothers. Critics will cry foul. Longhairs will demand, outraged, that they be removed from the air. But the kids will adore the Monkees [...] unlike other rock 'n' roll groups, the boys had never performed together before. Indeed, they'd never even met [...] they've been working to create their own sound." June 1966: Although the producers want the Monkees to create their own music, they have not progressed enough by this point and still lack the desired "upbeat, young, happy, driving, pulsating sound". Dolenz would later state, "I'm sure that Rafelson and Schneider said in all honesty, 'Yeah, don't worry, when we start going you're gonna record your own tunes and it will be wonderful.' But the things get caught up in the inertia of the moment. NBC gets involved. RCA gets involved. Screen Gems gets involved. Millions and millions of dollars are on the line [...] people aren't as forthcoming. Mike's style was very distinct, country-western, Peter was very folk-rock, neither of which at the time would have been considered mainstream pop. Davy would have done all Broadway tunes [...] I ended up singing the leads [...] pop-rock was more my style." However, selections of Nesmith's authorship and composition are used from the beginning. June 10, 1966: The Monkees' first recording sessions take place. These sessions feature members of the Wrecking Crew, a group of studio musicians in Los Angeles who played on several Monkees album tracks, mostly those produced by Nesmith. These sessions ultimately prove unsuccessful, however, and most future sessions in 1966 will feature the Candy Store Prophets, a studio band led by Boyce & Hart. June 25, 1966: Nesmith produces his first Monkees track in a recording studio, his two self-composed songs "All the King's Horses", "The Kind of Girl I Could Love", plus "I Don't Think You Know Me", as a way for Raybert Productions to fulfill their promise to him to allow him to produce and record his own music. He is not allowed to play the instruments. July 1966: Various producers from Boyce & Hart to Jack Keller to Nesmith continue to record sessions. Nesmith gets all four members to sing on his productions. On July 18, 1966, Nesmith also gets Tork to play guitar on the songs he is producing for the first time. Sessions continue in this manner, with the hired producers Boyce & Hart and Jack Keller and Monkees member Nesmith producing/recording songs in the studio through November 1966. October 1966: The Monkees' debut album is released. Group member Nesmith, in particular, is angered when he sees the album cover, because he thinks it makes it look like they played all of the instruments. October 2, 1966: The Monkees give their first public interview, which appears in The New York Times, in which Jones is asked if the big push for the Monkees is fair to the real rock groups, to which he responds, "... That's the breaks, but you can't fool the people, you really can't." October 24, 1966: Newsweek interviews the Monkees. They are asked how the music is created. Davy Jones tells them, "This isn't a rock 'n' roll group. This is an act." December 1966: The Monkees perform live in concert starting December 3, 1966. TV Week in the meantime, interviews Rafelson about why the Monkees' public access to interviews is limited, wondering if it could be related to embarrassing questions regarding their musical prowess, to which Rafelson assures that they do all of their own playing and singing. He also states that interviews are almost impossible due to their spending 12 hours a day filming the TV show, 4 hours recording, rehearsing for concert tours, and spending some weekends making personal appearance tours. During this time frame, the Monkees are generally barred from making television appearances on shows outside of their own, as Raybert fears the group's overexposure. December 27, 1966: The Monkees are again interviewed about their music in Look magazine. Tork responds, "We have the potential, but there's not time to practice." Dolenz says, "We're advertisers. We're selling the Monkees. It's gotta be that way." Nesmith says, "They're in the middle of something good and they're trying to sell something. They want us to be the Beatles, but we're not. We're us. We're funny." January 1967: The Monkees' second album is released while they were on tour, without the Monkees' knowledge. This upsets Nesmith and Tork, as they had been told that they were going to be doing their own album. Dolenz and Jones are initially indifferent because to them, coming from the acting world, it was just a soundtrack to the TV show and they were doing their job by singing what they were asked to sing. But when they see how angry Nesmith and Tork are, they too join in the revolt. January 16, 1967: Four months after their first single is released, the Monkees hold their first recording session as a self-contained, fully functioning band. January 28, 1967: Band member Nesmith speaks to the Saturday Evening Post in an exposé, stating, "The music had nothing to do with us. It was totally dishonest. Do you know how debilitating it is to sit up and have to duplicate somebody else's records? That's really what we're doing. The music happened in spite of the Monkees. It was what Kirshner wanted to do. Our records are not our forte. I don't care if we never sell another record. Maybe we were manufactured [...] Tell the world we're synthetic because [...] we are. Tell them the Monkees are wholly man-made overnight, that millions of dollars have been poured into this thing. Tell the world we don't record our own music. But that's us they see on television. That show is really a part of us. They're not seeing something invalid." Decades later, Nesmith reflected, "The press decided they were going to unload on us as being somehow illegitimate, somehow false. That we were making an attempt to dupe the public, when in fact it was me that was making the attempt to maintain the integrity. So, the press went into a full-scale war against us. Telling us the Monkees are four guys who have no credits, no credibility whatsoever, who have been trying to trick us into believing that they are a rock band. Number one, not only was it not the case, the reverse was true. Number two, [for] the press to report with genuine alarm that the Monkees were not a real rock band was looney tunes. It was one of the great goofball moments of the media, but it stuck." February 4, 1967: Although the Monkees have continued to play and record their own music for their upcoming album, Jones records some songs with hired producer Jeff Barry. February 25, 1967: Jones is interviewed for the New Musical Express, and says, "I can only speak for myself. I am an actor and I have never pretended to be anything else. The public have made me into a rock 'n' roll singer. No one is trying to fool anyone! People have tried to put us down by saying we copied the Beatles. So, all right, maybe the Monkees is a half-hour Hard Day's Night. But now we read that the Who are working on a TV a group. Now who's copying who?" February 27, 1967: Kirshner is dismissed as Music Coordinator for the Monkees, primarily due to his handling of the third would-be-but-withdrawn single from the Monkees. Lester Sill takes his place. The Monkees continue recording their own songs, with them playing instruments, getting ready for their next album. In the meantime, the Nesmith-penned "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" is released as part of the Monkees third single, which features the Monkees playing as a self-contained band, which becomes a top 40 hit. May 1967: The Monkees' first self-made album, Headquarters, is released. After Headquarters, the Monkees started using a mixture of themselves playing along with other musicians, including members of the Wrecking Crew and Candy Store Prophets along with other musicians such as Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Harry Nilsson; but they still wrote, sang, produced, and played on their remaining albums, except for their final offering from the original incarnation in 1970, Changes, which was recorded after Nesmith and Tork had left the group and featured Dolenz and Jones singing to the backing tracks of what Jones referred to in the liner notes of the 1994 reissue that album as "a rejected Andy Kim album". In the same liner notes, Jones stated that he was unhappy about that recording and claimed that it was not a real album. The final album featured one Dolenz composition. Tork commented on some of the controversy when writing about Jones's death: "When we first met, I was confronted with a slick, accomplished, young performer, vastly more experienced than I in the ways of show biz, and yes, I was intimidated. Englishness was at a high premium in my world, and his experience dwarfed my entertainer's life as a hippie, basket-passing folk singer on the Greenwich Village coffee house circuit. If anything, I suppose I was selected for the cast of 'The Monkees' TV show partly as a rough-hewn counterpart to David's sophistication. [...] the Monkees—the group now, not the TV series—took a lot of flack for being 'manufactured,' by which our critics meant that we hadn't grown up together, paying our dues, sleeping five to a room, trying to make it as had the Beatles and Rolling Stones. Furthermore, critics said, the Monkees' first albums—remember albums?—were almost entirely recorded by professional studio musicians, with hardly any input from any of us beyond lead vocals. I felt this criticism keenly, coming as I did from the world of the ethical folk singer, basically honoring the standards of the naysayers. We did play as a group live on tour." Meeting with the Beatles Critics of the Monkees observed that they were simply the "Pre-Fab Four", a made-for-TV knockoff of the Beatles; however, the Beatles themselves took it in stride and even hosted a party for the Monkees when they visited England. The Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band at the time of the Monkees' visit and as such, the party inspired the line in the Monkees' tune "Randy Scouse Git", written by Dolenz, which read, "the four kings of EMI are sitting stately on the floor." George Harrison praised their self-produced musical attempts, saying, "It's obvious what's happening, there's talent there. They're doing a TV show, it's a difficult chore and I wouldn't be in their shoes for the world. When they get it all sorted out, they might turn out to be the best." Monkees member Peter Tork was later one of the musicians on Harrison's album Wonderwall Music, playing Paul McCartney's five-string banjo. Nesmith attended the Beatles' recording session for "A Day in the Life" at Abbey Road Studios; he can be seen in the Beatles' home movies, including one scene where he is talking with John Lennon. During the conversation, Nesmith had reportedly asked Lennon "Do you think we're a cheap imitation of the Beatles, your movies and your records?" to which Lennon assuredly replied, "I think you're the greatest comic talent since the Marx Brothers. I've never missed one of your programs." Nesmith wrote about this encounter on Facebook: When the Beatles were recording Sgt. Peppers, Phyllis and I spent a few days with John and wife Cynthia Lennon at their home, and one in the studio with "the boys." That's where those pictures of John and I come from—the "Day in the Life" session. The minute I had the wherewithal—cachet and money—I raced to London and looked up John. During the '60s it seemed to me London was the center of the World and the Beatles were the center of London and the Sgt Pepper session was the center of the Beatles. It was an extraordinary time, I thought, and I wanted to get as close as I could to the heart of it. But like a hurricane the center was not stormy or tumultuous. It was exciting, but it was calm, and to an extent peaceful. The confidence of the art permeated the atmosphere. Serene—and really, really fun. Then I discovered the reason for this. During that time in one of our longer, more reflective, talks I realized that John was not aware of who the Beatles were. Of course he could not be. He was clueless in this regard. He had never seen or experienced them. In the strange paradox of fame, none of the Beatles ever saw the Beatles the way we did. Certainly not the way I did. I loved them beyond my ability to express it. As the years passed and I met more and more exceptional people sitting in the center of their own hurricane I saw they all shared this same sensibility. None of them could actually know the force of their own work. Dolenz was also in the studio during a Sgt. Pepper session, which he mentioned while broadcasting for radio WCBS-FM in New York (incidentally, he interviewed Ringo Starr on his program). On February 21, 1967, he attended the overdub and mixing session for the Beatles' "Fixing a Hole" at EMI's Abbey Road studio 2. During the 1970s, during Lennon's infamous "lost weekend", Lennon, Ringo Starr, Micky Dolenz, Harry Nilsson and Keith Moon often hung out together, and were collectively known in the press as "The Hollywood Vampires". Paul McCartney can be seen in the 2002 concert film Back in the U.S. singing "Hey, Hey, We're The Monkees", the theme from The Monkees television show, while backstage. The Monkees "Cuddly Toy" and "Daddy's Song" were written by songwriter Harry Nilsson. "Cuddly Toy" was recorded several months before Nilsson's own debut in October 1967. At the press conference announcing the formation of Apple, the Beatles named Nilsson as both their favorite American artist and as their favorite American group. Derek Taylor, the Beatles' press officer, had introduced them to Nilsson's music. In 1995, Ringo Starr joined Jones, Tork and Dolenz to film a Pizza Hut commercial. Julian Lennon was a fan, stating at the time of Jones' death, "You did some great work!" Rock and Roll Hall of Fame In June 2007, Tork complained to the New York Post that Jann Wenner had blackballed the Monkees from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Tork stated: [Wenner] doesn't care what the rules are and just operates how he sees fit. It is an abuse of power. I don't know whether the Monkees belong in the Hall of Fame, but it's pretty clear that we're not in there because of a personal whim. Jann seems to have taken it harder than everyone else, and now, 40 years later, everybody says, 'What's the big deal? Everybody else does it.' [Uses studio artists or backing bands.] Nobody cares now except him. He feels his moral judgment in 1967 and 1968 is supposed to serve in 2007. In a Facebook post, Nesmith stated that he did not know if the Monkees belonged in the Hall of Fame because he could only see the impact of the Monkees from the inside, and further stated: "I can see the HOF (Hall of Fame) is a private enterprise. It seems to operate as a business, and the inductees are there by some action of the owners of the Enterprise. The inductees appear to be chosen at the owner's pleasure. This seems proper to me. It is their business in any case. It does not seem to me that the HOF carries a public mandate, nor should it be compelled to conform to one." In 1992, Davy Jones spoke to People magazine, stating "I'm not as wealthy as some entertainers, but I work hard, and I think the best is yet to come. I know I'm never going to make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but maybe there's something else for me in show business. I've been given a talent—however big or little—that has given me many opportunities. I've got to try to use it the best way I can. A lot of people go days without having someone hug them or shake their hand. I get that all the time." In 2015, Micky Dolenz said, "As far as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame I've never been one to chase awards or anything like that; it's never been very important to me. I was very proud to win an Emmy for The Monkees, having come out of television as a kid. When we won the Emmy for best TV show in '66 or '67 that was a huge feather in my cap. But I've never chased that kind of stuff. I've never done a project and thought, 'What do I do here to win an award?' Specifically as far as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame I've been very flattered that the fans and people have championed the Monkees. Very flattered and honored that they do. If you know anything about the organization, and I've done charity work for the foundation, the Hall of Fame is a private club." Various magazines and news outlets, such as Time, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, Goldmine, Yahoo! Music and MSNBC have argued that the Monkees belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Members Micky Dolenz – lead and backing vocals, rhythm guitar, drums, percussion Davy Jones – lead and backing vocals, percussion, drums, rhythm guitar, bass Michael Nesmith – lead and rhythm guitar, keyboards, backing and lead vocals Peter Tork – bass, rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, banjo, backing and occasional lead vocals Timeline Discography The Monkees (1966) More of The Monkees (1967) Headquarters (1967) Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (1967) The Birds, The Bees & the Monkees (1968) Head (1968) Instant Replay (1969) The Monkees Present (1969) Changes (1970) Pool It! (1987) Justus (1996) Good Times! (2016) Christmas Party (2018) Originally unreleased recordings Beginning in 1987, Rhino Records started to make available previously unreleased Monkees recordings on a series of albums called Missing Links. Having numerous quality songwriters, musicians, producers and arrangers—along with high budgets—at their hands while making albums during the 1960s, the band was able to record as many songs as the Beatles in half the time. The three volumes of this initial series contained 59 songs. These include the group's first recordings as a self-contained band, including the intended single "All Of Your Toys", Nesmith's Nashville sessions, and alternate versions of songs featured only on the television series. The Listen to the Band box set also contained previously unreleased recordings, as did the 1994–95 series CD album reissues. Rhino/Rhino Handmade's Deluxe Edition reissue series has also included alternate mixes, unreleased songs, and the soundtrack to 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee. Tours North American Tour (1966–67) British Tour (1967) Pacific Rim Tour (1968) North American Tour (1969) (Dolenz, Jones, Nesmith) 20th Anniversary World Tour (1986) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) Here We Come Again Tour (1987–88) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork), for most of the 1987 shows, "Weird Al" Yankovic was the opening act. The Monkees Live (1989) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) The Monkees Summer Tour (1989) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) Monkees: The 30th Anniversary Tour (1996) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) Justus Tour (1997) North American Tour (1997) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) U.S. Tour (2001) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork; Tork removed from the tour partway through) Monkeemania Returns Tour (2001–2002) (Dolenz, Jones) An Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary Tour (2011) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) An Evening with The Monkees (Fall 2012) (Dolenz, Nesmith, Tork) A Midsummer's Night with the Monkees (Summer 2013) (Dolenz, Nesmith, Tork) The Monkees Live in Concert (Spring 2014) (Dolenz, Nesmith, Tork) An Evening with the Monkees (2015) (Dolenz, Tork) 50th Anniversary Tour (2016) (Dolenz, Tork with selected appearances by Nesmith) The Mike and Micky Show (2019) (Dolenz, Nesmith) (2019 dates billed as the Monkees) An Evening with the Monkees (2020; postponed) The Monkees Farewell Tour (Fall 2021) Related non-Monkees tours The Great Golden Hits of The Monkees (1975–77) (Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart) Sound of The Monkees (1986; 1987) (Jones, Tork) Micky and Davy: Together Again (1994–95) (Dolenz, Jones) The Monkees Present: The Mike and Micky Show (2018–19) (Dolenz, Nesmith) (early dates billed as a Dolenz and Nesmith duo and not the Monkees) Micky Dolenz Celebrates the Monkees (2022) (Dolenz) The Monkees Celebrated by Micky Dolenz (2023) (Dolenz) See also List of The Monkees episodes Monkeemobile References Further reading External links Micky Dolenz's official website Mike Nesmith Interview - Rocker Magazine 2013 Peter Tork Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2009) FBI Records: The Vault - The Monkees at vault.fbi.gov Category:1966 establishments in California Category:2021 disestablishments in California Category:American pop rock music groups Category:Arista Records artists Category:Articles which contain graphical timelines Category:Bell Records artists Category:Bubblegum pop groups Category:Colgems Records artists Category:Musical groups disestablished in 1970 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 2021 Category:Musical groups established in 1966 Category:Musical groups from Los Angeles Category:Musical groups reestablished in 2010 Category:Musical quartets Category:Psychedelic pop music groups Category:RCA Records artists Category:Rock and roll music groups Category:Television personalities from Los Angeles

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The Monkees

The Monkees were an American rock and pop band originally active between 1966 and 1971, with subsequent reunion albums and tours in the decades that followed. They were formed in Los Angeles in 1965 by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider for the American television series The Monkees which aired from 1966 to 1968. The musical acting quartet was composed of Americans Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork; and British actor and singer Davy Jones.

From television to concert stage

In assigning instruments for purposes of the television show, a dilemma arose as to which of the four would be the drummer. Both Nesmith (a skilled guitarist and bassist) and Tork (who could play several stringed and keyboard instruments) were peripherally familiar with the instrument but both declined to give the drum set a try. Jones knew how to play the drums and tested well enough initially on the instrument, but the producers felt that, behind a drum kit, the camera would exaggerate his short stature and make him virtually hidden from view. Thus, Dolenz (who only knew how to play the guitar) was assigned to become the drummer. Tork taught Dolenz his first few beats on the drums, enough for him to fake his way through filming the pilot, but he was soon taught how to play properly. Thus, the lineup for the TV show most frequently featured Nesmith on guitar, Tork on bass, Dolenz on drums and Jones as a frontman, singer and percussionist. This, however, is in opposition to the lineup which would have made the most sense based upon the members' musical strengths. For example, Tork was actually a more experienced guitar player than Nesmith, while Nesmith had at one time specifically trained on the bass. While Jones certainly had a strong lead voice and sings lead on several Monkees recordings, Dolenz's voice is regarded, particularly by Nesmith, as one of the most distinctive in popular music history and a hallmark of the Monkees' sound. This theoretical lineup was actually depicted once, in the music video for the band's song "Words", which shows Jones on drums, Tork playing lead guitar, Nesmith on bass and Dolenz fronting the group. In concert appearances Tork also took much of the guitar duties, even in appearances with Nesmith, and Dolenz often plays rhythm guitar on stage. Unlike most television shows of the time, The Monkees episodes were written with many setups, requiring frequent breaks to prepare the set and cameras for short bursts of filming. Some of the "bursts" are considered proto-music videos, inasmuch as they were produced to sell the records. The Monkees Tale author Eric Lefcowitz noted that the Monkees were--first and foremost--a video group. The four actors would spend 12-hour days on the set, many of them waiting for the production crew to do their jobs. Noticing that their instruments were left on the set unplugged, the four decided to turn them on and start playing. After working on the set all day, the Monkees (usually Dolenz or Jones) would be called into the recording studio to cut vocal tracks. As the band was essential to this aspect of the recording process, there were few limits on how long they could spend in the recording studio, and the result was an extensive catalogue of unreleased recordings. CANNOTANSWER

The Monkees were an American pop rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1966, comprising Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Davy Jones. They were conceived in 1965 as a fictional band for the sitcom The Monkees by the television producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider. Music credited to the Monkees appeared in the sitcom, which aired from 1966 to 1968, and was released on LP. While the sitcom was a mostly straightforward affair, the music production generated tension and controversy almost from the beginning. Music supervisor Don Kirshner was dissatisfied with the quartet's musical abilities, and he limited their involvement during the recording process, relying instead on professional songwriters and studio musicians. This arrangement yielded multiple hit albums and singles, but it did not sit well with the band members, who were facing a public backlash for not playing on the recordings. After a brief power struggle, the band members gained full control over the recording process. For two albums, the Monkees mostly performed as a group, but, within a year, each member was pursuing his own interests under the Monkees name. By the end of 1968, they were once again a group in name only, the show had been canceled, and their motion picture, Head, had flopped. Tork left the band soon after, followed by Nesmith a year later, and the Monkees officially broke up in 1970. A revival of interest in the television show came in 1986, and over the following 35 years the group periodically reunited for official reunion tours, a major-network television special, and four new full-length studio albums, though these efforts rarely featured all four members performing together. With Jones' death in 2012 and Tork's in 2019, Dolenz and Nesmith were left to embark on a farewell tour in 2021, finishing shortly before Nesmith's death at the end of the year. Spurred by the success of the show, the Monkees were one of the most successful bands of the 1960s. With international hits, including "Last Train to Clarksville", "I'm a Believer", "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You", "Pleasant Valley Sunday", and "Daydream Believer", four chart-topping albums and three chart-topping songs ("Last Train to Clarksville", "I'm a Believer", and "Daydream Believer"), they sold more than 75 million records worldwide, making them one of the biggest-selling groups of all time. However, claims from newspapers and magazines that the Monkees in 1967 outsold the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined are false and originated from Nesmith in a 1977 interview. History Conception and casting (1962–1965) Aspiring filmmaker Bob Rafelson developed the initial idea for The Monkees in 1962 and tried selling it to Revue, the television division of Universal Pictures, but was unsuccessful. In May 1964, while working at Screen Gems, Rafelson teamed up with Bert Schneider, whose father, Abraham Schneider, headed the Colpix Records and Screen Gems Television units of Columbia Pictures. Rafelson and Schneider ultimately formed Raybert Productions. The Beatles' films A Hard Day's Night and Help! inspired Rafelson and Schneider to revive Rafelson's idea for The Monkees. As "The Raybert Producers", they sold the show to Screen Gems Television on April 16, 1965. Rafelson and Schneider's original idea was to cast an existing New York folk rock group, the Lovin' Spoonful, who were not widely known at the time. However, John Sebastian had already signed the band to a record contract, which would have denied Screen Gems the right to market music from the show. After those plans fell through, Rafelson and Schneider focused on Davy Jones who, in September 1964, had signed to a long-term contract to appear in TV programs for Screen Gems, to make feature films for Columbia Pictures and to record music for the Colpix label. His involvement with The Monkees was publicly announced on July 14, 1965, when The Hollywood Reporter stated that he was expected to return to the United States in September (after a trip to England) "to prepare for [a] TV pilot for Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson". Jones had previously starred as the Artful Dodger in the Broadway theater show Oliver!, which debuted on December 17, 1962, and his performance was later seen on The Ed Sullivan Show the same night as the Beatles' first appearance on that show, February 9, 1964. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1963. On September 8–10, 1965, Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter ran an ad to cast the remainder of the band/cast members for the TV show: Out of 437 applicants, the other three chosen for the cast of the TV show were Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz. Nesmith had been working as a musician since early 1963 and had been recording and releasing music under various names, including Michael Blessing and "Mike & John & Bill", and he had studied drama in college. Of the final three, Nesmith was the only one who actually saw the ad in Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Tork, the last to be chosen, had been working the Greenwich Village scene as a musician and had shared the stage with Pete Seeger; he learned of The Monkees from Stephen Stills, whom Rafelson and Schneider had rejected as a songwriter. Dolenz was an actor (his father was veteran character actor George Dolenz) who had starred in the Screen Gems-produced TV series Circus Boy as a child, using the stage name Mickey Braddock. He had also played guitar and sung in a band called the Missing Links, which released one single, "Don't Do It". By that time he was using his real name; he found out about The Monkees through his agent. In a TV interview years later, Tork stated that the last condition in the ad referred to not being under the influence of illegal substances at the time of auditioning. During his audition, Tork was asked if he smoked (cigarettes), to which he replied, "Well, I don't smoke those." Early years (1966–1967) Developing the music for their debut album During the casting process, Don Kirshner, Screen Gems' head of music, was contacted to secure music for The Monkees pilot. Kirshner's Brill Building firm Aldon Music had an extensive portfolio of songwriters, many in need of work after the British Invasion had reorganized the American music scene; while several Aldon writers contributed songs to the Monkees during their existence, the bulk of the songwriting for the group fell upon Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, two songwriters who were only beginning to break through to success at the time. Boyce and Hart contributed four demo recordings for the pilot. One of these recordings was "(Theme From) The Monkees" which helped get the series the green light. When The Monkees was picked up as a series, development of the musical side of the project accelerated. Columbia-Screen Gems and RCA Victor entered into a joint venture called Colgems Records primarily to distribute Monkees records. Raybert set up a rehearsal space and rented instruments for the group to practice playing in April 1966, but it quickly became apparent they would not be in shape in time for the series debut. The producers called upon Kirshner to recruit a producer for the Monkees sessions. Kirshner called on Snuff Garrett, composer of several hits by Gary Lewis & the Playboys, to produce the initial musical cuts for the show. Garrett, upon meeting the four Monkees in June 1966, decided that Jones would sing lead, a choice that was unpopular with the group. This cool reception led Kirshner to drop Garrett and buy out his contract. Kirshner next allowed Nesmith to produce sessions, provided he did not play on any tracks he produced. Nesmith did, however, start using the other Monkees on his sessions, particularly Tork as a guitarist. Kirshner came back to the enthusiastic Boyce and Hart to be the regular producers, but he brought in one of his top East Coast associates, Jack Keller, to lend some production experience to the sessions. Boyce and Hart observed quickly that when brought into the studio together, the four actors fooled around and tried to crack each other up. Because of this, they often brought in each singer individually. According to Nesmith, it was Dolenz's voice that made the Monkees' sound distinctive, and even during tension-filled times Nesmith and Tork sometimes turned over lead vocal duties to Dolenz on their own compositions, such as Tork's "For Pete's Sake", which became the closing title theme for the second season of the television show. The Monkees' debut and second albums were meant to be a soundtrack to the first season of the TV show, to cash in on the audience. In the 2006 Rhino Deluxe Edition re-issue of their second album, More of the Monkees, Mike Nesmith stated, "The first album shows up and I look at it with horror because it makes [us] appear as if we are a rock 'n' roll band. There's no credit for the other musicians. I go completely ballistic, and I say, 'What are you people thinking?' [The powers that be say], 'Well, you know, it's the fantasy.' I say, 'It's not the fantasy. You've crossed the line here! You are now duping the public. They know when they look at the television series that we're not a rock 'n' roll band; it's a show about a rock 'n' roll band. ... nobody for a minute believes that we are somehow this accomplished rock 'n' roll band that got their own television show. ... you putting the record out like this is just beyond the pale." Within a few months of their debut album, Music Supervisor Don Kirshner was forcibly dismissed and the Monkees took control as a real band. The Monkees' first single, "Last Train to Clarksville" b/w "Take a Giant Step", was released in August 1966, just weeks prior to the TV broadcast debut. In conjunction with the first broadcast of the television show on September 12, 1966, on the NBC television network, NBC and Columbia had a major hit on their hands. The first long-playing album, The Monkees, was released a month later; it spent 13 weeks at No. 1 and stayed on the Billboard charts for 78 weeks. Twenty years later, during their reunion, it spent another 24 weeks on the Billboard charts. The album included Nesmith on lead vocals on "Papa Gene's Blues", a folk-rock and country-rock fusion that Nesmith also wrote. Lineup configuration In assigning instruments for purposes of the television show, a dilemma arose as to which of the four would be the drummer. Both Nesmith (a skilled guitarist and bassist) and Tork (who could play several stringed and keyboard instruments) were peripherally familiar with the instrument but both declined to give the drum set a try. Jones knew how to play the drums and tested well enough initially on the instrument, but the producers felt that, behind a drum kit, the camera would exaggerate his short stature and make him virtually hidden from view. Thus, Dolenz (who only knew how to play the guitar) was assigned to become the drummer. Tork taught Dolenz his first few beats on the drums, enough for him to fake his way through filming the pilot, but he was soon taught how to play properly. Thus, the lineup for the TV show most frequently featured Nesmith on guitar, Tork on bass, Dolenz on drums and Jones as a frontman, singer and percussionist, although this lineup did not correspond to the members' musical strengths. Tork was a more experienced guitar player than Nesmith, while Nesmith had trained on the bass. While Jones had a strong lead voice and did sing lead on several Monkees recordings, Dolenz's voice is regarded, particularly by Nesmith, as distinctive and a hallmark of the Monkees' sound. This theoretical lineup was actually depicted once, in the music video for the band's song "Words", which shows Jones on drums, Tork playing lead guitar, Nesmith on bass and Dolenz fronting the group. In concert appearances Tork also took much of the guitar duties, even in appearances with Nesmith, and Dolenz often plays rhythm guitar on stage. Unlike most television shows of the time, The Monkees episodes were written with many setups, requiring frequent breaks to prepare the set and cameras for short bursts of filming. Some of the "bursts" are considered proto-music videos, inasmuch as they were produced to sell the records. The Monkees Tale author Eric Lefcowitz noted that the Monkees were—first and foremost—a video group. The four actors spent 12-hour days on the set, many of them waiting for the production crew to do their jobs. Noticing that their instruments were left on the set unplugged, the four decided to turn them on and start playing. After working on the set all day, the Monkees (usually Dolenz or Jones) would be called into the recording studio to cut vocal tracks. As the band was essential to this aspect of the recording process, there were few limits on how long they could spend in the recording studio, and the result was an extensive catalog of unreleased recordings. Live performances and touring Pleased with their initial efforts, Columbia (over Kirshner's objections) planned to send the Monkees out to play live concerts. The massive success of the series—and its spin-off records—created intense pressure to mount a touring version of the group. Against the initial wishes of the producers, the band went out on the road and made their debut live performance in December 1966 in Hawaii. They had no time to rehearse a live performance except between takes on set. They worked on the TV series all day, recorded in the studio at night and slept very little. The weekends were usually filled with special appearances or filming of special sequences. These performances were sometimes used during the actual series. The episode "Too Many Girls (Fern and Davy)" opens with a live version of "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" being performed as the scene was shot. One entire episode was filmed featuring live music. The last show of the premiere season, "Monkees on Tour", was shot in a documentary style by filming a concert in Phoenix, Arizona, on January 21, 1967. Bob Rafelson wrote and directed the episode. In DVD commentary tracks included in the Season One release, Nesmith admitted that Tork was better at playing guitar than bass. In Tork's commentary he stated that Jones was a good drummer, and had the live performance lineups been based solely on playing ability, it should have been Tork on guitar, Nesmith on bass and Jones on drums, with Dolenz taking the fronting role. The four Monkees performed all the instruments and vocals for most of the live set. The most notable exceptions were during each member's solo sections where, during the December 1966 – May 1967 tour, they were backed by the Candy Store Prophets. During the summer, 1967 tour of the United States and the UK (from which the Live 1967 recordings are taken), they were backed by a band called the Sundowners. The Monkees toured Australia and Japan in 1968. The results of these live performances were far better than expected. Wherever they went, the group was greeted by scenes of fan adulation reminiscent of Beatlemania. This gave the singers increased confidence in their fight for control over the musical material chosen for the series. Kirshner and More of the Monkees Andrew Sandoval noted in Rhino's 2006 Deluxe Edition CD reissue of More of the Monkees that album sales were outstripping Nielsen ratings, meaning that more people were buying the music than watching the television show, prompting the producers to create more music for more albums. Sandoval also noted that their second album, More of the Monkees, propelled by their second single, "I'm a Believer" b/w "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone", became the biggest-selling LP of their career, spending 70 weeks on the Billboard charts, staying No. 1 for 18 weeks, becoming the third-highest-selling album of the 1960s. (The album also returned to the charts in 1986 for another 26 weeks.) At the time songwriters Boyce and Hart considered the Monkees to be their project, with Tommy Boyce stating in the 2006 Rhino reissue of More of the Monkees that he considered the Monkees to be actors in the television show, while Boyce and Hart were the songwriters and producers doing the records. They wanted Micky to sing the faster songs and have Davy sing the ballads. He also stated in the liner notes that he felt that Michael's country leanings did not fit in with the Monkees' image; and, although he thought that Peter was a great musician, Peter had a different process of thinking about songs that was not right for the Monkees. Music Coordinator Kirshner, though, realizing how important the music was, wanted to move the music in a newer direction than Boyce and Hart, and so he decided to move the production to New York where his A-list of writers/producers resided. However, the Monkees had already been complaining that the music publishing company would not allow them to play their own instruments on their records or to use more of their own material. These complaints intensified when Kirshner moved track recording from California to New York, leaving the band out of the musical process entirely until they were called upon to add their vocals to the completed tracks. Kirshner told Sandoval in 2006, "[I controlled the group] because I had a contract. I kicked them out of the studio because I had a TV show that I had to put songs in, and to me it was a business and I had to knock off the songs." Dolenz recounted to Sandoval: "To me, these were the soundtrack albums to the show, and it wasn't my job. My job was to be an actor and to come in and to sing the stuff when I was asked to do so. I had no problem with that . . . It wasn't until Mike and Peter started getting so upset that Davy and I started defending them ... they were upset because it wasn't the way they were used to making music. The artist is the bottom line. The artist decides what songs are gonna go on and in what order and who writes 'em and who produces 'em." Nesmith, when asked about the situation, in Rolling Stone magazine, said, "... We were confused, especially me. But all of us shared the desire to play the songs we were singing. Everyone was accomplished--the notion [that] I was the only musician is one of those rumors that got started and won't stop--but it was not true ... We were also kids with our own taste in music and were happier performing songs we liked--and/or wrote--than songs that were handed to us ... The [TV show's] producers [in Hollywood] backed us and David went along. None of us could have fought the battles we did [with the music publishers] without the explicit support of the show's producers." Eventually the group's efforts paid off, gaining them more participation in the recording process and laying the groundwork for Kirshner's departure.Four months after their debut single was released in September 1966, on January 16, 1967, the Monkees held their first recording session as a fully functioning, self-contained band, recording an early version of Nesmith's self-composed top 40 hit single "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", along with "All of Your Toys" and "She's So Far Out, She's In". The same month, Kirshner released their second album of songs that used session musicians, More of the Monkees, without the band's knowledge. Nesmith and Tork were particularly upset when they were on tour in January 1967 and discovered this second album. The Monkees were annoyed at not having even been told of the release in advance, at having their opinions on the track selection ignored, at Kirshner's self-congratulatory liner notes and also because of the amateurish-looking cover art, which was merely a composite of pictures of the four taken for a J.C. Penney clothing advertisement. Indeed, the Monkees had not even been given a copy of the album; they had to buy it from a record store. The climax of the rivalry between Kirshner and the band was an intense argument among Nesmith, Kirshner and Colgems lawyer Herb Moelis, which took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel in January 1967. Kirshner had presented the group with royalty checks and gold records. Nesmith had responded with an ultimatum, demanding a change in the way the Monkees' music was chosen and recorded. Moelis reminded Nesmith that he was under contract. The confrontation ended with Nesmith punching a hole in a wall and saying, "That could have been your face!" However, each of the members, including Nesmith, accepted the $250,000 royalty checks (equivalent to approximately $ in today's funds). Kirshner was reported to have been incensed by the group's unexpected rebellion, especially when he felt they had a "modicum" of talent when compared to the superstars of the day like John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Soon after, Colgems and the Monkees reached an agreement not to release material directly created by the group together with unrelated Kirshner-produced material. Kirshner immediately violated this agreement in early February 1967, when he released "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", composed and written by Neil Diamond, as a single with an early version of "She Hangs Out", a song recorded in New York with Davy Jones' vocals, as the B-side. (This single was only released in Canada and was withdrawn after a couple of weeks.) As a result, Kirshner was fired from the project, leaving the Monkees in charge of their own musical direction. Indeed, their musical opportunities were open beyond their ability to capitalize. Screen Gems held the publishing rights to a wealth of material, with the Monkees being offered the first choice of many new songs. Due to the abundance of material numerous tracks were recorded, but dozens were left unreleased until Rhino Records started releasing them through the Missing Links series of albums starting in the late 1980s. (A rumor persists that the Monkees were offered "Sugar, Sugar" in 1967, but declined to record it. Producer and songwriter Jeff Barry, joint writer and composer of "Sugar, Sugar" with Andy Kim, has denied this, saying that the song had not even been written at the time.) Independence (1967–1968) Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones The Monkees wanted to pick the songs they sang and played on, the songs they recorded, and to be the Monkees. With Kirshner dismissed as musical supervisor, in late February 1967 Nesmith hired former Turtles bassist Douglas Farthing Hatlelid, who was better known by his stage name Chip Douglas, to produce the next Monkees album, which was to be the first Monkees album where they were the only musicians, outside of most of the bass, and the horns. Douglas was responsible for both music presentation—actually leading the band and engineering recordings—and playing bass on most of Headquarters. This album, along with their next, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., served as the soundtrack to the second season of the television show. In March 1967 "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", composed by Nesmith and performed by Dolenz, Nesmith, Tork and bassist John London, was issued as the B-side to the Monkees' third single, "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You", and it rose to No. 39 on the charts. The A-side rose to No. 2. Issued in May 1967, Headquarters had no songs released as singles in the United States, but it was still their third No. 1 album in a row, with many of its songs played on the second season of the television show. Having a more country-folk-rock sound than the pop outings under Kirshner, Sandoval notes in the 2007 Deluxe Edition reissue from Rhino that the album rose to No. 1 on May 24, 1967, with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper released the following week, which moved Headquarters to the #2 spot on the charts for the next 11 weeks—the same weeks which became known by the counterculture as the "Summer of Love". A selection that Dolenz wrote and composed, "Randy Scouse Git", was issued under the title "Alternate Title" (owing to the controversial nature of its original title) as a single internationally, where it rose to No. 2 on the charts in the UK and Norway, and in the top 10 in other parts of the world. Tork's "For Pete's Sake" was used as the closing theme for the television show. Nesmith continued in his country-rock leanings, adding the pedal steel guitar to three of the songs, along with contributing his self-composed countrified-rock song "Sunny Girlfriend". Tork added the banjo to the Nesmith-composed rocker "You Told Me", a song whose introduction was satirical of the Beatles' "Taxman". Other notable songs are the Nesmith-composed straightforward pop-rock song "You Just May Be the One" (the only track from their peak years to feature the Monkees playing the same instruments they were shown to play on the television show), used on the television series during both seasons, along with "Shades of Gray" (with piano introduction written by Tork), "Forget that Girl", and "No Time", used in the television show. The Monkees wrote five of the 12 songs on the album, plus the two tracks "Band 6" and "Zilch". The Los Angeles Times, when reviewing Headquarters, stated that "The Monkees Upgrade Album Quality" and that "The Monkees are getting better. Headquarters has more interesting songs and a better quality level [than previous albums]... None of the tracks is a throwaway... The improvement trend is laudable." The high of Headquarters was short-lived, however. Recording and producing as a group was Tork's major interest and he hoped that the four would continue working together as a band on future recordings, according to the liner notes of the 2007 Rhino reissue of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.. "Cuddly Toy" on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. marked the last time Dolenz, who originally played guitar before the Monkees, made a solo stand as a studio drummer. In commentary for the DVD release of the second season of the show, Tork said that Dolenz was "incapable of repeating a triumph." Having been a drummer for one album, Dolenz lost interest in being a drummer and, indeed, he largely gave up playing instruments on Monkees recordings to session musicians like "Fast" Eddie Hoh. (Producer Chip Douglas also had identified Dolenz's drumming as the weak point in the collective musicianship of the quartet, having to splice together multiple takes of Dolenz's "shaky" drumming for final use.) By this point, the four did not have a common vision regarding their musical interests, with Nesmith and Jones also moving in different directions—Nesmith following his country/folk instincts and Jones reaching for Broadway-style numbers. The next three albums featured a diverse mixture of musical style influences, including country-rock, folk-rock, psychedelic rock, soul/R&B, guitar rock, Broadway and English music hall sensibilities. At the height of their fame in 1967, they also suffered from a media backlash. Nesmith states in the 2007 Rhino reissue of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., "Everybody in the press and in the hippie movement had got us into their target window as being illegitimate and not worthy of consideration as a musical force [or] certainly any kind of cultural force. We were under siege; wherever we went there was such resentment for us. We were constantly mocked and humiliated by the press. We were really gettin' beat up pretty good. We all knew what was going on inside. Kirshner had been purged. We'd gone to try to make Headquarters and found out that it was only marginally okay and that our better move was to just go back to the original songwriting and song-making strategy of the first albums except with a clear indication of how [the music] came to be... The rabid element and the hatred that was engendered is almost impossible to describe. It lingers to this day among people my own age." Tork disagreed with Nesmith's assessment of Headquarters, stating, "I don't think the Pisces album was as groovy to listen to as Headquarters. Technically it was much better, but I think it suffers for that reason." With Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., the Monkees' fourth album, they went back to making music for the television show, except that they had control over the music and which songs would be chosen. They used a mixture of themselves and session musicians on the album, including the Wrecking Crew, Louie Shelton, Glen Campbell, members of the Byrds and the Association, drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh, Lowell George, Stephen Stills, Buddy Miles, and Neil Young—a practice that continued for all their studio albums except Justus. Using Chip Douglas again to produce, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., released in November 1967 was the Monkees' fourth No. 1 album in a row, staying at No. 1 for 5 weeks, and was also their last No. 1 album. It featured the hit single "Pleasant Valley Sunday" (#3 on charts) b/w "Words" (#11 on charts), the A-side had Nesmith on electric guitar/backing vocals, Tork on piano/backing vocals, Dolenz on lead vocals and possibly guitar and Jones on backing vocals; the B-side had Micky and Peter alternating lead vocals, Peter played organ, Mike played guitar, percussion, and provided backing vocals, and Davy provided percussion and backing vocals. Other notable items about this album is that it features an early use of the Moog synthesizer on two tracks, the Nesmith-penned "Daily Nightly", along with "Star Collector". All of its songs, except for two, were featured on the Monkees' television show during the second season. The song "What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?", recorded in June 1967 and featured on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., is seen as a landmark in the fusion of country and rock despite Nesmith's prior country-flavored rock songs for the Monkees. Nesmith stated, "One of the things that I really felt was honest was country-rock. I wanted to move the Monkees more into that because ... if we get closer to country music, we'll get closer to blues, and country blues, and so forth. ... It had a lot of un-country things in it: a familiar change from a I major to a VI minor—those kinds of things. So it was a little kind of a new wave country song. It didn't sound like the country songs of the time, which was Buck Owens." Their next single, "Daydream Believer" (with a piano intro written by Tork), shot to No. 1 on the charts, letting the Monkees hold the No. 1 position in the singles chart and the album chart with Pisces simultaneously. "Daydream Believer" used the non-album track "Goin' Down" as its B-side, which featured Nesmith and Tork on guitar with Micky on lead vocals. During their 1986 reunion, both Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. returned to the charts for 17 weeks. The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees No longer desiring to work as a group, the Monkees dropped Chip Douglas as a producer, and starting in November 1967, they largely produced their own sessions. Although credited to the whole band, the songs were mostly solo efforts. In a couple of cases, Boyce and Hart had returned from the first two albums to produce, but credit was given to the Monkees due to contractual requirements. Propelled by the hit singles "Daydream Believer" and "Valleri", along with Nesmith's self-penned top 40 hit "Tapioca Tundra", The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts shortly after it was released in April 1968. It was the first album released after NBC announced they were not renewing The Monkees for a third season. The album cover—a quaint collage of items in a knickknack shelf—was chosen over the Monkees' objections. It was the last Monkees' album to be released in separate, dedicated mono and stereo mixes. During the 1986 reunion, it returned to the Billboard charts for 11 weeks. Beyond television and Head During the filming of the second season, the band became tired of scripts which they deemed monotonous and stale. They had already succeeded in eliminating the laugh track (a then-standard on American sitcoms), with the bulk of Season 2 episodes airing minus the canned chuckles. They proposed switching the format of the series to become more like a variety show, with musical guests and live performances. This desire was partially fulfilled within some second-season episodes, with guest stars like musicians Frank Zappa, Tim Buckley, and Charlie Smalls (composer of The Wiz) performing on the show. However, NBC was not interested in eliminating the existing format, and the group (except for Peter) had little desire to continue for a third season. Tork said in DVD commentary that everyone had developed such difficult personalities that the big-name stars invited as guests on the show invariably left the experience "hating everybody". Screen Gems and NBC went ahead with the existing format anyway, commissioning Monkees writers Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso to create a straight-comedy, no-music half-hour in the Monkees mold; a pilot episode was filmed with the then-popular nightclub act the Pickle Brothers. The pilot had the same energy and pace of The Monkees, but never became a series. In June 1968, Music Supervisor Lester Sill chose to release the two non-album tracks "D.W. Washburn" b/w "It's Nice To Be With You" as the Monkees' next single. The Leiber/Stoller-penned A-side broke into the Top 20, peaking at No. 19 on the charts and No. 2 on the Canadian RPM charts. After The Monkees was canceled in February 1968, Rafelson directed the four Monkees in a feature film, Head. Schneider was executive producer, and the project was co-written and co-produced by Bob Rafelson with a then-relatively unknown Jack Nicholson. The film, conceived and edited in a stream of consciousness style, featured oddball cameo appearances by movie stars Victor Mature, Annette Funicello, a young Teri Garr, boxer Sonny Liston, famous stripper Carol Doda, Green Bay Packers linebacker Ray Nitschke, and musician Frank Zappa. It was filmed at Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems studios and on location in California, Utah, and the Bahamas between February 19 and May 17, 1968, and premiered in New York City on November 6 of that year (the film later debuted in Hollywood on November 20). The film was not a commercial success, in part because it was the antithesis of The Monkees television show, intended to comprehensively demolish the group's carefully groomed public image. Rafelson and Nicholson's "Ditty Diego-War Chant" (recited at the start of the film by the group) ruthlessly parodies Boyce and Hart's "Monkees Theme". A sparse advertising campaign (with no mention of the Monkees) hurt any chances of the film doing well, and it played briefly in half-filled theaters. In the DVD commentary, Nesmith said that everyone associated with the Monkees "had gone crazy" by this time. They were each using the platform of the Monkees to push their own disparate career goals, to the detriment of the Monkees project. Nesmith added that Head was Rafelson and Nicholson's intentional effort to "kill" the Monkees, so that they would no longer be bothered with the matter. Indeed, Rafelson and Schneider severed all ties to the band amid the bitterness that ensued over the commercial failure of Head. At the time, Rafelson told the press, "I grooved on those four in very special ways while at the same time thinking they had absolutely no talent." Released in October 1968, the single from the album, "The Porpoise Song", is a psychedelic pop song written by Goffin and King, with lead vocals from Micky Dolenz and backing vocals from Davy Jones, and it reached No. 62 on the Billboard charts and No. 26 on the Canadian RPM charts. The soundtrack album to the movie, Head, reached No. 45 on the Billboard charts and No. 24 in Canada. Jack Nicholson assembled the film's soundtrack album, weaving dialogue and sound effects from the film in between the songs from the film. The six (plus "Ditty Diego") Monkees songs on the album range from psychedelic pop to straightforward rockers to Broadway rock to eastern-influenced pop to a folk-rock ballad. Although the Monkees performed "Circle Sky" live in the film, the studio version is chosen for the soundtrack album. The live version was later released on various compilations, including Rhino's Missing Links series of Monkees albums. The soundtrack album also includes a song from the film's composer, Ken Thorne. The album had a mylar cover, to give it a mirror-like appearance, so that the person looking at the cover would see his own head, a play on the album title Head. Peter Tork said, "That was something special... [Jack] Nicholson coordinated the record, made it up from the soundtrack. He made it different from the movie. There's a line in the movie where [Frank] Zappa says, 'That's pretty white.' Then there's another line in the movie that was not juxtaposed in the movie, but Nicholson put them together in the [soundtrack album], when Mike says, 'And the same thing goes for Christmas'... that's funny... very different from the movie... that was very important and wonderful that he assembled the record differently from the movie... It was a different artistic experience." Over the intervening years Head has developed a cult following for its innovative style and anarchic humor. Members of the Monkees, Nesmith in particular, cite the soundtrack album as one of the crowning achievements of the band. Later years and separation (1969–1971) Tork's resignation, Instant Replay and The Monkees Present Tensions within the group were increasing. Peter Tork, citing exhaustion, quit by buying out the last four years of his Monkees contract at $150,000 per year, equal to about $ per year today. This was shortly after the band's Far East tour in December 1968, after completing work on their 1969 NBC television special, 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee, which rehashed many of the ideas from Head, only with the Monkees playing a strangely second-string role. In the DVD commentary for the television special, Dolenz noted that after filming was complete, Nesmith gave Tork a gold watch as a going-away present, engraved "From the guys down at work." (Tork kept the back, but replaced the watch several times in later years.) Most of the songs from the 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee TV Special were not officially released until over 40 years later, on the 2010 and 2011 Rhino Handmade Deluxe boxed sets of Head and Instant Replay. Since the Monkees at this point were producing their own songs with very little of the other band members' involvement, they planned a future double album (eventually to be reduced to The Monkees Present) on which each Monkee would separately produce one side of a disc. In February 1969, the Monkees' seventh album, Instant Replay, without Tork's involvement beyond playing guitar on "I Won't Be the Same Without Her", was released, which reached No. 32 on the charts. and No. 45 in Canada. The single from the album was "Tear Drop City", which peaked at No. 56 on the U.S. Billboard chart, No. 27 on the Canadian chart, and No. 34 on the Australian chart. According to Rhino Handmade's 2011 Deluxe Edition reissue of this album, Davy Jones told Melody Maker, "Half of the songs were recorded over the last three years, but there are also about six new ones." The Monkees wanted to please the original 1966 fans by offering up new recordings of some previously unreleased older styled songs, as well as gain a new audience with what they considered a more mature sound. Nesmith continued in his country-rock vein after offering straight ahead rock and experimental songs on the two prior albums. Nesmith stated in Rhino Handmade's 2011 Deluxe Edition reissue, "I guess it was the same embryo beating in me that was somewhere in Don Henley and Glenn Frey and Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young. Everybody who was hanging out in those times. I could just feel this happening that there was this thing. So, I headed off to Nashville to see if I couldn't get some of the Nashville country thing into the rock 'n' roll or vice versa. What I found was that Nashville country was not the country that was going to be the basis of country-rock and that it was Western, Southwest country. It was coming much more out of the Southern California scene. I ended up with a lot of Dobro, mandolin, banjo, and things that were hard-core mountain music stuff ... the Nashville cats were so blown out by playin' this kind of music. They loved it, for one thing." Dolenz contributed the biggest and longest Monkees' production, "Shorty Blackwell", a song inspired by his cat of the same name. Dolenz called it his "feeble attempt at something to do with Sgt. Pepper." Jones contributed an electric guitar rocker, "You and I". Both Jones and Dolenz continued their role of singing on the pop songs. Lyrically, it has a theme of being one of the Monkees' most melancholy albums. Throughout 1969 the trio appeared as guests on television programs such as The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, The Johnny Cash Show, Hollywood Squares, and Laugh-In (Jones had also appeared on Laugh-In separate from the group). The Monkees also had a contractual obligation to appear in several television commercials with Bugs Bunny for Kool-Aid drink mix as well as Post cereal box singles. In April 1969, the single "Someday Man" b/w "Listen to the Band" was released, which had the unique distinction of the B-side, a Nesmith composed country-rock song, charting higher (No. 63) than the Jones-sung A-side (No. 81). In Canada, "Someday Man" was No. 74 and "Listen to the Band" reached No. 53. The final album with Michael Nesmith from the Monkees' original incarnation was their eighth album, The Monkees Present, released in October 1969, which peaked at No. 100 on the Billboard charts. It included the Nesmith composed country-rock singles "Listen to the Band" and "Good Clean Fun" (released in September 1969)(No. 80 Canada) Other notable songs include the Dolenz composition "Little Girl", which featured Louie Shelton on electric guitar, joining Micky on acoustic guitar, along with "Mommy and Daddy" (B-side to the "Good Clean Fun" single) in which he sang about America's treatment of the Native Americans and drug abuse, and in an earlier take, released on Rhino Handmade's 2011 Deluxe Edition of Instant Replay, sang about JFK's assassination and the Vietnam war. Jones collaborated with Bill Chadwick on some slower ballads, along with releasing a couple of older upbeat songs from 1966. In the summer of 1969 the three Monkees embarked on a tour with the backing of the soul band Sam and the Goodtimers. Concerts for this tour were longer sets than their earlier performances tours, with many shows running over two hours. Although the tour was met with some positive critical reception (Billboard in particular praised it), other critics were not favorable of the mixing of the Monkees' pop music with the Goodtimers' R&B approach. Toward the end of the tour, some dates were canceled due to poor ticket sales, and the tour failed to re-establish the band commercially, with no single entering the Top 40 in 1969. Dolenz remarked that the tour "was like kicking a dead horse. The phenomenon had peaked." Nesmith's resignation, Changes and disbandment On April 14, 1970, Nesmith joined Dolenz and Jones for the last time as part of the original incarnation of the Monkees to film a Kool-Aid commercial (with the then-newly introduced Nerf balls, thrown around a mock living room by the trio, available as a premium for Kool-Aid labels), with Nesmith leaving the group to continue recording songs with his own country-rock group called Michael Nesmith & The First National Band, which he had started recording with on February 10, 1970. His first album, Magnetic South, was released in June, 1970. At the time he left the Monkees in April, he was recording songs for his second, Loose Salute. This left Dolenz and Jones to record the bubblegum pop album Changes as the ninth and final album by the Monkees released during its original incarnation. By this time, Colgems was hardly putting any effort into the project, and they sent Dolenz and Jones to New York for the Changes sessions, to be produced by Jeff Barry. In comments for the liner notes of the 1994 re-release of Changes, Jones said that he felt they had been tricked into recording an "Andy Kim album" under the Monkees name. Except for the two singers' vocal performances, Changes is the only album that fails to win any significant praise from critics looking back 40 years to the Monkees' recording output. The album spawned the single "Oh My My", which was accompanied by a music film promo (produced/directed by Dolenz). Dolenz contributed one of his own compositions, "Midnight Train", which was used in the re-runs of the Monkees TV series. The "Oh My My" b/w "I Love You Better" single from the Changes album was the last single issued under the Monkees name in the United States until 1986. Originally released in June 1970, Changes first charted in Billboard's Top 200 during the Monkees' 1986 reunion, staying on the charts for 4 weeks. September 22, 1970 marked the final recording session by the Monkees in their original incarnation, when Jones and Dolenz recorded "Do It in the Name of Love" and "Lady Jane". Not mixed until February 19, 1971, and released later that year as a single, the two remaining Monkees then lost the rights to use the name in several countries, the U.S. included. The single was not credited to the Monkees in the U.S., but to a misspelled "Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones", although in Japan it was issued under the Monkees' name. Jones released a solo album in 1971, titled Davy Jones, featuring the single "Rainy Jane" / "Welcome to My Love". Both Jones and Dolenz released multiple singles as solo artists in the years following the original breakup of the Monkees. The duo continued to tour throughout most of the 1970s. Reunions and revivals (1976–2021) Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart Partly because of repeats of the television series The Monkees on Saturday mornings and in syndication, The Monkees Greatest Hits charted in 1976. The LP, issued by Arista Records, who by this time had possession of the Monkees' master tapes, courtesy of their corporate owner, Screen Gems, was actually a re-packaging of an earlier (1972) compilation LP called Refocus that had been issued by Arista's previous label imprint, Bell Records, also owned by Screen Gems. Dolenz and Jones took advantage of this, joining ex-Monkees songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to tour the United States. From 1975 to 1977, as the "Golden Hits of the Monkees" show ("The Guys who Wrote 'Em and the Guys who Sang 'Em!"), they successfully performed in smaller venues such as state fairs and amusement parks, as well as making stops in Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore. They also released an album of new material as Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. Nesmith had not been interested in a reunion. Tork claimed later that he had not been asked, although a Christmas single (credited to Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Peter Tork due to legal reasons) was produced by Chip Douglas and released on his own label in 1976. The single featured Douglas' and Howard Kaylan's "Christmas Is My Time of Year" (originally recorded by a 1960s group Christmas Spirit), with a B-side of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" (Douglas released a remixed version of the single, with additional overdubbed instruments, in 1986). This was the first (albeit unofficial) Monkees single since 1971. Tork also joined Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart on stage at Disneyland in Anaheim, California on July 4, 1976, and also joined Dolenz and Jones on stage at the Starwood in Hollywood in 1977. Other semi-reunions occurred between 1970 and 1986. Tork helped produce a Dolenz single, "Easy on You"/"Oh Someone" in 1971. Tork also recorded some unreleased tracks for Nesmith's Countryside label during the 1970s, and Dolenz (by then a successful television director in the United Kingdom) directed a segment of Nesmith's TV series Television Parts, although his segment was ultimately not included when the series' six episodes were broadcast by NBC during the summer of 1985. MTV and Nickelodeon reignite Monkeemania Brushed off by critics during their heyday in the late 1960s as manufactured and lacking talent, the Monkees experienced a critical and commercial renaissance two decades later. A Monkees TV show marathon ("Pleasant Valley Sunday") was broadcast on February 23, 1986, on the then five-year-old MTV video music channel. In February and March, Tork and Jones played together in Australia. Then in May, Dolenz, Jones, and Tork announced a "20th Anniversary Tour" produced by David Fishof and they began playing North America in June. Their original albums began selling again as Nickelodeon began to run their old series daily. MTV promotion also helped to resurrect a smaller version of Monkeemania, and tour dates grew from smaller to larger venues and became one of the biggest live acts of 1986 and 1987. A new greatest hits collection was issued, reaching platinum status. By this point, Nesmith was more amenable to a reunion, but forced to sit out most projects because of prior commitments to his Pacific Arts video production company. However, he did appear with the band in a 1986 Christmas medley music video for MTV, and appeared on stage with Dolenz, Jones, and Tork at the Greek Theatre, in Los Angeles, on September 7, 1986. In September 1988, the three rejoined to play Australia again, Europe and then North America, with that string of tours ending in September 1989. Nesmith again returned at the Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, show on July 10, 1989, and took part in a dedication ceremony at the Hollywood Walk of Fame, when the Monkees received a TV star there in 1989. The sudden revival of the Monkees in 1986 helped move the first official Monkees single since 1971, "That Was Then, This Is Now", to the No. 20 position in Billboard Magazine. The success, however, was not without controversy. Jones had declined to sing on the track, recorded along with two other new songs included in a compilation album, Then & Now... The Best of The Monkees. Some copies of the single and album credit the new songs to "the Monkees", others as "Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork (of the Monkees)". Reportedly, these recordings were the source of some personal friction between Jones and the others during the 1986 tour; Jones typically left the stage when the new songs were performed. However, Jones did participate in the follow-up album, 1987's Pool It!. New Monkees In 1987, a new television series called New Monkees appeared. Other than being centered around a boy band quartet, it bore no resemblance to the earlier series or group. The New Monkees left the air after 13 episodes. (Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider were involved in the production of the series, although it was primarily produced by "Straybert Productions" headed by Steve Blauner, Rafelson and Schneider's partner in BBS Productions.) 1990s reunions In the 1990s, the Monkees continued to record new material. The band also re-issued all the original LPs on CD, each of which included between three and six bonus tracks of previously unreleased songs or alternate takes; the first editions came with collectable trading cards. Dolenz, Jones and Tork appeared in a 1995 episode of Boy Meets World, but not as themselves; Tork appeared in two episodes as Topanga Lawrence's father Jedediah. The trio also appeared together, as themselves, in the 1995 film The Brady Bunch Movie. Their eleventh album Justus was released in 1996. It was the first since 1968 on which all four original members performed and produced. Justus was produced by the Monkees, all songs were written by one of the four Monkees, and it was recorded using only the four Monkees for all instruments and vocals, which was the inspiration for the album title and spelling (Justus = Just Us). The trio of Dolenz, Jones, and Tork reunited again for a successful 30th anniversary tour of American amphitheaters in 1996, while Nesmith joined them onstage in Los Angeles to promote the new songs from Justus. For the first time since the brief 1986 reunion, Nesmith returned to the concert stage for a tour of the United Kingdom in 1997, highlighted by two sold-out concerts at Wembley Arena in Wembley Park, London. This was a very fitting venue, as from 30 June to 2 July 1967 the Monkees had been the first group to headline on their own at the Empire Pool, as the Arena was then called. The full quartet also appeared in an ABC television special titled Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees, which was written and directed by Nesmith and spoofed the original series that had made them famous. Following the UK tour, Nesmith declined to continue future performances with the Monkees, having faced harsh criticism from the British music press for his deteriorating musicianship. Tork noted in DVD commentary that "In 1966, Nesmith had learned a reasonably good version of the famous 'Last Train to Clarksville' guitar lick, but in 1996, Mike was no longer able to play it" and so Tork took over the lead guitar parts. Nesmith's departure from the tour was acrimonious. Jones was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as complaining that Nesmith "made a new album with us. He toured Great Britain with us. Then all of a sudden, he's not here. Later, I hear rumors he's writing a script for our next movie. Oh, really? That's bloody news to me. He's always been this aloof, inaccessible person... the fourth part of the jigsaw puzzle that never quite fit in." 2000s reunions Tork, Jones, and Dolenz toured the United States in 1997, after which the group took another hiatus until 2001 when they once again reunited to tour the United States. However, this tour was also accompanied by public sniping. Dolenz and Jones had announced that they had "fired" Tork for his constant complaining and threatening to quit. Tork was quoted as confirming this, as well as stating that he wanted to tour with his own band, Shoe Suede Blues. Tork told WENN News he was troubled by the overindulgence in alcohol by other members of the tour crew: Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones fired me just before the last two shows of our 35th anniversary tour. I'm both happy and sad over the whole thing. I always loved the work onstage—but I just couldn't handle the backstage problems. I'd given them 30 days notice that I was leaving so my position is that I resigned first and then they dropped me. Thank God I don't need the Monkees anymore...I'm a recovering alcoholic and haven't had a drink in several years. I'm not against people drinking—just when they get mean and abusive. I went on the anniversary tour with the agreement that I didn't have to put up with drinking and difficult behavior offstage. When things weren't getting better, I gave the guys notice that I was leaving in 30 days for good. Tork later stated in 2011 that the alcohol played only a small role and Tork then said, "I take full responsibility for the backstage problems on the 2001 tour. We were getting along pretty well until I had a meltdown. I ticked the other guys off good and proper and it was a serious mistake on my part. I was not in charge of myself to the best of my ability – the way I hope I have become since. I really just behaved inappropriately, honestly. I apologized to them." Jones and Dolenz went on to tour the United Kingdom in 2002, but Tork declined to participate. Jones and Dolenz toured the United States one more time as a duo in 2002, and then split to concentrate on their own individual projects. With different Monkees citing different reasons, the group chose not to mark their 40th anniversary in 2006. 2010–2011: 45th anniversary tour and Jones' death In October 2010, Jones stated that a reunion marking the band's 45th anniversary was a possibility. Monkees biographer Andrew Sandoval commented in The Hollywood Reporter that he "spent three years cajoling them to look beyond their recent differences (which included putting aside solo projects to fully commit to the Monkees)." An Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary Tour commenced on May 12, 2011, in Liverpool, England, before moving to North America in June and July for a total of 43 performances. Sandoval noted, "Their mixed feelings on the music business and their long and winding relationship weighed heavily, but once they hit the stage, the old magic was apparent. For the next three months...[they brought] the music and memories to fans in the band's grandest stage show in decades. Images from their series and films flashed on a huge screen behind them; even Rolling Stone, whose owner, Jann Wenner, has vowed to keep them out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, gushed." Nesmith did not take part in the tour, which grossed approximately $4 million. On August 8, 2011, the band canceled ten last-minute shows due to what was initially reported as "internal group issues and conflicts", though Tork later confirmed "there were some business affairs that couldn't be coordinated correctly. We hit a glitch and there was just this weird dislocation at one point." Jones clarified that "the (45th Anniversary) tour was only supposed to go until July. And it was great, the best time we've had because we're all on the same page now. We jelled onstage and off. But then more dates were being added. And more. And then the next thing we knew, they were talking about Japan, Australia, Brazil, and we were like, 'Wait a second. This is turning into something more than a tour.' We were doing 40 songs a night, plus other material. Some of these shows were 2 hours long. Then there was the travel, getting to the next venue with no time to revive. The audiences were great. But, let's face it, we're not kids." The 45th anniversary tour was the last with Jones, who died of a heart attack at age 66 on February 29, 2012. 2012–2014: Reunion with Nesmith In the wake of Jones' death, rumors began to circulate that Nesmith would reunite with Dolenz and Tork. This was confirmed on August 8, 2012, when the surviving trio announced a series of U.S. shows for November and December, commencing in Escondido, California and concluding in New York City. The brief tour marked the first time Nesmith performed with the Monkees since 1997, as well as the first without Jones. Jones's memory was honored throughout the shows via recordings and video. During one point, the band went quiet and a recording of Jones singing "I Wanna Be Free" played while footage of him was screening behind the band. For Jones's signature song, "Daydream Believer", Dolenz said that the band had discussed who should sing the song and had concluded that it should be the fans, saying "It doesn't belong to us anymore. It belongs to you." The Fall 2012 tour was very well received by both fans and critics, resulting in the band's scheduling a 24-date summer tour for 2013. Dubbed "A Midsummer's Night With the Monkees", concerts also featured Nesmith, Dolenz, and Tork. "The reaction to the last tour was euphoric", Dolenz told Rolling Stone magazine. "It was pretty apparent there was a demand for another one." A third tour with Nesmith followed in 2014. In 2014, the Monkees were inducted into the Pop Music Hall of Fame at the 2014 Monkees Convention. At the convention the band announced a 2014 tour of the Eastern and Midwestern US. 2015–2017: Good Times! and 50th anniversary Dolenz and Tork toured as the Monkees in 2015 without Nesmith's participation. Nesmith stated that he was busy with other ventures, although Dolenz said that "He's always invited." In February 2016, Dolenz announced that the Monkees would be releasing a new album, titled Good Times!, as a celebration of their 50th anniversary. Good Times!, produced by Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, features contributions by all three surviving members, as well as a posthumous contribution from Jones through vocals he had recorded in the 60s. The album was released in May 2016 to considerable success, reaching No. 14 on the Billboard 200 and generally favorable reviews. With the release of the album, the band, featuring Dolenz and Tork, commenced their 50th anniversary tour. Nesmith did not participate in most of the tour, again citing other commitments. He did, however, make a few appearances throughout the summer of 2016, appearing virtually via Skype to perform "Papa Gene's Blues" at one concert and in person for a four-song encore at another. In September, he replaced Tork on the tour for two dates while Tork attended to a family emergency. After Tork returned to the tour, Nesmith performed with the band for a concert at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood on September 16, which he stated would likely be his final concert appearance with the Monkees. Dolenz and Tork's tour announced dates to the end of the year, including concerts in Australia and New Zealand. After the end of the 50th anniversary tour, Dolenz, Tork, and Nesmith spent 2017 engaging in solo activities. 2018–2021: The Mike and Micky Show, Christmas Party, Tork's death, farewell tour, and Nesmith's death In 2018, Nesmith toured with a revived version of the First National Band and stated that he was in negotiations with promoters to tour again with Dolenz later in the summer. On February 20, the tour was announced as "The Monkees Present: The Mike and Micky Show", their first tour as a duo; Tork declined to participate. Though the pair played Monkees music and promoted the tour under the Monkees banner, Nesmith stated that "there's no pretense there about Micky and I being the Monkees. We're not." The tour was cut short in June 2018, with four shows left unplayed, due to Nesmith having a health issue. He and Dolenz announced March 2019 as make-up dates for the missed shows. In an interview with Rolling Stone published on July 26, 2018, Nesmith revealed he had undergone quadruple bypass heart surgery. He was in the hospital for over a month and the health issue had persisted since early in the tour. Nesmith resumed live touring with his First National Band Redux shows in September 2018. In November 2018, Nesmith and Dolenz announced an additional eight shows had been added to the Mike and Micky Show tour. In June 2019, Nesmith and Dolenz toured the Mike and Micky Show in Australia and New Zealand. The Monkees released a Christmas album, Christmas Party, on October 12, 2018. The Adam Schlesinger-produced album features several holiday standards and new songwriting contributions from Andy Partridge, Scott McCaughey, Peter Buck, Rivers Cuomo and author Michael Chabon. In addition to newly recorded material from the three surviving Monkees, two songs feature vocals from Davy Jones. The cover art is provided by the comic book artists Mike and Laura Allred. Tork died of cancer on February 21, 2019. After Tork's death, Dolenz and Nesmith revealed that Tork had informed them that he would not be well enough to join them on tour, which led Dolenz and Nesmith to demand that the Mike and Mickey Show dates in 2018 were a separate duo, and not Monkees dates without Tork. However, after Tork's death, all future dates were credited to the Monkees. Following the success of the Mike and Micky Show, Dolenz and Nesmith announced a follow-up tour, An Evening with the Monkees, to begin in early 2020. The tour was delayed, however, due the COVID-19 pandemic. It was announced on May 4, 2021, that the rescheduled dates will be billed as a farewell tour. "The Monkees Farewell Tour" consisted of over 40 dates in the US from September to November; because of restrictions due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, they were unable to play shows in Canada, the UK or Australia. The final date and final show for the Monkees Farewell Tour was held on November 14, 2021, at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. In interviews, Dolenz did not rule out the possibility of the duo playing future one-off dates after the tour had concluded. However, he emphasized that as both members of the duo would be rapidly approaching their eighties by 2022–2023, the physical demands of touring meant that the Monkees would not be mounting any further tours after 2021. The duo had been scheduled to perform at least one more traditional concert (postponed due to coronavirus regulations) as well as perform on a cruise headlined Mike Love and Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys, the latter of which Dolenz agreed to honor as part of his subsequent solo tour. In May 2021, Dolenz released a solo album, Dolenz Sings Nesmith, featuring songs written by Nesmith and produced by Christian Nesmith. Nesmith died of heart failure on December 10, 2021, less than a month after the final date of the 2021 tour. Nesmith's passing leaves Dolenz as the only surviving member of the Monkees. Tributes to Nesmith from other musicians, fans, and Dolenz were posted on social media. Micky Dolenz (2022–present) 2022: "The Monkees Celebrated by Micky Dolenz" tour In early 2022, Dolenz announced that he would embark on a "special series of concert dates in April 2022. Honoring the contributions of his bandmates – the late Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith & Peter Tork – in song and with personal multimedia footage of the legendary performers". Monkees manager and tour manager Andrew Sandoval stated that "We will be fully delving into The Monkees' songbook, as well as Micky's personal archive of films and photos to create a unique evening of memories ... It will give Micky and the band an opportunity to share the music he made alongside Davy, Peter & Michael and reminisce on their journey as brothers for five decades. We have also been talking about Micky singing some songs he's never done on stage before, as well as pulling out older Monkees album tracks that have not been performed in many years ... it is unclear if we will be doing anything beyond these shows in this format, but we are truly looking forward to being together again to celebrate the Monkees in song." The official tour was set to start on April 5, 2022, with a pre-tour performance on "The Beach Boys Good Vibrations Cruise". Impact and legacy The Monkees, selected specifically to appeal to the youth market as American television's response to the Beatles with their manufactured personae and carefully produced singles, are seen as an original precursor to the modern proliferation of studio and corporation-created bands. But this critical reputation has softened somewhat, with the recognition that the Monkees were neither the first manufactured group nor unusual in this respect. The Monkees also frequently contributed their own songwriting efforts on their albums and saw their musical skills improve. They ultimately became a self-directed group, playing their own instruments and writing many of their own songs. Monkees and 1960s music historian Andrew Sandoval wrote in The Hollywood Reporter The Chicago Tribune interviewed Davy Jones, who said, "We touched a lot of musicians, you know. I can't tell you the amount of people that have come up and said, 'I wouldn't have been a musician if it hadn't been for the Monkees.' It baffles me even now", Jones added. "I met a guy from Guns N' Roses, and he was overwhelmed by the meeting, and was just so complimentary." The Monkees found unlikely fans among musicians of the punk rock period of the mid-1970s. Many of these punk performers had grown up on TV reruns of the series, and sympathized with the anti-industry, anti-establishment trend of their career. Sex Pistols and Minor Threat both recorded versions of "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and it was often played live by Toy Love. Japanese new wave pop group the Plastics recorded a synthesizer and drum-machine version of "Last Train to Clarksville" for their 1979 album Welcome Back. Glenn A. Baker, author of Monkeemania: The True Story of the Monkees, described the Monkees as "rock's first great embarrassment" in 1986: Like an illegitimate child in a respectable family, the Monkees are destined to be regarded forever as rock's first great embarrassment; misunderstood and maligned like a mongrel at a ritzy dog show, or a test tube baby at the Vatican. The rise of the pre-fab four coincided with rock's desperate desire to cloak itself with the trappings of respectability, credibility and irreproachable heritage. The fact was ignored that session players were being heavily employed by the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Mamas and the Papas, the Byrds and other titans of the age. However, what could not be ignored, as rock disdained its pubescent past, was a group of middle-aged Hollywood businessmen had actually assembled their concept of a profitable rock group and foisted it upon the world. What mattered was that the Monkees had success handed to them on a silver plate. Indeed, it was not so much righteous indignation but thinly disguised jealousy which motivated the scornful dismissal of what must, in retrospect, be seen as entertaining, imaginative and highly memorable exercise in pop culture. Mediaite columnist Paul Levinson noted that "The Monkees were the first example of something created in a medium—in this case, a rock group on television—that jumped off the screen to have big impact in the real world." When commenting on the death of Jones on February 29, 2012, Time magazine contributor James Poniewozik praised the television show, saying that ... even if the show never meant to be more than entertainment and a hit-single generator, we shouldn't sell The Monkees short. It was far better TV than it had to be; during an era of formulaic domestic sitcoms and wacky comedies, it was a stylistically ambitious show, with a distinctive visual style, absurdist sense of humor and unusual story structure. Whatever Jones and the Monkees were meant to be, they became creative artists in their own right, and Jones' chipper Brit-pop presence was a big reason they were able to produce work that was commercial, wholesome and yet impressively weird. Both the style and substance of the Monkees were imitated by American boy band Big Time Rush (BTR), who performed in their own television series which—by admission of series creator Scott Fellows—was heavily influenced by the Monkees. Similarly to the Monkees, Big Time Rush featured a "made-for-TV" boy band often caught in a series of misadventures, hijinks, and somewhat slapstick comedy. The show, now in reruns but still hugely popular on Teen Nick, is highly stylized and patterned after the Monkees, even capped with similar cartoonish sound effects. Like the Monkees, BTR has also seen critical and commercial success in America and worldwide through album, singles and high TV ratings worldwide." In popular culture The Criterion Collection, which has a stated goal to release "a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, [and] has been dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements" recognized the Monkees' film Head as meeting their criteria when they fully restored and released it on DVD and Blu-ray in 2010. They stated that Head was "way, way ahead of its time" and "arguably the most authentically psychedelic film made in 1960s Hollywood". Head dodged commercial success on its release but has since been reclaimed as one of the great cult objects of its era." In the book Hey, Hey We're The Monkees, Rafelson wrote that "[Head] explored techniques on film that hadn't been used before. The first shot of Micky under water is a perfect example. Now you see it on MTV all the time, but it was invented for the movie [...] I got two long-haired kids out of UCLA who created the effects that the established laboratory guys said couldn't be done. We invented double-matted experiences. Polarization hadn't been used in movies before. ... When it was shown in France, the head of the Cinematheque overly praised the movie as a cinematic masterpiece, and from that point on, this movie began to acquire an underground reputation." In 2010, Nick Vernier Band created a digital "Monkees reunion" through the release of Mister Bob (featuring the Monkees), a new song produced under license from Rhino Entertainment, containing vocal samples from the band's recording "Zilch". The contract bridge convention known as either Last Train or Last Train to Clarksville was so named by its inventor, Jeff Meckstroth, after the Monkees' song. Comic books A comic book series, The Monkees, was published in the United States by Dell Comics, which ran for 17 issues from 1967 to 1969. In the United Kingdom, a Daily Mirror "Crazy Cartoon Book" featured four comic stories as well as four photos of the Monkees, all in black and white; it was published in 1967. Biopic In 2000, VH-1 produced the television biopic Daydream Believers: The Monkees' Story. In 2002, the movie was released on DVD and featured both commentaries and interviews with Dolenz, Jones and Tork. The aired version did differ from the DVD release, as the TV version had an extended scene with all four Monkees meeting the Beatles, but with a shortened Cleveland concert segment. It was also available on VHS. Musical A stage musical opened in the UK at the Manchester Opera House on Friday March 30, 2012, and was dedicated to Davy Jones (the Jones family attended the official opening on April 3). The production is a Jukebox musical and starred Stephen Kirwan, Ben Evans, Tom Parsons and Oliver Savile as actors playing the parts of the Monkees (respectively Dolenz, Jones, Nesmith, Tork) who are hired by an unscrupulous businessman to go on a world tour pretending to be the real band. The show includes 18 Monkees songs plus numbers by other 60s artists. It ran in Manchester as part of the "Manchester Gets it First" program until April 14, 2012, before a UK tour. Following its Manchester run, the show appeared in the Glasgow King's Theatre and the Sunderland Empire Theatre. Awards and achievements Grammy Awards The Grammy Awards is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry. It shares recognition of the music industry as that of the other performance arts: Emmy Awards (television), the Tony Awards (stage performance), and the Academy Awards (motion pictures). Notable achievements Gave the Jimi Hendrix Experience their first U.S. concert tour exposure as an opening act in July 1967. Jimi Hendrix's heavy psychedelic guitar and sexual overtones did not go over well with the teenage girls in the audience, which eventually led to his leaving the tour early. The band inspired Gene Roddenberry to introduce the character of Chekov in his Star Trek TV series in response to the popularity of Davy Jones, complete with hairstyle and appearance mimicking that of Jones. Inducted into America's Pop Music Hall of Fame in 2014. Honored by the Music Business Association (Music Biz) with an Outstanding Achievement Award celebrating the band's 50th anniversary on May 16, 2016. Inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2007. Controversies Studio recordings controversy In early 1967, controversy concerning the Monkees' studio abilities arose. Dolenz told a reporter that the Wrecking Crew provided the backing tracks for the first two Monkees albums, and that his position as drummer was simply because a Monkee had to learn to play the drums, and he only knew the guitar. In the January 28, 1967 issue of Saturday Evening Post an article quoted Nesmith railing against the music creation process. "Do you know how debilitating it is to sit up and have to duplicate somebody else's records?" he asked. "Tell the world we don't record our own music." The whistle-blowing on themselves created a rift between the Monkees and producer Don Kirshner, ultimately resulting in his being fired from the project, and in the band taking creative control for the Monkees' third album. The Monkees' UK tour in 1967 received a chilly reception; the front pages of several UK and international music papers proclaimed that the group members did not always play their own instruments or sing the backing vocals in the studio. They were derisively dubbed the "Pre-Fab Four" and the Sunday Mirror called them a "disgrace to the pop world." Jimi Hendrix was their tour-opener that year, and he told Melody Maker magazine, "Oh God, I hate them! Dishwater... You can't knock anybody for making it, but people like the Monkees?" Dealing with the controversy proved challenging on the TV series. In an interview segment that closed episode No. 31, "Monkees at the Movies," first broadcast on April 17, 1967, Bob Rafelson asked the group about accusations that they did not play their instruments in concert. Nesmith responded, "I'm fixin' to walk out there in front of fifteen thousand people, man! If I don't play my own instrument, I'm in a lot of trouble!" But the "Devil and Peter Tork" episode serves as a parable, as a Kirshner-like entrepreneur has Tork sign over his soul to be a success as a musician. In November 1967, the wave of anti-Monkees sentiment was reaching its peak while they released their fourth album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones Ltd. The liner notes for the 1995 re-release of this album quote Nesmith: "The press went into a full-scale war against us, talking about how 'The Monkees are four guys who have no credits, no credibility whatsoever and have been trying to trick us into believing they are a rock band.' Number 1, not only was this not the case; the reverse was true. Number 2, for the press to report with genuine alarm that the Monkees were not a real rock band was looney tunes! It was one of the great goofball moments of the media, but it stuck." Jones stated in 1969 to Tiger Beat, "I get so angry when musicians say, 'Oh, your music is so bad,' because it's not bad to the kids. Those people who talk about 'doing their own thing' are groups that go and play in the clubs that hold 50 people while we're playing to 10,000 kids. You know, it hurts me to think that anybody thinks we're phony, because we're not. We're only doing what we think is our own thing." Rolling Stone reported on October 11, 2011, that Tork believed the Monkees did not receive the respect they deserve. "The Monkees' songbook is one of the better songbooks in pop history", he said. "Certainly in the top five in terms of breadth and depth. It was revealed that we didn't play our own instruments on the records much at the very moment when the idealism of early Beatlemania in rock was at its peak. So we became the ultimate betrayers." Timeline for the studio recordings controversy 1965: At the end of the year, the four Monkees are cast in the TV show. April 1966: The Monkees begin rehearsing as a band to produce music for the upcoming TV show and records. Nesmith, Dolenz, and Tork were all experienced guitar players, and Nesmith and Tork were a little familiar with drums, but no one was a real expert in drumming. Jones was an able drummer and percussionist, but his experience from Broadway made him more known as a singer. Producer Ward Sylvester tells Tork that he would have signed the band even without a TV show. May 1966: Filming for the TV show starts, taking 12 hours a day for the cast of the Monkees. The public is informed in the beginning that the Monkees are "manufactured", as seen in this Washington Post report: "The series stars a fearsome foursome in the Monkees, a wholly manufactured singing group of attractive young men who come off as a combination of the Beatles, the Dead End Kids and the Marx Brothers. Critics will cry foul. Longhairs will demand, outraged, that they be removed from the air. But the kids will adore the Monkees [...] unlike other rock 'n' roll groups, the boys had never performed together before. Indeed, they'd never even met [...] they've been working to create their own sound." June 1966: Although the producers want the Monkees to create their own music, they have not progressed enough by this point and still lack the desired "upbeat, young, happy, driving, pulsating sound". Dolenz would later state, "I'm sure that Rafelson and Schneider said in all honesty, 'Yeah, don't worry, when we start going you're gonna record your own tunes and it will be wonderful.' But the things get caught up in the inertia of the moment. NBC gets involved. RCA gets involved. Screen Gems gets involved. Millions and millions of dollars are on the line [...] people aren't as forthcoming. Mike's style was very distinct, country-western, Peter was very folk-rock, neither of which at the time would have been considered mainstream pop. Davy would have done all Broadway tunes [...] I ended up singing the leads [...] pop-rock was more my style." However, selections of Nesmith's authorship and composition are used from the beginning. June 10, 1966: The Monkees' first recording sessions take place. These sessions feature members of the Wrecking Crew, a group of studio musicians in Los Angeles who played on several Monkees album tracks, mostly those produced by Nesmith. These sessions ultimately prove unsuccessful, however, and most future sessions in 1966 will feature the Candy Store Prophets, a studio band led by Boyce & Hart. June 25, 1966: Nesmith produces his first Monkees track in a recording studio, his two self-composed songs "All the King's Horses", "The Kind of Girl I Could Love", plus "I Don't Think You Know Me", as a way for Raybert Productions to fulfill their promise to him to allow him to produce and record his own music. He is not allowed to play the instruments. July 1966: Various producers from Boyce & Hart to Jack Keller to Nesmith continue to record sessions. Nesmith gets all four members to sing on his productions. On July 18, 1966, Nesmith also gets Tork to play guitar on the songs he is producing for the first time. Sessions continue in this manner, with the hired producers Boyce & Hart and Jack Keller and Monkees member Nesmith producing/recording songs in the studio through November 1966. October 1966: The Monkees' debut album is released. Group member Nesmith, in particular, is angered when he sees the album cover, because he thinks it makes it look like they played all of the instruments. October 2, 1966: The Monkees give their first public interview, which appears in The New York Times, in which Jones is asked if the big push for the Monkees is fair to the real rock groups, to which he responds, "... That's the breaks, but you can't fool the people, you really can't." October 24, 1966: Newsweek interviews the Monkees. They are asked how the music is created. Davy Jones tells them, "This isn't a rock 'n' roll group. This is an act." December 1966: The Monkees perform live in concert starting December 3, 1966. TV Week in the meantime, interviews Rafelson about why the Monkees' public access to interviews is limited, wondering if it could be related to embarrassing questions regarding their musical prowess, to which Rafelson assures that they do all of their own playing and singing. He also states that interviews are almost impossible due to their spending 12 hours a day filming the TV show, 4 hours recording, rehearsing for concert tours, and spending some weekends making personal appearance tours. During this time frame, the Monkees are generally barred from making television appearances on shows outside of their own, as Raybert fears the group's overexposure. December 27, 1966: The Monkees are again interviewed about their music in Look magazine. Tork responds, "We have the potential, but there's not time to practice." Dolenz says, "We're advertisers. We're selling the Monkees. It's gotta be that way." Nesmith says, "They're in the middle of something good and they're trying to sell something. They want us to be the Beatles, but we're not. We're us. We're funny." January 1967: The Monkees' second album is released while they were on tour, without the Monkees' knowledge. This upsets Nesmith and Tork, as they had been told that they were going to be doing their own album. Dolenz and Jones are initially indifferent because to them, coming from the acting world, it was just a soundtrack to the TV show and they were doing their job by singing what they were asked to sing. But when they see how angry Nesmith and Tork are, they too join in the revolt. January 16, 1967: Four months after their first single is released, the Monkees hold their first recording session as a self-contained, fully functioning band. January 28, 1967: Band member Nesmith speaks to the Saturday Evening Post in an exposé, stating, "The music had nothing to do with us. It was totally dishonest. Do you know how debilitating it is to sit up and have to duplicate somebody else's records? That's really what we're doing. The music happened in spite of the Monkees. It was what Kirshner wanted to do. Our records are not our forte. I don't care if we never sell another record. Maybe we were manufactured [...] Tell the world we're synthetic because [...] we are. Tell them the Monkees are wholly man-made overnight, that millions of dollars have been poured into this thing. Tell the world we don't record our own music. But that's us they see on television. That show is really a part of us. They're not seeing something invalid." Decades later, Nesmith reflected, "The press decided they were going to unload on us as being somehow illegitimate, somehow false. That we were making an attempt to dupe the public, when in fact it was me that was making the attempt to maintain the integrity. So, the press went into a full-scale war against us. Telling us the Monkees are four guys who have no credits, no credibility whatsoever, who have been trying to trick us into believing that they are a rock band. Number one, not only was it not the case, the reverse was true. Number two, [for] the press to report with genuine alarm that the Monkees were not a real rock band was looney tunes. It was one of the great goofball moments of the media, but it stuck." February 4, 1967: Although the Monkees have continued to play and record their own music for their upcoming album, Jones records some songs with hired producer Jeff Barry. February 25, 1967: Jones is interviewed for the New Musical Express, and says, "I can only speak for myself. I am an actor and I have never pretended to be anything else. The public have made me into a rock 'n' roll singer. No one is trying to fool anyone! People have tried to put us down by saying we copied the Beatles. So, all right, maybe the Monkees is a half-hour Hard Day's Night. But now we read that the Who are working on a TV a group. Now who's copying who?" February 27, 1967: Kirshner is dismissed as Music Coordinator for the Monkees, primarily due to his handling of the third would-be-but-withdrawn single from the Monkees. Lester Sill takes his place. The Monkees continue recording their own songs, with them playing instruments, getting ready for their next album. In the meantime, the Nesmith-penned "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" is released as part of the Monkees third single, which features the Monkees playing as a self-contained band, which becomes a top 40 hit. May 1967: The Monkees' first self-made album, Headquarters, is released. After Headquarters, the Monkees started using a mixture of themselves playing along with other musicians, including members of the Wrecking Crew and Candy Store Prophets along with other musicians such as Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Harry Nilsson; but they still wrote, sang, produced, and played on their remaining albums, except for their final offering from the original incarnation in 1970, Changes, which was recorded after Nesmith and Tork had left the group and featured Dolenz and Jones singing to the backing tracks of what Jones referred to in the liner notes of the 1994 reissue that album as "a rejected Andy Kim album". In the same liner notes, Jones stated that he was unhappy about that recording and claimed that it was not a real album. The final album featured one Dolenz composition. Tork commented on some of the controversy when writing about Jones's death: "When we first met, I was confronted with a slick, accomplished, young performer, vastly more experienced than I in the ways of show biz, and yes, I was intimidated. Englishness was at a high premium in my world, and his experience dwarfed my entertainer's life as a hippie, basket-passing folk singer on the Greenwich Village coffee house circuit. If anything, I suppose I was selected for the cast of 'The Monkees' TV show partly as a rough-hewn counterpart to David's sophistication. [...] the Monkees—the group now, not the TV series—took a lot of flack for being 'manufactured,' by which our critics meant that we hadn't grown up together, paying our dues, sleeping five to a room, trying to make it as had the Beatles and Rolling Stones. Furthermore, critics said, the Monkees' first albums—remember albums?—were almost entirely recorded by professional studio musicians, with hardly any input from any of us beyond lead vocals. I felt this criticism keenly, coming as I did from the world of the ethical folk singer, basically honoring the standards of the naysayers. We did play as a group live on tour." Meeting with the Beatles Critics of the Monkees observed that they were simply the "Pre-Fab Four", a made-for-TV knockoff of the Beatles; however, the Beatles themselves took it in stride and even hosted a party for the Monkees when they visited England. The Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band at the time of the Monkees' visit and as such, the party inspired the line in the Monkees' tune "Randy Scouse Git", written by Dolenz, which read, "the four kings of EMI are sitting stately on the floor." George Harrison praised their self-produced musical attempts, saying, "It's obvious what's happening, there's talent there. They're doing a TV show, it's a difficult chore and I wouldn't be in their shoes for the world. When they get it all sorted out, they might turn out to be the best." Monkees member Peter Tork was later one of the musicians on Harrison's album Wonderwall Music, playing Paul McCartney's five-string banjo. Nesmith attended the Beatles' recording session for "A Day in the Life" at Abbey Road Studios; he can be seen in the Beatles' home movies, including one scene where he is talking with John Lennon. During the conversation, Nesmith had reportedly asked Lennon "Do you think we're a cheap imitation of the Beatles, your movies and your records?" to which Lennon assuredly replied, "I think you're the greatest comic talent since the Marx Brothers. I've never missed one of your programs." Nesmith wrote about this encounter on Facebook: When the Beatles were recording Sgt. Peppers, Phyllis and I spent a few days with John and wife Cynthia Lennon at their home, and one in the studio with "the boys." That's where those pictures of John and I come from—the "Day in the Life" session. The minute I had the wherewithal—cachet and money—I raced to London and looked up John. During the '60s it seemed to me London was the center of the World and the Beatles were the center of London and the Sgt Pepper session was the center of the Beatles. It was an extraordinary time, I thought, and I wanted to get as close as I could to the heart of it. But like a hurricane the center was not stormy or tumultuous. It was exciting, but it was calm, and to an extent peaceful. The confidence of the art permeated the atmosphere. Serene—and really, really fun. Then I discovered the reason for this. During that time in one of our longer, more reflective, talks I realized that John was not aware of who the Beatles were. Of course he could not be. He was clueless in this regard. He had never seen or experienced them. In the strange paradox of fame, none of the Beatles ever saw the Beatles the way we did. Certainly not the way I did. I loved them beyond my ability to express it. As the years passed and I met more and more exceptional people sitting in the center of their own hurricane I saw they all shared this same sensibility. None of them could actually know the force of their own work. Dolenz was also in the studio during a Sgt. Pepper session, which he mentioned while broadcasting for radio WCBS-FM in New York (incidentally, he interviewed Ringo Starr on his program). On February 21, 1967, he attended the overdub and mixing session for the Beatles' "Fixing a Hole" at EMI's Abbey Road studio 2. During the 1970s, during Lennon's infamous "lost weekend", Lennon, Ringo Starr, Micky Dolenz, Harry Nilsson and Keith Moon often hung out together, and were collectively known in the press as "The Hollywood Vampires". Paul McCartney can be seen in the 2002 concert film Back in the U.S. singing "Hey, Hey, We're The Monkees", the theme from The Monkees television show, while backstage. The Monkees "Cuddly Toy" and "Daddy's Song" were written by songwriter Harry Nilsson. "Cuddly Toy" was recorded several months before Nilsson's own debut in October 1967. At the press conference announcing the formation of Apple, the Beatles named Nilsson as both their favorite American artist and as their favorite American group. Derek Taylor, the Beatles' press officer, had introduced them to Nilsson's music. In 1995, Ringo Starr joined Jones, Tork and Dolenz to film a Pizza Hut commercial. Julian Lennon was a fan, stating at the time of Jones' death, "You did some great work!" Rock and Roll Hall of Fame In June 2007, Tork complained to the New York Post that Jann Wenner had blackballed the Monkees from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Tork stated: [Wenner] doesn't care what the rules are and just operates how he sees fit. It is an abuse of power. I don't know whether the Monkees belong in the Hall of Fame, but it's pretty clear that we're not in there because of a personal whim. Jann seems to have taken it harder than everyone else, and now, 40 years later, everybody says, 'What's the big deal? Everybody else does it.' [Uses studio artists or backing bands.] Nobody cares now except him. He feels his moral judgment in 1967 and 1968 is supposed to serve in 2007. In a Facebook post, Nesmith stated that he did not know if the Monkees belonged in the Hall of Fame because he could only see the impact of the Monkees from the inside, and further stated: "I can see the HOF (Hall of Fame) is a private enterprise. It seems to operate as a business, and the inductees are there by some action of the owners of the Enterprise. The inductees appear to be chosen at the owner's pleasure. This seems proper to me. It is their business in any case. It does not seem to me that the HOF carries a public mandate, nor should it be compelled to conform to one." In 1992, Davy Jones spoke to People magazine, stating "I'm not as wealthy as some entertainers, but I work hard, and I think the best is yet to come. I know I'm never going to make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but maybe there's something else for me in show business. I've been given a talent—however big or little—that has given me many opportunities. I've got to try to use it the best way I can. A lot of people go days without having someone hug them or shake their hand. I get that all the time." In 2015, Micky Dolenz said, "As far as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame I've never been one to chase awards or anything like that; it's never been very important to me. I was very proud to win an Emmy for The Monkees, having come out of television as a kid. When we won the Emmy for best TV show in '66 or '67 that was a huge feather in my cap. But I've never chased that kind of stuff. I've never done a project and thought, 'What do I do here to win an award?' Specifically as far as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame I've been very flattered that the fans and people have championed the Monkees. Very flattered and honored that they do. If you know anything about the organization, and I've done charity work for the foundation, the Hall of Fame is a private club." Various magazines and news outlets, such as Time, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, Goldmine, Yahoo! Music and MSNBC have argued that the Monkees belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Members Micky Dolenz – lead and backing vocals, rhythm guitar, drums, percussion Davy Jones – lead and backing vocals, percussion, drums, rhythm guitar, bass Michael Nesmith – lead and rhythm guitar, keyboards, backing and lead vocals Peter Tork – bass, rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards, banjo, backing and occasional lead vocals Timeline Discography The Monkees (1966) More of The Monkees (1967) Headquarters (1967) Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (1967) The Birds, The Bees & the Monkees (1968) Head (1968) Instant Replay (1969) The Monkees Present (1969) Changes (1970) Pool It! (1987) Justus (1996) Good Times! (2016) Christmas Party (2018) Originally unreleased recordings Beginning in 1987, Rhino Records started to make available previously unreleased Monkees recordings on a series of albums called Missing Links. Having numerous quality songwriters, musicians, producers and arrangers—along with high budgets—at their hands while making albums during the 1960s, the band was able to record as many songs as the Beatles in half the time. The three volumes of this initial series contained 59 songs. These include the group's first recordings as a self-contained band, including the intended single "All Of Your Toys", Nesmith's Nashville sessions, and alternate versions of songs featured only on the television series. The Listen to the Band box set also contained previously unreleased recordings, as did the 1994–95 series CD album reissues. Rhino/Rhino Handmade's Deluxe Edition reissue series has also included alternate mixes, unreleased songs, and the soundtrack to 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee. Tours North American Tour (1966–67) British Tour (1967) Pacific Rim Tour (1968) North American Tour (1969) (Dolenz, Jones, Nesmith) 20th Anniversary World Tour (1986) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) Here We Come Again Tour (1987–88) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork), for most of the 1987 shows, "Weird Al" Yankovic was the opening act. The Monkees Live (1989) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) The Monkees Summer Tour (1989) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) Monkees: The 30th Anniversary Tour (1996) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) Justus Tour (1997) North American Tour (1997) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) U.S. Tour (2001) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork; Tork removed from the tour partway through) Monkeemania Returns Tour (2001–2002) (Dolenz, Jones) An Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary Tour (2011) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork) An Evening with The Monkees (Fall 2012) (Dolenz, Nesmith, Tork) A Midsummer's Night with the Monkees (Summer 2013) (Dolenz, Nesmith, Tork) The Monkees Live in Concert (Spring 2014) (Dolenz, Nesmith, Tork) An Evening with the Monkees (2015) (Dolenz, Tork) 50th Anniversary Tour (2016) (Dolenz, Tork with selected appearances by Nesmith) The Mike and Micky Show (2019) (Dolenz, Nesmith) (2019 dates billed as the Monkees) An Evening with the Monkees (2020; postponed) The Monkees Farewell Tour (Fall 2021) Related non-Monkees tours The Great Golden Hits of The Monkees (1975–77) (Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart) Sound of The Monkees (1986; 1987) (Jones, Tork) Micky and Davy: Together Again (1994–95) (Dolenz, Jones) The Monkees Present: The Mike and Micky Show (2018–19) (Dolenz, Nesmith) (early dates billed as a Dolenz and Nesmith duo and not the Monkees) Micky Dolenz Celebrates the Monkees (2022) (Dolenz) The Monkees Celebrated by Micky Dolenz (2023) (Dolenz) See also List of The Monkees episodes Monkeemobile References Further reading External links Micky Dolenz's official website Mike Nesmith Interview - Rocker Magazine 2013 Peter Tork Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2009) FBI Records: The Vault - The Monkees at vault.fbi.gov Category:1966 establishments in California Category:2021 disestablishments in California Category:American pop rock music groups Category:Arista Records artists Category:Articles which contain graphical timelines Category:Bell Records artists Category:Bubblegum pop groups Category:Colgems Records artists Category:Musical groups disestablished in 1970 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 2021 Category:Musical groups established in 1966 Category:Musical groups from Los Angeles Category:Musical groups reestablished in 2010 Category:Musical quartets Category:Psychedelic pop music groups Category:RCA Records artists Category:Rock and roll music groups Category:Television personalities from Los Angeles

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T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot, (26 September 1888 - 4 January 1965) was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and "one of the twentieth century's major poets". He moved from his native United States to England in 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working, and marrying there. He eventually became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his American passport. Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), which was seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement.

Poetry

In a letter to Aiken late in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote, "I am very dependent upon women (I mean female society)." Less than four months later, Thayer introduced Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Cambridge governess. They were married at Hampstead Register Office on 26 June 1915. After a short visit alone to his family in the United States, Eliot returned to London and took several teaching jobs, such as lecturing at Birkbeck College, University of London. The philosopher Bertrand Russell took an interest in Vivienne while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some scholars have suggested that she and Russell had an affair, but the allegations were never confirmed. The marriage was markedly unhappy, in part because of Vivienne's health issues. In a letter addressed to Ezra Pound, she covers an extensive list of her symptoms, which included a habitually high temperature, fatigue, insomnia, migraines, and colitis. This, coupled with apparent mental instability, meant that she was often sent away by Eliot and her doctors for extended periods of time in the hope of improving her health, and as time went on, he became increasingly detached from her. The couple formally separated in 1933 and in 1938 Vivienne's brother, Maurice, had her committed to a lunatic asylum, against her will, where she remained until her death of heart disease in 1947. Their relationship became the subject of a 1984 play Tom & Viv, which in 1994 was adapted as a film. In a private paper written in his sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of [Ezra] Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land." By 1932, Eliot had been contemplating a separation from his wife for some time. When Harvard offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932-1933 academic year, he accepted and left Vivienne in England. Upon his return, he arranged for a formal separation from her, avoiding all but one meeting with her between his leaving for America in 1932 and her death in 1947. Vivienne was committed to the Northumberland House mental hospital, Stoke Newington, in 1938, and remained there until she died. Although Eliot was still legally her husband, he never visited her. From 1938 to 1957 Eliot's public companion was Mary Trevelyan of London University, who wanted to marry him and left a detailed memoir. From 1946 to 1957, Eliot shared a flat at 19 Carlyle Mansions, Chelsea, with his friend John Davy Hayward, who collected and managed Eliot's papers, styling himself "Keeper of the Eliot Archive". Hayward also collected Eliot's pre-Prufrock verse, commercially published after Eliot's death as Poems Written in Early Youth. When Eliot and Hayward separated their household in 1957, Hayward retained his collection of Eliot's papers, which he bequeathed to King's College, Cambridge, in 1965. On 10 January 1957, at the age of 68, Eliot married Esme Valerie Fletcher, who was 30. In contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949. They kept their wedding secret; the ceremony was held in a church at 6:15 am with virtually no one in attendance other than his wife's parents. Eliot had no children with either of his wives. In the early 1960s, by then in failing health, Eliot worked as an editor for the Wesleyan University Press, seeking new poets in Europe for publication. After Eliot's death, Valerie dedicated her time to preserving his legacy, by editing and annotating The Letters of T. S. Eliot and a facsimile of the draft of The Waste Land. Valerie Eliot died on 9 November 2012 at her home in London. For a poet of his stature, Eliot produced a relatively small number of poems. He was aware of this even early in his career. He wrote to J.H. Woods, one of his former Harvard professors, "My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event." Typically, Eliot first published his poems individually in periodicals or in small books or pamphlets, and then collected them in books. His first collection was Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). In 1920, he published more poems in Ara Vos Prec (London) and Poems: 1920 (New York). These had the same poems (in a different order) except that "Ode" in the British edition was replaced with "Hysteria" in the American edition. In 1925, he collected The Waste Land and the poems in Prufrock and Poems into one volume and added The Hollow Men to form Poems: 1909-1925. From then on, he updated this work as Collected Poems. Exceptions are Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), a collection of light verse; Poems Written in Early Youth, posthumously published in 1967 and consisting mainly of poems published between 1907 and 1910 in The Harvard Advocate, and Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917, material Eliot never intended to have published, which appeared posthumously in 1997. During an interview in 1959, Eliot said of his nationality and its role in his work: "I'd say that my poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation in England. That I'm sure of. ... It wouldn't be what it is, and I imagine it wouldn't be so good; putting it as modestly as I can, it wouldn't be what it is if I'd been born in England, and it wouldn't be what it is if I'd stayed in America. It's a combination of things. But in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America." Cleo McNelly Kearns notes in her biography that Eliot was deeply influenced by Indic traditions, notably the Upanishads. From the Sanskrit ending of The Waste Land to the "What Krishna meant" section of Four Quartets shows how much Indic religions and more specifically Hinduism made up his philosophical basic for his thought process. It must also be acknowledged, as Chinmoy Guha showed in his book Where the Dreams Cross: T S Eliot and French Poetry (Macmillan, 2011), that he was deeply influenced by French poets from Baudelaire to Paul Valery. He himself wrote in his 1940 essay on W.B. Yeats: "The kind of poetry that I needed to teach me the use of my own voice did not exist in English at all; it was only to be found in French." ("Yeats," On Poetry and Poets, 1948) CANNOTANSWER

Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, he is a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry. Through his trials in language, writing style, and verse structure, he reinvigorated English poetry. He also dismantled outdated beliefs and established new ones through a collection of critical essays. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and went on to settle, work, and marry there. He became a British citizen in 1927 at the age of 39 and renounced his American citizenship. Eliot first attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" from 1914 to 1915, which, at the time of its publication, was considered outlandish. It was followed by The Waste Land (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry". Life Early life and education The Eliots were a Boston Brahmin family, with roots in England and New England. Eliot's paternal grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, had moved to St. Louis, Missouri, to establish a Unitarian Christian church there. His father, Henry Ware Eliot (1843–1919), was a successful businessman, president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St Louis. His mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns (1843–1929), who wrote poetry, was a social worker, which was a new profession in the U.S. in the early 20th century. Eliot was the last of six surviving children. Known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Stearns. Eliot's childhood infatuation with literature can be ascribed to several factors. First, he had to overcome physical limitations as a child. Struggling from a congenital double inguinal hernia, he could not participate in many physical activities and thus was prevented from socialising with his peers. As he was often isolated, his love for literature developed. Once he learned to read, the young boy immediately became obsessed with books, favouring tales of savage life, the Wild West, or Mark Twain's thrill-seeking Tom Sawyer. In his memoir about Eliot, his friend Robert Sencourt comments that the young Eliot "would often curl up in the window-seat behind an enormous book, setting the drug of dreams against the pain of living." Secondly, Eliot credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision: "It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London." From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended Smith Academy, the boys college preparatory division of Washington University, where his studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and German. He began to write poetry when he was 14 under the influence of Edward Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. He said the results were gloomy and despairing and he destroyed them. His first published poem, "A Fable For Feasters", was written as a school exercise and was published in the Smith Academy Record in February 1905. Also published there in April 1905 was his oldest surviving poem in manuscript, an untitled lyric, later revised and reprinted as "Song" in The Harvard Advocate, Harvard University's student literary magazine. He published three short stories in 1905, "Birds of Prey", "A Tale of a Whale" and "The Man Who Was King". The last mentioned story reflected his exploration of the Igorot Village while visiting the 1904 World's Fair of St. Louis. His interest in indigenous peoples thus predated his anthropological studies at Harvard. Eliot lived in St. Louis, Missouri, for the first 16 years of his life at the house on Locust Street where he was born. After going away to school in 1905, he returned to St. Louis only for vacations and visits. Despite moving away from the city, Eliot wrote to a friend that "Missouri and the Mississippi have made a deeper impression on me than any other part of the world." Following graduation from Smith Academy, Eliot attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts for a preparatory year, where he met Scofield Thayer who later published The Waste Land. He studied at Harvard College from 1906 to 1909, earning a Bachelor of Arts in an elective program similar to comparative literature in 1909 and a Master of Arts in English literature the following year. Because of his year at Milton Academy, Eliot was allowed to earn his Bachelor of Arts after three years instead of the usual four. Frank Kermode writes that the most important moment of Eliot's undergraduate career was in 1908 when he discovered Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature. This introduced him to Jules Laforgue, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine. Without Verlaine, Eliot wrote, he might never have heard of Tristan Corbière and his book Les amours jaunes, a work that affected the course of Eliot's life. The Harvard Advocate published some of his poems and he became lifelong friends with Conrad Aiken, the American writer and critic. After working as a philosophy assistant at Harvard from 1909 to 1910, Eliot moved to Paris where, from 1910 to 1911, he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. He attended lectures by Henri Bergson and read poetry with Henri Alban-Fournier. From 1911 to 1914, he was back at Harvard studying Indian philosophy and Sanskrit. Whilst a member of the Harvard Graduate School, Eliot met and fell in love with Emily Hale. Eliot was awarded a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, in 1914. He first visited Marburg, Germany, where he planned to take a summer programme, but when the First World War broke out he went to Oxford instead. At the time so many American students attended Merton that the Junior Common Room proposed a motion "that this society abhors the Americanization of Oxford". It was defeated by two votes after Eliot reminded the students how much they owed American culture. Eliot wrote to Conrad Aiken on New Year's Eve 1914: "I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls [...] Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead." Escaping Oxford, Eliot spent much of his time in London. This city had a monumental and life-altering effect on Eliot for several reasons, the most significant of which was his introduction to the influential American literary figure Ezra Pound. A connection through Aiken resulted in an arranged meeting and on 22 September 1914, Eliot paid a visit to Pound's flat. Pound instantly deemed Eliot "worth watching" and was crucial to Eliot's fledgling career as a poet, as he is credited with promoting Eliot through social events and literary gatherings. Thus, according to biographer John Worthen, during his time in England Eliot "was seeing as little of Oxford as possible". He was instead spending long periods of time in London, in the company of Ezra Pound and "some of the modern artists whom the war has so far spared [...] It was Pound who helped most, introducing him everywhere." In the end, Eliot did not settle at Merton and left after a year. In 1915 he taught English at Birkbeck, University of London. In 1916, he completed a doctoral dissertation for Harvard on "Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley", but he failed to return for the viva voce exam. Marriage Before leaving the US, Eliot had told Emily Hale that he was in love with her. He exchanged letters with her from Oxford during 1914 and 1915, but they did not meet again until 1927. In a letter to Aiken late in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote: "I am very dependent upon women (I mean female society)." Less than four months later, Thayer introduced Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Cambridge governess. They were married at Hampstead Register Office on 26 June 1915. After a short visit, alone, to his family in the United States, Eliot returned to London and took several teaching jobs, such as lecturing at Birkbeck College, University of London. The philosopher Bertrand Russell took an interest in Vivienne while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some scholars have suggested that she and Russell had an affair, but the allegations were never confirmed. The marriage seems to have been markedly unhappy, in part because of Vivienne's health problems. In a letter addressed to Ezra Pound, she covers an extensive list of her symptoms, which included a habitually high temperature, fatigue, insomnia, migraines, and colitis. This, coupled with apparent mental instability, meant that she was often sent away by Eliot and her doctors for extended periods of time in the hope of improving her health. As time went on, he became increasingly detached from her. According to witnesses, both Eliots were frequent complainers of illness, physical and mental, while Eliot would drink excessively and Vivienne is said to have developed a liking for opium and ether, drugs prescribed for medical issues. It is claimed that the couple's wearying behaviour caused some visitors to vow never to spend another evening in the company of both together. The couple formally separated in 1933, and in 1938 Vivienne's brother, Maurice, had her committed to a mental hospital, against her will, where she remained until her death of heart disease in 1947. When told via a phone call from the asylum that Vivienne had died unexpectedly during the night, Eliot is said to have buried his face in his hands and cried out ‘Oh God, oh God.’ Their relationship became the subject of a 1984 play Tom & Viv, which in 1994 was adapted as a film of the same name. In a private paper written in his sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of [Ezra] Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land." Teaching, banking, and publishing After leaving Merton, Eliot worked as a schoolteacher, most notably at Highgate School in London, where he taught French and Latin: his students included John Betjeman. He subsequently taught at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. To earn extra money, he wrote book reviews and lectured at evening extension courses at University College London and Oxford. In 1917, he took a position at Lloyds Bank in London, working on foreign accounts. On a trip to Paris in August 1920 with the artist Wyndham Lewis, he met the writer James Joyce. Eliot said he found Joyce arrogant, and Joyce doubted Eliot's ability as a poet at the time, but the two writers soon became friends, with Eliot visiting Joyce whenever he was in Paris. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis also maintained a close friendship, leading to Lewis's later making his well-known portrait painting of Eliot in 1938. Charles Whibley recommended T.S. Eliot to Geoffrey Faber. In 1925 Eliot left Lloyds to become a director in the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber), where he remained for the rest of his career. At Faber and Faber, he was responsible for publishing distinguished English poets, including W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Charles Madge and Ted Hughes. Conversion to Anglicanism and British citizenship On 29 June 1927, Eliot converted from Unitarianism to Anglicanism, and in November that year he took British citizenship, thereby renouncing his United States citizenship in the event he had not officially done so previously. He became a churchwarden of his parish church, St Stephen's, Gloucester Road, London, and a life member of the Society of King Charles the Martyr. He specifically identified as Anglo-Catholic, proclaiming himself "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion". About 30 years later Eliot commented on his religious views that he combined "a Catholic cast of mind, a Calvinist heritage, and a Puritanical temperament". He also had wider spiritual interests, commenting that "I see the path of progress for modern man in his occupation with his own self, with his inner being" and citing Goethe and Rudolf Steiner as exemplars of such a direction. One of Eliot's biographers, Peter Ackroyd, commented that "the purposes of [Eliot's conversion] were two-fold. One: the Church of England offered Eliot some hope for himself, and I think Eliot needed some resting place. But secondly, it attached Eliot to the English community and English culture." Separation and remarriage By 1932, Eliot had been contemplating a separation from his wife for some time. When Harvard offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932–1933 academic year, he accepted and left Vivienne in England. Upon his return, he arranged for a formal separation from her, avoiding all but one meeting with her between his leaving for America in 1932 and her death in 1947. Vivienne was committed to the Northumberland House mental hospital in Woodberry Down, Manor House, London, in 1938, and remained there until she died. Although Eliot was still legally her husband, he never visited her. From 1933 to 1946 Eliot had a close emotional relationship with Emily Hale. Eliot later destroyed Hale's letters to him, but Hale donated Eliot's to Princeton University Library where they were sealed, following Eliot's and Hale's wishes, for 50 years after both had died, until 2020. When Eliot heard of the donation he deposited his own account of their relationship with Harvard University to be opened whenever the Princeton letters were. From 1938 to 1957 Eliot's public companion was Mary Trevelyan of London University, who wanted to marry him and left a detailed memoir. From 1946 to 1957, Eliot shared a flat at 19 Carlyle Mansions, Chelsea, with his friend John Davy Hayward, who collected and managed Eliot's papers, styling himself "Keeper of the Eliot Archive". Hayward also collected Eliot's pre-Prufrock verse, commercially published after Eliot's death as Poems Written in Early Youth. When Eliot and Hayward separated their household in 1957, Hayward retained his collection of Eliot's papers, which he bequeathed to King's College, Cambridge, in 1965. On 10 January 1957, at the age of 68, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Fletcher, who was 30. In contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949. They kept their wedding secret; the ceremony was held in St. Barnabas' Church, Kensington, London, at 6:15 am with virtually no one in attendance other than his wife's parents. Eliot had no children with either of his wives. In the early 1960s, by then in failing health, Eliot worked as an editor for the Wesleyan University Press, seeking new poets in Europe for publication. After Eliot's death, Valerie dedicated her time to preserving his legacy, by editing and annotating The Letters of T. S. Eliot and a facsimile of the draft of The Waste Land. Valerie Eliot died on 9 November 2012 at her home in London. Death and honours Eliot died of emphysema at his home in Kensington in London, on 4 January 1965, and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were taken to St Michael and All Angels' Church, East Coker, the village in Somerset from which his Eliot ancestors had emigrated to America. A wall plaque in the church commemorates him with a quotation from his poem East Coker: "In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning." In 1967, on the second anniversary of his death, Eliot was commemorated by the placement of a large stone in the floor of Poets' Corner in London's Westminster Abbey. The stone, cut by designer Reynolds Stone, is inscribed with his life dates, his Order of Merit, and a quotation from his poem Little Gidding, "the communication / of the dead is tongued with fire beyond / the language of the living." In 1986, a blue plaque was placed on the apartment block - No. 3 Kensington Court Gardens - where he lived and died. Poetry For a poet of his stature, Eliot produced relatively few poems. He was aware of this even early in his career; he wrote to J.H. Woods, one of his former Harvard professors, "My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event." Typically, Eliot first published his poems individually in periodicals or in small books or pamphlets and then collected them in books. His first collection was Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). In 1920, he published more poems in Ara Vos Prec (London) and Poems: 1920 (New York). These had the same poems (in a different order) except that "Ode" in the British edition was replaced with "Hysteria" in the American edition. In 1925, he collected The Waste Land and the poems in Prufrock and Poems into one volume and added The Hollow Men to form Poems: 1909–1925. From then on, he updated this work as Collected Poems. Exceptions are Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), a collection of light verse; Poems Written in Early Youth, posthumously published in 1967 and consisting mainly of poems published between 1907 and 1910 in The Harvard Advocate, and Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917, material Eliot never intended to have published, which appeared posthumously in 1996. During an interview in 1959, Eliot said of his nationality and its role in his work: "I'd say that my poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation in England. That I'm sure of. ... It wouldn't be what it is, and I imagine it wouldn't be so good; putting it as modestly as I can, it wouldn't be what it is if I'd been born in England, and it wouldn't be what it is if I'd stayed in America. It's a combination of things. But in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America." Cleo McNelly Kearns notes in her biography that Eliot was deeply influenced by Indic traditions, notably the Upanishads. From the Sanskrit ending of The Waste Land to the "What Krishna meant" section of Four Quartets shows how much Indic religions and more specifically Hinduism made up his philosophical basic for his thought process. It must also be acknowledged, as Chinmoy Guha showed in his book Where the Dreams Cross: T S Eliot and French Poetry (Macmillan, 2011) that he was deeply influenced by French poets from Baudelaire to Paul Valéry. He himself wrote in his 1940 essay on W.B. Yeats: "The kind of poetry that I needed to teach me the use of my own voice did not exist in English at all; it was only to be found in French." ("Yeats", On Poetry and Poets, 1948). "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" In 1915, Ezra Pound, overseas editor of Poetry magazine, recommended to Harriet Monroe, the magazine's founder, that she should publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Although the character Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only twenty-two. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table", were considered shocking and offensive, especially at a time when Georgian Poetry was hailed for its derivations of the nineteenth century Romantic Poets. The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of Dante and refers to a number of literary works, including Hamlet and those of the French Symbolists. Its reception in London can be gauged from an unsigned review in The Times Literary Supplement on 21 June 1917. "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr. Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry." "The Waste Land" In October 1922, Eliot published "The Waste Land" in The Criterion. Eliot's dedication to il miglior fabbro ('the better craftsman') refers to Ezra Pound's significant hand in editing and reshaping the poem from a longer Eliot manuscript, to the shortened version that appears in publication. It was composed during a period of personal difficulty for Eliot—his marriage was failing, and both he and Vivienne were suffering from nervous disorders. Before the poem's publication as a book in December 1922, Eliot distanced himself from its vision of despair. On 15 November 1922, he wrote to Richard Aldington, saying, "As for The Waste Land, that is a thing of the past so far as I am concerned and I am now feeling toward a new form and style." The poem is often read as a representation of the disillusionment of the post-war generation. Dismissing this view, Eliot commented in 1931, "When I wrote a poem called The Waste Land, some of the more approving critics said that I had expressed 'the disillusion of a generation', which is nonsense. I may have expressed for them their own illusion of being disillusioned, but that did not form part of my intention." The poem is known for its obscure nature—its slippage between satire and prophecy; its abrupt changes of speaker, location, and time. This structural complexity is one of the reasons that the poem has become a touchstone of modern literature, a poetic counterpart to a novel published in the same year, James Joyce's Ulysses. Among its best-known phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" and "Shantih shantih shantih"the Sanskrit mantra which ends the poem. "The Hollow Men" "The Hollow Men" appeared in 1925. For the critic Edmund Wilson, it marked "The nadir of the phase of despair and desolation given such effective expression in 'The Waste Land'." It is Eliot's major poem of the late 1920s. Similar to Eliot's other works, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary. Post-war Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised), the difficulty of hope and religious conversion, Eliot's failed marriage. Allen Tate perceived a shift in Eliot's method, writing, "The mythologies disappear altogether in 'The Hollow Men'." This is a striking claim for a poem as indebted to Dante as anything else in Eliot's early work, to say little of the modern English mythology—the "Old Guy Fawkes" of the Gunpowder Plot—or the colonial and agrarian mythos of Joseph Conrad and James George Frazer, which, at least for reasons of textual history, echo in The Waste Land. The "continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity" that is so characteristic of his mythical method remained in fine form. "The Hollow Men" contains some of Eliot's most famous lines, notably its conclusion: This is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper. "Ash-Wednesday" "Ash-Wednesday" is the first long poem written by Eliot, after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Published in 1930, it deals with the struggle that ensues when a person who has lacked faith acquires it. Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem", it is richly but ambiguously allusive, and deals with the aspiration to move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation. Eliot's style of writing in "Ash-Wednesday" showed a marked shift from the poetry he had written prior to his 1927 conversion, and his post-conversion style continued in a similar vein. His style became less ironic, and the poems were no longer populated by multiple characters in dialogue. Eliot's subject matter also became more focused on his spiritual concerns and his Christian faith. Many critics were particularly enthusiastic about "Ash-Wednesday". Edwin Muir maintained that it is one of the most moving poems Eliot wrote, and perhaps the "most perfect", though it was not well received by everyone. The poem's groundwork of orthodox Christianity discomfited many of the more secular literati. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats In 1939, Eliot published a book of light verse, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. ("Old Possum" was Ezra Pound's friendly nickname for Eliot.) The first edition had an illustration of the author on the cover. In 1954, the composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems for speaker and orchestra in a work titled Practical Cats. After Eliot's death, the book was the basis of the musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber, first produced in London's West End in 1981 and opening on Broadway the following year. Four Quartets Eliot regarded Four Quartets as his masterpiece, and it is the work that most of all led him to being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. It consists of four long poems, each first published separately: "Burnt Norton" (1936), "East Coker" (1940), "The Dry Salvages" (1941) and "Little Gidding" (1942). Each has five sections. Although they resist easy characterisation, each poem includes meditations on the nature of time in some important respect—theological, historical, physical—and its relation to the human condition. Each poem is associated with one of the four classical elements, respectively: air, earth, water, and fire. "Burnt Norton" is a meditative poem that begins with the narrator trying to focus on the present moment while walking through a garden, focusing on images and sounds such as the bird, the roses, clouds and an empty pool. The meditation leads the narrator to reach "the still point" in which there is no attempt to get anywhere or to experience place and/or time, instead experiencing "a grace of sense". In the final section, the narrator contemplates the arts ("words" and "music") as they relate to time. The narrator focuses particularly on the poet's art of manipulating "Words [which] strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden [of time], under the tension, slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision, [and] will not stay in place, / Will not stay still." By comparison, the narrator concludes that "Love is itself unmoving, / Only the cause and end of movement, / Timeless, and undesiring." "East Coker" continues the examination of time and meaning, focusing in a famous passage on the nature of language and poetry. Out of darkness, Eliot offers a solution: "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope." "The Dry Salvages" treats the element of water, via images of river and sea. It strives to contain opposites: "The past and future / Are conquered, and reconciled." "Little Gidding" (the element of fire) is the most anthologised of the Quartets. Eliot's experiences as an air raid warden in the Blitz power the poem, and he imagines meeting Dante during the German bombing. The beginning of the Quartets ("Houses / Are removed, destroyed") had become a violent everyday experience; this creates an animation, where for the first time he talks of love as the driving force behind all experience. From this background, the Quartets end with an affirmation of Julian of Norwich: "All shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well." The Four Quartets draws upon Christian theology, art, symbolism and language of such figures as Dante, and mystics St. John of the Cross and Julian of Norwich. Plays With the important exception of Four Quartets, Eliot directed much of his creative energies after Ash Wednesday to writing plays in verse, mostly comedies or plays with redemptive endings. He was long a critic and admirer of Elizabethan and Jacobean verse drama; witness his allusions to Webster, Thomas Middleton, William Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd in The Waste Land. In a 1933 lecture he said "Every poet would like, I fancy, to be able to think that he had some direct social utility . . . . He would like to be something of a popular entertainer and be able to think his own thoughts behind a tragic or a comic mask. He would like to convey the pleasures of poetry, not only to a larger audience but to larger groups of people collectively; and the theatre is the best place in which to do it." After The Waste Land (1922), he wrote that he was "now feeling toward a new form and style". One project he had in mind was writing a play in verse, using some of the rhythms of early jazz. The play featured "Sweeney", a character who had appeared in a number of his poems. Although Eliot did not finish the play, he did publish two scenes from the piece. These scenes, titled Fragment of a Prologue (1926) and Fragment of an Agon (1927), were published together in 1932 as Sweeney Agonistes. Although Eliot noted that this was not intended to be a one-act play, it is sometimes performed as one. A pageant play by Eliot called The Rock was performed in 1934 for the benefit of churches in the Diocese of London. Much of it was a collaborative effort; Eliot accepted credit only for the authorship of one scene and the choruses. George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, had been instrumental in connecting Eliot with producer E. Martin Browne for the production of The Rock, and later commissioned Eliot to write another play for the Canterbury Festival in 1935. This one, Murder in the Cathedral, concerning the death of the martyr, Thomas Becket, was more under Eliot's control. Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd comments that "for [Eliot], Murder in the Cathedral and succeeding verse plays offered a double advantage; it allowed him to practice poetry but it also offered a convenient home for his religious sensibility." After this, he worked on more "commercial" plays for more general audiences: The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk, (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958) (the latter three were produced by Henry Sherek and directed by E. Martin Browne). The Broadway production in New York of The Cocktail Party received the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play. Eliot wrote The Cocktail Party while he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study. Regarding his method of playwriting, Eliot explained, "If I set out to write a play, I start by an act of choice. I settle upon a particular emotional situation, out of which characters and a plot will emerge. And then lines of poetry may come into being: not from the original impulse but from a secondary stimulation of the unconscious mind." Literary criticism Eliot also made significant contributions to the field of literary criticism, and strongly influenced the school of New Criticism. He was somewhat self-deprecating and minimising of his work and once said his criticism was merely a "by-product" of his "private poetry-workshop". But the critic William Empson once said, "I do not know for certain how much of my own mind [Eliot] invented, let alone how much of it is a reaction against him or indeed a consequence of misreading him. He is a very penetrating influence, perhaps not unlike the east wind." In his critical essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent", Eliot argues that art must be understood not in a vacuum, but in the context of previous pieces of art. "In a peculiar sense [an artist or poet] ... must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past." This essay was an important influence over the New Criticism by introducing the idea that the value of a work of art must be viewed in the context of the artist's previous works, a "simultaneous order" of works (i.e., "tradition"). Eliot himself employed this concept on many of his works, especially on his long-poem The Waste Land. Also important to New Criticism was the idea—as articulated in Eliot's essay "Hamlet and His Problems"—of an "objective correlative", which posits a connection among the words of the text and events, states of mind, and experiences. This notion concedes that a poem means what it says, but suggests that there can be a non-subjective judgment based on different readers' different—but perhaps corollary—interpretations of a work. More generally, New Critics took a cue from Eliot in regard to his "'classical' ideals and his religious thought; his attention to the poetry and drama of the early seventeenth century; his deprecation of the Romantics, especially Shelley; his proposition that good poems constitute 'not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion'; and his insistence that 'poets... at present must be difficult'." Eliot's essays were a major factor in the revival of interest in the metaphysical poets. Eliot particularly praised the metaphysical poets' ability to show experience as both psychological and sensual, while at the same time infusing this portrayal with—in Eliot's view—wit and uniqueness. Eliot's essay "The Metaphysical Poets", along with giving new significance and attention to metaphysical poetry, introduced his now well-known definition of "unified sensibility", which is considered by some to mean the same thing as the term "metaphysical". His 1922 poem The Waste Land also can be better understood in light of his work as a critic. He had argued that a poet must write "programmatic criticism", that is, a poet should write to advance his own interests rather than to advance "historical scholarship". Viewed from Eliot's critical lens, The Waste Land likely shows his personal despair about World War I rather than an objective historical understanding of it. Late in his career, Eliot focused much of his creative energy on writing for the theatre; some of his earlier critical writing, in essays such as "Poetry and Drama", "Hamlet and his Problems", and "The Possibility of a Poetic Drama", focused on the aesthetics of writing drama in verse. Critical reception Responses to his poetry The writer Ronald Bush notes that Eliot's early poems like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "Portrait of a Lady", "La Figlia Che Piange", "Preludes", and "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" had "[an] effect [that] was both unique and compelling, and their assurance staggered [Eliot's] contemporaries who were privileged to read them in manuscript. [Conrad] Aiken, for example, marveled at 'how sharp and complete and sui generis the whole thing was, from the outset. The wholeness is there, from the very beginning.'" The initial critical response to Eliot's The Waste Land was mixed. Bush notes that the piece was at first correctly perceived as a work of jazz-like syncopation—and, like 1920s jazz, essentially iconoclastic." Some critics, like Edmund Wilson, Conrad Aiken, and Gilbert Seldes thought it was the best poetry being written in the English language while others thought it was esoteric and wilfully difficult. Edmund Wilson, being one of the critics who praised Eliot, called him "one of our only authentic poets". Wilson also pointed out some of Eliot's weaknesses as a poet. In regard to The Waste Land, Wilson admits its flaws ("its lack of structural unity"), but concluded, "I doubt whether there is a single other poem of equal length by a contemporary American which displays so high and so varied a mastery of English verse." Charles Powell was negative in his criticism of Eliot, calling his poems incomprehensible. And the writers of Time magazine were similarly baffled by a challenging poem like The Waste Land. John Crowe Ransom wrote negative criticisms of Eliot's work but also had positive things to say. For instance, though Ransom negatively criticised The Waste Land for its "extreme disconnection", Ransom was not completely condemnatory of Eliot's work and admitted that Eliot was a talented poet. Addressing some of the common criticisms directed against The Waste Land at the time, Gilbert Seldes stated, "It seems at first sight remarkably disconnected and confused... [however] a closer view of the poem does more than illuminate the difficulties; it reveals the hidden form of the work, [and] indicates how each thing falls into place." Eliot's reputation as a poet, as well as his influence in the academy, peaked following the publication of The Four Quartets. In an essay on Eliot published in 1989, the writer Cynthia Ozick refers to this peak of influence (from the 1940s through the early 1960s) as "the Age of Eliot" when Eliot "seemed pure zenith, a colossus, nothing less than a permanent luminary, fixed in the firmament like the sun and the moon". But during this post-war period, others, like Ronald Bush, observed that this time also marked the beginning of the decline in Eliot's literary influence: As Eliot's conservative religious and political convictions began to seem less congenial in the postwar world, other readers reacted with suspicion to his assertions of authority, obvious in Four Quartets and implicit in the earlier poetry. The result, fueled by intermittent rediscovery of Eliot's occasional anti-Semitic rhetoric, has been a progressive downward revision of his once towering reputation. Bush also notes that Eliot's reputation "slipped" significantly further after his death. He writes, "Sometimes regarded as too academic (William Carlos Williams's view), Eliot was also frequently criticized for a deadening neoclassicism (as he himself—perhaps just as unfairly—had criticized Milton). However, the multifarious tributes from practicing poets of many schools published during his centenary in 1988 was a strong indication of the intimidating continued presence of his poetic voice." Literary scholars, such as Harold Bloom and Stephen Greenblatt, acknowledge Eliot's poetry as central to the literary English canon. For instance, the editors of The Norton Anthology of English Literature write, "There is no disagreement on [Eliot's] importance as one of the great renovators of the English poetry dialect, whose influence on a whole generation of poets, critics, and intellectuals generally was enormous. [However] his range as a poet [was] limited, and his interest in the great middle ground of human experience (as distinct from the extremes of saint and sinner) [was] deficient." Despite this criticism, these scholars also acknowledge "[Eliot's] poetic cunning, his fine craftsmanship, his original accent, his historical and representative importance as the poet of the modern symbolist-Metaphysical tradition". Antisemitism The depiction of Jews in some of Eliot's poems has led several critics to accuse him of antisemitism, most forcefully in Anthony Julius' book T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form (1996). In "Gerontion", Eliot writes, in the voice of the poem's elderly narrator, "And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner [of my building] / Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp." Another example appears in the poem, "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar" in which Eliot wrote, "The rats are underneath the piles. / The jew is underneath the lot. / Money in furs." Julius writes: "The anti-Semitism is unmistakable. It reaches out like a clear signal to the reader." Julius' viewpoint has been supported by Harold Bloom, Christopher Ricks, George Steiner, Tom Paulin and James Fenton. In lectures delivered at the University of Virginia in 1933 (published in 1934 under the title After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy), Eliot wrote of societal tradition and coherence, "What is still more important [than cultural homogeneity] is unity of religious background, and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable." Eliot never re-published this book/lecture. In his 1934 pageant play The Rock, Eliot distances himself from Fascist movements of the 1930s by caricaturing Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts, who "firmly refuse/ To descend to palaver with anthropoid Jews". The "new evangels" of totalitarianism are presented as antithetic to the spirit of Christianity. In In Defence of T. S. Eliot (2001) and T. S. Eliot (2006), Craig Raine sought to defend Eliot from the charge of anti-Semitism. Paul Dean was not convinced by Raine's argument. Nevertheless, Dean concluded, "Ultimately, as both Raine and, to do him justice, Julius insist, however much Eliot may have been compromised as a person, as we all are in our several ways, his greatness as a poet remains." Critic Terry Eagleton also questioned the entire basis for Raine's book, writing, "Why do critics feel a need to defend the authors they write on, like doting parents deaf to all criticism of their obnoxious children? Eliot's well-earned reputation [as a poet] is established beyond all doubt, and making him out to be as unflawed as the Archangel Gabriel does him no favours." Influence Eliot influenced many poets, novelists, and songwriters, including Seán Ó Ríordáin, Máirtín Ó Díreáin, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Bob Dylan, Hart Crane, William Gaddis, Allen Tate, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Trevor Nunn, Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Russell Kirk, George Seferis (who in 1936 published a modern Greek translation of The Waste Land) and James Joyce. T. S. Eliot was a strong influence on 20th-century Caribbean poetry written in English, including the epic Omeros (1990) by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, and Islands (1969) by Barbadian Kamau Brathwaite. Honours and awards Below is a partial list of honours and awards received by Eliot or bestowed or created in his honour. National or state honours These honours are displayed in order of precedence based on Eliot's nationality and rules of protocol, not awarding date. Literary awards Nobel Prize in Literature "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry" (1948) Hanseatic Goethe Prize (of Hamburg) (1955) Dante Medal (of Florence) (1959) Drama awards 1950 Tony Award for Best Play for the Broadway production of The Cocktail Party 1983 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for his poems used in the musical Cats (posthumous award) 1983 Tony Award for Best Original Score for his poems used in the musical Cats (shared with Andrew Lloyd Webber) (posthumous award) Music awards Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for his poems used in the song "Memory" (1982) Academic awards Inducted into Phi Beta Kappa (1935) Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1954) Elected to the American Philosophical Society (1960) Thirteen Honorary Doctorates (Including ones from Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and Harvard) Other honours Eliot College of the University of Kent, England, named in his honour Celebrated on U.S. commemorative postage stamps Star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame Works Source: Earliest works Prose "The Birds of Prey" (a short story; 1905) "A Tale of a Whale" (a short story; 1905) "The Man Who Was King" (a short story; 1905) "The Wine and the Puritans" (review, 1909) "The Point of View" (1909) "Gentlemen and Seamen" (1909) "Egoist" (review, 1909) Poems "A Fable for Feasters" (1905) "[A Lyric:]'If Time and Space as Sages say'" (1905) "[At Graduation 1905]" (1905) "Song: 'If space and time, as sages say'" (1907) "Before Morning" (1908) "Circe's Palace" (1908) "Song: 'When we came home across the hill'" (1909) "On a Portrait" (1909) "Song: 'The moonflower opens to the moth'" (1909) "Nocturne" (1909) "Humoresque" (1910) "Spleen" (1910) "[Class] Ode" (1910) "The Death of Saint Narcissus" (c.1911-15) Poetry Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Portrait of a Lady Preludes Rhapsody on a Windy Night Morning at the Window The Boston Evening Transcript (about the Boston Evening Transcript) Aunt Helen Cousin Nancy Mr. Apollinax Hysteria Conversation Galante La Figlia Che Piange Poems (1920) Gerontion Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar Sweeney Erect A Cooking Egg Le Directeur Mélange Adultère de Tout Lune de Miel The Hippopotamus Dans le Restaurant Whispers of Immortality Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service Sweeney Among the Nightingales The Waste Land (1922) The Hollow Men (1925) Ariel Poems (1927–1954) Journey of the Magi (1927) A Song for Simeon (1928) Animula (1929) Marina (1930) Triumphal March (1931) The Cultivation of Christmas Trees (1954) Macavity:The Mystery Cat Ash Wednesday (1930) Coriolan (1931) Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs and Billy M'Caw: The Remarkable Parrot (1939) in The Queen's Book of the Red Cross Four Quartets (1945) Plays Sweeney Agonistes (published in 1926, first performed in 1934) The Rock (1934) Murder in the Cathedral (1935) The Family Reunion (1939) The Cocktail Party (1949) The Confidential Clerk (1953) The Elder Statesman (first performed in 1958, published in 1959) Non-fiction Christianity & Culture (1939, 1948) The Second-Order Mind (1920) Tradition and the Individual Talent (1920) The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920) "Hamlet and His Problems" Homage to John Dryden (1924) Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1928) For Lancelot Andrewes (1928) Dante (1929) Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (1932) The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933) After Strange Gods (1934) Elizabethan Essays (1934) Essays Ancient and Modern (1936) The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1941) made by Eliot, with an essay on Rudyard Kipling Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948) Poetry and Drama (1951) The Three Voices of Poetry (1954) The Frontiers of Criticism (1956) On Poetry and Poets (1943) Posthumous publications To Criticize the Critic (1965) Poems Written in Early Youth (1967) The Waste Land: Facsimile Edition (1974) Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917 (1996) Critical editions Collected Poems, 1909–1962 (1963), excerpt and text search Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, Illustrated Edition (1982), excerpt and text search Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, edited by Frank Kermode (1975), excerpt and text search The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions), edited by Michael North (2000) excerpt and text search The Poems of T.S. Eliot, volume 1 (Collected & Uncollected Poems) and volume 2 (Practical Cats & Further Verses), edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue (2015), Faber & Faber Selected Essays (1932); enlarged (1960) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton, Volume 1: 1898–1922 (1988, revised 2009) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton, Volume 2: 1923–1925 (2009) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 3: 1926–1927 (2012) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 4: 1928–1929 (2013) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 5: 1930–1931 (2014) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 6: 1932–1933 (2016) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 7: 1934–1935 (2017) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 8: 1936–1938 (2019) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 9: 1939–1941 (2021) Notes Further reading Ackroyd, Peter. T. S. Eliot: A Life (1984). Ali, Ahmed. Mr. Eliot's Penny World of Dreams: An Essay in the Interpretation of T.S. Eliot's Poetry, Published for the Lucknow University by New Book Co., Bombay, P.S. King & Staples Ltd, Westminster, London, 1942, 138 pp. Asher, Kenneth T. S. Eliot and Ideology (1995). Bottum, Joseph, "What T. S. Eliot Almost Believed", First Things 55 (August/September 1995): 25–30. Brand, Clinton A. "The Voice of This Calling: The Enduring Legacy of T. S. Eliot", Modern Age Volume 45, Number 4; Fall 2003, conservative perspective. Brown, Alec. "The Lyrical Impulse in Eliot's Poetry", Scrutiny, vol. 2. Bush, Ronald. T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style (1984). Bush, Ronald, 'The Presence of the Past: Ethnographic Thinking/ Literary Politics'. In Prehistories of the Future, ed. Elzar Barkan and Ronald Bush, Stanford University Press (1995). Crawford, Robert. The Savage and the City in the Work of T. S. Eliot (1987). Crawford, Robert. Young Eliot: From St Louis to "The Waste Land" (2015). Crawford, Robert. Eliot. After The Waste Land (2022). Christensen, Karen. "Dear Mrs. Eliot", The Guardian Review (29 January 2005). Das, Jolly. 'Eliot's Prismatic Plays: A Multifaceted Quest'. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2007. Dawson, J. L., P. D. Holland & D. J. McKitterick, A Concordance to "The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot" Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1995. Forster, E. M. Essay on T. S. Eliot, in Life and Letters, June 1929. Gardner, Helen. The Art of T. S. Eliot (1949). Gordon, Lyndall. T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life (1998). Guha, Chinmoy. Where the Dreams Cross: T. S. Eliot and French Poetry (2000, 2011). Harding, W. D. T. S. Eliot, 1925–1935, Scrutiny, September 1936: A Review. Hargrove, Nancy Duvall. Landscape as Symbol in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot. University Press of Mississippi (1978). Hearn, Sheila G., Tradition and the Individual Scot]: Edwin Muir & T.S. Eliot, in Cencrastus No. 13, Summer 1983, pp. 21–24, Hearn, Sheila G. T. S. Eliot's Parisian Year. University Press of Florida (2009). Julius, Anthony. T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form. Cambridge University Press (1995). Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot (1969). Kenner, Hugh. editor, T. S. Eliot: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall (1962). Kirk, Russell Eliot and His Age: T. S, Eliot's Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century (Introduction by Benjamin G. Lockerd Jr.). Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Republication of the revised second edition, 2008. Kojecky, Roger. T.S. Eliot's Social Criticism, Faber & Faber, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1972, revised Kindle edn. 2014. Lal, P. (editor), T. S. Eliot: Homage from India: A Commemoration Volume of 55 Essays & Elegies, Writer's Workshop Calcutta, 1965. The Letters of T. S. Eliot. Ed. Valerie Eliot. Vol. I, 1898–1922. San Diego [etc.], 1988. Vol. 2, 1923–1925. Edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton, London: Faber, 2009. Levy, William Turner and Victor Scherle. Affectionately, T. S. Eliot: The Story of a Friendship: 1947–1965 (1968). Matthews, T. S. Great Tom: Notes Towards the Definition of T. S. Eliot (1973) Maxwell, D. E. S. The Poetry of T. S. Eliot, Routledge and Kegan Paul (1960). Miller, James E., Jr. T. S. Eliot. The Making of an American Poet, 1888–1922. The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2005. North, Michael (ed.) The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions). New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. Raine, Craig. T. S. Eliot. Oxford University Press (2006). Ricks, Christopher.T. S. Eliot and Prejudice (1988). Robinson, Ian "The English Prophets", The Brynmill Press Ltd (2001) Schuchard, Ronald. Eliot's Dark Angel: Intersections of Life and Art (1999). Scofield, Dr. Martin, "T.S. Eliot: The Poems", Cambridge University Press (1988). Sencourt, Robert. T. S. Eliot: A Memoir (1971) Seymour-Jones, Carole. Painted Shadow: A Life of Vivienne Eliot (2001). Sinha, Arun Kumar and Vikram, Kumar. T. S. Eliot: An Intensive Study of Selected Poems, New Delhi: Spectrum Books Pvt. Ltd (2005). Spender, Stephen. T. S. Eliot (1975) Spurr, Barry, Anglo-Catholic in Religion: T. S. Eliot and Christianity, The Lutterworth Press (2009) Tate, Allen, editor. T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work (1966; republished by Penguin, 1971). External links Biography T. S. Eliot at the Poetry Foundation Biography From T. S. Eliot Lives' and Legacies Eliot family genealogy, including T. S. Eliot Eliot's grave Lyndall Gordon, Eliot's Early Years, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, . T. S. Eliot Profile, Poems, Essays at Poets.org Works official listing of T. S. Eliot's works with some available in full doollee.com listing of T S Eliot's works written for the stage Poems by T.S. Eliot and biography at PoetryFoundation.org Text of early poems (1907–1910) printed in The Harvard Advocate T. S. Eliot Collection at Bartleby.com T.S. Eliot's Cats The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. Knopf, 1921. Via HathiTrust. Websites T. S. Eliot Society (UK) Resource Hub T. S. Eliot Hypertext Project Official (T. S. Eliot Estate) site T. S. Eliot Society (US) Home Page Archives Search for T.S. Eliot at Harvard University T. S. Eliot Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin T. S. Eliot Collection at Merton College, Oxford University T. S. Eliot collection at University of Victoria, Special Collections T. S. Eliot collection at the University of Maryland Libraries T. S. Eliot Collection. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Miscellaneous Links to audio recordings of Eliot reading his work An interview with Eliot: Yale College Lecture on T.S. 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T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot, (26 September 1888 - 4 January 1965) was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and "one of the twentieth century's major poets". He moved from his native United States to England in 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working, and marrying there. He eventually became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his American passport. Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), which was seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

In 1915, Ezra Pound, overseas editor of Poetry magazine, recommended to Harriet Monroe, the magazine's founder, that she publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Although the character Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only twenty-two. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table", were considered shocking and offensive, especially at a time when Georgian Poetry was hailed for its derivations of the nineteenth century Romantic Poets. The poem follows the conscious experience of a man, Prufrock (relayed in the "stream of consciousness" form characteristic of the Modernists), lamenting his physical and intellectual inertia with the recurrent theme of carnal love unattained. Critical opinion is divided as to whether the narrator leaves his residence during the course of the narration. The locations described can be interpreted either as actual physical experiences, mental recollections, or as symbolic images from the unconscious mind, as, for example, in the refrain "In the room the women come and go". The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of Dante and refers to a number of literary works, including Hamlet and those of the French Symbolists. Its reception in London can be gauged from an unsigned review in The Times Literary Supplement on 21 June 1917. "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr. Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry." CANNOTANSWER

Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, he is a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry. Through his trials in language, writing style, and verse structure, he reinvigorated English poetry. He also dismantled outdated beliefs and established new ones through a collection of critical essays. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and went on to settle, work, and marry there. He became a British citizen in 1927 at the age of 39 and renounced his American citizenship. Eliot first attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" from 1914 to 1915, which, at the time of its publication, was considered outlandish. It was followed by The Waste Land (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry". Life Early life and education The Eliots were a Boston Brahmin family, with roots in England and New England. Eliot's paternal grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, had moved to St. Louis, Missouri, to establish a Unitarian Christian church there. His father, Henry Ware Eliot (1843–1919), was a successful businessman, president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St Louis. His mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns (1843–1929), who wrote poetry, was a social worker, which was a new profession in the U.S. in the early 20th century. Eliot was the last of six surviving children. Known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Stearns. Eliot's childhood infatuation with literature can be ascribed to several factors. First, he had to overcome physical limitations as a child. Struggling from a congenital double inguinal hernia, he could not participate in many physical activities and thus was prevented from socialising with his peers. As he was often isolated, his love for literature developed. Once he learned to read, the young boy immediately became obsessed with books, favouring tales of savage life, the Wild West, or Mark Twain's thrill-seeking Tom Sawyer. In his memoir about Eliot, his friend Robert Sencourt comments that the young Eliot "would often curl up in the window-seat behind an enormous book, setting the drug of dreams against the pain of living." Secondly, Eliot credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision: "It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London." From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended Smith Academy, the boys college preparatory division of Washington University, where his studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and German. He began to write poetry when he was 14 under the influence of Edward Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. He said the results were gloomy and despairing and he destroyed them. His first published poem, "A Fable For Feasters", was written as a school exercise and was published in the Smith Academy Record in February 1905. Also published there in April 1905 was his oldest surviving poem in manuscript, an untitled lyric, later revised and reprinted as "Song" in The Harvard Advocate, Harvard University's student literary magazine. He published three short stories in 1905, "Birds of Prey", "A Tale of a Whale" and "The Man Who Was King". The last mentioned story reflected his exploration of the Igorot Village while visiting the 1904 World's Fair of St. Louis. His interest in indigenous peoples thus predated his anthropological studies at Harvard. Eliot lived in St. Louis, Missouri, for the first 16 years of his life at the house on Locust Street where he was born. After going away to school in 1905, he returned to St. Louis only for vacations and visits. Despite moving away from the city, Eliot wrote to a friend that "Missouri and the Mississippi have made a deeper impression on me than any other part of the world." Following graduation from Smith Academy, Eliot attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts for a preparatory year, where he met Scofield Thayer who later published The Waste Land. He studied at Harvard College from 1906 to 1909, earning a Bachelor of Arts in an elective program similar to comparative literature in 1909 and a Master of Arts in English literature the following year. Because of his year at Milton Academy, Eliot was allowed to earn his Bachelor of Arts after three years instead of the usual four. Frank Kermode writes that the most important moment of Eliot's undergraduate career was in 1908 when he discovered Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature. This introduced him to Jules Laforgue, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine. Without Verlaine, Eliot wrote, he might never have heard of Tristan Corbière and his book Les amours jaunes, a work that affected the course of Eliot's life. The Harvard Advocate published some of his poems and he became lifelong friends with Conrad Aiken, the American writer and critic. After working as a philosophy assistant at Harvard from 1909 to 1910, Eliot moved to Paris where, from 1910 to 1911, he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. He attended lectures by Henri Bergson and read poetry with Henri Alban-Fournier. From 1911 to 1914, he was back at Harvard studying Indian philosophy and Sanskrit. Whilst a member of the Harvard Graduate School, Eliot met and fell in love with Emily Hale. Eliot was awarded a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, in 1914. He first visited Marburg, Germany, where he planned to take a summer programme, but when the First World War broke out he went to Oxford instead. At the time so many American students attended Merton that the Junior Common Room proposed a motion "that this society abhors the Americanization of Oxford". It was defeated by two votes after Eliot reminded the students how much they owed American culture. Eliot wrote to Conrad Aiken on New Year's Eve 1914: "I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls [...] Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead." Escaping Oxford, Eliot spent much of his time in London. This city had a monumental and life-altering effect on Eliot for several reasons, the most significant of which was his introduction to the influential American literary figure Ezra Pound. A connection through Aiken resulted in an arranged meeting and on 22 September 1914, Eliot paid a visit to Pound's flat. Pound instantly deemed Eliot "worth watching" and was crucial to Eliot's fledgling career as a poet, as he is credited with promoting Eliot through social events and literary gatherings. Thus, according to biographer John Worthen, during his time in England Eliot "was seeing as little of Oxford as possible". He was instead spending long periods of time in London, in the company of Ezra Pound and "some of the modern artists whom the war has so far spared [...] It was Pound who helped most, introducing him everywhere." In the end, Eliot did not settle at Merton and left after a year. In 1915 he taught English at Birkbeck, University of London. In 1916, he completed a doctoral dissertation for Harvard on "Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley", but he failed to return for the viva voce exam. Marriage Before leaving the US, Eliot had told Emily Hale that he was in love with her. He exchanged letters with her from Oxford during 1914 and 1915, but they did not meet again until 1927. In a letter to Aiken late in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote: "I am very dependent upon women (I mean female society)." Less than four months later, Thayer introduced Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Cambridge governess. They were married at Hampstead Register Office on 26 June 1915. After a short visit, alone, to his family in the United States, Eliot returned to London and took several teaching jobs, such as lecturing at Birkbeck College, University of London. The philosopher Bertrand Russell took an interest in Vivienne while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some scholars have suggested that she and Russell had an affair, but the allegations were never confirmed. The marriage seems to have been markedly unhappy, in part because of Vivienne's health problems. In a letter addressed to Ezra Pound, she covers an extensive list of her symptoms, which included a habitually high temperature, fatigue, insomnia, migraines, and colitis. This, coupled with apparent mental instability, meant that she was often sent away by Eliot and her doctors for extended periods of time in the hope of improving her health. As time went on, he became increasingly detached from her. According to witnesses, both Eliots were frequent complainers of illness, physical and mental, while Eliot would drink excessively and Vivienne is said to have developed a liking for opium and ether, drugs prescribed for medical issues. It is claimed that the couple's wearying behaviour caused some visitors to vow never to spend another evening in the company of both together. The couple formally separated in 1933, and in 1938 Vivienne's brother, Maurice, had her committed to a mental hospital, against her will, where she remained until her death of heart disease in 1947. When told via a phone call from the asylum that Vivienne had died unexpectedly during the night, Eliot is said to have buried his face in his hands and cried out ‘Oh God, oh God.’ Their relationship became the subject of a 1984 play Tom & Viv, which in 1994 was adapted as a film of the same name. In a private paper written in his sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of [Ezra] Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land." Teaching, banking, and publishing After leaving Merton, Eliot worked as a schoolteacher, most notably at Highgate School in London, where he taught French and Latin: his students included John Betjeman. He subsequently taught at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. To earn extra money, he wrote book reviews and lectured at evening extension courses at University College London and Oxford. In 1917, he took a position at Lloyds Bank in London, working on foreign accounts. On a trip to Paris in August 1920 with the artist Wyndham Lewis, he met the writer James Joyce. Eliot said he found Joyce arrogant, and Joyce doubted Eliot's ability as a poet at the time, but the two writers soon became friends, with Eliot visiting Joyce whenever he was in Paris. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis also maintained a close friendship, leading to Lewis's later making his well-known portrait painting of Eliot in 1938. Charles Whibley recommended T.S. Eliot to Geoffrey Faber. In 1925 Eliot left Lloyds to become a director in the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber), where he remained for the rest of his career. At Faber and Faber, he was responsible for publishing distinguished English poets, including W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Charles Madge and Ted Hughes. Conversion to Anglicanism and British citizenship On 29 June 1927, Eliot converted from Unitarianism to Anglicanism, and in November that year he took British citizenship, thereby renouncing his United States citizenship in the event he had not officially done so previously. He became a churchwarden of his parish church, St Stephen's, Gloucester Road, London, and a life member of the Society of King Charles the Martyr. He specifically identified as Anglo-Catholic, proclaiming himself "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion". About 30 years later Eliot commented on his religious views that he combined "a Catholic cast of mind, a Calvinist heritage, and a Puritanical temperament". He also had wider spiritual interests, commenting that "I see the path of progress for modern man in his occupation with his own self, with his inner being" and citing Goethe and Rudolf Steiner as exemplars of such a direction. One of Eliot's biographers, Peter Ackroyd, commented that "the purposes of [Eliot's conversion] were two-fold. One: the Church of England offered Eliot some hope for himself, and I think Eliot needed some resting place. But secondly, it attached Eliot to the English community and English culture." Separation and remarriage By 1932, Eliot had been contemplating a separation from his wife for some time. When Harvard offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932–1933 academic year, he accepted and left Vivienne in England. Upon his return, he arranged for a formal separation from her, avoiding all but one meeting with her between his leaving for America in 1932 and her death in 1947. Vivienne was committed to the Northumberland House mental hospital in Woodberry Down, Manor House, London, in 1938, and remained there until she died. Although Eliot was still legally her husband, he never visited her. From 1933 to 1946 Eliot had a close emotional relationship with Emily Hale. Eliot later destroyed Hale's letters to him, but Hale donated Eliot's to Princeton University Library where they were sealed, following Eliot's and Hale's wishes, for 50 years after both had died, until 2020. When Eliot heard of the donation he deposited his own account of their relationship with Harvard University to be opened whenever the Princeton letters were. From 1938 to 1957 Eliot's public companion was Mary Trevelyan of London University, who wanted to marry him and left a detailed memoir. From 1946 to 1957, Eliot shared a flat at 19 Carlyle Mansions, Chelsea, with his friend John Davy Hayward, who collected and managed Eliot's papers, styling himself "Keeper of the Eliot Archive". Hayward also collected Eliot's pre-Prufrock verse, commercially published after Eliot's death as Poems Written in Early Youth. When Eliot and Hayward separated their household in 1957, Hayward retained his collection of Eliot's papers, which he bequeathed to King's College, Cambridge, in 1965. On 10 January 1957, at the age of 68, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Fletcher, who was 30. In contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949. They kept their wedding secret; the ceremony was held in St. Barnabas' Church, Kensington, London, at 6:15 am with virtually no one in attendance other than his wife's parents. Eliot had no children with either of his wives. In the early 1960s, by then in failing health, Eliot worked as an editor for the Wesleyan University Press, seeking new poets in Europe for publication. After Eliot's death, Valerie dedicated her time to preserving his legacy, by editing and annotating The Letters of T. S. Eliot and a facsimile of the draft of The Waste Land. Valerie Eliot died on 9 November 2012 at her home in London. Death and honours Eliot died of emphysema at his home in Kensington in London, on 4 January 1965, and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were taken to St Michael and All Angels' Church, East Coker, the village in Somerset from which his Eliot ancestors had emigrated to America. A wall plaque in the church commemorates him with a quotation from his poem East Coker: "In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning." In 1967, on the second anniversary of his death, Eliot was commemorated by the placement of a large stone in the floor of Poets' Corner in London's Westminster Abbey. The stone, cut by designer Reynolds Stone, is inscribed with his life dates, his Order of Merit, and a quotation from his poem Little Gidding, "the communication / of the dead is tongued with fire beyond / the language of the living." In 1986, a blue plaque was placed on the apartment block - No. 3 Kensington Court Gardens - where he lived and died. Poetry For a poet of his stature, Eliot produced relatively few poems. He was aware of this even early in his career; he wrote to J.H. Woods, one of his former Harvard professors, "My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event." Typically, Eliot first published his poems individually in periodicals or in small books or pamphlets and then collected them in books. His first collection was Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). In 1920, he published more poems in Ara Vos Prec (London) and Poems: 1920 (New York). These had the same poems (in a different order) except that "Ode" in the British edition was replaced with "Hysteria" in the American edition. In 1925, he collected The Waste Land and the poems in Prufrock and Poems into one volume and added The Hollow Men to form Poems: 1909–1925. From then on, he updated this work as Collected Poems. Exceptions are Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), a collection of light verse; Poems Written in Early Youth, posthumously published in 1967 and consisting mainly of poems published between 1907 and 1910 in The Harvard Advocate, and Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917, material Eliot never intended to have published, which appeared posthumously in 1996. During an interview in 1959, Eliot said of his nationality and its role in his work: "I'd say that my poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation in England. That I'm sure of. ... It wouldn't be what it is, and I imagine it wouldn't be so good; putting it as modestly as I can, it wouldn't be what it is if I'd been born in England, and it wouldn't be what it is if I'd stayed in America. It's a combination of things. But in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America." Cleo McNelly Kearns notes in her biography that Eliot was deeply influenced by Indic traditions, notably the Upanishads. From the Sanskrit ending of The Waste Land to the "What Krishna meant" section of Four Quartets shows how much Indic religions and more specifically Hinduism made up his philosophical basic for his thought process. It must also be acknowledged, as Chinmoy Guha showed in his book Where the Dreams Cross: T S Eliot and French Poetry (Macmillan, 2011) that he was deeply influenced by French poets from Baudelaire to Paul Valéry. He himself wrote in his 1940 essay on W.B. Yeats: "The kind of poetry that I needed to teach me the use of my own voice did not exist in English at all; it was only to be found in French." ("Yeats", On Poetry and Poets, 1948). "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" In 1915, Ezra Pound, overseas editor of Poetry magazine, recommended to Harriet Monroe, the magazine's founder, that she should publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Although the character Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only twenty-two. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table", were considered shocking and offensive, especially at a time when Georgian Poetry was hailed for its derivations of the nineteenth century Romantic Poets. The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of Dante and refers to a number of literary works, including Hamlet and those of the French Symbolists. Its reception in London can be gauged from an unsigned review in The Times Literary Supplement on 21 June 1917. "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr. Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry." "The Waste Land" In October 1922, Eliot published "The Waste Land" in The Criterion. Eliot's dedication to il miglior fabbro ('the better craftsman') refers to Ezra Pound's significant hand in editing and reshaping the poem from a longer Eliot manuscript, to the shortened version that appears in publication. It was composed during a period of personal difficulty for Eliot—his marriage was failing, and both he and Vivienne were suffering from nervous disorders. Before the poem's publication as a book in December 1922, Eliot distanced himself from its vision of despair. On 15 November 1922, he wrote to Richard Aldington, saying, "As for The Waste Land, that is a thing of the past so far as I am concerned and I am now feeling toward a new form and style." The poem is often read as a representation of the disillusionment of the post-war generation. Dismissing this view, Eliot commented in 1931, "When I wrote a poem called The Waste Land, some of the more approving critics said that I had expressed 'the disillusion of a generation', which is nonsense. I may have expressed for them their own illusion of being disillusioned, but that did not form part of my intention." The poem is known for its obscure nature—its slippage between satire and prophecy; its abrupt changes of speaker, location, and time. This structural complexity is one of the reasons that the poem has become a touchstone of modern literature, a poetic counterpart to a novel published in the same year, James Joyce's Ulysses. Among its best-known phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" and "Shantih shantih shantih"the Sanskrit mantra which ends the poem. "The Hollow Men" "The Hollow Men" appeared in 1925. For the critic Edmund Wilson, it marked "The nadir of the phase of despair and desolation given such effective expression in 'The Waste Land'." It is Eliot's major poem of the late 1920s. Similar to Eliot's other works, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary. Post-war Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised), the difficulty of hope and religious conversion, Eliot's failed marriage. Allen Tate perceived a shift in Eliot's method, writing, "The mythologies disappear altogether in 'The Hollow Men'." This is a striking claim for a poem as indebted to Dante as anything else in Eliot's early work, to say little of the modern English mythology—the "Old Guy Fawkes" of the Gunpowder Plot—or the colonial and agrarian mythos of Joseph Conrad and James George Frazer, which, at least for reasons of textual history, echo in The Waste Land. The "continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity" that is so characteristic of his mythical method remained in fine form. "The Hollow Men" contains some of Eliot's most famous lines, notably its conclusion: This is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper. "Ash-Wednesday" "Ash-Wednesday" is the first long poem written by Eliot, after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Published in 1930, it deals with the struggle that ensues when a person who has lacked faith acquires it. Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem", it is richly but ambiguously allusive, and deals with the aspiration to move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation. Eliot's style of writing in "Ash-Wednesday" showed a marked shift from the poetry he had written prior to his 1927 conversion, and his post-conversion style continued in a similar vein. His style became less ironic, and the poems were no longer populated by multiple characters in dialogue. Eliot's subject matter also became more focused on his spiritual concerns and his Christian faith. Many critics were particularly enthusiastic about "Ash-Wednesday". Edwin Muir maintained that it is one of the most moving poems Eliot wrote, and perhaps the "most perfect", though it was not well received by everyone. The poem's groundwork of orthodox Christianity discomfited many of the more secular literati. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats In 1939, Eliot published a book of light verse, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. ("Old Possum" was Ezra Pound's friendly nickname for Eliot.) The first edition had an illustration of the author on the cover. In 1954, the composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems for speaker and orchestra in a work titled Practical Cats. After Eliot's death, the book was the basis of the musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber, first produced in London's West End in 1981 and opening on Broadway the following year. Four Quartets Eliot regarded Four Quartets as his masterpiece, and it is the work that most of all led him to being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. It consists of four long poems, each first published separately: "Burnt Norton" (1936), "East Coker" (1940), "The Dry Salvages" (1941) and "Little Gidding" (1942). Each has five sections. Although they resist easy characterisation, each poem includes meditations on the nature of time in some important respect—theological, historical, physical—and its relation to the human condition. Each poem is associated with one of the four classical elements, respectively: air, earth, water, and fire. "Burnt Norton" is a meditative poem that begins with the narrator trying to focus on the present moment while walking through a garden, focusing on images and sounds such as the bird, the roses, clouds and an empty pool. The meditation leads the narrator to reach "the still point" in which there is no attempt to get anywhere or to experience place and/or time, instead experiencing "a grace of sense". In the final section, the narrator contemplates the arts ("words" and "music") as they relate to time. The narrator focuses particularly on the poet's art of manipulating "Words [which] strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden [of time], under the tension, slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision, [and] will not stay in place, / Will not stay still." By comparison, the narrator concludes that "Love is itself unmoving, / Only the cause and end of movement, / Timeless, and undesiring." "East Coker" continues the examination of time and meaning, focusing in a famous passage on the nature of language and poetry. Out of darkness, Eliot offers a solution: "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope." "The Dry Salvages" treats the element of water, via images of river and sea. It strives to contain opposites: "The past and future / Are conquered, and reconciled." "Little Gidding" (the element of fire) is the most anthologised of the Quartets. Eliot's experiences as an air raid warden in the Blitz power the poem, and he imagines meeting Dante during the German bombing. The beginning of the Quartets ("Houses / Are removed, destroyed") had become a violent everyday experience; this creates an animation, where for the first time he talks of love as the driving force behind all experience. From this background, the Quartets end with an affirmation of Julian of Norwich: "All shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well." The Four Quartets draws upon Christian theology, art, symbolism and language of such figures as Dante, and mystics St. John of the Cross and Julian of Norwich. Plays With the important exception of Four Quartets, Eliot directed much of his creative energies after Ash Wednesday to writing plays in verse, mostly comedies or plays with redemptive endings. He was long a critic and admirer of Elizabethan and Jacobean verse drama; witness his allusions to Webster, Thomas Middleton, William Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd in The Waste Land. In a 1933 lecture he said "Every poet would like, I fancy, to be able to think that he had some direct social utility . . . . He would like to be something of a popular entertainer and be able to think his own thoughts behind a tragic or a comic mask. He would like to convey the pleasures of poetry, not only to a larger audience but to larger groups of people collectively; and the theatre is the best place in which to do it." After The Waste Land (1922), he wrote that he was "now feeling toward a new form and style". One project he had in mind was writing a play in verse, using some of the rhythms of early jazz. The play featured "Sweeney", a character who had appeared in a number of his poems. Although Eliot did not finish the play, he did publish two scenes from the piece. These scenes, titled Fragment of a Prologue (1926) and Fragment of an Agon (1927), were published together in 1932 as Sweeney Agonistes. Although Eliot noted that this was not intended to be a one-act play, it is sometimes performed as one. A pageant play by Eliot called The Rock was performed in 1934 for the benefit of churches in the Diocese of London. Much of it was a collaborative effort; Eliot accepted credit only for the authorship of one scene and the choruses. George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, had been instrumental in connecting Eliot with producer E. Martin Browne for the production of The Rock, and later commissioned Eliot to write another play for the Canterbury Festival in 1935. This one, Murder in the Cathedral, concerning the death of the martyr, Thomas Becket, was more under Eliot's control. Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd comments that "for [Eliot], Murder in the Cathedral and succeeding verse plays offered a double advantage; it allowed him to practice poetry but it also offered a convenient home for his religious sensibility." After this, he worked on more "commercial" plays for more general audiences: The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk, (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958) (the latter three were produced by Henry Sherek and directed by E. Martin Browne). The Broadway production in New York of The Cocktail Party received the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play. Eliot wrote The Cocktail Party while he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study. Regarding his method of playwriting, Eliot explained, "If I set out to write a play, I start by an act of choice. I settle upon a particular emotional situation, out of which characters and a plot will emerge. And then lines of poetry may come into being: not from the original impulse but from a secondary stimulation of the unconscious mind." Literary criticism Eliot also made significant contributions to the field of literary criticism, and strongly influenced the school of New Criticism. He was somewhat self-deprecating and minimising of his work and once said his criticism was merely a "by-product" of his "private poetry-workshop". But the critic William Empson once said, "I do not know for certain how much of my own mind [Eliot] invented, let alone how much of it is a reaction against him or indeed a consequence of misreading him. He is a very penetrating influence, perhaps not unlike the east wind." In his critical essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent", Eliot argues that art must be understood not in a vacuum, but in the context of previous pieces of art. "In a peculiar sense [an artist or poet] ... must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past." This essay was an important influence over the New Criticism by introducing the idea that the value of a work of art must be viewed in the context of the artist's previous works, a "simultaneous order" of works (i.e., "tradition"). Eliot himself employed this concept on many of his works, especially on his long-poem The Waste Land. Also important to New Criticism was the idea—as articulated in Eliot's essay "Hamlet and His Problems"—of an "objective correlative", which posits a connection among the words of the text and events, states of mind, and experiences. This notion concedes that a poem means what it says, but suggests that there can be a non-subjective judgment based on different readers' different—but perhaps corollary—interpretations of a work. More generally, New Critics took a cue from Eliot in regard to his "'classical' ideals and his religious thought; his attention to the poetry and drama of the early seventeenth century; his deprecation of the Romantics, especially Shelley; his proposition that good poems constitute 'not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion'; and his insistence that 'poets... at present must be difficult'." Eliot's essays were a major factor in the revival of interest in the metaphysical poets. Eliot particularly praised the metaphysical poets' ability to show experience as both psychological and sensual, while at the same time infusing this portrayal with—in Eliot's view—wit and uniqueness. Eliot's essay "The Metaphysical Poets", along with giving new significance and attention to metaphysical poetry, introduced his now well-known definition of "unified sensibility", which is considered by some to mean the same thing as the term "metaphysical". His 1922 poem The Waste Land also can be better understood in light of his work as a critic. He had argued that a poet must write "programmatic criticism", that is, a poet should write to advance his own interests rather than to advance "historical scholarship". Viewed from Eliot's critical lens, The Waste Land likely shows his personal despair about World War I rather than an objective historical understanding of it. Late in his career, Eliot focused much of his creative energy on writing for the theatre; some of his earlier critical writing, in essays such as "Poetry and Drama", "Hamlet and his Problems", and "The Possibility of a Poetic Drama", focused on the aesthetics of writing drama in verse. Critical reception Responses to his poetry The writer Ronald Bush notes that Eliot's early poems like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "Portrait of a Lady", "La Figlia Che Piange", "Preludes", and "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" had "[an] effect [that] was both unique and compelling, and their assurance staggered [Eliot's] contemporaries who were privileged to read them in manuscript. [Conrad] Aiken, for example, marveled at 'how sharp and complete and sui generis the whole thing was, from the outset. The wholeness is there, from the very beginning.'" The initial critical response to Eliot's The Waste Land was mixed. Bush notes that the piece was at first correctly perceived as a work of jazz-like syncopation—and, like 1920s jazz, essentially iconoclastic." Some critics, like Edmund Wilson, Conrad Aiken, and Gilbert Seldes thought it was the best poetry being written in the English language while others thought it was esoteric and wilfully difficult. Edmund Wilson, being one of the critics who praised Eliot, called him "one of our only authentic poets". Wilson also pointed out some of Eliot's weaknesses as a poet. In regard to The Waste Land, Wilson admits its flaws ("its lack of structural unity"), but concluded, "I doubt whether there is a single other poem of equal length by a contemporary American which displays so high and so varied a mastery of English verse." Charles Powell was negative in his criticism of Eliot, calling his poems incomprehensible. And the writers of Time magazine were similarly baffled by a challenging poem like The Waste Land. John Crowe Ransom wrote negative criticisms of Eliot's work but also had positive things to say. For instance, though Ransom negatively criticised The Waste Land for its "extreme disconnection", Ransom was not completely condemnatory of Eliot's work and admitted that Eliot was a talented poet. Addressing some of the common criticisms directed against The Waste Land at the time, Gilbert Seldes stated, "It seems at first sight remarkably disconnected and confused... [however] a closer view of the poem does more than illuminate the difficulties; it reveals the hidden form of the work, [and] indicates how each thing falls into place." Eliot's reputation as a poet, as well as his influence in the academy, peaked following the publication of The Four Quartets. In an essay on Eliot published in 1989, the writer Cynthia Ozick refers to this peak of influence (from the 1940s through the early 1960s) as "the Age of Eliot" when Eliot "seemed pure zenith, a colossus, nothing less than a permanent luminary, fixed in the firmament like the sun and the moon". But during this post-war period, others, like Ronald Bush, observed that this time also marked the beginning of the decline in Eliot's literary influence: As Eliot's conservative religious and political convictions began to seem less congenial in the postwar world, other readers reacted with suspicion to his assertions of authority, obvious in Four Quartets and implicit in the earlier poetry. The result, fueled by intermittent rediscovery of Eliot's occasional anti-Semitic rhetoric, has been a progressive downward revision of his once towering reputation. Bush also notes that Eliot's reputation "slipped" significantly further after his death. He writes, "Sometimes regarded as too academic (William Carlos Williams's view), Eliot was also frequently criticized for a deadening neoclassicism (as he himself—perhaps just as unfairly—had criticized Milton). However, the multifarious tributes from practicing poets of many schools published during his centenary in 1988 was a strong indication of the intimidating continued presence of his poetic voice." Literary scholars, such as Harold Bloom and Stephen Greenblatt, acknowledge Eliot's poetry as central to the literary English canon. For instance, the editors of The Norton Anthology of English Literature write, "There is no disagreement on [Eliot's] importance as one of the great renovators of the English poetry dialect, whose influence on a whole generation of poets, critics, and intellectuals generally was enormous. [However] his range as a poet [was] limited, and his interest in the great middle ground of human experience (as distinct from the extremes of saint and sinner) [was] deficient." Despite this criticism, these scholars also acknowledge "[Eliot's] poetic cunning, his fine craftsmanship, his original accent, his historical and representative importance as the poet of the modern symbolist-Metaphysical tradition". Antisemitism The depiction of Jews in some of Eliot's poems has led several critics to accuse him of antisemitism, most forcefully in Anthony Julius' book T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form (1996). In "Gerontion", Eliot writes, in the voice of the poem's elderly narrator, "And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner [of my building] / Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp." Another example appears in the poem, "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar" in which Eliot wrote, "The rats are underneath the piles. / The jew is underneath the lot. / Money in furs." Julius writes: "The anti-Semitism is unmistakable. It reaches out like a clear signal to the reader." Julius' viewpoint has been supported by Harold Bloom, Christopher Ricks, George Steiner, Tom Paulin and James Fenton. In lectures delivered at the University of Virginia in 1933 (published in 1934 under the title After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy), Eliot wrote of societal tradition and coherence, "What is still more important [than cultural homogeneity] is unity of religious background, and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable." Eliot never re-published this book/lecture. In his 1934 pageant play The Rock, Eliot distances himself from Fascist movements of the 1930s by caricaturing Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts, who "firmly refuse/ To descend to palaver with anthropoid Jews". The "new evangels" of totalitarianism are presented as antithetic to the spirit of Christianity. In In Defence of T. S. Eliot (2001) and T. S. Eliot (2006), Craig Raine sought to defend Eliot from the charge of anti-Semitism. Paul Dean was not convinced by Raine's argument. Nevertheless, Dean concluded, "Ultimately, as both Raine and, to do him justice, Julius insist, however much Eliot may have been compromised as a person, as we all are in our several ways, his greatness as a poet remains." Critic Terry Eagleton also questioned the entire basis for Raine's book, writing, "Why do critics feel a need to defend the authors they write on, like doting parents deaf to all criticism of their obnoxious children? Eliot's well-earned reputation [as a poet] is established beyond all doubt, and making him out to be as unflawed as the Archangel Gabriel does him no favours." Influence Eliot influenced many poets, novelists, and songwriters, including Seán Ó Ríordáin, Máirtín Ó Díreáin, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Bob Dylan, Hart Crane, William Gaddis, Allen Tate, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Trevor Nunn, Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Russell Kirk, George Seferis (who in 1936 published a modern Greek translation of The Waste Land) and James Joyce. T. S. Eliot was a strong influence on 20th-century Caribbean poetry written in English, including the epic Omeros (1990) by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, and Islands (1969) by Barbadian Kamau Brathwaite. Honours and awards Below is a partial list of honours and awards received by Eliot or bestowed or created in his honour. National or state honours These honours are displayed in order of precedence based on Eliot's nationality and rules of protocol, not awarding date. Literary awards Nobel Prize in Literature "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry" (1948) Hanseatic Goethe Prize (of Hamburg) (1955) Dante Medal (of Florence) (1959) Drama awards 1950 Tony Award for Best Play for the Broadway production of The Cocktail Party 1983 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for his poems used in the musical Cats (posthumous award) 1983 Tony Award for Best Original Score for his poems used in the musical Cats (shared with Andrew Lloyd Webber) (posthumous award) Music awards Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for his poems used in the song "Memory" (1982) Academic awards Inducted into Phi Beta Kappa (1935) Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1954) Elected to the American Philosophical Society (1960) Thirteen Honorary Doctorates (Including ones from Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and Harvard) Other honours Eliot College of the University of Kent, England, named in his honour Celebrated on U.S. commemorative postage stamps Star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame Works Source: Earliest works Prose "The Birds of Prey" (a short story; 1905) "A Tale of a Whale" (a short story; 1905) "The Man Who Was King" (a short story; 1905) "The Wine and the Puritans" (review, 1909) "The Point of View" (1909) "Gentlemen and Seamen" (1909) "Egoist" (review, 1909) Poems "A Fable for Feasters" (1905) "[A Lyric:]'If Time and Space as Sages say'" (1905) "[At Graduation 1905]" (1905) "Song: 'If space and time, as sages say'" (1907) "Before Morning" (1908) "Circe's Palace" (1908) "Song: 'When we came home across the hill'" (1909) "On a Portrait" (1909) "Song: 'The moonflower opens to the moth'" (1909) "Nocturne" (1909) "Humoresque" (1910) "Spleen" (1910) "[Class] Ode" (1910) "The Death of Saint Narcissus" (c.1911-15) Poetry Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Portrait of a Lady Preludes Rhapsody on a Windy Night Morning at the Window The Boston Evening Transcript (about the Boston Evening Transcript) Aunt Helen Cousin Nancy Mr. Apollinax Hysteria Conversation Galante La Figlia Che Piange Poems (1920) Gerontion Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar Sweeney Erect A Cooking Egg Le Directeur Mélange Adultère de Tout Lune de Miel The Hippopotamus Dans le Restaurant Whispers of Immortality Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service Sweeney Among the Nightingales The Waste Land (1922) The Hollow Men (1925) Ariel Poems (1927–1954) Journey of the Magi (1927) A Song for Simeon (1928) Animula (1929) Marina (1930) Triumphal March (1931) The Cultivation of Christmas Trees (1954) Macavity:The Mystery Cat Ash Wednesday (1930) Coriolan (1931) Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs and Billy M'Caw: The Remarkable Parrot (1939) in The Queen's Book of the Red Cross Four Quartets (1945) Plays Sweeney Agonistes (published in 1926, first performed in 1934) The Rock (1934) Murder in the Cathedral (1935) The Family Reunion (1939) The Cocktail Party (1949) The Confidential Clerk (1953) The Elder Statesman (first performed in 1958, published in 1959) Non-fiction Christianity & Culture (1939, 1948) The Second-Order Mind (1920) Tradition and the Individual Talent (1920) The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920) "Hamlet and His Problems" Homage to John Dryden (1924) Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1928) For Lancelot Andrewes (1928) Dante (1929) Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (1932) The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933) After Strange Gods (1934) Elizabethan Essays (1934) Essays Ancient and Modern (1936) The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1941) made by Eliot, with an essay on Rudyard Kipling Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948) Poetry and Drama (1951) The Three Voices of Poetry (1954) The Frontiers of Criticism (1956) On Poetry and Poets (1943) Posthumous publications To Criticize the Critic (1965) Poems Written in Early Youth (1967) The Waste Land: Facsimile Edition (1974) Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917 (1996) Critical editions Collected Poems, 1909–1962 (1963), excerpt and text search Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, Illustrated Edition (1982), excerpt and text search Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, edited by Frank Kermode (1975), excerpt and text search The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions), edited by Michael North (2000) excerpt and text search The Poems of T.S. Eliot, volume 1 (Collected & Uncollected Poems) and volume 2 (Practical Cats & Further Verses), edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue (2015), Faber & Faber Selected Essays (1932); enlarged (1960) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton, Volume 1: 1898–1922 (1988, revised 2009) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton, Volume 2: 1923–1925 (2009) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 3: 1926–1927 (2012) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 4: 1928–1929 (2013) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 5: 1930–1931 (2014) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 6: 1932–1933 (2016) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 7: 1934–1935 (2017) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 8: 1936–1938 (2019) The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Volume 9: 1939–1941 (2021) Notes Further reading Ackroyd, Peter. T. S. Eliot: A Life (1984). Ali, Ahmed. Mr. Eliot's Penny World of Dreams: An Essay in the Interpretation of T.S. Eliot's Poetry, Published for the Lucknow University by New Book Co., Bombay, P.S. King & Staples Ltd, Westminster, London, 1942, 138 pp. Asher, Kenneth T. S. Eliot and Ideology (1995). Bottum, Joseph, "What T. S. Eliot Almost Believed", First Things 55 (August/September 1995): 25–30. Brand, Clinton A. "The Voice of This Calling: The Enduring Legacy of T. S. Eliot", Modern Age Volume 45, Number 4; Fall 2003, conservative perspective. Brown, Alec. "The Lyrical Impulse in Eliot's Poetry", Scrutiny, vol. 2. Bush, Ronald. T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style (1984). Bush, Ronald, 'The Presence of the Past: Ethnographic Thinking/ Literary Politics'. In Prehistories of the Future, ed. Elzar Barkan and Ronald Bush, Stanford University Press (1995). Crawford, Robert. The Savage and the City in the Work of T. S. Eliot (1987). Crawford, Robert. Young Eliot: From St Louis to "The Waste Land" (2015). Crawford, Robert. Eliot. After The Waste Land (2022). Christensen, Karen. "Dear Mrs. Eliot", The Guardian Review (29 January 2005). Das, Jolly. 'Eliot's Prismatic Plays: A Multifaceted Quest'. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2007. Dawson, J. L., P. D. Holland & D. J. McKitterick, A Concordance to "The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot" Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1995. Forster, E. M. Essay on T. S. Eliot, in Life and Letters, June 1929. Gardner, Helen. The Art of T. S. Eliot (1949). Gordon, Lyndall. T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life (1998). Guha, Chinmoy. Where the Dreams Cross: T. S. Eliot and French Poetry (2000, 2011). Harding, W. D. T. S. Eliot, 1925–1935, Scrutiny, September 1936: A Review. Hargrove, Nancy Duvall. Landscape as Symbol in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot. University Press of Mississippi (1978). Hearn, Sheila G., Tradition and the Individual Scot]: Edwin Muir & T.S. Eliot, in Cencrastus No. 13, Summer 1983, pp. 21–24, Hearn, Sheila G. T. S. Eliot's Parisian Year. University Press of Florida (2009). Julius, Anthony. T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form. Cambridge University Press (1995). Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot (1969). Kenner, Hugh. editor, T. S. Eliot: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall (1962). Kirk, Russell Eliot and His Age: T. S, Eliot's Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century (Introduction by Benjamin G. Lockerd Jr.). Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Republication of the revised second edition, 2008. Kojecky, Roger. T.S. Eliot's Social Criticism, Faber & Faber, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1972, revised Kindle edn. 2014. Lal, P. (editor), T. S. Eliot: Homage from India: A Commemoration Volume of 55 Essays & Elegies, Writer's Workshop Calcutta, 1965. The Letters of T. S. Eliot. Ed. Valerie Eliot. Vol. I, 1898–1922. San Diego [etc.], 1988. Vol. 2, 1923–1925. Edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton, London: Faber, 2009. Levy, William Turner and Victor Scherle. Affectionately, T. S. Eliot: The Story of a Friendship: 1947–1965 (1968). Matthews, T. S. Great Tom: Notes Towards the Definition of T. S. Eliot (1973) Maxwell, D. E. S. The Poetry of T. S. Eliot, Routledge and Kegan Paul (1960). Miller, James E., Jr. T. S. Eliot. The Making of an American Poet, 1888–1922. The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2005. North, Michael (ed.) The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions). New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. Raine, Craig. T. S. Eliot. Oxford University Press (2006). Ricks, Christopher.T. S. Eliot and Prejudice (1988). Robinson, Ian "The English Prophets", The Brynmill Press Ltd (2001) Schuchard, Ronald. Eliot's Dark Angel: Intersections of Life and Art (1999). Scofield, Dr. Martin, "T.S. Eliot: The Poems", Cambridge University Press (1988). Sencourt, Robert. T. S. Eliot: A Memoir (1971) Seymour-Jones, Carole. Painted Shadow: A Life of Vivienne Eliot (2001). Sinha, Arun Kumar and Vikram, Kumar. T. S. Eliot: An Intensive Study of Selected Poems, New Delhi: Spectrum Books Pvt. Ltd (2005). Spender, Stephen. T. S. Eliot (1975) Spurr, Barry, Anglo-Catholic in Religion: T. S. Eliot and Christianity, The Lutterworth Press (2009) Tate, Allen, editor. T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work (1966; republished by Penguin, 1971). External links Biography T. S. Eliot at the Poetry Foundation Biography From T. S. Eliot Lives' and Legacies Eliot family genealogy, including T. S. Eliot Eliot's grave Lyndall Gordon, Eliot's Early Years, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, . T. S. Eliot Profile, Poems, Essays at Poets.org Works official listing of T. S. Eliot's works with some available in full doollee.com listing of T S Eliot's works written for the stage Poems by T.S. Eliot and biography at PoetryFoundation.org Text of early poems (1907–1910) printed in The Harvard Advocate T. S. Eliot Collection at Bartleby.com T.S. Eliot's Cats The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. Knopf, 1921. Via HathiTrust. Websites T. S. Eliot Society (UK) Resource Hub T. S. Eliot Hypertext Project Official (T. S. Eliot Estate) site T. S. Eliot Society (US) Home Page Archives Search for T.S. Eliot at Harvard University T. S. Eliot Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin T. S. Eliot Collection at Merton College, Oxford University T. S. Eliot collection at University of Victoria, Special Collections T. S. Eliot collection at the University of Maryland Libraries T. S. Eliot Collection. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Miscellaneous Links to audio recordings of Eliot reading his work An interview with Eliot: Yale College Lecture on T.S. Eliot audio, video and full transcripts from Open Yale Courses T S Eliot at the British Library Category:1888 births Category:1965 deaths Category:American emigrants to the United Kingdom Category:American expatriates in France Category:Eliot family (America) Category:People who renounced United States citizenship Category:Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom Category:Writers from St. Louis Category:20th-century American poets Category:20th-century British poets Category:American male poets Category:Anglican poets Category:British male poets Category:Epic poets Category:Modernist poetry in English Category:American modernist poets Category:British modernist poets Category:Poets from Missouri Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers Category:20th-century American writers Category:20th-century British male writers Category:20th-century British non-fiction writers Category:20th-century essayists Category:20th-century short story writers Category:American male essayists Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American male short story writers Category:Anglo-Catholic writers Category:British male essayists Category:British male short story writers Category:Lost Generation writers Category:Modernism Category:Neoclassical writers Category:Writers about activism and social change Category:Writers who illustrated their own writing Category:20th-century American dramatists and playwrights Category:American male dramatists and playwrights Category:British male dramatists and playwrights Category:Modernist theatre Category:American literary critics Category:British anthologists Category:British literary critics Category:Literary theorists Category:New Criticism Category:Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Category:Alumni of Merton College, Oxford Category:Harvard Advocate alumni Category:Harvard College alumni Category:Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Category:Lecturers Category:Milton Academy alumni Category:People associated with University of London Worldwide Category:University of Paris alumni Category:Wesleyan University people Category:American Nobel laureates Category:British Nobel laureates Category:Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Members of the Order of Merit Category:Nobel laureates affiliated with Missouri Category:Nobel laureates in Literature Category:Officers of the Legion of Honour Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Category:Tony Award winners Category:American Anglo-Catholics Category:Anglo-Catholic poets Category:British Anglo-Catholics Category:Converts to Anglicanism from Unitarianism Category:Burials in Somerset Category:Deaths from emphysema Category:People with acquired British citizenship Category:Presidents of the Classical Association Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:Smith Academy (Missouri) alumni Category:Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School alumni

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Foals (band)

Foals are a rock band from Oxford, England formed in 2005, consisting of lead vocalist and lead guitarist Yannis Philippakis, drummer and percussionist Jack Bevan, rhythm guitarist Jimmy Smith, and keyboardist Edwin Congreave. They are currently signed to Warner Bros. Records, and have released four studio albums: Antidotes (2008), Total Life Forever (2010), Holy Fire (2013), What Went Down (2015), one video album, six extended plays and nineteen singles. The band have toured internationally and have featured at Glastonbury, Coachella and Roskilde festivals.

Total Life Forever: 2009-2010

In August 2009, Foals started recording their second album at Svenska Grammofon Studion in Gothenburg, Sweden. The album, Total Life Forever, has been described by the band members as sounding like "tropical prog" and "like the dream of an eagle dying". The band have described the album as being "a lot less funk" than they had originally planned. The album was produced by Luke Smith, formerly of Clor. The album's title is named after an element of Ray Kurzweil's theory of singularity. The band's frontman, Yannis Philippakis, has professed a longtime interest in futurology, with it informing numerous songs on Total Life Forever. On 1 March 2010, the promotional single "Spanish Sahara" was first played on Zane Lowe's show Radio 1. The Foals' website was updated that night with the video for the track, directed by longtime collaborator Dave Ma, and on 6 March, the Total Life Forever site was launched. There puzzles revealed images, lyrics and sound clips of songs from the album. The last clip appeared on 12 March, with a password entry for Foals' new website. The site was opened on 13 March and presented the art concept and media including samples of songs, photos and videos. Lead single "This Orient" was released on 3 May 2010. The album was finally released on 10 May 2010. "Spanish Sahara" was featured in trailers for season seven of Entourage, season four of Skins and Outcasts. It was also used in the soundtrack of the second season of the E4 drama Misfits. It was released as a full physical single in September 2010, featuring an edited remix starring the strings of London Contemporary Orchestra. In 2015, it was used by French studio Dontnod Entertainment in the game Life Is Strange as the music for one of its final endings. The album was nominated for the 2010 Mercury Prize. In an interview with online magazine Coup de Main, Jimmy Smith said how the band members live together on and off the road - heading to Australia to record demos for their next album together. "It's just like touring with your family, it's nice". CANNOTANSWER

Foals, stylised as FOALS, are a British rock band formed in Oxford in 2005. The band's current line-up consists of Greek-born lead vocalist and guitarist Yannis Philippakis, drummer and percussionist Jack Bevan, rhythm guitarist Jimmy Smith and bassist Walter Gervers. They are currently signed to Warner Records, and have released seven studio albums to date: Antidotes (2008), Total Life Forever (2010), Holy Fire (2013), What Went Down (2015), and Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 & 2 (2019) and their most recent, Life Is Yours (2022). They have also released one video album, six extended plays and thirty-five singles. The band have toured internationally for over a decade, and have featured at many festivals including Glastonbury, Coachella, and Roskilde. They have won a number of awards, including best live act at the 2013 Q Awards while producers Alan Moulder and Flood were awarded 'UK Producer of the Year' for their work on the album Holy Fire. The band's studio albums Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 & 2 were released March and October 2019, respectively, with the latter becoming the group's first album to top the UK Album Chart. History 2005–2006: Formation The lead singer of the band Youthmovies, Andrew Mears, originally formed the band Foals. He was present on the band's debut 7" single, "Try This on Your Piano/Look at My Furrows of Worry", but left shortly afterwards to concentrate on Youthmovies's debut album, Good Nature. Jack Bevan, Lina Simon and Yannis Philippakis were originally in cult math rock band the Edmund Fitzgerald. The group disbanded, claiming that things had become "too serious" and that they wanted to have more "fun making their music". Walter Gervers and Jimmy Smith were part of a small Oxford band called Face Meets Grill. They met at and formed the band from members of Abingdon School, the same school that Radiohead attended. They played gigs in and around Oxford, and recorded an EP in Hull. After playing Truck Festival in 2004 they separated to follow different paths and careers. Guitarist Jimmy Smith is the only one of the band members to have completed his degree, at Hull University, each of the other band members quit their respective universities when the band signed to Transgressive Records. 2007–2008: Antidotes In early 2007, the band released the limited edition 7" singles "Hummer" and "Mathletics", both produced by Gareth Parton. "Hummer" later featured on the Channel Four teen drama Skins. Philippakis described this period as 'the music was almost a premeditated mix of blending techno and minimalism [and] we'd set ourselves these rules, like 'only staccato rhythms', and 'guitars must be played really high'. In the summer of 2007, Foals began working on their debut album in New York. It was produced by Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio. However, the band decided to mix the album themselves, stating that Sitek made the first master copy of the album sound like "it was recorded in the Grand Canyon". Philippakis has stated a number of times that Foals and Sitek are on good terms, even though the mix by Sitek was rejected by the band. Foals released their debut album, titled Antidotes, on 24 March 2008 in the UK and on 8 April 2008 in the US. The album was a commercial success in the UK, debuting at number 3 on the UK Albums Charts. The album was a minor success in other countries, charting in Japan, France and the Netherlands. Non-UK versions of the album include the early Parton-produced singles. 2009–2011: Total Life Forever In August 2009, Foals started recording their second album at Svenska Grammofon Studion in Gothenburg, Sweden. The album, Total Life Forever, has been described by the band members as sounding like "tropical prog" and "like the dream of an eagle dying". The band have described the album as being "a lot less funk" than they had originally planned. The album was produced by Luke Smith, formerly of Clor. The album's title is named after an element of Ray Kurzweil's theory of singularity. The band's frontman, Yannis Philippakis, has professed a longtime interest in futurology, with it informing numerous songs on Total Life Forever. On 1 March 2010, the promotional single "Spanish Sahara" was first played on Zane Lowe's show Radio 1. Foals' website was updated that night with the video for the track, directed by longtime collaborator Dave Ma, and on 6 March, the Total Life Forever site was launched. There puzzles revealed images, lyrics and sound clips of songs from the album. The last clip appeared on 12 March, with a password entry for Foals' new website. The site was opened on 13 March and presented the art concept and media including samples of songs, photos and videos. Lead single "This Orient" was released on 3 May 2010. The album was finally released on 10 May 2010. "Spanish Sahara" was featured in trailers for season seven of Entourage, season four of Skins and Outcasts. It was also used in the soundtrack of the second season of the E4 drama Misfits. It was released as a full physical single in September 2010, featuring an edited remix starring the strings of London Contemporary Orchestra. In 2015, it was used by French studio Dontnod Entertainment in the game Life is Strange as the music for one of its endings. The album was nominated for the 2010 Mercury Prize. In an interview with online magazine Coup de Main, Jimmy Smith said how the band members live together on and off the road – heading to Australia to record demos for their next album together. "It's just like touring with your family, it's nice." 2012–2013: Holy Fire Holy Fire was released in both the UK and the US on 11 February 2013. The album's lead single, "Inhaler", received its first radio play on 5 November 2012. They played the song "My Number" for the first time on Later... with Jools Holland. Holy Fire was produced by Flood and Alan Moulder, who have worked with many artists, including Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, and My Bloody Valentine. The album was recorded at Assault & Battery studios in London. Yannis Philippakis stated that the recording process had some unconventional moments: "At one point we even made these poor studio interns collect bones. We were inspired by voodoo, these Haitian rhythms. We collected some ourselves, from butchers in Willesden High Road. Mainly cows, I think often they had gristle and cartilage on them, mainly cow and occasionally sheep. We had to order these big pots because one of the shoulder blades was too big! We boiled the flesh away so we could use them as percussion! We wanted to get primitive!" According to The Guardian: "Their producers, Flood and Alan Moulder, even tricked them by recording their rehearsal in order to capture a more uninhibited sound." In late November to mid-December, Foals toured the UK for an album preview. The tour was supported by Petite Noir (a close friend of Philippakis's). In summer 2013, they attended a number of festivals and headlined Latitude Festival in Suffolk in July. The band have recently played a World and UK tour, which ended with two sell out shows at Alexandra Palace in February. The two shows were in stark contrast compared to playing the same venue 7 years earlier to an almost empty room while supporting Bloc Party, a sentiment which lead singer Philippakis did not fail to mention during the live shows. Holy Fire was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2013. Q awarded Foals with the Best Live Act award the same year while "Inhaler" received the Best Track award from NME. In a reader-nominated "Best Album of 2013" poll, Holy Fire topped the list; as did single "My Number" in a "Best Song of 2013" poll, beating NME favourites Arctic Monkeys, amongst other acclaimed bands. 2014–2016: What Went Down On 2 April 2014, in an interview with NME, Yannis Philippakis said "Over the next month I think we're going to start writing tentatively. We've already got some bits and bobs around some riffs and some vocal melodies. I think until May we're gonna go back to Oxford and write in the 'stinkbox' and see what happens." On 9 June 2015, Foals unveiled a short video teasing an upcoming album in 2015. Foals shared album track "Mountain at My Gates" on 20 June, premiering the song via BBC Radio 1 as Annie Mac's 'Hottest Record'. On 29 July, the band followed up the track with an accompanying 3D video, filmed on a GoPro HERO. On 6 August, Zane Lowe premiered new song 'A Knife in the Ocean' on his Beats 1 radio show on Apple Music. Foals made public a lyric video for 'A Knife In The Ocean' the same day. The album What Went Down was released on 28 August 2015. In late 2015, "Mountain at My Gates" was featured on the official soundtrack of EA Sports FIFA 16. In 2016, Foals toured the UK and Europe in February/March, followed by a US tour, playing a number of songs from What Went Down as well as previous releases, with support from Peace (DJ set) and Everything Everything (UK). 2017–2019: Gervers's departure and Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost In autumn 2017, Foals announced on social media that they were going to start recording materials for a new upcoming album. On 5 January 2018, they announced that bassist Walter Gervers was departing the band amicably, whilst recording of the fifth album continued. On 8 January 2019, the band teased their fifth and sixth studio albums, Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 and Part 2, respectively. Part 1 was released on 8 March 2019 and Part 2 was released on 18 October 2019. Following Gervers's departure, it was revealed on 19 February 2019 that Jeremy Pritchard, of British band Everything Everything would join as touring bassist for the band's remaining live shows of 2019. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 was preceded by the release via streaming services of Exits, On the Luna, Sunday and In Degrees (a day before the record's release). The album was the BBC 6 Music Album of the Day on its release date. In March 2019, the band embarked on the first shows of their "Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost World Tour" which had dates running throughout 2019 and 2020. After playing several festivals across the summer of 2019 (including an unannounced set at Glastonbury and a headline performance at Truck Festival), the band released a second set of singles, "Black Bull", "The Runner" and "Into the Surf" in the lead up to Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 2. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 2 was released on 18 October 2019 through Warner and Transgressive Records. The album cover was shot by famed National Geographic photographer, Maggie Steber. The album became the band's first to reach No. 1 on the UK Album Chart. On 7 October 2019, "Rip Up The Road", a documentary detailing the recording sessions of "Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost" and subsequent 2019 world tour, was announced, with a premiere scheduled for 11 and 15 November 2019 at London's Doc’n Roll Film Festival and thereafter exclusively through Amazon Prime respectively. On 11 November 2019 "Rip Up The Road" directed by Toby L premiered at the Rio Cinema in Dalston to an audience consisting of the band, friends and family, fans, documentary contributors/crew. The documentary was filmed over a 12-month period as the band embarked upon a world tour. The film hones in on two career highlight shows at London's Alexandra Palace and provides a candid, entertaining and gripping perspective of life on the road and being in a band. It also features their infamous Glastonbury Festival secret set on The Park Stage in 2019. 2020–present: COVID-19, Congreave's departure, Life Is Yours and Gervers's return Due to the COVID-19 crisis and subsequent global lockdowns, the band was forced to cancel and reschedule their entire 2020 UK and world tour, in support of Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 2 till Spring 2021. However, due to the continuing pandemic and ongoing safety restrictions throughout into 2021, the band once again had to reschedule touring until 2022, save for a string of UK summer festival shows during August 2021, which would be the group's first live performances since early 2020. In April 2022, 10 days before the tour commenced, it was re-branded to the Life Is Yours Tour in support of their upcoming seventh studio album. On 22 September 2021, Edwin Congreave announced that he had left the band to pursue a postgraduate degree in economics. Announcing the news of Congreave's departure, the band revealed that they had already begun working on their next album, this time as a three piece band. On 11 October 2021, the band announced scoring the opening theme of the Brian Cox-hosted BBC Two science documentary television series, Universe with an updated version of "Neptune", re-worked in collaboration with Hans Zimmer's Bleeding Fingers composing collective led by the famed film composer. On 27 October 2021, the band teased a promotional clip of an iPhone snooze alarm, cryptically revealing the release date of their seventh studio album's first single, "Wake Me Up" to be released 4 November 2021. The following day, the single was confirmed by the group with a teaser clip of the audio and music streaming platforms pre-save links respectively. "Wake Me Up" was premiered and released on 4 November 2021 via BBC Radio 1's Clara Amfo's 'Hottest Record'. On 10 February 2022, Foals released "2am" and announced the name of their seventh album as Life Is Yours, and later announced the 17 June album release date. On 1 April 2022, the band released the third single, "Looking High". On 19 May 2022, Foals released the single "2001". Three days before Life Is Yours was released, the band released the fifth and final single from the album, "Crest of the Wave". On 2 May 2023, the band announced that founding bassist, Walter Gervers had rejoined the group after a six-year absence, since his initial departure in 2018. Live Foals are considered one of the top UK live acts, having won the 2013 Q Award for Best Live Act and twice being nominated for the NME Award for Best Live Act (2011 and 2013). The band have released several live EPs (Live At Liars Club, iTunes Live: London Festival '08 and iTunes Festival: London 2010), in addition to the full-length concert film Live At The Royal Albert Hall, which was directed by Dave Ma. Frontman Yannis Philippakis is known for jumping off balconies and crowd surfing during the extended interlude of "Two Steps Twice" In October 2013, Philippakis got into a confrontation with a security guard at the Auckland Town Hall in New Zealand, as the security guard attempted to prevent him from jumping into the crowd. At the end of the show, Philippakis told the crowd: "I want to say a massive thank you to you and fuck that security guy." Musical style and influences Foals are classified as an indie rock, alternative rock, dance-punk, math rock, art rock, post-rock, post-punk, art punk and indie pop band. The band's musical influences are varied, with the band members citing minimal techno, Arthur Russell, Krautrock bands such as Harmonia, and Talking Heads, as their main sources of inspiration. Band members Current members Yannis Philippakis – lead guitar (2005–present), lead vocals (2006–present), percussion (2008–2013), bass guitar (2018–2023), backing vocals (2005) Jack Bevan – drums, percussion (2005–present) Jimmy Smith – rhythm guitar, keyboards, synthesizer, backing vocals (2005–present) Walter Gervers – bass, backing vocals (2005–2018, 2023–present), percussion (2008–2013) Current touring musicians Kit Monteith – percussion, sampler, backing vocals (2016–present) Joe Price – keyboards, synthesizer (2022–present) Former members Andrew Mears – lead vocals, rhythm guitar (2005–2006) Edwin Congreave – keyboards, synthesizer, backing vocals (2005–2021), bass guitar (2018–2021) Former touring musicians Vincent Taeger – percussion, timbales (2019) Jeremy Pritchard – bass, synthesizer, backing vocals (2019, 2022) Jack Freeman – bass, synthesizer, backing vocals (2020–2022, 2022–2023) Timeline Discography Studio albums Antidotes (2008) Total Life Forever (2010) Holy Fire (2013) What Went Down (2015) Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 (2019) Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 2 (2019) Life Is Yours (2022) Recognition Total Life Forever was nominated for the Mercury Prize in July 2010, losing to The xx's xx on 7 September that year. The album was tested again the following year for Best Album in addition to a nomination for Best Cover Artwork at the NME Awards. The single "Spanish Sahara" was nominated by the same group for Best Track on top of being named all-around Best Band and Best Live Act. In July, the MOJO honour awards also nominated Foals alongside Canadian band Arcade Fire for the calibre of their live performances. Mercury Prize |- | 2010 | Total Life Forever | Best Album | |- | 2013 | Holy Fire | Best Album | |- | 2019 | Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost - Part 1 | Best Album | |} Ivor Novello Awards |- | 2010 | "Spanish Sahara" | Best Song Musically and Lyrically | |} NME Awards |- | rowspan="5" style="text-align:center;"| 2011 |rowspan="2"| Foals | Best British Band | |- | Best Live Act | |- |rowspan="2"| Total Life Forever | Best British Album | |- | Best Artwork | |- | "Spanish Sahara" | Best Track | |- | rowspan="2" style="text-align:center;"| 2013 | Foals | Best Live Band | |- | "Inhaler" | Best Track | |- | 2014 | Foals | Best British Band | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"| 2016 | What Went Down | Best Album | |- | Foals | Best British Band | |- | "What Went Down" | Best Track | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"| 2020 | rowspan="2"| Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost - Part 1 | Best Album | style="text-align:center;" |- | Best Album in the World | |- | Foals | Best Live Act | |- | 2022 | "Wake Me Up" | Best Music Video | |} Q Awards |- |rowspan="3"| 2013 | Holy Fire | Best Album | |- |rowspan="2"| Foals | Best Act in the World Today | |- | Best Live Act | |- |rowspan="3"| 2015 | Foals | Best Act in the World Today | |- |rowspan="2"| "What Went Down" | Best Track | |- | Best Video | |- | 2019 | Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 | Best Album | |} Brit Awards |- | 2008 | Foals | Critics' Choice Award | |- | 2016 | Foals | British Group | |- | 2020 | Foals | Best Group | |} iHeartRadio Music Awards |- | 2017 | Foals | Best New Rock/Alternative Rock Artist | |} References External links Foals on Music Feeds TV Category:English indie rock groups Category:Brit Award winners Category:Dance-punk musical groups Category:NME Awards winners Category:Musical groups established in 2005 Category:Math rock groups Category:British musical trios Category:Musical groups from Oxford

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Foals (band)

Foals are a rock band from Oxford, England formed in 2005, consisting of lead vocalist and lead guitarist Yannis Philippakis, drummer and percussionist Jack Bevan, rhythm guitarist Jimmy Smith, and keyboardist Edwin Congreave. They are currently signed to Warner Bros. Records, and have released four studio albums: Antidotes (2008), Total Life Forever (2010), Holy Fire (2013), What Went Down (2015), one video album, six extended plays and nineteen singles. The band have toured internationally and have featured at Glastonbury, Coachella and Roskilde festivals.

Holy Fire: 2012-2013

Holy Fire was released in both the UK and the US on 11 February 2013. The album's lead single, "Inhaler", received its first radio play on 5 November 2012. They played the song "My Number" for the first time on Later... with Jools Holland. Holy Fire was produced by Flood and Alan Moulder, who have worked with many artists, including Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine. The album was recorded at Assault & Battery studios in London. Yannis Philippakis stated that the recording process had some unconventional moments: "At one point we even made these poor studio interns collect bones. We were inspired by voodoo, these Haitian rhythms. We collected some ourselves, from butchers in Willesden High Road. Mainly cows, I think often they had gristle and cartilage on them, mainly cow and occasionally sheep. We had to order these big pots because one of the shoulder blades was too big! We boiled the flesh away so we could use them as percussion! We wanted to get primitive!" According to The Guardian: "Their producers, Flood and Alan Moulder, even tricked them by recording their rehearsal in order to capture a more uninhibited sound." In late November to mid-December, Foals toured the UK for an album preview. The tour was supported by Petite Noir (a close friend of Philippakis'). In summer 2013, they attended a number of festivals and headlined Latitude Festival in Suffolk in July. The band have recently played a World and UK tour, which ended with two sell out shows at Alexandra Palace in February. The two shows were in stark contrast compared to playing the same venue 7 years earlier to an almost empty room while supporting Bloc Party, a sentiment which lead singer Philippakis did not fail to mention during the live shows. Holy Fire was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2013. Q awarded Foals with the Best Live Act award the same year while "Inhaler" received the Best Track award from NME. Not only this, but in a reader-nominated "Best Album of 2013" poll, Holy Fire topped the list; as did single "My Number" in a "Best Song of 2013" poll, beating NME favourites Arctic Monkeys, amongst other acclaimed bands. CANNOTANSWER

Foals, stylised as FOALS, are a British rock band formed in Oxford in 2005. The band's current line-up consists of Greek-born lead vocalist and guitarist Yannis Philippakis, drummer and percussionist Jack Bevan, rhythm guitarist Jimmy Smith and bassist Walter Gervers. They are currently signed to Warner Records, and have released seven studio albums to date: Antidotes (2008), Total Life Forever (2010), Holy Fire (2013), What Went Down (2015), and Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 & 2 (2019) and their most recent, Life Is Yours (2022). They have also released one video album, six extended plays and thirty-five singles. The band have toured internationally for over a decade, and have featured at many festivals including Glastonbury, Coachella, and Roskilde. They have won a number of awards, including best live act at the 2013 Q Awards while producers Alan Moulder and Flood were awarded 'UK Producer of the Year' for their work on the album Holy Fire. The band's studio albums Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 & 2 were released March and October 2019, respectively, with the latter becoming the group's first album to top the UK Album Chart. History 2005–2006: Formation The lead singer of the band Youthmovies, Andrew Mears, originally formed the band Foals. He was present on the band's debut 7" single, "Try This on Your Piano/Look at My Furrows of Worry", but left shortly afterwards to concentrate on Youthmovies's debut album, Good Nature. Jack Bevan, Lina Simon and Yannis Philippakis were originally in cult math rock band the Edmund Fitzgerald. The group disbanded, claiming that things had become "too serious" and that they wanted to have more "fun making their music". Walter Gervers and Jimmy Smith were part of a small Oxford band called Face Meets Grill. They met at and formed the band from members of Abingdon School, the same school that Radiohead attended. They played gigs in and around Oxford, and recorded an EP in Hull. After playing Truck Festival in 2004 they separated to follow different paths and careers. Guitarist Jimmy Smith is the only one of the band members to have completed his degree, at Hull University, each of the other band members quit their respective universities when the band signed to Transgressive Records. 2007–2008: Antidotes In early 2007, the band released the limited edition 7" singles "Hummer" and "Mathletics", both produced by Gareth Parton. "Hummer" later featured on the Channel Four teen drama Skins. Philippakis described this period as 'the music was almost a premeditated mix of blending techno and minimalism [and] we'd set ourselves these rules, like 'only staccato rhythms', and 'guitars must be played really high'. In the summer of 2007, Foals began working on their debut album in New York. It was produced by Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio. However, the band decided to mix the album themselves, stating that Sitek made the first master copy of the album sound like "it was recorded in the Grand Canyon". Philippakis has stated a number of times that Foals and Sitek are on good terms, even though the mix by Sitek was rejected by the band. Foals released their debut album, titled Antidotes, on 24 March 2008 in the UK and on 8 April 2008 in the US. The album was a commercial success in the UK, debuting at number 3 on the UK Albums Charts. The album was a minor success in other countries, charting in Japan, France and the Netherlands. Non-UK versions of the album include the early Parton-produced singles. 2009–2011: Total Life Forever In August 2009, Foals started recording their second album at Svenska Grammofon Studion in Gothenburg, Sweden. The album, Total Life Forever, has been described by the band members as sounding like "tropical prog" and "like the dream of an eagle dying". The band have described the album as being "a lot less funk" than they had originally planned. The album was produced by Luke Smith, formerly of Clor. The album's title is named after an element of Ray Kurzweil's theory of singularity. The band's frontman, Yannis Philippakis, has professed a longtime interest in futurology, with it informing numerous songs on Total Life Forever. On 1 March 2010, the promotional single "Spanish Sahara" was first played on Zane Lowe's show Radio 1. Foals' website was updated that night with the video for the track, directed by longtime collaborator Dave Ma, and on 6 March, the Total Life Forever site was launched. There puzzles revealed images, lyrics and sound clips of songs from the album. The last clip appeared on 12 March, with a password entry for Foals' new website. The site was opened on 13 March and presented the art concept and media including samples of songs, photos and videos. Lead single "This Orient" was released on 3 May 2010. The album was finally released on 10 May 2010. "Spanish Sahara" was featured in trailers for season seven of Entourage, season four of Skins and Outcasts. It was also used in the soundtrack of the second season of the E4 drama Misfits. It was released as a full physical single in September 2010, featuring an edited remix starring the strings of London Contemporary Orchestra. In 2015, it was used by French studio Dontnod Entertainment in the game Life is Strange as the music for one of its endings. The album was nominated for the 2010 Mercury Prize. In an interview with online magazine Coup de Main, Jimmy Smith said how the band members live together on and off the road – heading to Australia to record demos for their next album together. "It's just like touring with your family, it's nice." 2012–2013: Holy Fire Holy Fire was released in both the UK and the US on 11 February 2013. The album's lead single, "Inhaler", received its first radio play on 5 November 2012. They played the song "My Number" for the first time on Later... with Jools Holland. Holy Fire was produced by Flood and Alan Moulder, who have worked with many artists, including Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, and My Bloody Valentine. The album was recorded at Assault & Battery studios in London. Yannis Philippakis stated that the recording process had some unconventional moments: "At one point we even made these poor studio interns collect bones. We were inspired by voodoo, these Haitian rhythms. We collected some ourselves, from butchers in Willesden High Road. Mainly cows, I think often they had gristle and cartilage on them, mainly cow and occasionally sheep. We had to order these big pots because one of the shoulder blades was too big! We boiled the flesh away so we could use them as percussion! We wanted to get primitive!" According to The Guardian: "Their producers, Flood and Alan Moulder, even tricked them by recording their rehearsal in order to capture a more uninhibited sound." In late November to mid-December, Foals toured the UK for an album preview. The tour was supported by Petite Noir (a close friend of Philippakis's). In summer 2013, they attended a number of festivals and headlined Latitude Festival in Suffolk in July. The band have recently played a World and UK tour, which ended with two sell out shows at Alexandra Palace in February. The two shows were in stark contrast compared to playing the same venue 7 years earlier to an almost empty room while supporting Bloc Party, a sentiment which lead singer Philippakis did not fail to mention during the live shows. Holy Fire was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2013. Q awarded Foals with the Best Live Act award the same year while "Inhaler" received the Best Track award from NME. In a reader-nominated "Best Album of 2013" poll, Holy Fire topped the list; as did single "My Number" in a "Best Song of 2013" poll, beating NME favourites Arctic Monkeys, amongst other acclaimed bands. 2014–2016: What Went Down On 2 April 2014, in an interview with NME, Yannis Philippakis said "Over the next month I think we're going to start writing tentatively. We've already got some bits and bobs around some riffs and some vocal melodies. I think until May we're gonna go back to Oxford and write in the 'stinkbox' and see what happens." On 9 June 2015, Foals unveiled a short video teasing an upcoming album in 2015. Foals shared album track "Mountain at My Gates" on 20 June, premiering the song via BBC Radio 1 as Annie Mac's 'Hottest Record'. On 29 July, the band followed up the track with an accompanying 3D video, filmed on a GoPro HERO. On 6 August, Zane Lowe premiered new song 'A Knife in the Ocean' on his Beats 1 radio show on Apple Music. Foals made public a lyric video for 'A Knife In The Ocean' the same day. The album What Went Down was released on 28 August 2015. In late 2015, "Mountain at My Gates" was featured on the official soundtrack of EA Sports FIFA 16. In 2016, Foals toured the UK and Europe in February/March, followed by a US tour, playing a number of songs from What Went Down as well as previous releases, with support from Peace (DJ set) and Everything Everything (UK). 2017–2019: Gervers's departure and Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost In autumn 2017, Foals announced on social media that they were going to start recording materials for a new upcoming album. On 5 January 2018, they announced that bassist Walter Gervers was departing the band amicably, whilst recording of the fifth album continued. On 8 January 2019, the band teased their fifth and sixth studio albums, Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 and Part 2, respectively. Part 1 was released on 8 March 2019 and Part 2 was released on 18 October 2019. Following Gervers's departure, it was revealed on 19 February 2019 that Jeremy Pritchard, of British band Everything Everything would join as touring bassist for the band's remaining live shows of 2019. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 was preceded by the release via streaming services of Exits, On the Luna, Sunday and In Degrees (a day before the record's release). The album was the BBC 6 Music Album of the Day on its release date. In March 2019, the band embarked on the first shows of their "Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost World Tour" which had dates running throughout 2019 and 2020. After playing several festivals across the summer of 2019 (including an unannounced set at Glastonbury and a headline performance at Truck Festival), the band released a second set of singles, "Black Bull", "The Runner" and "Into the Surf" in the lead up to Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 2. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 2 was released on 18 October 2019 through Warner and Transgressive Records. The album cover was shot by famed National Geographic photographer, Maggie Steber. The album became the band's first to reach No. 1 on the UK Album Chart. On 7 October 2019, "Rip Up The Road", a documentary detailing the recording sessions of "Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost" and subsequent 2019 world tour, was announced, with a premiere scheduled for 11 and 15 November 2019 at London's Doc’n Roll Film Festival and thereafter exclusively through Amazon Prime respectively. On 11 November 2019 "Rip Up The Road" directed by Toby L premiered at the Rio Cinema in Dalston to an audience consisting of the band, friends and family, fans, documentary contributors/crew. The documentary was filmed over a 12-month period as the band embarked upon a world tour. The film hones in on two career highlight shows at London's Alexandra Palace and provides a candid, entertaining and gripping perspective of life on the road and being in a band. It also features their infamous Glastonbury Festival secret set on The Park Stage in 2019. 2020–present: COVID-19, Congreave's departure, Life Is Yours and Gervers's return Due to the COVID-19 crisis and subsequent global lockdowns, the band was forced to cancel and reschedule their entire 2020 UK and world tour, in support of Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 2 till Spring 2021. However, due to the continuing pandemic and ongoing safety restrictions throughout into 2021, the band once again had to reschedule touring until 2022, save for a string of UK summer festival shows during August 2021, which would be the group's first live performances since early 2020. In April 2022, 10 days before the tour commenced, it was re-branded to the Life Is Yours Tour in support of their upcoming seventh studio album. On 22 September 2021, Edwin Congreave announced that he had left the band to pursue a postgraduate degree in economics. Announcing the news of Congreave's departure, the band revealed that they had already begun working on their next album, this time as a three piece band. On 11 October 2021, the band announced scoring the opening theme of the Brian Cox-hosted BBC Two science documentary television series, Universe with an updated version of "Neptune", re-worked in collaboration with Hans Zimmer's Bleeding Fingers composing collective led by the famed film composer. On 27 October 2021, the band teased a promotional clip of an iPhone snooze alarm, cryptically revealing the release date of their seventh studio album's first single, "Wake Me Up" to be released 4 November 2021. The following day, the single was confirmed by the group with a teaser clip of the audio and music streaming platforms pre-save links respectively. "Wake Me Up" was premiered and released on 4 November 2021 via BBC Radio 1's Clara Amfo's 'Hottest Record'. On 10 February 2022, Foals released "2am" and announced the name of their seventh album as Life Is Yours, and later announced the 17 June album release date. On 1 April 2022, the band released the third single, "Looking High". On 19 May 2022, Foals released the single "2001". Three days before Life Is Yours was released, the band released the fifth and final single from the album, "Crest of the Wave". On 2 May 2023, the band announced that founding bassist, Walter Gervers had rejoined the group after a six-year absence, since his initial departure in 2018. Live Foals are considered one of the top UK live acts, having won the 2013 Q Award for Best Live Act and twice being nominated for the NME Award for Best Live Act (2011 and 2013). The band have released several live EPs (Live At Liars Club, iTunes Live: London Festival '08 and iTunes Festival: London 2010), in addition to the full-length concert film Live At The Royal Albert Hall, which was directed by Dave Ma. Frontman Yannis Philippakis is known for jumping off balconies and crowd surfing during the extended interlude of "Two Steps Twice" In October 2013, Philippakis got into a confrontation with a security guard at the Auckland Town Hall in New Zealand, as the security guard attempted to prevent him from jumping into the crowd. At the end of the show, Philippakis told the crowd: "I want to say a massive thank you to you and fuck that security guy." Musical style and influences Foals are classified as an indie rock, alternative rock, dance-punk, math rock, art rock, post-rock, post-punk, art punk and indie pop band. The band's musical influences are varied, with the band members citing minimal techno, Arthur Russell, Krautrock bands such as Harmonia, and Talking Heads, as their main sources of inspiration. Band members Current members Yannis Philippakis – lead guitar (2005–present), lead vocals (2006–present), percussion (2008–2013), bass guitar (2018–2023), backing vocals (2005) Jack Bevan – drums, percussion (2005–present) Jimmy Smith – rhythm guitar, keyboards, synthesizer, backing vocals (2005–present) Walter Gervers – bass, backing vocals (2005–2018, 2023–present), percussion (2008–2013) Current touring musicians Kit Monteith – percussion, sampler, backing vocals (2016–present) Joe Price – keyboards, synthesizer (2022–present) Former members Andrew Mears – lead vocals, rhythm guitar (2005–2006) Edwin Congreave – keyboards, synthesizer, backing vocals (2005–2021), bass guitar (2018–2021) Former touring musicians Vincent Taeger – percussion, timbales (2019) Jeremy Pritchard – bass, synthesizer, backing vocals (2019, 2022) Jack Freeman – bass, synthesizer, backing vocals (2020–2022, 2022–2023) Timeline Discography Studio albums Antidotes (2008) Total Life Forever (2010) Holy Fire (2013) What Went Down (2015) Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 (2019) Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 2 (2019) Life Is Yours (2022) Recognition Total Life Forever was nominated for the Mercury Prize in July 2010, losing to The xx's xx on 7 September that year. The album was tested again the following year for Best Album in addition to a nomination for Best Cover Artwork at the NME Awards. The single "Spanish Sahara" was nominated by the same group for Best Track on top of being named all-around Best Band and Best Live Act. In July, the MOJO honour awards also nominated Foals alongside Canadian band Arcade Fire for the calibre of their live performances. Mercury Prize |- | 2010 | Total Life Forever | Best Album | |- | 2013 | Holy Fire | Best Album | |- | 2019 | Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost - Part 1 | Best Album | |} Ivor Novello Awards |- | 2010 | "Spanish Sahara" | Best Song Musically and Lyrically | |} NME Awards |- | rowspan="5" style="text-align:center;"| 2011 |rowspan="2"| Foals | Best British Band | |- | Best Live Act | |- |rowspan="2"| Total Life Forever | Best British Album | |- | Best Artwork | |- | "Spanish Sahara" | Best Track | |- | rowspan="2" style="text-align:center;"| 2013 | Foals | Best Live Band | |- | "Inhaler" | Best Track | |- | 2014 | Foals | Best British Band | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"| 2016 | What Went Down | Best Album | |- | Foals | Best British Band | |- | "What Went Down" | Best Track | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"| 2020 | rowspan="2"| Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost - Part 1 | Best Album | style="text-align:center;" |- | Best Album in the World | |- | Foals | Best Live Act | |- | 2022 | "Wake Me Up" | Best Music Video | |} Q Awards |- |rowspan="3"| 2013 | Holy Fire | Best Album | |- |rowspan="2"| Foals | Best Act in the World Today | |- | Best Live Act | |- |rowspan="3"| 2015 | Foals | Best Act in the World Today | |- |rowspan="2"| "What Went Down" | Best Track | |- | Best Video | |- | 2019 | Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 | Best Album | |} Brit Awards |- | 2008 | Foals | Critics' Choice Award | |- | 2016 | Foals | British Group | |- | 2020 | Foals | Best Group | |} iHeartRadio Music Awards |- | 2017 | Foals | Best New Rock/Alternative Rock Artist | |} References External links Foals on Music Feeds TV Category:English indie rock groups Category:Brit Award winners Category:Dance-punk musical groups Category:NME Awards winners Category:Musical groups established in 2005 Category:Math rock groups Category:British musical trios Category:Musical groups from Oxford

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Hole (band)

Hole was an American alternative rock band formed by singer and guitarist Courtney Love and lead guitarist Eric Erlandson in Los Angeles, California in 1989. Influenced by Los Angeles' punk rock scene, and produced by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, the band's debut album, Pretty on the Inside (1991), attracted critical interest from British and American alternative press. Their second album, Live Through This, released 1994 by DGC Records, which featured less aggressive melodies and more restrained lyrical content, was widely acclaimed and reached platinum status within a year of its release. Their third album, Celebrity Skin (1998), which garnered them four Grammy nominations, marked a notable departure from their earlier punk influences, boasting a more commercially viable, "mature" sound.

Live performances

Throughout the duration of the 1990s, the band received widespread media coverage due to Love's often rambunctious and unpredictable behavior onstage. The band often destroyed equipment and guitars at the end of concerts, and Love would ramble between songs, bring fans onstage, and stage dive, sometimes returning with her clothes torn off of her or sustaining injuries. In a 1995 New York Magazine article, journalist John Homans addressed Love's frequent stage diving during Hole's concerts: The most shocking, frightening, and fascinating image in rock in the last few years is Courtney Love's stage dive... When some male performers do it, it looks like muscular, frat-boy fun, controlled aggression... For obvious reasons, the practice was strictly no-girls-allowed, but Love, typically, decided that she wanted to do it, too. Groped, ravaged, she compared the experience to being raped, wrote a song about it, and now does it just about every show. Nina Gordon of Veruca Salt, who toured with Hole in 1995, recalled Love's erratic behavior onstage, saying "She would just go off and [the rest of the band] would just kind of stand there." The majority of Love's chaotic behavior onstage was a result of heavy drug use at the time, which she admitted: "I was completely high on dope; I cannot remember much about it." She later criticized her behavior during that time, saying: "I [saw] pictures of how I looked. It's disgusting. I'm ashamed. There's death and there's disease and there's misery and there's giving up your soul... The human spirit mixed with certain powders is not the person, it's [a] demonic presence." Love's stage attire also garnered notoriety, influenced in part by Carroll Baker's wardrobe in the film Baby Doll (1956). The style was later dubbed "kinderwhore" by the media, and consisted of babydoll dresses, slips and nightgowns, and smeared makeup. Kurt Loder likened her onstage attire to a "debauched ragdoll", and John Peel noted in his review of the band's 1994 Reading Festival performance, that "[Love], swaying wildly and with lipstick smeared on her face, hands and, I think, her back, as well as on the collar of her dress, [...] would have drawn whistles of astonishment in Bedlam. The band teetered on the edge of chaos, generating a tension which I cannot remember having felt before from any stage." Rolling Stone referred to the style as "a slightly more politically charged version of grunge; apathy turned into ruinous angst, which soon became high fashion's favorite pose." The band's set lists for live shows were often loose, featuring improvisational jams and rough performances of unreleased songs. By 1998, their live performances had become less aggressive and more restrained, although Love continued to bring fans onstage, and would often go into the crowd while singing. CANNOTANSWER

Hole was an American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1989. It was founded by singer Courtney Love and guitarist Eric Erlandson. It had several different bassists and drummers, the most prolific being drummer Patty Schemel, and bassists Kristen Pfaff (d. 1994) and Melissa Auf der Maur. Hole released a total of four studio albums between two incarnations spanning the 1990s and early-2010s and became one of the most commercially successful rock bands in history fronted by a woman. Influenced by Los Angeles' punk rock scene, the band's debut album, Pretty on the Inside (1991), was produced by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, and attracted critical interest from British and American alternative press. Their second album, Live Through This, released in 1994 by DGC Records, combined elements of punk, grunge, and pop rock music, and was widely acclaimed, reaching platinum status within a year of its release. Their third album, Celebrity Skin (1998), marked a notable departure from their earlier punk influences, boasting a more commercially viable sound; the album sold around 2 million copies worldwide, and earned them significant critical acclaim. They disbanded in 2002, and the members individually pursued other projects. Eight years later in 2010, Hole was reformed by Love with new members, despite Erlandson's claim that the reformation breached a mutual contract he had with her. The reformed band released the album Nobody's Daughter (2010), which was conceived as Love's second solo album. In 2013, Love retired the Hole name, releasing new material and touring as a solo artist. Hole received several accolades, including four Grammy Award nominations. They were also commercially successful, selling over three million records in the United States alone, and had a far-reaching influence on contemporary female artists. Music and feminist scholars have also recognized the band as the most high-profile musical group of the 1990s to discuss gender issues in their songs, due to Love's aggressive and violent lyrical content, which often addressed themes of body image, abuse, and sexual exploitation. Background Hole formed after Eric Erlandson responded to an advertisement placed by Courtney Love in The Recycler in the summer of 1989. The advertisement read: "I want to start a band. My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac." Erlandson recalled of their first meeting: "We met at this coffee shop, and I saw her and I thought 'Oh, God. Oh, no, What am I getting myself into?' She grabbed me and started talking, and she's like 'I know you're the right one', and I hadn't even opened my mouth yet." In retrospect, Love said that Erlandson "had a Thurston [Moore] quality about him" and was an "intensely weird, good guitarist". In his 2012 book, Letters to Kurt, Erlandson revealed that he and Love had a sexual relationship during their first year together in the band, which Love also confirmed. Love had been living a nomadic life prior, immersing herself in numerous music scenes and living in various cities along the West Coast. After unsuccessful attempts at forming bands in San Francisco (where she was briefly a member of Faith No More) and Portland, Love relocated to Los Angeles, where she found work as an actress in two Alex Cox films (Sid and Nancy and Straight to Hell). Erlandson, a Los Angeles native and a graduate of Loyola Marymount University, was working as an accountant for Capitol Records at the time he met Love. Love originally wanted to name the band Sweet Baby Crystal Powered by God, but opted for the name Hole instead. During an interview on Later... with Jools Holland, she claimed the name for the band was partly inspired by a quote from Euripides' Medea that read: "There is a hole that pierces right through me." She also cited a conversation with her mother as the primary inspiration for the band's name, in which her mother told her that she couldn't live her life "with a hole running through her". Love also acknowledged the "obvious" genital reference in the band's name, alluding to the vagina. Career 1989–1991: Early work and indie success In the months preceding the band's full formation, Love and Erlandson would write and record in the evenings at a rehearsal space in Hollywood, loaned to them by the Red Hot Chili Peppers; during the day, Love worked as a stripper to support the band and purchase amplifiers and their backline for live shows. Hole's first official rehearsal took place at Fortress Studios in Hollywood with Love, Erlandson and Lisa Roberts on bass. According to Erlandson, "these two girls show up dressed completely crazy, we set up and they said, "okay, just start playing something." I started playing and they started screaming at the top of their lungs for two or three hours. Crazy lyrics and screaming. I said to myself, "most people would just run away from this really fast. But I heard something in Courtney's voice and lyrics." Initially, the band had no percussion until Love met drummer Caroline Rue at a Gwar and L7 concert in Long Beach. The band subsequently recruited a third guitarist, Mike Geisbrecht. Hole's first show took place at Raji's, a small bar in Hollywood, in October 1989. By early 1990, Geisbrecht and Roberts had both left the band, which led to the recruitment of bassist Jill Emery. According to Caroline Rue, Love fired Roberts after she threatened a Long Beach club owner—the wife of mobster Eddie Nash—with a screwdriver when the club refused to pay them for their performance. Hole released their no wave-influenced debut single "Retard Girl" in April 1990, and followed it with "Dicknail" in 1991, released on Sympathy for the Record Industry and Sub Pop, respectively. According to disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer, Love would often approach him at a Denny's on Sunset Blvd. where he went for coffee in the mornings, and convinced him to give "Retard Girl" airtime on his station KROQ-FM. In 1991, the band signed onto Caroline Records to release their debut album, and Love sought Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth to produce the record. She sent a letter, a Hello Kitty barrette, and copies of the band's early singles to her, mentioning that the band greatly admired Gordon's work and appreciated "the production of the SST record" (either referring to Sonic Youth's album Sister or EVOL). Gordon, impressed by the band's singles, agreed to produce the album, with assistance from Gumball's Don Fleming. The album, titled Pretty on the Inside, was released in September 1991 to positive reception from underground critics, branded "loud, ugly and deliberately shocking", and earned a spot on Spins "20 Best Albums of the Year" list. It was also voted album of the year by New York's Village Voice and peaked at number 59 on the UK albums chart. The album spawned one single, "Teenage Whore", which entered the UK Indie Chart at number one, as well as the band's debut music video for the song "Garbadge Man". Musically and lyrically, Pretty on the Inside was abrasive and drew on elements of punk rock and sludge metal, characterized by overt noise and feedback, chaotic guitar riffs, contrasting tempos, graphic lyrics, and a variation of Love's vocals ranging from whispers to guttural screaming. In later years, Love referred to the album as "unlistenable", despite its critical accolades and eventual cult following. The band embarked on a European tour in the fall of 1991 supporting Mudhoney. They also toured intermittently in the United States between July and December 1991, playing primarily at hard rock and punk clubs, including CBGB and the Whisky a Go Go, where they opened for the Smashing Pumpkins. In a write-up by the Los Angeles Times on the band's final show of the tour, it was noted that Love smashed the headstock of her Rickenbacker guitar onstage. In mid-1991, the band began to get the attention of the major labels. The first to court them was Maverick — a Warner subsidiary founded by Madonna and music executive Freddy DeMann. Love, however, was uninterested: "[They] would have me riding on elephants. They don't know what I am. For them, I'm a visual, period." She was also uneasy about sharing the spotlight on a label so heavily associated with one of the industry's most iconic female performers. In a 1992 interview with Vanity Fair, Love described Madonna's interest as "kind of like Dracula's interest in his latest victim". 1992–1999: Mainstream success 1992–1995: Live Through This Love and Erlandson began writing new material for a second Hole album in 1992, in the midst of Love's pregnancy with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Love's desire to take the band in a more melodic and controlled rock format led bassist Emery to leave the band, and drummer Caroline Rue followed. In an advertisement to find a new bass player, Love wrote: "[I want] someone who can play ok, and stand in front of 30,000 people, take off her shirt and have 'fuck you' written on her tits. If you're not afraid of me and you're not afraid to fucking say it, send a letter. No more pussies, no more fake girls, I want a whore from hell." In April 1992, drummer Patty Schemel was recruited after an audition in Los Angeles, but the band spent the remainder of the year without a bassist; Love, Schemel, and Erlandson began to write material together in the interim. Hole signed to Geffen's subsidiary DGC label with an eight-album contract in late 1992. In the spring of 1993, the band released their single "Beautiful Son", which was recorded in Seattle with producer Jack Endino as a fill-in bass player; Love also played bass on the single's b-side "20 Years In the Dakota", as well as on their contribution to the 1993 Germs tribute album A Small Circle of Friends. In the spring of 1993, Love and Erlandson recruited Janitor Joe bassist Kristen Pfaff, and the band toured the United Kingdom in the summer of that year (including the Phoenix Festival on July 16), mainly performing material from their upcoming major label debut, Live Through This, which they recorded at Triclops Studios in Marietta, Georgia in October 1993. Live Through This was released on April 12, 1994, one week after Love's husband, Kurt Cobain, was found dead in his Seattle home. In the wake of Love's family tragedy, Live Through This was a critical success. It spawned several popular singles, including "Doll Parts", "Violet", and "Miss World", going multi-platinum and being hailed "Album of the Year" by Spin magazine. NME called the album "a personal but secretive thrash-pop opera of urban nihilism and passionate dumb thinks", and Rolling Stone said the album "may be the most potent blast of female insurgency ever committed to tape". Despite the critical praise for Live Through This, rumors circulated insinuating that Cobain had actually written the majority of the album, though the band vehemently denies this. The band's drummer Patty Schemel, who had been friends with Cobain since the late 1980s, said: "There's that myth that Kurt [Cobain] wrote all our songs— it's not true. Courtney and Eric wrote Live Through This." The band did, however, state that Love convinced Cobain to provide backing vocals on "Asking for It" and "Softer, Softest" while visiting the studio, and music producers and engineers present during the recording sessions noted that Cobain seemed "completely unfamiliar" with the songs. According to Rolling Stone rock journalist Gavin Edwards, Love and Cobain had written songs together in the past, but opted to not release them because it was "a bit too redolent of John and Yoko". In 1994, bassist Kristen Pfaff went into a drug treatment facility to treat her heroin addiction. Pfaff contemplated leaving the band for health reasons. In June 1994, she was found dead of a heroin overdose in the bathroom of her Seattle home, 2 months after the death of Cobain. The band put their impending tour on hold, pulling out of the upcoming Lollapalooza festival. Recruiting bassist Melissa Auf der Maur over the summer, they commenced their world tour on August 26 at the Reading Festival in England, giving a performance that John Peel described as "teetering on the edge of chaos". The band embarked on a worldwide tour throughout late 1994 and for the duration of 1995, with appearances at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas, Saturday Night Live, the Big Day Out festival, MTV Unplugged, the 1995 Reading Festival, Lollapalooza 1995, and at the MTV Video Music Awards, where they were nominated for the "Doll Parts" music video. Love's reckless stage presence during the tour became a media spectacle, drawing press from MTV and other outlets due to her unpredictable performances. While touring with Sonic Youth, Love got into a physical fight with Kathleen Hanna backstage at a 1995 Lollapalooza festival and punched her in the face. In an August 1995 band interview with Rolling Stone, drummer Patty Schemel formally came out as a lesbian, saying: "It's important. I'm not out there with that fucking pink flag or anything, but it's good for other people who live somewhere else in some small town who feel freaky about being gay to know that there's other people who are and that it's okay." In a retrospective interview, Schemel said: Toward the end of the tour, the band released their first EP, titled Ask for It, in September 1995; it featured 1991 Peel session recordings, as well as covers of songs by Wipers and The Velvet Underground. The band performed its last show of the year on September 3, 1995, at the Molson Polar Beach Party in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada. The concert was a promotional event for the Molson Brewery, and also featured performances by Metallica, Veruca Salt, and Moist. 1996–1999: Celebrity Skin In 1996, the band recorded and released a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman" for The Crow: City of Angels (1996) soundtrack, the band's first studio song to feature Melissa Auf der Maur on bass, and produced by Ric Ocasek. Hole released two retrospective albums during this time: firstly, their second EP, titled The First Session (1997), which consisted of a complete version of the band's first recording session at Rudy's Rising Star in Los Angeles in March 1990, some of which had been bootlegged widely years prior. It featured the group's first ever recorded track, "Turpentine", which had previously been unreleased to the public. The same year, the band released their first compilation album, My Body, The Hand Grenade (1997), featuring early singles, b-sides and recent live tracks. In 1997, the band entered Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles after attempts to write new material in Miami, New Orleans, London, and New York. Recorded over a ten-month period, Hole's third studio album, Celebrity Skin (1998), adopted a complete new sound for the band, incorporating elements of power pop, and had Love drawing influences from Fleetwood Mac and My Bloody Valentine. According to Erlandson, Love was more focused on song-writing and singing than playing guitar on the record; Love stated that her aim for the album was to "deconstruct the California sound" in the L.A. tradition of bands like The Doors, The Beach Boys and The Byrds. In addition to Hole, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan entered the studio and helped perfect five of the album's twelve songs. Love, who felt she was in a creative slump, likened Corgan's presence in the studio to "a math teacher who wouldn't give you the answers but was making you solve the problems yourself". Upon the album's release, Corgan told CNN that he should have "been given credit [for writing the entire album]". Erlandson responded to Corgan's statements in a Rolling Stone interview, commenting: "We were working on all the stuff that Courtney and I had already written. Billy really facilitated things, in a way ... I would bring in the music, Courtney would start coming up with lyrics right away, and [Billy] would help map it all out." Erlandson also stated: "Courtney writes all her own lyrics. Nobody else is writing those lyrics and nobody ever has." One journalist took note of the controversy when reviewing the album, stating: "Back in 1994, the acclaim for Live Through This was undercut by whispers that Love's late husband wrote the album. Combine those conspiracy theories with the unfounded but persistent rumor that Cobain was actually murdered, and it is no surprise that, in the song 'Celebrity Skin', Love calls herself a walking study in demonology." Although Schemel is listed as drummer in the liner notes of the record, her drumming does not actually appear on the record; she was replaced by session drummer Deen Castronovo, under pressure from producer Michael Beinhorn. After the replacement, Schemel quit the band. Though Love and Erlandson had authorized Schemel's replacement, both expressed regret in retrospect, and Love stated in 2011 that Beinhorn was notorious for replacing drummers on records, and referred to him as "a Nazi". After Schemel's departure, the band hired drummer Samantha Maloney for their upcoming tours and music videos. Celebrity Skin was a critical success with strong sales and successful singles, including the title track, "Celebrity Skin", "Malibu", and "Awful". The album received largely positive reviews, with praise from music periodicals such as Rolling Stone, NME, and Blender, as well as a four-star review from the Los Angeles Times, calling it a "wild emotional ride" sure to be "one of the most dissected and debated collections of the year". The album peaked at number 9 on the Billboard 200, and garnered the band its first and only number 1 single, "Celebrity Skin", which topped the Modern Rock Tracks. "Malibu", released December 29, 1998, was the album's second single; it charted at number 3 on the Modern Rock Tracks. 1999–2002: Final tour and disbandment In the winter of 1998–99, Hole went on tour to promote Celebrity Skin, joining Marilyn Manson, who was promoting his album, Mechanical Animals (1998) on the Beautiful Monsters Tour. The tour turned into a publicity magnet, and Hole dropped out of the tour nine dates in, due to both the majority of the fans being Manson's, and the 50/50 financial arrangement between the groups, with Hole's production costs being disproportionately less than Manson's. Manson and Love often mocked one another onstage, and Love attacked Manson's stage antics, which included tearing up a Bible during performances: "You know, whenever somebody rips up the Bible in front of 40,000 people, I think it's a big deal", she said during a 1999 interview. Hole officially announced that they would be dropping out of the tour after a poorly received concert at the Rose Garden Arena in Portland, Oregon, which ended with Manson fans booing the band. The band continued to book shows and headline festivals after dropping off Manson's tour, and according to Auf der Maur, it was a "daily event" for Love to invite audience members onstage to sing with her for the last song at nearly every concert performance. On June 17, 1999, during Hole's set at the Hultsfred Festival in Sweden, a 19-year-old girl died after being crushed by the mosh pit behind the mixing board. Hole played its final show at Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver on July 14, 1999. In October 1999, Auf der Maur quit Hole and went on to become a touring bassist for The Smashing Pumpkins. Samantha Maloney also quit a few months later. The band's final release was a single for the movie Any Given Sunday (1999). "Be a Man", released in March 2000, was an outtake from the Celebrity Skin sessions. In April 2002, Love called The Howard Stern Show and said she had written nine songs with songwriter Linda Perry, but less than a month later Love and Erlandson officially disbanded Hole via a message posted on the band's website. After the split, the four musicians each took on projects of their own: Erlandson continued to work as a producer and session musician, eventually forming the experimental group RRIICCEE with controversial artist Vincent Gallo. Love began a solo career, releasing her debut, America's Sweetheart, in 2004, featuring several of the songs written with Perry. Melissa Auf der Maur also embarked on a solo career, and released her self-titled debut album in 2004, which included Erlandson performing lead guitar on the track, "Would If I Could". Her second album, Out of Our Minds, was released in March 2010. Hole's body of work from its inception to its first disbandment includes thirteen singles, three LPs, three EPs, and one compilation album. 2009–2013: Reformation On June 17, 2009, seven years after Hole's disbandment, NME reported that Love was re-forming the band with guitarist Micko Larkin for an upcoming album, on which Melissa Auf der Maur would be providing backup vocals. Days later, Melissa Auf der Maur stated in an interview that she was unaware of any reunion, but said Love had asked her to contribute harmonies to an upcoming album. In response, Eric Erlandson stated in an interview with Spin magazine that a reunion could not take place without his involvement, citing that he and Love "have a contract". Hole launched a new website and various social media pages on January 1, 2010, and performed on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in February. On February 17, 2010, they played a full set at the O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, with support from Little Fish. On March 16, the first Hole single in ten years was released, titled "Skinny Little Bitch"; it peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard Rock Chart, and at No. 21 on the Alternative Singles chart. The track also received airplay on Active rock and alternative radio. Nobody's Daughter was released on April 26, 2010, worldwide on Mercury Records, and was received moderately well by music critics. Rolling Stone gave the album three out of five stars, but noted "[while Love] was an absolute monster vocalist in the nineties, the greatest era ever for rock singers ... She doesn't have that power in her lungs anymore – barely a trace. But at least she remembers, and that means something in itself." The magazine also referred to the album as "not a true success", but a "noble effort". Love's voice, which had become noticeably raspier, was compared to the likes of Bob Dylan. NME gave the album a 6/10 rating, and Robert Christgau rated it an "A−", saying, "Thing is, I can use some new punk rage in my life, and unless you're a fan of Goldman Sachs and BP Petroleum, so can you. What's more, better it come from a 45-year-old woman who knows how to throw her weight around than from the zitty newbies and tattooed road dogs who churn most of it out these days. I know—for her, BP Petroleum is just something else to pretend about. But the emotion fueling her pretense is cathartic nevertheless." In support of the release, Hole toured extensively between 2010 and 2012 throughout North America and Europe, as well as performing in Russia and Brazil. On March 28, 2011, Love, Erlandson, Patty Schemel and Auf der Maur appeared at the New York screening of Schemel's documentary Hit So Hard: The Life and Near-Death Story of Patty Schemel at the Museum of Modern Art. The appearance was the first time in thirteen years that all four members appeared together in public. Schemel had expressed a desire to record with Love, Erlandson and Auf der Maur stating "nothing has been discussed, but I have a feeling." After the screening, the four took part in a Q&A session where Love stated: "For me, as much as I love playing with Patty – and I would play with her in five seconds again, and everyone onstage – if it's not moving forward, I don't wanna do it. That's just my thing. There's rumblings; there's always bloody rumblings. But if it's not miserable and it's going forward and I'm happy with it ... that's all I have to say about that question." In May 2011, a music video for "Samantha" was shot in Istanbul, although it remained officially unreleased. In September 2011, Scott Lipps joined the band, replacing drummer Stu Fisher. In April 2012, Love, Erlandson, Auf der Maur and Schemel reunited at the Public Assembly in New York for a two-song set, including "Miss World" and the Wipers' "Over the Edge", at an after-party for the Hit So Hard documentary. The performance marked the first time the four members performed together since 1998 after Schemel's departure and the 2002 breakup of the band. On December 29, 2012, Love performed a solo acoustic set in New York City, and in January 2013, performed at the Sundance Film Festival under her own name. She booked further performances across North America as a solo act, with Larkin, bassist Shawn Dailey, and Lipps as her backing band. 2014–2016: Second disbandment On December 28, 2013, Love posted two photos of herself with Erlandson on Facebook and Twitter, with a caption reading: "And this just happened ... 2014 going to be a very interesting year." Love also tagged Melissa Auf der Maur as well as Hole's former manager, Peter Mensch, in the post, alluding to a reconciliation with Erlandson and possible reunion in 2014. On April 2, 2014, Rolling Stone reported that the Celebrity Skin line-up of the band had reunited (with Patty Schemel in lieu of Samantha Maloney). Rolling Stone erroneously reported Love's upcoming solo single, "Wedding Day" to be a product of this reunion. Shortly after, Love curtailed her statement, saying: "We may have made out but there is no talk of marriage. It's very frail, nothing might happen, and now the band are all flipping out on me." On May 1, in an interview with Pitchfork, Love discussed the possibility of a reunion, and also stated it had been "a mistake" releasing Nobody's Daughter as a Hole record in 2010. "Eric was right—I kind of cheapened the name, even though I'm legally allowed to use it. I should save 'Hole' for the lineup everybody wants to see and had the balls to put Nobody's Daughter under my own name." Love further discussed the possibility of reuniting the band, saying: No one's been dormant. Patty teaches drumming and drums in three indie bands. Melissa has her metal-nerd thing going on—her dream is to play Castle Donington with Dokken. Eric hasn't flipped—I jammed with him, he's still doing his Thurston [Moore]-crazy tunings, still corresponding with Kevin Shields. We all get along great. There are bands who reunite and hate each others' guts. 2019–present: Possible reformation and attempted reunions In October 2019, Hole rehearsed at the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in Los Angeles. Nothing transpired after the event, since Love had relocated to the United Kingdom afterwards. In March 2020, Love and Auf Der Maur planned a performance at the "Bans Off My Body" event, which was eventually canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Artistry Composition Initially, Hole drew inspiration from no wave and experimental bands, which is evident in their earliest recordings, specifically "Retard Girl", but frontwoman Love also drew from a variety of influences. Love cited post-punk group Echo & the Bunnymen and classic rock such as Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac. The band's first album, Pretty on the Inside, was heavily influenced by noise and punk rock, using discordant melodies, distortion, and feedback, with Love's vocals ranging from whispers to guttural screams. Love described the band's earliest songwriting as being based on "really crazy Sonic Youth tunings". Nonetheless, Love claimed to have aimed for a pop sound early on: "There's a part of me that wants to have a grindcore band and another that wants to have a Raspberries-type pop band", she told Flipside magazine in 1991. Both Love and Erlandson were fans of the notorious LA punk band the Germs. In a 1996 interview for a Germs tribute documentary, Erlandson said: "I think every band is based on one song, and our band was based on "Forming" ... Courtney brought it into rehearsal, and she knew, like, three chords and it was the only punk rock song we could play." The band's second album Live Through This, captured a less abrasive sound, while maintaining the group's original punk roots. "I want this record to be shocking to the people who don't think we have a soft edge, and at the same time, [to know] that we haven't lost our very, very hard edge", Love told VH1 in 1994. The group's third album, Celebrity Skin, incorporated power pop into their hard rock sound, and was heavily inspired by California bands; Love was also influenced by Fleetwood Mac and My Bloody Valentine while writing the album. The group's 2010 release, Nobody's Daughter, featured a more folk rock-oriented sound, utilizing acoustic guitar and softer melodies. The group's chord progressions by and large drew on elements of punk music, which Love described as "grungey", although not necessarily grunge. Critics described their song style as "deceptively wispy and strummy", combined with "gunshot guitar choruses". Although the group's sound changed over the course of their career, the dynamic between beauty and ugliness has often been noted, particularly due to the layering of harsh and abrasive riffs which often bury more sophisticated arrangements. Lyrical content In a 1991 interview, Love stated that lyrics were "the most important" element of songwriting for her. Her lyrics explored a variety of themes throughout Hole's career, including body image, rape, child abuse, addiction, celebrity, suicide, elitism, and inferiority complex; all of which were addressed mainly from a female, and often feminist standpoint. This underlying feminism in Love's lyrics often led the public and critics to mistakenly associate her with the riot grrrl movement, of which Love was highly critical. In a 1991 interview with Everett True, Love said: "I try to place [beautiful imagery] next to fucked up imagery, because that's how I view things ... I sometimes feel that no one's taken the time to write about certain things in rock, that there's a certain female point of view that's never been given space." Charles Cross has referred to her lyrics on Live Through This as being "true extensions of her diary", and she has admitted that a great deal of the lyrics from Pretty on the Inside were excisions from her journals. Throughout Hole's career, Love's lyrics were often influenced by literature: The title of the band's second album Live Through This, for example (as well as lyrics from the track "Asking for It") is directly drawn from Gone With the Wind; and the group's single "Celebrity Skin" (the title track to their 1998 album), contains quotes from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Dante Rossetti's poem A Superscription. Love had had a minor background in literature, having briefly studied English literature in her early twenties. Performances Throughout the duration of the 1990s, the band received widespread media coverage due to Love's often rambunctious and unpredictable behavior onstage. The band often destroyed equipment and guitars at the end of concerts, and Love would ramble between songs, bring fans onstage, and stage dive, sometimes returning with her clothes torn off of her or sustaining injuries. In a 1995 New York magazine article, journalist John Homans addressed Love's frequent stage diving during Hole's concerts: The most shocking, frightening, and fascinating image in rock in the last few years is Courtney Love's stage dive ... When some male performers do it, it looks like muscular, frat-boy fun, controlled aggression ... For obvious reasons, the practice was strictly no-girls-allowed, but Love, typically, decided that she wanted to do it, too. Groped, ravaged, she compared the experience to being raped, wrote a song about it, and now does it just about every show. Nina Gordon of Veruca Salt, who toured with Hole in 1995, recalled Love's erratic behavior onstage, saying "She would just go off and [the rest of the band] would just kind of stand there." The majority of Love's chaotic behavior onstage was a result of heavy drug use at the time, which she admitted: "I was completely high on dope; I cannot remember much about it." She later criticized her behavior during that time, saying: "I [saw] pictures of how I looked. It's disgusting. I'm ashamed. There's death and there's disease and there's misery and there's giving up your soul ... The human spirit mixed with certain powders is not the person, it's [a] demonic presence." Love's stage attire also garnered notoriety, influenced in part by Carroll Baker's wardrobe in the film Baby Doll (1956). The style was later dubbed "kinderwhore" by the media, and consisted of babydoll dresses, slips and nightgowns, and smeared makeup. Kurt Loder likened her onstage attire to a "debauched ragdoll", and John Peel noted in his review of the band's 1994 Reading Festival performance, that "[Love], swaying wildly and with lipstick smeared on her face, hands and, I think, her back, as well as on the collar of her dress, ... would have drawn whistles of astonishment in Bedlam. The band teetered on the edge of chaos, generating a tension which I cannot remember having felt before from any stage." Rolling Stone referred to the style as "a slightly more politically charged version of grunge; apathy turned into ruinous angst, which soon became high fashion's favorite pose." The band's set lists for live shows were often loose, featuring improvisational jams and rough performances of unreleased songs. By 1998, their live performances had become less aggressive and more restrained, although Love continued to bring fans onstage, and would often go into the crowd while singing. Legacy Hole was one of the most commercially successful female-fronted alternative rock bands in history, selling over 3 million records in the United States between 1991 and 2010. In spite of Love's often polarizing reputation in the media, Hole received consistent critical praise for their output, and was often noted for the predominant feminist commentary found in Love's lyrics, which scholars have credited as "articulating a third-wave feminist consciousness". Love's subversive onstage persona and public image coincided with the band's songs, which expressed "pain, sorrow, and anger, but [an] underlying message of survival, particularly survival in the face of overwhelming circumstances". Music journalist Maria Raha expressed a similar sentiment in regard to the band's significance to third-wave feminism, stating, "Whether you love Courtney [Love] or hate her, Hole was the highest-profile female-fronted band of the '90s to openly and directly sing about feminism." While Rolling Stone compared the effect of Love's marriage to Cobain on the band to that of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, they noted that "Love's confrontational stage presence, as well as her gut-wrenching vocals and powerful punk-pop songcraft, made her an alternative-rock star in her own right." Author Nick Wise made a similar comparison in discussion of the band's public image, stating, "Not since Yoko Ono's marriage to John Lennon has a woman's personal life and exploits within the rock arena been so analyzed and dissected." The band has been cited as a major influence on several contemporary artists, including indie singer-songwriter Scout Niblett, Brody Dalle (of The Distillers and Spinnerette), Sky Ferreira, Lana Del Rey, Tove Lo, Tegan and Sara, Annie Hardy (of Giant Drag), Victoria Legrand (of Beach House), and the British rock band Nine Black Alps. The band ranked at number 77 on VH1's 100 Greatest Hard Rock Artists list. Materials loss In 2008 a fire swept through Universal Studios Hollywood destroying buildings belonging to Universal Music Group. News reports said that many artists including Hole had lost recordings in the fire. Love and the band were one of the artists suing UMG for the loss; however, on August 16, 2019, the band was removed from that lawsuit as it was amended "based on UMG's representations that none of Hole's original masters were destroyed (subject to confirmation)". Members Timeline Discography Pretty on the Inside (1991) Live Through This (1994) Celebrity Skin (1998) Nobody's Daughter (2010) Accolades {| class="wikitable unsortable plainrowheaders" |- ! scope="col" | Award ! scope="col" | Year ! scope="col" | Category ! scope="col" | Nominated work(s) ! scope="col" | Result ! scope="col" class="unsortable"| |- ! scope="row" rowspan=4|Grammy Awards | rowspan=3|1999 | Best Rock Album | Celebrity Skin | |rowspan=3 style="text-align:center;"| |- | Best Rock Song | rowspan=2|"Celebrity Skin" | |- |rowspan=2|Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group | |- | 2000 | "Malibu" | |style="text-align:center;"| |- ! scope="row" rowspan=2|MTV Video Music Awards | 1995 | Best Alternative Video | "Doll Parts" | |style="text-align:center;"| |- | 1999 | Best Cinematography | "Malibu" | |style="text-align:center;"| |- ! scope="row" rowspan=3|NME Awards | rowspan=3|1999 | Best Band | Hole | |rowspan=3| |- | Best Album | Celebrity Skin | |- | Best Single | "Celebrity Skin" | |- ! scope="row"|Spin Readers' Poll Awards | 1994 | Album of the Year | Live Through This | |style="text-align:center;"| References Sources External links Hole at Billboard Category:1989 establishments in California Category:2002 disestablishments in California Category:2009 establishments in California Category:2012 disestablishments in California Category:Alternative rock groups from California Category:American noise rock music groups Category:Punk rock groups from California Category:Musical groups established in 1989 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 2002 Category:Musical groups reestablished in 2009 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 2012 Category:Sympathy for the Record Industry artists Category:Caroline Records artists Category:DGC Records artists Category:Geffen Records artists Category:Sub Pop artists Category:Mercury Records artists Category:Musical groups from Los Angeles Category:Musical quartets Category:Feminist musicians Category:Third-wave feminism Category:Grunge musical groups Category:Courtney Love Category:Articles which contain graphical timelines Category:20th-century American guitarists Category:City Slang artists Category:Female-fronted musical groups

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Abbie Hoffman

Abbot Howard Hoffman (November 30, 1936 - April 12, 1989) was an American political and social activist, anarchist, and revolutionary who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies"). Hoffman was arrested and tried for conspiracy and inciting to riot as a result of his role in protests that led to violent confrontations with police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, along with Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale. The group was known collectively as the "Chicago Eight"; when Seale's prosecution was separated from the others, they became known as the Chicago Seven. While the defendants were initially convicted of intent to incite a riot, the verdicts were overturned on appeal.

Chicago Eight conspiracy trial

Hoffman was arrested and tried for conspiracy and inciting to riot as a result of his role in anti-Vietnam War protests, which were met by a violent police response during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He was among the group that came to be known as the Chicago Seven (originally known as the Chicago Eight), which included fellow Yippie Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, future California state senator Tom Hayden and Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale (before his trial was severed from the others). Presided over by Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation to Hoffman, about which he joked throughout the trial), Abbie Hoffman's courtroom antics frequently grabbed the headlines; one day, defendants Hoffman and Rubin appeared in court dressed in judicial robes, while on another day, Hoffman was sworn in as a witness with his hand giving the finger. Judge Hoffman became the favorite courtroom target of the Chicago Seven defendants, who frequently would insult the judge to his face. Abbie Hoffman told Judge Hoffman "you are a 'shande fur de Goyim' [disgrace in front of the gentiles]. You would have served Hitler better." He later added that "your idea of justice is the only obscenity in the room." Both Davis and Rubin told the Judge "this court is bullshit." When Hoffman was asked in what state he resided, he replied the "state of mind of my brothers and sisters". Other celebrities were called as "cultural witnesses" including Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Arlo Guthrie, Norman Mailer and others. Hoffman closed the trial with a speech in which he quoted Abraham Lincoln, making the claim that the president himself, if alive today, would also be arrested in Chicago's Lincoln Park. On February 18, 1970, Hoffman and four of the other defendants (Rubin, Dellinger, Davis, and Hayden) were found guilty of intent to incite a riot while crossing state lines. All seven defendants were found not guilty of conspiracy. At sentencing, Hoffman suggested the judge try LSD and offered to set him up with "a dealer he knew in Florida" (the judge was known to be headed to Florida for a post-trial vacation). Each of the five was sentenced to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. However, all convictions were subsequently overturned by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The Walker Commission later found that in fact it had been a "police riot". CANNOTANSWER

Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was an American political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and was a member of the Chicago Seven. He was also a leading proponent of the Flower Power movement. As a member of the Chicago Seven, Hoffman was charged with and tried―for activities during the 1968 Democratic National Convention―for conspiring to use interstate commerce with intent to incite a riot and crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot under the anti-riot provisions of Title X of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Five of the Chicago Seven defendants, including Hoffman, were convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot; all of the convictions were vacated after an appeal and the U.S. Department of Justice declined to pursue another trial. Hoffman, along with all of the defendants and their attorneys were also convicted and sentenced for contempt of court by the judge; these convictions were also vacated after an appeal. Hoffman continued his activism into the 1970s, and remains an icon of the anti-Vietnam war movement and the counterculture era. He died of an allegedly intentional phenobarbital overdose in 1989 at age 52. Early life and education Abbot Howard Hoffman was born November 30, 1936, in Worcester, Massachusetts, to Florence (née Schanberg) and John Hoffman. Hoffman was raised in a middle-class Jewish household and had two younger siblings. As a child in the 1940s and 1950s, he was a member of what has been described as "the transitional generation between the beatniks and hippies." He described his childhood as "idyllic" and the 1940s as "a great time to grow up in." During his school days, he became known as a troublemaker who started fights, played pranks, vandalized school property, and referred to teachers by their first names. In his second year, Hoffman was expelled from Classical High School, a now-closed public high school in Worcester. As an atheist, Hoffman wrote a paper declaring that, "God could not possibly exist, for if he did, there wouldn't be any suffering in the world." The irate teacher ripped up the paper and called him "a Communist punk." Hoffman jumped on the teacher and started fighting him until he was restrained and removed from the school. On June 3, 1954, 17-year-old Hoffman was arrested for the first time, for driving without a license. After his expulsion, he attended Worcester Academy, graduating in 1955. Hoffman engaged in many behaviors typical of rebellious teenagers in the 1950s, such as riding motorcycles, wearing leather jackets, and sporting a ducktail haircut. Upon graduating, he enrolled at nearby Brandeis University, where he studied under professors such as noted psychologist Abraham Maslow, often considered the father of humanistic psychology. He was also a student of Marxist theorist Herbert Marcuse, who Hoffman said had a profound effect on his political outlook. Hoffman would later cite Marcuse's influence during his activism and his theories on revolution. He was on the Brandeis tennis team, which was coached by journalist Bud Collins. Hoffman graduated with a B.A. in psychology in 1959. That fall, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed coursework toward a master's degree in psychology. Soon after, he married his girlfriend Sheila Karklin in May 1960. Countercultural activism Early activity Before his days as a leading member of the Yippie movement, Hoffman was involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and organized Liberty House, which sold items to support the civil rights movement in the southern United States. During the Vietnam War, Hoffman was an anti-war activist, using deliberately comical and theatrical tactics. In late 1966, Hoffman met with a radical community-action group called the Diggers and studied their ideology. He later returned to New York and published a book with this knowledge. Doing so was considered a violation by the Diggers. Diggers co-founder Peter Coyote explained: One of Hoffman's well-known stunts was on August 24, 1967, when he led members of the movement to the gallery of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The protesters threw fistfuls of real and fake dollar bills down to the traders below, some of whom booed, while others began to scramble frantically to grab the money as fast as they could. Accounts of the amount of money that Hoffman and the group tossed was said to be as little as $30 to $300. Hoffman claimed to be pointing out that, metaphorically, that's what NYSE traders "were already doing." "We didn't call the press," wrote Hoffman, "At that time we really had no notion of anything called a media event." Yet the press was quick to react and by evening the event was reported around the world. After that incident, the stock exchange spent $20,000 (approximately ) to enclose the gallery with bulletproof glass. In October 1967, David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam asked Jerry Rubin to help mobilize and direct a march on the Pentagon. The protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial as Dellinger and Dr. Benjamin Spock gave speeches to the mass of people. From there, the group marched towards the Pentagon. As the protesters neared the Pentagon, they were met by soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division who formed a human barricade blocking the Pentagon steps. Not to be dissuaded, Hoffman vowed to levitate the Pentagon claiming he would attempt to use psychic energy to levitate the Pentagon until it would turn orange and begin to vibrate, at which time the war in Vietnam would end. Allen Ginsberg led Tibetan chants to assist Hoffman. Chicago Seven conspiracy trial Hoffman was a member of a group of defendants that became known as the Chicago Seven (originally known as the Chicago Eight), which included fellow Yippie Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, Tom Hayden, and Bobby Seale (before his trial was severed from the others), who were charged by the United States federal government with conspiracy, crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War and countercultural protests in Chicago, Illinois during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Presided over by Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation to Hoffman, about which he joked throughout the trial), Abbie Hoffman's courtroom antics frequently grabbed the headlines; one day, defendants Hoffman and Rubin appeared in court dressed in judicial robes, while on another day, Hoffman was sworn in as a witness with his hand giving the finger. Judge Hoffman became the favorite courtroom target of the Chicago Seven defendants, who frequently would insult the judge to his face. Abbie Hoffman told Judge Hoffman "you are a shande fur de goyim [disgrace in front of the gentiles]. You would have served Hitler better." He later added that "your idea of justice is the only obscenity in the room." Both Davis and Rubin told the judge, "This court is bullshit." When Hoffman was asked in what state he resided, he replied the "state of mind of my brothers and sisters." Other celebrities were called as "cultural witnesses" including Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Arlo Guthrie, Norman Mailer and others. Hoffman closed the trial with a speech in which he quoted Abraham Lincoln, making the claim that the president himself, were he alive today, would also have been arrested in Chicago's Lincoln Park. On February 18, 1970, Hoffman and four of the other defendants (Rubin, Dellinger, Davis, and Hayden) were found guilty of intent to incite a riot while crossing state lines. All seven defendants were found not guilty of conspiracy. At sentencing, Hoffman suggested the judge try LSD and offered to set him up with "a dealer he knew in Florida." (The judge was known to be headed to Florida for a post-trial vacation.) Each of the five was sentenced to five years in prison and given a $5,000 fine (). However, all convictions were subsequently overturned by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Continuing protests At Woodstock in 1969, Hoffman interrupted The Who's performance to attempt to speak against the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party. He grabbed a microphone and yelled, "I think this is a pile of shit while John Sinclair rots in prison ..." Pete Townshend was adjusting his amplifier between songs and turned to look at Hoffman over his left shoulder. Townshend shouted "Fuck off! Fuck off my fucking stage!" and reportedly ran at Hoffman with his guitar and hit Hoffman in the back, although Townshend later denied attacking Hoffman. Townshend later said that while he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's imprisonment, he would have knocked him offstage regardless of the content of his message, given that Hoffman had violated the "sanctity of the stage," i.e., the right of the band to perform uninterrupted by distractions not relevant to the show. The incident took place during a camera change, and was not captured on film. The audio of this incident, however, can be heard on The Who's box set Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (Disc 2, Track 20, "Abbie Hoffman Incident"). In 1971's Steal This Book in the section "Free Communication," Hoffman encourages his readership to take to the stage at rock concerts to use the pre-assembled audience and PA system to get their message out. However, he mentions that "interrupting the concert is frowned upon since it is only spitting in the faces of people you are trying to reach." In Woodstock Nation, Hoffman mentions the incident and says he was on a bad LSD trip at the time. Joe Shea, then a reporter for the Times Herald-Record, a local newspaper that covered the event on-site, said he saw the incident. He recalled that Hoffman was actually hit in the back of the head by Townshend's guitar and toppled directly into the pit in front of the stage. He does not recall any "shove" from Townshend, and discounts both men's accounts. In 1971, Hoffman published Steal This Book, which advised readers on how to live for free. Many readers followed his advice and stole the book, leading many bookstores to refuse to carry it. He was also the author of several other books, including Vote!, co-written with Rubin and Ed Sanders. Later life Arrest and flight Hoffman was arrested on August 28, 1973, for intent to sell and distribute cocaine. He always maintained that undercover police agents entrapped him into a drug deal and planted suitcases of cocaine in his office. In the spring of 1974, Hoffman skipped bail, underwent cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance, and hid from authorities for several years. Some believed that Hoffman made himself a target. In 1998, Peter Coyote stated: Hoffman lived under the name Barry Freed in Fineview, New York, near Thousand Island Park, a private resort on the St. Lawrence River. He helped coordinate an environmental campaign to preserve the St. Lawrence River. Hoffman also was the travel columnist for Crawdaddy! magazine. On September 4, 1980, he surrendered to authorities, and he appeared the same day on a pre-taped edition of ABC's 20/20 in an interview with Barbara Walters. Hoffman received a one-year sentence but was released after four months. Return to activism In November 1986, Hoffman was arrested along with 14 others, including Amy Carter, the daughter of former President Jimmy Carter, for trespassing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The charges stemmed from a protest against the Central Intelligence Agency's recruitment on the UMass campus. Since the university's policy limited campus recruitment to law-abiding organizations, the defense argued that the CIA engaged in illegal activities. The federal district court judge permitted expert witnesses, including former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and a former CIA agent who testified that the CIA carried on an illegal Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in violation of the Boland Amendment. In three days of testimony, more than a dozen defense witnesses, including Daniel Ellsberg, and former Contra leader Edgar Chamorro, described the CIA's role in more than two decades of covert, illegal and often violent activities. In his closing argument, Hoffman, acting as his own attorney, placed his actions within the best tradition of American civil disobedience. He quoted from Thomas Paine, "the most outspoken and farsighted of the leaders of the American Revolution: 'Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. Man has no property in man, neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow.'" Hoffman concluded: "Thomas Paine was talking about this Spring day in this courtroom. A verdict of not guilty will say, 'When our country is right, keep it right; but when it is wrong, right those wrongs.'" On April 15, 1987, the jury found Hoffman and the other defendants not guilty. After his acquittal, Hoffman acted in a cameo appearance in Oliver Stone's later-released anti-Vietnam War film, Born on the Fourth of July. He essentially played himself in the movie, waving a flag on the ramparts of an administration building during a campus protest that was being teargassed and crushed by state troopers. In 1987 Hoffman summed up his views: Later that same year, Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers wrote Steal This Urine Test (published October 5, 1987), which exposed the internal contradictions of the War on Drugs and suggested ways to circumvent its most intrusive measures. Although Hoffman's satiric humor was on display throughout the book, Publishers Weekly wrote that "the extensive, in-depth research and a barrage of facts and figures... make this the definitive guide to the current drug-testing environment." Stone's Born on the Fourth of July was released on December 20, 1989, just eight months after Hoffman's suicide on April 12, 1989. At the time of his death, Hoffman was at the height of a renewed public visibility, one of the few 1960s radicals who still commanded the attention of the media. He regularly lectured about the CIA's covert activities, including assassinations disguised as suicides. His Playboy article (October 1988) outlining the connections that constitute the "October Surprise", brought that alleged conspiracy to the attention of a wide-ranging American readership for the first time. Personal life In 1960, Hoffman married Sheila Karklin, and had two children, Andrew (born 1960) and Amy (1962–2007), who later went by the name Ilya; she killed herself. Hoffman and Karklin divorced in 1966. In 1967, he married Anita Kushner in Manhattan's Central Park. They had one son whom they named Hoffman, deliberately using a lowercase "a". He and Kushner were effectively separated when Hoffman became a fugitive in 1973, although they were not formally divorced until 1980. While underground, Hoffman's companion was Johanna Lawrenson. His personal life drew a great deal of scrutiny from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose file on him was 13,262 pages long. Death Hoffman was found dead in his apartment in Solebury Township, Pennsylvania, on April 12, 1989, age 52. The cause of death was suicide by overdose from 150 phenobarbital tablets and liquor. Two hundred pages of handwritten notes were nearby, many detailing his moods. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1980. He had recently changed treatment medications and was reportedly depressed when his 83-year-old mother was diagnosed with cancer (she died in 1996 at age 90). Some who were close to him claimed that he was also unhappy about reaching middle age, combined with the fact that the liberal upheaval of the 1960s had produced a conservative backlash in the 1980s. In 1984, he had expressed dismay that the current generation of young people were not as interested in protesting and social activism as the youth had been during the 1960s. His death was officially ruled a suicide. Hoffman's fellow Chicago Seven defendant David Dellinger disputed this; he said, "I don't believe for one moment the suicide thing" and said that Hoffman had "numerous plans for the future." However, the coroner stood by the ruling, saying, "There is no way to take that amount of phenobarbital without intent. It was intentional and self-inflicted." His memorial service was held a week later in Worcester, Massachusetts, at Temple Emanuel, the synagogue that he attended as a child, with 1,000 friends and family members in attendance. Works Books Fuck the System (pamphlet, 1967) printed under the pseudonym George Metesky Revolution For the Hell of It (1968, Dial Press) published under the pseudonym "Free" Revolution for the Hell of It: The Book That Earned Abbie Hoffman a 5 Year Prison Term at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial (2005 reprint, ) Woodstock Nation: A Talk-Rock Album (1969, Random House) Steal This Book (1971, Pirate Editions) Steal This Book (1996 reprint, ) Authorized online location Vote! A Record, A Dialogue, A Manifesto – Miami Beach, 1972 And Beyond (1972, Warner Books) by Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Ed Sanders To America With Love: Letters From the Underground (1976, Stonehill Publishing) by Hoffman and Anita Hoffman To America With Love: Letters From the Underground (2000 second edition, ) Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture (1980, Perigee, ) The Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman (2000 second edition, ) Square Dancing in the Ice Age: Underground Writings (1982, Putnam, ) Steal This Urine Test: Fighting Drug Hysteria in America (1987, Penguin, ) by Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers The Best of Abbie Hoffman (1990, Four Walls Eight Windows, ) Preserving Disorder: The Faking of the President 1988 (1999, Viking, ) by Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers Record Abbie Hoffman and The Joint Chiefs of Staff. Wake Up, America! Big Toe Records (1971) Media Interviews Ken Jordan interview from January 1989, published in Reality Sandwich, May 2007 Appearances in documentary films Hoffman is featured in interviews and archival news footage in the following documentaries: Last Summer Won't Happen (1968), film by Peter Gessner & Tom Hurwitz; "a sympathetic but not uncritical document of the East Village in New York during that year (1968), capturing the movement's internal conflicts and contradictions". Hoffman's speech during the 1968 Democratic National Convention is featured in the 1970 Canadian fiction/documentary hybrid film, Prologue. Breathing Together: Revolution of the Electric Family (1971) Lord of the Universe (1974), satirical documentary, winner of the DuPont-Columbia Award in broadcast journalism, It Was 20 Years Ago Today (1987) Documentary about the year in which the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. Growing Up in America (1988), documentary on radical politics in the 1960s, First Run Features My Dinner with Abbie (1990). My Name Is Abbie (1998), Hoffman's first interview after seven years in hiding, Mystic Fire Video, Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune (2010), biographical documentary on the life and times of the singer-songwriter, First Run Features Appearances in feature films Born on the Fourth of July (1989); Hoffman appears as an organizer of the Syracuse University student strike which was triggered by the Kent State shooting. He died before the film was released, and a dedication to him is included in the credits. Appearances on television Vanguard Press's 10th Anniversary Media Bash, February 17, 1988, Moderated by Peter Freyne. With Abbie Hoffman, Dave Dellinger, and Bernie Sanders. The Coca Crystal Show: If I Can't Dance, You Can Keep Your Revolution, MANHATTAN CABLE TELEVISION, Public Access Cable TV, New York City. Appearances on radio Abbie Hoffman on WMCA radio, 1971 Abbie Hoffman on WBAI radio August 27, 1968 telephone recording of speeches during the Chicago DNC protests broadcast by Bob Fass Abbie Hoffman – 1988 – Howard Stern Show In popular culture Michael Lembeck portrayed Hoffman in the 1987 HBO television film Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8. Hoffman was portrayed by Richard D'Alessandro in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, speaking against "the war in Viet-fucking-nam" at a protest rally at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool facing the Washington Monument. Hoffman's life was dramatized in the 2000 film Steal This Movie!, in which he was portrayed by Vincent D'Onofrio. Hank Azaria's voice is heard as the animated Hoffman in the film Chicago 10 (2007). Thomas Ian Nicholas portrays Hoffman in the 2010 film titled The Chicago 8. Bern Cohen played the lead role in the 2011 Off Broadway play Abbie. Hoffman is portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen in The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020). Cohen was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the 93rd Academy Awards. Hoffman is mentioned in the song "Stuck in the 90's" on the 1993 album Bargainville by Canadian vocal group Moxy Früvous. A doll in Hoffman's likeness is used in a Raggedy Ann parody in the animated series Histeria!. In Wings 1993 season 4 episode 13 "Labor Pains" Faye describes an encounter with Hoffman at a protest in 1966. See also List of peace activists October Surprise conspiracy theory References Further reading "A Troubled Rebel Chooses A Silent Death." People Weekly, vol. 31, no. 17, May 1, 1989, pp. 100–104, 108, 110. Jezer, Marty (1992). Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel. Rutgers University Press. . Raskin, Jonah (1996). For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman. University of California Press. . Bruce Eric France, Jr. (2004). From Guerrilla Theater to Media Warfare Abbie Hoffman's Riotous Revolution in America: A Myth. Louisiana State University. Edited with an introduction by Jon Wiener. Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Seven. Afterword by Tom Hayden and drawings by Jules Feiffer. New York: The New Press, 2006. . External links Abbie Hoffman's Spirit Is Alive Scans of Abbie Hoffman's writing in The Realist during formation of the Yippie movement FBI file on Abbie Hoffman Biography and Photos at the Worcester Writers' Project Category:1936 births Category:1989 suicides Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American psychologists Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers Category:Activists from Massachusetts Category:Activists for African-American civil rights Category:American anti-capitalists Category:American anti-fascists Category:American anti-war activists Category:American anti–Vietnam War activists Category:American atheists Category:American cannabis activists Category:American foreign policy writers Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American non-fiction environmental writers Category:American people convicted of drug offenses Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:American political activists Category:American political writers Category:American writers of Russian descent Category:Anti-consumerists Category:Barbiturates-related deaths Category:Brandeis University alumni Category:Chicago Seven Category:COINTELPRO targets Category:Critics of work and the work ethic Category:American psychedelic drug advocates Category:Drug-related suicides in Pennsylvania Category:Free love advocates Category:Free speech activists Category:Jewish American atheists Category:Jewish American writers Category:American Jewish anti-racism activists Category:Jewish human rights activists Category:Jewish socialists Category:New Left Category:People from Greenwich Village Category:People with bipolar disorder Category:Revolution theorists Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:Worcester Academy alumni Category:Writers about activism and social change Category:Writers from Worcester, Massachusetts Category:Yippies Category:Youth empowerment people Category:1989 deaths

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Abbie Hoffman

Abbot Howard Hoffman (November 30, 1936 - April 12, 1989) was an American political and social activist, anarchist, and revolutionary who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies"). Hoffman was arrested and tried for conspiracy and inciting to riot as a result of his role in protests that led to violent confrontations with police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, along with Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale. The group was known collectively as the "Chicago Eight"; when Seale's prosecution was separated from the others, they became known as the Chicago Seven. While the defendants were initially convicted of intent to incite a riot, the verdicts were overturned on appeal.

Controversy at Woodstock

At Woodstock in 1969, Hoffman reportedly interrupted The Who's performance to attempt to speak against the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party. He grabbed a microphone and yelled, "I think this is a pile of shit while John Sinclair rots in prison ..." Pete Townshend was adjusting his amplifier between songs and turned to look at Hoffman over his left shoulder. Townshend shouted "Fuck off! Fuck off my fucking stage!" and reportedly ran at Hoffman with his guitar and hit Hoffman in the back, although Townshend later denied attacking Hoffman. Townshend later said that while he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's imprisonment, he would have knocked him offstage regardless of the content of his message, given that Hoffman had violated the "sanctity of the stage," i.e., the right of the band to perform uninterrupted by distractions not relevant to the show. The incident took place during a camera change, and was not captured on film. The audio of this incident, however, can be heard on The Who's box set, Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (Disc 2, Track 20, "Abbie Hoffman Incident"). In 1971's Steal This Book in the section "Free Communication," Hoffman encourages his readership to take to the stage at rock concerts to use the pre-assembled audience and PA system to get their message out. However he mentions that "interrupting the concert is frowned upon since it is only spitting in the faces of people you are trying to reach." In Woodstock Nation, Hoffman mentions the incident, and says he was on a bad LSD trip at the time. Joe Shea, then a reporter for the Times Herald-Record, newspaper that covered the event on-site, said he saw the incident. He recalled that Hoffman was actually hit in the back of the head by Townshend's guitar and toppled directly into the pit in front of the stage. He does not recall any "shove" from Townshend, and discounts both men's accounts. CANNOTANSWER

Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was an American political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and was a member of the Chicago Seven. He was also a leading proponent of the Flower Power movement. As a member of the Chicago Seven, Hoffman was charged with and tried―for activities during the 1968 Democratic National Convention―for conspiring to use interstate commerce with intent to incite a riot and crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot under the anti-riot provisions of Title X of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Five of the Chicago Seven defendants, including Hoffman, were convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot; all of the convictions were vacated after an appeal and the U.S. Department of Justice declined to pursue another trial. Hoffman, along with all of the defendants and their attorneys were also convicted and sentenced for contempt of court by the judge; these convictions were also vacated after an appeal. Hoffman continued his activism into the 1970s, and remains an icon of the anti-Vietnam war movement and the counterculture era. He died of an allegedly intentional phenobarbital overdose in 1989 at age 52. Early life and education Abbot Howard Hoffman was born November 30, 1936, in Worcester, Massachusetts, to Florence (née Schanberg) and John Hoffman. Hoffman was raised in a middle-class Jewish household and had two younger siblings. As a child in the 1940s and 1950s, he was a member of what has been described as "the transitional generation between the beatniks and hippies." He described his childhood as "idyllic" and the 1940s as "a great time to grow up in." During his school days, he became known as a troublemaker who started fights, played pranks, vandalized school property, and referred to teachers by their first names. In his second year, Hoffman was expelled from Classical High School, a now-closed public high school in Worcester. As an atheist, Hoffman wrote a paper declaring that, "God could not possibly exist, for if he did, there wouldn't be any suffering in the world." The irate teacher ripped up the paper and called him "a Communist punk." Hoffman jumped on the teacher and started fighting him until he was restrained and removed from the school. On June 3, 1954, 17-year-old Hoffman was arrested for the first time, for driving without a license. After his expulsion, he attended Worcester Academy, graduating in 1955. Hoffman engaged in many behaviors typical of rebellious teenagers in the 1950s, such as riding motorcycles, wearing leather jackets, and sporting a ducktail haircut. Upon graduating, he enrolled at nearby Brandeis University, where he studied under professors such as noted psychologist Abraham Maslow, often considered the father of humanistic psychology. He was also a student of Marxist theorist Herbert Marcuse, who Hoffman said had a profound effect on his political outlook. Hoffman would later cite Marcuse's influence during his activism and his theories on revolution. He was on the Brandeis tennis team, which was coached by journalist Bud Collins. Hoffman graduated with a B.A. in psychology in 1959. That fall, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed coursework toward a master's degree in psychology. Soon after, he married his girlfriend Sheila Karklin in May 1960. Countercultural activism Early activity Before his days as a leading member of the Yippie movement, Hoffman was involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and organized Liberty House, which sold items to support the civil rights movement in the southern United States. During the Vietnam War, Hoffman was an anti-war activist, using deliberately comical and theatrical tactics. In late 1966, Hoffman met with a radical community-action group called the Diggers and studied their ideology. He later returned to New York and published a book with this knowledge. Doing so was considered a violation by the Diggers. Diggers co-founder Peter Coyote explained: One of Hoffman's well-known stunts was on August 24, 1967, when he led members of the movement to the gallery of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The protesters threw fistfuls of real and fake dollar bills down to the traders below, some of whom booed, while others began to scramble frantically to grab the money as fast as they could. Accounts of the amount of money that Hoffman and the group tossed was said to be as little as $30 to $300. Hoffman claimed to be pointing out that, metaphorically, that's what NYSE traders "were already doing." "We didn't call the press," wrote Hoffman, "At that time we really had no notion of anything called a media event." Yet the press was quick to react and by evening the event was reported around the world. After that incident, the stock exchange spent $20,000 (approximately ) to enclose the gallery with bulletproof glass. In October 1967, David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam asked Jerry Rubin to help mobilize and direct a march on the Pentagon. The protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial as Dellinger and Dr. Benjamin Spock gave speeches to the mass of people. From there, the group marched towards the Pentagon. As the protesters neared the Pentagon, they were met by soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division who formed a human barricade blocking the Pentagon steps. Not to be dissuaded, Hoffman vowed to levitate the Pentagon claiming he would attempt to use psychic energy to levitate the Pentagon until it would turn orange and begin to vibrate, at which time the war in Vietnam would end. Allen Ginsberg led Tibetan chants to assist Hoffman. Chicago Seven conspiracy trial Hoffman was a member of a group of defendants that became known as the Chicago Seven (originally known as the Chicago Eight), which included fellow Yippie Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, Tom Hayden, and Bobby Seale (before his trial was severed from the others), who were charged by the United States federal government with conspiracy, crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War and countercultural protests in Chicago, Illinois during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Presided over by Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation to Hoffman, about which he joked throughout the trial), Abbie Hoffman's courtroom antics frequently grabbed the headlines; one day, defendants Hoffman and Rubin appeared in court dressed in judicial robes, while on another day, Hoffman was sworn in as a witness with his hand giving the finger. Judge Hoffman became the favorite courtroom target of the Chicago Seven defendants, who frequently would insult the judge to his face. Abbie Hoffman told Judge Hoffman "you are a shande fur de goyim [disgrace in front of the gentiles]. You would have served Hitler better." He later added that "your idea of justice is the only obscenity in the room." Both Davis and Rubin told the judge, "This court is bullshit." When Hoffman was asked in what state he resided, he replied the "state of mind of my brothers and sisters." Other celebrities were called as "cultural witnesses" including Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Arlo Guthrie, Norman Mailer and others. Hoffman closed the trial with a speech in which he quoted Abraham Lincoln, making the claim that the president himself, were he alive today, would also have been arrested in Chicago's Lincoln Park. On February 18, 1970, Hoffman and four of the other defendants (Rubin, Dellinger, Davis, and Hayden) were found guilty of intent to incite a riot while crossing state lines. All seven defendants were found not guilty of conspiracy. At sentencing, Hoffman suggested the judge try LSD and offered to set him up with "a dealer he knew in Florida." (The judge was known to be headed to Florida for a post-trial vacation.) Each of the five was sentenced to five years in prison and given a $5,000 fine (). However, all convictions were subsequently overturned by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Continuing protests At Woodstock in 1969, Hoffman interrupted The Who's performance to attempt to speak against the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party. He grabbed a microphone and yelled, "I think this is a pile of shit while John Sinclair rots in prison ..." Pete Townshend was adjusting his amplifier between songs and turned to look at Hoffman over his left shoulder. Townshend shouted "Fuck off! Fuck off my fucking stage!" and reportedly ran at Hoffman with his guitar and hit Hoffman in the back, although Townshend later denied attacking Hoffman. Townshend later said that while he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's imprisonment, he would have knocked him offstage regardless of the content of his message, given that Hoffman had violated the "sanctity of the stage," i.e., the right of the band to perform uninterrupted by distractions not relevant to the show. The incident took place during a camera change, and was not captured on film. The audio of this incident, however, can be heard on The Who's box set Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (Disc 2, Track 20, "Abbie Hoffman Incident"). In 1971's Steal This Book in the section "Free Communication," Hoffman encourages his readership to take to the stage at rock concerts to use the pre-assembled audience and PA system to get their message out. However, he mentions that "interrupting the concert is frowned upon since it is only spitting in the faces of people you are trying to reach." In Woodstock Nation, Hoffman mentions the incident and says he was on a bad LSD trip at the time. Joe Shea, then a reporter for the Times Herald-Record, a local newspaper that covered the event on-site, said he saw the incident. He recalled that Hoffman was actually hit in the back of the head by Townshend's guitar and toppled directly into the pit in front of the stage. He does not recall any "shove" from Townshend, and discounts both men's accounts. In 1971, Hoffman published Steal This Book, which advised readers on how to live for free. Many readers followed his advice and stole the book, leading many bookstores to refuse to carry it. He was also the author of several other books, including Vote!, co-written with Rubin and Ed Sanders. Later life Arrest and flight Hoffman was arrested on August 28, 1973, for intent to sell and distribute cocaine. He always maintained that undercover police agents entrapped him into a drug deal and planted suitcases of cocaine in his office. In the spring of 1974, Hoffman skipped bail, underwent cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance, and hid from authorities for several years. Some believed that Hoffman made himself a target. In 1998, Peter Coyote stated: Hoffman lived under the name Barry Freed in Fineview, New York, near Thousand Island Park, a private resort on the St. Lawrence River. He helped coordinate an environmental campaign to preserve the St. Lawrence River. Hoffman also was the travel columnist for Crawdaddy! magazine. On September 4, 1980, he surrendered to authorities, and he appeared the same day on a pre-taped edition of ABC's 20/20 in an interview with Barbara Walters. Hoffman received a one-year sentence but was released after four months. Return to activism In November 1986, Hoffman was arrested along with 14 others, including Amy Carter, the daughter of former President Jimmy Carter, for trespassing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The charges stemmed from a protest against the Central Intelligence Agency's recruitment on the UMass campus. Since the university's policy limited campus recruitment to law-abiding organizations, the defense argued that the CIA engaged in illegal activities. The federal district court judge permitted expert witnesses, including former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and a former CIA agent who testified that the CIA carried on an illegal Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in violation of the Boland Amendment. In three days of testimony, more than a dozen defense witnesses, including Daniel Ellsberg, and former Contra leader Edgar Chamorro, described the CIA's role in more than two decades of covert, illegal and often violent activities. In his closing argument, Hoffman, acting as his own attorney, placed his actions within the best tradition of American civil disobedience. He quoted from Thomas Paine, "the most outspoken and farsighted of the leaders of the American Revolution: 'Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. Man has no property in man, neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow.'" Hoffman concluded: "Thomas Paine was talking about this Spring day in this courtroom. A verdict of not guilty will say, 'When our country is right, keep it right; but when it is wrong, right those wrongs.'" On April 15, 1987, the jury found Hoffman and the other defendants not guilty. After his acquittal, Hoffman acted in a cameo appearance in Oliver Stone's later-released anti-Vietnam War film, Born on the Fourth of July. He essentially played himself in the movie, waving a flag on the ramparts of an administration building during a campus protest that was being teargassed and crushed by state troopers. In 1987 Hoffman summed up his views: Later that same year, Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers wrote Steal This Urine Test (published October 5, 1987), which exposed the internal contradictions of the War on Drugs and suggested ways to circumvent its most intrusive measures. Although Hoffman's satiric humor was on display throughout the book, Publishers Weekly wrote that "the extensive, in-depth research and a barrage of facts and figures... make this the definitive guide to the current drug-testing environment." Stone's Born on the Fourth of July was released on December 20, 1989, just eight months after Hoffman's suicide on April 12, 1989. At the time of his death, Hoffman was at the height of a renewed public visibility, one of the few 1960s radicals who still commanded the attention of the media. He regularly lectured about the CIA's covert activities, including assassinations disguised as suicides. His Playboy article (October 1988) outlining the connections that constitute the "October Surprise", brought that alleged conspiracy to the attention of a wide-ranging American readership for the first time. Personal life In 1960, Hoffman married Sheila Karklin, and had two children, Andrew (born 1960) and Amy (1962–2007), who later went by the name Ilya; she killed herself. Hoffman and Karklin divorced in 1966. In 1967, he married Anita Kushner in Manhattan's Central Park. They had one son whom they named Hoffman, deliberately using a lowercase "a". He and Kushner were effectively separated when Hoffman became a fugitive in 1973, although they were not formally divorced until 1980. While underground, Hoffman's companion was Johanna Lawrenson. His personal life drew a great deal of scrutiny from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose file on him was 13,262 pages long. Death Hoffman was found dead in his apartment in Solebury Township, Pennsylvania, on April 12, 1989, age 52. The cause of death was suicide by overdose from 150 phenobarbital tablets and liquor. Two hundred pages of handwritten notes were nearby, many detailing his moods. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1980. He had recently changed treatment medications and was reportedly depressed when his 83-year-old mother was diagnosed with cancer (she died in 1996 at age 90). Some who were close to him claimed that he was also unhappy about reaching middle age, combined with the fact that the liberal upheaval of the 1960s had produced a conservative backlash in the 1980s. In 1984, he had expressed dismay that the current generation of young people were not as interested in protesting and social activism as the youth had been during the 1960s. His death was officially ruled a suicide. Hoffman's fellow Chicago Seven defendant David Dellinger disputed this; he said, "I don't believe for one moment the suicide thing" and said that Hoffman had "numerous plans for the future." However, the coroner stood by the ruling, saying, "There is no way to take that amount of phenobarbital without intent. It was intentional and self-inflicted." His memorial service was held a week later in Worcester, Massachusetts, at Temple Emanuel, the synagogue that he attended as a child, with 1,000 friends and family members in attendance. Works Books Fuck the System (pamphlet, 1967) printed under the pseudonym George Metesky Revolution For the Hell of It (1968, Dial Press) published under the pseudonym "Free" Revolution for the Hell of It: The Book That Earned Abbie Hoffman a 5 Year Prison Term at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial (2005 reprint, ) Woodstock Nation: A Talk-Rock Album (1969, Random House) Steal This Book (1971, Pirate Editions) Steal This Book (1996 reprint, ) Authorized online location Vote! A Record, A Dialogue, A Manifesto – Miami Beach, 1972 And Beyond (1972, Warner Books) by Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Ed Sanders To America With Love: Letters From the Underground (1976, Stonehill Publishing) by Hoffman and Anita Hoffman To America With Love: Letters From the Underground (2000 second edition, ) Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture (1980, Perigee, ) The Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman (2000 second edition, ) Square Dancing in the Ice Age: Underground Writings (1982, Putnam, ) Steal This Urine Test: Fighting Drug Hysteria in America (1987, Penguin, ) by Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers The Best of Abbie Hoffman (1990, Four Walls Eight Windows, ) Preserving Disorder: The Faking of the President 1988 (1999, Viking, ) by Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers Record Abbie Hoffman and The Joint Chiefs of Staff. Wake Up, America! Big Toe Records (1971) Media Interviews Ken Jordan interview from January 1989, published in Reality Sandwich, May 2007 Appearances in documentary films Hoffman is featured in interviews and archival news footage in the following documentaries: Last Summer Won't Happen (1968), film by Peter Gessner & Tom Hurwitz; "a sympathetic but not uncritical document of the East Village in New York during that year (1968), capturing the movement's internal conflicts and contradictions". Hoffman's speech during the 1968 Democratic National Convention is featured in the 1970 Canadian fiction/documentary hybrid film, Prologue. Breathing Together: Revolution of the Electric Family (1971) Lord of the Universe (1974), satirical documentary, winner of the DuPont-Columbia Award in broadcast journalism, It Was 20 Years Ago Today (1987) Documentary about the year in which the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. Growing Up in America (1988), documentary on radical politics in the 1960s, First Run Features My Dinner with Abbie (1990). My Name Is Abbie (1998), Hoffman's first interview after seven years in hiding, Mystic Fire Video, Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune (2010), biographical documentary on the life and times of the singer-songwriter, First Run Features Appearances in feature films Born on the Fourth of July (1989); Hoffman appears as an organizer of the Syracuse University student strike which was triggered by the Kent State shooting. He died before the film was released, and a dedication to him is included in the credits. Appearances on television Vanguard Press's 10th Anniversary Media Bash, February 17, 1988, Moderated by Peter Freyne. With Abbie Hoffman, Dave Dellinger, and Bernie Sanders. The Coca Crystal Show: If I Can't Dance, You Can Keep Your Revolution, MANHATTAN CABLE TELEVISION, Public Access Cable TV, New York City. Appearances on radio Abbie Hoffman on WMCA radio, 1971 Abbie Hoffman on WBAI radio August 27, 1968 telephone recording of speeches during the Chicago DNC protests broadcast by Bob Fass Abbie Hoffman – 1988 – Howard Stern Show In popular culture Michael Lembeck portrayed Hoffman in the 1987 HBO television film Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8. Hoffman was portrayed by Richard D'Alessandro in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, speaking against "the war in Viet-fucking-nam" at a protest rally at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool facing the Washington Monument. Hoffman's life was dramatized in the 2000 film Steal This Movie!, in which he was portrayed by Vincent D'Onofrio. Hank Azaria's voice is heard as the animated Hoffman in the film Chicago 10 (2007). Thomas Ian Nicholas portrays Hoffman in the 2010 film titled The Chicago 8. Bern Cohen played the lead role in the 2011 Off Broadway play Abbie. Hoffman is portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen in The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020). Cohen was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the 93rd Academy Awards. Hoffman is mentioned in the song "Stuck in the 90's" on the 1993 album Bargainville by Canadian vocal group Moxy Früvous. A doll in Hoffman's likeness is used in a Raggedy Ann parody in the animated series Histeria!. In Wings 1993 season 4 episode 13 "Labor Pains" Faye describes an encounter with Hoffman at a protest in 1966. See also List of peace activists October Surprise conspiracy theory References Further reading "A Troubled Rebel Chooses A Silent Death." People Weekly, vol. 31, no. 17, May 1, 1989, pp. 100–104, 108, 110. Jezer, Marty (1992). Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel. Rutgers University Press. . Raskin, Jonah (1996). For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman. University of California Press. . Bruce Eric France, Jr. (2004). From Guerrilla Theater to Media Warfare Abbie Hoffman's Riotous Revolution in America: A Myth. Louisiana State University. Edited with an introduction by Jon Wiener. Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Seven. Afterword by Tom Hayden and drawings by Jules Feiffer. New York: The New Press, 2006. . External links Abbie Hoffman's Spirit Is Alive Scans of Abbie Hoffman's writing in The Realist during formation of the Yippie movement FBI file on Abbie Hoffman Biography and Photos at the Worcester Writers' Project Category:1936 births Category:1989 suicides Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American psychologists Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers Category:Activists from Massachusetts Category:Activists for African-American civil rights Category:American anti-capitalists Category:American anti-fascists Category:American anti-war activists Category:American anti–Vietnam War activists Category:American atheists Category:American cannabis activists Category:American foreign policy writers Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American non-fiction environmental writers Category:American people convicted of drug offenses Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:American political activists Category:American political writers Category:American writers of Russian descent Category:Anti-consumerists Category:Barbiturates-related deaths Category:Brandeis University alumni Category:Chicago Seven Category:COINTELPRO targets Category:Critics of work and the work ethic Category:American psychedelic drug advocates Category:Drug-related suicides in Pennsylvania Category:Free love advocates Category:Free speech activists Category:Jewish American atheists Category:Jewish American writers Category:American Jewish anti-racism activists Category:Jewish human rights activists Category:Jewish socialists Category:New Left Category:People from Greenwich Village Category:People with bipolar disorder Category:Revolution theorists Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:Worcester Academy alumni Category:Writers about activism and social change Category:Writers from Worcester, Massachusetts Category:Yippies Category:Youth empowerment people Category:1989 deaths

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Robert Todd Carroll

Carroll was born in Joliet, Illinois on May 18, 1945. His father worked in a coal processing plant. The family moved to San Diego in 1954 where Carroll grew up. He describes his early years in Ocean Beach as an ideal childhood.

Views on religion

Carroll did not believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent god. However, in his essay "Why I am not an atheist", Carroll described his dislike of the term "atheist" because he feels that the term is being exploited by theists and used as a straw man argument. He felt that the term implies a dogmatic set of beliefs and carries its own share of negative baggage. So, Carroll suggested that atheists might as well adopt the term "Brights" with all its negative connotations. The only religion that Carroll found attractive after abandoning Catholicism, despite never following it, is Buddhism as taught by the Dalai Lama. Carroll has always maintained the opinion that people have to be more skeptical of religion than they are now. He said in multiple interviews that religion is an area that skeptics don't target enough, and that pure faith is winning the race against critical thinking. Carroll tended to have a moderate outlook on religion. He believed that religion has a role to play in people's lives and he didn't condemn religion for terrorism. When asked about the relationship between violence and religion he said that he can't recall anything negative about his religious upbringing, and that maybe Catholicism can provide more good than harm. He didn't believe religion causes wars, he rather believed that it serves as an excuse for people who will go to war regardless of religion's existence. Carroll believed that some people rely on religion as their only source of morality and as a source of comfort. However, he found it distressing that some people are unable to find meaning in their lives without religion. In an interview with Beyond a Doubt he said "There is nothing dull about a life without fairies, Easter bunnies, devils, ghosts, magic crystals, etc. Life is only boring to boring people." CANNOTANSWER

Robert Todd Carroll (May 18, 1945 – August 25, 2016) was an American author, philosopher and academic, best known for The Skeptic's Dictionary. He described himself as a naturalist, an atheist, a materialist, a metaphysical libertarian, and a positivist. In 2010 he was elected a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He was a professor of philosophy at Sacramento City College from 1977 until his retirement in 2007. Life Carroll was born in Joliet, Illinois, on May 18, 1945. His father worked in a coal processing plant. In 1954 the family moved to San Diego, where Carroll grew up. He described his early years in Ocean Beach as an ideal childhood. He was raised Catholic. Carroll went to the University of San Diego High School and then received a Catholic education from the University of Notre Dame. He went into seminary in Notre Dame, but after a short time he left in 1965 and went back to San Diego. Carroll earned his PhD in philosophy in 1974 at the University of California, San Diego, writing his doctoral thesis under the direction of Richard H. Popkin on the religious philosophy of Edward Stillingfleet, who had defended the Anglican church passionately against Catholics, deists and atheists before becoming Bishop of Worcester. Carroll's thesis was published in 1975. By then Carroll was married, with two daughters. The new family moved to Susanville, California, where he started teaching philosophy at Lassen Community College. He later moved to the Sacramento area and from 1977 lived in Davis. Carroll said he never went through a religious deconversion moment but instead had a long journey to disbelief. He first started doubting Catholicism, he said, when he went into seminary in Notre Dame. After leaving the seminary he became intrigued by eastern religions and, inspired by Alan Watts, started looking at their holy books. Carroll became interested in Paramahansa Yogananda and attended meetings of his Self-Realization Fellowship to do yoga and chanting. At the time, he identified as agnostic. After leaving the Fellowship, he said, he spent years thinking about his religion. He later said, "The more I thought about religious ideas, the more false and absurd they seem to me." Carroll took up Kierkegaard's idea that religious beliefs require a leap of faith because they cannot be rationally proven. But Carroll decided to leap in the other direction. He said he "found many reasons for disbelief and absolutely no reasons for belief." In May 2014, Carroll was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer and liver metastasis. In May 2016 he announced he would no longer be able to write the Skeptic's Dictionary monthly newsletter on account of his illness. On August 25, 2016, Carroll died in a local hospital in Davis, California. He was survived by his wife and his two daughters and two grandchildren. Career Professor Carroll started teaching philosophy part time at Lassen Community College. Then he taught philosophy of religion at American River College for two years. Thereafter he taught full time at Sacramento City College, where from 1977 through 2007 he taught introductory philosophy; logic and critical reasoning; law, justice, and punishment; and critical thinking about the paranormal. For several years he served as chairman of the philosophy department. Writer Drawing on his classwork, Carroll wrote Becoming a Critical Thinker: A Guide for a New Millennium, an introductory textbook for logic and critical thinking. Pearson Educational published the first edition in 2000. A second edition was published in 2005. In 2003 John Wiley & Son published a paperback edition of The Skeptic's Dictionary, derived from Carroll's website of the same name. The book provides essays on subjects Carroll considered supernatural, occult, paranormal, or pseudoscientific. It generally assumed that something is false until proven true. In the last chapter, Carroll offered ways to improve critical thinking and skepticism. The book is also available in Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. In 2011 Carroll published online a children's version of The Skeptic's Dictionary. In 2013, it came out as a book under the title Mysteries and Science: Exploring Aliens, Ghosts, Monsters, the End of the World and Other Weird Things. Carroll also wrote Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!, which was published as an e-book in 2011 by the James Randi Educational Foundation. A paperback version is available from Lulu. In 2013 Carroll also self-published The Critical Thinker's Dictionary, which features short articles about cognitive biases and logical fallacies. Skeptic Carroll said he had been investigating controversial beliefs since he was seven years old when he had doubts about Santa Claus. Carroll started writing skeptical content in 1992, when both his best friend and his father-in-law died within the same week. He later said, "It was like the deaths of these two people had forced me to start looking at everything and not take anything for granted." After Carroll and his wife attended free training in 1994 in which they learned about the Internet and HTML code, Carroll started the Skeptic's Dictionary website (skepdic.com) with ten articles written for his students and expanded it from there. Although the website was a one-man project, volunteers later assisted in editing it and translated it into more than a dozen languages. The Skeptic's Dictionary, Carroll said, was inspired by Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary in both its name and its biased stance. On March 27, 2012, Carroll began a regular segment on the podcast Skepticality entitled Unnatural Virtue in which he commented on topics in critical thinking and skepticism. The segment ran for thirty-one episodes, until April 29, 2014. Carroll spoke at several skeptic conferences. In 2003 he spoke at the first Amaz!ng Meeting and at a conference of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal on frauds and hoaxes. In 2004 he spoke to the Irish Skeptics in Dublin. In 2007 he conducted a critical-thinking workshop at the 5th Amazing Meeting. In 2011 he led a discussion on "Five Myths About Skeptics" at the second annual SkeptiCalCon event, held in Berkeley, CA. He was also interviewed by groups promoting scientific skepticism, such as the New England Skeptical Society and Media Man Australia. In January 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In an interview with Point of Inquiry's Karen Stollznow, Carroll said he did not earn much money from his skeptical work: "If we talk about the money we make from skepticism we might set a record for the shortest interview ever." But everybody should be a skeptic, he said, because it is a healthy way of approaching life. He said that skeptics' meetups and conferences, as well as the positive feedback he received on his work, were his main motivations. Criticism Richard Milton After Carroll published a piece online labelling Richard Milton's writings on alternative science "Internet Bunk," Milton responded by accusing Carroll of being a "pseudo-skeptic" and said that Carroll had fabricated quotations and misrepresented his arguments. Carroll replied to these accusations in an addendum to his piece. Rupert Sheldrake Carroll wrote two Skeptic's Dictionary entries that criticize Rupert Sheldrake's ideas. The first criticized Sheldrake's N'kisi Project, a set of experiments meant to test the possibility of a telepathic link between N'kisi (a grey parrot) and its owner, Aimee Morgana. Carroll charged that when calculating the statistical significance of the parrot's responses, Sheldrake had omitted 60% of the data. Carroll also criticized Jane Goodall for her involvement in the Project. The second entry challenged Sheldrake's morphic resonance idea, in which Sheldrake proposed that, in addition to genetic influences, a "morphogenetic field" for each species evolves similarly to how the species' genes might evolve, that these fields organize the nervous system's activity and can act as a collective memory for the whole species, and that these fields get passed down into the species. Sheldrake replied to Carroll's criticism by defending his own arguments and accusing Carroll of committing several logical fallacies, including using false dilemmas and misrepresenting Sheldrake's position. He also criticized The Skeptic's Dictionary, writing that it would not survive had it been subject to independent peer reviews. Publications The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003, . "Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!", Los Angeles: James Randi Educational Foundation, 2011, . Becoming a Critical Thinker – A Guide for the New Millennium, 2nd ed., self-published, 2013. . The Common-sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet 1635–1699, . (1974 doctoral dissertation, under the direction of Richard Popkin, University of California at San Diego). References External links The Skeptic's Dictionary Category:1945 births Category:2016 deaths Category:20th-century American philosophers Category:American skeptics Category:Critics of alternative medicine Category:Critics of parapsychology Category:Writers from Joliet, Illinois Category:Writers from San Diego Category:University of California, San Diego alumni Category:Former Roman Catholics Category:21st-century American philosophers

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Robert Todd Carroll

Carroll was born in Joliet, Illinois on May 18, 1945. His father worked in a coal processing plant. The family moved to San Diego in 1954 where Carroll grew up. He describes his early years in Ocean Beach as an ideal childhood.

Writer

Carroll is the author of Becoming a Critical Thinker, a textbook for introductory logic and critical thinking courses. It covers subjects such as language and critical thinking, the mass media and other sources of information, fallacies of reasoning, and inductive and deductive arguments. The book is subtitled A Guide for the New Millennium. Pearson Educational published the first edition in 2000 and the second edition was published in 2005. Becoming a Critical Thinker was born out of Carroll's classwork during his time in Sacramento City College. The Skeptic's Dictionary is the print version of the website skepdic.com and is available in Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. It provides definitions, arguments, and essays on supernatural, occult, paranormal, and pseudo-scientific subjects. The book features many examples of pseudoscientific beliefs over its eight chapters. In the last chapter, Carroll provides ways to improve critical thinking and skepticism. Similar to the website, it takes a skeptical stance, typically assuming that something is false until proven otherwise. The book came about when Ted Weinstein, a literary agent, contacted Carroll about creating the book. The book was eventually published by John Wiley & Son in August 2003 as an inexpensive paperback. The book is intended to be biased towards the skeptical side; it is not targeted towards true believers. Carroll also wrote a children's version of the Skeptic's dictionary which was released online on July 22, 2011. In 2013, it was published as a children's book under the title Mysteries and Science: Exploring Aliens, Ghosts, Monsters, the End of the World and Other Weird Things. He also wrote Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed! which was initially published by the James Randi Educational Foundation as an e-book in 2011. A paperback version is available from Lulu. The Critical Thinker's Dictionary was published in 2013. It features short articles about cognitive biases and logical fallacies. CANNOTANSWER

Robert Todd Carroll (May 18, 1945 – August 25, 2016) was an American author, philosopher and academic, best known for The Skeptic's Dictionary. He described himself as a naturalist, an atheist, a materialist, a metaphysical libertarian, and a positivist. In 2010 he was elected a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He was a professor of philosophy at Sacramento City College from 1977 until his retirement in 2007. Life Carroll was born in Joliet, Illinois, on May 18, 1945. His father worked in a coal processing plant. In 1954 the family moved to San Diego, where Carroll grew up. He described his early years in Ocean Beach as an ideal childhood. He was raised Catholic. Carroll went to the University of San Diego High School and then received a Catholic education from the University of Notre Dame. He went into seminary in Notre Dame, but after a short time he left in 1965 and went back to San Diego. Carroll earned his PhD in philosophy in 1974 at the University of California, San Diego, writing his doctoral thesis under the direction of Richard H. Popkin on the religious philosophy of Edward Stillingfleet, who had defended the Anglican church passionately against Catholics, deists and atheists before becoming Bishop of Worcester. Carroll's thesis was published in 1975. By then Carroll was married, with two daughters. The new family moved to Susanville, California, where he started teaching philosophy at Lassen Community College. He later moved to the Sacramento area and from 1977 lived in Davis. Carroll said he never went through a religious deconversion moment but instead had a long journey to disbelief. He first started doubting Catholicism, he said, when he went into seminary in Notre Dame. After leaving the seminary he became intrigued by eastern religions and, inspired by Alan Watts, started looking at their holy books. Carroll became interested in Paramahansa Yogananda and attended meetings of his Self-Realization Fellowship to do yoga and chanting. At the time, he identified as agnostic. After leaving the Fellowship, he said, he spent years thinking about his religion. He later said, "The more I thought about religious ideas, the more false and absurd they seem to me." Carroll took up Kierkegaard's idea that religious beliefs require a leap of faith because they cannot be rationally proven. But Carroll decided to leap in the other direction. He said he "found many reasons for disbelief and absolutely no reasons for belief." In May 2014, Carroll was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer and liver metastasis. In May 2016 he announced he would no longer be able to write the Skeptic's Dictionary monthly newsletter on account of his illness. On August 25, 2016, Carroll died in a local hospital in Davis, California. He was survived by his wife and his two daughters and two grandchildren. Career Professor Carroll started teaching philosophy part time at Lassen Community College. Then he taught philosophy of religion at American River College for two years. Thereafter he taught full time at Sacramento City College, where from 1977 through 2007 he taught introductory philosophy; logic and critical reasoning; law, justice, and punishment; and critical thinking about the paranormal. For several years he served as chairman of the philosophy department. Writer Drawing on his classwork, Carroll wrote Becoming a Critical Thinker: A Guide for a New Millennium, an introductory textbook for logic and critical thinking. Pearson Educational published the first edition in 2000. A second edition was published in 2005. In 2003 John Wiley & Son published a paperback edition of The Skeptic's Dictionary, derived from Carroll's website of the same name. The book provides essays on subjects Carroll considered supernatural, occult, paranormal, or pseudoscientific. It generally assumed that something is false until proven true. In the last chapter, Carroll offered ways to improve critical thinking and skepticism. The book is also available in Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. In 2011 Carroll published online a children's version of The Skeptic's Dictionary. In 2013, it came out as a book under the title Mysteries and Science: Exploring Aliens, Ghosts, Monsters, the End of the World and Other Weird Things. Carroll also wrote Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!, which was published as an e-book in 2011 by the James Randi Educational Foundation. A paperback version is available from Lulu. In 2013 Carroll also self-published The Critical Thinker's Dictionary, which features short articles about cognitive biases and logical fallacies. Skeptic Carroll said he had been investigating controversial beliefs since he was seven years old when he had doubts about Santa Claus. Carroll started writing skeptical content in 1992, when both his best friend and his father-in-law died within the same week. He later said, "It was like the deaths of these two people had forced me to start looking at everything and not take anything for granted." After Carroll and his wife attended free training in 1994 in which they learned about the Internet and HTML code, Carroll started the Skeptic's Dictionary website (skepdic.com) with ten articles written for his students and expanded it from there. Although the website was a one-man project, volunteers later assisted in editing it and translated it into more than a dozen languages. The Skeptic's Dictionary, Carroll said, was inspired by Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary in both its name and its biased stance. On March 27, 2012, Carroll began a regular segment on the podcast Skepticality entitled Unnatural Virtue in which he commented on topics in critical thinking and skepticism. The segment ran for thirty-one episodes, until April 29, 2014. Carroll spoke at several skeptic conferences. In 2003 he spoke at the first Amaz!ng Meeting and at a conference of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal on frauds and hoaxes. In 2004 he spoke to the Irish Skeptics in Dublin. In 2007 he conducted a critical-thinking workshop at the 5th Amazing Meeting. In 2011 he led a discussion on "Five Myths About Skeptics" at the second annual SkeptiCalCon event, held in Berkeley, CA. He was also interviewed by groups promoting scientific skepticism, such as the New England Skeptical Society and Media Man Australia. In January 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In an interview with Point of Inquiry's Karen Stollznow, Carroll said he did not earn much money from his skeptical work: "If we talk about the money we make from skepticism we might set a record for the shortest interview ever." But everybody should be a skeptic, he said, because it is a healthy way of approaching life. He said that skeptics' meetups and conferences, as well as the positive feedback he received on his work, were his main motivations. Criticism Richard Milton After Carroll published a piece online labelling Richard Milton's writings on alternative science "Internet Bunk," Milton responded by accusing Carroll of being a "pseudo-skeptic" and said that Carroll had fabricated quotations and misrepresented his arguments. Carroll replied to these accusations in an addendum to his piece. Rupert Sheldrake Carroll wrote two Skeptic's Dictionary entries that criticize Rupert Sheldrake's ideas. The first criticized Sheldrake's N'kisi Project, a set of experiments meant to test the possibility of a telepathic link between N'kisi (a grey parrot) and its owner, Aimee Morgana. Carroll charged that when calculating the statistical significance of the parrot's responses, Sheldrake had omitted 60% of the data. Carroll also criticized Jane Goodall for her involvement in the Project. The second entry challenged Sheldrake's morphic resonance idea, in which Sheldrake proposed that, in addition to genetic influences, a "morphogenetic field" for each species evolves similarly to how the species' genes might evolve, that these fields organize the nervous system's activity and can act as a collective memory for the whole species, and that these fields get passed down into the species. Sheldrake replied to Carroll's criticism by defending his own arguments and accusing Carroll of committing several logical fallacies, including using false dilemmas and misrepresenting Sheldrake's position. He also criticized The Skeptic's Dictionary, writing that it would not survive had it been subject to independent peer reviews. Publications The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003, . "Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!", Los Angeles: James Randi Educational Foundation, 2011, . Becoming a Critical Thinker – A Guide for the New Millennium, 2nd ed., self-published, 2013. . The Common-sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet 1635–1699, . (1974 doctoral dissertation, under the direction of Richard Popkin, University of California at San Diego). References External links The Skeptic's Dictionary Category:1945 births Category:2016 deaths Category:20th-century American philosophers Category:American skeptics Category:Critics of alternative medicine Category:Critics of parapsychology Category:Writers from Joliet, Illinois Category:Writers from San Diego Category:University of California, San Diego alumni Category:Former Roman Catholics Category:21st-century American philosophers

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Tippi Hedren

Hedren was born on January 19, 1930, in New Ulm, Minnesota, to Bernard Carl and Dorothea Henrietta (nee Eckhardt) Hedren. For much of her career, Hedren's year of birth was reported as 1935. In 2004, however, she acknowledged that she was actually born in 1930 (which is consistent with the birth registration index at the Minnesota Historical Society). Her paternal grandparents were Swedish immigrants, while her maternal ancestry is German and Norwegian.

Discovery (1961)

On October 13, 1961, she received a call from an agent who told her a producer was interested in working with her. When she was told it was Alfred Hitchcock who, while he was watching The Today Show, saw her in a commercial for a diet drink called Sego, she agreed to sign a seven-year contract. During their first meeting, the two talked about everything except the role he was considering her for. Hedren was convinced for several weeks it was for his television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Hitchcock later said, "I was not primarily concerned with how she looked in person. Most important was her appearance on the screen, and I liked that immediately. She has a touch of that high-style, lady-like quality which was once well-represented in films by actresses like Irene Dunne, Grace Kelly, Claudette Colbert, and others but which is now quite rare." Hitchcock put Hedren through an extensive color screen test that lasted two days and cost $25,000, doing scenes from his previous films, such as Rebecca, Notorious and To Catch a Thief with actor Martin Balsam. According to Balsam, Hedren was very nervous but studied every line, did every move she was asked to, and tried to do everything right. Hitchcock asked costume designer Edith Head to design clothes for Hedren's private life and he personally advised her about wine and food. He also insisted for publicity purposes that her name should be printed only in single quotes, 'Tippi'. The press mostly ignored this directive from the director, who felt that the single quotes added distinction and mystery to her name. Hitchcock was impressed with Hedren. As production designer Robert F. Boyle explained, "Hitch always liked women who behaved like well-bred ladies. Tippi generated that quality." Afterward, Hedren was invited to lunch with Hitchcock, his wife, Alma, and Lew Wasserman, head of Universal, at one of Hitchcock's favorite restaurants, Chasen's. There she was presented with a golden pin of three birds in flight, adorned by three tiny seed pearls, and was asked by Hitchcock to play the leading role in his upcoming film The Birds. "I was so stunned. It never occurred to me that I would be given a leading role in a major motion picture. I had great big tears in my eyes", Hedren later recalled. CANNOTANSWER

Nathalie Kay "Tippi" Hedren (born January 19, 1930) is a retired American actress, animal rights activist, and fashion model. A successful fashion model who appeared on the front covers of Life and Glamour magazines, among others, Hedren became an actress after she was discovered by director Alfred Hitchcock while appearing on a television commercial in 1961. She achieved great praise for her work in two of his films: the suspense-thriller The Birds (1963), for which she won a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, and the psychological drama Marnie (1964). She has appeared in over 80 films and television shows, including Charlie Chaplin's final film A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), the political satire Citizen Ruth (1996), and the existential comedy I Heart Huckabees (2004). Among other honors, her contributions to world cinema have been recognized with the Jules Verne Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hedren's strong commitment to animal rescue began in 1969 while she was shooting two films in Africa and was introduced to the plight of African lions. In an attempt to raise awareness for wildlife, she spent over a decade bringing Roar (1981) to the screen. She started her own nonprofit organization, the Roar Foundation, in 1983; it supports the Shambala Preserve, an wildlife habitat that enables her to continue her work in the care and preservation of lions and tigers. Hedren has also set up relief programs worldwide following earthquakes, hurricanes, famine and war. She was also instrumental in the development of Vietnamese-American nail salons. Early life Nathalie Kay Hedren was born in New Ulm, Minnesota, on January 19, 1930, to Bernard Carl and Dorothea Henrietta (née Eckhardt) Hedren. For much of her career, her year of birth was misreported as 1935. In a 2004 A&E Biography, however, she acknowledged that she was actually born in 1930 (which is consistent with the birth registration index at the Minnesota Historical Society). Her paternal grandparents were Swedish immigrants, while her mother was of German and Norwegian descent. Career Modeling success (1950–1960) On reaching her 20th birthday, Hedren bought a ticket to New York City, where she joined the Eileen Ford Agency. Within a year, she made her unofficial film debut as "Miss Ice Box" in the musical comedy The Petty Girl. In interviews, she referred to The Birds, her first credited role, as her first film. Although she received several film offers during that time, Hedren had no interest in acting, as she knew it was very difficult to succeed. She had a highly successful modeling career during the 1950s and early 1960s, appearing on the covers of Life, The Saturday Evening Post, McCall's, and Glamour, among others. In 1961, after seven years of marriage to the actor Peter Griffith, Hedren divorced and returned to California with her daughter, Melanie, and rented an expensive home in Sherman Oaks. She later said, "I thought I could continue my career as it had been in New York. I thought everything would be just fine, and it wasn't. So I thought, 'well, I don't type, what shall I do? Acting, collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, & allegations of sexual harassment (1961–1966) On October 13, 1961, she received a call from an agent who told her a producer was interested in working with her. When she was told it was Alfred Hitchcock, who while watching The Today Show, saw her in a commercial for a diet drink called Sego, she agreed to sign a seven-year contract. During their first meeting, the two talked about everything except the role for which he was considering her. Hedren was convinced for several weeks it was for his television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Being an unknown actress with little training, Hitchcock put Hedren through an extensive color screen test that lasted two days and cost $25,000, doing scenes from his previous films, such as Rebecca, Notorious, and To Catch a Thief with actor Martin Balsam. According to Balsam, Hedren was very nervous, but studied every line, did every move she was asked to, and tried to do everything right. Hitchcock asked costume designer Edith Head to design clothes for Hedren's private life and he personally advised her about wine and food. He also insisted for publicity purposes that her name should be printed only in single quotes, 'Tippi'. The press mostly ignored this directive from the director, who felt that the single quotes added distinction and mystery to her name. Hitchcock was impressed with Hedren. As production designer Robert F. Boyle explained, "Hitch always liked women who behaved like well-bred ladies. Tippi generated that quality." Afterward, Hedren was invited to lunch with Hitchcock, his wife, Alma, and Lew Wasserman, head of Universal, at one of Hitchcock's favorite restaurants, Chasen's. There, she was presented with a golden pin of three birds in flight, adorned by three tiny seed pearls, and was asked by Hitchcock to play the leading role in his upcoming film The Birds. "I was so stunned. It never occurred to me that I would be given a leading role in a major motion picture. I had great big tears in my eyes," Hedren later recalled. The Birds (1963) was Hedren's screen debut. Hitchcock became her drama coach, and gave her an education in film-making, as she attended many of the production meetings such as script, music, or photography conferences. Hedren said, "I probably learned in three years what it would have taken me 15 years to learn otherwise." She learned how to break down a script, to become another character, and to study the relationship of different characters. Hedren portrayed her role of Melanie Daniels as Hitchcock requested. She said, "He gives his actors very little leeway. He'll listen, but he has a very definite plan in mind as to how he wants his characters to act. With me, it was understandable, because I was not an actress of stature. I welcomed his guidance." During the six months of principal photography, Hedren's schedule was tight, as she was only given one afternoon off a week. At first, she found the shooting "wonderful". Hitchcock told a reporter, after a few weeks of filming, that she was remarkable, and said, "She's already reaching the lows and highs of terror." Nonetheless, Hedren recalled the week she did the final bird attack scene in a second-floor bedroom as the worst of her life. Before filming it, she asked Hitchcock about her character's motivations to go upstairs, and his response was, "Because I tell you to." She was then assured that the crew would use mechanical birds. Instead, Hedren endured five solid days of prop men, protected by thick leather gloves, flinging dozens of live gulls, ravens, and crows at her (their beaks clamped shut with elastic bands). In a state of exhaustion, when one of the birds gouged her cheek and narrowly missed her eye, Hedren sat down on the set and began crying. A physician ordered a week's rest. Hitchcock protested, according to Hedren, saying nobody but her was left to film. The doctor's reply was, "Are you trying to kill her?" She said the week also appeared to be an ordeal for the director. Universal's executives, who did not back Hitchcock's decision to hire Hedren in the first place, were impressed with her performance and Wasserman described it as "remarkable". While promoting The Birds, Hitchcock was full of praise for his new protégée, and compared her to Grace Kelly. "Tippi has a faster tempo, city glibness, more humor [than Grace Kelly]. She displayed jaunty assuredness, pertness, an attractive throw of the head. And she memorized and read lines extraordinarily well and is sharper in expression." The film was screened out of competition in May at a prestigious invitational showing at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival. Hedren's performance was praised in Varietys review: "Aside from the birds, the film belongs to Hedren, who makes an auspicious screen bow. She virtually has to carry the picture alone for the first 45-minute stretch, prior to the advent of the first wave of organized attackers from the sky. Miss Hedren has a star quality and Hitchcock has provided her with a potent vehicle to launch her career." Hedren received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, tied with Elke Sommer and Ursula Andress. Her role as Melanie Daniels was named by Premiere as one of the greatest movie characters of all time. Hitchcock was so impressed with Hedren's acting abilities, he decided to offer her the leading role of his next film, Marnie (1964), a romantic drama and psychological thriller from the novel by Winston Graham, during the filming of The Birds. Hedren was stunned and felt extremely fortunate to be offered to play "such a complicated, sad, tragic woman", and later said, "I consider my acting, while not necessarily being method acting, but one that draws upon my own feelings. I thought Marnie was an extremely interesting role to play and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." She voiced doubts about her ability to play the demanding role, but Hitchcock assured her she could do it. As opposed to The Birds, where she had received little acting guidance, for this film Hedren studied every scene with Hitchcock. Hedren recalled Marnie as her favorite of the two films she did with Hitchcock for the challenge of playing an emotionally battered young woman who travels from city to city assuming various guises to rob her employers. During the filming, Hitchcock was quoted as saying about Hedren, "an Academy Award performance is in the making." On release, the film was greeted by mixed reviews and indifferent box-office returns, and received no Oscar nominations. Variety wrote, "Hedren returns in a particularly demanding role. Miss Hedren, undertaking a role originally offered Grace Kelly for a resumption of her screen career, lends credence to a part never sympathetic. It's a difficult assignment which she fulfills satisfactorily." Hedren later said that Marnie was "ahead of its time" because "people didn't talk about childhood and its effects on adult life. It was taboo to discuss sexuality and psychology and to put all that into a film was shocking." Despite its original lukewarm reception, the film was later acclaimed and described as a "masterpiece" and Hedren's performance is now regarded as one of the finest in any Hitchcock film. Richard Brody of The New Yorker wrote in his 2016 review of the film "Hedren's performance is one of the greatest in the history of cinema." Marnie was the second and last collaboration between Hedren and Hitchcock. In 1973, she admitted that a major lifestyle difference caused a split in their relationship. "He was too possessive and too demanding. I cannot be possessed by anyone. But, then, that's my own hangup." In 1983, author Donald Spoto published his second book about Hitchcock, The Dark Side of Genius, for which Hedren agreed to talk for the first time in detail about her relationship with the director. The book was controversial, as several of Hitchcock's friends claimed the Hitchcock portrayed in the book was not the man they knew. For years after its release, Hedren was not keen to talk about it in interviews, but thought the chapter devoted to her story was "accurate as to just what he was". Hedren later explained her long silence before telling her story, "It was embarrassing and insulting—there were a lot of reasons why I didn't want to tell the story. I didn't want it to be taken advantage of, twisted, turned, and made into an even uglier situation than it was." According to Spoto's book, Hitchcock brought in two members of his crew during the filming of The Birds and asked them to keep careful watch on the activities of Hedren, "when she left the set—where she went, who she visited, how she spent her free time". He then advised her on what she should eat, whom she should see, and how she should live. He told the cast and crew they were not allowed to talk to her. Hedren's co-star in The Birds, Rod Taylor, later remembered, "Hitch was becoming very domineering and covetous of 'Tippi', and it was very difficult for her. No one was permitted to come physically close to her during the production. 'Don't touch the girl after I call "Cut! he said to me repeatedly." Hitchcock also attempted, on one occasion, to grab and violently kiss Hedren in the back of a car as they drove onto the set. Hedren told his assistant, Peggy Robertson, and the studio chief, Lew Wasserman, that she was becoming very unhappy about the whole situation. "But he was Alfred Hitchcock, the great and famous director, and I was Tippi Hedren, an inexperienced actress who had no clout." She decided she could not quit her contract because she was afraid to be blacklisted and unable to find work. Hedren's own daughter, Melanie Griffith, remembered that while Hedren was doing The Birds, she thought Hitchcock was taking her mother away from her. "Suddenly, I wasn't allowed even to visit my mom at the studio." During the filming of Marnie, Hedren found Hitchcock's behavior toward her increasingly difficult to bear as filming progressed. "Everyone – I mean everyone – knew he was obsessed with me. He always wanted a glass of wine or champagne, with me alone, at the end of the day. He was really isolating me from everyone." Hedren's co-star in Marnie, Diane Baker, later recalled, "She was never allowed to gather around with the rest of us, and he demanded that every conversation between her and Hitch be held in private... Nothing could have been more horrible for me than to arrive on that movie set and to see her being treated the way she was." Hitchcock revealed to Hedren one day he had a recurring dream where she came up to him and said, "Hitch, I love you – I'll always love you." When she heard this, Hedren replied "But it was a dream. Just a dream," and excused herself from his presence. She believed Hitchcock had no consideration for her feelings and remembered she was humiliated after he asked her to touch him, just before shooting a scene. "He made sure no one else could hear, and his tone and glance made it clear exactly what he meant." Hedren asked Hitchcock's permission one day to travel to New York to appear on The Tonight Show, where she was supposed to be presented an award as the "Most Promising New Star". Hitchcock refused, according to his biographer, because he claimed the break would affect her performance. During that meeting, he apparently "made an overt sexual proposition" that Hedren "could neither ignore nor answer casually, as she could his previous gestures". In Spoto's third book about Hitchcock, Spellbound by Beauty (2008), Hedren revealed that Hitchcock actually made offensive demands on her. "He stared at me and simply said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, that from this time on, he expected me to make myself sexually available and accessible to him – however and whenever and wherever he wanted." Hitchcock's demands led to a "horrible, horrible fight", according to Hedren. "He made these demands on me, and no way could I acquiesce to them." Hedren then told him Marnie would be their last film together and later recalled how Hitchcock told her he would destroy her career. "I said I wanted to get out of my contract. He said: 'You can't. You have your daughter to support, and your parents are getting older.' I said: 'Nobody would want me to be in this situation, I want to get out.' And he said: 'I'll ruin your career.' I said: 'Do what you have to do.' And he did ruin my career. He kept me under contract, paid me to do nothing for close on two years." Hedren felt so humiliated, she called the director a "fat pig" in front of people on the set. Hitchcock made only a comment about it to his biographer, John Russell Taylor: "She did what no one is permitted to do. She referred to my weight." The two communicated only through a third party for the rest of the film. According to Marnie'''s screenwriter, Jay Presson Allen, Hitchcock was "mad" for Hedren. She felt unhappy for both and described the situation as "an old man's cri de coeur", adding that Hitchcock had a "Pygmalion complex about Tippi". She advised Hedren to finish the film and then get on with her life and be happy. Hedren's hairdresser, Virginia Darcy, even told Hitchcock he should not be possessive with Hedren. "Tippi felt rightly that she was not his property, but he'd say, 'You are, I have a contract. Although Hitchcock thought he might mend fences with Hedren and make another film with her, she refused to reconsider her decision. Hedren's contract terms gave Hitchcock the final say as to any work she could take on and he used that power to turn down several film roles on her behalf. She was particularly disappointed when French director François Truffaut told her he had wanted her for one of them. In 1966, Hitchcock finally sold her contract to Universal Studios after Hedren appeared in two of their TV shows, Kraft Suspense Theatre (1965) and Run for Your Life (id.). The studio ultimately released her from her contract after she refused to appear on a television Western for them. In 2012, The Girl, an HBO/BBC film about Hedren and Hitchcock's relationship, based on Donald Spoto's 2009 book Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies, was released. When she was first told about the project, Hedren said she had mixed feelings about it, "To be still alive and have a film made about you is an awesome and incredibly frightening experience." Hedren and Hitchcock were respectively portrayed by Sienna Miller and Toby Jones. Although she was thrilled with the choice of Miller, Hedren was worried she would not be portrayed "as strong a character as I was – and still am. I had to be extremely strong to fight off Mr. Hitchcock." She described the moment she saw the film as "probably one of the most involved, emotionally tense 90 minutes that I have ever lived". Upon the film's release, Hedren said although she believed the film accurately portrays Hitchcock's behavior towards her, the time constraints of a 90-minute film prevented telling the entire story of her career with him. "It wasn't a constant barrage of harassment. If it had been constantly the way we have had to do it in this film, I would have been long gone." She recalled there were times she described as "absolutely delightful and wonderful", and insisted that "Hitchcock had a charm about him. He was very funny at times. He was incredibly brilliant in his field." The film was controversial, as others who knew and worked with Hitchcock responded to it negatively. Kim Novak, who worked on Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), disputed Hitchcock's portrayal as a sexual predator in The Girl: "I never saw him make a pass at anybody or act strange to anybody. And wouldn't you think if he was that way, I would've seen it or at least seen him with somebody? I think it's unfortunate when someone's no longer around and can't defend themselves." Novak previously described Hitchcock as a gentleman, and when asked about reports of his behavior, she said, "Maybe I just wasn't his type." Novak also stated, "I won't dispute Tippi if that's what she saw." Hedren herself was asked why her account of sexual harassment contrasted with the many interviews she gave about her time with Hitchcock, her presence at the AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring him in 1979, and her presence at his funeral. She explained that, "He ruined my career, but he didn't ruin my life. That time of my life was over. I still admire the man for who he was." She also said, "I've been able to separate the two. The man who was the artist. I mean, what he gave to the motion picture industry can never be taken away from him and I certainly wouldn't want to try. But on the other side, there is that dark side that was really awful." Career setbacks (1967–1973) Hedren's first feature film appearance after Marnie was in the 1967 film A Countess from Hong Kong, starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren. She was told by writer-director Charlie Chaplin that he was offering her a major supporting role as Brando's estranged wife but had to accept the role without reading the script. However, when she arrived in England, where the filming took place, she finally received the script and realized that her part was little more than a cameo. She asked Chaplin why he had lied to her. "Every actor in the world was asking if they could do this film, to just do a walk-on, without even being paid for it. When I said, 'Why didn't you just tell me that it was a cameo? I would have done this film anyway?' He said, 'I didn't think you would come,' which was very sweet. He was a very clever man." Hedren asked Chaplin to expand the role, and although he tried to accommodate her, he could not, as the story mostly takes place on a ship, which Hedren's character boards near the end of the film. In the end, she remained in the film and later said that it was both amusing and strange to work with Chaplin. She found him to be a very serious man and loved his approach to directing. She later said, "I wish someone would have been allowed to do a documentary. The way he directed was unlike anyone I ever saw. He acted out all the parts himself. He did Sophia's part, then Marlon's part, then mine, and then he'd say, 'Okay, now you can do it.' Which would be impossible, to mimic the master. It was incredible. None of us believed it. Marlon hated it." After the release of A Countess from Hong Kong, Hedren's career was described as "spectacular" by the press. She told a reporter at the time, "I don't want to wait myself out of this business, but working for Hitch and Charlie has been very special to me, and now I'm going to wait for something special to come along." In 1968, she signed on to do the American Civil War drama Five Against Kansas with Farley Granger and Jeffrey Hunter, but the project was never realized. In 1968, Hedren returned to film as a socialite who helps her boyfriend (played by George Armstrong) catch a killer, in Tiger by the Tail. From 1970 to 1971, she guest-starred twice on The Courtship of Eddie's Father. She agreed to take part in Satan's Harvest (1970) and Mister Kingstreet's War (1973)—which were shot back-to-back despite the discrepancy in their release dates—for the sole reason that they were being filmed in Africa. In 1973, Hedren played a teacher at an experimental sex school in The Harrad Experiment, which starred James Whitmore and Don Johnson—the latter who would later marry her daughter, Melanie Griffith. Hedren felt that the film "deals with vital themes—themes like the decline in importance of ideas like possession and jealousy and, by inference, marriage. I have four teenaged children and I think this picture says some valuable things to them." She confessed at the time that she was occasionally depressed because she was not doing any major films, and told a magazine, "My husband just cancelled all the trade magazines because he felt I should cut off the source of my discontent. He's the type who won't stand for sustained down feelings." Roar (1974–1981) Hedren and husband Noel Marshall watched a pride of lions move into a house after a game warden moved out in 1969, during the filming of Satan's Harvest in Africa. She said, "We were delighted with the way they adapted themselves to living there. And they were so funny we knew we had an idea for a picture." Marshall wrote a script titled Lions, Lions and More Lions based on their experience; it was retitled Roar and centered on a family's misadventures in a research park filled with lions, tigers, and other wild cats. Hedren played the lead role and co-starred with her daughter Melanie, husband Marshall, and his own sons Jerry and John. They attempted to rent Hollywood animals for a nine-month shoot, but upon approaching animal trainers for support, they were discouraged and nobody would rent them 30 or 40 lions, as the script required, because of their natural tendency to fight. They were encouraged to start collecting and training their own exotic beasts. Animal trainer Ron Oxley told them, "to get to know about lions, you've got to live with them for a while". They started to raise a lion cub named Neil in their Sherman Oaks house and made sure that the animal slept in their bed. Life photographer Michael Rougier documented their life in 1971 and photographed the lion with the whole family inside and outside the house, from Hedren's daughter's bed to the living room to the swimming pool. After complaints from their neighbors, Hedren and Marshall bought a ranch outside of Los Angeles in Acton that would serve as the set for Roar. They got permission there to rescue and raise several lions, tigers, African elephants, and other exotic felines. Filming started in 1974 and took five years just to complete the photography. Every scene involving lions was improvised and shot with four or sometimes eight cameras. More than 100 people worked on the film, as well as more than 150 untrained lions, tigers, leopards, and cheetahs. During production, no animals were hurt, but more than 70 members of the cast and crew were mauled. Hedren fractured a leg and also had scalp wounds when an elephant bucked her off its back while she was riding it. She was also bitten in the neck by a lion and required 38 stitches; this incident can be seen in the film. Melanie Griffith was also attacked, receiving 50 stitches to her face; it was feared that she would lose an eye, but she recovered and was not disfigured. Marshall was attacked so many times that he eventually was diagnosed with gangrene. In one of those incidents, he was clawed by a cheetah when protecting the animals during a bushfire that occurred in 1979. All animals were evacuated, and several years were needed for him to recover from his injuries. In 1978, a flood destroyed the movie sets and killed three of the lions. The project was set back several years. Hedren said that they were all determined to finish the film: "We were so sure the film was going to be a success that we thought everything (financing the ranch and the lions, etc.) would take care of itself."Roar was released worldwide in 1981 with the exception of the United States, because according to Hedren, "The United States distributors wanted the lion's share of the profits, and we thought it ought to go to the beautiful animals that made the movie." The film cost $17 million and grossed only $2 million, but it was a turning point in Hedren's life. In 1983, she established the nonprofit The Roar Foundation to take care of the big cats. "After our movie was over," she explained, "it was unconscionable to see the animals go any place else." Roar was re-released in 2015, but Hedren declined to discuss it, as she felt that promotion for the film was filled with "inaccuracies". Later career (1982–present) After Roar, Hedren accepted any low-budget television or cinema role that could help bring funds to her foundation to provide protection, shelter, care, and maintenance for the animals at the Shambala Preserve. In 1982, she co-starred with Leslie Nielsen in Foxfire Light. She appeared in several television series, including Hart to Hart in 1983 and the late-night horror series Tales from the Darkside in 1984. In the 1985 pilot episode of The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents, she made a brief appearance as a waitress in a bar who berates a customer, played by her daughter Melanie Griffith. In 1990, she had a nonspeaking, minor part as a wealthy widow romanced by Michael Keaton in the film Pacific Heights (1990), which also starred her daughter. That same year, she had a role on The Bold and the Beautiful, a daytime soap opera she said she was "proud to have in my resume". In 1994, Hedren appeared in the made-for-cable sequel, The Birds II: Land's End, in a role different from the one she had played in the original. She was, however, disappointed that she did not get a starring role and admitted before the film's release, "I wish that it was more than a cameo. I think they made a mistake by not doing that, but it has helped me to feed my lions and tigers." When asked about what could have been Hitchcock's opinion on the film, she answered: "I'd hate to think what he would say!" However, in a 2007 interview Hedren said of the film: "It's absolutely horrible, it embarrasses me horribly." From 1994 to 1996, Hedren had a guest-starring role in Dream On. The sitcom gave her "the opportunity to do comedy. I'd never done comedy before and it was just wonderful for me to be able to do that. Everybody just thought of me as a serious actress, so I owe that to John Landis (the executive producer), giving me that opportunity." In 1996, she played an abortion rights activist in Alexander Payne's political satire Citizen Ruth with Laura Dern. In 1998, she co-starred alongside Billy Zane and Christina Ricci in I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, a film she felt was "incredible". "I must say I really love that film. It was a unique kind of film to do also, because it had no dialogue in it. It was very, very different." That same year, she guest-starred in a special episode titled "Psychodrama" of the television series Chicago Hope, that paid tribute to the Hitchcock movies. Hedren's character, Alfreda Perkins, was a reference to Alfred Hitchcock and actor Anthony Perkins, who starred in the director's 1960 film Psycho. After appearing in a number of little-exposed films between 1999 and 2003, Hedren had a small but showy role in the 2004 David O. Russell comedy I Heart Huckabees, as a foul-mouthed attractive older woman who slaps Jude Law in an elevator. She felt that the director, who had a reputation for being difficult, was "totally crazy", but also "very interesting. I was able to work well with him." She also added it was a strange experience as, "... all of a sudden, he'd be like, 'Now I'm going to do it this way,' and you'd think, 'How is he going to edit this? How is this going to work?' But he made it work." In 2006, Hedren was a cast member of the short-lived primetime soap opera Fashion House with Bo Derek and Morgan Fairchild, and continued to guest-star in television series such as The 4400 (2006) and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2008). In 2012, Hedren and her daughter guest-starred together on an episode of Raising Hope. That same year, she appeared in Free Samples, an indie film where she had a supporting role as an old movie star. In 2013, she made an appearance as herself in the fourth-season finale of Cougar Town. Hedren published her autobiography, Tippi: A Memoir, co-written with Lindsay Harrison, in 2016 through William Morrow and Company, as she felt it was "about time I stop letting everyone else tell my story and finally tell it myself". In 2018, at age 88, Hedren became the new face of Gucci's timepieces and jewelry and starred as a mysterious fortune teller in the brand's commercial ad, The Fortune Teller. Influence A Louis Vuitton ad campaign in 2006 paid tribute to Hedren and Hitchcock with a modern-day interpretation of the deserted railway station opening sequence of Marnie. Her look from The Birds (1963) inspired designer Bill Gaytten to design for John Galliano Pre-Fall 2012 collection. Naomi Watts stated that her character interpretation in Mulholland Drive (2001) was influenced by the look and performances of Hedren in Hitchcock films. Watts and Hedren both appeared in I Heart Huckabees (2004), but did not share any scenes together. Off screen, the film's director David O. Russell introduced them both, and Watts said of Hedren: "I was pretty fascinated by her then, because people have often said we're alike." Watts dressed up as Hedren's title character from Marnie for a photo shoot for March 2008 issue of Vanity Fair. In the same issue, Jodie Foster dressed up as Hedren's character, Melanie Daniels, from The Birds. Shambala Preserve In 1981, Hedren produced Roar, an 11-year project that ended up costing $17 million and starred dozens of African lions. "This was probably one of the most dangerous films that Hollywood has ever seen", remarked the actress. "It's amazing no one was killed." During the production of Roar, Hedren, her husband at the time, Noel Marshall, and daughter Melanie were attacked by lions; Jan de Bont, the director of photography, was scalped. Hedren later co-wrote Cats of Shambala (1985) about the experience. Roar made only $2 million worldwide. Hedren ended her marriage to Marshall a year later in 1982. The film directly led to the 1983 establishment of the nonprofit The Roar Foundation and Hedren's Shambala Preserve, located at the edge of the Mojave Desert in Acton, California, between the Antelope Valley and the Santa Clarita Valley, northeast of Los Angeles. Shambala houses some 70 animals. Hedren lives on the Shambala site and conducts monthly tours of the preserve for the public. In a 2015 interview with magazine Ability, Hedren emphasized that there is no human contact with the animals and that all of the cats are spayed and neutered, since they are being raised in captivity. Hedren was the founding president of the American Sanctuary Association, a post she still holds. She took in and cared for Togar, a lion that belonged to Anton LaVey, after he was told by San Francisco officials that he could not keep a fully grown lion as a house pet. Shambala became the new home for Michael Jackson's two Bengal tigers, Sabu and Thriller, after he decided to close his zoo at his Neverland Valley Ranch in Los Olivos. Thriller died in June 2012 of lung cancer. On December 3, 2007, Shambala Preserve made headlines when Chris Orr, a caretaker for the animals, was mauled by a tiger named Alexander. Several documentaries have focused on Shambala Preserve, including the 30-minute Lions: Kings of the Serengeti (1995), narrated by Melanie Griffith, and Animal Planet's Life with Big Cats (1998), which won the Genesis Award for best documentary in 1999. The animals at the preserve served as the initial inspiration for the life's work of artist A.E. London, who started her career working for Hedren. As of 2020, Hedren still maintains more than a dozen lions and tigers; her granddaughter Dakota Johnson is involved in their care. Personal life Hedren met future advertising executive Peter Griffith while doing a walk-on role on The Aldrich Family in 1951, when she was 21 and he was 17. On October 24, 1951, a day after Griffith turned 18, the couple took out a marriage license in New York, and were married the following year. Their daughter Melanie was born on August 9, 1957. They divorced in 1960, after which Hedren dated comedian Mort Sahl. On September 27, 1964, Hedren married her then-agent Noel Marshall, who later produced three of her films. The marriage came under strain during the filming of Roar and they divorced in 1982, with Hedren securing a restraining order forbidding Marshall from coming within 20 feet of her. On February 15, 1985, she married steel manufacturer Luis Barrenechea, but they divorced in 1992. According to Hedren, Barrenechea "was everything I wanted in a man, except that he was an alcoholic and that was unbearable." Hedren was engaged to veterinarian Martin Dinnes from 2002 until their breakup in mid-2008. In September 2008, Hedren told The Sunday Times "I'm waiting for someone to sweep me off my feet." Hedren has three grandchildren. Hedren played a role in the development of Vietnamese-American nail salons in the United States. In 1975, while an international relief coordinator with Food for the Hungry, she began visiting with refugees at Hope Village outside Sacramento, California. When she learned the women were interested in her manicured nails, she employed her manicurist to teach them the skills of the trade and worked with a local beauty school to help them find jobs. Hedren's work with the Vietnamese-Americans was the subject of several documentaries: Happy Hands, directed by Honey Lauren, which won Best Documentary Short at the Sonoma International Film Festival in 2014Sonoma International Film Festival website, sonomaportal.com; accessed March 10, 2015. and Nailedit: Vietnamese and the Nail Industry which won the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) 2014 Documentary Fund Award. CND and Beauty Changes Lives Foundation (BCL) have announced the BCL CND Tippi Hedren Nail Scholarship Fund to support professional nail education and will be administered starting January 1, 2014. Hedren was instrumental in helping a desperate Nguyen Thi Chinh to enter the US after the fall of the South Vietnam government in 1975, she arranged for an air ticket and a visa for her and then invited her to stay in her house. Hedren suffered from severe and persistent headaches for a long time, which rendered her unable to accept several projects, including a television series produced by and starring Betty White. After she got a titanium plate put in her neck, she improved and then agreed, with the blessing of her doctor, to take the part of a dying woman in the soap opera Fashion House. While she was rehearsing a scene, a gallon of water fell from the ceiling onto her head. The headaches returned after the incident and persisted. Hedren filed a suit to receive recompense following her inability to work. Hedren's lawyer, Joseph Allen, made a mistake in his discussions with the defendants that allowed them to block him from filing suit. Hedren sued Allen for malpractice. In 2013, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Hedren had been awarded a $1.5 million settlement, including $213,400 for past lost earnings and $440,308 for future lost earnings, against her former lawyer. Hedren was hurt by the report since she had not collected the award. She gave an interview to explain that her former lawyer does not have the money to pay her, and discussed how the report put her in a difficult situation since her foundation was in dire need of funds. She explained that she has to raise $75,000 monthly just to keep it going. "Chances are I won't ever even see the money, and that's what hurts so badly, that in all of this pain and suffering that publication ran with a swift and not researched story, which told people around the world who have been so gracious and thoughtful about sending donations, that I no longer needed them." Hedren is a pescetarian."A Life in the Day: Tippi Hedren, actress". thetimes.co.uk. Retrieved 8 April 2023. "I don’t eat meat as an ethical choice. I know fish are animals, but my doctor said if I don’t eat some fish I’ll get sick." Filmography Film Television Honours and awards 1964: Most Promising Newcomer Award by Photoplay 1964: Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year - Actress (shared with Ursula Andress and Elke Sommer) 1994: Life Achievement Award in France at The Beauvais Film Festival Cinemalia 1995: Life Achievement Award in Spain, La Fundación Municipal de Cine 1995: The Helen Woodward Animal Center's Annual Humane Award 1996: Founder's Award from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 1997: Lion and Lamb Award from Wildhaven 1999: Woman of Vision Award from Women of Film and Video in Washington, D.C. 1999: Presidential Medal for her work in film from Hofstra University 1999: Humanitarian Award at the Las Vegas International Film Festival 2000: Best Actress in a Comedy Short Award in the short film Mulligans! at the Method Fest, Independent Film Festival 2002: Best Actress Award for the short film Tea with Grandma from the New York International Independent Film Festival 2003: Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame 2003: Women of Los Angeles Annual Hope is a Woman Honor 2004: PAWS Companion for Life Award 2004: Best Actress Award for the short film Rose's Garden from the Los Angeles TV Short Film Festival 2004: Animal Rights Advocacy Award at Artivist Film Festival 2005: Living Legacy Award 2006: Conservationist of the Year—Dino Award from the Las Vegas Natural History Museum 2007: Lifetime Achievement Award—Riverside Film Festival 2007: Jules Verne "Nature" Award — the 1st Annual Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival of Los Angeles 2008: Academy of Art University's 2nd Epidemic Film Festival Award 2008: Jules Verne Legendaire Award 2008: Thespian Award - LA Femme Film Festival 2009: "When a Woman Wills She Will!" Award by the Woman's Club of Hollywood 2009: Workhouse's first Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award 2009: Received the First Star on the Orinda Theater Walk of Fame 2010: Received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 24th Annual Genesis Awards show from the Humane Society 2010: BraveHeart Award 2010: Who-Manitarian Award 2011: Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce at its 90th Annual Installation & Awards Luncheon 2011: "The Women Together Award" from the United Nations 2011: Vietnamese-American Marton Saint Award from the Boat People SOS Organization 2011: Omni Youth Humanitarian/Career Achievement Award 2012: Honorary Masters of Fine Arts Degree from the New York Film Academy 2012: Mayor Career Achievement Award from Starz Denver Film Festival 2013: Legacy of Style Award 2013: "People Helping People" Award by the Touching Live TV Award Show, broadwayworld.com; accessed November 14, 2015. 2014: Lifetime Achievement Award from Bel-Air Film Festival 2014: Special Recognition Award from Acton Women's Club 2014:The Women's International Film & Television Showcase Foundation International Visionary Award, thewifts.org; accessed November 14, 2015. 2015: Choreography of Desire (A Tribute to Tippi Hedren) by the Vienna International Film Festival, viennale.at; accessed November 14, 2015. 2015: Believe, Achieve, Empower Award 2017: Los Angeles Press Club’s 2017 Visionary Award 2017: Waggy Award recipient from the Tailwaggers Foundation 2017: The Icon Award 2018: "Friend for Life Award" from The Palm Springs Animal Shelter Notes References Hedren, Tippi. Tippi: A Memoir, William Morrow, 2016, 288 p. McGilligan, Patrick. Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, It Books, 2004 (Reprint), 864 p. Moral, Tony Lee. Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie, Scarecrow Pres, 2013 (Revised Edition), 340 p. Moral, Tony Lee. The Making of Hitchcock's The Birds, Scarecrow Pres, 2013 (Revised Edition), 224 p. Taylor, John Russell. Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, Bloomsbury Reader, 2013, 318 p. ASIN B00BWL8L0C Spoto, Donald. Spellbound by Beauty, Three Rivers Press, 2009, 368 p. Paul, Louis. Tales from the Cult Film Trenches: Interviews with 36 Actors from Horror, Science Fiction and Exploitation Cinema, McFarland, 2007, 336 p. Gambin, Lee. Massacred By Mother Nature: Exploring the Natural Horror Film'', Midnight Marquee Press, Inc., October 8, 2012 External links Category:20th-century American actresses Category:21st-century American actresses Category:American film actresses Category:American television actresses Category:American humanitarians Category:American animal rights activists Category:Keepers of animal sanctuaries Category:Big cat attack victims Category:New Star of the Year (Actress) Golden Globe winners Category:Apex Records artists Category:Challenge Records artists Category:Actresses from Minnesota Category:Female models from Minnesota Category:People from New Ulm, Minnesota Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Norwegian descent Category:American people of Swedish descent Category:Griffith family Category:1930 births Category:Living people

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Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee was born on November 27, 1940, at the Chinese Hospital, in San Francisco's Chinatown. According to the Chinese zodiac, Lee was born in both the hour and the year of the Dragon, which according to tradition is a strong and fortuitous omen. Lee and his parents returned to Hong Kong when he was three months old. Bruce's father, Lee Hoi-chuen, (Li Hai Quan ) was Han Chinese, and his mother, Grace Ho (He Ai Yu ), was of Eurasian ancestry.

Long Beach International Karate Championships

At the invitation of Ed Parker, Lee appeared in the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships and performed repetitions of two-finger push-ups (using the thumb and the index finger of one hand) with feet at approximately shoulder-width apart. In the same Long Beach event he also performed the "One inch punch." Lee stood upright, his right foot forward with knees bent slightly, in front of a standing, stationary partner. Lee's right arm was partly extended and his right fist approximately one inch (2.5 cm) away from the partner's chest. Without retracting his right arm, Lee then forcibly delivered the punch to his partner while largely maintaining his posture, sending the partner backwards and falling into a chair said to be placed behind the partner to prevent injury, though his partner's momentum soon caused him to fall to the floor. His volunteer was Bob Baker of Stockton, California. "I told Bruce not to do this type of demonstration again", Baker recalled. "When he punched me that last time, I had to stay home from work because the pain in my chest was unbearable". It was at the 1964 championships that Lee first met Taekwondo master Jhoon Goo Rhee. The two developed a friendship - a relationship from which they benefited as martial artists. Rhee taught Lee the side kick in detail, and Lee taught Rhee the "non-telegraphic" punch. Lee appeared at the 1967 Long Beach International Karate Championships and performed various demonstrations, including the famous "unstoppable punch" against USKA world Karate champion Vic Moore. Lee allegedly told Moore that he was going to throw a straight punch to the face, and all he had to do was to try to block it. Lee took several steps back and asked if Moore was ready. When Moore nodded in affirmation, Lee glided towards him until he was within striking range. He then threw a straight punch directly at Moore's face, and stopped before impact. In eight attempts, Moore failed to block any of the punches. However, Moore and grandmaster Steve Mohammed claim that Lee had first told Moore that he was going to throw a straight punch to the body, which Moore blocked. Lee attempted another punch, and Moore blocked it as well. The third punch, which Lee threw to Moore's face, did not come nearly within striking distance. Moore claims that Lee never successfully struck Moore but Moore was able to strike Lee after trying on his own; Moore further claims that Bruce Lee said he was the fastest American he's ever seen and that Lee's media crew repeatedly played the one punch towards Moore's face that did not come within striking range, allegedly in an attempt to preserve Lee's superstar image. However, when viewing the video of the demonstration, it is clear that Mohammed and especially Moore were erroneous in their claims. CANNOTANSWER

Bruce Lee (; born Lee Jun-fan, ; November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973) was a Hong Kong and American martial artist and actor. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines that is often credited with paving the way for modern mixed martial arts (MMA). Lee is considered by critics, media, and other martial artists to be the most influential martial artist of all time and a pop culture icon of the 20th century, who bridged the gap between East and West. He is credited with promoting Hong Kong action cinema and helping to change the way Chinese people were presented in American films. Born in San Francisco and raised in British Hong Kong, Lee was introduced to the Hong Kong film industry as a child actor by his father. However, these were not martial arts films. His early martial arts experience included Wing Chun (trained under Yip Man), tai chi, boxing (winning a Hong Kong boxing tournament), and apparently frequent street fighting (neighbourhood and rooftop fights). In 1959, Lee, having U.S. citizenship due to his birth, was able to move to Seattle. In 1961, he enrolled in the University of Washington. It was during this time in the United States that he began considering making money by teaching martial arts, even though he aspired to have a career in acting. He opened his first martial arts school, operated out of home in Seattle. After later adding a second school in Oakland, California, he once drew significant attention at the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships of California by making demonstrations and speaking. He subsequently moved to Los Angeles to teach, where his students included Chuck Norris, Sharon Tate, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In the 1970s, his Hong Kong and Hollywood-produced films elevated the Hong Kong martial arts films to a new level of popularity and acclaim, sparking a surge of Western interest in Chinese martial arts. The direction and tone of his films dramatically influenced and changed martial arts and martial arts films worldwide. He is noted for his roles in five feature-length Hong Kong martial arts films in the early 1970s: Lo Wei's The Big Boss (1971) and Fist of Fury (1972); Golden Harvest's The Way of the Dragon (1972), directed and written by Lee; and Golden Harvest and Warner Brothers' Enter the Dragon (1973) and The Game of Death (1978), both directed by Robert Clouse. Lee became an iconic figure known throughout the world, particularly among the Chinese, based upon his portrayal of Chinese nationalism in his films, and among Asian Americans for defying Asian stereotypes. Having initially learnt Wing Chun, tai chi, boxing, and street fighting, he combined them with other influences from various sources into the spirit of his personal martial arts philosophy, which he dubbed Jeet Kune Do (The Way of the Intercepting Fist). Lee died on July 20, 1973, aged 32. Since his death, Lee has continued to be a prominent influence on modern combat sports, including judo, karate, mixed martial arts, and boxing, as well as modern popular culture, including film, television, comics, animation, and video games. Time named Lee one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. Early life Bruce Lee's father Lee Hoi-chuen was a famous Cantonese opera singer based in Hong Kong. In December 1939, his parents went to Chinatown, San Francisco in California for an international opera tour. He was born there on November 27, 1940, making him a dual Hong Kong and United States citizen by birth. At four months old (April 1941), the Lee family returned to Hong Kong. Soon after, the Lee family experienced unexpected hardships over the next four years as Japan, in the midst of World War II, launched a surprise attack on Hong Kong in December 1941 and ruled the city for the next four years. Bruce's father, Lee Hoi-chuen, was Cantonese, and his mother, Grace Ho, was of Eurasian ancestry. Lee's maternal grandfather was Cantonese, his maternal grandmother was English and his maternal great-uncle, Robert Hotung, was a successful Hong Kong businessman of Dutch Jewish and Cantonese descent. Career and education 1940–1958: Early roles, schooling and martial arts initiation Lee's father Lee Hoi-chuen was a famous Cantonese opera star. As a result, the junior Lee was introduced to the world of cinema at a very young age and appeared in several films as a child. Lee had his first role as a baby who was carried onto the stage in the film Golden Gate Girl. He took his Chinese stage name as 李小龍, lit. Lee the Little Dragon, for the fact that he was born in both the hour and the year of the Dragon by the Chinese zodiac. As a nine-year-old, he co-starred with his father in The Kid in 1950, which was based on a comic book character and was his first leading role. By the time he was 18, he had appeared in 20 films. After attending Tak Sun School (; several blocks from his home at 218 Nathan Road, Kowloon), Lee entered the primary school division of the Catholic La Salle College at age 12. In 1956, due to poor academic performance and possibly poor conduct, he was transferred to St. Francis Xavier's College, where he was mentored by Brother Edward Muss, F.M.S., a Bavarian-born teacher and coach of the school boxing team. After Lee was involved in several street fights, his parents decided that he needed to be trained in the martial arts. In 1953, Lee's friend William Cheung introduced him to Ip Man, but he was rejected from learning Wing Chun Kung Fu under him because of the long-standing rule in the Chinese martial arts world not to teach foreigners. His one quarter European background from his mother's side was an initial obstacle towards his Wing Chun training. Cheung spoke on his behalf and Lee was accepted into the school. Lee began training in Wing Chun with Yip Man. Yip tried to keep his students from fighting in the street gangs of Hong Kong by encouraging them to fight in organised competitions. After a year into his Wing Chun training, most of Yip Man's other students refused to train with Lee when they had learned of his mixed ancestry, as the Chinese were generally against teaching their martial arts techniques to non-Asians. Lee's sparring partner, Hawkins Cheung, states, "Probably fewer than six people in the whole Wing Chun clan were personally taught, or even partly taught, by Yip Man". However, Lee showed a keen interest in Wing Chun and continued to train privately with Yip Man, William Cheung, and Wong Shun-leung. In 1958, Lee won the Hong Kong schools boxing tournament, knocking out the previous champion, Gary Elms, in the final. That year, Lee was also a cha-cha dancer, winning Hong Kong's Crown Colony Cha-Cha Championship. 1959–1964: Continuous studies and martial arts breakthrough Until his late teens, Lee's street fights became more frequent and included beating the son of a feared triad family. In 1958, after students from a rival Choy Li Fut martial arts school challenged Lee's Wing Chun school, he engaged in a fight on a rooftop. In response to an unfair punch by another boy, Bruce beat him so badly that he knocked out one of his teeth, leading to a complaint by the boy's parents to the police. Lee's mother had to go to a police station and sign a document saying that she would take full responsibility for Bruce's actions if they released him into her custody. Though she did not mention the incident to her husband, she suggested that Bruce, being an American citizen, return to the United States. Lee's father agreed, as Lee's college prospects were not very promising if he remained in Hong Kong . In April 1959, Lee's parents decided to send him to the United States to stay with his older sister, Agnes Lee (), who was already living with family friends in San Francisco. After several months, he moved to Seattle in 1959 to continue his high school education, where he also worked for Ruby Chow as a live-in waiter at her restaurant. Chow's husband was a co-worker and friend of Lee's father. Lee's elder brother Peter Lee () joined him in Seattle for a short stay, before moving on to Minnesota to attend college. In 1959 Lee started to teach martial arts. He called what he taught Jun Fan Gung Fu (literally Bruce Lee's Kung Fu). It was basically his approach to Wing Chun. Lee taught friends he met in Seattle, starting with Judo practitioner Jesse Glover, who continued to teach some of Lee's early techniques. Taky Kimura became Lee's first Assistant Instructor and continued to teach his art and philosophy after Lee's death. Lee opened his first martial arts school, named the Lee Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute, in Seattle. Lee completed his high school education and received his diploma from Edison Technical School on Capitol Hill in Seattle. In March 1961, Lee enrolled at the University of Washington and studied dramatic arts, philosophy, psychology, and various other subjects. Despite what Lee himself and many others have stated, Lee's official major was drama rather than philosophy, according to a 1999 article in the university's alumni publication. Lee dropped out of college in early 1964 and moved to Oakland to live with James Yimm Lee. James Lee was twenty years senior to Bruce Lee and a well-known Chinese martial artist in the area. Together, they founded the second Jun Fan martial arts studio in Oakland. James Lee was responsible for introducing Bruce Lee to Ed Parker, an American martial artist. At the invitation of Parker, Lee appeared in the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships and performed repetitions of two-finger push-ups, using the thumb and the index finger of one hand, with feet at approximately shoulder-width apart. In the same Long Beach event he also performed the "one inch punch". Lee stood upright, his right foot forward with knees bent slightly, in front of a standing, stationary partner. Lee's right arm was partly extended and his right fist approximately away from the partner's chest. Without retracting his right arm, Lee then forcibly delivered the punch to volunteer Bob Baker while largely maintaining his posture. This sent Baker backwards and falling into a chair placed behind Baker to prevent injury, though Baker's momentum caused him to fall to the floor. Baker recalled, "I told Bruce not to do this type of demonstration again. When he punched me that last time, I had to stay home from work because the pain in my chest was unbearable". It was at the 1964 championships that Lee first met Taekwondo master Jhoon Goo Rhee. The two developed a friendship—a relationship from which they benefited as martial artists. Rhee taught Lee the side kick in detail, and Lee taught Rhee the "non-telegraphic" punch. In Oakland's Chinatown in 1964, Lee had a controversial private match with Wong Jack-man, a direct student of Ma Kin Fung, known for his mastery of Xingyiquan, Northern Shaolin, and T'ai chi ch'uan. According to Lee, the Chinese community issued an ultimatum to him to stop teaching non-Chinese people. When he refused to comply, he was challenged to a combat match with Wong. The arrangement was that if Lee lost, he would have to shut down his school, while if he won, he would be free to teach white people, or anyone else. Wong denied this, stating that he requested to fight Lee after Lee boasted during one of his demonstrations at a Chinatown theatre that he could beat anyone in San Francisco, and that Wong himself did not discriminate against Whites or other non-Chinese people. Lee commented, "That paper had all the names of the sifu from Chinatown, but they don't scare me". Individuals known to have witnessed the match include Cadwell, James Lee (Bruce Lee's associate, no relation), and William Chen, a teacher of T'ai chi ch'uan. Wong and William Chen stated that the fight lasted an unusually long 20–25 minutes. Wong claims that although he had originally expected a serious but polite bout, Lee aggressively attacked him with intent to kill. When Wong presented the traditional handshake, Lee appeared to accept the greeting, but instead, Lee allegedly thrust his hand as a spear aimed at Wong's eyes. Forced to defend his life, Wong asserted that he refrained from striking Lee with killing force when the opportunity presented itself because it could have earned him a prison sentence, but used illegal cufflings under his sleeves. According to Michael Dorgan's 1980 book Bruce Lee's Toughest Fight, the fight ended due to Lee's "unusually winded" condition, as opposed to a decisive blow by either fighter. However, according to Bruce Lee, Linda Lee Cadwell, and James Yimm Lee, the fight lasted a mere three minutes with a decisive victory for Lee. In Cadwell's account, "The fight ensued, it was a no-holds-barred fight, it took three minutes. Bruce got this guy down to the ground and said 'Do you give up?' and the man said he gave up". A couple of weeks after the bout, Lee gave an interview claiming that he had defeated an unnamed challenger, which Wong says was an obvious reference to him. In response, Wong published his own account of the fight in the Chinese Pacific Weekly, a Chinese-language newspaper in San Francisco, with an invitation to a public rematch if Lee was not satisfied with the account. Lee did not respond to the invitation despite his reputation for violently responding to every provocation. There were no further public announcements by either, though Lee continued to teach white people. Lee had abandoned thoughts of a film career in favour of pursuing martial arts. However, a martial arts exhibition on Long Beach in 1964 eventually led to the invitation by television producer William Dozier for an audition for a role in the pilot for "Number One Son" about Lee Chan, the son of Charlie Chan. The show never materialised, but Dozier saw potential in Lee. 1966–1970: American roles and creating Jeet Kune Do From 1966 to 1967, Lee played the role of Kato alongside the title character played by Van Williams in the TV series produced and narrated by William Dozier titled The Green Hornet, based on the radio show by the same name. The show ran for one season (26 episodes) from September 1966 to March 1967. Lee and Williams also appeared as their characters in three crossover episodes of Batman, another William Dozier-produced television series. The Green Hornet introduced the adult Bruce Lee to an American audience, and became the first popular American show presenting Asian-style martial arts. The show's director wanted Lee to fight in the typical American style using fists and punches. As a professional martial artist, Lee refused, insisting that he should fight in the style of his expertise. At first, Lee moved so fast that his movements could not be caught on film, so he had to slow them down. During the show's production, Lee became friends with Gene LeBell, who worked as a stuntman in the show. The two trained together and exchange martial knowledge from their respective specialties. After the show was cancelled in 1967, Lee wrote to Dozier thanking him for starting "my career in show business". In 1967, Lee played a role in one episode of Ironside. Jeet Kune Do originated in 1967. After filming one season of The Green Hornet, Lee found himself out of work and opened The Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute. The controversial match with Wong Jack-man influenced Lee's philosophy about martial arts. Lee concluded that the fight had lasted too long and that he had failed to live up to his potential using his Wing Chun techniques. He took the view that traditional martial arts techniques were too rigid and formalised to be practical in scenarios of chaotic street fighting. Lee decided to develop a system with an emphasis on "practicality, flexibility, speed, and efficiency". He started to use different methods of training such as weight training for strength, running for endurance, stretching for flexibility, and many others which he constantly adapted, including fencing and basic boxing techniques. Lee emphasised what he called "the style of no style". This consisted of getting rid of the formalised approach which Lee claimed was indicative of traditional styles. Lee felt that even the system he now called Jun Fan Gung Fu was too restrictive, and it eventually evolved into a philosophy and martial art he would come to call Jeet Kune Do or the Way of the Intercepting Fist. It is a term he would later regret, because Jeet Kune Do implied specific parameters that styles connote, whereas the idea of his martial art was to exist outside of parameters and limitations. At the time, two of Lee's martial arts students were Hollywood script writer Stirling Silliphant and actor James Coburn. In 1969, the three worked on a script for a film called The Silent Flute, and went together on a location hunt to India. The project was not realised at the time, but the 1978 film Circle of Iron, starring David Carradine, was based on the same plot. In 2010, producer Paul Maslansky was reported to have planned and received funding for a film based on the original script for The Silent Flute. In 1969, Lee made a brief appearance in the Silliphant-penned film Marlowe, where he played a hoodlum hired to intimidate private detective Philip Marlowe, played by James Garner, who uses his martial arts abilities to commit acts of vandalisation to intimidate Marlowe. The same year, he was credited as the karate advisor in The Wrecking Crew, the fourth instalment of the Matt Helm comedy spy-fi film starring Dean Martin. Also that year, Lee acted in one episode of Here Come the Brides and Blondie. In 1970, he was responsible for fight choreography for A Walk in the Spring Rain starring Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn, again written by Silliphant. 1971–1973: Hong Kong films and Hollywood breakthrough In 1971, Lee appeared in four episodes of the television series Longstreet, written by Silliphant. Lee played Li Tsung, the martial arts instructor of the title character Mike Longstreet, played by James Franciscus, and important aspects of his martial arts philosophy were written into the script. According to statements made by Lee, and also by Linda Lee Cadwell after Lee's death, in 1971 Lee pitched a television series of his own, tentatively titled The Warrior, discussions of which were confirmed by Warner Bros. During a December 9, 1971, television interview on The Pierre Berton Show, Lee stated that both Paramount and Warner Brothers wanted him "to be in a modernized type of a thing, and that they think the Western idea is out, whereas I want to do the Western". According to Cadwell, Lee's concept was retooled and renamed Kung Fu, but Warner Bros. gave Lee no credit. Warner Brothers states that they had for some time been developing an identical concept, created by two writers and producers, Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander in 1969, as stated too by Lee's biographer Matthew Polly. According to these sources, the reason Lee was not cast was because he had a thick accent, but Fred Weintraub attributes that to his ethnicity. The role of the Shaolin monk in the Wild West was eventually awarded to then-non-martial-artist David Carradine. In The Pierre Berton Show interview, Lee stated he understood Warner Brothers' attitudes towards casting in the series: "They think that business-wise it is a risk. I don't blame them. If the situation were reversed, and an American star were to come to Hong Kong, and I was the man with the money, I would have my own concerns as to whether the acceptance would be there". Producer Fred Weintraub had advised Lee to return to Hong Kong and make a feature film which he could showcase to executives in Hollywood. Not happy with his supporting roles in the US, Lee returned to Hong Kong. Unaware that The Green Hornet had been played to success in Hong Kong and was unofficially referred to as "The Kato Show", he was surprised to be recognised as the star of the show. After negotiating with both Shaw Brothers Studio and Golden Harvest, Lee signed a film contract to star in two films produced by Golden Harvest. Lee played his first leading role in The Big Boss (1971), which proved to be an enormous box office success across Asia and catapulted him to stardom. He followed up with Fist of Fury (1972), which broke the box office records set previously by The Big Boss. Having finished his initial two-year contract, Lee negotiated a new deal with Golden Harvest. Lee later formed his own company, Concord Production Inc., with Chow. For his third film, The Way of the Dragon (1972), he was given complete control of the film's production as the writer, director, star, and choreographer of the fight scenes. In 1964, at a demonstration in Long Beach, California, Lee met karate champion Chuck Norris. In The Way of the Dragon Lee introduced Norris to moviegoers as his opponent. Their showdown has been characterised as "one of the best fight scenes in martial arts and film history". The role had originally been offered to American karate champion Joe Lewis. Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon grossed an estimated and worldwide, respectively. From August to October 1972, Lee began work on his fourth Golden Harvest film, Game of Death. He began filming some scenes, including his fight sequence with American basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a former student. Production stopped in November 1972 when Warner Brothers offered Lee the opportunity to star in Enter the Dragon, the first film to be produced jointly by Concord, Golden Harvest, and Warner Bros. Filming began in Hong Kong in February 1973 and was completed in April 1973. One month into the filming, another production company, Starseas Motion Pictures, promoted Bruce Lee as a leading actor in Fist of Unicorn, although he had merely agreed to choreograph the fight sequences in the film as a favour to his long-time friend Unicorn Chan. Lee planned to sue the production company, but retained his friendship with Chan. However, only a few months after the completion of Enter the Dragon, and six days before its July 26, 1973, release, Lee died. Enter the Dragon went on to become one of the year's highest-grossing films and cemented Lee as a martial arts legend. It was made for US$850,000 in 1973, the equivalent to $4 million adjusted for inflation as of 2007. Enter the Dragon is estimated to have grossed over worldwide, the equivalent of over adjusted for inflation . The film sparked a brief fad in martial arts, epitomised in songs such as "Kung Fu Fighting" and some TV shows. 1978–present: Posthumous work Robert Clouse, the director of Enter the Dragon, together with Golden Harvest, revived Lee's unfinished film Game of Death. Lee had shot over 100 minutes of footage, including out-takes, for Game of Death before shooting was stopped to allow him to work on Enter the Dragon. In addition to Abdul-Jabbar, George Lazenby, Hapkido master Ji Han-Jae, and another of Lee's students, Dan Inosanto, appeared in the film, which culminated in Lee's character, Hai Tien, clad in the now-famous yellow track suit taking on a series of different challengers on each floor as they make their way through a five-level pagoda. In a controversial move, Robert Clouse finished the film using a look-alike and archive footage of Lee from his other films with a new storyline and cast, which was released in 1978. However, the cobbled-together film contained only fifteen minutes of actual footage of Lee (he had printed many unsuccessful takes) while the rest had a Lee look-alike, Kim Tai Chung, and Yuen Biao as stunt double. The unused footage Lee had filmed was recovered 22 years later and included in the documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey. Apart from Game of Death, other future film projects were planned to feature Lee at the time. In 1972, after the success of The Big Boss and Fist of Fury, a third film was planned by Raymond Chow at Golden Harvest to be directed by Lo Wei, titled Yellow-Faced Tiger. However, at the time, Lee decided to direct and produce his own script for Way of the Dragon instead. Although Lee had formed a production company with Raymond Chow, a period film was also planned from September–November 1973 with the competing Shaw Brothers Studio, to be directed by either Chor Yuen or Cheng Kang, and written by Yi Kang and Chang Cheh, titled The Seven Sons of the Jade Dragon. In 2015, Perfect Storm Entertainment and Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee, announced that the series The Warrior would be produced and would air on the Cinemax. Filmmaker Justin Lin was chosen to direct the series. Production began in October 2017, in Cape Town, South Africa. The first season will contain 10 episodes. In April 2019, Cinemax renewed the series for a second season. In March 2021, it was announced that producer Jason Kothari had acquired the rights to The Silent Flute "to become a miniseries, which would have John Fusco as a screenwriter and executive producer. Unproduced works Lee had also worked on several scripts himself. A tape containing a recording of Lee narrating the basic storyline to a film tentatively titled Southern Fist/Northern Leg exists, showing some similarities with the canned script for The Silent Flute (Circle of Iron). Another script had the title Green Bamboo Warrior, set in San Francisco, planned to co-star Bolo Yeung and to be produced by Andrew Vajna. Photoshoot costume tests were organised for some of these planned film projects. Martial arts and fitness Striking Lee's first introduction to martial arts was through his father, from whom he learned the fundamentals of Wu-style t'ai chi ch'uan. In his teens, Lee became involved in Hong Kong gang conflicts, which led to frequent street fights. The largest influence on Lee's martial arts development was his study of Wing Chun. Lee was 16 years old under the Wing Chun teacher Yip Man, between late 1956 and 1957, after losing to rival gang members. Yip's regular classes generally consisted of the forms practice, chi sao (sticking hands) drills, wooden dummy techniques, and free sparring. There was no set pattern to the classes. Other Chinese martial arts styles Lee trained in were Northern Praying Mantis, Southern Praying Mantis, Eagle Claw, Tan Tui, Law Hon, Mizongyi, Wa K'ung, Monkey, Southern Dragon, Fujian White Crane, Choy Li Fut, Hung Gar, Choy Gar, Fut Gar, Mok Gar, Yau Kung Moon, Li Gar, and Lau Gar. Lee was trained in boxing, between 1956 and 1958, by Brother Edward, coach of the St. Francis Xavier's College boxing team. Lee went on to win the Hong Kong schools boxing tournament in 1958, while scoring knockdowns against the previous champion Gary Elms in the final. After moving to the United States, Lee was heavily influenced by heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, whose footwork he studied and incorporated into his own style in the 1960s. Lee demonstrated his Jeet Kune Do martial arts at the Long Beach International Karate Championships in 1964 and 1968, with the latter having higher-quality video footage available. Lee is seen demonstrating quick eye strikes before his opponent can block, and demonstrating the one-inch punch on several volunteers. He demonstrates chi sao drills while blindfolded against an opponent, probing for weaknesses in his opponent while scoring with punches and takedowns. Lee then participates in a full-contact sparring bout against an opponent, with both wearing leather headgear. Lee is seen implementing his Jeet Kune Do concept of economical motion, using Ali-inspired footwork to keep out of range while counter-attacking with backfists and straight punches. He halts attacks with stop-hit side kicks, and quickly executes several sweeps and head kicks. The opponent repeatedly attempts to attack Lee, but is never able to connect with a clean hit. He once manages to come close with a spin kick, but Lee counters it. The footage was reviewed by Black Belt magazine in 1995, concluding that "the action is as fast and furious as anything in Lee's films." It was at the 1964 championships that Lee first met taekwondo master Jhoon Goo Rhee. While Rhee taught Lee the side kick in detail, Lee taught Rhee the "non-telegraphic" punch. Rhee learned what he calls the "accupunch" from Lee and incorporated it into American taekwondo. The "accupunch" is a rapid fast punch that is very difficult to block, based on human reaction time—"the idea is to finish the execution of the punch before the opponent can complete the brain-to-wrist communication." Lee commonly used the oblique kick, made popular much later in mixed martial arts. It is called the jeet tek, "stop kick" or "intercepting kick", in Jeet Kune Do. Grappling Lee favored cross-training between different fighting styles, and had a particular interest in grappling. Lee trained with several judo practitioners in Seattle and California, among them Fred Sato, Jesse Glover, Taky Kimura, Hayward Nishioka and Wally Jay, as well as Gene LeBell. Many of his first students were proficient in judo and other arts, and he learned as much as he taught. After befriending LeBell on the set of The Green Hornet, Lee offered to teach him striking arts in exchange for being taught grappling techniques. LeBell had been taught catch wrestling by prestigious grapplers Lou Thesz and Ed Lewis, and notable techniques of both judo and catch wrestling can be seen in Lee's Tao of Jeet Kune Do. He also learned grappling moves from hapkido master Ji Han-jae. According to Glover, Lee only found judo ineffective at the action of getting hold of the opponent. In their first training together, Glover showed Lee an osoto gari, which Lee considered not a bad technique, but he disliked that Glover had needed to hold onto Lee. While in Seattle, Lee developed anti-grappling techniques against opponents trying to tackle him or take him to the ground. Glover recalled Lee "definitely would not go to the ground if he had the opportunity to get you standing up." Nonetheless, Lee expressed to LeBell a wish to integrate judo into his fighting style. He incorporated the osoto gari into Jeet Kune Do, among other throws, armlocks and chokeholds from judo. Although Lee opined that grappling was of little use in action choreography because it was not visually distinctive, he showcased grappling moves in his own films, such as Way of the Dragon, where his character finishes his opponent Chuck Norris with a neck hold inspired by LeBell, and Enter the Dragon, whose prologue features Lee submitting his opponent Sammo Hung with an armbar. Game of Death also features Lee and Han-jae exchanging grappling moves, as well as Lee using wrestling against the character played by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Lee was also influenced by the training routine of The Great Gama, an Indian/Pakistani pehlwani wrestling champion known for his grappling strength. Lee incorporated Gama's exercises into his own training routine. Street fighting Another major influence on Lee was Hong Kong's street fighting culture in the form of rooftop fights. In the mid-20th century, soaring crime in Hong Kong, combined with limited Hong Kong Police manpower, led to many young Hongkongers learning martial arts for self-defence. Around the 1960s, there were about 400 martial arts schools in Hong Kong, teaching their own distinctive styles of martial arts. In Hong Kong's street fighting culture, there emerged a rooftop fight scene in the 1950s and 1960s, where gangs from rival martial arts schools challenged each other to bare-knuckle fights on Hong Kong's rooftops, in order to avoid crackdowns by British colonial authorities. Lee frequently participated in these Hong Kong rooftop fights. He combined different techniques from different martial arts schools into his own hybrid martial arts style. When Lee returned to Hong Kong in the early 1970s, his reputation as "the fastest fist in the east" routinely led to locals challenging him to street fights. He sometimes accepted these challenges and engaged in street fights, which led to some criticism from the press portraying him as violent at the time. Fitness At 5 feet 7 inches and weighing less than 140 pounds, Lee was renowned for his physical fitness and vigor, achieved by using a dedicated fitness regimen to become as strong as possible. After his match with Wong Jack-man in 1965, Lee changed his approach toward martial arts training. Lee felt that many martial artists of his time did not spend enough time on physical conditioning. Lee included all elements of total fitness—muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, and flexibility. He used traditional bodybuilding techniques to build some muscle mass, though not overdone, as that could decrease speed or flexibility. At the same time, with respect to balance, Lee maintained that mental and spiritual preparation are fundamental to the success of physical training in martial arts skills. In Tao of Jeet Kune Do he wrote: According to Linda Lee Cadwell, soon after he moved to the United States, Lee started to take nutrition seriously and developed an interest in health foods, high-protein drinks, and vitamin and mineral supplements. He later concluded that achieving a high-performance body was akin to maintaining the engine of a high-performance automobile. Allegorically, as one could not keep a car running on low-octane fuels, one could not sustain one's body with a steady diet of junk food, and with "the wrong fuel", one's body would perform sluggishly or sloppily. Lee avoided baked goods and refined flour, describing them as providing empty calories that did nothing for his body. He was known for being a fan of Asian cuisine for its variety, and often ate meals with a combination of vegetables, rice, and fish. Lee had a dislike for dairy products and as a result, used powdered milk in his diet. Dan Inosanto recalls Lee practised meditation as the first action on his schedule. Artistry Philosophy While best known as a martial artist, Lee studied drama and Asian and Western philosophy, starting while a student at the University of Washington. He was well-read and had an extensive library dominated by martial arts subjects and philosophical texts. His own books on martial arts and fighting philosophy are known for their philosophical assertions, both inside and outside of martial arts circles. His eclectic philosophy often mirrored his fighting beliefs, though he was quick to claim that his martial arts were solely a metaphor for such teachings. He believed that any knowledge ultimately led to self-knowledge. He said that his chosen method of self-expression was martial arts. His influences include Taoism, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Buddhism. Lee's philosophy was very much in opposition to the conservative worldview advocated by Confucianism. John Little states that Lee was an atheist. When asked in 1972 about his religious affiliation, he replied, "none whatsoever". When asked if he believed in God, he said, "To be perfectly frank, I really do not." Poetry Aside from martial arts and philosophy, which focus on the physical aspect and self-consciousness for truths and principles, Lee also wrote poetry that reflected his emotion and a stage in his life collectively. Many forms of art remain concordant with the artist creating them. Lee's principle of self-expression was applied to his poetry as well. His daughter Shannon Lee said, "He did write poetry; he was really the consummate artist." His poetic works were originally handwritten on paper, then later on edited and published, with John Little being the major author (editor), for Bruce Lee's works. Linda Lee Cadwell (Bruce Lee's wife) shared her husband's notes, poems, and experiences with followers. She mentioned "Lee's poems are, by American standards, rather dark—reflecting the deeper, less exposed recesses of the human psyche". Most of Bruce Lee's poems are categorised as anti-poetry or fall into a paradox. The mood in his poems shows the side of the man that can be compared with other poets such as Robert Frost, one of many well-known poets expressing himself with dark poetic works. The paradox taken from the Yin and Yang symbol in martial arts was also integrated into his poetry. His martial arts and philosophy contribute a great part to his poetry. The free verse form of Lee's poetry reflects his famous quote "Be formless ... shapeless, like water." Personal life Names Lee's Cantonese birth name was Lee Jun-fan (). The name homophonically means "return again", and was given to Lee by his mother, who felt he would return to the United States once he came of age. Because of his mother's superstitious nature, she had originally named him Sai-fon (), which is a feminine name meaning "small phoenix". The English name "Bruce" is thought to have been given by the hospital attending physician, Dr. Mary Glover. Lee had three other Chinese names: Lee Yuen-cham (), a family/clan name; Lee Yuen-kam (), which he used as a student name while he was attending La Salle College, and his Chinese screen name Lee Siu-lung (; Siu-lung means "little dragon"). Lee's given name Jun-fan was originally written in Chinese as ; however, the Jun () Chinese character was identical to part of his grandfather's name, Lee Jun-biu (). Hence, the Chinese character for Jun in Lee's name was changed to the homonym instead, to avoid naming taboo in Chinese tradition. Family Lee's father, Lee Hoi-chuen, was one of the leading Cantonese opera and film actors at the time and was embarking on a year-long opera tour with his family on the eve of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. Lee Hoi-chuen had been touring the United States for many years and performing in numerous Chinese communities there. Although many of his peers decided to stay in the US, Lee Hoi-chuen returned to Hong Kong after Bruce's birth. Within months, Hong Kong was invaded and the Lees lived for three years and eight months under Japanese occupation. After the war ended, Lee Hoi-chuen resumed his acting career and became a more popular actor during Hong Kong's rebuilding years. Lee's mother, Grace Ho, was from one of the wealthiest and most powerful clans in Hong Kong, the Ho-tungs. She was the half-niece of Sir Robert Ho-tung, the Eurasian patriarch of the clan. As such, the young Bruce Lee grew up in an affluent and privileged environment. Despite the advantage of his family's status, the neighbourhood in which Lee grew up became overcrowded, dangerous, and full of gang rivalries due to an influx of refugees fleeing communist China for Hong Kong, at that time a British Crown Colony. Grace Ho is reported as either the adopted or biological daughter of Ho Kom-tong (Ho Gumtong, ) and the half-niece of Sir Robert Ho-tung, both notable Hong Kong businessmen and philanthropists. Bruce was the fourth of five children: Phoebe Lee (), Agnes Lee (), Peter Lee, and Robert Lee. Grace's parentage remains unclear. Linda Lee, in her 1989 biography The Bruce Lee Story, suggests that Grace had a German father and was a Catholic. Bruce Thomas, in his influential 1994 biography Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit, suggests that Grace had a Chinese mother and a German father. Lee's relative Eric Peter Ho, in his 2010 book Tracing My Children's Lineage, suggests that Grace was born in Shanghai to a Eurasian woman named Cheung King-sin. Eric Peter Ho said that Grace Lee was the daughter of a mixed race Shanghainese woman and her father was Ho Kom Tong. Grace Lee said her mother was English and her father was Chinese. Fredda Dudley Balling said Grace Lee was three-quarters Chinese and one-quarter British. In the 2018 biography Bruce Lee: A Life, Matthew Polly identifies Lee's maternal grandfather as Ho Kom-tong, who had often been reported as his adoptive grandfather. Ho Kom-tong's father, Charles Maurice Bosman, was a Dutch Jewish businessman from Rotterdam. He moved to Hong Kong with the Dutch East India Company and served as the Dutch consul to Hong Kong at one time. He had a Chinese concubine named Sze Tai with whom he had six children, including Ho Kom Tong. Bosman subsequently abandoned his family and immigrated to California. Ho Kom Tong became a wealthy businessman with a wife, 13 concubines, and a British mistress who gave birth to Grace Ho. His younger brother Robert Lee Jun-fai is a notable musician and singer, his group The Thunderbirds were famous in Hong Kong. A few singles were sung mostly or all in English. Also released was Lee singing a duet with Irene Ryder. Lee Jun-fai lived with Lee in Los Angeles in the United States and stayed. After Lee's death, Lee Jun-fai released an album and the single by the same name dedicated to Lee called The Ballad of Bruce Lee. While studying at the University of Washington he met his future wife Linda Emery, a fellow student studying to become a teacher. As relations between people of different races was still banned in many US states, they married in secret in August 1964. Lee had two children with Linda: Brandon (1965–1993) and Shannon Lee (born 1969). Upon's Lee passing in 1973, she continued to promote Bruce Lee's martial art Jeet Kune Do. She wrote the 1975 book Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew, on which the 1993 feature film Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was based. In 1989, she wrote the book The Bruce Lee Story. She retired in 2001 from the family estate. Lee died when his son Brandon was eight years old. While alive, Lee taught Brandon martial arts and would invite him to visit sets. This gave Brandon the desire to act and went on to study the craft. As a young adult, Brandon Lee found some success acting in action-oriented pictures such as Legacy of Rage (1986), Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991), and Rapid Fire (1992). In 1993, at the age of 28, Brandon Lee died after being accidentally shot by a prop gun on the set of The Crow. Lee died when his daughter Shannon was four. In her youth she studied Jeet Kune Do under Richard Bustillo, one of her father's students; however, her serious studies did not begin until the late 1990s. To train for parts in action movies, she studied Jeet Kune Do with Ted Wong. Friends, students, and contemporaries Lee's brother Robert with his friends Taky Kimura, Dan Inosanto, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, and Peter Chin were his pallbearers. Coburn was a martial arts student and a friend of Lee. Coburn worked with Lee and Stirling Silliphant on developing The Silent Flute. Upon Lee's early death, at his funeral Coburn gave a eulogy. Regarding McQueen, Lee made no secret that he wanted everything McQueen had and would stop at nothing to get it. Inosanto and Kimura were friends and disciple of Lee. Inosanto who would go on to train Lee's son Brandon. Kimura continued to teach Lee's craft in Seattle. According to Lee's wife, Chin was a lifelong family friend and a student of Lee. James Yimm Lee (no relation) was one of Lee's three personally certified 3rd rank instructors and co-founded the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute in Oakland where he taught Jun Fan Gung Fu in Lee's absence. James was responsible for introducing Lee to Ed Parker, the organiser of the Long Beach International Karate Championships, where Lee was first introduced to the martial arts community. Hollywood couple Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate studied martial arts with Lee. Polanski flew Lee to Switzerland to train him. Tate studied with Lee in preparation for her role in The Wrecking Crew. After Tate was murdered by the Manson Family, Polanski initially suspected Lee. Screenwriter Stirling Silliphant was a martial arts student and a friend of Lee. Silliphant worked with Lee and James Coburn on developing The Silent Flute. Lee acted and provided his martial arts expertise in several projects penned by Silliphant, the first in Marlowe (1969) where Lee plays Winslow Wong a hoodlum well versed in martial arts. Lee also did fight choreographies for the film A Walk in the Spring Rain (1970), and played Li Tsung, a Jeet Kune Do instructor who teaches the main character in the television show Longstreet (1971). Elements of his martial arts philosophy were included in the script for the latter. Basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar studied martial arts and developed a friendship with Lee. Actor and karate champion Chuck Norris was a friend and training partner of Lee's. After Lee's passing, Norris said he kept in touch with Lee's family. Judoka and professional wrestler Gene LeBell became a friend of Lee on the set of The Green Hornet. They trained together and exchanged their knowledge of martial arts. Death On May 10, 1973, Lee collapsed during an automated dialogue replacement session for Enter the Dragon at Golden Harvest film studio in Hong Kong. Because he was having seizures and headaches, he was immediately rushed to Hong Kong Baptist Hospital, where doctors diagnosed cerebral edema. They were able to reduce the swelling through the administration of mannitol. The headache and cerebral edema that occurred in his first collapse were later repeated on the day of his death. On Friday, July 20, 1973, Lee was in Hong Kong to have dinner with actor George Lazenby, with whom he intended to make a film. According to Lee's wife Linda, Lee met producer Raymond Chow at 2 p.m. at home to discuss the making of the film Game of Death. They worked until 4 p.m. and then drove together to the home of Lee's colleague Betty Ting Pei, a Taiwanese actress. The three went over the script at Ting's home, and then Chow left to attend a dinner meeting. Later, Lee complained of a headache, and Ting gave him the painkiller Equagesic, which contained both aspirin and the tranquiliser meprobamate. Around 7:30 p.m., he went to lie down for a nap. When Lee did not come for dinner, Chow came to the apartment, but he was unable to wake Lee up. A doctor was summoned, and spent ten minutes attempting to revive Lee before sending him by ambulance to Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Lee was declared dead on arrival at the age of 32. There was no visible external injury; however, according to autopsy reports, Lee's brain had swollen considerably, from 1,400 to 1,575 grams (a 13% increase). The autopsy found Equagesic in his system. On October 15, 2005, Chow stated in an interview that Lee died from an allergic reaction to the tranquiliser meprobamate, the main ingredient in Equagesic, which Chow described as an ingredient commonly used in painkillers. When the doctors announced Lee's death, it was officially ruled a "death by misadventure". Lee's wife Linda returned to her hometown of Seattle, and had Lee's body buried in Lake View Cemetery in Seattle. Pallbearers at Lee's funeral on July 25, 1973, included Taky Kimura, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Dan Inosanto, Peter Chin, and Lee's brother Robert. Around the time of Lee's death, numerous rumours appeared in the media. Lee's iconic status and untimely death fed many wild rumours and theories. These included murder involving the triads and a supposed curse on him and his family. Donald Teare, a forensic scientist, recommended by Scotland Yard, who had overseen over 1,000 autopsies, was assigned to the Lee case. His conclusion was "death by misadventure" caused by cerebral edema due to a reaction to compounds present in the combination medication Equagesic. Although there was initial speculation that cannabis found in Lee's stomach may have contributed to his death, Teare said it would "be both 'irresponsible and irrational' to say that [cannabis] might have triggered either the events of Bruce's collapse on May 10 or his death on July 20". Dr. R. R. Lycette, the clinical pathologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, reported at the coroner hearing that the death could not have been caused by cannabis. In a 2018 biography, author Matthew Polly consulted with medical experts and theorised that the cerebral edema that killed Lee had been caused by over-exertion and heat stroke; heat stroke was not considered at the time because it was then a poorly understood condition. Furthermore, Lee had his underarm sweat glands removed in late 1972, in the apparent belief that underarm sweat was unphotogenic on film. Polly further theorised that this caused Lee's body to overheat while practising in hot temperatures on May 10 and July 20, 1973, resulting in heat stroke that in turn exacerbated the cerebral edema that led to his death. In an article in the December 2022 issue of Clinical Kidney Journal, a team of researchers examined the various theories regarding Lee's cause of death, and concluded that his fatal cerebal edema was brought on by hyponatremia, an insufficient concentration of sodium in the blood. The authors noted that there were several risk factors which predisposed Lee to hyponatremia, including excessive water intake, insufficient solute intake, alcohol consumption, and use or overuse of multiple drugs which impair the ability of the kidneys to excrete excess fluids. Lee's symptoms prior to his death were also found to closely match known cases of fatal hyponatremia. Legacy and cultural impact Lee is considered by commentators, critics, media, and other martial artists to be the most influential martial artist of all time, and a pop culture icon of the 20th century, who bridged the gap between East and West. Time named Lee one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. A number of biography books have been written about Bruce Lee. A biography about Lee sold more than copies by 1988. Action films Lee was largely responsible for launching the "kung fu craze" of the 1970s. He initially introduced kung fu to the West with American television shows such as The Green Hornet and Kung Fu, before the "kung fu craze" began with the dominance of Hong Kong martial arts films in 1973. Lee's success inspired a wave of Western martial arts films and television shows throughout the 1970s–1990s (launching the careers of Western martial arts stars such as Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris), as well as the more general integration of Asian martial arts into Western action films and television shows during the 1980s1990s. Enter the Dragon has been cited as one of the most influential action films of all time. Sascha Matuszak of Vice said Enter the Dragon "is referenced in all manner of media, the plot line and characters continue to influence storytellers today, and the impact was particularly felt in the revolutionizing way the film portrayed African-Americans, Asians and traditional martial arts." Kuan-Hsing Chen and Beng Huat Chua cited fight scenes in Lee's films such as Enter the Dragon as being influential for the way they pitched "an elemental story of good against evil in such a spectacle-saturated way". A number of action filmmakers around the world have cited Bruce Lee as a formative influence on their careers, including Hong Kong action film directors such as Jackie Chan and John Woo, and Hollywood filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Brett Ratner. Martial arts and combat sports Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines that was founded by Lee, is often credited with paving the way for modern mixed martial arts (MMA). The concept of mixed martial arts was popularised in the West by Bruce Lee via his system of Jeet Kune Do. Lee believed that "the best fighter is not a Boxer, Karate or Judo man. The best fighter is someone who can adapt to any style, to be formless, to adopt an individual's own style and not following the system of styles." In 2004, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) founder Dana White called Lee the "father of mixed martial arts" and stated: "If you look at the way Bruce Lee trained, the way he fought, and many of the things he wrote, he said the perfect style was no style. You take a little something from everything. You take the good things from every different discipline, use what works, and you throw the rest away". Lee was largely responsible for many people taking up martial arts. These include numerous fighters in combat sports who were inspired by Lee; boxing champion Sugar Ray Leonard said he perfected his jab by watching Lee, boxing champion Manny Pacquiao compared his fighting style to Lee, and UFC champion Conor McGregor has compared himself to Lee and said that he believes Lee would have been a champion in the UFC if he were to compete in the present day. Lee inspired the foundation of American full-contact kickboxing tournaments by Joe Lewis and Benny Urquidez in the 1970s. American taekwondo pioneer Jhoon Goo Rhee learned from Lee what he calls the "accupunch", which he incorporated into American taekwondo. Rhee later coached heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali and taught him the "accupunch", which Ali used to knockout Richard Dunn in 1975. According to heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, "everyone wanted to be Bruce Lee" in the 1970s. UFC pound-for-pound champion Jon Jones cited Lee as inspiration, with Jones known for frequently using the oblique kick to the knee, a technique that was popularised by Lee. UFC champions Uriah Hall and Anderson Silva cited Lee as an inspiration. Numerous other UFC fighters have cited Lee as their inspiration, with several referring to him as a "godfather" or "grandfather" of MMA. Racial barriers and stereotypes Lee is credited with helping to change the way Asians were presented in American films. He defied Asian stereotypes, such as the emasculated Asian male stereotype. In contrast to earlier stereotypes which depicted Asian men as emasculated, childlike, coolies, or domestic servants, Lee demonstrated that Asian men could be "tough, strong and sexy" according to University of Michigan lecturer Hye Seung Chung. In turn, Lee's popularity inspired a new Asian stereotype, the martial artist. In North America, his films initially played largely to black, Asian and Hispanic audiences. Within black communities, Lee's popularity was second only to heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali in the 1970s. As Lee broke through to the mainstream, he became a rare non-white movie star in a Hollywood industry dominated by white actors at the time. According to rapper LL Cool J, Lee's films were the first time many non-white American children such as himself had seen a non-white action hero on the big screen in the 1970s. Popular culture Numerous entertainment and sports figures around the world have cited Lee as a major influence on their work, including martial arts actors such as Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen, actor-bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor-comedians such as Eddie Murphy and Eddie Griffin, actresses such as Olivia Munn and Dianne Doan, musicians such as Steve Aoki and Rohan Marley, rappers such as LL Cool J and Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA, music bands such as the Gorillaz, comedians such as W. Kamau Bell and Margaret Cho, basketball players Stephen Curry and Jamal Murray, skaters Tony Hawk and Christian Hosoi, and American footballer Kyler Murray, among others. Bruce Lee influenced several comic book writers, notably Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee, who considered Bruce Lee to be a superhero without a costume. Shortly after his death, Lee inspired the Marvel characters Shang-Chi (debuted 1973) and Iron Fist (debuted 1974) as well as the comic book series The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu (debuted 1974). According to Stan Lee, any character that is a martial artist since then owes their origin to Bruce Lee in some form. Bruce Lee was a formative influence on the development of breakdancing in the 1970s. Early breakdancing pioneers such as the Rock Steady Crew drew inspiration from kung fu moves, as performed by Lee, inspiring dance moves such as the windmill among other breaking moves. In India, Lee films had an influence on Hindi masala films. After the success of Lee films such as Enter the Dragon in India, Deewaar (1975) and later Hindi films incorporated fight scenes inspired by 1970s Hong Kong martial arts films up until the 1990s. According to Indian film star Aamir Khan, when he was a child, "almost every house had a poster of Bruce Lee" in 1970s Bombay. In Japan, the manga and anime franchises Fist of the North Star (1983–1988) and Dragon Ball (1984–1995) were inspired by Lee films such as Enter the Dragon. In turn, Fist of the North Star and especially Dragon Ball are credited with setting the trends for popular shōnen manga and anime from the 1980s onwards. Spike Spiegel, the protagonist from the 1998 anime Cowboy Bebop, is seen practising Jeet Kune Do and quotes Lee. Bruce Lee films such as Game of Death and Enter the Dragon were the foundation for video game genres such as beat 'em up action games and fighting games. The first beat 'em up game, Kung-Fu Master (1984), was based on Lee's Game of Death. The Street Fighter video game franchise (1987 debut) was inspired by Enter the Dragon, with the gameplay centered around an international fighting tournament, and each character having a unique combination of ethnicity, nationality and fighting style; Street Fighter went on to set the template for all fighting games that followed. Since then, nearly every major fighting game franchise has had a character based on Bruce Lee. In April 2014, Lee was named a featured character in the combat sports video game EA Sports UFC, and is playable in multiple weight classes. In France, the Yamakasi cited the martial arts philosophy of Bruce Lee as an influence on their development of the parkour discipline in the 1990s, along with the acrobatics of Jackie Chan. The Yamakasi considered Lee to be the "unofficial president" of their group. The Legend of Bruce Lee (2008), a Chinese television drama series based on the life of Bruce Lee, has been watched by over viewers in China, making it the most-watched Chinese television drama series of all time, as of 2017. In November 2022, it was announced that Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee was directing a biopic on Bruce Lee. Ang Lee's son Mason Lee was cast to star in the movie, while Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee, is set to produce the film. Commercials Though Bruce Lee did not appear in commercials during his lifetime, his likeness and image has since appeared in hundreds of commercials around the world. Nokia launched an Internet-based campaign in 2008 with staged "documentary-looking" footage of Bruce Lee playing ping-pong with his nunchaku and also igniting matches as they are thrown toward him. The videos went viral on YouTube, creating confusion as some people believed them to be authentic footage. Honors Awards 1972: Golden Horse Awards Best Mandarin Film 1972: Fist of Fury Special Jury Award 1994: Hong Kong Film Award for Lifetime Achievement 1999: Named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century 2004: Star of the Century Award 2013: The Asian Awards Founders Award Statues Statue of Bruce Lee (Los Angeles): unveiled June 15, 2013, Chinatown Central Plaza, Los Angeles, California Statue of Bruce Lee (Hong Kong): bronze statue of Lee was unveiled on November 27, 2005, on what would have been his 65th birthday. Statue of Bruce Lee (Mostar): The day before the Hong Kong statue was dedicated, the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina unveiled its own bronze statue; supporters of the statue cited Lee as a unifying symbol against the ethnic divisions in the country, which had culminated in the 1992–95 Bosnian War. Places A theme park dedicated to Lee was built in Jun'an, Guangdong. Mainland Chinese only started watching Bruce Lee films in the 1980s, when videos of classic movies like The Chinese Connection became available. On January 6, 2009, it was announced that Lee's Hong Kong home (41 Cumberland Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong) would be preserved and transformed into a tourist site by Yu Pang-lin. Yu died in 2015 and this plan did not materialise. In 2018, Yu's grandson, Pang Chi-ping, said: "We will convert the mansion into a centre for Chinese studies next year, which provides courses like Mandarin and Chinese music for children." Filmography Books Chinese Gung-Fu: The Philosophical Art of Self Defense (Bruce Lee's first book) – 1963 Tao of Jeet Kune Do (Published posthumously) – 1973 Bruce Lee's Fighting Method (Published posthumously) – 1978 See also Media about Bruce Lee Bruce Lee (comics) Bruce Lee Library Bruceploitation Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story List of stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – Bruce Lee at 6933 Hollywood Blvd The Legend of Bruce Lee Citations General bibliography External links Bruce Lee Foundation Category:1940 births Category:1973 deaths Category:20th-century American male actors Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American philosophers Category:20th-century American screenwriters Category:20th-century Hong Kong male actors Category:Accidental deaths in Hong Kong Category:American atheists Category:American emigrants to Hong Kong Category:American expatriates in Hong Kong Category:American film actors of Asian descent Category:American film directors of Hong Kong descent Category:American film producers Category:American Jeet Kune Do practitioners Category:American male actors of Hong Kong descent Category:American male film actors Category:American male martial artists Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American male screenwriters Category:American male television actors Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of German descent Category:American stunt performers Category:American Wing Chun practitioners Category:American writers of Chinese descent Category:American wushu practitioners Category:Burials in Washington (state) Category:Cantonese people Category:Chinese atheists Category:Chinese Jeet Kune Do practitioners Category:Death conspiracy theories Category:Deaths from cerebral edema Category:Film directors from San Francisco Category:Film producers from California Category:Green Hornet Category:Ho family Category:Hong Kong film directors Category:Hong Kong film producers Category:Hong Kong kung fu practitioners Category:Hong Kong male child actors Category:Hong Kong male film actors Category:Hong Kong male television actors Category:Hong Kong martial artists Category:Hong Kong people of English descent Category:Hong Kong people of German descent Category:Hong Kong philosophers Category:Hong Kong screenwriters Category:Hong Kong stunt performers Category:Hong Kong wushu practitioners Category:Male actors from California Category:Male actors from San Francisco Category:Martial arts school founders Category:Neurological disease deaths in Hong Kong Category:People from Chinatown, San Francisco Category:People with multiple nationality Category:Screenwriters from California Category:University of Washington alumni Category:Wing Chun practitioners from Hong Kong Category:Writers from San Francisco

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Faith Hill

Audrey Faith McGraw (born September 21, 1967) is an American singer and record producer. She is one of the most successful country artists of all time, having sold more than 40 million albums worldwide. Hill is married to American singer Tim McGraw, with whom she has recorded several duets. Hill's first two albums, Take Me as I Am (1993) and It Matters to Me (1995), were major successes and placed a combined three number ones on Billboard's country charts.

1993-1997: Country music success

Hill's debut album was Take Me as I Am (1993); sales were strong, buoyed by the chart success of "Wild One". Hill became the first female country singer in 30 years to hold Billboard's number one position for four consecutive weeks when "Wild One" managed the feat in 1994. Her version of "Piece of My Heart", also went to the top of the country charts in 1994. The album sold a total of 3 million copies. Other singles from the album include "Take Me as I Am". The recording of Faith's second album was delayed by surgery to repair a ruptured blood vessel on her vocal cords. It Matters to Me finally appeared in 1995 and was another success, with the title track becoming her third number-one country single. Several other top 10 singles followed, and more than 3 million copies of the album were sold. The fifth single from the album, "I Can't Do That Anymore", was written by country music artist Alan Jackson. Other singles from the album include "You Can't Lose Me", "Someone Else's Dream", and "Let's Go to Vegas". During this period, Hill appeared on the acclaimed PBS music program Austin City Limits. In spring 1996, Hill began the Spontaneous Combustion Tour with country singer Tim McGraw. At that time, Hill had recently become engaged to her former producer, Scott Hendricks, and McGraw had recently broken an engagement. McGraw and Hill were quickly attracted to each other and began an affair. After discovering that Hill was pregnant with their first child, the couple married on October 6, 1996. The couple have three daughters together: Gracie Katherine (born 1997), Maggie Elizabeth (born 1998) and Audrey Caroline (born 2001). Since their marriage, Hill and McGraw have endeavored never to be apart for more than three consecutive days. After the release of It Matters to Me, Hill took a three-year break from recording to give herself a rest from four years of touring and to begin a family with McGraw. During her break, she joined forces with her husband for their first duet, "It's Your Love". The song stayed at number one for six weeks, and won awards from both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. Hill has remarked that sometimes when they perform the song together, "it [doesn't] feel like anybody else was really watching." CANNOTANSWER

Audrey Faith McGraw (; born September 21, 1967), known professionally as Faith Hill, is an American singer and actress. She is one of the most successful country music artists of all time, having sold more than 40 million albums worldwide. Hill's first two albums, Take Me as I Am (1993) and It Matters to Me (1995), were major successes and placed a combined three number ones on Billboard's country charts. She then achieved mainstream and crossover success with her next two albums, Faith (1998) and Breathe (1999). Faith spawned her first international success in early 1998, "This Kiss", while Breathe became one of the best-selling country albums of all time, led by the huge crossover success of the songs "Breathe" and "The Way You Love Me". It had massive sales worldwide and earned Hill three Grammy Awards. In 2001, she recorded "There You'll Be" for the Pearl Harbor soundtrack and it became an international success and her best-selling single in Europe. Hill's next two albums, Cry (2002) and Fireflies (2005), were both commercial successes; the former spawned another crossover single, "Cry", which won Hill a Grammy Award, and the latter produced the singles "Mississippi Girl" and "Like We Never Loved at All", which earned her another Grammy Award. Hill has won five Grammy Awards, 15 Academy of Country Music Awards, six American Music Awards, and several other awards. Her Soul2Soul II Tour 2006 with Tim McGraw became the highest-grossing country tour of all time. In 2001, she was named one of the "30 Most Powerful Women in America" by Ladies Home Journal. In 2009, Billboard named her as the Adult Contemporary Artist of the Decade (2000s) and also as the 39th top artist overall. From 2007 to 2012, Hill was the voice of NBC Sunday Night Football'''s intro song. Hill received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019. Hill is married to American singer Tim McGraw, with whom she has recorded several duets. Early life and career beginnings Hill was born in Ridgeland, Mississippi, north of Jackson, Mississippi. She was adopted as an infant, and named Audrey Faith Perry. She was raised in the nearby town of Star, 20 miles southeast of Jackson. Her adoptive parents, Edna and Ted Perry, raised her with their two biological sons in a devout Christian environment. Hill's vocal talent was apparent early, and she had her first public performance, at a 4-H luncheon, when she was seven. In 1976, a few days before her 9th birthday, she attended a concert by Elvis Presley at the State Fair Coliseum in Jackson, which impressed her deeply. When she was young, Hill was a regular performer at area churches, including those not in her own Baptist denomination. At 17, Hill formed a band that played at local rodeos. She graduated from McLaurin Attendance Center in 1986, and briefly attended college at Hinds Junior College (now Hinds Community College) in Raymond, Mississippi. At times, she sang for prisoners at the Hinds County Jail, her song of choice being "Amazing Grace". At age 19, she quit school to move to Nashville and pursue her dream of being a country singer. In her early days in Nashville, Hill auditioned to be a backup singer for Reba McEntire, but failed to secure the job. A few years later in 1991, the singer who beat out Hill for the job was killed in a plane crash with 6 other members of Reba's band. After a stint selling T-shirts, Hill became a secretary at a music publishing firm. Hill also landed a job at a local McDonald's restaurant franchise, which she disliked intensely. "Fries, burgers, cash register – I did it all, I hated it," she has said. In 1988, she married music publishing executive Daniel Hill (not to be confused with Canadian musician Dan Hill). A co-worker heard Hill singing to herself one day, and soon the head of her music publishing company was encouraging her to become a demo singer for the firm. She supplemented this work by singing backup vocals for songwriter Gary Burr, who often performed his new songs at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe. During one of those performances, Martha Sharp, an executive from Warner Bros. Records was in the audience, and, impressed with Hill's voice, began the process of signing her to a recording contract. Shortly after the release of her album, she and Daniel Hill divorced in 1994. Music career 1993–1997: Country music success Hill's debut album was Take Me as I Am (1993); sales were strong, buoyed by the chart success of "Wild One". Hill became the first female country singer in 30 years to hold Billboard number one position for four consecutive weeks when "Wild One" managed the feat in 1994. Her version of "Piece of My Heart", also went to the top of the country charts in 1994. The album sold a total of 3 million copies. Other singles from the album include "Take Me as I Am". The recording of Faith's second album was delayed by surgery to repair a ruptured blood vessel on her vocal cords. It Matters to Me finally appeared in 1995 and was another success, with the title track becoming her third number-one country single. Several other top 10 singles followed, and more than 3 million copies of the album were sold. The fifth single from the album, "I Can't Do That Anymore", was written by Alan Jackson. Other singles from the album include "You Can't Lose Me", "Someone Else's Dream", and "Let's Go to Vegas". During this period, Hill appeared on the acclaimed PBS music program Austin City Limits. In spring 1996, Hill began the Spontaneous Combustion Tour with country singer Tim McGraw. At that time, Hill had recently become engaged to her former producer, Scott Hendricks, and McGraw had recently broken an engagement. McGraw and Hill were quickly attracted to each other and began a relationship. After discovering that Hill was pregnant with their first child, the couple married on October 6, 1996. The couple have three daughters together: Gracie Katherine (born 1997), Maggie Elizabeth (born 1998) and Audrey Caroline (born 2001). Since their marriage, Hill and McGraw have endeavored never to be apart for more than three consecutive days. After the release of It Matters to Me, Hill took a three-year break from recording to give herself a rest from four years of touring and to begin a family with McGraw. During her break, she joined forces with her husband for their first duet, "It's Your Love". The song stayed at number one for six weeks, and won awards from both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. Hill has remarked that sometimes when they perform the song together, "it [doesn't] feel like anybody else was really watching." 1998–2003: Pop music crossover and career breakthrough Faith Hill re-entered the music business in 1998 with her third album Faith. The album showcased her progression toward a more mainstream, pop-oriented sound, although it retained a distinct country sound. "This Kiss" became a number one country hit, and was the first of her singles to place on the pop charts, peaking at number seven. More than six million copies of the album were sold. The album also delivered several other hits including another duet with McGraw, "Just To Hear You Say That You Love Me", "Let Me Let Go" and "The Secret of Life". To follow up this newfound success, Hill immediately released Breathe in November 1999, which debuted at the top of the Billboard Country and all genre charts, ahead of albums by Mariah Carey and Savage Garden. Although the album had few overt country sounds, it "complement[ed] her vocal strengths." For the first time, the album consisted solely of songs about love and did not venture into the more somber territory that her previous albums had touched. The title track, "Breathe", reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. "The Way You Love Me" hit the top 10 as well, topping out at number six on the charts. The album won Hill three Grammy Awards including Best Country Album, Best Country Collaboration With Vocals for "Let's Make Love" featuring Tim McGraw and Best Country Female Vocal Performance for "Breathe". It also marked a step away from her girl-next-door image, as the videos and promotional pictures all portrayed a much sexier image. Breathe has sold almost 10 million copies worldwide. 2000 was an especially busy year for Hill; besides a successful tour with her husband, Hill was featured in a CBS television special, VH1's Behind the Music, VH1 Divas 2000, and the Lifetime cable channel's Intimate Portrait series. She signed an endorsement deal with CoverGirl makeup, performed at the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards, appeared on the cover of numerous magazines, and performed the national anthem at Super Bowl XXXIV. Hill was also named to Mr. Blackwell's 10-best dressed women of 2000, the only singer listed among actresses and other celebrities. Hill and McGraw also embarked on their first Soul2Soul tour, the "Soul2Soul Tour 2000". Musically, in 2000, Hill recorded a song for the movie Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, entitled "Where Are You Christmas" (written by James Horner, Will Jennings and R&B artist Mariah Carey). The song also appeared on the pop and country charts. Hill's success on the pop charts disturbed some country music insiders, who questioned whether she was trying to dismiss her country roots and move into the pop genre. Despite the grumbling, Hill won the CMA Female Vocalist of the Year Award, and in her acceptance speech announced, "I love this business, and I love this industry... and my heart is here." In 2001, Hill recorded a song for the Pearl Harbor soundtrack. The track, also titled "There You'll Be", which was originally offered to Celine Dion, has since become one of Hill's most critically acclaimed songs. Because of the single's international success, a compilation album There You'll Be: The Best of Faith Hill, was released to international markets. The album featured dance mixes of "Breathe" and "The Way You Love Me" along with alternate versions of "Piece of My Heart" and "Let Me Let Go". "There You'll Be" was nominated for a 2002 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in a motion picture. In 2002, Hill released her fifth studio album, Cry. The album "spotlight[ed] her impressive set of pipes", and also marked the completion of her "transformation into a pop diva", containing few nods to her country roots. Though the album debuted at number one on Billboard magazine's pop and country album charts, the album's singles received much less country radio airplay than her previous hits, instead aiming to international and adult contemporary markets. The album also won a Grammy Award and over 3.7 million copies have been sold worldwide. An album track from the album "Baby You Belong", was used as the theme song for the movie Lilo & Stitch. The music video featured clips from the movie as well as performance clips. "When the Lights Go Down", the official second single from the album was used to promote an NBC television special which detailed the making of Cry and also featured intimate performances of Hill's hits. 2005–2006: Return to country music In 2005, Hill returned with her new country album, Fireflies. The CD debuted on top of the Billboard Country and all genre album charts, placing her among only a handful of artists to have three consecutive albums debut at number one on both charts. The debut single, "Mississippi Girl", became Hill's highest-debuting single. The song was written specifically for her by John Rich (of Big and Rich) and Adam Shoenfield of MuzikMafia, and tells the abbreviated story of her life. Hill recorded two other songs by Rich, "Sunshine and Summertime" and "Like We Never Loved at All", both of which became successful singles. The title track "Fireflies", "Stealing Kisses" and "If You Ask" were written by artist Lori McKenna and also appear on McKenna's albums. They appeared and performed the songs together on the Oprah Winfrey Show and an awards show. The album marked a return to Hill's country roots and succeeded in reestablishing her place on country radio. In 2006, after a six-year break from touring following the birth of her youngest daughter, Hill and husband Tim McGraw embarked on their Soul2Soul II Tour 2006. The tour became the highest grossing country music tour ever with a gross of $90 million. It was named "Major Tour of the Year" by the prestigious Pollstar, beating out such heavyweights as Madonna and the Rolling Stones. 2007–2010: Love Will Always Win, The Hits, Joy to the World and NBC Sunday Night Football In 2007, Hill started work on her first domestic greatest hits package, titled The Hits, which was released on October 2. It contains two new tracks, "Lost" and "Red Umbrella", as well as 13 additional tracks. The album also features hits covering her entire career from 1993 to 2005. Included with the 2-Disc Special-Edition of The Hits is a DVD of 11 of Hill's music videos. The DVD substitutes the Tim McGraw duet "Just To Hear You Say That You Love Me" for their "I Need You" duet on the CD. Faith is also featured on husband's 2007 album Let It Go where she sings two duets with him, "I Need You" and "Shotgun Rider". Both of these songs were performed during the couple's critically acclaimed Soul2Soul II Tour; this tour began in June 2006 and ran through to August 2007. The song I Need You was nominated for both the Best Country Collaboration with Vocals and Best Country Song awards at the 2008 Grammy Awards. At the beginning of the 2007 NFL season, Hill replaced Pink as the signature voice of NFL on NBC's Sunday Night Football, singing the weekly game's introductory theme song; of which the show's producer said: Hill performed this opening theme until April 15, 2013. In September 2008, Hill issued her first Christmas album, titled Joy to the World. The compilation was given positive reviews, including about.com, which gave the album four and a half out of five stars, calling the album, "a great collection of classic Christmas songs". Hill continually worked on the album two years prior to its official release. The album included one original track, "A Baby Changes Everything", which was released as the album's only single in late 2008 and debuted at No. 24 on Billboard's AC chart, quickly rising to the No. 1 position, becoming Hill's fourth number one on that chart. During the Super Bowl XLIII pregame show On February 1, 2009, Hill performed "America the Beautiful". Other performers at the event were Jennifer Hudson and Journey, whilst Bruce Springsteen performed the Halftime show. To celebrate the induction of ABBA into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Faith performed "The Winner Takes It All", together with keyboardist Benny Andersson, at the event held in New York City on March 13, 2010. Hill also performed a rendition of "The Long & Winding Road" as part of a tribute to Paul McCartney which was held at the White House on July 28, 2010. Audience members included President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. Following these performances, Hill contributed a song titled "Give In to Me" which appears on the Country Strong soundtrack which was released in October 2010. The film also stars Hill's husband Tim McGraw. Further appearances followed, with Hill featuring in Coal Miner's Daughter: A Tribute To Loretta Lynn, where she performs "Love Is The Foundation". Hill also contributed her vocals to the Ryan Tedder penned song "All I Ever Wanted" for the 2010 film Life As We Know It. The song was used in trailers to promote the film and also appeared during the end credits of the film. 2011–2015: Unreleased studio album and Las Vegas Residency Brendan O'Brien, known for producing projects for Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, and Rage Against the Machine, began working with Hill and producing her next album, originally set for release in 2011. Hill also worked with pop producer Brian Kennedy in January 2011 to complete the album. Faith returned to the studio in March 2011 for another round of recording. "I would like to have a record out," Hill told Billboard.com, "but it hasn't been the right thing yet. I don't want it to be just another record. It's a lot of work to support a record, so I just want it to be ... really great. I want it to represent where I am as a woman. I don't want it to be fake. I want it to be authentic and real." In mid-2011, Hill recorded a duet with George Strait on the song "A Showman's Life" which can be heard on Strait's album Here for a Good Time. During the CMA Awards held on November 9, 2011, Hill performed the potential first single for her upcoming album titled "Come Home". This song is a re-working of the OneRepublic song heard on their "Dreaming out Loud" album. In June 2012, Hill debuted the songs "Illusion" and "Overrated" during her set at the CMA Music Festival. Following the performance, Hill confirmed that the album was done, but made no comment about when it would be released or whether the rumored title of Illusion was official. While a second single, titled "American Heart", along with its accompanying music video, was released on October 1, 2012, no further singles have since been released while an album also remains unreleased. Following a successful tour of Australia with their Soul2Soul tour throughout March and April 2012, Hill and McGraw began an exclusive twenty show run of the Soul2Soul show at the Venetian in Las Vegas starting December 2012. A second leg of the show ran from October 2013, through to April 2014. The show was met with critical acclaim. During the Billboard Music Awards filmed on May 17, 2015, Hill joined Little Big Town on a performance of their single "Girl Crush". 2016–present: New music and touring Hill was one of 30 artists selected to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of the songs "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "On the Road Again" and "I Will Always Love You". The single was released September 16 and celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. On October 4, 2016, during a surprise show at Nashville's famous Ryman Auditorium, both Faith and her husband announced that they would once again be going back on the road together with the Soul2Soul The World Tour 2017. The tour began April 7, 2017, in New Orleans, and continued into Europe throughout 2018, including as part of the C2C: Country to Country festival. Following the new tour announcement, Faith sent out a tweet via her official Twitter account announcing the release of a new compilation album. The album, titled Deep Tracks, is a montage of Hill's favorite songs that were previously included on her various albums but were not released as singles. The album also includes three previously unreleased songs entitled, "Boy", "Why" and "Come to Jesus". The album, which is Hill's last record to be released via Warner Bros. Records, was released November 18, 2016. It was reported on February 3, 2017, that Hill, alongside McGraw, had signed a new deal with Sony Music Nashville, also indicating that a duet album between the couple, as well as multiple solo recordings would be produced. The new record label signing also preceded the release of "Speak to a Girl", the lead single from Hill and McGraw's joint album, The Rest of Our Life, which was released on November 17, 2017. The release of the album coincided with the opening of an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum titled Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man, which celebrates the careers of both Hill and McGraw. Artistry Hill possesses an alto vocal range, which Joanna Horowitz of The Seattle Times described as unmistakably "throaty". Although Hill typically does not write most of the music she performs, Horowitz noted that her music "emphasize[s] personal, intimate storytelling". She co-wrote two tracks on her debut album Take Me as I Am: "I've Got This Friend" and "Go the Distance". Other ventures Film and television career In 1997, Hill guest starred in a three episode arc of popular television series Touched by an Angel and its subsequent spin off series, Promised Land, which marked her acting debut. In 2002 it was rumored that Hill had won the role of Julia Compton Moore, the wife of Hal Moore, played by Mel Gibson, in the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers. The role was ultimately played by Madeleine Stowe. Hill made her film debut in the summer of 2004, when she co-starred with Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick and Glenn Close in director Frank Oz's remake of the 1975 thriller The Stepford Wives. Although the film received mixed reviews, it went on to earn over $100 million. In 2015, Hill appeared in the independent crime drama film Dixieland. The film was written and directed by Hank Bedford and also stars Chris Zylka, Riley Keough, Spencer Lofranco, and Steve Earle. Dixieland had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 19, 2015. The film was released in a limited release and through video on demand on December 11, 2015, by IFC Films. On October 14, 2015, it was announced that Hill would be an executive producer for a new lifestyle television program with former Oprah executive producer Lisa Erspamer. The show, called Pickler & Ben, debuted in mid-2017, features Kellie Pickler and Ben Aaron as hosts and is filmed in Nashville. In August 2021, it was announced that Hill would co-star in Paramount+'s Yellowstone prequel 1883. Hill also appeared in one episode of Yellowstone season four in a flashback scene. Fragrance In October 2009, Hill released her first fragrance titled Faith Hill Parfums. The fragrance is a blend of Southern Magnolia, Jasmine and Peach Pears. In 2010, Hill released her second fragrance, titled True. Philanthropy Hill used her 1999 tour to support a national children's book drive, The Faith Hill Family Literacy Project. The charity was inspired by Faith's father, who faced challenges with literacy. Fans who donated books at one of her concerts were entered into a draw to meet her personally after the show. The effort resulted in the donation of 35,000 children's books, which were distributed to hospitals, schools, libraries, and daycare centers in 40 cities across the United States. In the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, Hill and her husband, Tim McGraw, who was raised in Louisiana, joined groups taking supplies to Gulfport, Mississippi. The two also hosted several charity concerts to benefit those who were displaced by the storm. Later in the year the couple established the Neighbor's Keeper Foundation, which provides funding for community charities to assist with basic humanitarian services in the event of a natural disaster or for desperate personal circumstances. In a special gesture, the couple also donated profits from their performance in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina relief. In June 2010, Hill and McGraw organized Nashville Rising, a benefit concert aimed to raise $2 million for The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee in response to the flood in early May that killed 22 people and caused $2 billion in damage. DiscographyTake Me as I Am (1993)It Matters to Me (1995)Faith (1998)Breathe (1999)Cry (2002)Fireflies (2005)Joy to the World (2008)The Rest of Our Life (with Tim McGraw) (2017) Tours Headlining tours This Kiss Tour Co-headlining tours Soul2Soul Tour Soul2Soul II Tour Australia 2012 Soul2Soul: The World Tour Promotional tours '94 Promo Tour Residency shows Faith Soul2Soul Opening act No Doubt About It Tour Waitin' on Sundown Read My Mind Tour Fruit of the Loom Comfort Tour Easy Come Easy Go Tour Spontaneous Combustion Tour The Cowboy Rides Away Tour Other shows Chevy Truck Country Music Festival Millennium Blast Show Sam & Audrey Live 8 Rome, Italy (with Tim McGraw, Duran Duran, Planet Funk, Max Pezzali, Fiorella Mannoia, etc.) (2005) Concert specials Faith! When the Lights Go Down Fireflies Love Will Always Win Joy to the World Greatest Hits Tim & Faith: Soul2Soul Awards Country Music Association Awards The Country Music Association Awards are held annually by the Country Music Association and celebrate excellence and achievements in the country genre. Hill has won 3 awards from 22 nominations. |- |1994 |rowspan=3|Faith Hill |rowspan=2|Horizon Award | |- |1995 | |- |1996 |Female Vocalist of the Year | |- |1997 |"It's Your Love" (with Tim McGraw) |Vocal Event of the Year | |- |rowspan=4|1998 |Faith Hill |Female Vocalist of the Year | |- |rowspan=2|"This Kiss" |Single of the Year | |- |Video of the Year | |- |rowspan=2|"Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me" |Vocal Event of the Year (with Tim McGraw) | |- |rowspan=2|1999 |Music Video of the Year | |- |rowspan=3|Faith Hill |rowspan=2|Female Vocalist of the Year | |- |rowspan=6|2000 | |- |Entertainer of the Year | |- |Breathe|Album of the Year | |- |rowspan=2|"Breathe" |Single of the Year | |- |Music Video of the Year | |- |"Let's Make Love" (with Tim McGraw) |Vocal Event of the Year | |- |2001 |rowspan=2|Faith Hill |rowspan=2|Female Vocalist of the Year | |- |rowspan=2|2006 | |- |"Like We Never Loved at All" (with Tim McGraw) |rowspan=2|Musical Event of the Year | |- |rowspan=2|2014 |rowspan=2|"Meanwhile Back at Mama's" (with Tim McGraw) | |- |Single of the Year | |- |2017 |"Speak to a Girl" (with Tim McGraw) |Musical Event of the Year | Grammy Awards The Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Hill has won 5 awards from 17 nominations. |- |1997 |"Hope" |rowspan="3"|Best Country Collaboration with Vocals | |- |1998 ||"It's Your Love" | |- |rowspan="3"|1999 |"Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me" | |- ||Faith|Best Country Album | |- |"This Kiss" |rowspan="3"|Best Female Country Vocal Performance | |- |2000 |"Let Me Let Go" | |- |rowspan="3"|2001 |"Breathe" | |- |"Let's Make Love" |Best Country Collaboration with Vocals | |- ||Breathe|Best Country Album | |- |2002 |"There You'll Be" |Best Female Pop Vocal Performance | |- |2003 |"Cry" |Best Female Country Vocal Performance | |- |2004 |Cry|rowspan="2"|Best Country Album | |- |rowspan="3"|2006 |Fireflies'' | |- |"Mississippi Girl" |Best Female Country Vocal Performance | |- |"Like We Never Loved at All" |rowspan="2"|Best Country Collaboration with Vocals | |- |2008 |"I Need You" | |- |2015 |"Meanwhile Back at Mama's" |Best Country Duo/Group Performance | Other awards In addition to her five Grammy Awards, Hill has also won 15 Academy of Country Music Awards, six American Music Awards, and four People's Choice Awards among others. In addition, Hill received the Samuel S. Beard Award for Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under in 2000, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards. References Further reading External links Category:1967 births Category:20th-century American singers Category:21st-century American singers Category:American adoptees Category:American women country singers Category:Arista Nashville artists Category:Country musicians from Mississippi Category:Country pop musicians Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Hinds Community College alumni Category:Living people Category:Southern Baptists Category:Warner Records artists Category:20th-century American women singers Category:21st-century American women singers Category:American contraltos

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Faith Hill

Audrey Faith McGraw (born September 21, 1967) is an American singer and record producer. She is one of the most successful country artists of all time, having sold more than 40 million albums worldwide. Hill is married to American singer Tim McGraw, with whom she has recorded several duets. Hill's first two albums, Take Me as I Am (1993) and It Matters to Me (1995), were major successes and placed a combined three number ones on Billboard's country charts.

Early life and career beginnings

Hill was born in Ridgeland, Mississippi, north of Jackson, Mississippi. She was adopted as an infant, and named Audrey Faith Perry. She was raised in the nearby town of Star, 20 miles outside of Jackson. Her adoptive parents, Edna and Ted Perry, raised her with their two biological sons in a devout Christian environment. Hill's vocal talent was apparent early, and she had her first public performance, at a 4-H luncheon, when she was seven. In 1976, a few days before her 9th birthday, she attended a concert by Elvis Presley at the State Fair Coliseum, in Jackson, which impressed her deeply. By the time she was a teenager, Hill was a regular performer at area churches, even those not in her own Baptist denomination. At 17, Hill formed a band that played in local rodeos. She graduated from McLaurin Attendance Center in 1986, and briefly attended college at Hinds Junior College (now Hinds Community College) in Raymond, Mississippi. At times, she sang for prisoners at the Hinds County Jail, her song of choice being "Amazing Grace". At age 19 she quit school to move to Nashville and pursue her dream of being a country singer. In her early days in Nashville, Hill auditioned to be a backup singer for Reba McEntire, but failed to secure the job. After a stint selling T-shirts, Hill became a secretary at a music publishing firm. Hill also landed a job at a local McDonald's restaurant franchise, which she disliked intensely. "Fries, burgers, cash register - I did it all, I hated it," she has said. In 1988, she married music publishing executive Daniel Hill (not to be confused with Canadian musician Dan Hill). A co-worker heard Hill singing to herself one day, and soon the head of her music publishing company was encouraging her to become a demo singer for the firm. She supplemented this work by singing backup vocals for songwriter Gary Burr, who often performed his new songs at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe. During one of those performances, Bob Saporiti, an executive from Warner Bros. Records was in the audience, and, impressed with Hill's voice, began the process of signing her to a recording contract. Shortly after the release of her album, Hill's marriage fell apart. She and Daniel Hill divorced in 1994. CANNOTANSWER

Audrey Faith McGraw (; born September 21, 1967), known professionally as Faith Hill, is an American singer and actress. She is one of the most successful country music artists of all time, having sold more than 40 million albums worldwide. Hill's first two albums, Take Me as I Am (1993) and It Matters to Me (1995), were major successes and placed a combined three number ones on Billboard's country charts. She then achieved mainstream and crossover success with her next two albums, Faith (1998) and Breathe (1999). Faith spawned her first international success in early 1998, "This Kiss", while Breathe became one of the best-selling country albums of all time, led by the huge crossover success of the songs "Breathe" and "The Way You Love Me". It had massive sales worldwide and earned Hill three Grammy Awards. In 2001, she recorded "There You'll Be" for the Pearl Harbor soundtrack and it became an international success and her best-selling single in Europe. Hill's next two albums, Cry (2002) and Fireflies (2005), were both commercial successes; the former spawned another crossover single, "Cry", which won Hill a Grammy Award, and the latter produced the singles "Mississippi Girl" and "Like We Never Loved at All", which earned her another Grammy Award. Hill has won five Grammy Awards, 15 Academy of Country Music Awards, six American Music Awards, and several other awards. Her Soul2Soul II Tour 2006 with Tim McGraw became the highest-grossing country tour of all time. In 2001, she was named one of the "30 Most Powerful Women in America" by Ladies Home Journal. In 2009, Billboard named her as the Adult Contemporary Artist of the Decade (2000s) and also as the 39th top artist overall. From 2007 to 2012, Hill was the voice of NBC Sunday Night Football'''s intro song. Hill received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019. Hill is married to American singer Tim McGraw, with whom she has recorded several duets. Early life and career beginnings Hill was born in Ridgeland, Mississippi, north of Jackson, Mississippi. She was adopted as an infant, and named Audrey Faith Perry. She was raised in the nearby town of Star, 20 miles southeast of Jackson. Her adoptive parents, Edna and Ted Perry, raised her with their two biological sons in a devout Christian environment. Hill's vocal talent was apparent early, and she had her first public performance, at a 4-H luncheon, when she was seven. In 1976, a few days before her 9th birthday, she attended a concert by Elvis Presley at the State Fair Coliseum in Jackson, which impressed her deeply. When she was young, Hill was a regular performer at area churches, including those not in her own Baptist denomination. At 17, Hill formed a band that played at local rodeos. She graduated from McLaurin Attendance Center in 1986, and briefly attended college at Hinds Junior College (now Hinds Community College) in Raymond, Mississippi. At times, she sang for prisoners at the Hinds County Jail, her song of choice being "Amazing Grace". At age 19, she quit school to move to Nashville and pursue her dream of being a country singer. In her early days in Nashville, Hill auditioned to be a backup singer for Reba McEntire, but failed to secure the job. A few years later in 1991, the singer who beat out Hill for the job was killed in a plane crash with 6 other members of Reba's band. After a stint selling T-shirts, Hill became a secretary at a music publishing firm. Hill also landed a job at a local McDonald's restaurant franchise, which she disliked intensely. "Fries, burgers, cash register – I did it all, I hated it," she has said. In 1988, she married music publishing executive Daniel Hill (not to be confused with Canadian musician Dan Hill). A co-worker heard Hill singing to herself one day, and soon the head of her music publishing company was encouraging her to become a demo singer for the firm. She supplemented this work by singing backup vocals for songwriter Gary Burr, who often performed his new songs at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe. During one of those performances, Martha Sharp, an executive from Warner Bros. Records was in the audience, and, impressed with Hill's voice, began the process of signing her to a recording contract. Shortly after the release of her album, she and Daniel Hill divorced in 1994. Music career 1993–1997: Country music success Hill's debut album was Take Me as I Am (1993); sales were strong, buoyed by the chart success of "Wild One". Hill became the first female country singer in 30 years to hold Billboard number one position for four consecutive weeks when "Wild One" managed the feat in 1994. Her version of "Piece of My Heart", also went to the top of the country charts in 1994. The album sold a total of 3 million copies. Other singles from the album include "Take Me as I Am". The recording of Faith's second album was delayed by surgery to repair a ruptured blood vessel on her vocal cords. It Matters to Me finally appeared in 1995 and was another success, with the title track becoming her third number-one country single. Several other top 10 singles followed, and more than 3 million copies of the album were sold. The fifth single from the album, "I Can't Do That Anymore", was written by Alan Jackson. Other singles from the album include "You Can't Lose Me", "Someone Else's Dream", and "Let's Go to Vegas". During this period, Hill appeared on the acclaimed PBS music program Austin City Limits. In spring 1996, Hill began the Spontaneous Combustion Tour with country singer Tim McGraw. At that time, Hill had recently become engaged to her former producer, Scott Hendricks, and McGraw had recently broken an engagement. McGraw and Hill were quickly attracted to each other and began a relationship. After discovering that Hill was pregnant with their first child, the couple married on October 6, 1996. The couple have three daughters together: Gracie Katherine (born 1997), Maggie Elizabeth (born 1998) and Audrey Caroline (born 2001). Since their marriage, Hill and McGraw have endeavored never to be apart for more than three consecutive days. After the release of It Matters to Me, Hill took a three-year break from recording to give herself a rest from four years of touring and to begin a family with McGraw. During her break, she joined forces with her husband for their first duet, "It's Your Love". The song stayed at number one for six weeks, and won awards from both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. Hill has remarked that sometimes when they perform the song together, "it [doesn't] feel like anybody else was really watching." 1998–2003: Pop music crossover and career breakthrough Faith Hill re-entered the music business in 1998 with her third album Faith. The album showcased her progression toward a more mainstream, pop-oriented sound, although it retained a distinct country sound. "This Kiss" became a number one country hit, and was the first of her singles to place on the pop charts, peaking at number seven. More than six million copies of the album were sold. The album also delivered several other hits including another duet with McGraw, "Just To Hear You Say That You Love Me", "Let Me Let Go" and "The Secret of Life". To follow up this newfound success, Hill immediately released Breathe in November 1999, which debuted at the top of the Billboard Country and all genre charts, ahead of albums by Mariah Carey and Savage Garden. Although the album had few overt country sounds, it "complement[ed] her vocal strengths." For the first time, the album consisted solely of songs about love and did not venture into the more somber territory that her previous albums had touched. The title track, "Breathe", reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. "The Way You Love Me" hit the top 10 as well, topping out at number six on the charts. The album won Hill three Grammy Awards including Best Country Album, Best Country Collaboration With Vocals for "Let's Make Love" featuring Tim McGraw and Best Country Female Vocal Performance for "Breathe". It also marked a step away from her girl-next-door image, as the videos and promotional pictures all portrayed a much sexier image. Breathe has sold almost 10 million copies worldwide. 2000 was an especially busy year for Hill; besides a successful tour with her husband, Hill was featured in a CBS television special, VH1's Behind the Music, VH1 Divas 2000, and the Lifetime cable channel's Intimate Portrait series. She signed an endorsement deal with CoverGirl makeup, performed at the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards, appeared on the cover of numerous magazines, and performed the national anthem at Super Bowl XXXIV. Hill was also named to Mr. Blackwell's 10-best dressed women of 2000, the only singer listed among actresses and other celebrities. Hill and McGraw also embarked on their first Soul2Soul tour, the "Soul2Soul Tour 2000". Musically, in 2000, Hill recorded a song for the movie Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, entitled "Where Are You Christmas" (written by James Horner, Will Jennings and R&B artist Mariah Carey). The song also appeared on the pop and country charts. Hill's success on the pop charts disturbed some country music insiders, who questioned whether she was trying to dismiss her country roots and move into the pop genre. Despite the grumbling, Hill won the CMA Female Vocalist of the Year Award, and in her acceptance speech announced, "I love this business, and I love this industry... and my heart is here." In 2001, Hill recorded a song for the Pearl Harbor soundtrack. The track, also titled "There You'll Be", which was originally offered to Celine Dion, has since become one of Hill's most critically acclaimed songs. Because of the single's international success, a compilation album There You'll Be: The Best of Faith Hill, was released to international markets. The album featured dance mixes of "Breathe" and "The Way You Love Me" along with alternate versions of "Piece of My Heart" and "Let Me Let Go". "There You'll Be" was nominated for a 2002 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in a motion picture. In 2002, Hill released her fifth studio album, Cry. The album "spotlight[ed] her impressive set of pipes", and also marked the completion of her "transformation into a pop diva", containing few nods to her country roots. Though the album debuted at number one on Billboard magazine's pop and country album charts, the album's singles received much less country radio airplay than her previous hits, instead aiming to international and adult contemporary markets. The album also won a Grammy Award and over 3.7 million copies have been sold worldwide. An album track from the album "Baby You Belong", was used as the theme song for the movie Lilo & Stitch. The music video featured clips from the movie as well as performance clips. "When the Lights Go Down", the official second single from the album was used to promote an NBC television special which detailed the making of Cry and also featured intimate performances of Hill's hits. 2005–2006: Return to country music In 2005, Hill returned with her new country album, Fireflies. The CD debuted on top of the Billboard Country and all genre album charts, placing her among only a handful of artists to have three consecutive albums debut at number one on both charts. The debut single, "Mississippi Girl", became Hill's highest-debuting single. The song was written specifically for her by John Rich (of Big and Rich) and Adam Shoenfield of MuzikMafia, and tells the abbreviated story of her life. Hill recorded two other songs by Rich, "Sunshine and Summertime" and "Like We Never Loved at All", both of which became successful singles. The title track "Fireflies", "Stealing Kisses" and "If You Ask" were written by artist Lori McKenna and also appear on McKenna's albums. They appeared and performed the songs together on the Oprah Winfrey Show and an awards show. The album marked a return to Hill's country roots and succeeded in reestablishing her place on country radio. In 2006, after a six-year break from touring following the birth of her youngest daughter, Hill and husband Tim McGraw embarked on their Soul2Soul II Tour 2006. The tour became the highest grossing country music tour ever with a gross of $90 million. It was named "Major Tour of the Year" by the prestigious Pollstar, beating out such heavyweights as Madonna and the Rolling Stones. 2007–2010: Love Will Always Win, The Hits, Joy to the World and NBC Sunday Night Football In 2007, Hill started work on her first domestic greatest hits package, titled The Hits, which was released on October 2. It contains two new tracks, "Lost" and "Red Umbrella", as well as 13 additional tracks. The album also features hits covering her entire career from 1993 to 2005. Included with the 2-Disc Special-Edition of The Hits is a DVD of 11 of Hill's music videos. The DVD substitutes the Tim McGraw duet "Just To Hear You Say That You Love Me" for their "I Need You" duet on the CD. Faith is also featured on husband's 2007 album Let It Go where she sings two duets with him, "I Need You" and "Shotgun Rider". Both of these songs were performed during the couple's critically acclaimed Soul2Soul II Tour; this tour began in June 2006 and ran through to August 2007. The song I Need You was nominated for both the Best Country Collaboration with Vocals and Best Country Song awards at the 2008 Grammy Awards. At the beginning of the 2007 NFL season, Hill replaced Pink as the signature voice of NFL on NBC's Sunday Night Football, singing the weekly game's introductory theme song; of which the show's producer said: Hill performed this opening theme until April 15, 2013. In September 2008, Hill issued her first Christmas album, titled Joy to the World. The compilation was given positive reviews, including about.com, which gave the album four and a half out of five stars, calling the album, "a great collection of classic Christmas songs". Hill continually worked on the album two years prior to its official release. The album included one original track, "A Baby Changes Everything", which was released as the album's only single in late 2008 and debuted at No. 24 on Billboard's AC chart, quickly rising to the No. 1 position, becoming Hill's fourth number one on that chart. During the Super Bowl XLIII pregame show On February 1, 2009, Hill performed "America the Beautiful". Other performers at the event were Jennifer Hudson and Journey, whilst Bruce Springsteen performed the Halftime show. To celebrate the induction of ABBA into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Faith performed "The Winner Takes It All", together with keyboardist Benny Andersson, at the event held in New York City on March 13, 2010. Hill also performed a rendition of "The Long & Winding Road" as part of a tribute to Paul McCartney which was held at the White House on July 28, 2010. Audience members included President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. Following these performances, Hill contributed a song titled "Give In to Me" which appears on the Country Strong soundtrack which was released in October 2010. The film also stars Hill's husband Tim McGraw. Further appearances followed, with Hill featuring in Coal Miner's Daughter: A Tribute To Loretta Lynn, where she performs "Love Is The Foundation". Hill also contributed her vocals to the Ryan Tedder penned song "All I Ever Wanted" for the 2010 film Life As We Know It. The song was used in trailers to promote the film and also appeared during the end credits of the film. 2011–2015: Unreleased studio album and Las Vegas Residency Brendan O'Brien, known for producing projects for Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, and Rage Against the Machine, began working with Hill and producing her next album, originally set for release in 2011. Hill also worked with pop producer Brian Kennedy in January 2011 to complete the album. Faith returned to the studio in March 2011 for another round of recording. "I would like to have a record out," Hill told Billboard.com, "but it hasn't been the right thing yet. I don't want it to be just another record. It's a lot of work to support a record, so I just want it to be ... really great. I want it to represent where I am as a woman. I don't want it to be fake. I want it to be authentic and real." In mid-2011, Hill recorded a duet with George Strait on the song "A Showman's Life" which can be heard on Strait's album Here for a Good Time. During the CMA Awards held on November 9, 2011, Hill performed the potential first single for her upcoming album titled "Come Home". This song is a re-working of the OneRepublic song heard on their "Dreaming out Loud" album. In June 2012, Hill debuted the songs "Illusion" and "Overrated" during her set at the CMA Music Festival. Following the performance, Hill confirmed that the album was done, but made no comment about when it would be released or whether the rumored title of Illusion was official. While a second single, titled "American Heart", along with its accompanying music video, was released on October 1, 2012, no further singles have since been released while an album also remains unreleased. Following a successful tour of Australia with their Soul2Soul tour throughout March and April 2012, Hill and McGraw began an exclusive twenty show run of the Soul2Soul show at the Venetian in Las Vegas starting December 2012. A second leg of the show ran from October 2013, through to April 2014. The show was met with critical acclaim. During the Billboard Music Awards filmed on May 17, 2015, Hill joined Little Big Town on a performance of their single "Girl Crush". 2016–present: New music and touring Hill was one of 30 artists selected to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of the songs "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "On the Road Again" and "I Will Always Love You". The single was released September 16 and celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. On October 4, 2016, during a surprise show at Nashville's famous Ryman Auditorium, both Faith and her husband announced that they would once again be going back on the road together with the Soul2Soul The World Tour 2017. The tour began April 7, 2017, in New Orleans, and continued into Europe throughout 2018, including as part of the C2C: Country to Country festival. Following the new tour announcement, Faith sent out a tweet via her official Twitter account announcing the release of a new compilation album. The album, titled Deep Tracks, is a montage of Hill's favorite songs that were previously included on her various albums but were not released as singles. The album also includes three previously unreleased songs entitled, "Boy", "Why" and "Come to Jesus". The album, which is Hill's last record to be released via Warner Bros. Records, was released November 18, 2016. It was reported on February 3, 2017, that Hill, alongside McGraw, had signed a new deal with Sony Music Nashville, also indicating that a duet album between the couple, as well as multiple solo recordings would be produced. The new record label signing also preceded the release of "Speak to a Girl", the lead single from Hill and McGraw's joint album, The Rest of Our Life, which was released on November 17, 2017. The release of the album coincided with the opening of an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum titled Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man, which celebrates the careers of both Hill and McGraw. Artistry Hill possesses an alto vocal range, which Joanna Horowitz of The Seattle Times described as unmistakably "throaty". Although Hill typically does not write most of the music she performs, Horowitz noted that her music "emphasize[s] personal, intimate storytelling". She co-wrote two tracks on her debut album Take Me as I Am: "I've Got This Friend" and "Go the Distance". Other ventures Film and television career In 1997, Hill guest starred in a three episode arc of popular television series Touched by an Angel and its subsequent spin off series, Promised Land, which marked her acting debut. In 2002 it was rumored that Hill had won the role of Julia Compton Moore, the wife of Hal Moore, played by Mel Gibson, in the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers. The role was ultimately played by Madeleine Stowe. Hill made her film debut in the summer of 2004, when she co-starred with Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick and Glenn Close in director Frank Oz's remake of the 1975 thriller The Stepford Wives. Although the film received mixed reviews, it went on to earn over $100 million. In 2015, Hill appeared in the independent crime drama film Dixieland. The film was written and directed by Hank Bedford and also stars Chris Zylka, Riley Keough, Spencer Lofranco, and Steve Earle. Dixieland had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 19, 2015. The film was released in a limited release and through video on demand on December 11, 2015, by IFC Films. On October 14, 2015, it was announced that Hill would be an executive producer for a new lifestyle television program with former Oprah executive producer Lisa Erspamer. The show, called Pickler & Ben, debuted in mid-2017, features Kellie Pickler and Ben Aaron as hosts and is filmed in Nashville. In August 2021, it was announced that Hill would co-star in Paramount+'s Yellowstone prequel 1883. Hill also appeared in one episode of Yellowstone season four in a flashback scene. Fragrance In October 2009, Hill released her first fragrance titled Faith Hill Parfums. The fragrance is a blend of Southern Magnolia, Jasmine and Peach Pears. In 2010, Hill released her second fragrance, titled True. Philanthropy Hill used her 1999 tour to support a national children's book drive, The Faith Hill Family Literacy Project. The charity was inspired by Faith's father, who faced challenges with literacy. Fans who donated books at one of her concerts were entered into a draw to meet her personally after the show. The effort resulted in the donation of 35,000 children's books, which were distributed to hospitals, schools, libraries, and daycare centers in 40 cities across the United States. In the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, Hill and her husband, Tim McGraw, who was raised in Louisiana, joined groups taking supplies to Gulfport, Mississippi. The two also hosted several charity concerts to benefit those who were displaced by the storm. Later in the year the couple established the Neighbor's Keeper Foundation, which provides funding for community charities to assist with basic humanitarian services in the event of a natural disaster or for desperate personal circumstances. In a special gesture, the couple also donated profits from their performance in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina relief. In June 2010, Hill and McGraw organized Nashville Rising, a benefit concert aimed to raise $2 million for The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee in response to the flood in early May that killed 22 people and caused $2 billion in damage. DiscographyTake Me as I Am (1993)It Matters to Me (1995)Faith (1998)Breathe (1999)Cry (2002)Fireflies (2005)Joy to the World (2008)The Rest of Our Life (with Tim McGraw) (2017) Tours Headlining tours This Kiss Tour Co-headlining tours Soul2Soul Tour Soul2Soul II Tour Australia 2012 Soul2Soul: The World Tour Promotional tours '94 Promo Tour Residency shows Faith Soul2Soul Opening act No Doubt About It Tour Waitin' on Sundown Read My Mind Tour Fruit of the Loom Comfort Tour Easy Come Easy Go Tour Spontaneous Combustion Tour The Cowboy Rides Away Tour Other shows Chevy Truck Country Music Festival Millennium Blast Show Sam & Audrey Live 8 Rome, Italy (with Tim McGraw, Duran Duran, Planet Funk, Max Pezzali, Fiorella Mannoia, etc.) (2005) Concert specials Faith! When the Lights Go Down Fireflies Love Will Always Win Joy to the World Greatest Hits Tim & Faith: Soul2Soul Awards Country Music Association Awards The Country Music Association Awards are held annually by the Country Music Association and celebrate excellence and achievements in the country genre. Hill has won 3 awards from 22 nominations. |- |1994 |rowspan=3|Faith Hill |rowspan=2|Horizon Award | |- |1995 | |- |1996 |Female Vocalist of the Year | |- |1997 |"It's Your Love" (with Tim McGraw) |Vocal Event of the Year | |- |rowspan=4|1998 |Faith Hill |Female Vocalist of the Year | |- |rowspan=2|"This Kiss" |Single of the Year | |- |Video of the Year | |- |rowspan=2|"Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me" |Vocal Event of the Year (with Tim McGraw) | |- |rowspan=2|1999 |Music Video of the Year | |- |rowspan=3|Faith Hill |rowspan=2|Female Vocalist of the Year | |- |rowspan=6|2000 | |- |Entertainer of the Year | |- |Breathe|Album of the Year | |- |rowspan=2|"Breathe" |Single of the Year | |- |Music Video of the Year | |- |"Let's Make Love" (with Tim McGraw) |Vocal Event of the Year | |- |2001 |rowspan=2|Faith Hill |rowspan=2|Female Vocalist of the Year | |- |rowspan=2|2006 | |- |"Like We Never Loved at All" (with Tim McGraw) |rowspan=2|Musical Event of the Year | |- |rowspan=2|2014 |rowspan=2|"Meanwhile Back at Mama's" (with Tim McGraw) | |- |Single of the Year | |- |2017 |"Speak to a Girl" (with Tim McGraw) |Musical Event of the Year | Grammy Awards The Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Hill has won 5 awards from 17 nominations. |- |1997 |"Hope" |rowspan="3"|Best Country Collaboration with Vocals | |- |1998 ||"It's Your Love" | |- |rowspan="3"|1999 |"Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me" | |- ||Faith|Best Country Album | |- |"This Kiss" |rowspan="3"|Best Female Country Vocal Performance | |- |2000 |"Let Me Let Go" | |- |rowspan="3"|2001 |"Breathe" | |- |"Let's Make Love" |Best Country Collaboration with Vocals | |- ||Breathe|Best Country Album | |- |2002 |"There You'll Be" |Best Female Pop Vocal Performance | |- |2003 |"Cry" |Best Female Country Vocal Performance | |- |2004 |Cry|rowspan="2"|Best Country Album | |- |rowspan="3"|2006 |Fireflies'' | |- |"Mississippi Girl" |Best Female Country Vocal Performance | |- |"Like We Never Loved at All" |rowspan="2"|Best Country Collaboration with Vocals | |- |2008 |"I Need You" | |- |2015 |"Meanwhile Back at Mama's" |Best Country Duo/Group Performance | Other awards In addition to her five Grammy Awards, Hill has also won 15 Academy of Country Music Awards, six American Music Awards, and four People's Choice Awards among others. In addition, Hill received the Samuel S. Beard Award for Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under in 2000, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards. References Further reading External links Category:1967 births Category:20th-century American singers Category:21st-century American singers Category:American adoptees Category:American women country singers Category:Arista Nashville artists Category:Country musicians from Mississippi Category:Country pop musicians Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Hinds Community College alumni Category:Living people Category:Southern Baptists Category:Warner Records artists Category:20th-century American women singers Category:21st-century American women singers Category:American contraltos

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Julianne Hough

Hough was born in Orem, Utah, the youngest of five children in a Latter-day Saints (Mormon) family. Her parents are Marianne and Bruce Hough; her father was twice chairman of the Utah Republican Party. Her brother, Derek Hough, is also a professional dancer. She also has three older sisters: Sharee, Marabeth and Katherine.

Move Live On Tour

On March 18, 2014, Hough and her brother Derek announced a summer tour of over 40 cities across the U.S. and Canada, called "Move Live on Tour", which would include dancing and singing from both of them, and the appearance of a group of dancers employed by the Houghs who earned their jobs through auditions. They embarked on the sold out tour on May 25, 2014 in Park City, Kansas and ended it in Los Angeles on July 26, 2014. Due to the success of ticket sales and several sold out venues before the tour had officially kicked off, several more shows were added to the tour schedule, which also sold out. For the tour choreography, the Hough siblings collaborated with Nappytabs. Following the success of the 2014 tour and high demand, the Houghs announced the return of "Move Live on Tour" in the summer of 2015. Spanning from June 12, 2015 to August 8, 2015, the sold out tour visited over 40 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada, and visited larger venues than in the previous year. Tabitha and Napoleon D'umo "Nappytabs" returned as collaborating choreographers alongside the Hough siblings. Auditions were also held to recruit a new group of dancers to join the Houghs, although some back-up dancers from the previous year returned. On July 9, 2016, the Houghs held a free fitness pop-up event called 'Move Interactive' in Los Angeles, which they announced would be the first of many. The event started off in Sherman Oaks with a workout session at Pulse Fitness Studios led by celebrity personal trainer and owner, Mark Harari. The participants then took part in a two-mile run along Ventura Blvd, before finishing off with a dance-fitness class at JustDance Los Angeles. According to Hough, the motivation behind the event was to "bring health, love, community and human interaction into our everyday lives." The following week, on July 14, the Hough's held a second free Move Interactive event in Fryman Canyon, LA, which included a hike and team building exercises. On December 14, 2016, they announced, via social media, that they would be going on a new tour, MOVE BEYOND Live on Tour, in 2017. CANNOTANSWER

Julianne Alexandra Hough (; born July 20, 1988) is an American dancer, actress, and singer. In 2007, she joined the cast of ABC's Dancing with the Stars as a professional dancer, winning two seasons with her celebrity partners. After leaving the show in 2009, she returned in 2014 to serve as a permanent judge on Dancing with the Stars, a position she held until 2017. For her work on the series, she has received three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Choreography, winning once in 2015 with her brother Derek Hough. Hough made her acting debut in the 2001 film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, but played her first major role in the 2010 film Burlesque, which was followed by leading roles as Ariel in Footloose, Sherrie in Rock of Ages, and Katie in Safe Haven. In 2016, she played Sandy in the live Fox television production of Grease. She also served as a judge on America's Got Talent for its 14th season. In 2022, she made her Broadway theatre debut in the political farce POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. That same year, she hosted The Tony Awards: Act One alongside Darren Criss, which streamed on Paramount+. In 2023, Hough is set to join Dancing with the Stars as co-host, alongside main host Alfonso Ribeiro. Early life Hough was born in Orem, Utah, the youngest of five children in a Mormon family. Her parents are Bruce and Marianne Hough; her father was twice chairman of the Utah Republican Party. Her brother, Derek Hough, is also a professional dancer. She also has three older sisters: Sharee, Marabeth and Katherine. All four of Hough's grandparents were dancers. She is also a second cousin of musicians Riker, Rydel, Rocky and Ross Lynch from R5, their maternal grandmothers being sisters. Hough's formal training began at the Center Stage Performing Arts Studio in Orem where she danced with Josh Murillo, among others, in Latin Ballroom. She began dancing competitively at nine. When she was 10, Julianne's parents, who were divorcing, sent Julianne and her brother Derek to London to live and study with their coaches, Corky and Shirley Ballas. The Ballases tutored the Houghs alongside their own son, Mark. At the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts Hough and her brother received training in song, theatre, gymnastics and many forms of dance, including jazz, ballet, and tap. When Hough was 12, the three children formed their own pop music trio 2B1G ("2 Boys, 1 Girl"). They performed at dance competitions in the UK and the U.S., and showcased in a UK television show. At 15, Hough became the youngest dancer, and the only American, to win both Junior World Latin Champion and International Latin Youth Champion at the Blackpool Dance Festival. After returning to the U.S., she attended the Las Vegas Academy and Alta High School. Career Hough was one of the Million Dollar Dancers in the 2006 ABC game show called Show Me the Money. She won season four of the U.S. edition of Dancing with the Stars with her partner, Olympic gold medal-winning speed skater Apolo Ohno, making Hough the youngest professional dancer to win on the program. On November 27, 2007, Hough and her partner, three-time Indianapolis 500 champion Hélio Castroneves, became the winners of season five. Hough returned for season six with radio host/comedian Adam Carolla, but they were eliminated in week four. In July 2008, Hough was nominated at the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards in the category of "Outstanding Choreography" for her mambo "Para Los Rumberos" (performed with partner Hélio Castroneves) on Dancing with the Stars. On August 25, 2008, the cast of season seven was announced, and Hough was partnered with Hannah Montana actor Cody Linley. She felt abdominal pains during their jitterbug performance on October 27, 2008, and was immediately rushed to a hospital following the encore performance. She subsequently had surgery to have her appendix removed, causing her to miss several performances; Edyta Śliwińska stood in for her. Hough returned to the show, although the pair was ultimately eliminated in the semifinals competition. She appeared on the November 12 results show dancing the jive to "Great Balls of Fire" with her brother for the "Design-A-Dance" contest. On November 20, 2008, Hough was on Ryan Seacrest's radio show, On Air with Ryan Seacrest. She announced that, in order to further her music career, she would not be returning to Dancing with the Stars for the foreseeable future. However, she did return for season eight, partnering with country singer Chuck Wicks. They were voted off in week eight of the competition and came in sixth place. They then began dating after the season was over. On October 11, 2011, Hough returned to Dancing with the Stars and danced with her Footloose co-star Kenny Wormald twice, and with her brother. She returned again on May 15, 2012, in a dance performance to promote her film Rock of Ages. On October 7, 2013, she was guest judge in place of Len Goodman, which was the first time a former pro dancer came back to judge. In September 2014, she returned as a permanent judge on the panel, a position she held until 2017. She returned to the show as a guest judge in 2021, filling in for her brother Derek. On March 20, 2023, it was announced that Hough will be joining Dancing with the Stars as the new co-host, following Tyra Banks' departure. Previous co-host Alfonso Ribeiro will be assuming Banks' previous role, while Hough will be taking over Ribeiro's previous role. Move Live On Tour On March 18, 2014, Hough and her brother Derek announced a summer tour of over 40 cities across the U.S. and Canada, called "Move Live on Tour", which would include dancing and singing from both of them, and the appearance of a group of dancers employed by the Houghs who earned their jobs through auditions. They embarked on the sold-out tour on May 25, 2014, in Park City, Kansas, and ended it in Los Angeles on July 26, 2014. Due to the success of ticket sales and several sold-out venues before the tour had officially kicked off, several more shows were added to the tour schedule, which also sold out. For the tour choreography, the Hough siblings collaborated with Nappytabs. Following the success of the 2014 tour and high demand, the Houghs announced the return of "Move Live on Tour" in the summer of 2015. Spanning from June 12, 2015, to August 8, 2015, the sold-out tour visited over 40 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada, and visited larger venues than in the previous year. Tabitha and Napoleon D'umo "Nappytabs" returned as collaborating choreographers alongside the Hough siblings. Auditions were also held to recruit a new group of dancers to join the Houghs, although some back-up dancers from the previous year returned. On December 14, 2016, they announced, via social media, that they would be going on a new tour, "MOVE BEYOND Live on Tour", in 2017. Music Hough's first country-music single, "Will You Dance With Me", was released to iTunes and Wal-Mart in May 2007 to raise money for the American Red Cross. The song placed at number 100 on the Billboard Pop 100 chart. She later signed with Universal Music Group Nashville's Mercury Nashville division. Her 2008 self-titled debut album was recorded in Nashville and produced by David Malloy, who has worked with Reba McEntire and Eddie Rabbitt, among others. Hough's album, which met with mixed reviews, debuted at number one on the Top Country Albums chart on May 31, and also peaked at number three on the Billboard 200. Hough's second single, and the first to be released to country radio, was "That Song in My Head". Hough joined Brad Paisley's 2008 Tour, along with Jewel and Chuck Wicks. Hough, Paisley, and Willie Nelson appeared in the video for the Snoop Dogg song "My Medicine". Hough appeared in a Juicy Fruit commercial in the fall of 2008, and released an EP of Christmas music called Sounds of the Season: The Julianne Hough Holiday Collection. She performed her second single "My Hallelujah Song" on Dancing With the Stars on November 18, 2008, with her brother Derek Hough, Mark Ballas, and Lacey Schwimmer dancing. Hough, LeAnn Rimes, Jessica Simpson, and Kellie Pickler announced the 2009 Academy of Country Music Award nominees in February 2009. Hough was nominated for the Top New Female Vocalist award, a fan-voted award, which she subsequently won. Hough won the Top New Artist award at the 44th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards on April 5, 2009, and released a single, "Is That So Wrong", to country radio on June 21, 2010. It was intended as the lead single for her second album, Wildfire, but the album was never released. In June 2012, Hough told AOL's The Boot that her second album was "completely done" and that she was initially "really, really looking forward to the record." However, she also stated that, due to the underperforming lead single and having "a lot of momentum" in her film career, no plans have been made to release Wildfire. She does intend to resume focusing on her music career at some point, though: "I feel like when I have the time to focus on it, and when I feel like it is the right time, [I'll return to] my music," she said. Acting and other appearances Hough's first acting role was in the 2001 feature film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, in an uncredited role as a "Hogwarts schoolgirl". She appeared in the 2010 musical Burlesque, starring Cher and Christina Aguilera. In the film, which chronicles a small-town girl (Aguilera) who finds success at a Los Angeles burlesque club, Hough plays a dancer named Georgia. Hough's first leading role was as Ariel Moore in the 2011 remake of the Paramount film Footloose, opposite Kenny Wormald as Ren McCormack. Filming began in September 2010. The film was released on October 14, 2011. Hough played the role of Sherrie Christian in the 2012 film adaptation of the Broadway musical Rock of Ages, alongside Tom Cruise, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Malin Akerman. That same year she filmed her starring role opposite Josh Duhamel in the romantic drama Safe Haven, based on the novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks, which was released on February 14, 2013. Hough also starred in the comedy-drama Paradise as Lamb Mannerheim, which was released on October 18, 2013. She starred alongside Russell Brand, who had previously co-starred with Hough in Rock of Ages. Hough starred as protagonist Mallory Rutledge in the 2015 thriller film Curve opposite Teddy Sears. That same year she appeared on business coach Lewis Howes' podcast where they had a discussion and it ended with him asking to salsa dance with her. Hough returned to musical performances portraying the role of Sandy Young for Fox's live television presentation of the musical Grease on January 31, 2016. Hough and brother Derek hosted the 2016 The Wonderful World of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration and The Disney Parks' Magical Christmas Celebration. It was televised by ABC on Thanksgiving night, November 24, and Christmas Day, December 25. The Hough siblings introduced performances by Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood and Kelly Clarkson. A companion holiday album, Disney Channel Holiday Hits, was released November 18, 2016. In 2018, she was cast as Jolene in the episode of the same name from the Netflix anthology series Heartstrings, based on the Dolly Parton song. On February 11, 2019, it was announced that Hough had joined the NBC talent competition series America's Got Talent. However, she was announced to be exiting in November 22 in the same year after one season. In 2020, Hough partnered with entertainment company Meet Cute for a three-part Transformation podcast series. Meet Cute, along with Hough's production banner, Canary House Productions, wrote, executive produced, and voice acted in the series. As the title of the series suggests, Transformation aligns with Canary House's mission to impact lives through stories of transformation, self-discovery and identity. Broadway debut Hough made her Broadway debut as Dusty in Selina Fillinger's comedic play POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. Performances began on April 14, 2022, at the Shubert Theatre. Hough received rave reviews for her comic performance with Entertainment Weekly declaring, "Julianne Hough is particularly mesmerizing...[she] could easily be a mere stereotype, but she surprises at every turn." Hough hosted the first hour of the 75th Tony Awards alongside Darren Criss which was aired on Paramount+. The New York Times praised her hosting capabilities writing, "[she] delighted us with her endearing eagerness to put on a show." Critic Elizabeth Vincentelli also praised her adding, "she who didn’t miss a step...[she] had a sparkly showbiz quality peppered with an adorably enthusiastic nerdiness". She also presented Best Book of a Musical on the main telecast which aired on CBS. Personal life In October 2013, Hough told the New York Post that although she was no longer a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was glad that she was raised in the church. Hough dated fellow country singer Chuck Wicks from August 2008 to November 2009; when the two had a mutual break-up, it inspired Hough's song "Is That So Wrong". Hough dated Ryan Seacrest from April 2010 to March 2013. In February 2014, it was revealed that she had begun dating NHL player Brooks Laich, then of the Washington Capitals, in December 2013. The couple announced their engagement on August 18, 2015, and were married on July 8, 2017. They separated in 2020, but later attempted to reconcile. Hough filed for divorce on November 2, 2020; the divorce was finalized on February 22, 2022. Hough attracted controversy in October 2013 when she donned blackface as part of a Halloween costume depicting Uzo Aduba's character Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren from the Netflix comedy-drama Orange Is the New Black. Hough later apologized, writing on Twitter, "I realize my costume hurt and offended people and I truly apologize." Hough has been diagnosed with endometriosis since 2008, and went public with it to help de-stigmatize the conditions surrounding the disease. Hough describes herself as "not straight". She has a close friendship with Nina Dobrev. Dancing with the Stars performances With Apolo Anton Ohno (average 27.53) With Hélio Castroneves (average 27.13) With Adam Carolla (average 18.5) With Cody Linley (average 23.56) Weeks 7 and 8, Hough was recovering from surgery. Linley danced with Edyta Śliwińska during this time. Score was awarded by stand in judge Michael Flatley. With Chuck Wicks (average 23.22) Discography Albums / EPs Singles Guest singles Soundtrack appearances Music videos Filmography Film Television Theatre Podcasts Awards and nominations References External links Category:1988 births Category:Living people Category:21st-century American actresses Category:21st-century American singers Category:21st-century American women singers Category:American expatriates in England Category:Actresses from Las Vegas Category:Actresses from Utah Category:Alumni of the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts Category:American ballroom dancers Category:American choreographers Category:American women country singers Category:American female dancers Category:American film actresses Category:Country musicians from Utah Category:Dancers from Nevada Category:Dancers from Utah Category:Dancing with the Stars (American TV series) winners Category:Former Latter Day Saints Category:LGBT actresses Category:LGBT dancers Category:LGBT people from Nevada Category:LGBT people from Utah Category:American LGBT singers Category:Mercury Records artists Category:People from Orem, Utah Category:Primetime Emmy Award winners Category:Singers from Nevada Category:Singers from Utah Category:Judges in American reality television series

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Sara Evans

Sara Lynn Evans (born February 5, 1971) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Evans has released eight studio albums: Three Chords and the Truth (1997), No Place That Far (1998), Born to Fly (2000), Restless (2003), Real Fine Place (2005), Stronger (2011), Slow Me Down (2014), Words (2017), plus one Christmas album, At Christmas (2014).

Early life and the rise to fame

Evans was born in Boonville, Missouri, in 1971, and is of Welsh, English, Irish, and Native American descent. She was raised on a farm near New Franklin, Missouri, the eldest girl of seven children. By five, she was singing weekends in her family's band. At the age of eight, she was struck by an automobile in front of the family home, and her legs suffered multiple fractures. Recuperating for months in a wheelchair, she continued singing to help pay her medical bills. When she was 16, she began performing at a nightclub near Columbia, Missouri, a gig that lasted two years. Evans moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1991 to be a country music artist. She met fellow musician Craig Schelske and left Nashville with him in 1992, moving to Oregon. They married in 1993. She returned to Nashville in 1995 and began recording demos. Nashville songwriter Harlan Howard was impressed by her demo of his song "Tiger by the Tail". He decided to help her music career, leading to a signed contract with RCA Nashville. In 1997, Evans released her debut album for RCA, Three Chords and the Truth. Although none of its three singles ("True Lies," the title track, and "Shame About That") reached the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, the album received critical praise for its neotraditional country sound. In 1998, Evans released her second album, No Place That Far. The album's lead single, "Cryin' Game," also failed to reach the Top 40. However, the album's second single and title track, gave Evans her first Number One hit on the Hot Country Songs chart in March 1999. The album was eventually certified Gold by the RIAA, and produced one additional Top 40 country hit in "Fool, I'm a Woman." CANNOTANSWER

Sara Lynn Evans (; born February 5, 1971) is an American country music singer and songwriter. She is also credited as a record producer, actress, and author. She had five songs reach the number one spot on the Billboard country songs chart and has sold over six million albums. Nine additional singles have reached the top ten of the Billboard country chart, including "I Could Not Ask for More", "I Keep Looking", and "Cheatin'". Among her top 20 charting singles are "Saints & Angels", "Backseat of a Greyhound Bus", and "As If". She has won accolades from the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. She has also been nominated for several more accolades from both associations, including Female Vocalist of the Year and Single of the Year. Evans grew up in New Franklin, Missouri and started performing alongside her siblings in The Evans Family Band. The group performed throughout her childhood and early teenage years in her local area. During her teenage years, Evans and her older brother Matt formed their own band before moving to Nashville in 1991 to pursue a country music career. In Nashville, Evans met her first husband Craig Schelske and briefly moved to Aumsville, Oregon before returning to Nashville. Upon moving back to Nashville, Evans found work as a demo singer, which led to her signing a recording contract with RCA Records. Her first album Three Chords and the Truth was released in 1997. It was followed by No Place That Far (1998), whose second single of the same name topped the Billboard country chart. Evans reached her peak success in the 2000s with the albums Born to Fly (2000), Restless (2003) and Real Fine Place (2005). The discs sold over one million copies each and included the number one country singles "Born to Fly", "Suds in the Bucket" and "A Real Fine Place to Start". In 2006, Evans appeared as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars before subsequently dropping out. Evans took steps back from her recording career to focus on her family life, only releasing a Greatest Hits package in 2008. She re-launched her career in 2011 with her sixth studio album Stronger. It was supported by the two-week number one single "A Little Bit Stronger". After the release of Slow Me Down (2014), Evans left RCA and formed her own record label. In 2017, she released her first album through the label, Words. Evans's music was originally influenced by honky tonk and neotraditional country, but shifted to an increasing focus on country pop ballads after her second album. While critical reception to her body of work has been mixed, many critics have noted the strength and twang of her singing voice. Early life Sara Lynn Evans was born in Boonville, Missouri, on February 5, 1971. She was raised in New Franklin, Missouri by parents Pat and Jack Evans. She was one of seven children (which also included her half siblings after her mother remarried). The Evans family was raised on a 400-acre farm that included several crops and livestock. To make ends meet, her mother became a school bus driver while her father became a pressman for the Columbia Daily Tribune newspaper. Evans's family discovered she had a natural singing ability after she started singing along with her two older brothers who were taking guitar lessons. This prompted Evans's mother to put her siblings into a band which they later called The Evans Family Band. Evans started performing lead vocals in the band when she was six years old. She later learned to perform guitar, mandolin, and drums. When she was eight years old, Evans was hit by a car after crossing the highway that faced her family's farm. She was thrown onto the hood of the car and eventually landed in a grassy field along the highway. She had suffered a concussion and a leg injury. Due to the severity of her injuries, Evans was sent to the University of Missouri Hospital, located 30 miles from her hometown. To avoid having a deformed left leg, doctors had to drill pins into Evans's knee. She was unable to move from her hospital bed for six weeks. According to Evans, the accident itself and being tied to the hospital bed resulted in her having post-traumatic stress disorder. "I had severe PTSD and anxiety, but it was the '80s, and I didn't have a name for it," she explained. In 1983, Evans's parents divorced. Her mother remarried in 1985 and the couple had two more children (Evans's half sisters). After her mother remarried, the family moved to a tobacco farm, also located in New Franklin. The Evans Family Band continued performing as well. The group often performed on weekends and later had a manager. When she was about ten years old, Evans recorded a song called "I'm Gonna Be the Only Female Fiddle Player in Charlie Daniels Band". She then traveled to Nashville alongside her manager to promote the song at Fan Fair. Evans later performed on a local program called Country Stampede and briefly formed a band with her brother Matt. In 1989, Evans graduated high school. She accepted a full scholarship to study music at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri. However, she left after one semester once realizing she wanted to pursue a country music career. She returned to her mother's New Franklin farm where she got a job at the Holiday Inn as a waitress. With the money saved from waiting tables, Evans and her brother Matt moved to Nashville in 1991. After moving to Nashville, Evans got a job waiting tables during the breakfast shift at another Holiday Inn restaurant. At the restaurant she would meet her first husband who was also a waiter at the Holiday Inn. The couple started dating and temporarily moved to Aumsville, Oregon, in 1992. In Oregon, she performed billed as Sara Evans & North Santiam. The couple married while in Oregon and spent three years there before returning to Nashville in the mid-1990s. Through her lawyer, Evans got a job as a demo singer. Among the demos she recorded was a cover of Buck Owens's "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail", which was originally intended to be sent to Patty Loveless. Her demo was heard by Nashville songwriter Harlan Howard who was impressed by Evans's traditional country singing style. Howard convinced executives at RCA Records to hear Evans sing. In a live audition for RCA executive Joe Galante, Evans sang three songs. The same day, Evans was offered a recording contract from RCA Records. She accepted and signed a seven-album deal with the label. Career 1997–1999: Three Chords and the Truth and early success Evans quit her job following the signing of her contract. She chose to have her album produced by Pete Anderson, a producer and guitarist best known for his work with Dwight Yoakam. To record the album, she moved to Los Angeles. In July 1997, Three Chords and the Truth was released on RCA. The album's sound centered around traditional honky tonk country and drew critical acclaim. Allmusic's James Chrispell positively commented, "This disc rings out with an air of originality helped along by great tunes and solid backup musicianship." Billboard commented, "At once a preserver of the best of country's history and a progressive writer and singer forging a timeless contemporary country sound, she invites favorable comparisons to the best country divas." However, the album was not commercially successful. The disc peaked at number 56 on the Billboard country albums chart. Its three singlesin order of release, True Lies, the title track, and "Shame About That"peaked outside the Billboard country songs top 40. According to Evans, country radio refused to play the singles, claiming they were "too country". "It was the most disheartening experience of my life–at least to this point," she reflected in her memoir. In an effort to have commercial success, Evans went back into the studio to record her next album. She intended to cut an album that was contemporary yet "without compromising" her musical interests. The result was No Place That Far, released in October 1998 on RCA. The project peaked at number 11 on the Billboard country albums chart. While its lead single ("Cryin' Game") peaked outside the country top 40, its second single (the title track) reached the number one spot on the Billboard country songs chart. Its success was due to the buy-in from country radio programmers who were invited to a private showcase of her new repertoire in Cincinnati, Ohio. "By the end of the show, they were all eating out of my hands and singing my praises," Evans recounted. The album's final single "Fool, I'm a Woman" only reached number 32 on the country songs chart, which disappointed Evans. "It felt like I was constantly starting over, like in Groundhog Day, with these people at country radio," she commented. To rebuild career momentum, Evans hired a co-manager. Evans also discovered she was pregnant with her first child during this time. This caused friction with her record label who encouraged her to "lose the baby weight as soon as possible". 2000–2005: Peak success Evans was motivated to make shifts in her career after watching Faith Hill's "Breathe" music video. "I'm going to lose this weight, grow my hair long, and make the best album Nashville has ever heard," she recounted. She was drawn to the bluegrass sound by Dixie Chicks and sought out their producer, Paul Worley. She also sought out rock session musician Matt Chamberlain to play drums. Together, they would craft Evans's third studio album. In October 2000, Born to Fly was released on RCA Nashville. Evans co-produced the project with Worley. The disc became Evans's breakout album, certifying double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over two million copies in the United States. Critic Thom Jurek took notice of the record. He described Evans as having the "confidence and authority of a seasoned veteran who is in control of her work." Born to Fly peaked at number six on the Billboard country albums chart and number 55 on the Billboard 200. Four singles were released from Born to Fly. First was the title track, which Evans co-wrote with Marcus Hummon. This reached the number one spot on the Billboard country singles chart and number 34 on the Hot 100. Next was a cover of Edwin McCain's "I Could Not Ask for More", followed by "Saints & Angels" and "I Keep Looking", the latter a top-five country hit in 2002. In 2001, Evans received five nominations from the Country Music Association Awards. This included Female Vocalist of the Year and Album of the Year. She later won Music Video of the Year for Born to Flys title track. The Academy of Country Music Awards also nominated her for Top Female Vocalist. With her new success, Evans joined Reba McEntire, Martina McBride, Jamie O'Neal, and Carolyn Dawn Johnson on the all-women headlining Girls Night Out Tour in 2001. In August 2003, her fourth studio album Restless was released, with Evans and Worley continuing to co-produce. Restless was met with mixed reviews. Writer Edward Morris described it as being "more pop than country in sound and attitude". James Christopher Monger found it to be "slick and predictable". Restless debuted at number three on the Top Country Albums chart reached number 20 on the Billboard 200 and certified platinum in the United States. While the lead single "Backseat of a Greyhound Bus", reached the top 20, its second single, "Perfect", climbed to the number two spot on Billboard country chart. The album's third single was the traditionally-sounding "Suds in the Bucket". The song was not intended to be part of the project's track list but Evans pushed for its inclusion. It became her third number one song on the Billboard country chart. The fourth and final single "Tonight" was less successful, peaking outside the top 40 of Hot Country Songs in 2005. Evans was subsequently nominated for several awards by the Academy of Country Music in both 2003 and 2004 She received similar nominations from the Country Music Association. In 2004, she co-headlined the Mud & Suds Tour with Brad Paisley. In 2005, Evans released a cover of Radney Foster's "A Real Fine Place to Start". It became her fourth number one song on the Billboard country survey and her fourth song to chart in the Hot 100 top 40. It would serve as the title track to her fifth studio album Real Fine Place, which was released in October 2005. Unlike her previous albums, Evans co-produced with Mark Bright. Sue Keough of BBC called it "the perfect balance between radio-friendly country pop and the rootsy sounds she offered with her 1997 debut Three Chords And The Truth." Meanwhile, Slant Magazine'''s Jonathan Keefe gave it 2.5 stars, calling its notoriety in her catalog "less than essential". Despite mixed reviews, the disc was her first to top the Billboard country albums chart. It also debuted at number three on the Billboard 200. Like its predecessors, it also certified platinum in sales. Real Fine Place also included the single "Cheatin'", which reached the number nine spot on the country chart. While the follow-up single "Coalmine" faltered on the charts, follow-up "You'll Always Be My Baby" reached number 13 in 2006. She would also win the Top Female Vocalist award from the Academy of Country Music. 2006–2009: Setbacks and music hiatus By 2006, Evans had reached the height of her career. She was headlining her own tours, and made almost 300 appearances in one year. In August of that year, Evans joined the cast of Dancing with the Stars which aired on the ABC network. She made her first appearance on the show in September alongside dancing partner Tony Dovolani. Evans moved her family to Beverly Hills, California where the show rented her a home while she competed on the program. "It was absolutely exhausting and totally invigorating at the same time," she reflected in her memoir. At the same time, Evans's marriage to husband Craig Schelske was ending. The stress in her personal life caused Evans to suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. A month following her first appearance, she announced her departure from the show after filing for divorce from Schelske. "I had to quit working altogether, focus on my children, and really figure out what I was going to do," she later explained. Evans's divorce received widespread media attention between 2006 and 2007. These personal events delayed plans for the recording of a studio album for several years. However Evans did continue to sporadically release new music. In 2007, RCA released her first compilation album of Greatest Hits. The project reached number three on the Billboard country albums chart and number eight on the Billboard 200. The disc featured twelve of her most popular recordings, along with four new tracks co-written by Evans. AllMusic's Thom Jurek gave the album three stars, criticizing its production and choice of material. Three of its new songs were released as singles. Its lead single "As If" reached number 11 on the Billboard country songs chart. It was followed by the top 40 entry "Some Things Never Change". Later that year, she co-hosted the Country Music Association Awards. In May 2008, Evans appeared on CMT Crossroads, a music show on CMT which paired country music artists with pop music artists for collaborative performance. On her episode, she collaborated with pop band Maroon 5 to sing songs from both artists' catalogs. In September 2008, Evans recorded the theme song to film Billy: The Early Years. Released as a single, "Low" briefly charted on the Hot Country Songs chart. In June 2009, ABC Daytime and SOAPnet sponsored a tour, headlined by Evans, that featured performances throughout the middle of the year. Evans's next single was "Feels Just Like a Love Song", which only peaked at number 59 on the country songs chart. She ended 2009 by releasing an extended play of Christmas music titled I'll Be Home for Christmas. The release coincided with a two-month holiday tour. 2010–2015: Comeback and career re-launch with Stronger In 2010, Evans collaborated with author Rachel Hauck to write The Sweet By and By. Its follow up book, Softly and Tenderly, was released in January 2011. Both novels focused on Christian themes and the main characters explored their religious relationships. Evans also returned to music in 2011. She enlisted record producer Nathan Chapman to help re-launch her career. Evans also started searching for material and eventually found the song "A Little Bit Stronger". The song was co-written by Lady Antebellum lead singer Hillary Scott, who allowed Evans to record the song after that band did not cut it. It was issued as a single in 2010 and topped the Hot Country Songs chart in 2011. "A Little Bit Stronger" became her first number one single since 2005 and spent two weeks at the top. It was released on Evans's corresponding sixth studio album, Stronger. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard Top Country Albums list and number six on the Billboard 200. Stronger later certified gold in the United States. In mid-2011, Evans served as the opening act for Rascal Flatts on their Flatts Fest tour. The duo continued touring through 2012. Also in 2011, "A Little Bit Stronger" was nominated for Single of the Year by the Country Music Association Awards. The program also nominated Evans for Female Vocalist of the Year. The Academy of Country Music Awards also nominated Evans for Female Vocalist of the Year in 2011. Evans felt pressure to sustain the commercial success from her comeback. "I've worked my ass off," she told Country Music Television. Evans had hoped to have "two or three big hits" off of Stronger. The follow-up single, a cover of Rod Stewart's "My Heart Can't Tell You No", only reached number 21 on the Billboard country chart. It was followed by a third single, "Anywhere", which peaked outside the top 40 in 2012. Evans also released her third novel in 2012 titled Love Lifted Me. The book was co-written again with Rachel Hauck and followed a similar story to that of her previous book releases. Evans also sang the National Anthem at Game two of the 2012 NBA Finals. Evans also sang the National Anthem at the start of Game 2 of the 2015 World Series between the Kansas City Royals and the New York Mets. In November 2012, Evans went back into the recording studio alongside Mark Bright to prepare for her next album project. A year later RCA released the single "Slow Me Down". According to Evans, the single required more promotion due to the popularity of Bro-country which had taken chart positions away from women. "I did something like forty-four free shows that year, on top of my regular touring dates," her memoir recalled. Nevertheless, "Slow Me Down" peaked in the top 20, climbing to number 19 on the Billboard country songs chart and number 17 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart. Her seventh album of the same name was released in March 2014 on RCA. The album reached number two on the Country Albums list and number nine on the Billboard 200. It was named among the "Best of 2014" in AllMusic's year-end ranking and ranked number ten on Billboards "Best Country Albums of 2014". In October 2014, Evans appeared on ABC's Nashville, playing herself. She performed a duet version of her next single, "Put My Heart Down", with Will Chase, who performed in-character as Luke Wheeler. Evans herself helped inspire the creation of the series lead Rayna Jaymes, as the writers consulted with her about her experiences as a working mother in the country music industry so that Rayna's character would come across as authentic. In November 2014, Evans released her first full studio album of Christmas music titled At Christmas. The project featured covers of Christmas songs along with original tunes. She later promoted the project on ABC's annual CMA Country Christmas television special. In August 2015, Evans made a second appearance on CMT Crossroads, this time performing alongside rock band REO Speedwagon. 2016–present: New record label and career transition After spending her entire recording career on RCA, Evans left the label in February 2016. Six months later, she announced that she would be signing a contract with Sugar Hill Records. However the label underwent a restructuring and Evans ultimately decided to leave the contract. In the same year, Evans appeared on the season finale of USA Network's Chrisley Knows Best. She performed a new track called "Infinite Love". The song was a duet with one of the show's cast members, Todd Chrisley. A recording by the pair appeared in 2016 that charted in the top 40 of the Billboard country chart. Evans and several of her siblings also competed against the Chrisley family on the 2016 season finale of ABC's game show Celebrity Family Feud. Evans had become increasingly frustrated with the country radio's lack of support for female artists. "No one seemed to respect all my previous success that I'd worked years to achieve," she recalled in her memoir. The frustration prompted Evans to launch her own label titled Born to Fly Records. Sony RED partnered with the label to distribute the company's music. "Now I'm in the driver's seat, and every decision is made between my managers and me," she commented. The label released her ninth studio record in July 2017 called Words. All fourteen of the album's tracks included credits from female songwriters. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented that, "Words offers a sharp and welcome contrast to the bustling digital era." Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press praised the album and concluded, "Artistic freedom has never sounded so good." Words peaked at number four on the Billboard country albums chart and number 46 on the Billboard 200. Despite heavy promotion, its lead single ("Marquee Sign") failed to make a chart appearance. In 2019, Evans collaborated with her son and daughter to release an EP named The Barker Family Band. The project featured harmonies from Evans and her children performing covers of songs by Aretha Franklin and Fleetwood Mac. A corresponding live album was recorded at City Winery in Nashville. Both projects were promoted through a mini tour that included five show dates in May 2019. In May 2020, Evans released her tenth studio project titled Copy That. The project was a collection of classic country and pop covers from different decades. The album received mixed reviews. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented, "Copy That is a clever title for a covers album, but it also raises the question of whether these new cover versions are mere Xeroxes of the original." Meanwhile Jeffrey B. Remz of Country Standard Time found it to be "just too syrupy" in his review. In September 2020, Evans released a memoir that discussed highlights from her life and career. The book was published by Howard Books. Evans stated in mid-2022 that she intended to begin working on a followup album to Copy That. She said that the album would have a more neotraditional country sound similar to "Suds in the Bucket", and also cited Patty Loveless as one of the influences for the upcoming project. In 2023, Evans competed in season nine of The Masked Singer as "Mustang". She was eliminated during the season premiere alongside Dick Van Dyke as "Gnome". Artistry Musical styles Evans has embedded different styles of country music into her songs throughout her career. In her early career, Evans incorporated a traditional country sound on the albums Three Chords and the Truth and No Place That Far. Box Paxman explained, "Evans was hailed for her neo-traditional vocal style and obvious respect for country's past". When Evans released 2000's Born to Fly, her sound shifted towards a contemporary country musical identity. "Born to Fly marks an uptown shift in Evans' musical landscape. With Worley at the helm, the singer has made a much more contemporary record than her previous outings," commented Lisa Young of CMT. Thom Jurek from AllMusic noted a similar theme while reviewing the disc: "Born to Fly emphasizes the more contemporary sounds on the recording, while placing some of the rootsy bluegrass back in the mix." When the genre shifted back to a traditional country style, Evans followed suit with 2005's Real Fine Place. Writer Jacquilynne Schlesier found Evans to be a "natural choice to lead the parade" considering the acclaim she received from her debut album. Critic Johnny Loftus also found a traditional element to her 2005 transition, commenting that, "Real Fine Place is sure to lure traditional country fans with Evans' rich vocal presence and the album's assertion that the simplest things in life are its truest." As the genre shifted towards a pop and rock-inspired sound, Evans's music also made the shift. In his review of 2011's Stronger, Jurek highlighted how Evans was attentive to the changing trends: "Contemporary country music has undergone a tumultuous shift in terms of its production style and songwriting trends. Though her life experiences--good and bad--have kept her from recording, Evans reveals here she's been paying close attention." Ken Tucker of NPR found Evans to have fondness for pop and that she found more confidence singing it her later career: "It's undeniable that on her last album, 2011's Stronger, and this new one [2014's] Slow Me Down, Evans has located a new undercurrent of steely firmness that has only strengthened her singing." After leaving RCA Records, Evans began experimenting with other musical styles, particularly on the 2020 album Copy That. Reflecting on her current musical style, Evans commented, "For the first time in my career, I felt like I didn't have to stay in any certain genre". Voice Writers and critics have highlighted the power of Evans's voice. Ken Tucker of NPR commented, "Sara Evans is a singer with a big voice who knows what to do with it. Her phrasing is conversational; she rarely tries to goose the emotion in a song by stretching out syllables or leaping registers." In reviewing a live show, Emily Yahr of The Washington Post described Evans has having a "crystal-clear powerhouse twang." Other journalists have noted that Evans's singing has a specific identity. AllMusic's John Bush described her as having "an instantly recognizable contralto" while The Boot wrote, "Evans has built a hugely successful career on the strength of her song choices, as well as her readily identifiable voice." Personal life First marriage, children and divorce Evans married Craig Schelske in 1993. At the time of their marriage, Schelske was an aspiring musician. In 2002, Schelske ran for congress in the fifth district in his home state of Oregon as a Republican candidate. After Evans became commercially successful, the couple moved into a home located in Franklin, Tennessee. They also had a residence outside Aumsville, Oregon and a residence in Missouri. In 1999, Evans gave birth to their first son, Avery Jack. She had a daughter named Olivia Margaret in 2003, and a second daughter named Audrey Elizabeth one year later. Evans's children are also musical; both Avery and Olivia have performed in her touring band, the former as a guitarist and the latter as a vocalist. Her daughter released her first music in 2021 while her son currently tours as part of Thomas Rhett's band. After her 2006 departure from Dancing with the Stars, it was disclosed that Evans had filed for divorce from Schelske. In court documents, Evans accused Schelske of unemployment, alcoholism, infidelity, watching adult entertainment with their children present, maintaining sexually explicit photographs of himself and others, and verbal abuse. Schelske denied all of his wife's claims. He explained that the "interrupted adult entertainment viewing" was inadvertent and involved both Schelske and Evans. Schelske also claimed that his explicit photograph collection was limited to images of the married couple, and counterclaimed that Evans had numerous personal problems. Schelske accused Evans of having multiple affairs with fellow musicians, including Kenny Chesney. A representative for Chesney called the allegations "ridiculous". On September 28, 2007, the divorce between Evans and Schelske became final. The divorce agreement established a joint custody plan for their three children, a split of marital assets, and an alimony agreement where Evans would pay Schelske at least $500,000 over 10 years. Subsequently, Evans' ex-nanny sued her for $3 million, claiming that Evans had smeared her name by accusing her of an affair with Schelske. The lawsuit was settled in July 2009 for $500,000. Following their divorce, Evans obtained two temporary restraining orders against Schelske in 2010 and 2011, restricting him from making any derogatory statements to the media about Evans or their former marriage. Schelske also sued Evans's Nashville attorney John Hollins Sr. and his firm (Hollins, Wagster, Yarbrough, Weatherly & Raybin, P.C.) for "slander, false light and other damages" after Hollins gave an October 2006 interview to People magazine regarding Evans' divorce claims. That lawsuit resulted in an undisclosed financial settlement and a written apology from Hollins in 2011, which stated in part: "My firm and I represented Sara Evans in a highly contested divorce from Craig Schelske... to the best of my ability. I regret that my actions on behalf of Sara Evans caused Mr. Schelske harm in any way." Schelske issued a public statement thanking God, family, and friends for staying alongside during the period, and stating: "Sara is not my enemy... Hollins... he's the one who did this." Second marriage and separation Through her marriage counselor, Evans would meet her second husband Jay Barker. The pair first began exchanging emails in 2007 and started a romantic relationship shortly afterward. Barker was a former University of Alabama quarterback, and at the time of their meeting was a radio host. The pair married on June 14, 2008 in Franklin; their children were their attendants.Finan, Eileen. (June 17, 2008) FIRST LOOK: Sara Evans Wedding Photo - Weddings, Music News, Sara Evans. People.com. Retrieved on October 17, 2015. Barker shared custody of four children with his ex-wife, which would total to seven kids when both families were present. "We are truly a family. We don't think of it as 'blended'; they are just our kids. But we also understand our roles. If I'm around when Sara's kids' father is around, I give him his place as their dad," Barker explained in 2011. The family later settled in Mountain Brook, Alabama, which is a suburb of Birmingham. In 2019, the family returned to Nashville so that Evans could live in closer proximity to the country music business. On January 15, 2022, Barker was arrested for aggravated assault, after he allegedly attempted to use his car to hit Evans while she was a passenger in a friend's car after leaving a party. The arrest affidavit has the couple listed as separated, and that Evans had filed for divorce prior to the incident in August 2021, citing "irreconcilable differences and inappropriate marital conduct". Barker responded on social media to his arrest claiming that the reports "do not adequately capture the full context and complex fabric of our lives". Barker was released from the Davidson County Jail on a $10,000 bond and was scheduled for a court appearance in March 2022. In June 2022, Barker entered a plea deal and was sentenced to a year of probation. A divorce between Evans and Barker is still "in progress", according to Billboard. Personal setbacks and challenges Evans has suffered from panic attacks and anxiety during different points in her life. In her memoir, Evans described having a "meltdown" in December 2005 once realizing her first marriage was ending. She recounted having "terrifying thoughts" of being kidnapped and losing control of herself. For ten days, Evans refused to leave her Nashville home and was afraid to "walk from one room to another". She was also briefly brought into the hospital and was diagnosed with "exhaustion". Evans found solace in her Christian faith and began working with a pastor who helped her gain control of her mental health. "He encouraged me to just stay home for the time being and get rest and let God do the rest," she remembered. Evans also met with a doctor who prescribed her anti-anxiety medication. In December 2012, Evans was nearly killed in a plane crash in Minnesota. Following a successful takeoff, the aircraft's gyroscope malfunctioned, causing her private plane to fly upside down. "I knew we had not been in the air long, so we were probably seconds from dying. I completely accepted it. It was so strange and peaceful," her memoir recalled. The pilots were able to recenter the plane despite its one wing breaking. The pilots then made an emergency landing in Fargo, North Dakota. Advocacy Evans is a spokesperson for the National Eating Disorders Association and has spoken out widely on this subject. She was influenced to become their spokesperson after having a close friend suffer from anorexia. "Thankfully, I have never suffered from an eating disorder but am well aware of our society’s obsession with body image," she told CMT. She also hosted a charity event, Fashion for Every Body, which featured a fashion show, silent auction and performance by Evans. A libertarian Republican, Evans also showed support for Texas Congressman Ron Paul in the 2008 Presidential election and was the headliner at his "Rally For The Republic" on September 2, 2008, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the same day as the Republican National Convention in neighboring St. Paul. Discography Studio albums 1997: Three Chords and the Truth 1998: No Place That Far 2000: Born to Fly 2003: Restless 2005: Real Fine Place 2011: Stronger 2014: Slow Me Down 2014: At Christmas 2017: Words 2020: Copy ThatAwards and nominations Evans has won several awards for her work as a music artist. This includes one accolade from the Academy of Country Music and one accolade from the Country Music Association. Filmography Books You'll Always Be My Baby (2006) Sweet By and By (2010) Softly and Tenderly (2011) Love Lifted Me (2012) Born to Fly: A Memoir'' (2020) Notes References Footnotes Books External links Category:1971 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century American singers Category:20th-century Christians Category:20th-century American women singers Category:21st-century American singers Category:21st-century Christians Category:21st-century American women singers Category:Alabama Republicans Category:American country singer-songwriters Category:American evangelicals Category:American women country singers Category:American libertarians Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:Christian libertarians Category:Christians from Missouri Category:Christians from Tennessee Category:Country musicians from Missouri Category:Country musicians from Tennessee Category:Musicians from Birmingham, Alabama Category:Musicians from Nashville, Tennessee Category:People from Boonville, Missouri Category:People from Howard County, Missouri Category:People from Mountain Brook, Alabama Category:RCA Records Nashville artists Category:Singer-songwriters from Missouri Category:Singer-songwriters from Tennessee Category:Tennessee Republicans Category:Country musicians from Alabama Category:Singer-songwriters from Alabama

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Sara Evans

Sara Lynn Evans (born February 5, 1971) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Evans has released eight studio albums: Three Chords and the Truth (1997), No Place That Far (1998), Born to Fly (2000), Restless (2003), Real Fine Place (2005), Stronger (2011), Slow Me Down (2014), Words (2017), plus one Christmas album, At Christmas (2014).

Breakthrough with Born to Fly and Restless albums

Evans' third studio album, Born to Fly, was released on October 10, 2000. She insisted on hiring Seattle-based rock drummer Matt Chamberlain (The Wallflowers, Edie Brickell), who brought a different sound to her music. The album's title track ("Born to Fly"), which was released as the lead single, was a Number One hit on the Hot Country Songs chart. Three more singles were released from the album ("I Could Not Ask for More," "I Keep Looking," and "Saints & Angels"), the first two reaching the Top 10, and the latter becoming a Top 20 hit. Born to Fly was eventually certified 2x Platinum by the RIAA in 2004. In 2001, Evans was the most-nominated artist at the Country Music Association awards with seven nominations overall, and she won her first CMA award when "Born to Fly" won the award for Video of the Year, her first major industry award. Evans released her fourth studio album, Restless, on August 19, 2003. The album's lead single, "Backseat of a Greyhound Bus," was a Top 20 hit on the Hot Country Songs chart. The album debuted at No. 3 on the Top Country Albums chart and at No. 20 on the Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of over 40,000 copies. "Perfect," the album's second single, was a No. 2 hit on the country charts. However, the album's third single, "Suds in the Bucket," was the most successful single; it became Evans' third Number One hit on the Hot Country Songs chart and was also her fifth Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. Additionally, it was Evans' first ever Gold-certified single by the RIAA. The album's fourth and final single, "Tonight," failed to reach the Top 40 country charts. Restless received a nomination in the 2005 Academy of Country Music Awards. CANNOTANSWER

Sara Lynn Evans (; born February 5, 1971) is an American country music singer and songwriter. She is also credited as a record producer, actress, and author. She had five songs reach the number one spot on the Billboard country songs chart and has sold over six million albums. Nine additional singles have reached the top ten of the Billboard country chart, including "I Could Not Ask for More", "I Keep Looking", and "Cheatin'". Among her top 20 charting singles are "Saints & Angels", "Backseat of a Greyhound Bus", and "As If". She has won accolades from the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. She has also been nominated for several more accolades from both associations, including Female Vocalist of the Year and Single of the Year. Evans grew up in New Franklin, Missouri and started performing alongside her siblings in The Evans Family Band. The group performed throughout her childhood and early teenage years in her local area. During her teenage years, Evans and her older brother Matt formed their own band before moving to Nashville in 1991 to pursue a country music career. In Nashville, Evans met her first husband Craig Schelske and briefly moved to Aumsville, Oregon before returning to Nashville. Upon moving back to Nashville, Evans found work as a demo singer, which led to her signing a recording contract with RCA Records. Her first album Three Chords and the Truth was released in 1997. It was followed by No Place That Far (1998), whose second single of the same name topped the Billboard country chart. Evans reached her peak success in the 2000s with the albums Born to Fly (2000), Restless (2003) and Real Fine Place (2005). The discs sold over one million copies each and included the number one country singles "Born to Fly", "Suds in the Bucket" and "A Real Fine Place to Start". In 2006, Evans appeared as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars before subsequently dropping out. Evans took steps back from her recording career to focus on her family life, only releasing a Greatest Hits package in 2008. She re-launched her career in 2011 with her sixth studio album Stronger. It was supported by the two-week number one single "A Little Bit Stronger". After the release of Slow Me Down (2014), Evans left RCA and formed her own record label. In 2017, she released her first album through the label, Words. Evans's music was originally influenced by honky tonk and neotraditional country, but shifted to an increasing focus on country pop ballads after her second album. While critical reception to her body of work has been mixed, many critics have noted the strength and twang of her singing voice. Early life Sara Lynn Evans was born in Boonville, Missouri, on February 5, 1971. She was raised in New Franklin, Missouri by parents Pat and Jack Evans. She was one of seven children (which also included her half siblings after her mother remarried). The Evans family was raised on a 400-acre farm that included several crops and livestock. To make ends meet, her mother became a school bus driver while her father became a pressman for the Columbia Daily Tribune newspaper. Evans's family discovered she had a natural singing ability after she started singing along with her two older brothers who were taking guitar lessons. This prompted Evans's mother to put her siblings into a band which they later called The Evans Family Band. Evans started performing lead vocals in the band when she was six years old. She later learned to perform guitar, mandolin, and drums. When she was eight years old, Evans was hit by a car after crossing the highway that faced her family's farm. She was thrown onto the hood of the car and eventually landed in a grassy field along the highway. She had suffered a concussion and a leg injury. Due to the severity of her injuries, Evans was sent to the University of Missouri Hospital, located 30 miles from her hometown. To avoid having a deformed left leg, doctors had to drill pins into Evans's knee. She was unable to move from her hospital bed for six weeks. According to Evans, the accident itself and being tied to the hospital bed resulted in her having post-traumatic stress disorder. "I had severe PTSD and anxiety, but it was the '80s, and I didn't have a name for it," she explained. In 1983, Evans's parents divorced. Her mother remarried in 1985 and the couple had two more children (Evans's half sisters). After her mother remarried, the family moved to a tobacco farm, also located in New Franklin. The Evans Family Band continued performing as well. The group often performed on weekends and later had a manager. When she was about ten years old, Evans recorded a song called "I'm Gonna Be the Only Female Fiddle Player in Charlie Daniels Band". She then traveled to Nashville alongside her manager to promote the song at Fan Fair. Evans later performed on a local program called Country Stampede and briefly formed a band with her brother Matt. In 1989, Evans graduated high school. She accepted a full scholarship to study music at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri. However, she left after one semester once realizing she wanted to pursue a country music career. She returned to her mother's New Franklin farm where she got a job at the Holiday Inn as a waitress. With the money saved from waiting tables, Evans and her brother Matt moved to Nashville in 1991. After moving to Nashville, Evans got a job waiting tables during the breakfast shift at another Holiday Inn restaurant. At the restaurant she would meet her first husband who was also a waiter at the Holiday Inn. The couple started dating and temporarily moved to Aumsville, Oregon, in 1992. In Oregon, she performed billed as Sara Evans & North Santiam. The couple married while in Oregon and spent three years there before returning to Nashville in the mid-1990s. Through her lawyer, Evans got a job as a demo singer. Among the demos she recorded was a cover of Buck Owens's "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail", which was originally intended to be sent to Patty Loveless. Her demo was heard by Nashville songwriter Harlan Howard who was impressed by Evans's traditional country singing style. Howard convinced executives at RCA Records to hear Evans sing. In a live audition for RCA executive Joe Galante, Evans sang three songs. The same day, Evans was offered a recording contract from RCA Records. She accepted and signed a seven-album deal with the label. Career 1997–1999: Three Chords and the Truth and early success Evans quit her job following the signing of her contract. She chose to have her album produced by Pete Anderson, a producer and guitarist best known for his work with Dwight Yoakam. To record the album, she moved to Los Angeles. In July 1997, Three Chords and the Truth was released on RCA. The album's sound centered around traditional honky tonk country and drew critical acclaim. Allmusic's James Chrispell positively commented, "This disc rings out with an air of originality helped along by great tunes and solid backup musicianship." Billboard commented, "At once a preserver of the best of country's history and a progressive writer and singer forging a timeless contemporary country sound, she invites favorable comparisons to the best country divas." However, the album was not commercially successful. The disc peaked at number 56 on the Billboard country albums chart. Its three singlesin order of release, True Lies, the title track, and "Shame About That"peaked outside the Billboard country songs top 40. According to Evans, country radio refused to play the singles, claiming they were "too country". "It was the most disheartening experience of my life–at least to this point," she reflected in her memoir. In an effort to have commercial success, Evans went back into the studio to record her next album. She intended to cut an album that was contemporary yet "without compromising" her musical interests. The result was No Place That Far, released in October 1998 on RCA. The project peaked at number 11 on the Billboard country albums chart. While its lead single ("Cryin' Game") peaked outside the country top 40, its second single (the title track) reached the number one spot on the Billboard country songs chart. Its success was due to the buy-in from country radio programmers who were invited to a private showcase of her new repertoire in Cincinnati, Ohio. "By the end of the show, they were all eating out of my hands and singing my praises," Evans recounted. The album's final single "Fool, I'm a Woman" only reached number 32 on the country songs chart, which disappointed Evans. "It felt like I was constantly starting over, like in Groundhog Day, with these people at country radio," she commented. To rebuild career momentum, Evans hired a co-manager. Evans also discovered she was pregnant with her first child during this time. This caused friction with her record label who encouraged her to "lose the baby weight as soon as possible". 2000–2005: Peak success Evans was motivated to make shifts in her career after watching Faith Hill's "Breathe" music video. "I'm going to lose this weight, grow my hair long, and make the best album Nashville has ever heard," she recounted. She was drawn to the bluegrass sound by Dixie Chicks and sought out their producer, Paul Worley. She also sought out rock session musician Matt Chamberlain to play drums. Together, they would craft Evans's third studio album. In October 2000, Born to Fly was released on RCA Nashville. Evans co-produced the project with Worley. The disc became Evans's breakout album, certifying double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over two million copies in the United States. Critic Thom Jurek took notice of the record. He described Evans as having the "confidence and authority of a seasoned veteran who is in control of her work." Born to Fly peaked at number six on the Billboard country albums chart and number 55 on the Billboard 200. Four singles were released from Born to Fly. First was the title track, which Evans co-wrote with Marcus Hummon. This reached the number one spot on the Billboard country singles chart and number 34 on the Hot 100. Next was a cover of Edwin McCain's "I Could Not Ask for More", followed by "Saints & Angels" and "I Keep Looking", the latter a top-five country hit in 2002. In 2001, Evans received five nominations from the Country Music Association Awards. This included Female Vocalist of the Year and Album of the Year. She later won Music Video of the Year for Born to Flys title track. The Academy of Country Music Awards also nominated her for Top Female Vocalist. With her new success, Evans joined Reba McEntire, Martina McBride, Jamie O'Neal, and Carolyn Dawn Johnson on the all-women headlining Girls Night Out Tour in 2001. In August 2003, her fourth studio album Restless was released, with Evans and Worley continuing to co-produce. Restless was met with mixed reviews. Writer Edward Morris described it as being "more pop than country in sound and attitude". James Christopher Monger found it to be "slick and predictable". Restless debuted at number three on the Top Country Albums chart reached number 20 on the Billboard 200 and certified platinum in the United States. While the lead single "Backseat of a Greyhound Bus", reached the top 20, its second single, "Perfect", climbed to the number two spot on Billboard country chart. The album's third single was the traditionally-sounding "Suds in the Bucket". The song was not intended to be part of the project's track list but Evans pushed for its inclusion. It became her third number one song on the Billboard country chart. The fourth and final single "Tonight" was less successful, peaking outside the top 40 of Hot Country Songs in 2005. Evans was subsequently nominated for several awards by the Academy of Country Music in both 2003 and 2004 She received similar nominations from the Country Music Association. In 2004, she co-headlined the Mud & Suds Tour with Brad Paisley. In 2005, Evans released a cover of Radney Foster's "A Real Fine Place to Start". It became her fourth number one song on the Billboard country survey and her fourth song to chart in the Hot 100 top 40. It would serve as the title track to her fifth studio album Real Fine Place, which was released in October 2005. Unlike her previous albums, Evans co-produced with Mark Bright. Sue Keough of BBC called it "the perfect balance between radio-friendly country pop and the rootsy sounds she offered with her 1997 debut Three Chords And The Truth." Meanwhile, Slant Magazine'''s Jonathan Keefe gave it 2.5 stars, calling its notoriety in her catalog "less than essential". Despite mixed reviews, the disc was her first to top the Billboard country albums chart. It also debuted at number three on the Billboard 200. Like its predecessors, it also certified platinum in sales. Real Fine Place also included the single "Cheatin'", which reached the number nine spot on the country chart. While the follow-up single "Coalmine" faltered on the charts, follow-up "You'll Always Be My Baby" reached number 13 in 2006. She would also win the Top Female Vocalist award from the Academy of Country Music. 2006–2009: Setbacks and music hiatus By 2006, Evans had reached the height of her career. She was headlining her own tours, and made almost 300 appearances in one year. In August of that year, Evans joined the cast of Dancing with the Stars which aired on the ABC network. She made her first appearance on the show in September alongside dancing partner Tony Dovolani. Evans moved her family to Beverly Hills, California where the show rented her a home while she competed on the program. "It was absolutely exhausting and totally invigorating at the same time," she reflected in her memoir. At the same time, Evans's marriage to husband Craig Schelske was ending. The stress in her personal life caused Evans to suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. A month following her first appearance, she announced her departure from the show after filing for divorce from Schelske. "I had to quit working altogether, focus on my children, and really figure out what I was going to do," she later explained. Evans's divorce received widespread media attention between 2006 and 2007. These personal events delayed plans for the recording of a studio album for several years. However Evans did continue to sporadically release new music. In 2007, RCA released her first compilation album of Greatest Hits. The project reached number three on the Billboard country albums chart and number eight on the Billboard 200. The disc featured twelve of her most popular recordings, along with four new tracks co-written by Evans. AllMusic's Thom Jurek gave the album three stars, criticizing its production and choice of material. Three of its new songs were released as singles. Its lead single "As If" reached number 11 on the Billboard country songs chart. It was followed by the top 40 entry "Some Things Never Change". Later that year, she co-hosted the Country Music Association Awards. In May 2008, Evans appeared on CMT Crossroads, a music show on CMT which paired country music artists with pop music artists for collaborative performance. On her episode, she collaborated with pop band Maroon 5 to sing songs from both artists' catalogs. In September 2008, Evans recorded the theme song to film Billy: The Early Years. Released as a single, "Low" briefly charted on the Hot Country Songs chart. In June 2009, ABC Daytime and SOAPnet sponsored a tour, headlined by Evans, that featured performances throughout the middle of the year. Evans's next single was "Feels Just Like a Love Song", which only peaked at number 59 on the country songs chart. She ended 2009 by releasing an extended play of Christmas music titled I'll Be Home for Christmas. The release coincided with a two-month holiday tour. 2010–2015: Comeback and career re-launch with Stronger In 2010, Evans collaborated with author Rachel Hauck to write The Sweet By and By. Its follow up book, Softly and Tenderly, was released in January 2011. Both novels focused on Christian themes and the main characters explored their religious relationships. Evans also returned to music in 2011. She enlisted record producer Nathan Chapman to help re-launch her career. Evans also started searching for material and eventually found the song "A Little Bit Stronger". The song was co-written by Lady Antebellum lead singer Hillary Scott, who allowed Evans to record the song after that band did not cut it. It was issued as a single in 2010 and topped the Hot Country Songs chart in 2011. "A Little Bit Stronger" became her first number one single since 2005 and spent two weeks at the top. It was released on Evans's corresponding sixth studio album, Stronger. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard Top Country Albums list and number six on the Billboard 200. Stronger later certified gold in the United States. In mid-2011, Evans served as the opening act for Rascal Flatts on their Flatts Fest tour. The duo continued touring through 2012. Also in 2011, "A Little Bit Stronger" was nominated for Single of the Year by the Country Music Association Awards. The program also nominated Evans for Female Vocalist of the Year. The Academy of Country Music Awards also nominated Evans for Female Vocalist of the Year in 2011. Evans felt pressure to sustain the commercial success from her comeback. "I've worked my ass off," she told Country Music Television. Evans had hoped to have "two or three big hits" off of Stronger. The follow-up single, a cover of Rod Stewart's "My Heart Can't Tell You No", only reached number 21 on the Billboard country chart. It was followed by a third single, "Anywhere", which peaked outside the top 40 in 2012. Evans also released her third novel in 2012 titled Love Lifted Me. The book was co-written again with Rachel Hauck and followed a similar story to that of her previous book releases. Evans also sang the National Anthem at Game two of the 2012 NBA Finals. Evans also sang the National Anthem at the start of Game 2 of the 2015 World Series between the Kansas City Royals and the New York Mets. In November 2012, Evans went back into the recording studio alongside Mark Bright to prepare for her next album project. A year later RCA released the single "Slow Me Down". According to Evans, the single required more promotion due to the popularity of Bro-country which had taken chart positions away from women. "I did something like forty-four free shows that year, on top of my regular touring dates," her memoir recalled. Nevertheless, "Slow Me Down" peaked in the top 20, climbing to number 19 on the Billboard country songs chart and number 17 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart. Her seventh album of the same name was released in March 2014 on RCA. The album reached number two on the Country Albums list and number nine on the Billboard 200. It was named among the "Best of 2014" in AllMusic's year-end ranking and ranked number ten on Billboards "Best Country Albums of 2014". In October 2014, Evans appeared on ABC's Nashville, playing herself. She performed a duet version of her next single, "Put My Heart Down", with Will Chase, who performed in-character as Luke Wheeler. Evans herself helped inspire the creation of the series lead Rayna Jaymes, as the writers consulted with her about her experiences as a working mother in the country music industry so that Rayna's character would come across as authentic. In November 2014, Evans released her first full studio album of Christmas music titled At Christmas. The project featured covers of Christmas songs along with original tunes. She later promoted the project on ABC's annual CMA Country Christmas television special. In August 2015, Evans made a second appearance on CMT Crossroads, this time performing alongside rock band REO Speedwagon. 2016–present: New record label and career transition After spending her entire recording career on RCA, Evans left the label in February 2016. Six months later, she announced that she would be signing a contract with Sugar Hill Records. However the label underwent a restructuring and Evans ultimately decided to leave the contract. In the same year, Evans appeared on the season finale of USA Network's Chrisley Knows Best. She performed a new track called "Infinite Love". The song was a duet with one of the show's cast members, Todd Chrisley. A recording by the pair appeared in 2016 that charted in the top 40 of the Billboard country chart. Evans and several of her siblings also competed against the Chrisley family on the 2016 season finale of ABC's game show Celebrity Family Feud. Evans had become increasingly frustrated with the country radio's lack of support for female artists. "No one seemed to respect all my previous success that I'd worked years to achieve," she recalled in her memoir. The frustration prompted Evans to launch her own label titled Born to Fly Records. Sony RED partnered with the label to distribute the company's music. "Now I'm in the driver's seat, and every decision is made between my managers and me," she commented. The label released her ninth studio record in July 2017 called Words. All fourteen of the album's tracks included credits from female songwriters. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented that, "Words offers a sharp and welcome contrast to the bustling digital era." Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press praised the album and concluded, "Artistic freedom has never sounded so good." Words peaked at number four on the Billboard country albums chart and number 46 on the Billboard 200. Despite heavy promotion, its lead single ("Marquee Sign") failed to make a chart appearance. In 2019, Evans collaborated with her son and daughter to release an EP named The Barker Family Band. The project featured harmonies from Evans and her children performing covers of songs by Aretha Franklin and Fleetwood Mac. A corresponding live album was recorded at City Winery in Nashville. Both projects were promoted through a mini tour that included five show dates in May 2019. In May 2020, Evans released her tenth studio project titled Copy That. The project was a collection of classic country and pop covers from different decades. The album received mixed reviews. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented, "Copy That is a clever title for a covers album, but it also raises the question of whether these new cover versions are mere Xeroxes of the original." Meanwhile Jeffrey B. Remz of Country Standard Time found it to be "just too syrupy" in his review. In September 2020, Evans released a memoir that discussed highlights from her life and career. The book was published by Howard Books. Evans stated in mid-2022 that she intended to begin working on a followup album to Copy That. She said that the album would have a more neotraditional country sound similar to "Suds in the Bucket", and also cited Patty Loveless as one of the influences for the upcoming project. In 2023, Evans competed in season nine of The Masked Singer as "Mustang". She was eliminated during the season premiere alongside Dick Van Dyke as "Gnome". Artistry Musical styles Evans has embedded different styles of country music into her songs throughout her career. In her early career, Evans incorporated a traditional country sound on the albums Three Chords and the Truth and No Place That Far. Box Paxman explained, "Evans was hailed for her neo-traditional vocal style and obvious respect for country's past". When Evans released 2000's Born to Fly, her sound shifted towards a contemporary country musical identity. "Born to Fly marks an uptown shift in Evans' musical landscape. With Worley at the helm, the singer has made a much more contemporary record than her previous outings," commented Lisa Young of CMT. Thom Jurek from AllMusic noted a similar theme while reviewing the disc: "Born to Fly emphasizes the more contemporary sounds on the recording, while placing some of the rootsy bluegrass back in the mix." When the genre shifted back to a traditional country style, Evans followed suit with 2005's Real Fine Place. Writer Jacquilynne Schlesier found Evans to be a "natural choice to lead the parade" considering the acclaim she received from her debut album. Critic Johnny Loftus also found a traditional element to her 2005 transition, commenting that, "Real Fine Place is sure to lure traditional country fans with Evans' rich vocal presence and the album's assertion that the simplest things in life are its truest." As the genre shifted towards a pop and rock-inspired sound, Evans's music also made the shift. In his review of 2011's Stronger, Jurek highlighted how Evans was attentive to the changing trends: "Contemporary country music has undergone a tumultuous shift in terms of its production style and songwriting trends. Though her life experiences--good and bad--have kept her from recording, Evans reveals here she's been paying close attention." Ken Tucker of NPR found Evans to have fondness for pop and that she found more confidence singing it her later career: "It's undeniable that on her last album, 2011's Stronger, and this new one [2014's] Slow Me Down, Evans has located a new undercurrent of steely firmness that has only strengthened her singing." After leaving RCA Records, Evans began experimenting with other musical styles, particularly on the 2020 album Copy That. Reflecting on her current musical style, Evans commented, "For the first time in my career, I felt like I didn't have to stay in any certain genre". Voice Writers and critics have highlighted the power of Evans's voice. Ken Tucker of NPR commented, "Sara Evans is a singer with a big voice who knows what to do with it. Her phrasing is conversational; she rarely tries to goose the emotion in a song by stretching out syllables or leaping registers." In reviewing a live show, Emily Yahr of The Washington Post described Evans has having a "crystal-clear powerhouse twang." Other journalists have noted that Evans's singing has a specific identity. AllMusic's John Bush described her as having "an instantly recognizable contralto" while The Boot wrote, "Evans has built a hugely successful career on the strength of her song choices, as well as her readily identifiable voice." Personal life First marriage, children and divorce Evans married Craig Schelske in 1993. At the time of their marriage, Schelske was an aspiring musician. In 2002, Schelske ran for congress in the fifth district in his home state of Oregon as a Republican candidate. After Evans became commercially successful, the couple moved into a home located in Franklin, Tennessee. They also had a residence outside Aumsville, Oregon and a residence in Missouri. In 1999, Evans gave birth to their first son, Avery Jack. She had a daughter named Olivia Margaret in 2003, and a second daughter named Audrey Elizabeth one year later. Evans's children are also musical; both Avery and Olivia have performed in her touring band, the former as a guitarist and the latter as a vocalist. Her daughter released her first music in 2021 while her son currently tours as part of Thomas Rhett's band. After her 2006 departure from Dancing with the Stars, it was disclosed that Evans had filed for divorce from Schelske. In court documents, Evans accused Schelske of unemployment, alcoholism, infidelity, watching adult entertainment with their children present, maintaining sexually explicit photographs of himself and others, and verbal abuse. Schelske denied all of his wife's claims. He explained that the "interrupted adult entertainment viewing" was inadvertent and involved both Schelske and Evans. Schelske also claimed that his explicit photograph collection was limited to images of the married couple, and counterclaimed that Evans had numerous personal problems. Schelske accused Evans of having multiple affairs with fellow musicians, including Kenny Chesney. A representative for Chesney called the allegations "ridiculous". On September 28, 2007, the divorce between Evans and Schelske became final. The divorce agreement established a joint custody plan for their three children, a split of marital assets, and an alimony agreement where Evans would pay Schelske at least $500,000 over 10 years. Subsequently, Evans' ex-nanny sued her for $3 million, claiming that Evans had smeared her name by accusing her of an affair with Schelske. The lawsuit was settled in July 2009 for $500,000. Following their divorce, Evans obtained two temporary restraining orders against Schelske in 2010 and 2011, restricting him from making any derogatory statements to the media about Evans or their former marriage. Schelske also sued Evans's Nashville attorney John Hollins Sr. and his firm (Hollins, Wagster, Yarbrough, Weatherly & Raybin, P.C.) for "slander, false light and other damages" after Hollins gave an October 2006 interview to People magazine regarding Evans' divorce claims. That lawsuit resulted in an undisclosed financial settlement and a written apology from Hollins in 2011, which stated in part: "My firm and I represented Sara Evans in a highly contested divorce from Craig Schelske... to the best of my ability. I regret that my actions on behalf of Sara Evans caused Mr. Schelske harm in any way." Schelske issued a public statement thanking God, family, and friends for staying alongside during the period, and stating: "Sara is not my enemy... Hollins... he's the one who did this." Second marriage and separation Through her marriage counselor, Evans would meet her second husband Jay Barker. The pair first began exchanging emails in 2007 and started a romantic relationship shortly afterward. Barker was a former University of Alabama quarterback, and at the time of their meeting was a radio host. The pair married on June 14, 2008 in Franklin; their children were their attendants.Finan, Eileen. (June 17, 2008) FIRST LOOK: Sara Evans Wedding Photo - Weddings, Music News, Sara Evans. People.com. Retrieved on October 17, 2015. Barker shared custody of four children with his ex-wife, which would total to seven kids when both families were present. "We are truly a family. We don't think of it as 'blended'; they are just our kids. But we also understand our roles. If I'm around when Sara's kids' father is around, I give him his place as their dad," Barker explained in 2011. The family later settled in Mountain Brook, Alabama, which is a suburb of Birmingham. In 2019, the family returned to Nashville so that Evans could live in closer proximity to the country music business. On January 15, 2022, Barker was arrested for aggravated assault, after he allegedly attempted to use his car to hit Evans while she was a passenger in a friend's car after leaving a party. The arrest affidavit has the couple listed as separated, and that Evans had filed for divorce prior to the incident in August 2021, citing "irreconcilable differences and inappropriate marital conduct". Barker responded on social media to his arrest claiming that the reports "do not adequately capture the full context and complex fabric of our lives". Barker was released from the Davidson County Jail on a $10,000 bond and was scheduled for a court appearance in March 2022. In June 2022, Barker entered a plea deal and was sentenced to a year of probation. A divorce between Evans and Barker is still "in progress", according to Billboard. Personal setbacks and challenges Evans has suffered from panic attacks and anxiety during different points in her life. In her memoir, Evans described having a "meltdown" in December 2005 once realizing her first marriage was ending. She recounted having "terrifying thoughts" of being kidnapped and losing control of herself. For ten days, Evans refused to leave her Nashville home and was afraid to "walk from one room to another". She was also briefly brought into the hospital and was diagnosed with "exhaustion". Evans found solace in her Christian faith and began working with a pastor who helped her gain control of her mental health. "He encouraged me to just stay home for the time being and get rest and let God do the rest," she remembered. Evans also met with a doctor who prescribed her anti-anxiety medication. In December 2012, Evans was nearly killed in a plane crash in Minnesota. Following a successful takeoff, the aircraft's gyroscope malfunctioned, causing her private plane to fly upside down. "I knew we had not been in the air long, so we were probably seconds from dying. I completely accepted it. It was so strange and peaceful," her memoir recalled. The pilots were able to recenter the plane despite its one wing breaking. The pilots then made an emergency landing in Fargo, North Dakota. Advocacy Evans is a spokesperson for the National Eating Disorders Association and has spoken out widely on this subject. She was influenced to become their spokesperson after having a close friend suffer from anorexia. "Thankfully, I have never suffered from an eating disorder but am well aware of our society’s obsession with body image," she told CMT. She also hosted a charity event, Fashion for Every Body, which featured a fashion show, silent auction and performance by Evans. A libertarian Republican, Evans also showed support for Texas Congressman Ron Paul in the 2008 Presidential election and was the headliner at his "Rally For The Republic" on September 2, 2008, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the same day as the Republican National Convention in neighboring St. Paul. Discography Studio albums 1997: Three Chords and the Truth 1998: No Place That Far 2000: Born to Fly 2003: Restless 2005: Real Fine Place 2011: Stronger 2014: Slow Me Down 2014: At Christmas 2017: Words 2020: Copy ThatAwards and nominations Evans has won several awards for her work as a music artist. This includes one accolade from the Academy of Country Music and one accolade from the Country Music Association. Filmography Books You'll Always Be My Baby (2006) Sweet By and By (2010) Softly and Tenderly (2011) Love Lifted Me (2012) Born to Fly: A Memoir'' (2020) Notes References Footnotes Books External links Category:1971 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century American singers Category:20th-century Christians Category:20th-century American women singers Category:21st-century American singers Category:21st-century Christians Category:21st-century American women singers Category:Alabama Republicans Category:American country singer-songwriters Category:American evangelicals Category:American women country singers Category:American libertarians Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:Christian libertarians Category:Christians from Missouri Category:Christians from Tennessee Category:Country musicians from Missouri Category:Country musicians from Tennessee Category:Musicians from Birmingham, Alabama Category:Musicians from Nashville, Tennessee Category:People from Boonville, Missouri Category:People from Howard County, Missouri Category:People from Mountain Brook, Alabama Category:RCA Records Nashville artists Category:Singer-songwriters from Missouri Category:Singer-songwriters from Tennessee Category:Tennessee Republicans Category:Country musicians from Alabama Category:Singer-songwriters from Alabama

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Leander Paes

Leander was born in Calcutta, India, on 17 June 1973 to Vece Paes, a Goan, and, Jennifer Paes, from Calcutta. He was educated at La Martiniere Calcutta, and the St. Xavier's College of the University of Calcutta. His parents were both sports persons. Vece was a midfielder in the bronze medal-winning Indian field hockey team at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Davis Cup career

Paes started his Davis Cup career in 1990 at the age of 16, when he partnered Zeeshan Ali in doubles to beat the Japanese team in a gruelling five-set encounter. He is considered one of the top Davis cup players for his country, with a record of 89-32 overall, as of July 2015. He played an important role in the Indian Davis cup team that reached the World Group from 1991-1998. He was part of the Indian Davis Cup team that reached the semifinals of the 1993 Davis Cup with wins against Switzerland and France, eventually losing to Australia. In singles, his major wins came against French duo of Arnaud Boetsch and Henri Leconte in Frejus, France in 1993, Wayne Ferreira in 1994, and Goran Ivanisevic in 1995 when India defeated Croatia, Jan Siemerink in 1995 to defeat Netherlands, and Jiri Novak in 1997. He teamed up with Bhupathi to beat Hirszon and Ivanisevic of Croatia in 1995, Martin Damm and Petr Korda of the Czech Republic in 1997, Nicolas Massu and Marcelo Rios of Chile in 1997, Broad and Tim Henman in 1998, and Simon Aspelin and Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden in 2005. In 2007, Leander has three wins (two doubles and one singles) and no losses in the Davis Cup. In 1993, ranked No. 197, he lost to No. 238 Fernon Wibierin the first round of qualifying at Wimbledon. Three weeks later he beat No. 25 Arnaud Boetsch on clay in straight sets in the Davis Cup. He also defeated Henri Leconte in the same week and even though Ramesh Krishnan closed the tie out by beating Rodolphe Gilbert in a five-setter, the architect of that victory was Paes. In 1994, ranked No 143, he lost in the first round of a Challenger to No 208 Louis Gloria. Four weeks later, he beat World No. 13 Wayne Ferreira in straight sets in the Davis Cup. In 1995, ranked No 130, he managed to beat Croatia's World No 7 Goran Ivanisevic (1992 and 1994 Wimbledon singles finalist) in a controversial five-setter on grass. Jan Siemerink, in 1996, then ranked No. 20, also fell to Paes in the Davis Cup. CANNOTANSWER

Leander Adrian Paes ( ; born 17 June 1973) is an Indian former professional tennis player. He is regarded as one of the greatest doubles tennis players ever. He holds the record for the most doubles wins in the Davis Cup. Paes won eight men's doubles and ten mixed doubles Grand Slam titles. He holds a career Grand Slam in men's doubles and mixed doubles, and achieved the rare men's/mixed double at the 1999 Wimbledon Championships. His mixed doubles Wimbledon title in 2015 made him the second man (after Rod Laver) to win Wimbledon titles in three decades. Paes received the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna award, India's highest sporting honor, in 1996–97; the Arjuna Award in 1990; the Padma Shri award in 2001; and India's third-highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan prize in January 2014, for his outstanding contributions to tennis. He won a bronze medal for India in men's singles at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. He competed in consecutive Olympics from 1992 to 2016, making him the first Indian and the only tennis player to compete in seven Olympic Games. He is a former Davis Cup team captain, and holds the record for the most Davis Cup doubles wins with 43 victories. He played in World Team Tennis for the Washington Kastles. He was on the 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 championship teams and was named Male MVP for 2009 and 2011. He is the sports ambassador of the Indian state of Haryana. Paes announced his retirement from professional tennis in 2020, before postponing his final season to 2021 following the rescheduling of the Tokyo Olympics. Early life Paes was born in Calcutta, India, on 17 June 1973 to Vece Paes, a Goan, and, Jennifer Paes, from Calcutta. He studied at La Martiniere Calcutta, Madras Christian College Higher Secondary School and at St. Xavier's College. His parents were both athletes. Vece was a midfield squad member in the bronze medal-winning Indian field hockey team at the 1972 Munich Olympics although he did not personally receive a medal as he did not take to the field in any of India's matches. His mother captained the Indian basketball team in the 1980 Asian basketball championship. Paes is a direct descendant of Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutta through his mother. Paes enrolled with the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Academy in Madras (Chennai) in 1985, where he was coached by Dave O'Meara. Paes earned international fame when he won the 1990 Wimbledon Junior title and reached No. 1 in the junior world rankings at age 17. Career Early career (1991–1997) Paes first won titles at the Junior US Open and the Junior Wimbledon. He turned professional in 1991. He became number 1 in the world junior rankings. In 1992, he reached the quarter finals of the doubles event in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics with Ramesh Krishnan. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics he beat Fernando Meligeni to win the bronze medal, the first Indian to win an individual medal since KD Jadhav won bronze at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. Paes cited the match as one of his greatest performances, in part because his wrist was severely injured. He was awarded the highest sporting honor by the government of India, the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna in 1996. His first successful year in the ATP circuit came in 1993, when he partnered with Sébastien Lareau to reach the US Open doubles semifinal. After a moderate season in 1994, he reached the quarter-finals of the 1995 Australian Open doubles with Kevin Ullyett. From 1996, he partnered with fellow Indian Mahesh Bhupathi. Their first year was not successful, especially in the Grand Slams, reaching the round of 32 only at Wimbledon. 1997 proved to be a much better year for the team, reaching the US Open semifinals. Paes climbed the doubles ranking from no. 89 at the beginning of the year to no. 14 at year-end. That year he made his best singles performance in a Grand Slam, losing in the third round of the 1997 US Open to Cédric Pioline after beating Carlos Costa and Arnaud Boetsch. Rise in doubles (1998–2002) Paes/Bhupathi grew stronger in 1998,and reached the semifinals of three Grand Slams, the Australian Open, the French Open and the US Open. Paes had two of his biggest singles results. The first one came by winning his only ATP singles title at Newport, and the second was beating Pete Sampras, 6–3, 6–4 at the New Haven ATP tournament at their only meeting. In 1999, the duo reached the finals of all four Grand Slams, winning Wimbledon and the French, thus becoming the first Indians to win a doubles event at a Grand Slam. Paes teamed up with Lisa Raymond to win the mixed doubles event at Wimbledon. The year marked his ascent to the no. 1 doubles ranking. The following year, Paes partnered with Sébastien Lareau for the Australian and Jan Siemerink for the French, losing in the first round on both occasions. Paes again teamed with Bhupathi for the US Open, but lost in the first round again. The duo had a disappointing second round exit to Australian duo of Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde at the Sydney Olympics. Paes was given the honor of carrying the Indian Flag at the opening ceremony. In spite of winning the French in 2001, Bhupathi/Paes had first-round exits in the other three Grand Slams. Paes was awarded the Padmashri by the Government of India in 2001. The duo of Paes and Bhupathi won the gold medal at the 2002 Asian Games in Busan. In 2002, Leander paired up with Michael Hill with moderate success. 2003–2007 After 2003 Paes increasingly focused on doubles. He won the mixed doubles events at the Australian and Wimbledon with Martina Navratilova, both in 2003. Weeks later, Paes was admitted to the MD Anderson Cancer Center for a suspected brain tumour that was later found to be neurocysticercosis, a parasitic brain infection. He had to miss the US Open, but recovered by the end of that year. In the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, he paired up with Bhupathi, failing again at the semifinals stage. His next Grand Slam success was in the US Open doubles event in 2006 with Martin Damm. Paes led the Indian tennis team at the Doha Asian Games in 2006 and won two golds in the men's doubles (with Bhupathi) and mixed doubles (with Sania Mirza). Paes maintained his doubles ranking in the top 20 in the world between 2005 and 2007. With wins in the Rotterdam and Indian Wells, Paes took his doubles tally to 38. 2008 Paes/Bhupathi took part in men's doubles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka, who went on to win gold. With Cara Black he won the 2008 US Open mixed doubles title. 2009 In 2009, he won the French Open and US Open Men's doubles titles with Lukáš Dlouhý and was the runner-up in mixed at the US Open. 2010 He began the 2010 season in good form, again winning the Australian Open mixed doubles title with Cara Black. This was the pair's third consecutive Grand Slam final and the fourth overall. 2012 Paes and Radek Štěpánek's 2012 Wimbledon tournament ended when the duo lost to Ivan Dodig and Marcelo Melo. Paes and Elena Vesnina reached the finals of the Wimbledon mixed doubles after beating Bob Bryan and Liezel Huber, 7–5, 3–6, 6–3 on 7 July. They lost in the final to Lisa Raymond and Mike Bryan 3–6, 7–5, 4–6. In the 2012 Summer Olympics, the Indian pair (Vishnu Vardhan) lost to French team Michaël Llodra and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 6–7, 6–4, 3–6. Paes and Štěpánek advanced to the finals at the 2012 US Open after their Spanish opponents, Marcel Granollers and Marc López, retired because of injury. However the duo lost in the final of US Open 2012 to the Bryan brothers. Paes and Štěpánek kicked off the ATP World Tour Finals with a win against Pakistan's Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi and Dutchman Jean Julien Rojer, 6–4, 7–5. They made it to the semifinals, where they were eliminated by eventual runners-up Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna. 2013 Paes/Štěpánek won the 2013 US Open, defeating Alexander Peya and Bruno Soares 6–1, 6–3. This was Paes' 3rd US Open men's doubles title and 14th Grand Slam title. In January 2014, Government of India announced its 3rd Highest Civilian Award Padma Bhushan for Paes. 2014 Paes won the 2014 Malaysian Open men's doubles with Marcin Matkowski. 2015 Paes started his 25th season on the ATP World Tour by partnering with Klaasen to reach the Chennai final, where the team lost to Lu/Marray. On 17 January, he won his 55th tour-level title in his 93rd final at Auckland, again with Klaasen. The team recorded three-match tie break victories en route to the final. With the win, Paes had won at least one trophy every season since 1997. On 1 February, Paes captured his seventh Grand Slam mixed doubles crown at the 2015 Australian Open with Martina Hingis. It was his 15th major crown overall and his third mixed doubles triumph at Melbourne Park. The pair beat defending champions Daniel Nestor and Kristina Mladenovic in the final. As No. 7 seed with Klaasen in men's doubles, Paes lost to eventual champions Bolelli/Fognini in the second round. At the 2015 French Open, Paes started a new partnership with Daniel Nestor. The pair crashed out in the third round; however, Paes became just the seventh male player in Open Era to complete 700 doubles wins. At Wimbledon 2015, Paes again teamed up with Hingis to win the mixed doubles championship. The final 6–1, 6–1 score against fifth seeds Alexander Peya and Tímea Babos came after only 41 minutes. Paes/Nestor reached the third round. By winning his 4th Wimbledon mixed doubles title, Paes shared the record for men's titles in the open era with Owen Davidson. On 12 September 2015, Paes won the mixed doubles at the 2015 US Open with Hingis, defeating Sam Querrey and Bethanie Mattek-Sands in three sets. 2016 On 3 June 2016, Leander Paes completed his Career Grand Slam in mixed by winning the 2016 French Open with Hingis, thus joining an elite league of players. He broke Davidson's record for most men's titles. Paes qualified for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Men's Doubles and partnered with Rohan Bopanna. They lost in the first round to the Polish pair of Marcin Matkowski and Łukasz Kubot. He later paired up with Andre Begemann, where they reached the final in the Winston-Salem Open. This pair lost in the first round of the 2016 US Open. He turned up for the Davis Cup against Spain with Saketh Myneni, losing to Rafael Nadal and Marc López in 4 sets. 2017 Paes played in the 2017 season with his 111th partner, Andre Sa. The duo lost to the Indian pair of Purav Raja and Divij Sharan in the first round of Aircel Chennai Open in straight sets. With this loss, Paes moved down to 64th in doubles ranks. Though India won their Davis Cup tie against New Zealand, Paes and his last-minute partner, Vishnu Vardhan, lost to the New Zealanders Artem Sitak/Michael Venus. Paes and Rohan Bopanna were kept as reserves by new, non-playing captain Mahesh Bhupathi for the tie against Uzbekistan. Eventually, Paes was dropped from the final four, which created controversy. Paes reached the semis of the Dubai Open and at Delray Beach. Paes then played a series of challenger events, never getting his ranking above 49th. He played with Adil Shamasdin, Scott Lipsky, and Purav Raja. It was the first time since 1996 that Paes failed to win a title or reach the final at an ATP tour event in a season. 2018 Paes continued his partnership with Raja, losing the Maharashtra Open in the first round to defending champions Bopanna/Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan. In the Australian Open, Paes/Raja lost in the round of 16. Paes along with James Cerretani finished as runner up in the Dubai Open. Paes was recalled to India's Davis Cup squad to play against China. On 7 April 2018, Paes became the most successful player in Davis Cup history with his 43rd doubles victory. After going 0–2 down, Paes/Bopanna scripted India's comeback and in the end, India won the tie 3–2. After this, Paes skipped clay and grass court seasons. Paes was selected for the 2018 Asian Games, but the day before the Games started, he opted out citing the lack of a doubles specialist to accompany him. Paes/Cerretani played in several Challenger tournaments, before losing in the first round of the US Open. Paes also played Challengers with Miguel Ángel Reyes-Varela. 2019 Paes/Reyes-Varela started the 2019 season at the Maharashtra Open. The duo lost a close quarter-final to the eventual champions, Bopanna/Divij Sharan, 17–15 in a match tie-break. Paes/Reyes-Varela then finished as runners-up in the Da Nang Challenger before losing in the first round of the Australian Open. Paes reached the semi-finals of the Hall of Fame Championship in July 2019. Davis Cup Paes started his Davis Cup career in 1990, when he partnered Zeeshan Ali in doubles to beat the Japanese team in a five-set encounter. He played a key role on the Indian team that reached the World Group from 1991 to 1998. He was part of the Indian team that reached the semifinals 1993 with wins against Switzerland and France, eventually losing to Australia. In singles, his major wins came against the French duo of Arnaud Boetsch and Henri Leconte in 1993, Wayne Ferreira in 1994, and Goran Ivanišević in 1995 when India defeated Croatia, beating Jan Siemerink in 1996 to defeat Netherlands, and Jiří Novák in 1997. He teamed up with Bhupathi to beat Hirszon/Ivanisevic of Croatia in 1995, Damm/Korda of the Czech Republic in 1997, Massú/Ríos of Chile in 1997, Broad/Henman in 1998, and Aspelin/Björkman of Sweden in 2005. In 2007, Leander had three wins (two doubles and one singles) and no losses. In 1993, he defeated No. 25 Arnaud Boetsch in straight sets on clay. Paes defeated Henri Leconte in the same week, and although Ramesh Krishnan won the tie-breaker against Rodolphe Gilbert, it was Paes who put that match over the top. In 1994, he beat World No. 13 Wayne Ferreira in straight sets, but lost the overall tie. Year-end finals Paes appeared with Bhupathi in six season finales. Paes played at the year-end championships with Bhupathi each year from 1997 to 2000, as well as in 2002 and 2011, reaching three finals. In 1997 they lost the final to Rick Leach and Jonathan Stark. They lost 1999 final to Sébastien Lareau and Alex O'Brien. In 2000, they lost the final to Donald Johnson and Pieter Norval. Playing style Leander has been described as having a strange playing style by Andre Agassi. He varies his play as the match goes on; he is one of the best volleyers and a talented drop shotter. His volleying techniques were learnt from former Indian player Akhtar Ali. He hits a one-handed backhand, which he drives only seldom, preferring instead to slice when returning serve or rallying from his backhand. Other activities In 2010, he joined the Board of Directors of Olympic Gold Quest, a foundation co-founded by Geet Sethi and Prakash Padukone to support talented Indian athletes. Acting career Leander made his film debut in Ashok Kohli's Rajdhani Express, a socio-political thriller. Significant finals Grand Slam finals Doubles: 16 (8 titles, 8 runner-ups) By winning the 2012 Australian Open title, Paes achieved the career Grand Slam. Mixed doubles: 18 (10 titles, 8 runner-ups) Olympic medal matches Singles: 1 (1 bronze medal) Bronze medal final Doubles: 1 ATP career finals Singles: 1 (1 title) Doubles: 98 (55 titles, 43 runners-up) ATP Challenger and ITF Futures finals Singles: 14 (11 titles, 3 runner-ups) Doubles: 44 (26 titles, 18 runner-ups) Performance timelines Singles Doubles Current through the 2020 ATP Tour. Mixed doubles Partnerships Leander Paes is known for changing partnerships, and he has had over 100 different partners over his career. Paes teamed with 25 players in Grand Slam mixed doubles. Partners in men's doubles Partners in Mixed doubles These lists consist of players who played with Paes in ATP and ITF-recognized tournaments which include the Olympics, Grand Slams, World Tour Finals, World Tour Masters, World Tour Series, Davis Cup ties, and ATP Challengers. They do not include the players who played with him in the other unrecognized multi-sport events and leagues such as World TeamTennis. The order of the players in the list is based on their first partnering with Paes. Sania Mirza had also earlier played with Paes in 2006 and 2010 in the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games. Other partners Indian Team Mahesh Bhupathi Rohan Bopanna Sania Mirza World Team Tennis Bobby Reynolds Anastasia Rodionova Venus Williams Serena Williams Rennae Stubbs Scott Oudsema Martina Hingis Denis Kudla Sam Querrey Champions Tennis League Garbiñe Muguruza Somdev Devvarman Partnership with Mahesh Bhupathi The duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi was nicknamed the ″Indian Express″. Paes' off-and-on partnership with Bhupathi drew constant media attention in their home country. In the 2006 Asian Games, a loss to the Chinese Taipei team in the team event led Leander to question Bhupathi's commitment to Team India. He once stated in an interview that although he and Bhupathi are friends, he did not consider pairing with his former teammate. However, for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, they reunited for their country, losing in the quarterfinals to eventual champions Federer/Wawrinka. In 2011, the pair won doubles at the Chennai Open. They reunited to play in a Grand Slam Tournament after nine years and claimed runners-up in the 2011 Australian Open and reached the semifinals in the year-end championships. The Indian duo has a 303–103 career record together. They have a high success rate against various top teams. They have a Davis Cup record for the longest doubles winning streak, with 24 straight wins. Paes paired with Vishnu Vardhan at the London Olympics 2012, following Bhupathi and Bopanna 's refusal. Paes threatened to withdraw from the Olympics rather than play with Vardhan, whose world ranking was 296, but withdrew the threat a week later. Paes and Vardhan reached the second round of the tournament, losing to French silver medalists Llodra/Tsonga. In 2021, Zee5 produced a documentary called Break Point, showing the ups and downs in the relationship between Paes and Bhupathi. Davis Cup record The duo has the longest doubles streak in Davis Cup history.(24 consecutive wins, total 25–2) References External links Category:1973 births Category:Living people Category:Bengali people Category:Sportspeople from Kolkata Category:Goan people Category:St. Xavier's College, Kolkata alumni Category:Asian Games gold medalists for India Category:Australian Open (tennis) champions Category:French Open champions Category:Indian male tennis players Category:La Martiniere Calcutta alumni Category:Olympic bronze medalists for India Category:Olympic medalists in tennis Category:Olympic tennis players for India Category:Tennis players from Kolkata Category:Racket sportspeople from Goa Category:Recipients of the Arjuna Award Category:Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports Category:Recipients of the Khel Ratna Award Category:Tennis players at the 1992 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 1996 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2000 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2004 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2008 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2012 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2016 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2010 Commonwealth Games Category:US Open (tennis) junior champions Category:US Open (tennis) champions Category:University of Calcutta alumni Category:Wimbledon champions Category:Wimbledon junior champions Category:Grand Slam (tennis) champions in mixed doubles Category:Grand Slam (tennis) champions in men's doubles Category:Asian Games medalists in tennis Category:Tennis players at the 1990 Asian Games Category:Tennis players at the 1994 Asian Games Category:Tennis players at the 2002 Asian Games Category:Tennis players at the 2006 Asian Games Category:Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports Category:Medalists at the 1996 Summer Olympics Category:Commonwealth Games bronze medallists for India Category:Asian Games bronze medalists for India Category:Commonwealth Games medallists in tennis Category:Medalists at the 1990 Asian Games Category:Medalists at the 1994 Asian Games Category:Medalists at the 2002 Asian Games Category:Medalists at the 2006 Asian Games Category:People from New Alipore Category:Grand Slam (tennis) champions in boys' singles Category:Trinamool Congress politicians Category:ATP number 1 ranked doubles tennis players Category:ITF World Champions Category:Medallists at the 2010 Commonwealth Games

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Leander Paes

Leander was born in Calcutta, India, on 17 June 1973 to Vece Paes, a Goan, and, Jennifer Paes, from Calcutta. He was educated at La Martiniere Calcutta, and the St. Xavier's College of the University of Calcutta. His parents were both sports persons. Vece was a midfielder in the bronze medal-winning Indian field hockey team at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Partnership with Mahesh Bhupathi

The duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi were nicknamed the ''Indian Express''. Leander Paes' off-and-on partnership with Bhupathi drew constant media attention in their home country India. In the 2006 Asian Games, a loss to the Chinese Taipei team in the team event led Leander to question Bhupathi's commitment to Team India. He once stated in an interview that although he and Bhupathi are friends, he did not consider pairing with his former teammate. However, for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, they decided to play together for their country, and lost in the quarterfinals to the eventual champions Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka. In 2011, the "Indian Express" pair won the doubles title at Chennai Open. They reunited to play in a Grand Slam Tournament after nine years and claimed runners-up in the 2011 Australian Open and reached the semifinals in the year-end championships. The Indian duo has a 303-103 career record together. They have a higher success rate against various top teams. They have a Davis Cup record of longest winning streak in doubles, with 24 straight wins. Leander Paes was paired with Vishnu Vardhan at the London Olympics 2012, following the refusal of Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna to play with him at the Olympics. Paes threatened to withdraw from the Olympics rather than play with Vardhan, whose world ranking was 296, but withdrew the threat a week later. Paes and Vardhan reached the second round of the tournament, losing to eventual silver medalists Michael Llodra and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France. CANNOTANSWER

Leander Adrian Paes ( ; born 17 June 1973) is an Indian former professional tennis player. He is regarded as one of the greatest doubles tennis players ever. He holds the record for the most doubles wins in the Davis Cup. Paes won eight men's doubles and ten mixed doubles Grand Slam titles. He holds a career Grand Slam in men's doubles and mixed doubles, and achieved the rare men's/mixed double at the 1999 Wimbledon Championships. His mixed doubles Wimbledon title in 2015 made him the second man (after Rod Laver) to win Wimbledon titles in three decades. Paes received the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna award, India's highest sporting honor, in 1996–97; the Arjuna Award in 1990; the Padma Shri award in 2001; and India's third-highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan prize in January 2014, for his outstanding contributions to tennis. He won a bronze medal for India in men's singles at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. He competed in consecutive Olympics from 1992 to 2016, making him the first Indian and the only tennis player to compete in seven Olympic Games. He is a former Davis Cup team captain, and holds the record for the most Davis Cup doubles wins with 43 victories. He played in World Team Tennis for the Washington Kastles. He was on the 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 championship teams and was named Male MVP for 2009 and 2011. He is the sports ambassador of the Indian state of Haryana. Paes announced his retirement from professional tennis in 2020, before postponing his final season to 2021 following the rescheduling of the Tokyo Olympics. Early life Paes was born in Calcutta, India, on 17 June 1973 to Vece Paes, a Goan, and, Jennifer Paes, from Calcutta. He studied at La Martiniere Calcutta, Madras Christian College Higher Secondary School and at St. Xavier's College. His parents were both athletes. Vece was a midfield squad member in the bronze medal-winning Indian field hockey team at the 1972 Munich Olympics although he did not personally receive a medal as he did not take to the field in any of India's matches. His mother captained the Indian basketball team in the 1980 Asian basketball championship. Paes is a direct descendant of Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutta through his mother. Paes enrolled with the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Academy in Madras (Chennai) in 1985, where he was coached by Dave O'Meara. Paes earned international fame when he won the 1990 Wimbledon Junior title and reached No. 1 in the junior world rankings at age 17. Career Early career (1991–1997) Paes first won titles at the Junior US Open and the Junior Wimbledon. He turned professional in 1991. He became number 1 in the world junior rankings. In 1992, he reached the quarter finals of the doubles event in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics with Ramesh Krishnan. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics he beat Fernando Meligeni to win the bronze medal, the first Indian to win an individual medal since KD Jadhav won bronze at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. Paes cited the match as one of his greatest performances, in part because his wrist was severely injured. He was awarded the highest sporting honor by the government of India, the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna in 1996. His first successful year in the ATP circuit came in 1993, when he partnered with Sébastien Lareau to reach the US Open doubles semifinal. After a moderate season in 1994, he reached the quarter-finals of the 1995 Australian Open doubles with Kevin Ullyett. From 1996, he partnered with fellow Indian Mahesh Bhupathi. Their first year was not successful, especially in the Grand Slams, reaching the round of 32 only at Wimbledon. 1997 proved to be a much better year for the team, reaching the US Open semifinals. Paes climbed the doubles ranking from no. 89 at the beginning of the year to no. 14 at year-end. That year he made his best singles performance in a Grand Slam, losing in the third round of the 1997 US Open to Cédric Pioline after beating Carlos Costa and Arnaud Boetsch. Rise in doubles (1998–2002) Paes/Bhupathi grew stronger in 1998,and reached the semifinals of three Grand Slams, the Australian Open, the French Open and the US Open. Paes had two of his biggest singles results. The first one came by winning his only ATP singles title at Newport, and the second was beating Pete Sampras, 6–3, 6–4 at the New Haven ATP tournament at their only meeting. In 1999, the duo reached the finals of all four Grand Slams, winning Wimbledon and the French, thus becoming the first Indians to win a doubles event at a Grand Slam. Paes teamed up with Lisa Raymond to win the mixed doubles event at Wimbledon. The year marked his ascent to the no. 1 doubles ranking. The following year, Paes partnered with Sébastien Lareau for the Australian and Jan Siemerink for the French, losing in the first round on both occasions. Paes again teamed with Bhupathi for the US Open, but lost in the first round again. The duo had a disappointing second round exit to Australian duo of Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde at the Sydney Olympics. Paes was given the honor of carrying the Indian Flag at the opening ceremony. In spite of winning the French in 2001, Bhupathi/Paes had first-round exits in the other three Grand Slams. Paes was awarded the Padmashri by the Government of India in 2001. The duo of Paes and Bhupathi won the gold medal at the 2002 Asian Games in Busan. In 2002, Leander paired up with Michael Hill with moderate success. 2003–2007 After 2003 Paes increasingly focused on doubles. He won the mixed doubles events at the Australian and Wimbledon with Martina Navratilova, both in 2003. Weeks later, Paes was admitted to the MD Anderson Cancer Center for a suspected brain tumour that was later found to be neurocysticercosis, a parasitic brain infection. He had to miss the US Open, but recovered by the end of that year. In the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, he paired up with Bhupathi, failing again at the semifinals stage. His next Grand Slam success was in the US Open doubles event in 2006 with Martin Damm. Paes led the Indian tennis team at the Doha Asian Games in 2006 and won two golds in the men's doubles (with Bhupathi) and mixed doubles (with Sania Mirza). Paes maintained his doubles ranking in the top 20 in the world between 2005 and 2007. With wins in the Rotterdam and Indian Wells, Paes took his doubles tally to 38. 2008 Paes/Bhupathi took part in men's doubles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka, who went on to win gold. With Cara Black he won the 2008 US Open mixed doubles title. 2009 In 2009, he won the French Open and US Open Men's doubles titles with Lukáš Dlouhý and was the runner-up in mixed at the US Open. 2010 He began the 2010 season in good form, again winning the Australian Open mixed doubles title with Cara Black. This was the pair's third consecutive Grand Slam final and the fourth overall. 2012 Paes and Radek Štěpánek's 2012 Wimbledon tournament ended when the duo lost to Ivan Dodig and Marcelo Melo. Paes and Elena Vesnina reached the finals of the Wimbledon mixed doubles after beating Bob Bryan and Liezel Huber, 7–5, 3–6, 6–3 on 7 July. They lost in the final to Lisa Raymond and Mike Bryan 3–6, 7–5, 4–6. In the 2012 Summer Olympics, the Indian pair (Vishnu Vardhan) lost to French team Michaël Llodra and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 6–7, 6–4, 3–6. Paes and Štěpánek advanced to the finals at the 2012 US Open after their Spanish opponents, Marcel Granollers and Marc López, retired because of injury. However the duo lost in the final of US Open 2012 to the Bryan brothers. Paes and Štěpánek kicked off the ATP World Tour Finals with a win against Pakistan's Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi and Dutchman Jean Julien Rojer, 6–4, 7–5. They made it to the semifinals, where they were eliminated by eventual runners-up Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna. 2013 Paes/Štěpánek won the 2013 US Open, defeating Alexander Peya and Bruno Soares 6–1, 6–3. This was Paes' 3rd US Open men's doubles title and 14th Grand Slam title. In January 2014, Government of India announced its 3rd Highest Civilian Award Padma Bhushan for Paes. 2014 Paes won the 2014 Malaysian Open men's doubles with Marcin Matkowski. 2015 Paes started his 25th season on the ATP World Tour by partnering with Klaasen to reach the Chennai final, where the team lost to Lu/Marray. On 17 January, he won his 55th tour-level title in his 93rd final at Auckland, again with Klaasen. The team recorded three-match tie break victories en route to the final. With the win, Paes had won at least one trophy every season since 1997. On 1 February, Paes captured his seventh Grand Slam mixed doubles crown at the 2015 Australian Open with Martina Hingis. It was his 15th major crown overall and his third mixed doubles triumph at Melbourne Park. The pair beat defending champions Daniel Nestor and Kristina Mladenovic in the final. As No. 7 seed with Klaasen in men's doubles, Paes lost to eventual champions Bolelli/Fognini in the second round. At the 2015 French Open, Paes started a new partnership with Daniel Nestor. The pair crashed out in the third round; however, Paes became just the seventh male player in Open Era to complete 700 doubles wins. At Wimbledon 2015, Paes again teamed up with Hingis to win the mixed doubles championship. The final 6–1, 6–1 score against fifth seeds Alexander Peya and Tímea Babos came after only 41 minutes. Paes/Nestor reached the third round. By winning his 4th Wimbledon mixed doubles title, Paes shared the record for men's titles in the open era with Owen Davidson. On 12 September 2015, Paes won the mixed doubles at the 2015 US Open with Hingis, defeating Sam Querrey and Bethanie Mattek-Sands in three sets. 2016 On 3 June 2016, Leander Paes completed his Career Grand Slam in mixed by winning the 2016 French Open with Hingis, thus joining an elite league of players. He broke Davidson's record for most men's titles. Paes qualified for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Men's Doubles and partnered with Rohan Bopanna. They lost in the first round to the Polish pair of Marcin Matkowski and Łukasz Kubot. He later paired up with Andre Begemann, where they reached the final in the Winston-Salem Open. This pair lost in the first round of the 2016 US Open. He turned up for the Davis Cup against Spain with Saketh Myneni, losing to Rafael Nadal and Marc López in 4 sets. 2017 Paes played in the 2017 season with his 111th partner, Andre Sa. The duo lost to the Indian pair of Purav Raja and Divij Sharan in the first round of Aircel Chennai Open in straight sets. With this loss, Paes moved down to 64th in doubles ranks. Though India won their Davis Cup tie against New Zealand, Paes and his last-minute partner, Vishnu Vardhan, lost to the New Zealanders Artem Sitak/Michael Venus. Paes and Rohan Bopanna were kept as reserves by new, non-playing captain Mahesh Bhupathi for the tie against Uzbekistan. Eventually, Paes was dropped from the final four, which created controversy. Paes reached the semis of the Dubai Open and at Delray Beach. Paes then played a series of challenger events, never getting his ranking above 49th. He played with Adil Shamasdin, Scott Lipsky, and Purav Raja. It was the first time since 1996 that Paes failed to win a title or reach the final at an ATP tour event in a season. 2018 Paes continued his partnership with Raja, losing the Maharashtra Open in the first round to defending champions Bopanna/Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan. In the Australian Open, Paes/Raja lost in the round of 16. Paes along with James Cerretani finished as runner up in the Dubai Open. Paes was recalled to India's Davis Cup squad to play against China. On 7 April 2018, Paes became the most successful player in Davis Cup history with his 43rd doubles victory. After going 0–2 down, Paes/Bopanna scripted India's comeback and in the end, India won the tie 3–2. After this, Paes skipped clay and grass court seasons. Paes was selected for the 2018 Asian Games, but the day before the Games started, he opted out citing the lack of a doubles specialist to accompany him. Paes/Cerretani played in several Challenger tournaments, before losing in the first round of the US Open. Paes also played Challengers with Miguel Ángel Reyes-Varela. 2019 Paes/Reyes-Varela started the 2019 season at the Maharashtra Open. The duo lost a close quarter-final to the eventual champions, Bopanna/Divij Sharan, 17–15 in a match tie-break. Paes/Reyes-Varela then finished as runners-up in the Da Nang Challenger before losing in the first round of the Australian Open. Paes reached the semi-finals of the Hall of Fame Championship in July 2019. Davis Cup Paes started his Davis Cup career in 1990, when he partnered Zeeshan Ali in doubles to beat the Japanese team in a five-set encounter. He played a key role on the Indian team that reached the World Group from 1991 to 1998. He was part of the Indian team that reached the semifinals 1993 with wins against Switzerland and France, eventually losing to Australia. In singles, his major wins came against the French duo of Arnaud Boetsch and Henri Leconte in 1993, Wayne Ferreira in 1994, and Goran Ivanišević in 1995 when India defeated Croatia, beating Jan Siemerink in 1996 to defeat Netherlands, and Jiří Novák in 1997. He teamed up with Bhupathi to beat Hirszon/Ivanisevic of Croatia in 1995, Damm/Korda of the Czech Republic in 1997, Massú/Ríos of Chile in 1997, Broad/Henman in 1998, and Aspelin/Björkman of Sweden in 2005. In 2007, Leander had three wins (two doubles and one singles) and no losses. In 1993, he defeated No. 25 Arnaud Boetsch in straight sets on clay. Paes defeated Henri Leconte in the same week, and although Ramesh Krishnan won the tie-breaker against Rodolphe Gilbert, it was Paes who put that match over the top. In 1994, he beat World No. 13 Wayne Ferreira in straight sets, but lost the overall tie. Year-end finals Paes appeared with Bhupathi in six season finales. Paes played at the year-end championships with Bhupathi each year from 1997 to 2000, as well as in 2002 and 2011, reaching three finals. In 1997 they lost the final to Rick Leach and Jonathan Stark. They lost 1999 final to Sébastien Lareau and Alex O'Brien. In 2000, they lost the final to Donald Johnson and Pieter Norval. Playing style Leander has been described as having a strange playing style by Andre Agassi. He varies his play as the match goes on; he is one of the best volleyers and a talented drop shotter. His volleying techniques were learnt from former Indian player Akhtar Ali. He hits a one-handed backhand, which he drives only seldom, preferring instead to slice when returning serve or rallying from his backhand. Other activities In 2010, he joined the Board of Directors of Olympic Gold Quest, a foundation co-founded by Geet Sethi and Prakash Padukone to support talented Indian athletes. Acting career Leander made his film debut in Ashok Kohli's Rajdhani Express, a socio-political thriller. Significant finals Grand Slam finals Doubles: 16 (8 titles, 8 runner-ups) By winning the 2012 Australian Open title, Paes achieved the career Grand Slam. Mixed doubles: 18 (10 titles, 8 runner-ups) Olympic medal matches Singles: 1 (1 bronze medal) Bronze medal final Doubles: 1 ATP career finals Singles: 1 (1 title) Doubles: 98 (55 titles, 43 runners-up) ATP Challenger and ITF Futures finals Singles: 14 (11 titles, 3 runner-ups) Doubles: 44 (26 titles, 18 runner-ups) Performance timelines Singles Doubles Current through the 2020 ATP Tour. Mixed doubles Partnerships Leander Paes is known for changing partnerships, and he has had over 100 different partners over his career. Paes teamed with 25 players in Grand Slam mixed doubles. Partners in men's doubles Partners in Mixed doubles These lists consist of players who played with Paes in ATP and ITF-recognized tournaments which include the Olympics, Grand Slams, World Tour Finals, World Tour Masters, World Tour Series, Davis Cup ties, and ATP Challengers. They do not include the players who played with him in the other unrecognized multi-sport events and leagues such as World TeamTennis. The order of the players in the list is based on their first partnering with Paes. Sania Mirza had also earlier played with Paes in 2006 and 2010 in the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games. Other partners Indian Team Mahesh Bhupathi Rohan Bopanna Sania Mirza World Team Tennis Bobby Reynolds Anastasia Rodionova Venus Williams Serena Williams Rennae Stubbs Scott Oudsema Martina Hingis Denis Kudla Sam Querrey Champions Tennis League Garbiñe Muguruza Somdev Devvarman Partnership with Mahesh Bhupathi The duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi was nicknamed the ″Indian Express″. Paes' off-and-on partnership with Bhupathi drew constant media attention in their home country. In the 2006 Asian Games, a loss to the Chinese Taipei team in the team event led Leander to question Bhupathi's commitment to Team India. He once stated in an interview that although he and Bhupathi are friends, he did not consider pairing with his former teammate. However, for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, they reunited for their country, losing in the quarterfinals to eventual champions Federer/Wawrinka. In 2011, the pair won doubles at the Chennai Open. They reunited to play in a Grand Slam Tournament after nine years and claimed runners-up in the 2011 Australian Open and reached the semifinals in the year-end championships. The Indian duo has a 303–103 career record together. They have a high success rate against various top teams. They have a Davis Cup record for the longest doubles winning streak, with 24 straight wins. Paes paired with Vishnu Vardhan at the London Olympics 2012, following Bhupathi and Bopanna 's refusal. Paes threatened to withdraw from the Olympics rather than play with Vardhan, whose world ranking was 296, but withdrew the threat a week later. Paes and Vardhan reached the second round of the tournament, losing to French silver medalists Llodra/Tsonga. In 2021, Zee5 produced a documentary called Break Point, showing the ups and downs in the relationship between Paes and Bhupathi. Davis Cup record The duo has the longest doubles streak in Davis Cup history.(24 consecutive wins, total 25–2) References External links Category:1973 births Category:Living people Category:Bengali people Category:Sportspeople from Kolkata Category:Goan people Category:St. Xavier's College, Kolkata alumni Category:Asian Games gold medalists for India Category:Australian Open (tennis) champions Category:French Open champions Category:Indian male tennis players Category:La Martiniere Calcutta alumni Category:Olympic bronze medalists for India Category:Olympic medalists in tennis Category:Olympic tennis players for India Category:Tennis players from Kolkata Category:Racket sportspeople from Goa Category:Recipients of the Arjuna Award Category:Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports Category:Recipients of the Khel Ratna Award Category:Tennis players at the 1992 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 1996 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2000 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2004 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2008 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2012 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2016 Summer Olympics Category:Tennis players at the 2010 Commonwealth Games Category:US Open (tennis) junior champions Category:US Open (tennis) champions Category:University of Calcutta alumni Category:Wimbledon champions Category:Wimbledon junior champions Category:Grand Slam (tennis) champions in mixed doubles Category:Grand Slam (tennis) champions in men's doubles Category:Asian Games medalists in tennis Category:Tennis players at the 1990 Asian Games Category:Tennis players at the 1994 Asian Games Category:Tennis players at the 2002 Asian Games Category:Tennis players at the 2006 Asian Games Category:Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports Category:Medalists at the 1996 Summer Olympics Category:Commonwealth Games bronze medallists for India Category:Asian Games bronze medalists for India Category:Commonwealth Games medallists in tennis Category:Medalists at the 1990 Asian Games Category:Medalists at the 1994 Asian Games Category:Medalists at the 2002 Asian Games Category:Medalists at the 2006 Asian Games Category:People from New Alipore Category:Grand Slam (tennis) champions in boys' singles Category:Trinamool Congress politicians Category:ATP number 1 ranked doubles tennis players Category:ITF World Champions Category:Medallists at the 2010 Commonwealth Games

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Travis (band)

Travis are a Scottish rock band formed in Glasgow in 1990, composed of Fran Healy (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Dougie Payne (bass guitar, backing vocals), Andy Dunlop (lead guitar, banjo, backing vocals) and Neil Primrose (drums, percussion). The band's name comes from the Harry Dean Stanton character Travis Henderson from the film Paris, Texas. The band is widely claimed by the media as having paved the way for other bands such as Keane and Coldplay to go onto achieve worldwide success throughout the 2000s, particularly through the band's The Man Who (1999) album. The band released their debut album, Good Feeling (1997) to moderate success where it debuted at number nine on the UK Albums Chart and went onto achieve a silver certification from the BPI in January 2000.

Primrose's accident and change in direction (2002-06)

In 2002, however, things came to a halt for Travis, with the band almost calling it quits, after drummer Neil Primrose went head-first into a shallow swimming pool while on tour in France, just after a concert at Eurockeennes festival. Breaking his neck, he almost died due to spinal damage. If not for his road crew, he also would have drowned. Despite the severity of the accident, Primrose has since made a full recovery. With Primrose having recovered, Travis regrouped and re-evaluated. Moving into a cottage in Crear, Argyll and Bute, they set up a small studio, and over two weeks, came up with nine new songs that would form the basis of their fourth studio album, 2003's 12 Memories. Produced by Travis themselves, Tchad Blake, and Steve Orchard, the album marked a move into more organic, moody and political territory for the band. Although this seems to have alienated some fans, the album generally received very positive reviews (for example, "Then, of course, there's Travis and their album 12 Memories [Epic]. You just have to sit there and listen to it all the way through, and it will take you on a real journey. It's like an old album. It's like the Beatles' Revolver [1966]. Fran Healy's voice and lyrics are mesmerizing and beautiful"--Elton John), singles such as "Re-Offender" did very well on the UK chart, and the album itself reached No. 3. Yet it also saw them lose ground in the U.S., where Coldplay had usurped Travis during their 2002 absence. Much later, Fran Healy spoke about the album as a whole being about him working through his own clinical depression, and the 12 memories being 12 reasons for him reaching his depressed state. At the time this wasn't mentioned, but the revelation that Healy was depressed ties in with the band's decision to take longer writing and releasing their next work. In 2004, Travis embarked on a highly successful tour of Canada, the US, and Europe (supported by Keane in the UK), and on November 2004, the band released a successful compilation of their singles, Singles, as well as the new tracks, "Walking in the Sun" and "The Distance" (written by Dougie Payne). This was followed by a series of small, intimate gigs at UK venues such as Liverpool's Cavern Club, London's Mean Fiddler, and Glasgow's Barrowlands. While on tour, the band also made a series of impromptu acoustic "busks", raising money for the charity The Big Issue. In addition to other performances, they also headlined the 2005 Isle of Wight Festival and T in the Park. On 2 July 2005, Travis performed at Live 8's London concert, and four days later, at the Edinburgh 50,000 - The Final Push concert. Travis also participated in Band Aid 20's re-recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?"--Healy and friend Nigel Godrich playing leading roles in its organisation. Healy is a part of the Make Poverty History movement, having recently made two trips to Sudan with the Save the Children organisation. On 13 July 2006, the members of Travis stuck a giant post-it sticker on the front door of the Downing Street home of British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. It read: "Tony Blair--Some steps forward, much to do at the G8, make poverty history." CANNOTANSWER

Travis are a Scottish rock band formed in Glasgow in 1990, composed of Fran Healy (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Dougie Payne (bass guitar, backing vocals), Andy Dunlop (lead guitar, banjo, backing vocals) and Neil Primrose (drums, percussion). The band's name comes from the character Travis Henderson (played by Harry Dean Stanton) from the film Paris, Texas (1984). The band released their debut album, Good Feeling (1997), to moderate success where it debuted at number nine on the UK Albums Chart and was later awarded a silver certification from the BPI in January 2000. The band gained greater success with their second album, The Man Who (1999), which spent nine weeks at number one on the UK Albums Chart, totalling 134 weeks in the top 100 of the chart. In 2003, The Man Who was certified 9× platinum by the BPI, representing sales of over 2.68 million in the UK alone. Following this success, the band released their third effort, The Invisible Band (2001) album. The Invisible Band went on to match the success found with their previous album, where it debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and spent a total of four weeks at the top spot, fifteen weeks in the top ten, and a total of fifty-five weeks in the top 100 chart, as well as peaking at thirty-nine on the US Billboard 200 album chart, spending a duration of seven weeks in the Billboard 200 chart. A year following the release of The Invisible Band, the BPI awarded Travis with a 4× platinum certification for the album. The band's subsequent discography has included studio albums 12 Memories (2003), The Boy with No Name (2007), Ode to J. Smith (2008), Where You Stand (2013), Everything at Once (2016) and 10 Songs (2020). In 2004, the band released their first greatest hits album, Singles, which spent nineteen weeks in the top 100 of the UK albums chart. Travis have twice been awarded best band at the BRIT Awards and were awarded the NME Artist of the Year award at their 2000 ceremony, and in 2016 were honoured at the Scottish Music Awards for their outstanding contribution to music. The band are widely said by the media to have paved the way for other bands such as Coldplay to go on to achieve worldwide success throughout the 2000s, particularly with the success of The Man Who. Craft Recordings celebrated the 20th anniversary of Travis' breakthrough year with two simultaneous releases: Live at Glastonbury '99, plus expanded editions of The Man Who – both of which were released on 21 June 2019. History Formation and early years (1990–1993) The band that would become Travis was formed by brothers Chris Martyn (bass) and Geoff Martyn (keyboards) along with Simon Jarvis (drums). Andy Dunlop, a school friend at Lenzie Academy, was drafted in on guitar. The line-up was completed by a female vocalist, Catherine Maxwell, and the band's name became "Glass Onion", after the Beatles song of the same name. Neil Primrose joined to replace Jarvis. Parting company with their singer in the spring of 1991, they auditioned for a new vocalist. Having met each other through Primrose pouring him a pint, an untrained art student, Fran Healy, then joined after being invited to audition by Primrose. Healy joined the band on the day he enrolled at The Glasgow School of Art, in the autumn of 1991. Two years later, with the option of music holding more appeal, Healy dropped out of art school, and inspired by songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, assumed songwriting responsibilities. With brothers Chris and Geoff Martyn on bass and keyboards, in 1993, the fivesome released a privately made CD, The Glass Onion EP, featuring the tracks "Dream On", "The Day Before", "Free Soul" and "Whenever She Comes Round". 500 copies of the EP were made and were recently valued at £1000 each. Other songs they recorded but were left off are "She's So Strange" and "Not About to Change". The band won a talent contest organised by the Music in Scotland Trust, who promised £2,000 so that Travis could deal-hunt at a new music seminar in New York. Two weeks before they were due to leave, however, the prize was instead given to the Music in Scotland Trust Directory. The band showed promise but had yet to evolve into a decent line-up capable of fulfilling it and spent several years treading water. According to their publisher Charlie Pinder: "They were a band that everyone in the A&R community knew about and would go and see every now and then. But they weren’t very good. They had quite good songs; Fran always did write good songs." While on a visit to Scotland, American engineer and producer Niko Bolas, a long-time Neil Young and Rolling Stones associate, tuned into a Travis session on Radio Scotland, and heard something in the band's music which instantly made him travel to Perth to see them. Healy: "He told us we were shit, took us in the studio for four days, and taught us how to play properly, like a band. He was ballsy, rude, and New York pushy. He didn't believe my lyrics and told me to write what I believed in and not tell lies. He was Mary Poppins, he sorted us out." The band recorded a five-song demo, which included the song "All I Want to Do Is Rock". Changes and debut album (1994–1997) With the sudden death of his grandfather, a grief-stricken Healy shut himself away, refusing to talk to anyone. Emerging a week later, and with a clear vision of where he now wanted Travis and their music to go, Healy dispensed with the band's management and publicity agent. Having been repeatedly knocked back by the British record industry, the band couldn't afford to stay around the country for another few years and so decided to move to New York, feeling that the U.S. might be more suited to their style of music. Before leaving Healy told the band that they should send the demo to Charlie Pinder of Sony Music Publishing, who they had known for a few years and regularly sent songs to, saying: "If he's not into it, then we'll go." Pinder was immediately impressed by the song "All I Want to Do is Rock", which he felt was a dramatic change for the band: "It was harder, more exciting, sexy; all things that they never really were. They turned a corner." After performing a secret gig for Pinder and his boss at Sony, Blair McDonald, they were signed to Sony Music Publishing. The immediate impact of was that the founding member and keyboard player Geoff Martyn was removed while the bassist, his brother Chris, was replaced with Healy's best friend Dougie Payne. The band was moved to London where they were given a rehearsal room and a house. Payne, a fellow art student who worked as a Levi's shop assistant, had not played bass guitar previously and initially proved reluctant to take up the new instrument. After having completed a crash course of a couple of weeks, Payne played with the new line-up for the first time in a free space above the Horse Shoe Bar in Glasgow. Once set up in London the band spent between nine months and a year recording new songs. The band played their first London show at the Dublin Castle in Camden. With around twenty good songs ready they then approached managers Colin Lester and Ian McAndrew of Wildlife Entertainment who then introduced the band to Andy MacDonald, owner of Go! Discs Records and founder of Independiente Records. Sensing greatness, he negotiated with Wildlife Entertainment and signed Travis for a reputed £100,000 of his own money. The band is signed to MacDonald personally, not to the label—if MacDonald ever leaves the Sony-financed label Independiente Records, the band goes with him (commonly referred to in the industry as a "golden handcuffs" clause). Produced by Steve Lillywhite of U2 fame, Travis' first studio album, 1997's Good Feeling, is a rockier, more upbeat record than the band's others to date. Recorded at the legendary Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York, the place where Travis favourite The Band recorded, the album contained singles such as "All I Want to Do Is Rock", "U16 Girls", the Beatle'esque "Tied to the 90s", "Happy" and "More Than Us". Guest musicians include Page McConnell of Phish playing keyboards on the title track "Good Feeling". The album reached No. 9 on the UK Albums Chart, but with little radio play, it slipped from the chart relatively quickly. Although it heralded Travis' arrival on the British music scene, received extremely positive reviews, and substantially broadened Travis' fan base, it sold just 40,000 copies. Following the release, Travis toured extensively, their live performances further enhancing their reputation. This included support slots in the UK for Oasis, after Noel Gallagher became an outspoken fan. Mainstream success (1998–2001) Travis' second album, 1999's The Man Who, was produced by Nigel Godrich and partially recorded at producer Mike Hedges' chateau in France. The band continued recording at, among other studios, Abbey Road Studios in London. Shortly after release, The Man Who initially looked as though it would mirror the release of Good Feeling. Although it entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 7, with little radio play of its singles, it quickly slipped down. Worse, many critics who had raved about the rocky Good Feeling rubbished the album for the band's move into more melodic, melancholic material (for example, "Travis will be best when they stop trying to make sad, classic records"—NME). When the album slipped as far as No. 19, it stopped. Word of mouth and increasing radio play of the single "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" increased awareness of the band and the album began to rise back up the chart. When Travis took the stage to perform this song at the 1999 Glastonbury Festival, after being dry for several hours, it began to rain as soon as the first line was sung. The following day the story was all over the papers and television, and with word of mouth and increased radio play of this and the album's other singles, The Man Who rose to No. 1 on the UK chart. It also eventually took Best Album at the 2000 BRIT Awards, with Travis being named Best Band. Music industry magazine Music Week awarded them the same honours, while at the Ivor Novello Awards, Travis took the Best Songwriter(s) and Best Contemporary Song Awards. Travis followed the release of The Man Who with an extensive 237-gig world tour, including headlining the 2000 Glastonbury, T in the Park and V Festivals, and a US tour leg with Oasis. In Los Angeles, an appearance of the band at an in-store signing forced police to close Sunset Strip. The gentle, melodic approach of The Man Who became a hallmark of the latter-day Britpop sound, and inspired a new wave of UK-based rock bands, with acts such as Coldplay and Starsailor soon joining Travis in challenging the chart dominance of urban and dance acts. The title "The Man Who" comes from the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by neurologist Oliver Sacks. The majority of songs for this album were written before Good Feeling was even released. "Writing to Reach You", "The Fear" and "Luv" being penned around 1995–96, with "As You Are", "Turn" and "She's So Strange" dating back as far as 1993 and the early Glass Onion EP. The title of Travis' following album, 2001's The Invisible Band, again produced by Nigel Godrich, reflects the band's genuine belief that their music is more important than the group behind it. Featuring such songs as "Sing" (the most played song on British radio that summer), "Side", the McCartneyesque "Flowers in the Window", "Indefinitely", "Pipe Dream" and "The Cage", and recorded at Ocean Way Studios in Los Angeles, the album again made No. 1 on the UK chart, generally received widespread critical acclaim, with the band again taking Best British Band at the annual BRIT Awards. It also received Top of the Pops Album of the Year. The album also had an impact across the Atlantic, the popularity in the US of the single "Coming Around", a non-album track with Byrdsesque harmonies and 12-string guitar, enhancing this. Travis again followed the release of The Invisible Band with an extensive world tour. Primrose's accident and change in direction (2002–2006) In 2002 things came to a halt for Travis, with the band almost calling it quits, after drummer Neil Primrose went head-first into a shallow swimming pool while on tour in France, just after a concert at Eurockéennes festival. Breaking his neck, he almost died due to spinal damage. If not for his road crew, he also would have drowned. Despite the severity of the accident, Primrose has since made a full recovery. With Primrose having recovered, Travis regrouped and re-evaluated. Moving into a cottage in Crear, Argyll and Bute, they set up a small studio, and over two weeks, came up with nine new songs that would form the basis of their fourth studio album, 2003's 12 Memories. Produced by Travis themselves, Tchad Blake, and Steve Orchard, the album marked a move into more organic, moody and political territory for the band. Although this seems to have alienated some fans, the album generally received very positive reviews (for example, "Then, of course, there's Travis and their album 12 Memories [Epic]. You just have to sit there and listen to it all the way through, and it will take you on a real journey. It's like an old album. It's like the Beatles' Revolver [1966]. Fran Healy's voice and lyrics are mesmerizing and beautiful"—Elton John), singles such as "Re-Offender" did very well on the UK chart, and the album itself reached No. 3. Yet it also saw them lose ground in the U.S., where Coldplay had usurped Travis during their 2002 absence. Much later, Fran Healy spoke about the album as a whole being about him working through his own clinical depression, and the 12 memories being 12 reasons for him reaching his depressed state. At the time this wasn't mentioned, but the revelation that Healy was depressed ties in with the band's decision to take longer writing and releasing their next work. In 2004, Travis embarked on a highly successful tour of Canada, the US, and Europe (supported by Keane in the UK), and in November 2004, the band released a successful compilation of their singles, Singles, as well as the new tracks, "Walking in the Sun" and "The Distance" (written by Dougie Payne). This was followed by a series of small, intimate gigs at UK venues such as Liverpool's Cavern Club, London's Mean Fiddler, and Glasgow's Barrowlands. While on tour, the band made a series of impromptu acoustic "busks", raising money for the charity The Big Issue. In addition to other performances, they headlined the 2005 Isle of Wight Festival and T in the Park. On 2 July 2005, Travis performed at Live 8's London concert, and four days later, at the Edinburgh 50,000 – The Final Push concert. Travis also participated in Band Aid 20's re-recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?"—Healy and friend Nigel Godrich playing leading roles in its organisation. Healy is a part of the Make Poverty History movement, having recently made two trips to Sudan with the Save the Children organisation. On 13 July 2006, the members of Travis stuck a giant post-it sticker on the front door of the Downing Street home of British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. It read: "Tony Blair—Some steps forward, much to do at the G8, make poverty history." Artistic re-evaluation (2007–2009) Travis released a fifth studio album, The Boy with No Name, on 7 May 2007. Nigel Godrich was the album's executive producer, while Mike Hedges and Brian Eno were also involved. The album is named after Healy's son, Clay, whom Healy and his partner Nora were unable to name until four weeks after his birth. Healy has described the process of making the album as "like coming out of the forest", and that the band is now "in a good place", contrasting with the dark mood surrounding 12 Memories. Travis played at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival on 28 April 2007. At the Virgin Megastore tent in the festival, The Boy With No Name was available to purchase over a week early. Reviews of the album were mixed. The album's first single, "Closer", was released on 23 April 2007 and peaked at No. 10 in the UK Singles Chart. The music video for the single features a cameo role from actor and friend of the band, Ben Stiller. Stiller plays the role of a supermarket manager. The follow-up singles to "Closer" were "Selfish Jean" and "My Eyes". For the promotional tour for the album (which started just before its release), Travis included a new touring pianist, Claes Björklund from Sweden. Björklund's first appearance with the band was when they played at the Oxford Brookes Union on 19 March 2007, prior to the album's release. The band dedicated their performance at the Vic Theater in Chicago to their producer Nigel Godrich. The album's tour lasted until December 2007 ending in a home-coming gig in Glasgow. The band visited for the first time places including Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile (playing as part of a festival co-headlined with The Killers and Starsailor) during this tour. Following a short UK tour, where the band tested some new material, Travis recorded their sixth album in two weeks in February/March 2008, having been inspired by the speed and simplicity of their recent recording session with Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick while participating in a BBC programme celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. It was announced around this time that the band and long term record label Independiente had split amicably. In early June 2008, a vinyl EP of the song "J. Smith" was announced online as the first release from Ode to J. Smith for 30 June. It was an EP limited to 1000 copies and not an 'official' single, instead more of a taster of the album for fans. Fran Healy said, "The album is called Ode to J. Smith partly giving a heads up to the key song and partly because all the songs are written about nameless characters or to nameless characters." He has also described the album as a novel with 12 chapters, with each chapter being a song. In live shows promoting the album in spring 2009, Healy said the song Friends was written from the perspective of the girlfriend of the book's protagonist (J.Smith), about friends who are only there to ask for favours. The album would be released through their own record label Red Telephone Box, with the lead single "Something Anything" being released on 15 September. Two weeks later on 29 September, Ode to J. Smith was released. The band also headlined a 12-gig UK tour to coincide with the releases between 22 September and 8 October. Early reviews were very positive, with some calling it Travis' best record ever. The second single released from Ode To J. Smith was "Song to Self", on 5 January 2009. In the December 2008 issue of Q Magazine, Ode To J Smith appeared at number 28 on a list of the Readers' Best Albums Of 2008. Where You Stand (2010–2013) A live acoustic album featuring Healy and Dunlop was released on 19 January 2010. In 2011 Travis returned to live performances. They played at the Maxidrom Festival in Moscow, in May; at G! festival, Faroe Island and the Rock’n Coke Festival in Istanbul, Turkey in July. On 31 October, Fran Healy performed a concert in Berlin along with Keane's Tim Rice-Oxley. They performed several Keane songs. Travis recorded some songs for their next album at the end of September 2011 and they continued writing new songs in February 2012 with Keane. Fran Healy confirmed on his Twitter account that the new Travis album will be released in the first half of 2013. Travis played together on 4 May 2012 at the Sandance Festival in Dubai. They also played at the Porto Student Festival in Portugal on 9 May. The band performed in the Norwegian Festival in July 2012 and Belladrum Festival in August 2012. A pre single teaser track called "Another Guy" from the band's forthcoming seventh album was released as a free download from the band's official website on 20 March 2013. On 25 April 2013, they revealed that the new album Where You Stand would be released on 19 August 2013 via Kobalt Label Services, and that the first eponymous single "Where You Stand" was released on 30 April. Everything at Once, outstanding music contribution and Almost Fashionable (2013–2016) A post from Travis on their Instagram page confirmed that recording had commenced on the band's eighth album at Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin in January 2015. On 25 November 2015, Travis shared a free download single 'Everything at Once' and announced two UK live shows in January 2016. A new album, also titled Everything at Once, was released on 29 April 2016. In 2016 at the 18th annual Scottish Music Awards, Travis were presented with the award for their outstanding contribution to music. Travis’ June 2016 tour of Mexico formed the backdrop for Almost Fashionable: A Film About Travis, a documentary directed by Healy. The film stars Wyndham Wallace, a music journalist and acquaintance of Healy's in Berlin who was invited to travel with Travis to Mexico because he had previously expressed his distaste for the band. The film had its premiere in 2018 at the 72nd Edinburgh International Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award. The Man Who anniversary and 10 Songs (2017–present) In 2017, Travis decided to celebrate the 18th anniversary of their seminal 1999 album The Man Who as they were currently writing songs and figured that they would be busy promoting a new album on what would have been The Man Who’s 20th anniversary. To mark the occasion, the band re-released the album as a limited edition box set. In September 2017, the band also performed the album in full at two shows in Manchester and London, followed by more full album UK shows in June and December of the following year. Finally, on the 20th anniversary of The Man Who, the band re-released the album reissue box set, along with the live album Live at Glastonbury ‘99, a recording of the set which turned out to be a pivotal moment in kickstarting Travis’ commercial success despite the band members feeling that they had performed poorly. On 10 December 2019, Travis released “Kissing in the Wind”, a song from their upcoming new album which had previously been included in their 2018 documentary Almost Fashionable: A Film About Travis. Another single, “A Ghost”, was released on 3 June 2020, along with details of the band's upcoming ninth studio album 10 Songs, released on 9 October of the same year. On 17 July 2022, the group supported Gerry Cinnamon at his concert at Hampden Park in Glasgow. Collaborations and solo work The band have played with a number of other artists, including Paul McCartney, Graham Nash, Noel Gallagher, and Jason Falkner. Travis guest starred on Feeder's "Tumble and Fall", performing backing vocals at the end of the song. This, because Feeder were recording their album Pushing the Senses and Travis were in the next studio. An adaptation of the Oasis song "Half the World Away", as performed by Healy, was used as the intro music for a sketch in The Adam and Joe Show entitled "The Imperial Family". The sketch itself was a parody of The Royle Family (to which the Oasis song lends itself as the theme music). In June 2007, Travis participated in BBC Radio 2's project to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. All the album's tracks were re-recorded by contemporary artists, supervised by the original engineer, Geoff Emerick, using the same 4-track studio equipment. Travis contributed a rendition of "Lovely Rita". The band wanted to be as faithful to the original as possible, even to the extent of recording the guitars in the stairwell of Abbey Road Studios to recreate the acoustics. In 2010, Travis contributed a live version of their song "Before You Were Young" to the Enough Project and Downtown Records' Raise Hope for Congo compilation. Proceeds from the compilation fund efforts to make the protection and empowerment of Congo's women a priority, as well as inspire individuals around the world to raise their voice for peace in Congo. Healy released his first solo album entitled Wreckorder in October 2010. Recorded in Berlin, New York and Vermont and produced by Emery Dobyns (Patti Smith, Noah and the Whale), the album features Paul McCartney, Neko Case and Noah and the Whale's Tom Hobden. Band members Fran Healy – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, piano (1990–present) Dougie Payne – bass guitar, backing vocals (1994–present) Andy Dunlop – lead guitar, banjo, backing vocals (1990–present) Neil Primrose – drums, percussion (1990–present) Former members Geoff Martyn – keyboards (1990–1996) Chris Martyn – bass guitar (1990–1996) Simon Jarvis – drums, percussion (1990-1990) Catherine Maxwell – lead vocals (1990–1991) Discography Studio albums Good Feeling (1997) The Man Who (1999) The Invisible Band (2001) 12 Memories (2003) The Boy with No Name (2007) Ode to J. Smith (2008) Where You Stand (2013) Everything at Once (2016) 10 Songs (2020) Live albums Live at Glastonbury ‘99 (2019) The Invisible Band Live (2023) Compilation albums Singles (2004) List of awards and nominations received by Travis Brit Awards The Brit Awards are the British Phonographic Industry's annual pop music awards. |- | 1998 || Travis || British Breakthrough Act || |- | rowspan="3" | 2000 || Travis || British Group || |- | The Man Who || British Album of the Year || |- | "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" || British Single of the Year || |- | 2001 || "Coming Around" || British Video of the Year || |- | rowspan="3" | 2002 || Travis || British Group || |- | The Invisible Band || British Album of the Year || |- | "Sing" || British Video of the Year || |} Q Awards The Q Awards are the United Kingdom's annual music awards run by the music magazine Q. |- | rowspan="3" | 1999 || Travis || Best New Act || |- | The Man Who || Best Album || |- | "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" || Best Single || |- | rowspan="3" | 2000 || rowspan="2" | Travis || Best Act in the World Today || |- | Best Live Act || |- | "Coming Around" || Best Video || |- | rowspan="2" | 2001 || Travis || Best Act in the World Today || |- | The Invisible Band || Best Album || |} References External links Category:Scottish rock music groups Category:Post-Britpop groups Category:Britpop groups Category:British soft rock music groups Category:Musical groups from Glasgow Category:Musical groups established in 1990 Category:Brit Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:NME Awards winners Category:Independiente Records artists Category:Epic Records artists

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Travis (band)

Travis are a Scottish rock band formed in Glasgow in 1990, composed of Fran Healy (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Dougie Payne (bass guitar, backing vocals), Andy Dunlop (lead guitar, banjo, backing vocals) and Neil Primrose (drums, percussion). The band's name comes from the Harry Dean Stanton character Travis Henderson from the film Paris, Texas. The band is widely claimed by the media as having paved the way for other bands such as Keane and Coldplay to go onto achieve worldwide success throughout the 2000s, particularly through the band's The Man Who (1999) album. The band released their debut album, Good Feeling (1997) to moderate success where it debuted at number nine on the UK Albums Chart and went onto achieve a silver certification from the BPI in January 2000.

Formation and early years (1990-93)

The band that would become Travis was formed by brothers Chris Martyn (bass) and Geoff Martyn (keyboards) along with Simon Jarvis (drums). Andy Dunlop, a school friend at Lenzie Academy, was drafted in on guitar. The line-up was completed by a female vocalist, Catherine Maxwell, and the band's name became "Glass Onion", after the Beatles song of the same name. Neil Primrose joined to replace Jarvis. Parting company with their singer in the spring of 1991, they auditioned for a new vocalist. Having met each other through Primrose pouring him a pint, an untrained art student, Fran Healy, then joined after being invited to audition by Primrose. Healy joined the band on the day he enrolled at The Glasgow School of Art, in the autumn of 1991. Two years later, with the option of music holding more appeal, Healy dropped out of art school, and inspired by songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, assumed songwriting responsibilities. With brothers Chris and Geoff Martyn on bass and keyboards, in 1993, the fivesome released a privately made CD, The Glass Onion EP, featuring the tracks "Dream On", "The Day Before", "Free Soul" and "Whenever She Comes Round". 500 copies of the EP were made and were recently valued at PS1000 each. Other songs they recorded but were left off are "She's So Strange" and "Not About to Change". The band won a talent contest organised by the Music in Scotland Trust, who promised PS2,000 so that Travis could deal-hunt at a new music seminar in New York. Two weeks before they were due to leave, however, the prize was instead given to the Music in Scotland Trust Directory. When sent a copy of the directory, the band noticed that it seemed to feature every single band in Scotland--except for them. The band showed promise but had yet to evolve into a decent line-up capable of fulfilling it and spent several years treading water. According to their publisher Charlie Pinder: "They were a band that everyone in the A&R community knew about and would go and see every now and then. But they weren't very good. They had quite good songs; Fran always did write good songs." While on a visit to Scotland, American engineer and producer Niko Bolas, a long-time Neil Young and Rolling Stones associate, tuned into a Travis session on Radio Scotland, and heard something in the band's music which instantly made him travel to Perth to see them. Healy: "He told us we were shit, took us in the studio for four days, and taught us how to play properly, like a band. He was ballsy, rude, and New York pushy. He didn't believe my lyrics and told me to write what I believed in and not tell lies. He was Mary Poppins, he sorted us out." The band recorded a five-song demo, which included the song "All I Want to Do Is Rock". CANNOTANSWER

Travis are a Scottish rock band formed in Glasgow in 1990, composed of Fran Healy (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Dougie Payne (bass guitar, backing vocals), Andy Dunlop (lead guitar, banjo, backing vocals) and Neil Primrose (drums, percussion). The band's name comes from the character Travis Henderson (played by Harry Dean Stanton) from the film Paris, Texas (1984). The band released their debut album, Good Feeling (1997), to moderate success where it debuted at number nine on the UK Albums Chart and was later awarded a silver certification from the BPI in January 2000. The band gained greater success with their second album, The Man Who (1999), which spent nine weeks at number one on the UK Albums Chart, totalling 134 weeks in the top 100 of the chart. In 2003, The Man Who was certified 9× platinum by the BPI, representing sales of over 2.68 million in the UK alone. Following this success, the band released their third effort, The Invisible Band (2001) album. The Invisible Band went on to match the success found with their previous album, where it debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and spent a total of four weeks at the top spot, fifteen weeks in the top ten, and a total of fifty-five weeks in the top 100 chart, as well as peaking at thirty-nine on the US Billboard 200 album chart, spending a duration of seven weeks in the Billboard 200 chart. A year following the release of The Invisible Band, the BPI awarded Travis with a 4× platinum certification for the album. The band's subsequent discography has included studio albums 12 Memories (2003), The Boy with No Name (2007), Ode to J. Smith (2008), Where You Stand (2013), Everything at Once (2016) and 10 Songs (2020). In 2004, the band released their first greatest hits album, Singles, which spent nineteen weeks in the top 100 of the UK albums chart. Travis have twice been awarded best band at the BRIT Awards and were awarded the NME Artist of the Year award at their 2000 ceremony, and in 2016 were honoured at the Scottish Music Awards for their outstanding contribution to music. The band are widely said by the media to have paved the way for other bands such as Coldplay to go on to achieve worldwide success throughout the 2000s, particularly with the success of The Man Who. Craft Recordings celebrated the 20th anniversary of Travis' breakthrough year with two simultaneous releases: Live at Glastonbury '99, plus expanded editions of The Man Who – both of which were released on 21 June 2019. History Formation and early years (1990–1993) The band that would become Travis was formed by brothers Chris Martyn (bass) and Geoff Martyn (keyboards) along with Simon Jarvis (drums). Andy Dunlop, a school friend at Lenzie Academy, was drafted in on guitar. The line-up was completed by a female vocalist, Catherine Maxwell, and the band's name became "Glass Onion", after the Beatles song of the same name. Neil Primrose joined to replace Jarvis. Parting company with their singer in the spring of 1991, they auditioned for a new vocalist. Having met each other through Primrose pouring him a pint, an untrained art student, Fran Healy, then joined after being invited to audition by Primrose. Healy joined the band on the day he enrolled at The Glasgow School of Art, in the autumn of 1991. Two years later, with the option of music holding more appeal, Healy dropped out of art school, and inspired by songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, assumed songwriting responsibilities. With brothers Chris and Geoff Martyn on bass and keyboards, in 1993, the fivesome released a privately made CD, The Glass Onion EP, featuring the tracks "Dream On", "The Day Before", "Free Soul" and "Whenever She Comes Round". 500 copies of the EP were made and were recently valued at £1000 each. Other songs they recorded but were left off are "She's So Strange" and "Not About to Change". The band won a talent contest organised by the Music in Scotland Trust, who promised £2,000 so that Travis could deal-hunt at a new music seminar in New York. Two weeks before they were due to leave, however, the prize was instead given to the Music in Scotland Trust Directory. The band showed promise but had yet to evolve into a decent line-up capable of fulfilling it and spent several years treading water. According to their publisher Charlie Pinder: "They were a band that everyone in the A&R community knew about and would go and see every now and then. But they weren’t very good. They had quite good songs; Fran always did write good songs." While on a visit to Scotland, American engineer and producer Niko Bolas, a long-time Neil Young and Rolling Stones associate, tuned into a Travis session on Radio Scotland, and heard something in the band's music which instantly made him travel to Perth to see them. Healy: "He told us we were shit, took us in the studio for four days, and taught us how to play properly, like a band. He was ballsy, rude, and New York pushy. He didn't believe my lyrics and told me to write what I believed in and not tell lies. He was Mary Poppins, he sorted us out." The band recorded a five-song demo, which included the song "All I Want to Do Is Rock". Changes and debut album (1994–1997) With the sudden death of his grandfather, a grief-stricken Healy shut himself away, refusing to talk to anyone. Emerging a week later, and with a clear vision of where he now wanted Travis and their music to go, Healy dispensed with the band's management and publicity agent. Having been repeatedly knocked back by the British record industry, the band couldn't afford to stay around the country for another few years and so decided to move to New York, feeling that the U.S. might be more suited to their style of music. Before leaving Healy told the band that they should send the demo to Charlie Pinder of Sony Music Publishing, who they had known for a few years and regularly sent songs to, saying: "If he's not into it, then we'll go." Pinder was immediately impressed by the song "All I Want to Do is Rock", which he felt was a dramatic change for the band: "It was harder, more exciting, sexy; all things that they never really were. They turned a corner." After performing a secret gig for Pinder and his boss at Sony, Blair McDonald, they were signed to Sony Music Publishing. The immediate impact of was that the founding member and keyboard player Geoff Martyn was removed while the bassist, his brother Chris, was replaced with Healy's best friend Dougie Payne. The band was moved to London where they were given a rehearsal room and a house. Payne, a fellow art student who worked as a Levi's shop assistant, had not played bass guitar previously and initially proved reluctant to take up the new instrument. After having completed a crash course of a couple of weeks, Payne played with the new line-up for the first time in a free space above the Horse Shoe Bar in Glasgow. Once set up in London the band spent between nine months and a year recording new songs. The band played their first London show at the Dublin Castle in Camden. With around twenty good songs ready they then approached managers Colin Lester and Ian McAndrew of Wildlife Entertainment who then introduced the band to Andy MacDonald, owner of Go! Discs Records and founder of Independiente Records. Sensing greatness, he negotiated with Wildlife Entertainment and signed Travis for a reputed £100,000 of his own money. The band is signed to MacDonald personally, not to the label—if MacDonald ever leaves the Sony-financed label Independiente Records, the band goes with him (commonly referred to in the industry as a "golden handcuffs" clause). Produced by Steve Lillywhite of U2 fame, Travis' first studio album, 1997's Good Feeling, is a rockier, more upbeat record than the band's others to date. Recorded at the legendary Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York, the place where Travis favourite The Band recorded, the album contained singles such as "All I Want to Do Is Rock", "U16 Girls", the Beatle'esque "Tied to the 90s", "Happy" and "More Than Us". Guest musicians include Page McConnell of Phish playing keyboards on the title track "Good Feeling". The album reached No. 9 on the UK Albums Chart, but with little radio play, it slipped from the chart relatively quickly. Although it heralded Travis' arrival on the British music scene, received extremely positive reviews, and substantially broadened Travis' fan base, it sold just 40,000 copies. Following the release, Travis toured extensively, their live performances further enhancing their reputation. This included support slots in the UK for Oasis, after Noel Gallagher became an outspoken fan. Mainstream success (1998–2001) Travis' second album, 1999's The Man Who, was produced by Nigel Godrich and partially recorded at producer Mike Hedges' chateau in France. The band continued recording at, among other studios, Abbey Road Studios in London. Shortly after release, The Man Who initially looked as though it would mirror the release of Good Feeling. Although it entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 7, with little radio play of its singles, it quickly slipped down. Worse, many critics who had raved about the rocky Good Feeling rubbished the album for the band's move into more melodic, melancholic material (for example, "Travis will be best when they stop trying to make sad, classic records"—NME). When the album slipped as far as No. 19, it stopped. Word of mouth and increasing radio play of the single "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" increased awareness of the band and the album began to rise back up the chart. When Travis took the stage to perform this song at the 1999 Glastonbury Festival, after being dry for several hours, it began to rain as soon as the first line was sung. The following day the story was all over the papers and television, and with word of mouth and increased radio play of this and the album's other singles, The Man Who rose to No. 1 on the UK chart. It also eventually took Best Album at the 2000 BRIT Awards, with Travis being named Best Band. Music industry magazine Music Week awarded them the same honours, while at the Ivor Novello Awards, Travis took the Best Songwriter(s) and Best Contemporary Song Awards. Travis followed the release of The Man Who with an extensive 237-gig world tour, including headlining the 2000 Glastonbury, T in the Park and V Festivals, and a US tour leg with Oasis. In Los Angeles, an appearance of the band at an in-store signing forced police to close Sunset Strip. The gentle, melodic approach of The Man Who became a hallmark of the latter-day Britpop sound, and inspired a new wave of UK-based rock bands, with acts such as Coldplay and Starsailor soon joining Travis in challenging the chart dominance of urban and dance acts. The title "The Man Who" comes from the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by neurologist Oliver Sacks. The majority of songs for this album were written before Good Feeling was even released. "Writing to Reach You", "The Fear" and "Luv" being penned around 1995–96, with "As You Are", "Turn" and "She's So Strange" dating back as far as 1993 and the early Glass Onion EP. The title of Travis' following album, 2001's The Invisible Band, again produced by Nigel Godrich, reflects the band's genuine belief that their music is more important than the group behind it. Featuring such songs as "Sing" (the most played song on British radio that summer), "Side", the McCartneyesque "Flowers in the Window", "Indefinitely", "Pipe Dream" and "The Cage", and recorded at Ocean Way Studios in Los Angeles, the album again made No. 1 on the UK chart, generally received widespread critical acclaim, with the band again taking Best British Band at the annual BRIT Awards. It also received Top of the Pops Album of the Year. The album also had an impact across the Atlantic, the popularity in the US of the single "Coming Around", a non-album track with Byrdsesque harmonies and 12-string guitar, enhancing this. Travis again followed the release of The Invisible Band with an extensive world tour. Primrose's accident and change in direction (2002–2006) In 2002 things came to a halt for Travis, with the band almost calling it quits, after drummer Neil Primrose went head-first into a shallow swimming pool while on tour in France, just after a concert at Eurockéennes festival. Breaking his neck, he almost died due to spinal damage. If not for his road crew, he also would have drowned. Despite the severity of the accident, Primrose has since made a full recovery. With Primrose having recovered, Travis regrouped and re-evaluated. Moving into a cottage in Crear, Argyll and Bute, they set up a small studio, and over two weeks, came up with nine new songs that would form the basis of their fourth studio album, 2003's 12 Memories. Produced by Travis themselves, Tchad Blake, and Steve Orchard, the album marked a move into more organic, moody and political territory for the band. Although this seems to have alienated some fans, the album generally received very positive reviews (for example, "Then, of course, there's Travis and their album 12 Memories [Epic]. You just have to sit there and listen to it all the way through, and it will take you on a real journey. It's like an old album. It's like the Beatles' Revolver [1966]. Fran Healy's voice and lyrics are mesmerizing and beautiful"—Elton John), singles such as "Re-Offender" did very well on the UK chart, and the album itself reached No. 3. Yet it also saw them lose ground in the U.S., where Coldplay had usurped Travis during their 2002 absence. Much later, Fran Healy spoke about the album as a whole being about him working through his own clinical depression, and the 12 memories being 12 reasons for him reaching his depressed state. At the time this wasn't mentioned, but the revelation that Healy was depressed ties in with the band's decision to take longer writing and releasing their next work. In 2004, Travis embarked on a highly successful tour of Canada, the US, and Europe (supported by Keane in the UK), and in November 2004, the band released a successful compilation of their singles, Singles, as well as the new tracks, "Walking in the Sun" and "The Distance" (written by Dougie Payne). This was followed by a series of small, intimate gigs at UK venues such as Liverpool's Cavern Club, London's Mean Fiddler, and Glasgow's Barrowlands. While on tour, the band made a series of impromptu acoustic "busks", raising money for the charity The Big Issue. In addition to other performances, they headlined the 2005 Isle of Wight Festival and T in the Park. On 2 July 2005, Travis performed at Live 8's London concert, and four days later, at the Edinburgh 50,000 – The Final Push concert. Travis also participated in Band Aid 20's re-recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?"—Healy and friend Nigel Godrich playing leading roles in its organisation. Healy is a part of the Make Poverty History movement, having recently made two trips to Sudan with the Save the Children organisation. On 13 July 2006, the members of Travis stuck a giant post-it sticker on the front door of the Downing Street home of British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. It read: "Tony Blair—Some steps forward, much to do at the G8, make poverty history." Artistic re-evaluation (2007–2009) Travis released a fifth studio album, The Boy with No Name, on 7 May 2007. Nigel Godrich was the album's executive producer, while Mike Hedges and Brian Eno were also involved. The album is named after Healy's son, Clay, whom Healy and his partner Nora were unable to name until four weeks after his birth. Healy has described the process of making the album as "like coming out of the forest", and that the band is now "in a good place", contrasting with the dark mood surrounding 12 Memories. Travis played at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival on 28 April 2007. At the Virgin Megastore tent in the festival, The Boy With No Name was available to purchase over a week early. Reviews of the album were mixed. The album's first single, "Closer", was released on 23 April 2007 and peaked at No. 10 in the UK Singles Chart. The music video for the single features a cameo role from actor and friend of the band, Ben Stiller. Stiller plays the role of a supermarket manager. The follow-up singles to "Closer" were "Selfish Jean" and "My Eyes". For the promotional tour for the album (which started just before its release), Travis included a new touring pianist, Claes Björklund from Sweden. Björklund's first appearance with the band was when they played at the Oxford Brookes Union on 19 March 2007, prior to the album's release. The band dedicated their performance at the Vic Theater in Chicago to their producer Nigel Godrich. The album's tour lasted until December 2007 ending in a home-coming gig in Glasgow. The band visited for the first time places including Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile (playing as part of a festival co-headlined with The Killers and Starsailor) during this tour. Following a short UK tour, where the band tested some new material, Travis recorded their sixth album in two weeks in February/March 2008, having been inspired by the speed and simplicity of their recent recording session with Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick while participating in a BBC programme celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. It was announced around this time that the band and long term record label Independiente had split amicably. In early June 2008, a vinyl EP of the song "J. Smith" was announced online as the first release from Ode to J. Smith for 30 June. It was an EP limited to 1000 copies and not an 'official' single, instead more of a taster of the album for fans. Fran Healy said, "The album is called Ode to J. Smith partly giving a heads up to the key song and partly because all the songs are written about nameless characters or to nameless characters." He has also described the album as a novel with 12 chapters, with each chapter being a song. In live shows promoting the album in spring 2009, Healy said the song Friends was written from the perspective of the girlfriend of the book's protagonist (J.Smith), about friends who are only there to ask for favours. The album would be released through their own record label Red Telephone Box, with the lead single "Something Anything" being released on 15 September. Two weeks later on 29 September, Ode to J. Smith was released. The band also headlined a 12-gig UK tour to coincide with the releases between 22 September and 8 October. Early reviews were very positive, with some calling it Travis' best record ever. The second single released from Ode To J. Smith was "Song to Self", on 5 January 2009. In the December 2008 issue of Q Magazine, Ode To J Smith appeared at number 28 on a list of the Readers' Best Albums Of 2008. Where You Stand (2010–2013) A live acoustic album featuring Healy and Dunlop was released on 19 January 2010. In 2011 Travis returned to live performances. They played at the Maxidrom Festival in Moscow, in May; at G! festival, Faroe Island and the Rock’n Coke Festival in Istanbul, Turkey in July. On 31 October, Fran Healy performed a concert in Berlin along with Keane's Tim Rice-Oxley. They performed several Keane songs. Travis recorded some songs for their next album at the end of September 2011 and they continued writing new songs in February 2012 with Keane. Fran Healy confirmed on his Twitter account that the new Travis album will be released in the first half of 2013. Travis played together on 4 May 2012 at the Sandance Festival in Dubai. They also played at the Porto Student Festival in Portugal on 9 May. The band performed in the Norwegian Festival in July 2012 and Belladrum Festival in August 2012. A pre single teaser track called "Another Guy" from the band's forthcoming seventh album was released as a free download from the band's official website on 20 March 2013. On 25 April 2013, they revealed that the new album Where You Stand would be released on 19 August 2013 via Kobalt Label Services, and that the first eponymous single "Where You Stand" was released on 30 April. Everything at Once, outstanding music contribution and Almost Fashionable (2013–2016) A post from Travis on their Instagram page confirmed that recording had commenced on the band's eighth album at Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin in January 2015. On 25 November 2015, Travis shared a free download single 'Everything at Once' and announced two UK live shows in January 2016. A new album, also titled Everything at Once, was released on 29 April 2016. In 2016 at the 18th annual Scottish Music Awards, Travis were presented with the award for their outstanding contribution to music. Travis’ June 2016 tour of Mexico formed the backdrop for Almost Fashionable: A Film About Travis, a documentary directed by Healy. The film stars Wyndham Wallace, a music journalist and acquaintance of Healy's in Berlin who was invited to travel with Travis to Mexico because he had previously expressed his distaste for the band. The film had its premiere in 2018 at the 72nd Edinburgh International Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award. The Man Who anniversary and 10 Songs (2017–present) In 2017, Travis decided to celebrate the 18th anniversary of their seminal 1999 album The Man Who as they were currently writing songs and figured that they would be busy promoting a new album on what would have been The Man Who’s 20th anniversary. To mark the occasion, the band re-released the album as a limited edition box set. In September 2017, the band also performed the album in full at two shows in Manchester and London, followed by more full album UK shows in June and December of the following year. Finally, on the 20th anniversary of The Man Who, the band re-released the album reissue box set, along with the live album Live at Glastonbury ‘99, a recording of the set which turned out to be a pivotal moment in kickstarting Travis’ commercial success despite the band members feeling that they had performed poorly. On 10 December 2019, Travis released “Kissing in the Wind”, a song from their upcoming new album which had previously been included in their 2018 documentary Almost Fashionable: A Film About Travis. Another single, “A Ghost”, was released on 3 June 2020, along with details of the band's upcoming ninth studio album 10 Songs, released on 9 October of the same year. On 17 July 2022, the group supported Gerry Cinnamon at his concert at Hampden Park in Glasgow. Collaborations and solo work The band have played with a number of other artists, including Paul McCartney, Graham Nash, Noel Gallagher, and Jason Falkner. Travis guest starred on Feeder's "Tumble and Fall", performing backing vocals at the end of the song. This, because Feeder were recording their album Pushing the Senses and Travis were in the next studio. An adaptation of the Oasis song "Half the World Away", as performed by Healy, was used as the intro music for a sketch in The Adam and Joe Show entitled "The Imperial Family". The sketch itself was a parody of The Royle Family (to which the Oasis song lends itself as the theme music). In June 2007, Travis participated in BBC Radio 2's project to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. All the album's tracks were re-recorded by contemporary artists, supervised by the original engineer, Geoff Emerick, using the same 4-track studio equipment. Travis contributed a rendition of "Lovely Rita". The band wanted to be as faithful to the original as possible, even to the extent of recording the guitars in the stairwell of Abbey Road Studios to recreate the acoustics. In 2010, Travis contributed a live version of their song "Before You Were Young" to the Enough Project and Downtown Records' Raise Hope for Congo compilation. Proceeds from the compilation fund efforts to make the protection and empowerment of Congo's women a priority, as well as inspire individuals around the world to raise their voice for peace in Congo. Healy released his first solo album entitled Wreckorder in October 2010. Recorded in Berlin, New York and Vermont and produced by Emery Dobyns (Patti Smith, Noah and the Whale), the album features Paul McCartney, Neko Case and Noah and the Whale's Tom Hobden. Band members Fran Healy – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, piano (1990–present) Dougie Payne – bass guitar, backing vocals (1994–present) Andy Dunlop – lead guitar, banjo, backing vocals (1990–present) Neil Primrose – drums, percussion (1990–present) Former members Geoff Martyn – keyboards (1990–1996) Chris Martyn – bass guitar (1990–1996) Simon Jarvis – drums, percussion (1990-1990) Catherine Maxwell – lead vocals (1990–1991) Discography Studio albums Good Feeling (1997) The Man Who (1999) The Invisible Band (2001) 12 Memories (2003) The Boy with No Name (2007) Ode to J. Smith (2008) Where You Stand (2013) Everything at Once (2016) 10 Songs (2020) Live albums Live at Glastonbury ‘99 (2019) The Invisible Band Live (2023) Compilation albums Singles (2004) List of awards and nominations received by Travis Brit Awards The Brit Awards are the British Phonographic Industry's annual pop music awards. |- | 1998 || Travis || British Breakthrough Act || |- | rowspan="3" | 2000 || Travis || British Group || |- | The Man Who || British Album of the Year || |- | "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" || British Single of the Year || |- | 2001 || "Coming Around" || British Video of the Year || |- | rowspan="3" | 2002 || Travis || British Group || |- | The Invisible Band || British Album of the Year || |- | "Sing" || British Video of the Year || |} Q Awards The Q Awards are the United Kingdom's annual music awards run by the music magazine Q. |- | rowspan="3" | 1999 || Travis || Best New Act || |- | The Man Who || Best Album || |- | "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" || Best Single || |- | rowspan="3" | 2000 || rowspan="2" | Travis || Best Act in the World Today || |- | Best Live Act || |- | "Coming Around" || Best Video || |- | rowspan="2" | 2001 || Travis || Best Act in the World Today || |- | The Invisible Band || Best Album || |} References External links Category:Scottish rock music groups Category:Post-Britpop groups Category:Britpop groups Category:British soft rock music groups Category:Musical groups from Glasgow Category:Musical groups established in 1990 Category:Brit Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:NME Awards winners Category:Independiente Records artists Category:Epic Records artists

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Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim (born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-Israeli pianist and conductor who is a citizen of Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain. He is the general music director of the Berlin State Opera, and the Staatskapelle Berlin; he previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and La Scala in Milan. Barenboim is known for his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as a resolute critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, France's Legion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, and the German Grosses Bundesverdienstkreuz and Willy Brandt Award.

Biography

Daniel Barenboim was born in 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Argentinian-Jewish parents Aida (nee Schuster) and Enrique Barenboim. He started piano lessons at the age of five with his mother, continuing to study with his father, who remained his only teacher. On 19 August 1950, at the age of seven, he gave his first formal concert in his hometown, Buenos Aires. In 1952, Barenboim's family moved to Israel. Two years later, in the summer of 1954, his parents took him to Salzburg to take part in Igor Markevitch's conducting classes. During that summer he also met and played for Wilhelm Furtwangler, who has remained a central musical influence and ideal for Barenboim. Furtwangler called the young Barenboim a "phenomenon" and invited him to perform the Beethoven First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, but Barenboim's father considered it too soon after the Second World War for a child of Jewish parents to be performing in Berlin. In 1955 Barenboim studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. On 15 June 1967, Barenboim and British cellist Jacqueline du Pre were married in Jerusalem at a Western Wall ceremony, Du Pre having converted to Judaism. Acting as one of the witnesses was the conductor Zubin Mehta, a long-time friend of Barenboim. Since "I was not Jewish I had to temporarily be renamed Moshe Cohen, which made me a 'kosher witness'," Mehta recalled. Du Pre retired from music in 1973, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). The marriage lasted until du Pre's death in 1987. In the early 1980s, Barenboim began an affair with the Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova, with whom he had two sons born in Paris before du Pre's death: David Arthur, born 1983, and Michael, born 1985. Barenboim worked to keep his relationship with Bashkirova hidden from du Pre, and believed he had succeeded. He and Bashkirova married in 1988. Both sons are part of the music world: David is a manager-writer for the German hip-hop band Level 8, and Michael Barenboim is a classical violinist. CANNOTANSWER

Daniel Barenboim (; in , born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born classical pianist and conductor based in Berlin. From 1992 until January 2023, Barenboim was the General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera and "Staatskapellmeister" of its orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin. The former music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and La Scala in Milan. Barenboim is known for his work with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as a resolute critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including seven Grammy awards, an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, France's Légion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, and the German Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband. In 2002, along with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, he was given Spain's Prince of Asturias Concord Award. Barenboim is multilingual, fluent in Spanish, Hebrew, English, French, Italian, and German. A self-described Spinozist, he is significantly influenced by Spinoza's life and thought. Biography Daniel Barenboim was born on 15 November 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Jewish parents Aida (née Schuster) and Enrique Barenboim, both professional pianists. He started piano lessons at the age of five with his mother, continuing to study with his father, who remained his only teacher. On 19 August 1950, at the age of seven, he gave his first formal concert, in Buenos Aires. In 1952, Barenboim's family moved to Israel. Two years later, in the summer of 1954, his parents took him to Salzburg to take part in Igor Markevitch's conducting classes. During that summer he also met and played for Wilhelm Furtwängler, who has remained a central musical influence and ideal for Barenboim. Furtwängler called the young Barenboim a "phenomenon" and invited him to perform the Beethoven First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, but Barenboim's father considered it too soon after the Second World War for a Jewish boy to go to Germany. In 1955, Barenboim studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. On 15 June 1967, Barenboim and British cellist Jacqueline du Pré were married in Jerusalem at a Western Wall ceremony, du Pré having converted to Judaism. Acting as one of the witnesses was the conductor Zubin Mehta, a long-time friend of Barenboim. Since "I was not Jewish I had to temporarily be renamed Moshe Cohen, which made me a 'kosher witness'", Mehta recalled. Du Pré retired from music in 1973, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). The marriage lasted until du Pré's death in 1987. In the early 1980s, Barenboim and Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova started a relationship. Together they had two sons, both born in Paris before du Pré's death: David Arthur, born 1983, and Michael, born 1985. Barenboim worked to keep his relationship with Bashkirova hidden from du Pré, and believed he had succeeded. He and Bashkirova married in 1988. Both sons are part of the music world: David is a manager-writer for the German hip-hop band Level 8, and is a classical violinist. Citizenship Barenboim holds citizenship in Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain, and was the first person to hold Palestinian and Israeli citizenship simultaneously. He lives in Berlin. Career After performing in Buenos Aires, Barenboim made his international debut as a pianist at the age of 10 in 1952 in Vienna and Rome. In 1955, he performed in Paris, in 1956, in London, and in 1957 in New York under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. Regular concert tours of Europe, the United States, South America, Australia and the Far East followed thereafter. In June 1967, Barenboim and his then-fiancée Jacqueline du Pré gave concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba before and during the Six-Day War. His friendship with musicians Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman, and marriage to du Pré led to the 1969 film by Christopher Nupen of their performance of the Schubert "Trout" Quintet. Following his debut as a conductor with the English Chamber Orchestra in Abbey Road Studios, London, in 1966, Barenboim was invited to conduct by many European and American symphony orchestras. Between 1975 and 1989, he was music director of the Orchestre de Paris, where he conducted much contemporary music. Barenboim made his opera conducting debut in 1973 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival. He made his debut at Bayreuth in 1981, conducting there regularly until 1999. In 1988, he was appointed artistic and musical director of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, scheduled to open in 1990, but was fired in January 1989 by the opera's chairman Pierre Bergé. Barenboim was named music director designate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1989 and succeeded Sir Georg Solti as its music director in 1991, a post he held until 17 June 2006. He expressed frustration with the need for fund-raising duties in the United States as part of being a music director of an American orchestra. Since 1992, Barenboim has been music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, succeeding in maintaining the independent status of the State Opera. He has tried to maintain the orchestra's traditional sound and style. In autumn 2000 he was made conductor for life of the Staatskapelle Berlin. On 15 May 2006, Barenboim was named principal guest conductor of La Scala opera house, in Milan, after Riccardo Muti's resignation. He subsequently became music director of La Scala in 2011. In 2006, Barenboim presented the BBC Reith Lectures, presenting a series of five lectures titled In the Beginning was Sound. The lectures on music were recorded in a range of cities, including London, Chicago, Berlin, and two in Jerusalem. In the autumn of 2006, Barenboim gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University, entitling his talk Sound and Thought. In November 2006, Lorin Maazel submitted Barenboim's name as his nominee to succeed him as the New York Philharmonic's music director. Barenboim said he was flattered but "nothing could be further from my thoughts at the moment than the possibility of returning to the United States for a permanent position", repeating in April 2007 his lack of interest in the New York Philharmonic's music directorship or its newly created principal conductor position. Barenboim made his conducting debut on 28 November 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the House's 450th performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. In 2009, Barenboim conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time. In his New Year message, he expressed the hope that 2009 would be a year for peace and for human justice in the Middle East. He returned to conduct the 2014 Vienna New Year's Concert, and also conducted the 2022 Concert. In 2014, construction began on the Barenboim–Said Academy in Berlin. A joint project Barenboim developed with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, the academy was planned as a site for young music students from the Arab world and Israel to study music and humanities in Berlin. It opened its doors on 8 December 2016. In 2017, the Pierre Boulez Saal opened as the public face of the academy. The elliptical shaped concert hall was designed by Frank Gehry. Acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota created the hall’s sound profile. In 2015, Barenboim unveiled a new concert grand piano. Designed by Chris Maene with support from Steinway & Sons, the piano features straight parallel strings instead of the conventional diagonally-crossed strings of a modern Steinway. In 2018, Barenboim was the subject of the French animated series Max & Maestro. In 2020, Barenboim curated the digital festival of new music “Distance / Intimacy” with flautist Emmanuel Pahud in the Pierre Boulez Saal. At their invitation ten contemporary composers, among them Jörg Widmann, Olga Neuwirth and Matthias Pintscher, contributed new works engaging artistically with the COVID-19 pandemic. All participating composers and musicians waived their fees, inviting listeners to financially support arts and culture. In October 2022, Barenboim announced on social media that he would be reducing his conducting and other engagements for health reasons. On 6 January 2023, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden announced Barenboim's resignation as its Generalmusikdirektor, effective 31 January 2023, because of health reasons. Musical style Barenboim has rejected musical fashions based on current musicological research, such as the authentic performance movement. His recording of Beethoven's symphonies shows his preference for some conventional practices, rather than fully adhering to Bärenreiter's new edition (edited by Jonathan Del Mar). Barenboim has opposed the practice of choosing the tempo of a piece based on historical evidence, such as the composer's metronome marks. He argues instead for finding the tempo from within the music, especially from its harmony and harmonic rhythm. He has reflected this in the general tempi chosen in his recording of Beethoven's symphonies, usually adhering to early-twentieth-century practices. He has not been influenced by the faster tempos chosen by other conductors such as David Zinman and authentic movement advocate Roger Norrington. In his recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Barenboim makes frequent use of the right-foot sustaining pedal, a device absent from the keyboard instruments of Bach's time (although the harpsichord was highly resonant), producing a sonority very different from the "dry" and often staccato sound favoured by Glenn Gould. Moreover, in the fugues, he often plays one voice considerably louder than the others, a practice impossible on a harpsichord. According to some scholarship, this practice began in Beethoven's time (see, for example, Matthew Dirst's book Engaging Bach). When justifying his interpretation of Bach, Barenboim claims that he is interested in the long tradition of playing Bach that has existed for two and a half centuries, rather than in the exact style of performance in Bach's time: The study of old instruments and historic performance practice has taught us a great deal, but the main point, the impact of harmony, has been ignored. This is proved by the fact that tempo is described as an independent phenomenon. It is claimed that one of Bach's gavottes must be played fast and another one slowly. But tempo is not independent! ... I think that concerning oneself purely with historic performance practice and the attempt to reproduce the sound of older styles of music-making is limiting and no indication of progress. Mendelssohn and Schumann tried to introduce Bach into their own period, as did Liszt with his transcriptions and Busoni with his arrangements. In America Leopold Stokowski also tried to do it with his arrangements for orchestra. This was always the result of "progressive" efforts to bring Bach closer to the particular period. I have no philosophical problem with someone playing Bach and making it sound like Boulez. My problem is more with someone who tries to imitate the sound of that time ... Recordings In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, Beethoven's piano concertos (with the New Philharmonia Orchestra and Otto Klemperer), and Mozart's piano concertos (conducting the English Chamber Orchestra from the piano). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and Chopin's Nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pré), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pré and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pré, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta). Notable recordings as a conductor include the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert, and Schumann; the Da Ponte operas of Mozart; numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle; and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist. By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: J. S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's Préludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played. Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart's Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle. To mark Barenboim's 75th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of 39 CDs of his solo recordings, and Sony Classical issued a box set of Barenboim's orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs in 2017, Daniel Barenboim – A Retrospective. Conducting Wagner in Israel The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (then Palestine Orchestra) had performed Richard Wagner's music in Mandatory Palestine even during the early days of the Nazi era. But after the Kristallnacht, Jewish musicians avoided playing Wagner's music in Israel because of the use Nazi Germany made of the composer and because of Wagner's own anti-Semitic writings, initiating an unofficial boycott. This informal ban continued when Israel was founded in 1948, but from time to time unsuccessful efforts were made to end it. In 1974 and again in 1981 Zubin Mehta planned to (but did not) lead the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in works of Wagner. During the latter occasion, fist fights broke out in the audience. Barenboim, who had been selected to head the production of Wagner's operas at the 1988 Bayreuth Festival, had since at least 1989 publicly opposed the Israeli ban. In that year, he had the Israel Philharmonic "rehearse" two of Wagner's works. In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous", and feels it must be faced, but argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust." In 1990, Barenboim conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in its first appearance in Israel, but he excluded Wagner's works. "Although Wagner died in 1883, he is not played [in Israel] because his music is too inextricably linked with Nazism, and so is too painful for those who suffered", Barenboim told a reporter. "Why play what hurts people?" Not long afterwards, it was announced that Barenboim would lead the Israel Philharmonic in two Wagner overtures, which took place on 27 December "before a carefully screened audience". In 2000, the Israel Supreme Court upheld the right of the Rishon LeZion Orchestra to perform Wagner's Siegfried Idyll. At the Israel Festival in Jerusalem in July 2001, Barenboim had scheduled to perform the first act of Die Walküre with three singers, including tenor Plácido Domingo. However, strong protests by some Holocaust survivors, as well as the Israeli government, led the festival authorities to ask for an alternative program. (The Israel Festival's Public Advisory board, which included some Holocaust survivors, had originally approved the program.) The controversy appeared to end in May, after the Israel Festival announced that a selection by Wagner would not be included at the 7 July concert. Barenboim agreed to substitute music by Schumann and Stravinsky. However, at the end of the concert with the Berlin Staatskapelle, Barenboim announced that he would like to play Wagner as a second encore and invited those who objected to leave, saying, "Despite what the Israel Festival believes, there are people sitting in the audience for whom Wagner does not spark Nazi associations. I respect those for whom these associations are oppressive. It will be democratic to play a Wagner encore for those who wish to hear it. I am turning to you now and asking whether I can play Wagner." A half-hour debate ensued, with some audience members calling Barenboim a "fascist". In the end, a small number of attendees walked out and the overwhelming majority remained, applauding loudly after the performance of the Tristan und Isolde Prelude. In September 2001, a public relations associate for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Barenboim was the Music Director, revealed that season ticket-holders were about evenly divided about the wisdom of Barenboim's decision to play Wagner in Jerusalem. Barenboim regarded the performance of Wagner at the 7 July concert as a political statement. He said he had decided to defy the ban on Wagner after having a news conference he held the previous week interrupted by the ringing of a mobile phone to the tune of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries". "I thought if it can be heard on the ring of a telephone, why can't it be played in a concert hall?" he said. A Knesset committee subsequently called for Barenboim to be declared a persona non-grata in Israel until he apologized for conducting Wagner's music. The move was condemned by the musical director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Zubin Mehta and members of Knesset. Prior to receiving the $100,000 Wolf Prize, awarded annually in Israel, Barenboim said, "If people were really hurt, of course I regret this, because I don't want to harm anyone". In 2005, Barenboim gave the inaugural Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University, entitled "Wagner, Israel and Palestine". In the speech, according to the Financial Times, Barenboim "called on Israel to accept the Palestinian 'narrative even though they may not agree with it'", and said, "The state of Israel was supposed to provide the instrument for the end of anti-Semitism ... This inability to accept a new narrative has led to a new anti-Semitism that is very different from the European anti-Semitism of the 19th century." According to The New York Times, Barenboim said it was the "fear, this conviction of being yet again the victim, that does not allow the Israeli public to accept Wagner's anti-Semitism ... It is the same cell in the collective brain that does not allow them to make progress in their understanding of the needs of the Palestinian people", and also said that suicide bombings in Israel "had to be seen in the context of the historical development at which we have arrived". The speech caused controversy; the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wrote that Barenboim had "compared Herzl's ideas to Wagner's; criticized Palestinian terrorist attacks but also justified them; and said Israeli actions contributed to the rise of international anti-Semitism". In March 2007, Barenboim said: "The whole subject of Wagner in Israel has been politicized and is a symptom of a malaise that goes very deep in Israeli society..." In 2010, before conducting Wagner's Die Walküre for the gala premiere of La Scala's season in Milan, he said that the perception of Wagner was unjustly influenced by the fact that he was Hitler's favourite composer: "I think a bit of the problem with Wagner isn't what we all know in Israel, anti-Semitism, etc ... It is how the Nazis and Hitler saw Wagner as his own prophet ... This perception of Hitler colors for many people the perception of Wagner ... We need one day to liberate Wagner of all this weight". In a 2012 interview with Der Spiegel, Barenboim said, "It saddens me that official Israel so doggedly refuses to allow Wagner to be performed – as was the case, once again, at the University of Tel Aviv two weeks ago – because I see it as a symptom of a disease. The words I'm about to use are harsh, but I choose them deliberately: There is a politicization of the remembrance of the Holocaust in Israel, and that's terrible." He also argued that after the trial of Adolf Eichmann and the Six-Day War, "a misunderstanding also arose ... namely that the Holocaust, from which the Jews' ultimate claim to Israel was derived, and the Palestinian problem had something to do with each other." He also said, that since the Six-Day War, Israeli politicians have repeatedly established a connection between European anti-Semitism and the fact that the Palestinians don't accept the founding of the State of Israel. But that's absurd! The Palestinians weren't primarily anti-Semitic. They just didn't accept their expulsion. But European anti-Semitism goes much further back than to the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel in 1948. In response to a question from the interviewer, he said he conducted Wagner with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra because, "The musicians wanted it. I said: Sure, but we have to talk about it. It's a tricky decision." When the interviewer asked if the initiative came from Arab musicians in the orchestra, he replied, "On the contrary. It was the Israelis. The Israeli brass players." Over the years, observers of the Wagner battle have weighed in on both sides of the issue. Political views Barenboim is an outspoken critic of Israel's conservative governments and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. In an interview with the British music critic Norman Lebrecht in 2003, Barenboim accused Israel of behaving in a manner that was "morally abhorrent and strategically wrong" and "putting in danger the very existence of the state of Israel". In 1967, at the start of the Six-Day War, Barenboim and du Pré had performed for the Israeli troops on the front lines, as well as during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. During the Gulf War, he and an orchestra performed in Israel in gas masks. Barenboim has argued publicly for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. In a November 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian, he wrote that the "ongoing security of the state of Israel ... is only possible in the long term if the future of the Palestinian people, too, is secured in its own sovereign state. If this does not happen, the wars and history of that region will be constantly repeated and the unbearable stalemate will continue." West–Eastern Divan In 1999, Barenboim and Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said jointly founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra. This initiative brings together, every summer, a group of young classical musicians from Israel, the Palestine and Arab countries to study, perform and to promote mutual reflection and understanding. Barenboim and Said jointly received the 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards for their work in "improving understanding between nations". Together they wrote the book Parallels and Paradoxes, based on a series of public discussions held at New York's Carnegie Hall. In September 2005, presenting the book written with Said, Barenboim refused to be interviewed by uniformed Israel Defense Forces Radio reporter Dafna Arad, considering the wearing of the uniform insensitive for the occasion. In response, Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat of the Likud party called him "a real Jew hater" and "a real anti-Semite". After being invited for the fourth time to the Doha Festival for Music and Dialogue in Qatar with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in 2012, Barenboim's invitation was cancelled by the authorities because of "sensitivity to the developments in the Arab world". There had been a campaign against him in the Arab media, accusing him of "being a Zionist". In July 2012, Barenboim and the orchestra played a pivotal role at the BBC Proms, performing a cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies, with the Ninth timed to coincide with the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games. In addition, he was an Olympic flag carrier at the opening ceremony of the Games. Wolf Prize In May 2004, Barenboim was awarded the Wolf Prize at a ceremony at the Israeli Knesset. Education Minister Livnat held up the nomination until Barenboim apologized for his performance of Wagner in Israel. Barenboim called Livnat's demand "politically motivated", adding "I don't see what I need to apologize about. If I ever hurt a person privately or in public, I am sorry, because I have no intention of hurting people...", which was good enough for Livnat. The ceremony was boycotted by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, also a member of the Likud party. In his acceptance speech, Barenboim expressed his opinion on the political situation, referring to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948: I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice? Israel's President Moshe Katsav and Education Minister Livnat criticized Barenboim for his speech. Livnat accused him of attacking the state of Israel, to which Barenboim replied that he had not done so, but that he instead had cited the text of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Performing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Barenboim has performed several times in the West Bank: at Bir Zeit University in 1999 and several times in Ramallah. In December 2007, Barenboim and 20 musicians from Britain, the United States, France and Germany, and one Palestinian were scheduled to play a baroque music concert in Gaza. Although they had received authorization from Israeli authorities, the Palestinian was stopped at the Israel–Gaza border and told that he needed individual permission to enter. The group waited seven hours at the border, and then canceled the concert in solidarity. Barenboim commented: "A baroque music concert in a Roman Catholic church in Gaza – as we all know – has nothing to do with security and would bring so much joy to people who live there in great difficulty." In January 2008, after performing in Ramallah, Barenboim accepted honorary Palestinian citizenship, becoming the first Jewish Israeli citizen to be offered the status. Barenboim said he hoped it would serve as a public gesture of peace. Some Israelis criticized Barenboim's decision to accept Palestinian citizenship. The parliamentary faction chairman of the Shas party demanded that Barenboim be stripped of his Israeli citizenship, but the Interior Minister told the media that "the matter is not even up for discussion". In January 2009, Barenboim cancelled two concerts of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in Qatar and Cairo "due to the escalating violence in Gaza and the resulting concerns for the musicians' safety". In May 2011, Barenboim conducted the "Orchestra for Gaza" composed of volunteers from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Orchestra of La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris, at al-Mathaf Cultural House. The concert, held in Gaza City, was co-ordinated in secret with the United Nations. The orchestra flew from Berlin to Vienna and from there to El Arish on a plane chartered by Barenboim, entering the Gaza Strip at the Egyptian Rafah Border Crossing. The musicians were escorted by a convoy of United Nations vehicles. The concert, the first performance by an international classical ensemble in the Strip, was attended by an invited audience of several hundred schoolchildren and NGO workers, who greeted Barenboim with applause. The orchestra played Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Symphony No. 40, also familiar to an Arab audience as the basis of one of the songs of the famous Arab singer Fairuz. In his speech, Barenboim said: "Everyone has to understand that the Palestinian cause is a just cause therefore it can be only given justice if it is achieved without violence. Violence can only weaken the righteousness of the Palestinian cause". Awards and recognition Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards, 2002 (jointly with Edward Said) Toleranzpreis der Evangelischen Akademie Tutzing, 2002 Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize, 2003 (with Staatskapelle Berlin) Buber-Rosenzweig-Medal, 2004 Wolf Prize in Arts, 2004 (According to the documentary "Knowledge Is the Beginning", Barenboim donated all the proceeds to music education for Israeli and Palestinian youth) Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005; Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, 2006 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 2007 Commander of the Legion of Honour, 2007 Goethe Medal, 2007 Praemium Imperiale, 2007 Nominated "Honorary Guide" by UFO religion Raëlian Movement, 2008 International Service Award for the Global Defence of Human Rights, 2008 Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 2008 Istanbul International Music Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, 2009; In 2009 Konex Foundation from Argentina granted him the Diamond Konex Award for Classical Music as the most important musician in the last decade in his country. Léonie Sonning Music Prize, 2009 Westphalian Peace Prize (Westfälischer Friedenspreis), in 2010, for his striving for dialog in the Near East Otto Hahn Peace Medal (Otto-Hahn-Friedensmedaille) of the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN), Berlin-Brandenburg, for his efforts in promoting peace, humanity and international understanding, 2010; Grand Officier of the Légion d'honneur, 2011 Edison Award for Lifetime Achievement 2011, the most prestigious music award of The Netherlands Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), 2011 Dresden Peace Prize, 2011 International Willy-Brandt Prize, 2011 In 2012, he was voted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame. Honorary Member of the Berliner Philharmoniker Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts, 2015 Elgar Medal, 2015 Honorary citizen of Berlin, 2023 Minor planet 7163 Barenboim is named after him. Honorary degrees Doctor of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996 Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2003 Doctor of Music, University of Oxford, 2007 Doctor of Music, SOAS, University of London, 2008 Doctor of Music, Royal Academy of Music, 2010 Doctor of Philosophy, Weizmann Institute of Science, 2013 University of Florence, 2020 Grammy Awards Barenboim received 7 Grammy Awards. Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording: Christoph Classen (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel, Tobias Lehmann (engineers), Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Jane Eaglen, Thomas Hampson, Waltraud Meier, René Pape, Peter Seiffert, the Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin & the Staatskapelle Berlin for Wagner: Tannhäuser (2003) Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance: Daniel Barenboim, Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Daniele Damiano, Hansjörg Schellenberger & the Berlin Philharmonic for Beethoven/Mozart: Quintets (Chicago-Berlin) (1995) Daniel Barenboim & Itzhak Perlman for Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas (1991) Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance: Daniel Barenboim (conductor) & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1992) Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra): Martin Fouqué (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel (engineer), Daniel Barenboim (conductor / piano), Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Alex Klein, David McGill & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Richard Strauss Wind Concertos (Horn Concerto; Oboe Concerto, etc.) (2002) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Itzhak Perlman & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Elgar: Violin Concerto in B Minor (1983) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Arthur Rubinstein & the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos (1977) (also awarded Grammy Award for Best Classical Album) Straight-strung piano In 2017, Barenboim unveiled a piano that has straight-strung bass strings, as opposed to the crossed-stringed modern instrument. He was inspired by Liszt's Erard piano, which has straight strings. Barenboim appreciates the clarity of tone and a greater control over the tonal quality (or color) his new instrument gives. This piano was developed with the help of Chris Maene at Maene Piano, who also built it. In 2019, Barenboim used this instrument to perform at Berliner Philhamoniker. See also 19th century piano concertos References External links Barenboim Revealed on CNN.com Parallels and Paradoxes, NPR interview with Barenboim and Edward Said, 28 December 2002 "In harmony", The Guardian feature on Barenboim and Said, 5 April 2003 In the Beginning was Sound, 2006 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures. BBC Radio 3 interviews, November 1991 Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, opus 85 Jacqueline Du Pré with Daniel Barenboim and The New Philharmonia Orchestra on YouTube Review: Fidelio played by Daniel Barenboim and the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra Westphalian Peace Prize Barenboim's outstanding Beethoven, on the symphony cycle at classicstoday.com Daniel Barenboim and Arab Anti-Israel Sentiment: A Classic Example of Political Naivety Mutual Appreciation Is Essential Interview with Daniel Barenboim Two interviews with Daniel Barenboim by Bruce Duffie, 2 November 1985 & 11 September 1993 Category:1942 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century Argentine musicians Category:20th-century classical pianists Category:20th-century male musicians Category:21st-century Argentine musicians Category:21st-century classical pianists Category:21st-century male musicians Category:Accademia Musicale Chigiana alumni Category:Argentine classical pianists Category:Argentine conductors (music) Category:Argentine emigrants to Israel Category:Argentine Jews Category:Argentine people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Child classical musicians Category:Commanders of the Legion of Honour Category:Conductors (music) awarded knighthoods Category:Deutsche Grammophon artists Category:Edison Classical Music Awards Oeuvreprijs winners Category:EMI Classics and Virgin Classics artists Category:Erato Records artists Category:Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winners Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Category:Grand Officers of the Legion of Honour Category:Herbert von Karajan Music Prize winners Category:Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Category:Illustrious Citizens of Buenos Aires Category:Israeli classical pianists Category:Israeli conductors (music) Category:Israeli expatriates in Germany Category:Israeli expatriates in Italy Category:Israeli Jews Category:Israeli people of Argentine-Jewish descent Category:Israeli people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Israeli–Palestinian peace process Category:Jewish Argentine musicians Category:Jewish classical pianists Category:Jews in the State of Palestine Category:Male classical pianists Category:Male conductors (music) Category:Music directors of the Berlin State Opera Category:Musicians awarded knighthoods Category:Musicians from Buenos Aires Category:Recipients of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize Category:Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Category:Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:Spinozists Category:United Nations Messengers of Peace Category:Wolf Prize in Arts laureates Category:Naturalized citizens of the State of Palestine

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Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim (born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-Israeli pianist and conductor who is a citizen of Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain. He is the general music director of the Berlin State Opera, and the Staatskapelle Berlin; he previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and La Scala in Milan. Barenboim is known for his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as a resolute critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, France's Legion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, and the German Grosses Bundesverdienstkreuz and Willy Brandt Award.

Musical style

In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, and Mozart's piano concertos (in the latter, taking part as both soloist and conductor). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and Chopin's nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pre, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pre), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pre and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pre, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta). Notable recordings as a conductor include: the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert and Schumann, the Da Ponte operas of Mozart, numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle, and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist. By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's Preludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played. Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart's Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle. To mark Barenboim's 75th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of 39 CDs of his solo recordings, and Sony Classical issued a box set of Barenboim's orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs in 2017, Daniel Barenboim - A Retrospective. CANNOTANSWER

Daniel Barenboim (; in , born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born classical pianist and conductor based in Berlin. From 1992 until January 2023, Barenboim was the General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera and "Staatskapellmeister" of its orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin. The former music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and La Scala in Milan. Barenboim is known for his work with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as a resolute critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including seven Grammy awards, an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, France's Légion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, and the German Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband. In 2002, along with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, he was given Spain's Prince of Asturias Concord Award. Barenboim is multilingual, fluent in Spanish, Hebrew, English, French, Italian, and German. A self-described Spinozist, he is significantly influenced by Spinoza's life and thought. Biography Daniel Barenboim was born on 15 November 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Jewish parents Aida (née Schuster) and Enrique Barenboim, both professional pianists. He started piano lessons at the age of five with his mother, continuing to study with his father, who remained his only teacher. On 19 August 1950, at the age of seven, he gave his first formal concert, in Buenos Aires. In 1952, Barenboim's family moved to Israel. Two years later, in the summer of 1954, his parents took him to Salzburg to take part in Igor Markevitch's conducting classes. During that summer he also met and played for Wilhelm Furtwängler, who has remained a central musical influence and ideal for Barenboim. Furtwängler called the young Barenboim a "phenomenon" and invited him to perform the Beethoven First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, but Barenboim's father considered it too soon after the Second World War for a Jewish boy to go to Germany. In 1955, Barenboim studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. On 15 June 1967, Barenboim and British cellist Jacqueline du Pré were married in Jerusalem at a Western Wall ceremony, du Pré having converted to Judaism. Acting as one of the witnesses was the conductor Zubin Mehta, a long-time friend of Barenboim. Since "I was not Jewish I had to temporarily be renamed Moshe Cohen, which made me a 'kosher witness'", Mehta recalled. Du Pré retired from music in 1973, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). The marriage lasted until du Pré's death in 1987. In the early 1980s, Barenboim and Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova started a relationship. Together they had two sons, both born in Paris before du Pré's death: David Arthur, born 1983, and Michael, born 1985. Barenboim worked to keep his relationship with Bashkirova hidden from du Pré, and believed he had succeeded. He and Bashkirova married in 1988. Both sons are part of the music world: David is a manager-writer for the German hip-hop band Level 8, and is a classical violinist. Citizenship Barenboim holds citizenship in Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain, and was the first person to hold Palestinian and Israeli citizenship simultaneously. He lives in Berlin. Career After performing in Buenos Aires, Barenboim made his international debut as a pianist at the age of 10 in 1952 in Vienna and Rome. In 1955, he performed in Paris, in 1956, in London, and in 1957 in New York under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. Regular concert tours of Europe, the United States, South America, Australia and the Far East followed thereafter. In June 1967, Barenboim and his then-fiancée Jacqueline du Pré gave concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba before and during the Six-Day War. His friendship with musicians Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman, and marriage to du Pré led to the 1969 film by Christopher Nupen of their performance of the Schubert "Trout" Quintet. Following his debut as a conductor with the English Chamber Orchestra in Abbey Road Studios, London, in 1966, Barenboim was invited to conduct by many European and American symphony orchestras. Between 1975 and 1989, he was music director of the Orchestre de Paris, where he conducted much contemporary music. Barenboim made his opera conducting debut in 1973 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival. He made his debut at Bayreuth in 1981, conducting there regularly until 1999. In 1988, he was appointed artistic and musical director of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, scheduled to open in 1990, but was fired in January 1989 by the opera's chairman Pierre Bergé. Barenboim was named music director designate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1989 and succeeded Sir Georg Solti as its music director in 1991, a post he held until 17 June 2006. He expressed frustration with the need for fund-raising duties in the United States as part of being a music director of an American orchestra. Since 1992, Barenboim has been music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, succeeding in maintaining the independent status of the State Opera. He has tried to maintain the orchestra's traditional sound and style. In autumn 2000 he was made conductor for life of the Staatskapelle Berlin. On 15 May 2006, Barenboim was named principal guest conductor of La Scala opera house, in Milan, after Riccardo Muti's resignation. He subsequently became music director of La Scala in 2011. In 2006, Barenboim presented the BBC Reith Lectures, presenting a series of five lectures titled In the Beginning was Sound. The lectures on music were recorded in a range of cities, including London, Chicago, Berlin, and two in Jerusalem. In the autumn of 2006, Barenboim gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University, entitling his talk Sound and Thought. In November 2006, Lorin Maazel submitted Barenboim's name as his nominee to succeed him as the New York Philharmonic's music director. Barenboim said he was flattered but "nothing could be further from my thoughts at the moment than the possibility of returning to the United States for a permanent position", repeating in April 2007 his lack of interest in the New York Philharmonic's music directorship or its newly created principal conductor position. Barenboim made his conducting debut on 28 November 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the House's 450th performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. In 2009, Barenboim conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time. In his New Year message, he expressed the hope that 2009 would be a year for peace and for human justice in the Middle East. He returned to conduct the 2014 Vienna New Year's Concert, and also conducted the 2022 Concert. In 2014, construction began on the Barenboim–Said Academy in Berlin. A joint project Barenboim developed with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, the academy was planned as a site for young music students from the Arab world and Israel to study music and humanities in Berlin. It opened its doors on 8 December 2016. In 2017, the Pierre Boulez Saal opened as the public face of the academy. The elliptical shaped concert hall was designed by Frank Gehry. Acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota created the hall’s sound profile. In 2015, Barenboim unveiled a new concert grand piano. Designed by Chris Maene with support from Steinway & Sons, the piano features straight parallel strings instead of the conventional diagonally-crossed strings of a modern Steinway. In 2018, Barenboim was the subject of the French animated series Max & Maestro. In 2020, Barenboim curated the digital festival of new music “Distance / Intimacy” with flautist Emmanuel Pahud in the Pierre Boulez Saal. At their invitation ten contemporary composers, among them Jörg Widmann, Olga Neuwirth and Matthias Pintscher, contributed new works engaging artistically with the COVID-19 pandemic. All participating composers and musicians waived their fees, inviting listeners to financially support arts and culture. In October 2022, Barenboim announced on social media that he would be reducing his conducting and other engagements for health reasons. On 6 January 2023, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden announced Barenboim's resignation as its Generalmusikdirektor, effective 31 January 2023, because of health reasons. Musical style Barenboim has rejected musical fashions based on current musicological research, such as the authentic performance movement. His recording of Beethoven's symphonies shows his preference for some conventional practices, rather than fully adhering to Bärenreiter's new edition (edited by Jonathan Del Mar). Barenboim has opposed the practice of choosing the tempo of a piece based on historical evidence, such as the composer's metronome marks. He argues instead for finding the tempo from within the music, especially from its harmony and harmonic rhythm. He has reflected this in the general tempi chosen in his recording of Beethoven's symphonies, usually adhering to early-twentieth-century practices. He has not been influenced by the faster tempos chosen by other conductors such as David Zinman and authentic movement advocate Roger Norrington. In his recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Barenboim makes frequent use of the right-foot sustaining pedal, a device absent from the keyboard instruments of Bach's time (although the harpsichord was highly resonant), producing a sonority very different from the "dry" and often staccato sound favoured by Glenn Gould. Moreover, in the fugues, he often plays one voice considerably louder than the others, a practice impossible on a harpsichord. According to some scholarship, this practice began in Beethoven's time (see, for example, Matthew Dirst's book Engaging Bach). When justifying his interpretation of Bach, Barenboim claims that he is interested in the long tradition of playing Bach that has existed for two and a half centuries, rather than in the exact style of performance in Bach's time: The study of old instruments and historic performance practice has taught us a great deal, but the main point, the impact of harmony, has been ignored. This is proved by the fact that tempo is described as an independent phenomenon. It is claimed that one of Bach's gavottes must be played fast and another one slowly. But tempo is not independent! ... I think that concerning oneself purely with historic performance practice and the attempt to reproduce the sound of older styles of music-making is limiting and no indication of progress. Mendelssohn and Schumann tried to introduce Bach into their own period, as did Liszt with his transcriptions and Busoni with his arrangements. In America Leopold Stokowski also tried to do it with his arrangements for orchestra. This was always the result of "progressive" efforts to bring Bach closer to the particular period. I have no philosophical problem with someone playing Bach and making it sound like Boulez. My problem is more with someone who tries to imitate the sound of that time ... Recordings In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, Beethoven's piano concertos (with the New Philharmonia Orchestra and Otto Klemperer), and Mozart's piano concertos (conducting the English Chamber Orchestra from the piano). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and Chopin's Nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pré), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pré and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pré, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta). Notable recordings as a conductor include the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert, and Schumann; the Da Ponte operas of Mozart; numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle; and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist. By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: J. S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's Préludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played. Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart's Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle. To mark Barenboim's 75th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of 39 CDs of his solo recordings, and Sony Classical issued a box set of Barenboim's orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs in 2017, Daniel Barenboim – A Retrospective. Conducting Wagner in Israel The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (then Palestine Orchestra) had performed Richard Wagner's music in Mandatory Palestine even during the early days of the Nazi era. But after the Kristallnacht, Jewish musicians avoided playing Wagner's music in Israel because of the use Nazi Germany made of the composer and because of Wagner's own anti-Semitic writings, initiating an unofficial boycott. This informal ban continued when Israel was founded in 1948, but from time to time unsuccessful efforts were made to end it. In 1974 and again in 1981 Zubin Mehta planned to (but did not) lead the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in works of Wagner. During the latter occasion, fist fights broke out in the audience. Barenboim, who had been selected to head the production of Wagner's operas at the 1988 Bayreuth Festival, had since at least 1989 publicly opposed the Israeli ban. In that year, he had the Israel Philharmonic "rehearse" two of Wagner's works. In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous", and feels it must be faced, but argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust." In 1990, Barenboim conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in its first appearance in Israel, but he excluded Wagner's works. "Although Wagner died in 1883, he is not played [in Israel] because his music is too inextricably linked with Nazism, and so is too painful for those who suffered", Barenboim told a reporter. "Why play what hurts people?" Not long afterwards, it was announced that Barenboim would lead the Israel Philharmonic in two Wagner overtures, which took place on 27 December "before a carefully screened audience". In 2000, the Israel Supreme Court upheld the right of the Rishon LeZion Orchestra to perform Wagner's Siegfried Idyll. At the Israel Festival in Jerusalem in July 2001, Barenboim had scheduled to perform the first act of Die Walküre with three singers, including tenor Plácido Domingo. However, strong protests by some Holocaust survivors, as well as the Israeli government, led the festival authorities to ask for an alternative program. (The Israel Festival's Public Advisory board, which included some Holocaust survivors, had originally approved the program.) The controversy appeared to end in May, after the Israel Festival announced that a selection by Wagner would not be included at the 7 July concert. Barenboim agreed to substitute music by Schumann and Stravinsky. However, at the end of the concert with the Berlin Staatskapelle, Barenboim announced that he would like to play Wagner as a second encore and invited those who objected to leave, saying, "Despite what the Israel Festival believes, there are people sitting in the audience for whom Wagner does not spark Nazi associations. I respect those for whom these associations are oppressive. It will be democratic to play a Wagner encore for those who wish to hear it. I am turning to you now and asking whether I can play Wagner." A half-hour debate ensued, with some audience members calling Barenboim a "fascist". In the end, a small number of attendees walked out and the overwhelming majority remained, applauding loudly after the performance of the Tristan und Isolde Prelude. In September 2001, a public relations associate for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Barenboim was the Music Director, revealed that season ticket-holders were about evenly divided about the wisdom of Barenboim's decision to play Wagner in Jerusalem. Barenboim regarded the performance of Wagner at the 7 July concert as a political statement. He said he had decided to defy the ban on Wagner after having a news conference he held the previous week interrupted by the ringing of a mobile phone to the tune of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries". "I thought if it can be heard on the ring of a telephone, why can't it be played in a concert hall?" he said. A Knesset committee subsequently called for Barenboim to be declared a persona non-grata in Israel until he apologized for conducting Wagner's music. The move was condemned by the musical director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Zubin Mehta and members of Knesset. Prior to receiving the $100,000 Wolf Prize, awarded annually in Israel, Barenboim said, "If people were really hurt, of course I regret this, because I don't want to harm anyone". In 2005, Barenboim gave the inaugural Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University, entitled "Wagner, Israel and Palestine". In the speech, according to the Financial Times, Barenboim "called on Israel to accept the Palestinian 'narrative even though they may not agree with it'", and said, "The state of Israel was supposed to provide the instrument for the end of anti-Semitism ... This inability to accept a new narrative has led to a new anti-Semitism that is very different from the European anti-Semitism of the 19th century." According to The New York Times, Barenboim said it was the "fear, this conviction of being yet again the victim, that does not allow the Israeli public to accept Wagner's anti-Semitism ... It is the same cell in the collective brain that does not allow them to make progress in their understanding of the needs of the Palestinian people", and also said that suicide bombings in Israel "had to be seen in the context of the historical development at which we have arrived". The speech caused controversy; the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wrote that Barenboim had "compared Herzl's ideas to Wagner's; criticized Palestinian terrorist attacks but also justified them; and said Israeli actions contributed to the rise of international anti-Semitism". In March 2007, Barenboim said: "The whole subject of Wagner in Israel has been politicized and is a symptom of a malaise that goes very deep in Israeli society..." In 2010, before conducting Wagner's Die Walküre for the gala premiere of La Scala's season in Milan, he said that the perception of Wagner was unjustly influenced by the fact that he was Hitler's favourite composer: "I think a bit of the problem with Wagner isn't what we all know in Israel, anti-Semitism, etc ... It is how the Nazis and Hitler saw Wagner as his own prophet ... This perception of Hitler colors for many people the perception of Wagner ... We need one day to liberate Wagner of all this weight". In a 2012 interview with Der Spiegel, Barenboim said, "It saddens me that official Israel so doggedly refuses to allow Wagner to be performed – as was the case, once again, at the University of Tel Aviv two weeks ago – because I see it as a symptom of a disease. The words I'm about to use are harsh, but I choose them deliberately: There is a politicization of the remembrance of the Holocaust in Israel, and that's terrible." He also argued that after the trial of Adolf Eichmann and the Six-Day War, "a misunderstanding also arose ... namely that the Holocaust, from which the Jews' ultimate claim to Israel was derived, and the Palestinian problem had something to do with each other." He also said, that since the Six-Day War, Israeli politicians have repeatedly established a connection between European anti-Semitism and the fact that the Palestinians don't accept the founding of the State of Israel. But that's absurd! The Palestinians weren't primarily anti-Semitic. They just didn't accept their expulsion. But European anti-Semitism goes much further back than to the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel in 1948. In response to a question from the interviewer, he said he conducted Wagner with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra because, "The musicians wanted it. I said: Sure, but we have to talk about it. It's a tricky decision." When the interviewer asked if the initiative came from Arab musicians in the orchestra, he replied, "On the contrary. It was the Israelis. The Israeli brass players." Over the years, observers of the Wagner battle have weighed in on both sides of the issue. Political views Barenboim is an outspoken critic of Israel's conservative governments and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. In an interview with the British music critic Norman Lebrecht in 2003, Barenboim accused Israel of behaving in a manner that was "morally abhorrent and strategically wrong" and "putting in danger the very existence of the state of Israel". In 1967, at the start of the Six-Day War, Barenboim and du Pré had performed for the Israeli troops on the front lines, as well as during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. During the Gulf War, he and an orchestra performed in Israel in gas masks. Barenboim has argued publicly for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. In a November 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian, he wrote that the "ongoing security of the state of Israel ... is only possible in the long term if the future of the Palestinian people, too, is secured in its own sovereign state. If this does not happen, the wars and history of that region will be constantly repeated and the unbearable stalemate will continue." West–Eastern Divan In 1999, Barenboim and Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said jointly founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra. This initiative brings together, every summer, a group of young classical musicians from Israel, the Palestine and Arab countries to study, perform and to promote mutual reflection and understanding. Barenboim and Said jointly received the 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards for their work in "improving understanding between nations". Together they wrote the book Parallels and Paradoxes, based on a series of public discussions held at New York's Carnegie Hall. In September 2005, presenting the book written with Said, Barenboim refused to be interviewed by uniformed Israel Defense Forces Radio reporter Dafna Arad, considering the wearing of the uniform insensitive for the occasion. In response, Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat of the Likud party called him "a real Jew hater" and "a real anti-Semite". After being invited for the fourth time to the Doha Festival for Music and Dialogue in Qatar with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in 2012, Barenboim's invitation was cancelled by the authorities because of "sensitivity to the developments in the Arab world". There had been a campaign against him in the Arab media, accusing him of "being a Zionist". In July 2012, Barenboim and the orchestra played a pivotal role at the BBC Proms, performing a cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies, with the Ninth timed to coincide with the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games. In addition, he was an Olympic flag carrier at the opening ceremony of the Games. Wolf Prize In May 2004, Barenboim was awarded the Wolf Prize at a ceremony at the Israeli Knesset. Education Minister Livnat held up the nomination until Barenboim apologized for his performance of Wagner in Israel. Barenboim called Livnat's demand "politically motivated", adding "I don't see what I need to apologize about. If I ever hurt a person privately or in public, I am sorry, because I have no intention of hurting people...", which was good enough for Livnat. The ceremony was boycotted by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, also a member of the Likud party. In his acceptance speech, Barenboim expressed his opinion on the political situation, referring to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948: I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice? Israel's President Moshe Katsav and Education Minister Livnat criticized Barenboim for his speech. Livnat accused him of attacking the state of Israel, to which Barenboim replied that he had not done so, but that he instead had cited the text of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Performing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Barenboim has performed several times in the West Bank: at Bir Zeit University in 1999 and several times in Ramallah. In December 2007, Barenboim and 20 musicians from Britain, the United States, France and Germany, and one Palestinian were scheduled to play a baroque music concert in Gaza. Although they had received authorization from Israeli authorities, the Palestinian was stopped at the Israel–Gaza border and told that he needed individual permission to enter. The group waited seven hours at the border, and then canceled the concert in solidarity. Barenboim commented: "A baroque music concert in a Roman Catholic church in Gaza – as we all know – has nothing to do with security and would bring so much joy to people who live there in great difficulty." In January 2008, after performing in Ramallah, Barenboim accepted honorary Palestinian citizenship, becoming the first Jewish Israeli citizen to be offered the status. Barenboim said he hoped it would serve as a public gesture of peace. Some Israelis criticized Barenboim's decision to accept Palestinian citizenship. The parliamentary faction chairman of the Shas party demanded that Barenboim be stripped of his Israeli citizenship, but the Interior Minister told the media that "the matter is not even up for discussion". In January 2009, Barenboim cancelled two concerts of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in Qatar and Cairo "due to the escalating violence in Gaza and the resulting concerns for the musicians' safety". In May 2011, Barenboim conducted the "Orchestra for Gaza" composed of volunteers from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Orchestra of La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris, at al-Mathaf Cultural House. The concert, held in Gaza City, was co-ordinated in secret with the United Nations. The orchestra flew from Berlin to Vienna and from there to El Arish on a plane chartered by Barenboim, entering the Gaza Strip at the Egyptian Rafah Border Crossing. The musicians were escorted by a convoy of United Nations vehicles. The concert, the first performance by an international classical ensemble in the Strip, was attended by an invited audience of several hundred schoolchildren and NGO workers, who greeted Barenboim with applause. The orchestra played Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Symphony No. 40, also familiar to an Arab audience as the basis of one of the songs of the famous Arab singer Fairuz. In his speech, Barenboim said: "Everyone has to understand that the Palestinian cause is a just cause therefore it can be only given justice if it is achieved without violence. Violence can only weaken the righteousness of the Palestinian cause". Awards and recognition Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards, 2002 (jointly with Edward Said) Toleranzpreis der Evangelischen Akademie Tutzing, 2002 Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize, 2003 (with Staatskapelle Berlin) Buber-Rosenzweig-Medal, 2004 Wolf Prize in Arts, 2004 (According to the documentary "Knowledge Is the Beginning", Barenboim donated all the proceeds to music education for Israeli and Palestinian youth) Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005; Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, 2006 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 2007 Commander of the Legion of Honour, 2007 Goethe Medal, 2007 Praemium Imperiale, 2007 Nominated "Honorary Guide" by UFO religion Raëlian Movement, 2008 International Service Award for the Global Defence of Human Rights, 2008 Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 2008 Istanbul International Music Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, 2009; In 2009 Konex Foundation from Argentina granted him the Diamond Konex Award for Classical Music as the most important musician in the last decade in his country. Léonie Sonning Music Prize, 2009 Westphalian Peace Prize (Westfälischer Friedenspreis), in 2010, for his striving for dialog in the Near East Otto Hahn Peace Medal (Otto-Hahn-Friedensmedaille) of the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN), Berlin-Brandenburg, for his efforts in promoting peace, humanity and international understanding, 2010; Grand Officier of the Légion d'honneur, 2011 Edison Award for Lifetime Achievement 2011, the most prestigious music award of The Netherlands Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), 2011 Dresden Peace Prize, 2011 International Willy-Brandt Prize, 2011 In 2012, he was voted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame. Honorary Member of the Berliner Philharmoniker Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts, 2015 Elgar Medal, 2015 Honorary citizen of Berlin, 2023 Minor planet 7163 Barenboim is named after him. Honorary degrees Doctor of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996 Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2003 Doctor of Music, University of Oxford, 2007 Doctor of Music, SOAS, University of London, 2008 Doctor of Music, Royal Academy of Music, 2010 Doctor of Philosophy, Weizmann Institute of Science, 2013 University of Florence, 2020 Grammy Awards Barenboim received 7 Grammy Awards. Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording: Christoph Classen (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel, Tobias Lehmann (engineers), Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Jane Eaglen, Thomas Hampson, Waltraud Meier, René Pape, Peter Seiffert, the Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin & the Staatskapelle Berlin for Wagner: Tannhäuser (2003) Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance: Daniel Barenboim, Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Daniele Damiano, Hansjörg Schellenberger & the Berlin Philharmonic for Beethoven/Mozart: Quintets (Chicago-Berlin) (1995) Daniel Barenboim & Itzhak Perlman for Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas (1991) Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance: Daniel Barenboim (conductor) & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1992) Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra): Martin Fouqué (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel (engineer), Daniel Barenboim (conductor / piano), Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Alex Klein, David McGill & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Richard Strauss Wind Concertos (Horn Concerto; Oboe Concerto, etc.) (2002) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Itzhak Perlman & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Elgar: Violin Concerto in B Minor (1983) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Arthur Rubinstein & the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos (1977) (also awarded Grammy Award for Best Classical Album) Straight-strung piano In 2017, Barenboim unveiled a piano that has straight-strung bass strings, as opposed to the crossed-stringed modern instrument. He was inspired by Liszt's Erard piano, which has straight strings. Barenboim appreciates the clarity of tone and a greater control over the tonal quality (or color) his new instrument gives. This piano was developed with the help of Chris Maene at Maene Piano, who also built it. In 2019, Barenboim used this instrument to perform at Berliner Philhamoniker. See also 19th century piano concertos References External links Barenboim Revealed on CNN.com Parallels and Paradoxes, NPR interview with Barenboim and Edward Said, 28 December 2002 "In harmony", The Guardian feature on Barenboim and Said, 5 April 2003 In the Beginning was Sound, 2006 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures. BBC Radio 3 interviews, November 1991 Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, opus 85 Jacqueline Du Pré with Daniel Barenboim and The New Philharmonia Orchestra on YouTube Review: Fidelio played by Daniel Barenboim and the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra Westphalian Peace Prize Barenboim's outstanding Beethoven, on the symphony cycle at classicstoday.com Daniel Barenboim and Arab Anti-Israel Sentiment: A Classic Example of Political Naivety Mutual Appreciation Is Essential Interview with Daniel Barenboim Two interviews with Daniel Barenboim by Bruce Duffie, 2 November 1985 & 11 September 1993 Category:1942 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century Argentine musicians Category:20th-century classical pianists Category:20th-century male musicians Category:21st-century Argentine musicians Category:21st-century classical pianists Category:21st-century male musicians Category:Accademia Musicale Chigiana alumni Category:Argentine classical pianists Category:Argentine conductors (music) Category:Argentine emigrants to Israel Category:Argentine Jews Category:Argentine people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Child classical musicians Category:Commanders of the Legion of Honour Category:Conductors (music) awarded knighthoods Category:Deutsche Grammophon artists Category:Edison Classical Music Awards Oeuvreprijs winners Category:EMI Classics and Virgin Classics artists Category:Erato Records artists Category:Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winners Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Category:Grand Officers of the Legion of Honour Category:Herbert von Karajan Music Prize winners Category:Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Category:Illustrious Citizens of Buenos Aires Category:Israeli classical pianists Category:Israeli conductors (music) Category:Israeli expatriates in Germany Category:Israeli expatriates in Italy Category:Israeli Jews Category:Israeli people of Argentine-Jewish descent Category:Israeli people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Israeli–Palestinian peace process Category:Jewish Argentine musicians Category:Jewish classical pianists Category:Jews in the State of Palestine Category:Male classical pianists Category:Male conductors (music) Category:Music directors of the Berlin State Opera Category:Musicians awarded knighthoods Category:Musicians from Buenos Aires Category:Recipients of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize Category:Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Category:Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:Spinozists Category:United Nations Messengers of Peace Category:Wolf Prize in Arts laureates Category:Naturalized citizens of the State of Palestine

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Ed the Happy Clown

Ed the Happy Clown is a graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. Its title character is a large-headed, childlike children's clown who undergoes one horrifying affliction after another. The story is a dark, humorous mix of genres and features scatological humour, sex, body horror, extreme graphic violence, and blasphemous religious imagery. Central to the plot are a man who cannot stop defecating; the head of a miniature, other-dimensional Ronald Reagan attached to the head of Ed's penis; and a female vampire who seeks revenge on her adulterous lover who had murdered her to escape his sins.

Summary

The children's hospital Ed is about to visit burns down with all the children in it. A number of apparently unrelated short gag strips appear before Brown begins to tie the narrative together into one plot. Ed is imprisoned when he finds hospital janitor Chet Doodley's severed hand and the police assume Ed had taken it. In the prison a man is unable stop defecating and his faeces fill the jail, engulfing all, including Ed. When Ed emerges he finds the head of his penis replaced with the head of a miniature Ronald Reagan from Dimension X--a world much like Ed's but whose people are tiny. Dimension X has dumped its waste into a trans-dimensional portal, which turns out to be the anus of the man who could not stop defecating. Reagan's body remains in Dimension X, and the professor who discovered the portal travels to Ed's dimension to find the head, making contact with the authorities of Ed's world. Chet believes the loss of his hand is due to his unfaithfulness to his wife; as a child his mother read Chet the story of a Saint Justin who cuts off his right hand to avoid sinning, and Chet assumes his lost hand is a like punishment from God. He tries to atone for it by killing his girlfriend, Josie, in the woods. Penis-worshipping, rat-eating pygmy cannibals drag the bodies of both Josie and Ed into the sewers. As they are about to sever Ed's penis Josie reanimates in time to save him. The two attempt to escape from the sewers when they are accidentally shot by a mother-daughter team of pygmy hunters. Josie dies again, and her disembodied spirit learns from the ghost of Chet's sister that she has become a vampire. The professor from Dimension X and members of the staff of the Adventures in Science TV show find Ed and the President and bring them to the TV studio. The discovery is big news, and the professor and the President make a TV appearance. When it is discovered that the people of Dimension X are homosexual or bisexual the professor is put to a violent death, and Ed and the body of Josie are put in confinement. The studio is invaded by the pygmies when they recognize their "Penis God" on television. Josie's spirit returns to her body, and she and Ed escape and make their way to the hospital where Chet works. Josie gets her revenge by seducing Chet and killing him before he is able to repent, thus sending him to Hell. Ed is one of a number of men secretly kidnapped to provide another, Bick Backman, with a penis transplant--a larger one to please his wife. Out of the lineup of unconscious men, Ed's penis with the President's head on it stands out and is chosen for Backman. After the operation, Mounties raid the hospital and, finding Reagan, take Backman and leave Ed, who has had a larger penis sewn on in the President's place. The hospital hands Ed over to Mrs Backman, claiming he is her husband. Though suspicious, she accepts Ed--and his newly transplanted penis. CANNOTANSWER

Ed the Happy Clown is a graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. Its title character is a large-headed, childlike children's clown who undergoes one horrifying affliction after another. The story is a dark, humorous mix of genres and features scatological humour, sex, body horror, extreme graphic violence, and blasphemous religious imagery. Central to the plot are a man who cannot stop defecating; the head of a miniature, other-dimensional Ronald Reagan attached to the head of Ed's penis; and a female vampire who seeks revenge on her adulterous lover who had murdered her to escape his sins. The surreal, largely improvised story began with a series of unrelated short strips that Brown went on to tie into a single narrative. Brown first serialized it in his comic book Yummy Fur, and the first, incomplete collected edition in 1989, titled Ed the Happy Clown: A Yummy Fur Book. Shortly after, Brown became unsatisfied with the direction of the serial; he brought it to an abrupt end in the eighteenth issue of Yummy Fur and turned to autobiography. A second edition titled Ed the Happy Clown: The Definitive Ed Book appeared in 1992 with an altered ending and most of the later parts of the series eliminated. The contents of this edition were re-serialized with extensive endnotes in 2005–2006 as a nine-issue Ed the Happy Clown series and collected as Ed the Happy Clown: A in 2012. The story is seen by many critics as a highlight of the 1980s North American alternative comics scene. It has left an influence on contemporary alternative cartoonists such as Daniel Clowes, Seth, and Dave Sim, and has won a Harvey and other awards. Canadian film director Bruce McDonald has had the rights since 1991 to make an Ed film, but the project has struggled to find financial backing. Background Brown grew up in Châteauguay, Quebec, a Montreal suburb with a large English-speaking minority. He was an introverted youth attracted to comic books from a young age. He aimed at a career drawing superhero comics, but was unsuccessful in getting work with Marvel or DC Comics after graduating from high school. He moved to Toronto and discovered and the small-press community. By the early 1980s Marvel and DC had come to dominate comic-book publishing in North America, and comic shops became the main places of purchase, with a clientele of dedicated comics fans. During this time, a trend towards greater ambition and expressiveness was developing on the fringes, such as Dave Sim's long Cerebus series and the avant-garde graphics magazine Raw in which the serialization of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus appeared. Brown was to find himself in the alternative comics scene that grew throughout the decade. Brown was feeling himself in a creatively stagnant period when he came across a book on Surrealism: Wallace Fowlie's The Age of Surrealism (1950). The book motivated Brown to work on an improvised minicomic series which he called Yummy Fur and self-published from 1983. Content Ed suffers one indignity after another as the plot gets grimmer and more surreal. His bizarre misfortunes include having the tip of his penis replaced by the head of a miniature, talking Ronald Reagan from another universe. Ed's adventures featured encounters with penis-worshipping pygmies, flesh-eating rats, Martians, Frankenstein's monster, and other characters from traditional genre fiction. The story unfolds with a black-comedic sensibility topped with Christian symbolism. Despite his ordeals—being imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, falling in love with a vampire—Ed remains a gentle, childlike innocent, with a Candide-like optimism. The story has had more than one ending and is a challenge to summarize. Summary The children's hospital Ed is about to visit burns down with all the children in it. A number of apparently unrelated short gag strips appear before Brown begins to tie the narrative together into one plot. Ed is imprisoned when he finds hospital janitor Chet Doodley's severed hand and the police assume Ed had taken it. In the prison, a man is unable to stop defecating and his faeces fill the jail engulfing all, including Ed. When Ed emerges he finds the head of his penis replaced with the head of a miniature Ronald Reagan from Dimension X—a world much like Ed's but whose people are tiny. Dimension X has dumped its waste into a trans-dimensional portal, which turns out to be the anus of the man who could not stop defecating. Reagan's body remains in Dimension X, and the professor who discovered the portal travels to Ed's dimension to find the head, making contact with the authorities of Ed's world. Chet believes the loss of his hand is due to his unfaithfulness to his wife; as a child his mother read Chet the story of a Saint Justin who cuts off his right hand to avoid sinning, and Chet assumes his lost hand is a like punishment from God. He tries to atone for it by killing his girlfriend, Josie, in the woods. Penis-worshipping, rat-eating pygmy cannibals drag the bodies of both Josie and Ed into the sewers. As they are about to sever Ed's penis, Josie reanimates in time to save him. The two attempt to escape from the sewers when they are accidentally shot by a mother–daughter team of pygmy hunters. Josie dies again, and her disembodied spirit learns from the ghost of Chet's sister that she has become a vampire. The professor from Dimension X and members of the staff of the Adventures in Science TV show find Ed and the President and bring them to the TV studio. The discovery is big news, and the professor and the President make a TV appearance. When it is discovered that the people of Dimension X are homosexual or bisexual the professor is put to a violent death, and Ed and the body of Josie are put in confinement. The studio is invaded by the pygmies when they recognize their "Penis God" on television. Josie's spirit returns to her body, and she and Ed escape and make their way to the hospital where Chet works. Josie gets her revenge by seducing Chet and killing him before he is able to repent, thus sending him to Hell. Ed is one of a number of men secretly kidnapped to provide another, Bick Backman, with a penis transplant—a larger one to please his wife. Out of the lineup of unconscious men, Ed's penis with the President's head on it stands out and is chosen for Backman. After the operation, Mounties raid the hospital and, finding Reagan, take Backman and leave Ed, who has had a larger penis sewn on in the President's place. The hospital hands Ed over to Mrs Backman, claiming he is her husband. Though suspicious, she accepts Ed—and his newly transplanted penis. Endings The ending that appeared in Yummy Fur has not appeared in book editions. In it, Mrs Backman takes Ed home, but her children are not convinced he is their father. After he spends some time in the house they decide "he's way better than the other one". There is a resemblance between Ed and Mrs Backman, and it is revealed they were twins separated at birth. While at church, the Backman children are kidnapped by stone aliens and are saved by Frankenstein's monster, who brings them to Washington, D.C. where they find their kidnapped real father. Josie and Ed's zombie friend rescues the Backmans. Ed has his clown makeup restored and reverts to his cheerful self. When he goes to visit Josie, he learns her apartment building has burned down, and she was the only casualty. Her charred skeleton is brought out, clutching an unburnt severed hand. The alternate ending from the 1992 and later versions drops most of the story that follows Chet's death, replacing it with 17 new pages. In this version, Chet's severed hand visits Josie's apartment at night and rolls up her window shade. As she is a vampire, the sunlight in the morning burns her to death while she sleeps, and she and Chet are reunited in the flames of Hell. Primary characters Analysis Ed spans a range of Brown's interests, from political skepticism to scatological humour to vampires and werewolves. The story is dark and surreal, desperate and humorous. Christian elements especially—largely sacrilegious—are prominent in the book. They are at first innocuous and unimportant: a zombie named Christian, another character who believes he has found Christ's face on a piece of adhesive tape. With the fourth issue of Yummy Fur, Brown's surreal take on Christianity becomes central: the cover depicts the Virgin Mary holding not just the infant Christ, but also a severed hand. Within is the story of Saint Justin, whose amputation becomes a key motif: Chet loses his own hand and finds another; his own appears mysteriously under Ed's pillow. Only by praying for forgiveness for his adultery and by murdering his lover is Chet's hand miraculously restored. According to the Lives of the Saints, the fictional Saint Justin severed his own hand, but in another version Brown presents, Justin's wife cuts it off with a woodaxe when she catches her husband masturbating after rejecting her advances. Despite Saint Justin's story's exposure to the reader as a fraud, Chet's faith in the official version restores his severed hand. The altered ending from 1992 has both Josie and Chet reunited in Hell, and the ghost of Chet's sister becomes a devil. As Brown mixes surreal sacrilege with the sort of moralism that compels him to condemn Josie for her bloody revenge, Brian Evenson calls Brown "deft at muddying the waters in a way that makes it very hard to pin him down as either belieever or satirist, as either anti-religionist or apologist". While not part of the Ed story, Brown had been serializing straight adaptations in Yummy Fur of the Gospels of Mark and of Matthew during most of Ed'''s run. R. Fiore called these adaptations "the best exploration of Christian mythology since Justin Green's Binky Brown", comparing Chet's excessive Christian guilt with the "almost childlike retelling" of Mark. Yummy Fur readers also found "I Live in the Bottomless Pit", a short strip in which a man discovers the Antichrist, who after millennia underground has forgotten his mission—a paradoxical one, as he states his orders were from God.Ed prominently features transgressive content including nudity, graphic violence, racist imagery, blasphemy, and profanity. Brown grew up in a strictly Baptist household in which he was not allowed to swear, as depicted in Brown's graphic novel I Never Liked You (1994). Brown challenged his own anxieties by tackling subjects such as scatological humour. Imagery such as the recurring Pygmy characters and their "ooga booga" language, Chris Lanier asserted, reinforce "old colonial imaging of 'third world natives' ". Style According to comics historian John Bell, "Brown arrived in print almost fully formed as an artist". His style, while showing the influence of artists such as Robert Crumb, Harold Gray, and Jack Kirby, was distinct from his predecessors. He continued to mature as an artist and draughtsman throughout the run of Ed, showing enormous growth from the beginning to end of the graphic novel. Unlike most cartoonists, Brown does not compose his pages, but draws each panel on separate sheets of paper and assembles them into pages afterwards. The panels in Ed were on squares of cheap typewriter paper, which he placed on a block of wood on his lap in lieu of a drawing board. He used a number of different drawing tools, including Rapidograph technical pens, markers, crowquill pens and ink brushes. He had some photocopies printed from his pencilled work, which he found both faster to produce and more spontaneous in feel. Brown worked freely, without ruling lines or lettering. Usually he roughly sketched the artwork with a light blue pencil, then elaborated it with an HB pencil, at which stage he has said "most of the work done". Brown inked the pre-Vortex stories with a brush; when he committed himself to a regular schedule, he felt inking with a brush would be too slow, and switched to cheap markers or pencils to increase his productivity. He continued to use a brush to fill in blacks and to letter his dialogue balloons. Brown came to favour the quality of the brush again toward the end of the story's run, but found it slow to work with and thus used it less than he would have preferred. By photocopying before sending the artwork to the printer, Brown could ensure that the copy printed from was sufficiently black. While he occasionally scripted certain pages or scenes, more frequently he did not, and often wrote dialogue only after having drawn the artwork. Brown did not plan out the stories, though he might have certain ideas prepared. Some ideas he found carried him for up to two to three issues of Yummy Fur. Brown used of flashback scenes different perspectives to alter the story to his needs—for example, when Brown revisited the scene of Josie's murder, he placed Ed behind a bush, linking the two characters' fates. When he had originally done the murder scene, he says he did not "know that Ed was over in the bushes a couple feet away". Brown found himself dissatisfied with much of the work, and later abandoning about a hundred printed pages which he intends not to have reprinted. He found that the improvisational method did not work well with Underwater in the 1990s; after cancelling that series he turned to carefully scripting out his stories, beginning with Louis Riel. Influences When Brown started Ed, he was largely influenced by the comics he had grown up with, especially monster stories from Marvel Comics such as Werewolf by Night and Frankenstein's Monster by artists such as Mike Ploog, and from DC Comics such as Swamp Thing by artists such as Bernie Wrightson and Jim Aparo. Since graduating from high school, Brown had been inching towards underground comix, starting with the work of Richard Corben and especially Moebius in Heavy Metal, and eventually getting over his disgust over Robert Crumb's sex-laden comics to become a huge fan of the Zap and Weirdo artist. He says the book that finally pulled him over into the underground was The Apex Treasury of Underground Comics, which included Crumb as well as Art Spiegelman's original short story. He was also affected by Will Eisner's graphic novel, A Contract with God. Brown had already been an Eisner fan, but this book was different, "something that wasn't about a character with a mask on his face". He started drawing in a more underground style, and submitting work to Raw, Last Gasp and Fantagraphics. The work was rejected from these publishers for one reason or another, and Brown was eventually convinced by his friend Kris Nakamura, who was active in the Toronto small press scene, to take it and self-publish it. His minicomic, Yummy Fur, was the result, and included the earliest instalments of the Ed the Happy Clown story. The book also drew inspiration from pulp science fiction, religious literature and television clichés. Harold Gray's comic strip Little Orphan Annie had an effect on Brown after he discovered some Annie reprint books in the early 1980s. This was to be a primary influence on later work of Brown's such as Louis Riel. Publication The story began in July 1983 in the second issue of Brown's original Yummy Fur minicomic, the seven issues of which were reprinted in 1986–87 in the first three issues of the Vortex Comics-published Yummy Fur. Ed ran in the first eighteen issues of Yummy Fur, along other features, such as Brown's Gospel adaptations. Brown envisioned Ed as an ongoing character in the vein of Marvel and DC comic-book characters. In the late 1980s he came to feel restricted by the character; inspired by the revealing autobiographical work of Julie Doucet and Joe Matt and the simple cartooning of fellow Toronto cartoonist Seth, Brown turned to autobiography. While Ed was the main feature of Yummy Fur until Brown switched to autobiographical comics in 1990, it was juxtaposed against straight adaptations of the gospels of Mark and Matthew, which filled up the rest of the Yummy Fur issues starting with issue 4. {| class="wikitable" style="float: right;margin-left:1em;" |- |+ Issues of Ed the Happy Clown|- ! scope="col" | ! scope="col" colspan="2"| Date |- ! scope="row" |1 |February |rowspan="4" style="text-align:center;"|2005 |- ! scope="row" |2 |May |- ! scope="row" |3 |August |- ! scope="row" |4 |November |- ! scope="row" |5 |January |rowspan="5" style="text-align:center;"|2006 |- ! scope="row" |6 |March |- ! scope="row" |7 |May |- ! scope="row" |8 |July |- ! scope="row" |9 |September |- |} In 2004 Brown set to work on a revised Ed; he pencilled a number of pages, but stopped when he came to believe the new version was no better than the original. Drawn & Quarterly—Brown's publisher since 1991—reissued the contents of the Definitive Ed collection in a nine issue series on smaller-sized pages from 2005 to 2006 titled Ed the Happy Clown, with new covers, previously unpublished art and extensive commentary by Brown. The contents came mainly from issues two through twelve, and some from issue seventeen. About 80 pages—a third of the original Ed material—remains uncollected, including the entire 24-page ending that appeared in issue eighteen. The first collection, Ed the Happy Clown: A Yummy Fur Book, appeared in 1989 from Vortex Comics before Brown decided to end the story. It collects the Ed stories up to the twelfth issue of Yummy Fur and includes a cartoon foreword scripted by Harvey Pekar and drawn by Brown. It was this edition that in 1990 won Brown one of his two Harvey Awards, for Best Graphic Album, and a UK Comic Art Award the same year for Best Graphic Novel/Collection. The second edition came from Vortex in 1992, after Brown had taken Yummy Fur to Drawn & Quarterly. Bill Marks had it labelled The Definitive Ed Book for marketing reasons. The edition reprinted what was in the first edition with an altered ending and some material from Yummy Fur 17, and excluded most of the material in the series from after Chet's death. In June 2012, Drawn & Quarterly published a third edition, Ed the Happy Clown: A Graphic-Novel, reprinting the contents of the Ed series of a few years earlier, including somewhat modified endnotes and annotations. It had a new introduction by Brown, replacing those by Pekar and Solomos in the previous editions. Compared to those editions, it was printed on higher-quality paper with higher contrast in the printing, and the artwork was reduced in size. Brown subtitled the book with a hyphen: "graphic-novel". This reflects Brown's distaste yet reluctant acceptance of the term, as its usage had by then become widespread. Brian Evenson sees this as a Brown-like eccentricity and a gesture emphasizing the equal importance Brown places on both word and image. The book was a bestseller. The 2012 edition also included a ten-page story called "The Door", which Brown redrew from an anonymous public domain story from a horror comic book. In the story, a couple go through a door in a funhouse which leads through a passage in which they get lost for years. Their clothes disintegrate over that time, exposing their genitals, until they finally come across another door—one that leads them to Hell. Brown wrote he found the original story truly horrifying, as the couple had done nothing apparent to deserve their fate. He had originally intended to incorporate it into the Ed story, but capriciously veered off in another narrative direction. {| class="wikitable sortable" |- |+ Book collections of Ed the Happy Clown|- ! scope="col" | Date ! scope="col" | Title ! scope="col" | Publisher ! scope="col" | Pages ! scope="col" | ISBN ! scope="col" | Notes |- ! scope="row" | 1989 | Ed the Happy Clown: a Yummy Fur Book| rowspan="2" style="text-align:center;" | Vortex | style="text-align:center;" | 198 | | incomplete foreword by Harvey Pekar |- ! scope="row" | 1992 | Ed the Happy Clown: the Definitive Ed Book| style="text-align:center;" | 215 | | abridged alternate ending introduction by Steve Solomos |- ! scope="row" | 2012 | Ed the Happy Clown: A Graphic Novel| style="text-align:center;" | Drawn & Quarterly | style="text-align:center;" | 240 | | extensive end notes and appendices additional story "The Door" |- |} The artwork appeared at its largest in the Vortex Yummy Fur issues; it was somewhat smaller in the minicomics and first two collected editions. The artwork was smallest in the 2012 Drawn & Quarterly edition, a size Brown considered ideal, stating, "The smaller the better, as long as the words are still legible." The 2012 edition also had wider page margins and gutters between the images. Reception and legacyEd was seen by many critics a high point of the early alternative comics scene in the 1980s, echoes of which can be seen in such later surrealistic graphics novels as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by Daniel Clowes and Black Hole by Charles Burns. The story won praise from The Comics Journal and mainstream publications such as The Village Voice and Rolling Stone, which placed Ed on an early-1990s "Hot" list. Time placed Ed at seventh on its list of "All Time Top Ten Graphic Novels", while publisher and critic Kim Thompson placed Ed 27th on his top 100 comics of the 20th Century, and editor and critic Tom Spurgeon called Ed "one of the three best alt-comix serials of all time". The book appeared in Gene Kannenberg's 500 Essential Graphic Novels (2008).Ed had a large impact on a number of Brown's contemporaries, including fellow Canadians Dave Sim and Seth, the latter of whom was taken in by the ambitiousness of Brown's storytelling, saying "Those brilliant sequences where he would show a situation and then return to it later from a different perspective, like the death of Josie, really blew me away"—and Dave Cooper, who called Ed "the most perfect book ever". Others who cite Ed as an influence on their work include Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, Craig Thompson, Matt Madden, Eric Reynolds and the Canadian cartoonists Alex Fellows, whose Canvas shows the influence of Ed, and Bryan Lee O'Malley, who calls Brown "a Golden God" and whose Lost at Sea was heavily influenced by Ed. Anders Nilsen calls Ed "completely amazing and one of the best comics ever", placing it in his top five comic books, and citing it as a major influence on his spontaneous Big Questions. Critic Chris Lanier placed Ed in a tradition that included Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Max Andersson's Pixy, and Eric Drooker's Flood!; he wrote that symbols appear with such frequency and importance in these works as to suggest significance, while remaining symbolically empty. He finds predecessors for these works in German Dada and the Theatre of the Absurd. Reviewer Brad McKay found Ed "both hopeless and funny, a trick moviemakers like Tim Burton and Todd Solondz wish they could pull off more regularly". D. Aviva Rothschild likened the story to "staring at six-day-old roadkill". Brown's father was too offended to keep reading after the fifth minicomic issue, "Ed and the Beanstalk". In Yummy Fur #4, there was a scene in which a fictional "Saint Justin" masturbates after putting off his wife's advances. In one panel "Saint Justin" had just ejaculated all over his hand, his penis in full view and his semen-covered hand clearly visible behind it. Vortex publisher Bill Marks had the panel covered up with another illustration after discussing it with Brown. Brown agreed to this censorship, but was "annoyed" by it. Marks later called it a mistake that he would not make again, and when Brown included a scene in the following issue of the Ronald Reagan penishead vomiting Marks made no objection, and all future collections of Ed have the original uncensored panel. The censored portion of the panel was covered with a note delivered by a rabbit that Brown often used as a surrogate self; the message read: Brown has said that perhaps 100 to 200 readers sent requests for the uncensored panel. In stores, Yummy Fur was often wrapped in plastic with "adults only" labels on it. It is not known if Ed or Yummy Fur were banned from any stores, but Diamond, the largest American comics distributor, stopped carrying it for a time in 1988. A publisher discovered that boxes of its feminist publication were lined with discarded pages of Yummy Fur, included pages in which Chet stabs Josie while having sex with her. The publisher lodged a complaint with the Ontario-based printer, which informed Vortex it would no longer handle Yummy Fur. The third issue of the Drawn & Quarterly Ed series was seized at the Canadian border, but was later deemed admissible. Critic R. Fiore initially found the 1992 ending disappointing, but changed his mind 2012, saying the sad ending gave Ed "an emotional punch that it wouldn't otherwise have". Cartoonists such as Craig Thompson at first found the story off-putting, but later came to admire it. Critic Douglas Wolk wrote that it is not surprising that Brown had not settled on one conclusion to the story, as that "would mean some kind of narrative closure", while Eds premise is that "everything makes sense as a big picture eventually, but nothing can be relied on from moment to moment". In 2014, Uncivilized Books published Ed Vs. Yummy Fur Brian Evenson. The book details the differences between the various versions of the Ed narrative. Awards Other media Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald has had the rights since 1991 to adapt Ed to film, for which he has planned to use Yummy Fur as the title. Such a film could use stop-motion animation, but the project has yet to get off the ground. At one point McDonald hoped to have Macaulay Culkin star as Ed, Rip Torn as Ronald Reagan and Drew Barrymore as Nancy Reagan. In 2000, it was reported that the movie would have a budget of $6,000,000, but it was unable to get the financial backing. A script was written by Don McKellar, and later with John Frizzell. In 2007, the City of Toronto government commissioned Brown to create six weeks' worth of new episodes of the strip as part of their Live with Culture campaign. The strips were published in Now magazine. In one episode a zombie and his human girlfriend attend a screening of McDonald's still-unmade adaptation of Ed. The same year, McDonald placed Brown's graphic novel in scenes in his film The Tracey Fragments. See also Canadian comicsComic Book ConfidentialSurreal humour Notes References Works cited Books Journals and magazines Other sources Brown, Chester. Ed the Happy Clown''. Drawn & Quarterly. Nine issues (February 2005 – September 2006)(notes pages unnumbered; pages counted from first page of notes) External links Category:Drawn & Quarterly titles Category:Harvey Award winners for Best Graphic Album Category:Books by Chester Brown Category:Comics by Chester Brown Category:1989 graphic novels Category:1992 graphic novels Category:2012 graphic novels Category:Obscenity controversies in comics Category:Canadian comics characters Category:Fictional clowns Category:Fictional Canadian people Category:Cultural depictions of Ronald Reagan

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Ed the Happy Clown

Ed the Happy Clown is a graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. Its title character is a large-headed, childlike children's clown who undergoes one horrifying affliction after another. The story is a dark, humorous mix of genres and features scatological humour, sex, body horror, extreme graphic violence, and blasphemous religious imagery. Central to the plot are a man who cannot stop defecating; the head of a miniature, other-dimensional Ronald Reagan attached to the head of Ed's penis; and a female vampire who seeks revenge on her adulterous lover who had murdered her to escape his sins.

Analysis

Ed spans a range of Brown's interests, from political skepticism to scatological humour to vampires and werewolves. The story is dark and surreal, desperate and humorous. Christian elements especially--largely sacriligeous--are prominent in the book. They are at first innocuous and unimportant: a zombie named Christian, another character who believes he has found Christ's face on a piece of adhesive tape. With the fourth issue of Yummy Fur, Brown's surreal take on Christianity becomes central: the cover depicts the Virgin Mary holding not just the infant Christ, but also a severed hand. Within is the story of Saint Justin, whose amputation becomes a key motif: Chet loses his own hand and finds another; his own appears mysteriously under Ed's pillow. Only by praying for forgiveness for his adultery and by murdering his lover is Chet's hand miraculously restored. According to the Lives of the Saints, the fictional Saint Justin severed his own hand, but in another version Brown presents, Justin's wife cuts it off with a woodaxe when she catches her husband masturbating after rejecting her advances. Despite Saint Justin's story's exposure to the reader as a fraud, Chet's faith in the official version restores his severed hand. The altered ending from 1992 has both Josie and Chet reunited in Hell, and the ghost of Chet's sister becomes a devil. As Brown mixes surreal sacrilege with the sort of moralism that compels him to condemn Josie for her bloody revenge, Brian Evenson calls Brown "deft at muddying the waters in a way that makes it very hard to pin him down as either belieever or satirist, as either anti-religionist or apologist". While not part of the Ed story, Brown had been serializing straight adaptations in Yummy Fur of the Gospels of Mark and of Matthew during most of Ed's run. R. Fiore called these adaptations "the best exploration of Christian mythology since Justin Green's Binky Brown", comparing Chet's excessive Christian guilt with the "almost childlike retelling" of Mark. Yummy Fur readers also found "I Live in the Bottomless Pit", a short strip in which a man discovers the Antichrist, who after millennia underground has forgotten his mission--a paradoxical one, as he states his orders were from God. Ed prominently features transgressive content including nudity, graphic violence, racist imagery, blasphemy, and profanity. Brown grew up in a strictly Baptist household in which he was not allowed to swear, as depicted in Brown's graphic novel I Never Liked You (1994). Brown challenged his own anxieties by tackling subjects such as scatological humour. Imagery such as the recurring Pygmy characters and their "ooga booga" language, Chris Lanier asserted, reinforce "old colonial imaging of 'third world natives' ". CANNOTANSWER

Ed the Happy Clown is a graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. Its title character is a large-headed, childlike children's clown who undergoes one horrifying affliction after another. The story is a dark, humorous mix of genres and features scatological humour, sex, body horror, extreme graphic violence, and blasphemous religious imagery. Central to the plot are a man who cannot stop defecating; the head of a miniature, other-dimensional Ronald Reagan attached to the head of Ed's penis; and a female vampire who seeks revenge on her adulterous lover who had murdered her to escape his sins. The surreal, largely improvised story began with a series of unrelated short strips that Brown went on to tie into a single narrative. Brown first serialized it in his comic book Yummy Fur, and the first, incomplete collected edition in 1989, titled Ed the Happy Clown: A Yummy Fur Book. Shortly after, Brown became unsatisfied with the direction of the serial; he brought it to an abrupt end in the eighteenth issue of Yummy Fur and turned to autobiography. A second edition titled Ed the Happy Clown: The Definitive Ed Book appeared in 1992 with an altered ending and most of the later parts of the series eliminated. The contents of this edition were re-serialized with extensive endnotes in 2005–2006 as a nine-issue Ed the Happy Clown series and collected as Ed the Happy Clown: A in 2012. The story is seen by many critics as a highlight of the 1980s North American alternative comics scene. It has left an influence on contemporary alternative cartoonists such as Daniel Clowes, Seth, and Dave Sim, and has won a Harvey and other awards. Canadian film director Bruce McDonald has had the rights since 1991 to make an Ed film, but the project has struggled to find financial backing. Background Brown grew up in Châteauguay, Quebec, a Montreal suburb with a large English-speaking minority. He was an introverted youth attracted to comic books from a young age. He aimed at a career drawing superhero comics, but was unsuccessful in getting work with Marvel or DC Comics after graduating from high school. He moved to Toronto and discovered and the small-press community. By the early 1980s Marvel and DC had come to dominate comic-book publishing in North America, and comic shops became the main places of purchase, with a clientele of dedicated comics fans. During this time, a trend towards greater ambition and expressiveness was developing on the fringes, such as Dave Sim's long Cerebus series and the avant-garde graphics magazine Raw in which the serialization of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus appeared. Brown was to find himself in the alternative comics scene that grew throughout the decade. Brown was feeling himself in a creatively stagnant period when he came across a book on Surrealism: Wallace Fowlie's The Age of Surrealism (1950). The book motivated Brown to work on an improvised minicomic series which he called Yummy Fur and self-published from 1983. Content Ed suffers one indignity after another as the plot gets grimmer and more surreal. His bizarre misfortunes include having the tip of his penis replaced by the head of a miniature, talking Ronald Reagan from another universe. Ed's adventures featured encounters with penis-worshipping pygmies, flesh-eating rats, Martians, Frankenstein's monster, and other characters from traditional genre fiction. The story unfolds with a black-comedic sensibility topped with Christian symbolism. Despite his ordeals—being imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, falling in love with a vampire—Ed remains a gentle, childlike innocent, with a Candide-like optimism. The story has had more than one ending and is a challenge to summarize. Summary The children's hospital Ed is about to visit burns down with all the children in it. A number of apparently unrelated short gag strips appear before Brown begins to tie the narrative together into one plot. Ed is imprisoned when he finds hospital janitor Chet Doodley's severed hand and the police assume Ed had taken it. In the prison, a man is unable to stop defecating and his faeces fill the jail engulfing all, including Ed. When Ed emerges he finds the head of his penis replaced with the head of a miniature Ronald Reagan from Dimension X—a world much like Ed's but whose people are tiny. Dimension X has dumped its waste into a trans-dimensional portal, which turns out to be the anus of the man who could not stop defecating. Reagan's body remains in Dimension X, and the professor who discovered the portal travels to Ed's dimension to find the head, making contact with the authorities of Ed's world. Chet believes the loss of his hand is due to his unfaithfulness to his wife; as a child his mother read Chet the story of a Saint Justin who cuts off his right hand to avoid sinning, and Chet assumes his lost hand is a like punishment from God. He tries to atone for it by killing his girlfriend, Josie, in the woods. Penis-worshipping, rat-eating pygmy cannibals drag the bodies of both Josie and Ed into the sewers. As they are about to sever Ed's penis, Josie reanimates in time to save him. The two attempt to escape from the sewers when they are accidentally shot by a mother–daughter team of pygmy hunters. Josie dies again, and her disembodied spirit learns from the ghost of Chet's sister that she has become a vampire. The professor from Dimension X and members of the staff of the Adventures in Science TV show find Ed and the President and bring them to the TV studio. The discovery is big news, and the professor and the President make a TV appearance. When it is discovered that the people of Dimension X are homosexual or bisexual the professor is put to a violent death, and Ed and the body of Josie are put in confinement. The studio is invaded by the pygmies when they recognize their "Penis God" on television. Josie's spirit returns to her body, and she and Ed escape and make their way to the hospital where Chet works. Josie gets her revenge by seducing Chet and killing him before he is able to repent, thus sending him to Hell. Ed is one of a number of men secretly kidnapped to provide another, Bick Backman, with a penis transplant—a larger one to please his wife. Out of the lineup of unconscious men, Ed's penis with the President's head on it stands out and is chosen for Backman. After the operation, Mounties raid the hospital and, finding Reagan, take Backman and leave Ed, who has had a larger penis sewn on in the President's place. The hospital hands Ed over to Mrs Backman, claiming he is her husband. Though suspicious, she accepts Ed—and his newly transplanted penis. Endings The ending that appeared in Yummy Fur has not appeared in book editions. In it, Mrs Backman takes Ed home, but her children are not convinced he is their father. After he spends some time in the house they decide "he's way better than the other one". There is a resemblance between Ed and Mrs Backman, and it is revealed they were twins separated at birth. While at church, the Backman children are kidnapped by stone aliens and are saved by Frankenstein's monster, who brings them to Washington, D.C. where they find their kidnapped real father. Josie and Ed's zombie friend rescues the Backmans. Ed has his clown makeup restored and reverts to his cheerful self. When he goes to visit Josie, he learns her apartment building has burned down, and she was the only casualty. Her charred skeleton is brought out, clutching an unburnt severed hand. The alternate ending from the 1992 and later versions drops most of the story that follows Chet's death, replacing it with 17 new pages. In this version, Chet's severed hand visits Josie's apartment at night and rolls up her window shade. As she is a vampire, the sunlight in the morning burns her to death while she sleeps, and she and Chet are reunited in the flames of Hell. Primary characters Analysis Ed spans a range of Brown's interests, from political skepticism to scatological humour to vampires and werewolves. The story is dark and surreal, desperate and humorous. Christian elements especially—largely sacrilegious—are prominent in the book. They are at first innocuous and unimportant: a zombie named Christian, another character who believes he has found Christ's face on a piece of adhesive tape. With the fourth issue of Yummy Fur, Brown's surreal take on Christianity becomes central: the cover depicts the Virgin Mary holding not just the infant Christ, but also a severed hand. Within is the story of Saint Justin, whose amputation becomes a key motif: Chet loses his own hand and finds another; his own appears mysteriously under Ed's pillow. Only by praying for forgiveness for his adultery and by murdering his lover is Chet's hand miraculously restored. According to the Lives of the Saints, the fictional Saint Justin severed his own hand, but in another version Brown presents, Justin's wife cuts it off with a woodaxe when she catches her husband masturbating after rejecting her advances. Despite Saint Justin's story's exposure to the reader as a fraud, Chet's faith in the official version restores his severed hand. The altered ending from 1992 has both Josie and Chet reunited in Hell, and the ghost of Chet's sister becomes a devil. As Brown mixes surreal sacrilege with the sort of moralism that compels him to condemn Josie for her bloody revenge, Brian Evenson calls Brown "deft at muddying the waters in a way that makes it very hard to pin him down as either belieever or satirist, as either anti-religionist or apologist". While not part of the Ed story, Brown had been serializing straight adaptations in Yummy Fur of the Gospels of Mark and of Matthew during most of Ed'''s run. R. Fiore called these adaptations "the best exploration of Christian mythology since Justin Green's Binky Brown", comparing Chet's excessive Christian guilt with the "almost childlike retelling" of Mark. Yummy Fur readers also found "I Live in the Bottomless Pit", a short strip in which a man discovers the Antichrist, who after millennia underground has forgotten his mission—a paradoxical one, as he states his orders were from God.Ed prominently features transgressive content including nudity, graphic violence, racist imagery, blasphemy, and profanity. Brown grew up in a strictly Baptist household in which he was not allowed to swear, as depicted in Brown's graphic novel I Never Liked You (1994). Brown challenged his own anxieties by tackling subjects such as scatological humour. Imagery such as the recurring Pygmy characters and their "ooga booga" language, Chris Lanier asserted, reinforce "old colonial imaging of 'third world natives' ". Style According to comics historian John Bell, "Brown arrived in print almost fully formed as an artist". His style, while showing the influence of artists such as Robert Crumb, Harold Gray, and Jack Kirby, was distinct from his predecessors. He continued to mature as an artist and draughtsman throughout the run of Ed, showing enormous growth from the beginning to end of the graphic novel. Unlike most cartoonists, Brown does not compose his pages, but draws each panel on separate sheets of paper and assembles them into pages afterwards. The panels in Ed were on squares of cheap typewriter paper, which he placed on a block of wood on his lap in lieu of a drawing board. He used a number of different drawing tools, including Rapidograph technical pens, markers, crowquill pens and ink brushes. He had some photocopies printed from his pencilled work, which he found both faster to produce and more spontaneous in feel. Brown worked freely, without ruling lines or lettering. Usually he roughly sketched the artwork with a light blue pencil, then elaborated it with an HB pencil, at which stage he has said "most of the work done". Brown inked the pre-Vortex stories with a brush; when he committed himself to a regular schedule, he felt inking with a brush would be too slow, and switched to cheap markers or pencils to increase his productivity. He continued to use a brush to fill in blacks and to letter his dialogue balloons. Brown came to favour the quality of the brush again toward the end of the story's run, but found it slow to work with and thus used it less than he would have preferred. By photocopying before sending the artwork to the printer, Brown could ensure that the copy printed from was sufficiently black. While he occasionally scripted certain pages or scenes, more frequently he did not, and often wrote dialogue only after having drawn the artwork. Brown did not plan out the stories, though he might have certain ideas prepared. Some ideas he found carried him for up to two to three issues of Yummy Fur. Brown used of flashback scenes different perspectives to alter the story to his needs—for example, when Brown revisited the scene of Josie's murder, he placed Ed behind a bush, linking the two characters' fates. When he had originally done the murder scene, he says he did not "know that Ed was over in the bushes a couple feet away". Brown found himself dissatisfied with much of the work, and later abandoning about a hundred printed pages which he intends not to have reprinted. He found that the improvisational method did not work well with Underwater in the 1990s; after cancelling that series he turned to carefully scripting out his stories, beginning with Louis Riel. Influences When Brown started Ed, he was largely influenced by the comics he had grown up with, especially monster stories from Marvel Comics such as Werewolf by Night and Frankenstein's Monster by artists such as Mike Ploog, and from DC Comics such as Swamp Thing by artists such as Bernie Wrightson and Jim Aparo. Since graduating from high school, Brown had been inching towards underground comix, starting with the work of Richard Corben and especially Moebius in Heavy Metal, and eventually getting over his disgust over Robert Crumb's sex-laden comics to become a huge fan of the Zap and Weirdo artist. He says the book that finally pulled him over into the underground was The Apex Treasury of Underground Comics, which included Crumb as well as Art Spiegelman's original short story. He was also affected by Will Eisner's graphic novel, A Contract with God. Brown had already been an Eisner fan, but this book was different, "something that wasn't about a character with a mask on his face". He started drawing in a more underground style, and submitting work to Raw, Last Gasp and Fantagraphics. The work was rejected from these publishers for one reason or another, and Brown was eventually convinced by his friend Kris Nakamura, who was active in the Toronto small press scene, to take it and self-publish it. His minicomic, Yummy Fur, was the result, and included the earliest instalments of the Ed the Happy Clown story. The book also drew inspiration from pulp science fiction, religious literature and television clichés. Harold Gray's comic strip Little Orphan Annie had an effect on Brown after he discovered some Annie reprint books in the early 1980s. This was to be a primary influence on later work of Brown's such as Louis Riel. Publication The story began in July 1983 in the second issue of Brown's original Yummy Fur minicomic, the seven issues of which were reprinted in 1986–87 in the first three issues of the Vortex Comics-published Yummy Fur. Ed ran in the first eighteen issues of Yummy Fur, along other features, such as Brown's Gospel adaptations. Brown envisioned Ed as an ongoing character in the vein of Marvel and DC comic-book characters. In the late 1980s he came to feel restricted by the character; inspired by the revealing autobiographical work of Julie Doucet and Joe Matt and the simple cartooning of fellow Toronto cartoonist Seth, Brown turned to autobiography. While Ed was the main feature of Yummy Fur until Brown switched to autobiographical comics in 1990, it was juxtaposed against straight adaptations of the gospels of Mark and Matthew, which filled up the rest of the Yummy Fur issues starting with issue 4. {| class="wikitable" style="float: right;margin-left:1em;" |- |+ Issues of Ed the Happy Clown|- ! scope="col" | ! scope="col" colspan="2"| Date |- ! scope="row" |1 |February |rowspan="4" style="text-align:center;"|2005 |- ! scope="row" |2 |May |- ! scope="row" |3 |August |- ! scope="row" |4 |November |- ! scope="row" |5 |January |rowspan="5" style="text-align:center;"|2006 |- ! scope="row" |6 |March |- ! scope="row" |7 |May |- ! scope="row" |8 |July |- ! scope="row" |9 |September |- |} In 2004 Brown set to work on a revised Ed; he pencilled a number of pages, but stopped when he came to believe the new version was no better than the original. Drawn & Quarterly—Brown's publisher since 1991—reissued the contents of the Definitive Ed collection in a nine issue series on smaller-sized pages from 2005 to 2006 titled Ed the Happy Clown, with new covers, previously unpublished art and extensive commentary by Brown. The contents came mainly from issues two through twelve, and some from issue seventeen. About 80 pages—a third of the original Ed material—remains uncollected, including the entire 24-page ending that appeared in issue eighteen. The first collection, Ed the Happy Clown: A Yummy Fur Book, appeared in 1989 from Vortex Comics before Brown decided to end the story. It collects the Ed stories up to the twelfth issue of Yummy Fur and includes a cartoon foreword scripted by Harvey Pekar and drawn by Brown. It was this edition that in 1990 won Brown one of his two Harvey Awards, for Best Graphic Album, and a UK Comic Art Award the same year for Best Graphic Novel/Collection. The second edition came from Vortex in 1992, after Brown had taken Yummy Fur to Drawn & Quarterly. Bill Marks had it labelled The Definitive Ed Book for marketing reasons. The edition reprinted what was in the first edition with an altered ending and some material from Yummy Fur 17, and excluded most of the material in the series from after Chet's death. In June 2012, Drawn & Quarterly published a third edition, Ed the Happy Clown: A Graphic-Novel, reprinting the contents of the Ed series of a few years earlier, including somewhat modified endnotes and annotations. It had a new introduction by Brown, replacing those by Pekar and Solomos in the previous editions. Compared to those editions, it was printed on higher-quality paper with higher contrast in the printing, and the artwork was reduced in size. Brown subtitled the book with a hyphen: "graphic-novel". This reflects Brown's distaste yet reluctant acceptance of the term, as its usage had by then become widespread. Brian Evenson sees this as a Brown-like eccentricity and a gesture emphasizing the equal importance Brown places on both word and image. The book was a bestseller. The 2012 edition also included a ten-page story called "The Door", which Brown redrew from an anonymous public domain story from a horror comic book. In the story, a couple go through a door in a funhouse which leads through a passage in which they get lost for years. Their clothes disintegrate over that time, exposing their genitals, until they finally come across another door—one that leads them to Hell. Brown wrote he found the original story truly horrifying, as the couple had done nothing apparent to deserve their fate. He had originally intended to incorporate it into the Ed story, but capriciously veered off in another narrative direction. {| class="wikitable sortable" |- |+ Book collections of Ed the Happy Clown|- ! scope="col" | Date ! scope="col" | Title ! scope="col" | Publisher ! scope="col" | Pages ! scope="col" | ISBN ! scope="col" | Notes |- ! scope="row" | 1989 | Ed the Happy Clown: a Yummy Fur Book| rowspan="2" style="text-align:center;" | Vortex | style="text-align:center;" | 198 | | incomplete foreword by Harvey Pekar |- ! scope="row" | 1992 | Ed the Happy Clown: the Definitive Ed Book| style="text-align:center;" | 215 | | abridged alternate ending introduction by Steve Solomos |- ! scope="row" | 2012 | Ed the Happy Clown: A Graphic Novel| style="text-align:center;" | Drawn & Quarterly | style="text-align:center;" | 240 | | extensive end notes and appendices additional story "The Door" |- |} The artwork appeared at its largest in the Vortex Yummy Fur issues; it was somewhat smaller in the minicomics and first two collected editions. The artwork was smallest in the 2012 Drawn & Quarterly edition, a size Brown considered ideal, stating, "The smaller the better, as long as the words are still legible." The 2012 edition also had wider page margins and gutters between the images. Reception and legacyEd was seen by many critics a high point of the early alternative comics scene in the 1980s, echoes of which can be seen in such later surrealistic graphics novels as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by Daniel Clowes and Black Hole by Charles Burns. The story won praise from The Comics Journal and mainstream publications such as The Village Voice and Rolling Stone, which placed Ed on an early-1990s "Hot" list. Time placed Ed at seventh on its list of "All Time Top Ten Graphic Novels", while publisher and critic Kim Thompson placed Ed 27th on his top 100 comics of the 20th Century, and editor and critic Tom Spurgeon called Ed "one of the three best alt-comix serials of all time". The book appeared in Gene Kannenberg's 500 Essential Graphic Novels (2008).Ed had a large impact on a number of Brown's contemporaries, including fellow Canadians Dave Sim and Seth, the latter of whom was taken in by the ambitiousness of Brown's storytelling, saying "Those brilliant sequences where he would show a situation and then return to it later from a different perspective, like the death of Josie, really blew me away"—and Dave Cooper, who called Ed "the most perfect book ever". Others who cite Ed as an influence on their work include Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, Craig Thompson, Matt Madden, Eric Reynolds and the Canadian cartoonists Alex Fellows, whose Canvas shows the influence of Ed, and Bryan Lee O'Malley, who calls Brown "a Golden God" and whose Lost at Sea was heavily influenced by Ed. Anders Nilsen calls Ed "completely amazing and one of the best comics ever", placing it in his top five comic books, and citing it as a major influence on his spontaneous Big Questions. Critic Chris Lanier placed Ed in a tradition that included Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Max Andersson's Pixy, and Eric Drooker's Flood!; he wrote that symbols appear with such frequency and importance in these works as to suggest significance, while remaining symbolically empty. He finds predecessors for these works in German Dada and the Theatre of the Absurd. Reviewer Brad McKay found Ed "both hopeless and funny, a trick moviemakers like Tim Burton and Todd Solondz wish they could pull off more regularly". D. Aviva Rothschild likened the story to "staring at six-day-old roadkill". Brown's father was too offended to keep reading after the fifth minicomic issue, "Ed and the Beanstalk". In Yummy Fur #4, there was a scene in which a fictional "Saint Justin" masturbates after putting off his wife's advances. In one panel "Saint Justin" had just ejaculated all over his hand, his penis in full view and his semen-covered hand clearly visible behind it. Vortex publisher Bill Marks had the panel covered up with another illustration after discussing it with Brown. Brown agreed to this censorship, but was "annoyed" by it. Marks later called it a mistake that he would not make again, and when Brown included a scene in the following issue of the Ronald Reagan penishead vomiting Marks made no objection, and all future collections of Ed have the original uncensored panel. The censored portion of the panel was covered with a note delivered by a rabbit that Brown often used as a surrogate self; the message read: Brown has said that perhaps 100 to 200 readers sent requests for the uncensored panel. In stores, Yummy Fur was often wrapped in plastic with "adults only" labels on it. It is not known if Ed or Yummy Fur were banned from any stores, but Diamond, the largest American comics distributor, stopped carrying it for a time in 1988. A publisher discovered that boxes of its feminist publication were lined with discarded pages of Yummy Fur, included pages in which Chet stabs Josie while having sex with her. The publisher lodged a complaint with the Ontario-based printer, which informed Vortex it would no longer handle Yummy Fur. The third issue of the Drawn & Quarterly Ed series was seized at the Canadian border, but was later deemed admissible. Critic R. Fiore initially found the 1992 ending disappointing, but changed his mind 2012, saying the sad ending gave Ed "an emotional punch that it wouldn't otherwise have". Cartoonists such as Craig Thompson at first found the story off-putting, but later came to admire it. Critic Douglas Wolk wrote that it is not surprising that Brown had not settled on one conclusion to the story, as that "would mean some kind of narrative closure", while Eds premise is that "everything makes sense as a big picture eventually, but nothing can be relied on from moment to moment". In 2014, Uncivilized Books published Ed Vs. Yummy Fur Brian Evenson. The book details the differences between the various versions of the Ed narrative. Awards Other media Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald has had the rights since 1991 to adapt Ed to film, for which he has planned to use Yummy Fur as the title. Such a film could use stop-motion animation, but the project has yet to get off the ground. At one point McDonald hoped to have Macaulay Culkin star as Ed, Rip Torn as Ronald Reagan and Drew Barrymore as Nancy Reagan. In 2000, it was reported that the movie would have a budget of $6,000,000, but it was unable to get the financial backing. A script was written by Don McKellar, and later with John Frizzell. In 2007, the City of Toronto government commissioned Brown to create six weeks' worth of new episodes of the strip as part of their Live with Culture campaign. The strips were published in Now magazine. In one episode a zombie and his human girlfriend attend a screening of McDonald's still-unmade adaptation of Ed. The same year, McDonald placed Brown's graphic novel in scenes in his film The Tracey Fragments. See also Canadian comicsComic Book ConfidentialSurreal humour Notes References Works cited Books Journals and magazines Other sources Brown, Chester. Ed the Happy Clown''. Drawn & Quarterly. Nine issues (February 2005 – September 2006)(notes pages unnumbered; pages counted from first page of notes) External links Category:Drawn & Quarterly titles Category:Harvey Award winners for Best Graphic Album Category:Books by Chester Brown Category:Comics by Chester Brown Category:1989 graphic novels Category:1992 graphic novels Category:2012 graphic novels Category:Obscenity controversies in comics Category:Canadian comics characters Category:Fictional clowns Category:Fictional Canadian people Category:Cultural depictions of Ronald Reagan

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Ted DiBiase

DiBiase was born in Miami, Florida. He is the biological son of wrestler Helen Nevins and Ted Wills, an entertainer and singer. He is the adopted son of wrestler "Iron" Mike DiBiase, who was Italian-American. DiBiase is of mostly German and English ancestry.

All Japan Pro Wrestling (1983-1987, 1993)

DiBiase entered All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) in 1983. He won the NWA United National Championship on October 14, 1983 in a tournament defeating Jerry Lawler by forfeit. Two months later on January 28, 1984, DiBiase lost the title to Michael Hayes. DiBiase's mother Helen Hild died two months later in March 4, 1984. In August 1985, DiBiase formed a tag team with fellow gaijin: Stan Hansen and the two became the PWF Tag Team Champions when Hansen chose DiBiase to replace Bruiser Brody who left for New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW). Later that year, DiBiase and Hansen entered the 1985 World's Strongest Tag Determination League and would emerge victorious finishing in first place with 7 points. On July 3, 1987, DiBiase and Hansen would lose the PWF Tag Team Championship to Jumbo Tsuruta and Tiger Mask, ending their two-year reign as champions. Eight days later on July 11, DiBiase and Hansen regain the titles for a second time, but would be stripped of the titles shortly after due to DiBiase leaving AJPW for the WWF. In September 1993, DiBiase returned to AJPW and reformed his team with Hansen. The two immediately saw success as they defeated The Holy Demon Army on September 3, 1993 for the World Tag Team Championship. Two months later on November 13, 1993, DiBiase and Hansen would be stripped of the titles so they could be put on the line for the 1993 World's Strongest Tag Determination League. DiBiase would enter the tournament, but would only wrestle one match on November 14 where he and Hansen defeated Tracey Smothers and Richard Slinger before he suffered neck and back injuries which forced him out of the tournament (Giant Baba ended up replacing him). CANNOTANSWER

Theodore Marvin DiBiase Sr. (born January 18, 1954) is an American retired professional wrestler, manager, ordained minister and color commentator. He is signed to WWE as of 2023, where he works in their Legends program. DiBiase achieved championship success in a number of wrestling promotions, holding thirty titles during his professional wrestling career. He is best recalled by mainstream audiences for his time in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), where he wrestled as "The Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase. He has been named as one of the best technical wrestlers, and greatest villains, in pro wrestling history. Among other accolades in the WWF/E, DiBiase was the first WWF North American Heavyweight Champion, a three-time WWF Tag Team Champion (with Irwin R. Schyster), a one-time WWE 24/7 Champion, and winner of the 1988 King of the Ring tournament. He purchased the WWF World Heavyweight Championship once, although recognition of this reign was withdrawn by the company. DiBiase also awarded himself the Million Dollar Championship, which was held by various associated wrestlers including DiBiase's onscreen proteges, Stone Cold Steve Austin and LA Knight. DiBiase headlined multiple WWF cards, including WrestleMania IV and the first-ever SummerSlam in 1988. DiBiase is a member of several professional wrestling halls of fame: he was inducted into the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame upon its inception in 1996, and headlined the 2010 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony. Early life DiBiase was born Theodore Marvin Willis in Omaha, Nebraska. He is the biological son of wrestler Helen Nevins and Ted Wills, an entertainer and singer. He is the adopted son of wrestler "Iron" Mike DiBiase, who married his mother when he was 4 years old. His adoptive father Mike died of a heart attack in the ring when DiBiase was 15. Seven-time NWA World champion Harley Race rushed to the ring and performed CPR, but was unable to save Iron Mike's life. In response, his mother suffered from depression and alcoholism, so DiBiase was moved to Willcox, Arizona, to live with his grandparents. He attended Creighton Preparatory high school in Omaha, Nebraska and attended West Texas State University on a football scholarship. While there he became a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. However, due to an injury in his senior year, he later dropped out of college to begin a career in professional wrestling. Professional wrestling career Mid-South Wrestling (1974–1979) Ted DiBiase was trained by Dory Funk, Jr. and Terry Funk. He made his professional wrestling debut as a referee in June 1974 in the Amarillo territory owned by the Funks. He then went to the Mid-South territory of Bill Watts being promoted as the son of Iron Mike in 1975 where he wrestled for four years. His first match was a loss against Danny Hodge. By February 1978, DiBiase would unseat Dick Slater to become Missouri State champion only to lose to Dick Murdoch after a few weeks on television. World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) / World Wrestling Federation (WWF) 1979 In the beginning of 1979, DiBiase came to Vince McMahon, Sr.'s World Wide Wrestling Federation. On February 13, 1979, the WWWF North American Heavyweight Championship was created, and Ted DiBiase would be awarded the North American Heavyweight Championship, becoming the title's first champion. In March of 1979, Vince McMahon (Vince Jr.) purchased the WWWF and renamed it the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). The newly established championship would be renamed the WWF North American Heavyweight Championship shortly after the company's name change. On June 19, 1979, DiBiase would go onto lose the North American Championship to Pat Patterson. Patterson would "win" the now famous Intercontinental Championship tournament. "The tournament was fictional, but was said to have been held in Rio De Janeiro in September of 1979". The North American Heavyweight Championship was "unified" by Patterson with the (fictional) South American Heavyweight Championship to create the new WWF Intercontinental Championship The tournament win and title unification would result in Pat Patterson becoming the first ever Intercontinental Champion. title. He was Hulk Hogan's opponent in Hogan's first Madison Square Garden match. The North American Heavyweight Championship was unified with the South American Heavyweight Championship to create the Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship, but some believe there was no unification and that it was just said to explain the introduction of the new title. National Wrestling Alliance and return to MSW / Universal Wrestling Federation (1980–1987) DiBiase also spent time in the Georgia area where he had an early face run. One legendary angle had DiBiase enduring four piledrivers (one on the concrete floor and three in the ring) administered in the WTBS studio arena by The Fabulous Freebirds before his tag team partner, Tommy "Wildfire" Rich, threw in the towel (the angle of DiBiase being badly injured was so real the TBS studio audience could be seen crying). Rich and DiBiase later feuded, leading to a loser leaves town match which DiBiase won, but instead of Rich leaving the area, he donned a mask calling himself "Mister R." The feud culminated in a match between Mister R and DiBiase, Rich appeared from backstage and distracted DiBiase. Mister R then rolled up DiBiase to get the win and unmasked as Brad Armstrong. Both DiBiase and Rich left the territory shortly thereafter. In the early to mid-1980s, DiBiase participated in angles in various territories feuding with the likes of Ric Flair best known from this point in his Mid South return with the likes of Bob Roop, Paul Orndorff, Dick Murdoch, The Fabulous Freebirds and One Man Gang. DiBiase turned heel against the Junkyard Dog and formed a group called The Rat Pack with Jim Duggan and Matt Borne, ran Mid-south for months. Aligning with Skandor Akbar, Dibiase caused a riff with the group, namely Duggan. The two would feud until DiBiase lost a loser leaves town match. He also held various championships and made frequent trips to All Japan Pro Wrestling until his eventual departure from Mid-South Wrestling (which by this point was now the UWF). Typically, his matches ended with the use of a "loaded" black glove, which he pulled from his tights to "knock out" his opponent when the referee was not looking. While locked in talks with the National Wrestling Alliance in 1987 after the UWF was acquired by Jim Crockett, DiBiase received an offer from the WWF. DiBiase was eventually convinced by WWF to sign despite the fact that he would not be told his gimmick until after he agreed, under the promise that it was something that would receive a serious push. WWF official Pat Patterson informed DiBiase that if owner Vince McMahon were to go out to wrestle, it would be the gimmick that he would give himself. All Japan Pro Wrestling (1983–1987, 1993) DiBiase entered All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) in 1983. He won the NWA United National Championship on October 14, 1983, in a tournament defeating Jerry Lawler by forfeit. Three months later, on January 28, 1984, DiBiase lost the title to Michael Hayes. DiBiase's mother Helen Hild died two months later on March 4, 1984. In August 1985, DiBiase formed a tag team with fellow gaijin Stan Hansen, and the two became the PWF Tag Team Champions when Hansen chose DiBiase to replace Bruiser Brody, who left for New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). Later that year, DiBiase and Hansen entered the 1985 World's Strongest Tag Determination League and would emerge victorious, finishing in first place with 7 points. On July 3, 1987, DiBiase and Hansen would lose the PWF Tag Team Championship to Jumbo Tsuruta and Tiger Mask, ending their two-year reign as champions. Eight days later, on July 11, DiBiase and Hansen regained the title for a second time, but would be stripped of the title shortly after due to DiBiase leaving AJPW for the WWF. In September 1993, DiBiase returned to AJPW and reformed his team with Hansen. The two immediately saw success as they defeated The Holy Demon Army on September 3, 1993 for the World Tag Team Championship. Two months later, on November 13, 1993, DiBiase and Hansen would be stripped of the title so it could be put on the line for the 1993 World's Strongest Tag Determination League. DiBiase would enter the tournament, but would only wrestle one match, on November 14, where he and Hansen defeated Tracey Smothers and Richard Slinger before he suffered neck and back injuries which forced him out of the tournament (Giant Baba ended up replacing him). Return to the WWF (1987–1993, 1994–1996) The Million Dollar Man (1987–1991) DiBiase made his return to the WWF as a babyface on May 15, 1987, at a house show in Houston, Texas. He came out to the ring to announce to those in attendance that it was only fitting that he was now competing in the WWF. Moments later The One Man Gang and Slick came to the ring for Gang's scheduled match. The referee had to force DiBiase to leave before there was a confrontation. At the next house show on June 7, DiBiase would have his first match and lose to The One Man Gang. He went on to lose two additional house show confrontations to The Gang. DiBiase would tag-team with Sam Houston on June 26 against The One Man Gang and Ron Bass (Houston had run in to assist DiBiase against The Gang at one of the earlier house show matches); towards the end of the match, DiBiase (kayfabe) turned on and attacked Houston after Houston missed a dropkick on Bass, leaving him to get double-teamed and pinned. His actions during the match served to effectively turn Dibiase heel, right before the onscreen debut of his new gimmick. On a June 27 episode of WWF Superstars, DiBiase had his first vignette. He would now be known as "The Million Dollar Man", a millionaire who wore a gold-studded, dollar-sign-covered suit and, in time, a custom-made, diamond-encrusted and self-awarded "Million Dollar Championship" belt. The Million Dollar Man character was based on the type of wrestler who Vince McMahon would want to be. He was billed as having a spring residence in Palm Beach, Florida, a summer residence in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, an autumn residence in Bel Air, California, and a winter residence in the Netherlands Antilles. DiBiase had a bodyguard by the name of Virgil, who was by his side during his matches and vignettes. The idea for the name Virgil was based on then-NWA/WCW booker Dusty Rhodes, whose real name was Virgil Runnels, though booker and producer Bruce Prichard disputes this. The name of DiBiase's finishing move, the Million Dollar Dream, was also supposedly meant to be a rib (inside joke) towards Dusty Rhodes, who was nicknamed "The American Dream". Virgil was often seen performing humiliating tasks, such as rubbing DiBiase's feet. DiBiase claimed "Everybody has a price" demonstrating his "power" through a series of vignettes in which he did things such as bribe the manager of a local swimming pool to close for the day so he could have the pool to himself, or when the honeymoon suite in a hotel was already booked, he bribed the desk clerk to have the couple already in there thrown out. Other skits featured DiBiase traveling in limousines, giving $100 tips to waiters, and using $100 bills in convenience stores for small purchases like chewing gum. In reality, DiBiase's road travel was deliberately booked for first-class airplane flights and five-star hotel accommodations, and he was given a stipend of petty cash from the WWF Offices so that he could "throw money around" in public (i.e. pick up tabs and "overtip", buy drinks for entire bars, actually pay for small items with a $100 bill, etc.) in order to make the character seem more real. Other times, DiBiase invited fans (including a young Rob Van Dam and a then-unknown Linda McMahon) to perform humiliating acts (such as kissing his feet) for money. During one skit, he invited a young boy onto a stage and told him if he bounced a ball 15 times in succession, DiBiase would pay him $500. After the 14th bounce, DiBiase kicked the ball away, sending the boy home without pay; however, according to his autobiography, everybody who wasn't paid on-camera was paid off-camera. He frequently stuffed a $100 bill into the mouth of a wrestler on whom he had used the Million Dollar Dream move. Virgil, however, would more often than not retrieve the discarded bill from the wrestler's mouth. His first big in-ring angle came in late 1987 on an episode of Superstars of Wrestling, where he announced his plan to buy the WWF World Heavyweight Championship from Hulk Hogan, as Hogan refused and said that DiBiase would have to defeat him in the ring for the championship belt. Hogan got the upper hand in a series of matches, and a frustrated DiBiase approached André the Giant to win the title for him, which did happen on the February 5, 1988, edition of The Main Event I (which aired live on NBC), where André defeated Hogan under questionable circumstances for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship. This was the match of the infamous "who is the true Dave Hebner" debacle. Whom the crowd and viewers at home thought was the "real" Dave Hebner (it was actually his real-life twin brother Earl, whom many now mistake as being the original Hebner) counted the match finishing pin for André despite the fact that Hogan's shoulder was up at the count of one. Afterwards the real Dave Hebner came running into the ring to dispute the ruling his "evil twin" had made awarding the WWF world championship to Andre the Giant; André then announced he was surrendering the championship belt and handed it to DiBiase. In the following days, DiBiase was, in fact, billed as the WWF World Heavyweight Champion in three house shows, defending the title one time against Bam Bam Bigelow. However, WWF President Jack Tunney declared DiBiase was not the champion, as he did not win the title by pin or submission, and said that because Andre had surrendered the title, it was therefore vacant. André's world title win was still recognized, though it is still considered the shortest world title reign in WWF history. This angle was an amplification of an angle in the old Georgia Championship Wrestling (GCW), when Larry Zbyszko paid Killer Tim Brooks $25,000 for his NWA National Heavyweight Championship in 1983. A tournament was announced to crown a new WWF World Heavyweight Champion at WrestleMania IV, where DiBiase defeated Hacksaw Jim Duggan in the first round and Don Muraco in the quarterfinal before receiving a bye in the semi-finals to advance to the finals of the tournament. The reason for the bye was a double-elimination of Hulk Hogan and André the Giant when they both were disqualified in their match, with DiBiase meant to face the winner. In a backstage interview afterwards, André revealed that DiBiase paid him to make sure Hogan didn't advance in the tournament. DiBiase was defeated by "Macho Man" Randy Savage in the finals, helped by Hulk Hogan negating André's repeated interference in the match. DiBiase continued to feud with Savage over the WWF World Heavyweight Championship throughout the summer of 1988, even headlining in a tag team match pitting DiBiase and André the Giant vs. Hogan and Savage at the inaugural SummerSlam (in a match billed as "Where The Mega Powers Meet The Mega Bucks"). Although pro-heel commentator Jesse "The Body" Ventura served as the guest referee, Hogan pinned DiBiase to win the match. DiBiase then defeated Brutus Beefcake, Ken Patera, Ron Bass, and Randy Savage to win the 1988 King of the Ring tournament, receiving his first WWF success. Bobby Heenan sold Hercules' contract to Ted DiBiase for his services as his personal slave. DiBiase claimed that Hercules was his slave, but started feuding with him after Hercules turned face. He eliminated Hercules from the main event at Survivor Series. At the Royal Rumble in 1989, DiBiase purchased the #30 entrance spot from Akeem to become the final entrant in the match. Big John Studd and DiBiase were the final two participants in the match. DiBiase offered Studd a bribe to eliminate himself, but Studd eliminated him to win the match. DiBiase continued to feud with Hercules; the two had a series of matches including a match that DiBiase won on the February 3 The Main Event II. He defeated The Blue Blazer on the March 11 Saturday Night's Main Event XX. After that match, he introduced the Million Dollar Championship, his own championship belt which was not recognized by the WWF. He created this belt because he was unable to buy or win the WWF World Heavyweight Championship from Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. DiBiase fought Brutus Beefcake to a double-count-out at WrestleMania V. DiBiase's next big feud was with Jake "The Snake" Roberts. A few weeks after WrestleMania, DiBiase attacked Roberts on WWF Superstars of Wrestling after Roberts defeated Virgil in a match. DiBiase put Roberts out of action for several months with a neck injury. (The storyline was created so Roberts could get surgery on his back from the guitar attack from The Honky Tonk Man a year earlier.) While Roberts recuperated, DiBiase defeated Jimmy "The Superfly" Snuka at SummerSlam by count-out. On the October 14 Saturday Night's Main Event XXIII, DiBiase faced Hulk Hogan in a match for the WWF Championship where DiBiase had the monster Zeus by his side. DiBiase lost the match when he accidentally hit Zeus and was pinned by Hogan with a small package. At Survivor Series, DiBiase captained a team dubbed the "Million Dollar Team" consisting of himself, The Powers of Pain (The Warlord and The Barbarian), and Zeus against Hogan's "Hulkamaniacs" consisting of Hogan, Jake Roberts, and Demolition (Ax and Smash). DiBiase eliminated Roberts after pinning him with help from Virgil before being pinned himself by Hogan. In 1990, he was punished for buying #30 in the previous year's Royal Rumble. For his punishment, he was forced to enter as entrant #1. He broke the record at the time by lasting 45 minutes in the Royal Rumble match after entering as the #1 entrant. He eliminated two opponents before he was eliminated by The Ultimate Warrior. This may have foreshadowed Dibiase seeking revenge on Warrior after Warrior became WWF Champion, by facing him several months later at a co-promotional All Japan and New Japan event in the Tokyo Dome. He then continued his feud with Jake Roberts, who stole the Million Dollar Belt, leading to a match at WrestleMania VI where Roberts was counted out. Shortly after WrestleMania, he had a brief feud with Big Bossman which dated back to when DiBiase tried to bribe Bossman into retrieving the Million Dollar Belt. Bossman refused DiBiase's bribe and returned the Million Dollar Belt to Roberts. At SummerSlam, DiBiase bought the services of Sapphire, who was the manager of Dusty Rhodes at the time. This led to Rhodes and DiBiase feuding throughout the end of 1990 into the beginning of 1991. On the October 13 Saturday Night's Main Event XXVIII, he attacked Dusty's son Dustin Rhodes during Dusty's match with Randy Savage. DiBiase and Dusty captained rival teams at Survivor Series, with DiBiase's mystery partner turning out to be the debuting Undertaker. DiBiase wound up eliminating both members of The Hart Foundation and was the sole survivor of the match. He, however, was eliminated in the main event by Hogan. DiBiase said about Undertaker's debut "nobody knew him, at the time if you know how this works they were using my celebrity and me introducing The Undertaker was helping him get over. He wasn't 'The Phenom' then he was just a new kid on the card, this new character The Undertaker and of course he grew in to be one of the greatest attractions the WWE has ever had. At the time it wasn't a big deal to me, I was just doing my job." DiBiase then received a shot at the WWF champion: The Ultimate Warrior on a special Thanksgiving episode of Saturday Night's Main Event, which ended when DiBiase was disqualified after Virgil attacked Warrior, which was seemingly an interlude to Randy Savage further assaulting Warrior. During this time DiBiase started to develop a real-life disdain for the Warrior and would later become very vocal about it both in behind the scenes interviews and in his autobiography. At the Royal Rumble, Ted DiBiase and Virgil defeated Dusty and Dustin Rhodes in a tag team match. After the match, DiBiase ordered Virgil to put the Million Dollar Championship belt around his waist. Virgil instead hit DiBiase with the belt, turning face. At WrestleMania VII, DiBiase lost by count-out to Virgil, who had help from 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper. Sensational Sherri, who earlier in the night had turned on a losing Randy Savage, came down midway through the match to help DiBiase and became his full-time valet. On the April 27 Saturday Night's Main Event XXIX, DiBiase fought Bret Hart to a double count-out. DiBiase lost the Million Dollar Championship to Virgil at SummerSlam when Virgil smashed his head into an exposed turnbuckle and pinned him to get the victory. DiBiase participated in the 1991 King of the Ring tournament drawing with Ricky Steamboat in the first round. DiBiase and Steamboat would battle to a time-limit draw with neither man advancing in the tournament. DiBiase regained the Million Dollar Championship from Virgil with help from Repo Man on the November 11 edition of Prime Time Wrestling which was dubbed Survivor Series Showdown. At Survivor Series, he was one of the contestants eliminated from his match. At This Tuesday in Texas, DiBiase and Repo Man defeated Virgil and Tito Santana. Money Inc. and retirement (1992–1993) Shortly after Royal Rumble 1992, DiBiase quietly dropped Sherri as his valet (so she could manage Shawn Michaels) and officially formed the tag team Money Incorporated with Irwin R. Schyster (IRS). The duo, mostly managed by Jimmy Hart, won the WWF Tag Team Championship three times between February 1992 and June 1993. Their first reign came on February 7, 1992, when they defeated The Legion of Doom for the titles. Money Incorporated then feuded with The Natural Disasters (Earthquake and Typhoon). They defended the title against the Natural Disasters at WrestleMania VIII and lost the match by count-out, thus retaining the title. On July 20, they lost the title to the Natural Disasters. After losing a match to the Legion of Doom at SummerSlam, DiBiase and IRS regained the belts on the October 13 edition of Wrestling Challenge from the Natural Disasters. This title change led to a feud with The Nasty Boys, who were originally scheduled for the title shot. On the November 14 Saturday Night's Main Event XXXI, they defended their titles against the Ultimate Maniacs (Ultimate Warrior and Randy Savage). DiBiase and IRS lost the match by count-out and thus retained the titles once more. DiBiase participated in the Royal Rumble match, entering at #4 before eventually being eliminated by The Undertaker. Shortly after, DiBiase and IRS became involved in a major angle with the returning Brutus Beefcake. DiBiase faced Beefcake on one of the first episodes of Monday Night Raw. DiBiase and IRS attacked Beefcake after the match and slammed his face (which had been surgically repaired following a windsailing accident) with a briefcase. Money Inc. also attacked their manager Jimmy Hart, who was disgusted by their actions. Beefcake's best friend Hulk Hogan came to Beefcake's defense and challenged Money Inc. to a tag team title match at WrestleMania IX. DiBiase and IRS retained their titles by disqualification after Hogan used Beefcake's protective face mask as a weapon. Money Inc. dominated the tag team division of the WWF. They feuded with the Steiner Brothers (Rick and Scott) and had a series of title exchanges. DiBiase and IRS were defeated by the Steiners for the WWF Tag Team Championship on June 14 in a non-televised match at a Wrestling Challenge taping. They would regain the titles on June 16 at a live event but lost them back to the Steiners three days later on June 19 at another live event, their feud culminated in a tag team steel cage match for the WWF Tag Team Championship at SummerSlam Spectacular. DiBiase last wrestled for the WWF in August, bowing out following an angle which saw Razor Ramon turn face and 1-2-3 Kid debut. The Kid had scored an upset pinfall against a cocky Ramon, causing DiBiase to mock Ramon and tell him he would show him how it was done. He then went on to also lose to the Kid, giving Razor a newfound respect for the Kid thus turning Razor face. This included a match at SummerSlam between DiBiase and Ramon which DiBiase lost. This was DiBiase's last TV appearance in the WWF during this run. He revealed in a shoot interview that his decision to leave the WWF at this point was motivated by a desire to resolve his marital problems. After a few months back in AJPW, where he won the World Tag Team Championship with Hansen, he quietly announced his retirement due to sustaining an injury to two cervical discs in his neck and returned to the USA. Million Dollar Corporation (1994–1996) DiBiase returned to the WWF at the Royal Rumble as a guest commentator. DiBiase then began working as a commentator and manager for the WWF. Later in 1994, DiBiase purchased the contracts of many wrestlers for his Million Dollar Corporation stable in the WWF, which over time included I.R.S., Bam Bam Bigelow, Nikolai Volkoff, Kama, King Kong Bundy, Sycho Sid, 1-2-3 Kid, and in a swerve, Tatanka. DiBiase also renewed his connection with the Undertaker after the latter's six-month hiatus after the January Royal Rumble. Saying that he had originally brought the Undertaker to the WWF, and he was going to bring him back, DiBiase debuted a new Undertaker under his control. This Undertaker, however, proved to be an impostor played by Brian Lee, and was subsequently defeated by the real Undertaker at SummerSlam. DiBiase also had a place in the main event of WrestleMania XI as the manager of Bam Bam Bigelow in his match versus Lawrence Taylor. Surrounding the ring were members of DiBiase's corporation to offset Taylor's entourage of NFL All-Pros on the opposite side. After Taylor defeated Bigelow, DiBiase publicly referred to Bigelow as an embarrassment. This culminated in Bigelow quitting The corporation after DiBiase fired him following a loss to Diesel in a WWF Championship match. Bigelow aligned himself with Diesel in a feud versus members of DiBiase's corporation. As a manager, DiBiase also later introduced "The Ringmaster", who eventually became Stone Cold Steve Austin, to the WWF in January 1996. Austin became the Million Dollar Champion and began wearing DiBiase's gold belt that was introduced in 1989. DiBiase's last appearance with the company was at In Your House: Beware of Dog 2 in 1996, where he was kayfabe forced to leave the WWF after Steve Austin lost to Savio Vega. In reality, he left for rival promotion World Championship Wrestling (WCW). World Championship Wrestling (1996–1999) DiBiase debuted in WCW on August 26, 1996, revealing himself as the fourth member of the New World Order, joining Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and Hollywood Hogan. DiBiase claimed to be financing the group (seemingly playing on his "Million Dollar Man" WWF persona). He was jokingly referred to by the members of the group as "Trillionaire Ted", satirizing "Billionaire Ted", which was itself a disparaging nickname WWF had given to WCW owner Ted Turner. DiBiase was the spokesperson for the nWo for 3 months until Eric Bischoff joined the nWo and replaced him in that role. DiBiase quit the nWo shortly after Spring Stampede. Less than a few months later, on the August 4, 1997, episode of Nitro, he made a face turn and began managing The Steiner Brothers, leading them to two World Tag Team Championships. DiBiase managed The Steiners until Scott Steiner turned heel via betraying Rick Steiner at SuperBrawl VIII on February 22 and joined the nWo (DiBiase still remained in Rick's corner thru April 1998). DiBiase also managed one-time WWF rival Ray Traylor for a while until he stopped managing altogether. In 2013, DiBiase said about his time in WCW: "Eric Bischoff doesn't know that much about wrestling", "Eric took credit for the nWo but that wasn't his idea, the nWo had already been done in Japan, so they had copied something that had already been done. It was a good idea, but originally I was supposed to be the mouthpiece of the nWo and reality is I think Eric saw how it was getting over and he saw how he could put himself in the role that he had hired me for. As each week went by pretty soon Eric isn't the announcer anymore, he becomes part of the nWo and I just went to him one day and told him I'm not just going to walk out there and be Hulk Hogan's Virgil, you hired me to be the spokesperson for this, so if that's not what I'm going to do you can send me home. The reason I said that was because they had to pay me one way or the other because I had a contract where they had to pay me for three years". Second return to WWE (2004–2008, 2009–present) Backstage roles (2004–2008) In late 2004, WWE offered DiBiase a job as creative. He accepted the job and worked as part of the creative team a year and a half. In April 2005, DiBiase was hired as a creative consultant and road agent for the SmackDown! brand of World Wrestling Entertainment. On October 3, 2005, at WWE Homecoming, DiBiase appeared with other WWE legends in a ceremony. He eventually led the attack on Rob Conway, who had come down to the ring to insult the legends. DiBiase inducted his former manager Sensational Sherri into the WWE Hall of Fame on April 1, 2006 and made an appearance at WrestleMania 22, offering Eugene $1,000 to dribble a basketball 100 times backstage and kicked the ball away at the last second. DiBiase also appeared on the April 17 episode of Raw behind a newspaper doing his famous evil laugh as the camera went off air. DiBiase made an appearance at an IPW show in Newton, Iowa, on July 14, 2006, where he watched his sons' tag team match. The following day, he accepted the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame induction for his father, Mike, at the International Wrestling Institute and Museum. He also appeared at the Raw Family Reunion on October 9, 2006, aiding Ric Flair in his match with the Spirit Squad. On October 26, 2006, Ted DiBiase was released from his WWE contract. DiBiase made his first in ring appearance in over five years at the Raw 15th Anniversary Special on December 10, 2007, by winning a 15-man battle royal, in which he was not even an active participant. Irwin R. Schyster, DiBiase's former tag team partner of Money Incorporated, had won the battle royal. DiBiase came down to ringside and offered Schyster a bribe to eliminate himself. Schyster accepted and hopped over the top rope, making DiBiase the victor. DiBiase then declared that even after fifteen years, everyone still had a price for the "Million Dollar Man." On the May 19, 2008, edition of Raw, he was seen alongside Mr. McMahon about to "discuss business", in William Regal's office. On the following Raw, DiBiase introduced his son Ted DiBiase, Jr. to WWE as its newest member. WWE Hall of Fame and sporadic appearances (2009–present) On the June 29 episode of Raw, Ted DiBiase, Jr. announced in a segment with Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton that DiBiase would appear on Raw the following week as the special guest host, and DiBiase appeared as scheduled on July 6. On the show, DiBiase booked his son to face Randy Orton. After DiBiase Jr. lost the match, he accused his father of setting him up and trying to steal his time, even slapping his father across the face. DiBiase would later come out at the end of the show and sanctioned a triple threat match for Randy Orton's WWE Championship at Night of Champions including John Cena and Triple H in his final act as the guest host. He is also a playable character in WWE Legends of WrestleMania and an unlockable superstar in WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010 and WWE 2K14. DiBiase was announced as the first inductee of the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2010 on the February 8 episode of Raw. DiBiase appeared again on the November 2 edition of NXT, where he was the minister for Aksana and Goldust's wedding. Later in November 2010, DiBiase made an appearance on Raw, accompanied by Irwin R. Schyster, wherein Goldust returned the stolen Million Dollar Championship to him. DiBiase immediately offered to give the newly returned title to his son Ted DiBiase Jr., but was refused. On February 21, 2011, it was announced DiBiase would induct Jim Duggan into the Hall of Fame. He appeared on the Slammy Awards episode of Raw on December 12 alongside fellow legend Mick Foley, and presented the "Holy %&@*# Move of the Year" award, which was won by Mark Henry and Big Show. On April 10, 2012, DiBiase made an appearance on Smackdown: Blast from the Past. He returned on the March 4, 2013 Old School Raw at ringside with The Prime Time Players and agreed to be their manager if they won the match against Team Hell No. DiBiase, again accompanied by IRS, appeared at the 2014 Old School Raw special, encountering Big E Langston on his way to a match and told him everybody's got a price, to which Langston smiled. On January 22, 2018, DiBiase made an appearance during the 25th Anniversary episode of Raw in which he played Poker with The Acolytes Protection Agency. On July 22, 2019, DiBiase "bought" the WWE 24/7 Championship from Alundra Blayze. The 26-year space between his last title victory in 1993 is reportedly the longest in WWE history. He later lost the title to Drake Maverick in a limousine on the same night. On the April 27, 2021, episode of NXT, DiBiase "was inside the jewelry store showing his Silver and Gold diamond watch in front of Cameron Grimes and his gold watch and made Grimes jealous. Throughout May 2021, DiBiase would continue to cost Grimes matches and outdo him during skits such as outbidding him during a house auction on May 11, and costing him a victory on May 18th, following this incident it was announced the pair would have a 'Million Dollar Faceoff' on the May 25 episode of NXT. During the showdown, Grimes was attacked by L. A. Knight, with DiBiase yelling him he's "never gonna get it" before laughing and leaving with Knight. DiBiase put the Million Dollar Championship on the line in a ladder match between Knight and Grimes at NXT TakeOver: In Your House, in which Knight was victorious. On June 15, 2021, episode of NXT, Knight turned on DiBiase and attacked him. Grimes saved DiBiase from Knight. At NXT Takeover 36 Knight would face Grimes again, If Grimes lost, DiBiase would have had to become Knight’s butler. At the event, Grimes defeated Knight to become the Million Dollar Champion with the help of DiBiase. On August 24, the storyline came to a conclusion on NXT, as they talked about Grimes’ journey to the title and how he was now headed "Straight to the moon!". The celebration ended with fake $100 bills with Grimes’ face raining down over the Capitol Wrestling Center. Grimes later escorted DiBiase to his limousine and handed him the Million Dollar Championship. DiBiase handed the belt back, however upon checking it, Grimes realizes he has been handed a cheap replica. DiBiase leaves after giving his signature laugh. On January 23, 2023, Dibiase made a backstage appearance at Raw is XXX alongside Irwin R. Schyster. Christian ministry DiBiase is now a Christian minister. In 1999, he founded Heart of David Ministry and travels the world ministering to churches, camps and conferences including Promise Keepers and Youth of the Nation. Ted is also the author of Every Man Has His Price, a part-autobiography and part-Christian testimony. Welfare fraud accusations In February 2020, it was reported that DiBiase's ministry received more than $2.1 million in welfare funds from the state of Mississippi after his son, Brett, was hired as deputy administrator of the state's Department of Human Services. His son, Brett, pleaded guilty to creating fraudulent statements in what has been labeled as Mississippi's largest public embezzlement case in state history. In October 2021, a court ordered Ted DiBiase, Sr. to pay $722,299 of the misappropriated funds given to his Heart of David Ministries. In May 2022, the Mississippi Department of Human Services sued DiBiase, his sons, and retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre, and several others to recover more than $20 million in money "squandered" from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families anti-poverty program. In April 2022, the Mississippi Office of State Auditor reported that DiBiase personally received a $250,000 check from the Family Resource Center, a Mississippi welfare grantee, to "provide services as a Motivational Speaker." DiBiase forwarded an email from the welfare grantee to his sons, Ted DiBiase, Jr. and Brett DiBiase, stating, “Look what I got today!". Books DiBiase, Ted. Every Man Has His Price. Multnomah Publishers. 1997. DiBiase, Ted. The Million Dollar Man. Pocket Books. 2008. DiBiase, Ted (Foreword). Bruce, William J., III. Penholder. Queensbridge Publishing. 2010. Documentaries Wrestling with Faith is a documentary film about Ted DiBiase. It went into production in February 2010. The Price of Fame is a documentary film directed by Peter Ferriero and executive produced by Ferriero, Ted DiBiase Jr. & Engage Media Partners. The film features Ted DiBiase Jr. following his father's story of redemption and faith. It was released on November 7, 2017, in 650 theaters through Fathom Events. The film was released on DVD and digitally on April 10, 2018. Nine Legends is a documentary in which Ted DiBiase is profiled as one of the nine legends. Personal life DiBiase's sons, Mike, Ted Jr. and Brett were formerly professional wrestlers. DiBiase went to West Texas State University, where he was a member of Alpha Tau Omega. In a 2016 interview with ESPN.com, DiBiase revealed that he and Virgil had a falling out over Virgil trying to book himself and DiBiase on independent wrestling shows without DiBiase's knowledge. DiBiase stated that Virgil does not represent him for bookings. Championships and accomplishments All Japan Pro Wrestling NWA United National Championship (1 time) PWF World Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Stan Hansen World Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Stan Hansen World's Strongest Tag Determination League (1985) – with Stan Hansen Champion Carnival Technique Award (1980) Champion Carnival Outstanding Performance Award (1982) Cauliflower Alley Club Iron Mike Mazurki Award (2010) Central States Wrestling NWA Central States Heavyweight Championship (2 times) Dutch Pro Wrestling Dutch Heavyweight Championship (1 time) Georgia Championship Wrestling NWA National Heavyweight Championship (2 times) NWA National Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Stan Frazier (1), and Steve Olsonoski (1) George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame Class of 2007 NWA Tri-State/Mid-South Wrestling Association Mid-South North American Heavyweight Championship (4 times) NWA North American Heavyweight Championship (Tri-State version) (1 time) NWA United States Tag Team Championship (Tri-State version) (1 time) – with Dick Murdoch Mid-South Tag Team Championship (6 times) – with Paul Orndorff (1), Matt Borne (1), Jerry Stubbs (1), Hercules Hernandez (1), and Steve Williams (2) NWA Western States Sports NWA Western States Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Ervin Smith (1) and Tito Santana (1) Pro Wrestling Illustrated Most Hated Wrestler of the Year (1982) Ranked No. 17 of the top 500 singles wrestlers in the PWI 500 in 1991 Ranked No. 32 of the top 500 singles wrestlers of the "PWI Years" in 2003 Ranked No. 20, No. 24, and No. 61 of the top 100 tag teams of the PWI Years with Steve Williams, Stan Hansen, and Irwin R. Schyster, respectively, in 2003 Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame Class of 2007 St. Louis Wrestling Club NWA Missouri Heavyweight Championship (2 times) St. Louis Wrestling Hall of Fame (2014) Texas All-Star Wrestling TASW Heavyweight Championship (1 time) World Wrestling Federation/World Wrestling Entertainment/WWE WWE 24/7 Championship (1 time) Million Dollar Championship (2 times) WWF North American Heavyweight Championship (1 time) WWF Tag Team Championship (3 times) – with Irwin R. Schyster King of the Ring (1988) WWE Hall of Fame (Class of 2010) Slammy Award (2 times) Humanitarian of the Year (1987) Best Manager (1994) Wrestling Observer Newsletter Best Gimmick (1987) Best Heel (1987, 1988) Best Technical Wrestler (1979–1981) Feud of the Year (1982) Feud of the Year (1985) Best Gimmick (1996) – nWo Feud of the Year (1996) New World Order vs. World Championship Wrestling Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame (Class of 1996) Nebraska Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame inductee (2019) Notes References External links HeartOfDavidMinistry.com (Official Ministry Website) Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame Profile Ted Dibiase Interview Ted DiBiase Article Category:1954 births Category:20th-century professional wrestlers Category:American adoptees Category:American color commentators Category:American male professional wrestlers Category:American male television writers Category:American Protestant ministers and clergy Category:American television writers Category:Living people Category:Million Dollar Champions Category:NWA National Heavyweight Champions Category:NWA National Tag Team Champions Category:NWA United National Champions Category:People from Willcox, Arizona Category:Professional wrestling announcers Category:Professional wrestling executives Category:Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum Category:Professional wrestling managers and valets Category:Professional wrestling trainers Category:PWF World Tag Team Champions Category:The Million Dollar Corporation members Category:New World Order (professional wrestling) members Category:World Tag Team Champions (AJPW) Category:WWE 24/7 Champions Category:WWE Hall of Fame inductees Category:WWF/WWE King's Crown Champions/King of the Ring winners

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The Aquabats! Super Show!

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 18, 2014 on Hub Network. The series was created by Christian Jacobs and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. series Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock/ska band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats!

History and previous attempts at a series

In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs - a former child actor with ties in the industry - to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. CANNOTANSWER

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. Channel series Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. Channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats Category:The Aquabats Category:2010s American children's comedy television series Category:2010s American musical comedy television series Category:2010s American satirical television series Category:2010s American sketch comedy television series Category:2010s American superhero comedy television series Category:2012 American television series debuts Category:2014 American television series endings Category:American children's action television series Category:American children's adventure television series Category:American children's musical television series Category:American superhero television series Category:American television series with live action and animation Category:American television shows featuring puppetry Category:Children's sketch comedy Category:English-language television shows Category:Television series by Fremantle (company) Category:Television shows set in Orange County, California Category:Discovery Family original programming

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The Aquabats! Super Show!

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 18, 2014 on Hub Network. The series was created by Christian Jacobs and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. series Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock/ska band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats!

Premise

Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified recreational vehicle which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as kids are more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids--they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which--if any--could be considered officially canonical. CANNOTANSWER

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an American action-comedy musical television series which aired from March 3, 2012 to January 8, 2014 on The Hub Network and resumed as an independent YouTube web series in September 2019. The series was created by Christian Jacobs and Scott Schultz, both the creators of the Nick Jr. Channel series Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Jason deVilliers. Based on the superhero mythology of The Aquabats, a real-life comedy rock band which series co-creator and lead singer Jacobs formed in 1994, The Aquabats! Super Show! follows the comic adventures of a fictionalized version of the band, a musical group of amateur superheroes, as they haphazardly defend the world from a variety of villains and monsters. Styled similarly to the campy aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s children's television and Japanese tokusatsu, Super Show! utilizes various mediums of visual styles and special effects, mixing live-action storylines with cartoon shorts, parody advertisements and musical interludes. The series' first season concluded on June 16, 2012 following a run of 13 episodes, having met with a largely positive critical reception, consistently high ratings for the channel and a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Series. The series' second season consisted of an initial five episodes which aired through June 2013, with three additional episodes airing in late December and January 2014, receiving similar acclaim and a further seven Daytime Emmy nominations, ultimately winning one for Best Stunt Coordination. In June 2014, co-creator Jacobs officially announced the series' cancellation, following news of The Hub's financial losses which led to the network's rebranding as Discovery Family later that October. In July 2018, The Aquabats launched a successful Kickstarter to help independently finance new episodes of The Aquabats! Super Show!, promoting the campaign with a series of YouTube-exclusive mini-episodes continuing the original series' storyline. On September 28, 2019, The Aquabats premiered the first installment of these new episodes, now a biweekly YouTube series entitled The Aquabats! RadVentures!, though still retaining Super Show!s theme song and title card. Series overview Premise Chronicled in both live-action and animated segments, The Aquabats! Super Show! is centered around the adventures of The Aquabats, a group of superhero rock musicians who travel the countryside on a self-appointed mission to fight evil and "destroy boredom", protecting the world from the villains and creatures who threaten to destroy it while aiming to become a famous rock and roll band in their own right. The Aquabats consist of singer The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), the swaggering leader of the group; bassist Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who can grow up to 100 feet in size; drummer Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir), who has the power of super speed; guitarist EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), who's armed with a laser-shooting electric guitar; and keyboardist Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), an android. Despite their superhuman strengths and abilities, The Aquabats are quite bumbling, disorganized, and sometimes cowardly when faced with danger; this has in fact led them to be labeled "the world's most inept superheroes". The band lives and travels by way of their "Battletram", a modified classic GMC motorhome which, despite its small exterior, has an implausibly massive interior (similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who or The Big Bologna from The Kids From C.A.P.E.R.), which contains, among many things, a science lab, a command center, and a living room. The Aquabats' origin story was left intentionally vague throughout the series, a choice Jacobs explains was done for the sake of the viewer's imagination, as he felt kids were more accepting of the inherent absurdity of the premise than adults tend to be: "'There's five guys. This is what each of the five guys does. There are monsters. They're gonna try to fight them'. It's so simple. And I think that's why it's so awesome with kids—they just take it and run with it". In the first five episodes of season two, each member of The Aquabats shares their memory of how they joined the band via animated flashback sequences; however, all of these flashbacks directly and intentionally contradict each other, leaving it unknown which—if any—could be considered officially canonical. Format and influences The Aquabats! Super Show! juxtaposes both live-action and animated segments starring The Aquabats, interwoven with various tangential skits and cartoon interstitials. The live-action storylines are the primary focus of each episode, following a self-contained villain of the week formula. In the first season, each episode featured brief anime-styled cartoon shorts which one of the characters would introduce at a random point of the show, often by finding "A Cartoon" (represented by a miniature television set) in an absurd location. Unlike the live-action segments, these cartoons followed a serialized story arc, with each installment ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next episode. In season two, this format was replaced with a series of animated flashbacks recounting the origins of The Aquabats, each by a different animation studio and in a different animation style. Between these segments are pantomime cartoon shorts starring "Lil' Bat", The Aquabats' anthropomorphic bat mascot, and live-action parody commercials for outlandish fictional products, the latter of which has long been a staple of The Aquabats' multi-media stage shows. Jacobs says the concept behind Super Show! was something he had always dreamed of doing, making a "campy, live-action, funky kid's show" in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s television that he and the rest of the series' producers had grown up with. While the show pays homage to many facets of pop culture, Jacobs has named the 1960s Batman television series as the primary influence on Super Show!s "obviously silly" tone and visual style, ranging from set design to the trademark use of dutch angles for villain scenes. Other notable influences Jacobs has repeatedly mentioned include the works of Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna-Barbera, Japanese tokusatsu series such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, the Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema, and shows including Danger Island, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and Pee-wee's Playhouse, noting "there's a good 30 years worth of television culture packed into these 22-minute episodes". Demographic As The Hub's key demographic were children aged 6 to 12, Super Show! was ostensibly targeted towards said age group, though Jacobs has stated that the series primarily aimed to appeal to an all-ages crowd, with the intent of creating entertainment that both kids and parents can watch and enjoy together or separately. In interviews prior to the series' premiere, he explained that this was merely an extension of The Aquabats' own family-friendly ethos: "There's just obviously something about the costumes and being superheroes that really appeals to younger kids, and I think we always knew that as a band...I think we'll want to put things in [the show] for an older audience, because we realize we have an older audience, but then also we want the young kids, to not have it go over their heads". Production history History and previous attempts at a series In 1994, musicians Christian Jacobs, Chad Larson and former member Boyd Terry formed The Aquabats in Brea, California. Influenced as much by cartoons and camp television as theatrical bands like Devo and Oingo Boingo, The Aquabats gained instant notoriety in the Orange County music scene for their eccentric persona in which they claimed to be a band of superheroes on a quest to save the world and their elaborate stage shows which regularly featured scripted fights with costumed villains alongside similar stunts and comedy sketches. The Aquabats' second studio album, 1997's The Fury of The Aquabats!, proved to be a minor commercial breakthrough for the group, charting on the Billboard 200 and bringing them exposure through such venues as MTV, leading Jacobs – a former child actor with ties in the industry – to develop the concept of adapting the band's mythology for television. In 1998, Buena Vista Television helped produce a live-action mini-pilot directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait titled simply The Aquabats!, following the comic misadventures of the then-eight member band in an over-the-top camp style similar to Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pilot, which has yet to be made available for public viewing, failed to generate any network interest and was ultimately even disowned by the band themselves. Undeterred, The Aquabats made an attempt at a second pilot the following year, using a music video budget granted by their record label Goldenvoice Records for their 1999 album The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death!. Independently directed and produced by Jacobs and his creative partner Scott Schultz, the result was a five-minute promo video entitled The Aquabats in Color!. In contrast to the wackier tone of the previous pilot, The Aquabats in Color! was a more action-oriented superhero series modeled after Japanese tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider. According to Jacobs, the Fox Family Channel reportedly expressed interest in the series and ordered production on a proper pilot episode, though following the channel's acquisition by Disney in 2001, the project was cancelled. The Aquabats! Super Show! pilot (2008) In 2005, Jacobs and Schultz formed the Orange County-based production company The Magic Store, focusing on creating family-oriented television entertainment. One of the company's independently produced pilots, the children's television series Yo Gabba Gabba!, was eventually picked up as a series by Viacoms Nick Jr. Channel, premiering in August 2007 and ultimately becoming an award-winning and critically acclaimed international success. In the wake of the series' popularity, Jacobs and Schultz persuaded Yo Gabba Gabba!s joint production company Wild Brain to help produce a new pilot based around The Aquabats in conjuncture with The Magic Store. Again creatively spearheaded by Jacobs and Schultz, The Aquabats' third pilot, titled The Aquabats! Super Show!, was shot on location throughout southern California in late 2007 and early 2008. Part of this filming took place at a free invitation-only concert for members of the band's official fan club at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on January 12, 2008. While The Aquabats' previous pilots were short, live-action promotional videos, The Aquabats! Super Show! was a fully realized 22-minute episode featuring two separate storylines based on the adventures of The Aquabats, one live-action and one animated, and interspersed with parody commercials and live footage of the band. Speaking on the decision to structure the show in such a varied format, Jacobs said "[w]e did that for a strategic reason – some networks like cartoons more than other networks. We wanted to say, 'this could be both shows'." Following a period of post-production, The Aquabats began widely self-promoting Super Show! in June 2008, redesigning their website to promote the pilot and releasing a teaser trailer and several exclusive clips through an official Super Show! YouTube channel. On July 25, 2008, the band screened the full pilot at a concert in San Diego held during the weekend of the San Diego Comic-Con, while a segment of the episode was hosted on Boing Boing the same day. In 2009, Cartoon Network allegedly picked the series up for a run of 22 episodes, though following major staff changes within the company—which, according to Jacobs, included the termination of the executives who had green-lighted Super Show!—the project was again cancelled. The Hub and season one After several more unsuccessful network pitches into the 2010s, The Aquabats! Super Show! was finally picked up as a series by family cable channel The Hub, a joint venture between Hasbro and Discovery which launched in 2010 as a replacement for Discovery Kids. The Hub formally announced the series in a press release on March 23, 2011, revealing Super Show! would be given a first season run of 13 episodes, produced in conjuncture with FremantleMedia. In promotion of the series, The Aquabats appeared as part of a panel at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con where they discussed their initial plans for the show, while The Hub sponsored an Aquabats concert held at the nearby House of Blues during the same weekend. Production on season one of Super Show! officially began in May 2011. The entirety of the first season was shot within and around The Aquabats' hometown of Orange County, California; according to the first season DVD audio commentary, episodes were shot on location in the cities of Irvine, Silverado, Yorba Linda, Huntington Beach and Fullerton, while a private sound stage in Santa Ana was used for interior shots of the Battletram. A public Aquabats concert held at The Glass House club in Pomona on November 5, 2011 was also filmed to provide live footage of the band which is featured in the series' opening credits montage and several individual episodes. Much of Super Show!s staff consist of friends and colleagues of The Aquabats who've previously worked with the band on various projects, ranging from members of Yo Gabba Gabba!s production team to fellow musicians within the southern California music scene. Among the more notable examples include Dallas McLaughlin and Matthew Gorney, both members of the San Diego hip hop band Bad Credit, who prominently served as writers, composers and performers, Warren Fitzgerald, guitarist for The Vandals, who was hired as a writer and music director, internet sketch comedy group Mega64 were commissioned to produce original material, primarily the series' parody commercials, and Japanese artist Pey, who had designed much of The Aquabats' promotional art and merchandise during the 2000s, was hired to design the season's animated segments. Additionally, several industry professionals were brought in to help work on the show: Dani Michaeli, a staff writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, was hired as the series' story editor, while Matt Chapman, co-creator of the internet Flash cartoon Homestar Runner, acted as a writer, director and actor on several episodes. As none of the members besides Jacobs had any previous acting experience, comedian Matt Walsh of the Upright Citizens Brigade was brought in to help teach The Aquabats comedic acting and timing. In further homage to the original Batman series, Super Show! features a variety of celebrity cameo appearances. The series' first season included appearances from actors Jon Heder, Lou Diamond Phillips and Samm Levine, comedians Rip Taylor, Paul Scheer and Paul Rust, and comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who appeared in two episodes as different characters. The first season also included several "Easter egg" cameos from original Aquabats members Corey "Chainsaw" Pollock and Boyd "Catboy" Terry, as well as from fellow musicians Warren Fitzgerald and Art Mitchell of the band Supernova. Despite having been originally announced as part of The Hub's 2011 Fall line-up, production delays postponed Super Show!s premiere to early 2012. The series' marketing campaign began in December 2011, with a later announcement of an official premiere date confirmed for March 3, 2012. Following a non-consecutive run of 13 episodes, the first-season finale aired on June 16, 2012. Season two On October 16, 2012, The Aquabats and The Hub confirmed production on new episodes of Super Show! through the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, announcing a tentative debut date of Spring 2013. Principal photography on season two began on October 22 and wrapped on December 1. Unlike the first season, the majority of season two was shot in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, which Jacobs explained was considerably less expensive than shooting in California. While no changes were made to Super Shows creative team, in December 2012 it was announced that season two would introduce the series' first guest director, musician and comic book writer Gerard Way, who co-directed and co-wrote the season finale "The AntiBats!" with Jacobs and deVilliers. Way's involvement with the series was heavily covered by the music press in the wake of the March 2013 break-up of his popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance. Among the guest stars featured in season two were professional skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston, Devo frontman and Yo Gabba Gabba! cast member Mark Mothersbaugh, internet celebrity Leslie Hall, actor Martin Starr and My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way. On December 2, 2012, deVilliers revealed on his Twitter account that the upcoming season would consist of only five new episodes, in what he called more "season 1.5" than a "season 2", though mentioned the possibility of more being made in the future. On May 1, 2013, it was announced through Entertainment Weekly that the series' second season would begin airing on June 1. After a run of only five episodes, the season concluded on June 29, 2013. 2013–2014 specials On August 22, 2013, series performer Chad Larson confirmed via Twitter that three additional episodes of Super Show! were being filmed near the end of the year, "and maybe more next". Principal photography on these episodes eventually began in Utah in early October. Throughout the month, The Aquabats posted numerous pictures of production on the new episodes on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, some of which revealed production code numbers of 301, 302 and 303, ostensibly indicating what would be a third season. Though these numbers were later verified by the Internet Movie Database, a November press release from The Hub explicitly referred to these three episodes as "specials". The first of these specials, "Christmas with The Aquabats!", aired on December 21, featuring comedians Robert Smigel and Matt Walsh in guest roles. The second of these episodes, "The Shark Fighter!" (based on The Aquabats' song of the same name), featuring comedian Rhys Darby, aired the following week on December 28, while the final special "Kitty Litter!" aired on January 18, 2014. "Kitty Litter!" was helmed by another guest director, Munn Powell, best known for his work as cinematographer on the Jared and Jerusha Hess films Napoleon Dynamite and Gentlemen Broncos. Following this short run of episodes, there was no confirmation by either The Hub or The Aquabats as to the production of any future episodes. In a December 2013 interview, Christian Jacobs acknowledged the network's unusually small order of episodes but didn't elaborate on any possible reasoning. In the same interview, he stated that the band had initially prepared for another order of 13 episodes, having written as many scripts for potential future episodes. On May 1, 2014, the nominees for the 2014 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, revealing that Super Show! had been nominated for five awards in four categories, including the award for Best Writing in a Children's Series for the episode "The AntiBats!". The awards ceremony was held on June 22, 2014, where the series ultimately won the award for Best Stunt Coordination for stuntman Skip Carlson. Cancellation by The Hub and hiatus In mid-2014, it was announced in entertainment press that Hasbro and Discovery had been in the process of rebranding The Hub following what they saw to be disappointing returns for the channel, changes which included the departure of CEO Margaret Loesch, who was instrumental in acquiring Super Show! as a series. In a Huffington Post feature about The Aquabats prior to the band's appearance at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that The Hub had opted not to renew Super Show! for a third season, effectively cancelling the series. Jacobs admitted he was surprised by this turn of events, noting "Everything we heard was that the show has been a real Cinderella story for the Hub and that it was rating really well with viewers. We just assumed that we'd eventually go back into production or at least get picked up for Season 3", but ultimately concluded "it is what it is" in regard to the network's decision. Despite this, Jacobs remained optimistic about the series' future, saying "Given that we now live in a world where people are streaming TV shows directly onto their iPhones & computers, and given that companies like Netflix & Yahoo! are now picking up so much new content for their customers...I just find it hard to believe that The Aquabats! Super Show! is really over. I mean, we haven't even made any toys yet". He concluded by stating "It took us almost 15 years to get that TV series made. And even though we've got a bunch more concert dates lined up for the rest of this year, our first priority is to find a new home for The Aquabats! Super Show!". On March 31, 2015, the nominees for the 42nd annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced, with Super Show! earning nominations for Best SFX Mixer (Blaine Stewart) and Best Stunt Coordinator (Braxton McAllister). On June 27, 2015, The Aquabats screened the entire first season of Super Show! before a sold-out crowd at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, which was accompanied by a live performance by the band and Q&A sessions with The Aquabats and numerous members of the cast and crew. A similar presentation of the entire second season – including the three additional specials – took place at The Art Theater in Long Beach on December 16, 2017, coinciding with the release of the second season Blu-ray. Bring Back The Aquabats! Kickstarter campaign Following weeks of teasing a major announcement, The Aquabats launched a Kickstarter campaign on July 31, 2018 to help finance the return of The Aquabats! Super Show! as well as new studio albums from the band at a minimum projected cost of $1.1 million. The Aquabats promoted their campaign with a video featuring a slew of celebrity cameos, including Super Show! guest stars "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Smigel (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Matt Chapman (as Homestar Runner and Strong Bad), former Aquabats member Travis Barker, Tony Kanal, Tom Dumont, Oscar Nunez, Kate Micucci, Blake Anderson, Imagine Dragons, Felicia Day and Tom Lennon, all of whom appeared in The Aquabats' trademark uniforms and spoke the Kickstarter's promotional slogan "I am The Aquabats"/"We are The Aquabats". Most prominently featured, however, was comedian Jack Black, who was later confirmed by the campaign's press releases to act as executive producer for the series' return. Along with their Kickstarter, the band began releasing a series of Super Show! "mini-episodes", depicting the MC Bat Commander's metafictional quest to reunite the estranged Aquabats following the series' cancellation. The band confirmed that as the Kickstarter progresses, further "mini-episodes" will be released to both promote the campaign as well as act as a continuation of Super Show!. By August 28, mere days before the campaign's end date of September 1, The Aquabats' Kickstarter had raised only $601,629 of its projected $1.1 million goal. The funding was subsequently cancelled and the campaign was rebooted the same day with a smaller goal of $100,000 to instead finance one new album and the continued production of the Super Show!! "mini-episodes". The project's goal was met within minutes. Music Original music for The Aquabats! Super Show! was primarily composed and performed by The Aquabats themselves, with additional scoring on most episodes provided by Matthew Gorney, Warren Fitzgerald or individual credits for Aquabats members James R. Briggs, Jr., Richard Falomir and Ian Fowles. Fitzgerald, guitarist for punk rock band The Vandals and former member of Oingo Boingo, acted as the series' music supervisor. The theme song to Super Show!, "Super Show Theme Song!", was co-written by The Aquabats and Fitzgerald. Whereas most musically oriented shows like The Monkees typically break the narrative of an episode for a music video performance of a standalone song, each episode of Super Show! typically features one or two unique songs that tied directly into the plot, usually about and performed during the events of a particular scene. Most of these songs are rather brief, averaging a running time of just under a minute; Jacobs stated that many of the show's original songs were recorded as full-length pieces but trimmed down for inclusion in an episode, simply due to the show "trying to pack so much into 22 minutes". Shortly after Super Show!s premiere, Jacobs confirmed plans to eventually release the series' original full-length songs as a soundtrack album. However, these plans wouldn't fully come to fruition until 2019; in a 2018 interview, Jacobs retrospectively revealed that the album had been long completed but the band "hadn't had all the rights tied up" until then. The first original and full-length recordings from the series' first season debuted in July 2017, when "Burger Rain" and "Beat Fishin'" were released as a tour-exclusive 7" single. Songs from the series' first season were eventually compiled as The Aquabats! Super Show! Television Soundtrack: Volume One, which was released digitally in March 2019 and then onto physical media the following June, where it became The Aquabats' highest-charting album to date, debuting at the top of Billboards Top Heatseekers chart and at 165 on the Billboard 200. Cast and characters See: List of The Aquabats! Super Show! characters The Aquabats! Super Show! stars and is based upon fictionalized versions of the then-current (since 2006) line-up of the California comedy rock band The Aquabats. Adapting the backstory the band has used for the entirety of their professional career, Super Show! depicts The Aquabats as a group of bumbling, out-of-shape superheroes on a self-appointed mission to fight the forces of evil, presented in both live-action and animated segments. The five members of The Aquabats are: The MC Bat Commander (played and voiced by Christian Jacobs) – The Aquabats' singer and de facto leader of the team. Though he doesn't have any superpowers of his own and is often quite stubborn and naive, the Commander is shown to be an effective strategist whose sharp leadership skills, bravery and determination regularly drive the band towards victory. Crash McLarson (played and voiced by Chad Larson) – The band's bass guitarist, who has the frequently uncontrollable ability to grow upwards of 100 feet in size when under emotional stress. Despite being the largest and strongest of The Aquabats, Crash has a gentle, childlike demeanor bordering on slight dim-wittedness, and as such is usually the most cowardly member of the team. Jimmy the Robot (played and voiced by James R. Briggs, Jr.) – The Aquabats' keyboardist. As his name implies, Jimmy is an android whose mechanical body houses a variety of built-in gadgets and weaponry, plus a comprehensive knowledge database which earns him the position of the group's resident scientist. Being a robot, Jimmy is generally perplexed by human emotions and behavior. Ricky Fitness (played and voiced by Richard Falomir) – the band's drummer, Ricky possesses the power of super speed. Being the most physically fit and health-conscious member of The Aquabats, some of the series' running gags revolve around Ricky's status as a handsome ladies' man and his fondness for "fresh, healthy veggies" in contrast to the rest of the team's voracious affinity for junk food. EagleBones Falconhawk (played and voiced by Ian Fowles) – The Aquabats' guitarist. The cocky and boyish maverick of the team, EagleBones is highly proficient on his custom weaponized electric guitar which shoots lasers from its headstock. Following a spiritual encounter early in season one, EagleBones also has the gift of second sight and is accompanied by "The Dude", an invisible spirit eagle whom he summons to aide The Aquabats in battle. Voice actor and writer Mr. Lawrence provided the minimal narration for both seasons of Super Show!s live-action segments, while staff writer Kyle McCulloch narrated the first season's animated segments. Guest stars and recurring characters Though each episode of the series introduced a new villain, ally and/or celebrity cameo, Super Show! never featured any major recurring characters throughout its run. However, every episode of the show included a very brief appearance by a character fans dubbed the "Fox Man", a man in a cheap-looking fox costume played by visual effects supervisor Joel Fox, who would appear hidden in the background of a random scene as an Easter egg for viewers to spot, although his character was never explained within the context of the series. Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic and comedian Paul Rust were the only two guest actors to appear in two episodes: Yankovic played two different roles as the President of the United States and superhero SuperMagic PowerMan! (in a 2012 interview, Jacobs alluded to the two possibly being the same character, though this isn't implied within the series), while Rust played a boorish slacker named Ronmark, first appearing in live-action in a first-season episode and subsequently lending his voice to a mutated monster version of the character in part of a second-season episode. Episodes Distribution International broadcast Outside of North America, The Aquabats! Super Show! broadcast in Australia on the children's public broadcasting channel ABC3 and in the United Kingdom on the children's network CITV. Home media Coinciding with the run of the first season, each new episode of The Aquabats! Super Show! was released through the iTunes Store for digital download. Prior to the series debut, a season pass was made available for purchase to enable viewers to automatically receive a download of each new episode on its airdate. The first season of Super Show! was added to the video streaming service Netflix on December 1, 2012, later being added to Hulu on December 21. Unlike the first season, the series' second season was not made available for iTunes pre-order, nor were episodes released for purchase. Though each episode was briefly streamed on The Hub's official website, none of the seasons' episodes were made available on Hulu, Netflix or similar streaming services. Shout! Factory had the DVD publishing rights for The Aquabats! Super Show! within Region 1 for release of the first season. The company first announced their acquisition of the series and plans for a future DVD in a press release dated August 6, 2012, though did not initially confirm a set release date until several months later. On May 21, 2013, the first season of Super Show! was released on a two-disc DVD set. On November 22, 2017, in conjunction with their announcement of a season two theatrical screening, The Aquabats confirmed an independent Blu-ray release for season two, including the three specials often considered a "season three". On December 5, pre-orders were launched on The Aquabats' merchandising site for an official release date of December 22, though copies were first made for public sale at the second season theatrical screening on December 16. Starting in December 2014, The Aquabats gradually began uploading the series' full episodes onto their official YouTube channel. As of August 2019, all 21 episodes of Super Show! and its pilot episode have been publicly uploaded to their account. Critical reception Critical response to The Aquabats! Super Show! was predominantly positive, with most reviewers praising the series' intentionally campy tone and offbeat humor. The Onions The A.V. Club gave the series premiere an A− rating, describing it as "a loving homage to basically everything ever done by the brothers Krofft": "the show adeptly flips from humor to melodrama to action, providing some awesomely cheap special effects, goofy songs, and gags that range from slapstick to sublime", summarizing "there's so much here that both kids and parents will be able to enjoy the proceedings on their own respective levels and rarely find themselves bored". Brian Lowry of Variety wrote "you don't have to laugh at everything to admire the effort and sheer silliness", calling the show a "goofy and nostalgic" throwback to the "children's TV of baby boomers' youth, down to crappy production values and awful-looking 'monsters' that work to its advantage". He summarized "Although this Hub series at times feels like an SNL skit stretched to a half-hour, its sly mix of music, live-action crime-fighting, cartoons and mock ads ought to develop a cult following—and might be more popular with parents, at least those with the geek gene, than their kids". Technology magazine Wired was consistently positive towards the series, calling it both "wonderfully strange" and "delightfully deranged", writing "[f]illed with self-deprecating music videos, toon interludes and ludicrous villains, The Aquabats! Super Show! has become one of television's strangely comforting finds". Common Sense Media, who review shows based on age-appropriate content, gave Super Show! a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "demented and manic...fun by sheer dint of how many jokes, visual and otherwise, are thrown at the screen, both those calculated to appeal to kids and adults". The site praised the series for its lighter and sillier tone in comparison to more violent live-action superhero fare, and considered the "kind-hearted" Aquabats to be relatively positive role models. However, the reviewer suggested the show's violence and creatures may be too intense for very young children, and pointed out a distinct lack of central female characters. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times offered a more indifferent opinion, calling The Aquabats "indescribably odd" and the series "frenetic, semicoherent and generally harmless. Also somewhat hallucinogenic", noting Super Show!s writing "may be over the heads of the 2-to-12 set", suggesting its most receptive audience might be "the college drinking-game crowd". Awards and nominations The Aquabats! Super Show! was nominated for the following awards: Daytime Emmy Award References External links Official website of The Aquabats Category:The Aquabats Category:2010s American children's comedy television series Category:2010s American musical comedy television series Category:2010s American satirical television series Category:2010s American sketch comedy television series Category:2010s American superhero comedy television series Category:2012 American television series debuts Category:2014 American television series endings Category:American children's action television series Category:American children's adventure television series Category:American children's musical television series Category:American superhero television series Category:American television series with live action and animation Category:American television shows featuring puppetry Category:Children's sketch comedy Category:English-language television shows Category:Television series by Fremantle (company) Category:Television shows set in Orange County, California Category:Discovery Family original programming

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Thomas A. Hendricks

Thomas Andrews Hendricks (September 7, 1819 - November 25, 1885) was an American politician and lawyer from Indiana who served as the 16th Governor of Indiana (1873-77) and the 21st Vice President of the United States (1885). Hendricks represented Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives (1851-55) and the U.S. Senate (1863-69). He also represented Shelby County, Indiana, in the Indiana General Assembly (1848-50) and as a delegate to the 1851 Indiana constitutional convention. In addition, Hendricks served as commissioner of the General Land Office (1855-59).

U.S. Senator

Hendricks represented Indiana in the U.S. Senate (1863-69) during the final years of the American Civil War and part of the Reconstruction Era. Military reverses in the Civil War, some unpopular decisions in the Lincoln administration, and Democratic control of the Indiana General Assembly helped Hendricks win election to the U.S. Senate. His six years in the Senate covered the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, and Fortieth Congresses, where Hendricks was a leader of the small Democratic minority and a member of the opposition who was often overruled. Hendricks challenged what he thought was radical legislation, including the military draft and issuing greenbacks; however, he supported the Union and prosecution of the war, consistently voting in favor of wartime appropriations. Hendricks adamantly opposed Radical Reconstruction. After the war he argued that the Southern states had never been out of the Union and were therefore entitled to representation in the U.S. Congress. Hendricks also maintained that Congress had no authority over the affairs of state governments. Hendricks voted against the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that would, upon ratification, grant voting rights to males of all races and abolish slavery. Hendricks felt it was not the right time, so soon after the Civil War, to make fundamental changes to the U.S. Constitution. Although Hendricks supported freedom for African Americans, stating, "He is free; now let him remain free," he unsuccessfully opposed reconstruction legislation. Hendricks also opposed the attempt to remove President Andrew Johnson from office following his impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives. Hendricks's views were often misinterpreted by his political opponents in Indiana. When the Republicans regained a majority in the Indiana General Assembly in 1868, the same year Hendricks's U.S. Senate term expired, he lost reelection to a second term, and was succeeded by Republican Congressman-elect Daniel D. Pratt, who resigned the U.S. House seat to which he had been elected in 1868 in order to accept the Senate seat. CANNOTANSWER

Thomas Andrews Hendricks (September 7, 1819November 25, 1885) was an American politician and lawyer from Indiana who served as the 16th governor of Indiana from 1873 to 1877 and the 21st vice president of the United States from March until his death in November 1885. Hendricks represented Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives (1851–1855) and the U.S. Senate (1863–1869). He also represented Shelby County, Indiana, in the Indiana General Assembly (1848–1850) and as a delegate to the 1851 Indiana constitutional convention. In addition, Hendricks served as commissioner of the General Land Office (1855–1859). Hendricks, a popular member of the Democratic Party, was a fiscal conservative. He defended the Democratic position in the U.S. Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era and voted against the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. He also opposed Radical Reconstruction and President Andrew Johnson's removal from office following Johnson's impeachment in the U.S. House. Born in Muskingum County, Ohio, Hendricks moved to Indiana, with his parents in 1820; the family settled in Shelby County in 1822. After graduating from Hanover College, class of 1841, Hendricks studied law in Shelbyville, Indiana, and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1843. Hendricks began his law practice in Shelbyville, moved to Indianapolis in 1860, and established a private law practice with Oscar B. Hord in 1862. The firm evolved into Baker & Daniels, one of the state's leading law firms. Hendricks also ran for election as Indiana's governor three times, but won only once. In 1872, on his third and final attempt, Hendricks defeated General Thomas M. Brown by a margin of 1,148 votes. His term as governor of Indiana was marked by numerous challenges, including a strong Republican majority in the Indiana General Assembly, the economic Panic of 1873, and an economic depression. One of Hendricks's lasting legacies during his tenure as governor was initiating discussions to fund construction of the present-day Indiana Statehouse, which was completed after he left office. A memorial to Hendricks was installed on the southeast corner of its grounds in 1890. Hendricks, a lifelong Democrat, was his party's candidate for U.S. vice president with New York governor Samuel Tilden as its presidential nominee in the controversial presidential election of 1876. Although they won the popular vote, Tilden and Hendricks lost the election by one vote in the Electoral College to the Republican Party's presidential nominee, Rutherford B. Hayes, and his vice presidential running mate, William A. Wheeler. Despite his poor health, Hendricks accepted his party's nomination for vice president in the election of 1884 as Grover Cleveland's running mate. Cleveland and Hendricks won the election, but Hendricks only served as vice president for about eight months, from March 4, 1885, until his death on November 25, 1885, in Indianapolis. He is buried in Indianapolis's Crown Hill Cemetery. Early life and education Hendricks was born on September 7, 1819, in Muskingum County, Ohio, near East Fultonham and Zanesville. He was the second of eight children born to John and Jane (Duke) Hendricks. His father was from Pennsylvania, and his mother was from Virginia. In 1820 Hendricks moved with his parents and older brother to Madison in Jefferson County, Indiana, at the urging of Thomas's uncle, William Hendricks, a successful politician who served as a U.S. Representative, a U.S. Senator (1825–1837), and as the third governor of Indiana (1822–1825). Thomas's family first settled on a farm near his uncle's home in Madison, and moved to Shelby County, Indiana, in 1822. Hendricks's father, a successful farmer who operated a general store, became involved in politics, including appointment from President Andrew Jackson as deputy surveyor of public lands for his district. Indiana's Democratic Party leaders frequently visited the Hendricks home in Shelbyville, and from an early age Hendricks was influenced to enter politics. Hendricks attended local schools (Shelby County Seminary and Greensburg Academy). He graduated from Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana, in 1841, in the same class as Albert G. Porter, also a future governor of Indiana. After college Hendricks read law with Judge Stephen Major in Shelbyville, and in 1843 he took an eight-month law course at a school operated by his uncle, Judge Alexander Thomson in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Hendricks returned to Indiana, was admitted to the bar in 1843, and established a private practice in Shelbyville. Marriage and family Hendricks married Eliza Carol Morgan of North Bend, Ohio, on September 26, 1845, after a two-year courtship. The couple met when Eliza was visiting her married sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Morgan West, in Shelbyville. The couple's only child, a son named Morgan, was born on January 16, 1848, and died in 1851, at the age of three. Thomas and Eliza Hendricks moved to Indianapolis in 1860 and resided from 1865 to 1872 at 1526 South New Jersey Street, now known as the Bates-Hendricks House. Early political career Hendricks remained active in the legal community and in state and national politics from the 1840s until his death in 1885. Indiana legislature and constitutional convention Hendricks began his political career in 1848, when he served a one-year term in the Indiana House of Representatives after defeating Martin M. Ray, the Whig candidate. Hendricks was also one of the two Shelby County delegates to the 1850–1851 Indiana constitutional convention. He served on committee that created the organization of the state's townships and counties and decided on the taxation and financial portion of the state constitution. Hendricks also debated the clauses on the powers of the different offices and argued in favor of a powerful judiciary and the abolishment of grand juries. U.S. congressman Hendricks represented Indiana as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives (1851–1855) in the Thirty-second and Thirty-third Congresses from March 4, 1851, to March 3, 1855. Hendricks was chairman of the U.S. Committee on Mileage (Thirty-second Congress) and served on the U.S. Committee on Invalid Pensions (Thirty-third Congress). He supported the principle of popular sovereignty and voted in favor of the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which expanded slavery into the western territories of the United States. Both positions were unpopular in Hendricks's home district in Indiana and led to defeat in his re-election bid to Congress in 1854. Land office commissioner In 1855 President Franklin Pierce appointed Hendricks as commissioner of the General Land Office in Washington, D.C. His job supervising 180 clerks and a four-year backlog of work was a demanding one, especially at a time when westward expansion meant that the government was going through one of its largest periods of land sales. During his tenure, the land office issued 400,000 land patents and settled 20,000 disputed land cases. Although Hendricks made thousands of decisions related to disputed land claims, only a few were reversed in court, but he did receive some criticism: "He was the first commissioner who apparently had no background or qualifications for the job. ...Some of the rulings and letters during Hendricks's tenure were not always correct." Hendricks resigned as land office commissioner in 1859 and returned to Shelby County, Indiana. The cause of his departure was not recorded, but potential reasons may have been differences of opinion with President James Buchanan, Pierce's successor. Hendricks resisted Buchanan's efforts to make land office clerks patronage positions, objected to the pro-slavery policies of the Buchanan administration, and supported the homestead bill, which Buchanan opposed. Candidate for Indiana governor Hendricks ran for governor of Indiana three times (1860, 1868, and 1872), and succeeded only on his third attempt. He became the first Democrat to win a gubernatorial seat after the American Civil War. In 1860 Hendricks, who ran with David Turpie as his running mate, lost to the Republican candidates, Henry Smith Lane and Oliver P. Morton. Three of the four men (Lane, Morton, and Hendricks) eventually served as Indiana's governor, and all four became U.S. senators. In 1868, his second campaign for Indiana governor, Hendricks lost to Conrad Baker, the incumbent, by 961 votes. Baker, who would later become one of Hendricks's law partners, was elected as lieutenant governor in 1864, and became governor after Morton was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1867. In the national election, Republican nominees Ulysses S. Grant and his running mate, Schuyler Colfax of Indiana, carried the state by a margin of more than 20,000 votes, suggesting that the close race for governor demonstrated Hendricks's popularity in Indiana. Following his defeat in his second gubernatorial race Hendricks retired from the U.S. Senate in March 1869 and returned to his private law practice in Indianapolis, but remained connected to state and national politics. In 1872, his third campaign to become governor of Indiana, Hendricks narrowly defeated General Thomas M. Browne, 189,424 votes to 188,276. Law practice In addition to his years of service in various political offices in Indiana and Washington, D.C., Hendricks maintained an active law practice, which he first established in Shelbyville in 1843 and continued after his relocation to Indianapolis. Hendricks and Oscar B. Hord established a law firm in 1862, where Hendricks practiced until the Indiana General Assembly elected him to represent Indiana in the U.S. Senate in 1863. The law practice was renamed Hendricks, Hord, and Hendricks in 1866, after Abram W. Hendricks joined the firm. In 1873 it was renamed Baker, Hord, and Hendricks, after Conrad Baker, the outgoing governor of Indiana, joined the firm and Hendricks succeeded him as governor. In 1888 the firm passed to Baker's son, who partnered with Edward Daniels, and it became known as Baker & Daniels, which grew into one of the state's leading law firms. High office U.S. Senator Hendricks represented Indiana in the U.S. Senate from 1863 to 1869, during the final years of the American Civil War and the early years of the Reconstruction era. Military reverses in the Civil War, some unpopular decisions in the Lincoln administration, and Democratic control of the Indiana General Assembly helped Hendricks win election to the U.S. Senate. His six years in the Senate covered the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, and Fortieth Congresses, where Hendricks was a leader of the small Democratic minority and a member of the opposition who was often overruled. Hendricks challenged what he thought was radical legislation, including the military draft and issuing greenbacks; however, he supported the Union and prosecution of the war, consistently voting in favor of wartime appropriations. Hendricks adamantly opposed Radical Reconstruction. After the war he argued that the Southern states had never been out of the Union and were therefore entitled to representation in the U.S. Congress. Hendricks also maintained that Congress had no authority over the affairs of state governments. Hendricks voted against the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that would, upon ratification, grant voting rights to males of all races and abolish slavery. Hendricks felt it was not the right time, so soon after the Civil War, to make fundamental changes to the U.S. Constitution. Although Hendricks supported freedom for African Americans, stating, "He is free; now let him remain free," he unsuccessfully opposed reconstruction legislation. Hendricks did not believe in racial equality. For example, in a congressional debate with Indiana's Senator Oliver Morton, Hendricks argued, Hendricks also opposed the attempt to remove President Andrew Johnson from office following his impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives. Hendricks's views were often misinterpreted by his political opponents in Indiana. When the Republicans regained a majority in the Indiana General Assembly in 1868, the same year Hendricks's U.S. Senate term expired, he lost reelection to a second term, and was succeeded by Republican Congressman-elect Daniel D. Pratt, who resigned the U.S. House seat to which he had been elected in 1868 in order to accept the Senate seat. Governor of Indiana In 1872 Hendricks was elected as the governor of Indiana in his third bid for the office. An indication of Hendricks's growing national popularity occurred during the presidential election of 1872; the Democrats nominated Horace Greeley, the Liberal Republican candidate. Greeley died soon after the election, but before the Electoral College cast its ballots; 42 of 63 Democratic electors previously pledged to Greeley voted for Hendricks. Hendricks served as governor of Indiana from January 13, 1873, to January 8, 1877, a difficult period of post-war economic depression following the financial Panic of 1873. Indiana experienced high unemployment, business failures, labor strikes, and falling farm prices. Hendricks twice called out the state militia to end workers' strikes, one by miners in Clay County, and one by railroad workers' in Logansport. Although Hendricks succeeded in encouraging legislation enacting election and judiciary reform, the Republican-controlled legislature prevented him from achieving many of his other legislative goals. In 1873 Hendricks signed the Baxter bill, a controversial piece of temperance legislation that established a strict form of local option, even though he personally had favored a licensing law. Hendricks signed the legislation because he thought the bill was constitutional and reflected the majority view of the Indiana General Assembly and the will of Indiana's citizens. The law proved to be unenforceable and was repealed in 1875; it was replaced by a licensing system that Hendricks had preferred. One of Hendricks's lasting legacies during his tenure as governor began with discussion to fund construction of a new Indiana Statehouse. The existing structure, which had been in use since 1835, had become too small, forcing the growing state government to rent additional buildings around Indianapolis. Besides its size, the dilapidated capitol building was in need of major repair. The roof in the Hall of Representatives had collapsed in 1867 and public inspectors condemned the building in 1873. The cornerstone for the present-day state capital building was laid in 1880, after Hendricks left office, and he delivered the keynote speech at the ceremony. The new statehouse was completed eight years later and remains in use as Indiana's state capitol building. Vice presidential nominee Hendricks ran for vice president in 1876 and 1884; he won in 1884. The Democrats also nominated Hendricks for the vice presidency in 1880, but he declined for health reasons. In 1880, while on a visit to Hot Springs, Arkansas, Hendricks suffered a bout of paralysis, but returned to public life. No one outside of his family and doctors knew his health was failing. Two years later he was no longer able to stand. In the disputed presidential election of 1876 Hendricks ran as the Democratic candidate for vice president with New York governor Samuel Tilden as the party's presidential nominee. Hendricks did not attend the Democratic convention in Saint Louis, but the party was pursuing the strategy of carrying the Solid South along with New York and Indiana. The Indiana delegation urged Hendricks as the vice presidential nominee, and he was nominated unanimously. Although they received the majority of the popular vote, Tilden and Hendricks lost the disputed election by one vote in Electoral College balloting to Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican Party's presidential nominee, and William A. Wheeler, his vice presidential running mate. A fifteen-member Electoral Commission that included five representatives each from the House, Senate, and U.S. Supreme Court determined the outcome of the contested electoral votes. In an 8 to 7 partisan vote, the commission awarded all twenty of the disputed votes from South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, and Oregon to the Republican candidates. Tilden and Hendricks accepted the decision, despite deep disappointment at the outcome. As chairman of the Indiana delegation, Hendricks attended the Democratic Party's national convention in 1884 in Chicago, where he was again nominated as its vice presidential candidate by a unanimous vote. Grover Cleveland was the party's presidential nominee in the 1884 presidential election; once again the Democrats' strategy was to win New York, Cleveland's home state, and Hendricks's home state of Indiana, plus the electoral votes of the Solid South. Democrats narrowly won New York, Indiana, and two more Northern states plus the Solid South to secure the election. Vice presidency (1885) Hendricks maintained a strong working relationship with President Cleveland during his brief tenure. He spoke highly of Cleveland's character and described him as "courteous and affable". Hendricks, who had been in poor health for several years, served as Cleveland's vice president during the last eight months of his life, from his inauguration on March 4 until his death on November 25, 1885. The vice presidency remained vacant after Hendricks's death until Levi P. Morton assumed office in 1889. On September 8, 1885, in Indianapolis, Hendricks made a controversial speech in support of Irish independence. Soon afterwards, Boston machine politician Martin Lomasney named the Hendricks Club after him. Death and legacy Hendricks died unexpectedly of a heart attack on November 25, 1885, during a trip home to Indianapolis. He complained of feeling ill the morning of November 24, went to bed early, and died in his sleep the following day, aged 66. His reported last words were "Free at last!". Hendricks's funeral service at Saint Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Indianapolis was a large one. Hundreds of dignitaries were in attendance, including President Grover Cleveland, and thousands of people gathered along the city's street to see the 1.2 mile long funeral cortege as it traveled from downtown Indianapolis to Crown Hill Cemetery, where his remains were interred. Hendricks, a popular member of the Democratic Party, remained on good terms with both Democrats and Republicans. He was a fiscal conservative and a powerful orator who was known for his honesty and firm convictions. Hendricks was one of four vice-presidential candidates from Indiana who were elected during the period 1868 to 1920, when Indiana's electoral votes were critical to winning a national election. (The three other men from Indiana who became U.S. vice presidents during this period were Schuyler Colfax, Charles W. Fairbanks, and Thomas R. Marshall.) Five other men from Indiana, George Washington Julian, Joseph Lane, Judge Samuel Williams, John W. Kern, and William Hayden English, lost their bids for the vice presidency during this time period. Honors and tributes Hendricks remains the only vice president who did not serve as president whose portrait appears on U.S. paper currency. An engraved portrait of Hendricks appears on a $10 "tombstone" silver certificate. The currency note's nickname is derived from the tombstone-shaped border outlining Hendricks's portrait. The Bates-Hendricks House, where the family lived from 1865 to 1872, is located in Indianapolis at 1526 South New Jersey Street, Indianapolis. The home was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 11, 1977. Thomas A. Hendricks Library (Hendricks Hall) at Hanover College, which overlooks the Ohio River near Madison, Indiana, was built in 1903. Hendricks's widow, Eliza, provided funding for the project as a tribute to her late husband, an alumnus of the college. The library was added to the National Register on February 26, 1982. Portraits of Thomas and Eliza Hendricks hang in the library. The Thomas A. Hendricks Monument was installed on the southeast corner of the state capitol building's grounds in 1890. At it is the tallest bronze statue on the statehouse grounds. The community of Hendricks in Minnesota and the adjacent lake were named in his honor. Electoral history See also List of governors of Indiana Thomas A. Hendricks Monument Hendricks, West Virginia, a town named after him Notes References (copy) External links "Thomas A. Hendricks: “The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was”, Indiana Historical Bureau Hendricks biography and portrait, Indiana Historical Bureau Hendricks biography, Biographical Dictionary of Congress Hendricks obituaries, Indiana Historic Newspaper Digitization Project] Category:1819 births Category:1885 deaths Category:19th-century American Episcopalians Category:19th-century vice presidents of the United States Category:Candidates in the 1868 United States presidential election Category:Candidates in the 1872 United States presidential election Category:Candidates in the 1876 United States presidential election Category:Candidates in the 1884 United States presidential election Category:1876 United States vice-presidential candidates Category:1884 United States vice-presidential candidates Category:Burials at Crown Hill Cemetery Category:Democratic Party (United States) vice presidential nominees Category:Hanover College alumni Category:Democratic Party governors of Indiana Category:Indiana lawyers Category:People from Shelbyville, Indiana Category:People from Muskingum County, Ohio Category:Democratic Party members of the Indiana House of Representatives Category:Vice presidents of the United States Category:Democratic Party vice presidents of the United States Category:Democratic Party United States senators from Indiana Category:General Land Office Commissioners Category:Cleveland administration cabinet members Category:Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Indiana Category:Politicians from Indianapolis Category:Members of the Odd Fellows

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Thomas A. Hendricks

Thomas Andrews Hendricks (September 7, 1819 - November 25, 1885) was an American politician and lawyer from Indiana who served as the 16th Governor of Indiana (1873-77) and the 21st Vice President of the United States (1885). Hendricks represented Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives (1851-55) and the U.S. Senate (1863-69). He also represented Shelby County, Indiana, in the Indiana General Assembly (1848-50) and as a delegate to the 1851 Indiana constitutional convention. In addition, Hendricks served as commissioner of the General Land Office (1855-59).

Governor of Indiana

In 1872 Hendricks was elected as the governor of Indiana in his third bid for the office. An indication of Hendricks's growing national popularity occurred during the presidential election of 1872; the Democrats nominated Horace Greeley, the Liberal Republican candidate. Greeley died soon after the election, but before the Electoral College cast its ballots; 42 of 63 Democratic electors previously pledged to Greeley voted for Hendricks. Hendricks served as governor of Indiana from January 13, 1873 to January 8, 1877, a difficult period of post-war economic depression following the financial Panic of 1873. Indiana experienced high unemployment, business failures, labor strikes, and falling farm prices. Hendricks twice called out the state militia to end workers' strikes, one by miners in Clay County, and one by railroad workers' in Logansport. Although Hendricks succeeded in encouraging legislation enacting election and judiciary reform, the Republican-controlled legislature prevented him from achieving many of his other legislative goals. In 1873 Hendricks signed the Baxter bill, a controversial piece of temperance legislation that established a strict form of local option, even though he personally had favored a licensing law. Hendricks signed the legislation because he thought the bill was constitutional and reflected the majority view of the Indiana General Assembly and the will of Indiana's citizens. The law proved to be unenforceable and was repealed in 1875; it was replaced by a licensing system that Hendricks had preferred. One of Hendricks's lasting legacies during his tenure as governor began with discussion to fund construction of a new Indiana Statehouse. The existing structure, which had been in use since 1835, had become too small, forcing the growing state government to rent additional buildings around Indianapolis. Besides its size, the dilapidated capitol building was in need of major repair. The roof in the Hall of Representatives had collapsed in 1867 and public inspectors condemned the building in 1873. The cornerstone for the present-day state capital building was laid in 1880, after Hendricks left office, and he delivered the keynote speech at the ceremony. The new statehouse was completed eight years later and remains in use as Indiana's state capitol building. CANNOTANSWER

Thomas Andrews Hendricks (September 7, 1819November 25, 1885) was an American politician and lawyer from Indiana who served as the 16th governor of Indiana from 1873 to 1877 and the 21st vice president of the United States from March until his death in November 1885. Hendricks represented Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives (1851–1855) and the U.S. Senate (1863–1869). He also represented Shelby County, Indiana, in the Indiana General Assembly (1848–1850) and as a delegate to the 1851 Indiana constitutional convention. In addition, Hendricks served as commissioner of the General Land Office (1855–1859). Hendricks, a popular member of the Democratic Party, was a fiscal conservative. He defended the Democratic position in the U.S. Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era and voted against the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. He also opposed Radical Reconstruction and President Andrew Johnson's removal from office following Johnson's impeachment in the U.S. House. Born in Muskingum County, Ohio, Hendricks moved to Indiana, with his parents in 1820; the family settled in Shelby County in 1822. After graduating from Hanover College, class of 1841, Hendricks studied law in Shelbyville, Indiana, and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1843. Hendricks began his law practice in Shelbyville, moved to Indianapolis in 1860, and established a private law practice with Oscar B. Hord in 1862. The firm evolved into Baker & Daniels, one of the state's leading law firms. Hendricks also ran for election as Indiana's governor three times, but won only once. In 1872, on his third and final attempt, Hendricks defeated General Thomas M. Brown by a margin of 1,148 votes. His term as governor of Indiana was marked by numerous challenges, including a strong Republican majority in the Indiana General Assembly, the economic Panic of 1873, and an economic depression. One of Hendricks's lasting legacies during his tenure as governor was initiating discussions to fund construction of the present-day Indiana Statehouse, which was completed after he left office. A memorial to Hendricks was installed on the southeast corner of its grounds in 1890. Hendricks, a lifelong Democrat, was his party's candidate for U.S. vice president with New York governor Samuel Tilden as its presidential nominee in the controversial presidential election of 1876. Although they won the popular vote, Tilden and Hendricks lost the election by one vote in the Electoral College to the Republican Party's presidential nominee, Rutherford B. Hayes, and his vice presidential running mate, William A. Wheeler. Despite his poor health, Hendricks accepted his party's nomination for vice president in the election of 1884 as Grover Cleveland's running mate. Cleveland and Hendricks won the election, but Hendricks only served as vice president for about eight months, from March 4, 1885, until his death on November 25, 1885, in Indianapolis. He is buried in Indianapolis's Crown Hill Cemetery. Early life and education Hendricks was born on September 7, 1819, in Muskingum County, Ohio, near East Fultonham and Zanesville. He was the second of eight children born to John and Jane (Duke) Hendricks. His father was from Pennsylvania, and his mother was from Virginia. In 1820 Hendricks moved with his parents and older brother to Madison in Jefferson County, Indiana, at the urging of Thomas's uncle, William Hendricks, a successful politician who served as a U.S. Representative, a U.S. Senator (1825–1837), and as the third governor of Indiana (1822–1825). Thomas's family first settled on a farm near his uncle's home in Madison, and moved to Shelby County, Indiana, in 1822. Hendricks's father, a successful farmer who operated a general store, became involved in politics, including appointment from President Andrew Jackson as deputy surveyor of public lands for his district. Indiana's Democratic Party leaders frequently visited the Hendricks home in Shelbyville, and from an early age Hendricks was influenced to enter politics. Hendricks attended local schools (Shelby County Seminary and Greensburg Academy). He graduated from Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana, in 1841, in the same class as Albert G. Porter, also a future governor of Indiana. After college Hendricks read law with Judge Stephen Major in Shelbyville, and in 1843 he took an eight-month law course at a school operated by his uncle, Judge Alexander Thomson in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Hendricks returned to Indiana, was admitted to the bar in 1843, and established a private practice in Shelbyville. Marriage and family Hendricks married Eliza Carol Morgan of North Bend, Ohio, on September 26, 1845, after a two-year courtship. The couple met when Eliza was visiting her married sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Morgan West, in Shelbyville. The couple's only child, a son named Morgan, was born on January 16, 1848, and died in 1851, at the age of three. Thomas and Eliza Hendricks moved to Indianapolis in 1860 and resided from 1865 to 1872 at 1526 South New Jersey Street, now known as the Bates-Hendricks House. Early political career Hendricks remained active in the legal community and in state and national politics from the 1840s until his death in 1885. Indiana legislature and constitutional convention Hendricks began his political career in 1848, when he served a one-year term in the Indiana House of Representatives after defeating Martin M. Ray, the Whig candidate. Hendricks was also one of the two Shelby County delegates to the 1850–1851 Indiana constitutional convention. He served on committee that created the organization of the state's townships and counties and decided on the taxation and financial portion of the state constitution. Hendricks also debated the clauses on the powers of the different offices and argued in favor of a powerful judiciary and the abolishment of grand juries. U.S. congressman Hendricks represented Indiana as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives (1851–1855) in the Thirty-second and Thirty-third Congresses from March 4, 1851, to March 3, 1855. Hendricks was chairman of the U.S. Committee on Mileage (Thirty-second Congress) and served on the U.S. Committee on Invalid Pensions (Thirty-third Congress). He supported the principle of popular sovereignty and voted in favor of the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which expanded slavery into the western territories of the United States. Both positions were unpopular in Hendricks's home district in Indiana and led to defeat in his re-election bid to Congress in 1854. Land office commissioner In 1855 President Franklin Pierce appointed Hendricks as commissioner of the General Land Office in Washington, D.C. His job supervising 180 clerks and a four-year backlog of work was a demanding one, especially at a time when westward expansion meant that the government was going through one of its largest periods of land sales. During his tenure, the land office issued 400,000 land patents and settled 20,000 disputed land cases. Although Hendricks made thousands of decisions related to disputed land claims, only a few were reversed in court, but he did receive some criticism: "He was the first commissioner who apparently had no background or qualifications for the job. ...Some of the rulings and letters during Hendricks's tenure were not always correct." Hendricks resigned as land office commissioner in 1859 and returned to Shelby County, Indiana. The cause of his departure was not recorded, but potential reasons may have been differences of opinion with President James Buchanan, Pierce's successor. Hendricks resisted Buchanan's efforts to make land office clerks patronage positions, objected to the pro-slavery policies of the Buchanan administration, and supported the homestead bill, which Buchanan opposed. Candidate for Indiana governor Hendricks ran for governor of Indiana three times (1860, 1868, and 1872), and succeeded only on his third attempt. He became the first Democrat to win a gubernatorial seat after the American Civil War. In 1860 Hendricks, who ran with David Turpie as his running mate, lost to the Republican candidates, Henry Smith Lane and Oliver P. Morton. Three of the four men (Lane, Morton, and Hendricks) eventually served as Indiana's governor, and all four became U.S. senators. In 1868, his second campaign for Indiana governor, Hendricks lost to Conrad Baker, the incumbent, by 961 votes. Baker, who would later become one of Hendricks's law partners, was elected as lieutenant governor in 1864, and became governor after Morton was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1867. In the national election, Republican nominees Ulysses S. Grant and his running mate, Schuyler Colfax of Indiana, carried the state by a margin of more than 20,000 votes, suggesting that the close race for governor demonstrated Hendricks's popularity in Indiana. Following his defeat in his second gubernatorial race Hendricks retired from the U.S. Senate in March 1869 and returned to his private law practice in Indianapolis, but remained connected to state and national politics. In 1872, his third campaign to become governor of Indiana, Hendricks narrowly defeated General Thomas M. Browne, 189,424 votes to 188,276. Law practice In addition to his years of service in various political offices in Indiana and Washington, D.C., Hendricks maintained an active law practice, which he first established in Shelbyville in 1843 and continued after his relocation to Indianapolis. Hendricks and Oscar B. Hord established a law firm in 1862, where Hendricks practiced until the Indiana General Assembly elected him to represent Indiana in the U.S. Senate in 1863. The law practice was renamed Hendricks, Hord, and Hendricks in 1866, after Abram W. Hendricks joined the firm. In 1873 it was renamed Baker, Hord, and Hendricks, after Conrad Baker, the outgoing governor of Indiana, joined the firm and Hendricks succeeded him as governor. In 1888 the firm passed to Baker's son, who partnered with Edward Daniels, and it became known as Baker & Daniels, which grew into one of the state's leading law firms. High office U.S. Senator Hendricks represented Indiana in the U.S. Senate from 1863 to 1869, during the final years of the American Civil War and the early years of the Reconstruction era. Military reverses in the Civil War, some unpopular decisions in the Lincoln administration, and Democratic control of the Indiana General Assembly helped Hendricks win election to the U.S. Senate. His six years in the Senate covered the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, and Fortieth Congresses, where Hendricks was a leader of the small Democratic minority and a member of the opposition who was often overruled. Hendricks challenged what he thought was radical legislation, including the military draft and issuing greenbacks; however, he supported the Union and prosecution of the war, consistently voting in favor of wartime appropriations. Hendricks adamantly opposed Radical Reconstruction. After the war he argued that the Southern states had never been out of the Union and were therefore entitled to representation in the U.S. Congress. Hendricks also maintained that Congress had no authority over the affairs of state governments. Hendricks voted against the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that would, upon ratification, grant voting rights to males of all races and abolish slavery. Hendricks felt it was not the right time, so soon after the Civil War, to make fundamental changes to the U.S. Constitution. Although Hendricks supported freedom for African Americans, stating, "He is free; now let him remain free," he unsuccessfully opposed reconstruction legislation. Hendricks did not believe in racial equality. For example, in a congressional debate with Indiana's Senator Oliver Morton, Hendricks argued, Hendricks also opposed the attempt to remove President Andrew Johnson from office following his impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives. Hendricks's views were often misinterpreted by his political opponents in Indiana. When the Republicans regained a majority in the Indiana General Assembly in 1868, the same year Hendricks's U.S. Senate term expired, he lost reelection to a second term, and was succeeded by Republican Congressman-elect Daniel D. Pratt, who resigned the U.S. House seat to which he had been elected in 1868 in order to accept the Senate seat. Governor of Indiana In 1872 Hendricks was elected as the governor of Indiana in his third bid for the office. An indication of Hendricks's growing national popularity occurred during the presidential election of 1872; the Democrats nominated Horace Greeley, the Liberal Republican candidate. Greeley died soon after the election, but before the Electoral College cast its ballots; 42 of 63 Democratic electors previously pledged to Greeley voted for Hendricks. Hendricks served as governor of Indiana from January 13, 1873, to January 8, 1877, a difficult period of post-war economic depression following the financial Panic of 1873. Indiana experienced high unemployment, business failures, labor strikes, and falling farm prices. Hendricks twice called out the state militia to end workers' strikes, one by miners in Clay County, and one by railroad workers' in Logansport. Although Hendricks succeeded in encouraging legislation enacting election and judiciary reform, the Republican-controlled legislature prevented him from achieving many of his other legislative goals. In 1873 Hendricks signed the Baxter bill, a controversial piece of temperance legislation that established a strict form of local option, even though he personally had favored a licensing law. Hendricks signed the legislation because he thought the bill was constitutional and reflected the majority view of the Indiana General Assembly and the will of Indiana's citizens. The law proved to be unenforceable and was repealed in 1875; it was replaced by a licensing system that Hendricks had preferred. One of Hendricks's lasting legacies during his tenure as governor began with discussion to fund construction of a new Indiana Statehouse. The existing structure, which had been in use since 1835, had become too small, forcing the growing state government to rent additional buildings around Indianapolis. Besides its size, the dilapidated capitol building was in need of major repair. The roof in the Hall of Representatives had collapsed in 1867 and public inspectors condemned the building in 1873. The cornerstone for the present-day state capital building was laid in 1880, after Hendricks left office, and he delivered the keynote speech at the ceremony. The new statehouse was completed eight years later and remains in use as Indiana's state capitol building. Vice presidential nominee Hendricks ran for vice president in 1876 and 1884; he won in 1884. The Democrats also nominated Hendricks for the vice presidency in 1880, but he declined for health reasons. In 1880, while on a visit to Hot Springs, Arkansas, Hendricks suffered a bout of paralysis, but returned to public life. No one outside of his family and doctors knew his health was failing. Two years later he was no longer able to stand. In the disputed presidential election of 1876 Hendricks ran as the Democratic candidate for vice president with New York governor Samuel Tilden as the party's presidential nominee. Hendricks did not attend the Democratic convention in Saint Louis, but the party was pursuing the strategy of carrying the Solid South along with New York and Indiana. The Indiana delegation urged Hendricks as the vice presidential nominee, and he was nominated unanimously. Although they received the majority of the popular vote, Tilden and Hendricks lost the disputed election by one vote in Electoral College balloting to Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican Party's presidential nominee, and William A. Wheeler, his vice presidential running mate. A fifteen-member Electoral Commission that included five representatives each from the House, Senate, and U.S. Supreme Court determined the outcome of the contested electoral votes. In an 8 to 7 partisan vote, the commission awarded all twenty of the disputed votes from South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, and Oregon to the Republican candidates. Tilden and Hendricks accepted the decision, despite deep disappointment at the outcome. As chairman of the Indiana delegation, Hendricks attended the Democratic Party's national convention in 1884 in Chicago, where he was again nominated as its vice presidential candidate by a unanimous vote. Grover Cleveland was the party's presidential nominee in the 1884 presidential election; once again the Democrats' strategy was to win New York, Cleveland's home state, and Hendricks's home state of Indiana, plus the electoral votes of the Solid South. Democrats narrowly won New York, Indiana, and two more Northern states plus the Solid South to secure the election. Vice presidency (1885) Hendricks maintained a strong working relationship with President Cleveland during his brief tenure. He spoke highly of Cleveland's character and described him as "courteous and affable". Hendricks, who had been in poor health for several years, served as Cleveland's vice president during the last eight months of his life, from his inauguration on March 4 until his death on November 25, 1885. The vice presidency remained vacant after Hendricks's death until Levi P. Morton assumed office in 1889. On September 8, 1885, in Indianapolis, Hendricks made a controversial speech in support of Irish independence. Soon afterwards, Boston machine politician Martin Lomasney named the Hendricks Club after him. Death and legacy Hendricks died unexpectedly of a heart attack on November 25, 1885, during a trip home to Indianapolis. He complained of feeling ill the morning of November 24, went to bed early, and died in his sleep the following day, aged 66. His reported last words were "Free at last!". Hendricks's funeral service at Saint Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Indianapolis was a large one. Hundreds of dignitaries were in attendance, including President Grover Cleveland, and thousands of people gathered along the city's street to see the 1.2 mile long funeral cortege as it traveled from downtown Indianapolis to Crown Hill Cemetery, where his remains were interred. Hendricks, a popular member of the Democratic Party, remained on good terms with both Democrats and Republicans. He was a fiscal conservative and a powerful orator who was known for his honesty and firm convictions. Hendricks was one of four vice-presidential candidates from Indiana who were elected during the period 1868 to 1920, when Indiana's electoral votes were critical to winning a national election. (The three other men from Indiana who became U.S. vice presidents during this period were Schuyler Colfax, Charles W. Fairbanks, and Thomas R. Marshall.) Five other men from Indiana, George Washington Julian, Joseph Lane, Judge Samuel Williams, John W. Kern, and William Hayden English, lost their bids for the vice presidency during this time period. Honors and tributes Hendricks remains the only vice president who did not serve as president whose portrait appears on U.S. paper currency. An engraved portrait of Hendricks appears on a $10 "tombstone" silver certificate. The currency note's nickname is derived from the tombstone-shaped border outlining Hendricks's portrait. The Bates-Hendricks House, where the family lived from 1865 to 1872, is located in Indianapolis at 1526 South New Jersey Street, Indianapolis. The home was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 11, 1977. Thomas A. Hendricks Library (Hendricks Hall) at Hanover College, which overlooks the Ohio River near Madison, Indiana, was built in 1903. Hendricks's widow, Eliza, provided funding for the project as a tribute to her late husband, an alumnus of the college. The library was added to the National Register on February 26, 1982. Portraits of Thomas and Eliza Hendricks hang in the library. The Thomas A. Hendricks Monument was installed on the southeast corner of the state capitol building's grounds in 1890. At it is the tallest bronze statue on the statehouse grounds. The community of Hendricks in Minnesota and the adjacent lake were named in his honor. Electoral history See also List of governors of Indiana Thomas A. Hendricks Monument Hendricks, West Virginia, a town named after him Notes References (copy) External links "Thomas A. Hendricks: “The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was”, Indiana Historical Bureau Hendricks biography and portrait, Indiana Historical Bureau Hendricks biography, Biographical Dictionary of Congress Hendricks obituaries, Indiana Historic Newspaper Digitization Project] Category:1819 births Category:1885 deaths Category:19th-century American Episcopalians Category:19th-century vice presidents of the United States Category:Candidates in the 1868 United States presidential election Category:Candidates in the 1872 United States presidential election Category:Candidates in the 1876 United States presidential election Category:Candidates in the 1884 United States presidential election Category:1876 United States vice-presidential candidates Category:1884 United States vice-presidential candidates Category:Burials at Crown Hill Cemetery Category:Democratic Party (United States) vice presidential nominees Category:Hanover College alumni Category:Democratic Party governors of Indiana Category:Indiana lawyers Category:People from Shelbyville, Indiana Category:People from Muskingum County, Ohio Category:Democratic Party members of the Indiana House of Representatives Category:Vice presidents of the United States Category:Democratic Party vice presidents of the United States Category:Democratic Party United States senators from Indiana Category:General Land Office Commissioners Category:Cleveland administration cabinet members Category:Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Indiana Category:Politicians from Indianapolis Category:Members of the Odd Fellows

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Kurt Gödel

Kurt Friedrich Godel (UK: , US: ; German: ['kUat 'go:dl] ( listen); April 28, 1906 - January 14, 1978) was an Austrian, and later American, logician, mathematician, and philosopher.

Studying in Vienna

At the age of 18, Godel joined his brother in Vienna and entered the University of Vienna. By that time, he had already mastered university-level mathematics. Although initially intending to study theoretical physics, he also attended courses on mathematics and philosophy. During this time, he adopted ideas of mathematical realism. He read Kant's Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Naturwissenschaft, and participated in the Vienna Circle with Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap. Godel then studied number theory, but when he took part in a seminar run by Moritz Schlick which studied Bertrand Russell's book Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, he became interested in mathematical logic. According to Godel, mathematical logic was "a science prior to all others, which contains the ideas and principles underlying all sciences." Attending a lecture by David Hilbert in Bologna on completeness and consistency of mathematical systems may have set Godel's life course. In 1928, Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann published Grundzuge der theoretischen Logik (Principles of Mathematical Logic), an introduction to first-order logic in which the problem of completeness was posed: Are the axioms of a formal system sufficient to derive every statement that is true in all models of the system? This became the topic that Godel chose for his doctoral work. In 1929, at the age of 23, he completed his doctoral dissertation under Hans Hahn's supervision. In it, he established the completeness of the first-order predicate calculus (Godel's completeness theorem). He was awarded his doctorate in 1930. His thesis, along with some additional work, was published by the Vienna Academy of Science. CANNOTANSWER

Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( , ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an immense effect upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when others such as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and David Hilbert were using logic and set theory to investigate the foundations of mathematics, building on earlier work by the likes of Richard Dedekind, Georg Cantor and Frege. Gödel's discoveries in the foundations of mathematics led to the proof of his completeness theorem in 1929 as part of his dissertation to earn a doctorate at the University of Vienna, and the publication of Gödel's incompleteness theorems two years later, in 1931. The first incompleteness theorem states that for any ω-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (for example, Peano arithmetic), there are true propositions about the natural numbers that can be neither proved nor disproved from the axioms. To prove this, Gödel developed a technique now known as Gödel numbering, which codes formal expressions as natural numbers. The second incompleteness theorem, which follows from the first, states that the system cannot prove its own consistency. Gödel also showed that neither the axiom of choice nor the continuum hypothesis can be disproved from the accepted Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, assuming that its axioms are consistent. The former result opened the door for mathematicians to assume the axiom of choice in their proofs. He also made important contributions to proof theory by clarifying the connections between classical logic, intuitionistic logic, and modal logic. Early life and education Childhood Gödel was born April 28, 1906, in Brünn (now Brno), Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic), into the German-speaking family of Rudolf Gödel (1874–1929), the managing director and part owner of a major textile firm, and Marianne Gödel (née Handschuh, 1879–1966). At the time of his birth the city had a German-speaking majority which included his parents. His father was Catholic and his mother was Protestant and the children were raised Protestant. The ancestors of Kurt Gödel were often active in Brünn's cultural life. For example, his grandfather Joseph Gödel was a famous singer in his time and for some years a member of the (Men's Choral Union of Brünn). Gödel automatically became a citizen of Czechoslovakia at age 12 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed following its defeat in the First World War. According to his classmate , like many residents of the predominantly German , "Gödel considered himself always Austrian and an exile in Czechoslovakia". In February 1929, he was granted release from his Czechoslovakian citizenship and then, in April, granted Austrian citizenship. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Gödel automatically became a German citizen at age 32. In 1948, after World War II, at the age of 42, he became an American citizen. In his family, the young Gödel was nicknamed ("Mr. Why") because of his insatiable curiosity. According to his brother Rudolf, at the age of six or seven, Kurt suffered from rheumatic fever; he completely recovered, but for the rest of his life he remained convinced that his heart had suffered permanent damage. Beginning at age four, Gödel suffered from "frequent episodes of poor health", which would continue for his entire life. Gödel attended the , a Lutheran school in Brünn from 1912 to 1916, and was enrolled in the from 1916 to 1924, excelling with honors in all his subjects, particularly in mathematics, languages and religion. Although Gödel had first excelled in languages, he later became more interested in history and mathematics. His interest in mathematics increased when in 1920 his older brother Rudolf (born 1902) left for Vienna, where he attended medical school at the University of Vienna. During his teens, Gödel studied Gabelsberger shorthand, Goethe's Theory of Colours and criticisms of Isaac Newton, and the writings of Immanuel Kant. Studies in Vienna At the age of 18, Gödel joined his brother at the University of Vienna. By that time, he had already mastered university-level mathematics. Although initially intending to study theoretical physics, he also attended courses on mathematics and philosophy.<ref>At the University of Vienna, Kurt Gödel attended several mathematics and philosophy courses side by side with Hermann Broch, who was then in his early forties. See: {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BFgpBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA27|title=Kurt Gödel: Das Album - The Album|author=Sigmund, Karl|author-link=Karl Sigmund|author2=Dawson Jr., John W.|author-link2=John W. Dawson Jr.|author3=Mühlberger, Kurt|page=27|publisher=Springer-Verlag|year=2007|isbn=978-3-8348-0173-9}}</ref> During this time, he adopted ideas of mathematical realism. He read Kant's , and participated in the Vienna Circle with Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap. Gödel then studied number theory, but when he took part in a seminar run by Moritz Schlick which studied Bertrand Russell's book Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, he became interested in mathematical logic. According to Gödel, mathematical logic was "a science prior to all others, which contains the ideas and principles underlying all sciences." Attending a lecture by David Hilbert in Bologna on completeness and consistency in mathematical systems may have set Gödel's life course. In 1928, Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann published (Principles of Mathematical Logic), an introduction to first-order logic in which the problem of completeness was posed: "Are the axioms of a formal system sufficient to derive every statement that is true in all models of the system?" This problem became the topic that Gödel chose for his doctoral work. In 1929, at the age of 23, he completed his doctoral dissertation under Hans Hahn's supervision. In it, he established his eponymous completeness theorem regarding the first-order predicate calculus. He was awarded his doctorate in 1930, and his thesis (accompanied by some additional work) was published by the Vienna Academy of Science. Career Incompleteness theorems In 1930 Gödel attended the Second Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences, held in Königsberg, 5–7 September. Here he delivered his incompleteness theorems. Gödel published his incompleteness theorems in (called in English "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of and Related Systems"). In that article, he proved for any computable axiomatic system that is powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (e.g., the Peano axioms or Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice), that: If a (logical or axiomatic formal) system is omega-consistent, it cannot be syntactically complete. The consistency of axioms cannot be proved within their own system. These theorems ended a half-century of attempts, beginning with the work of Gottlob Frege and culminating in and Hilbert's Program, to find a non-relatively consistent axiomatization sufficient for number theory (that was to serve as the foundation for other fields of mathematics). In hindsight, the basic idea at the heart of the incompleteness theorem is rather simple. Gödel essentially constructed a formula that claims that it is unprovable in a given formal system. If it were provable, it would be false. Thus there will always be at least one true but unprovable statement. That is, for any computably enumerable set of axioms for arithmetic (that is, a set that can in principle be printed out by an idealized computer with unlimited resources), there is a formula that is true of arithmetic, but which is not provable in that system. To make this precise, however, Gödel needed to produce a method to encode (as natural numbers) statements, proofs, and the concept of provability; he did this using a process known as Gödel numbering. In his two-page paper (1932) Gödel refuted the finite-valuedness of intuitionistic logic. In the proof, he implicitly used what has later become known as Gödel–Dummett intermediate logic (or Gödel fuzzy logic). Mid-1930s: further work and U.S. visits Gödel earned his habilitation at Vienna in 1932, and in 1933 he became a (unpaid lecturer) there. In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and over the following years the Nazis rose in influence in Austria, and among Vienna's mathematicians. In June 1936, Moritz Schlick, whose seminar had aroused Gödel's interest in logic, was assassinated by one of his former students, Johann Nelböck. This triggered "a severe nervous crisis" in Gödel. He developed paranoid symptoms, including a fear of being poisoned, and spent several months in a sanitarium for nervous diseases. In 1933, Gödel first traveled to the U.S., where he met Albert Einstein, who became a good friend. He delivered an address to the annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society. During this year, Gödel also developed the ideas of computability and recursive functions to the point where he was able to present a lecture on general recursive functions and the concept of truth. This work was developed in number theory, using Gödel numbering. In 1934, Gödel gave a series of lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, titled On undecidable propositions of formal mathematical systems. Stephen Kleene, who had just completed his PhD at Princeton, took notes of these lectures that have been subsequently published. Gödel visited the IAS again in the autumn of 1935. The travelling and the hard work had exhausted him and the next year he took a break to recover from a depressive episode. He returned to teaching in 1937. During this time, he worked on the proof of consistency of the axiom of choice and of the continuum hypothesis; he went on to show that these hypotheses cannot be disproved from the common system of axioms of set theory. He married (née Porkert, 1899–1981), whom he had known for over 10 years, on September 20, 1938. Gödel's parents had opposed their relationship because she was a divorced dancer, six years older than he was. Subsequently, he left for another visit to the United States, spending the autumn of 1938 at the IAS and publishing Consistency of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum-hypothesis with the axioms of set theory, a classic of modern mathematics. In that work he introduced the constructible universe, a model of set theory in which the only sets that exist are those that can be constructed from simpler sets. Gödel showed that both the axiom of choice (AC) and the generalized continuum hypothesis (GCH) are true in the constructible universe, and therefore must be consistent with the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms for set theory (ZF). This result has had considerable consequences for working mathematicians, as it means they can assume the axiom of choice when proving the Hahn–Banach theorem. Paul Cohen later constructed a model of ZF in which AC and GCH are false; together these proofs mean that AC and GCH are independent of the ZF axioms for set theory. Gödel spent the spring of 1939 at the University of Notre Dame. Princeton, Einstein, U.S. citizenship After the Anschluss on 12 March 1938, Austria had become a part of Nazi Germany. Germany abolished the title , so Gödel had to apply for a different position under the new order. His former association with Jewish members of the Vienna Circle, especially with Hahn, weighed against him. The University of Vienna turned his application down. His predicament intensified when the German army found him fit for conscription. World War II started in September 1939. Before the year was up, Gödel and his wife left Vienna for Princeton. To avoid the difficulty of an Atlantic crossing, the Gödels took the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Pacific, sailed from Japan to San Francisco (which they reached on March 4, 1940), then crossed the US by train to Princeton. There Gödel accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), which he had previously visited during 1933–34. Albert Einstein was also living at Princeton during this time. Gödel and Einstein developed a strong friendship, and were known to take long walks together to and from the Institute for Advanced Study. The nature of their conversations was a mystery to the other Institute members. Economist Oskar Morgenstern recounts that toward the end of his life Einstein confided that his "own work no longer meant much, that he came to the Institute merely ... to have the privilege of walking home with Gödel". Gödel and his wife, Adele, spent the summer of 1942 in Blue Hill, Maine, at the Blue Hill Inn at the top of the bay. Gödel was not merely vacationing but had a very productive summer of work. Using [volume 15] of Gödel's still-unpublished [working notebooks], John W. Dawson Jr. conjectures that Gödel discovered a proof for the independence of the axiom of choice from finite type theory, a weakened form of set theory, while in Blue Hill in 1942. Gödel's close friend Hao Wang supports this conjecture, noting that Gödel's Blue Hill notebooks contain his most extensive treatment of the problem. On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gödel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that could allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship; this has since been dubbed Gödel's Loophole. Einstein and Morgenstern were concerned that their friend's unpredictable behavior might jeopardize his application. The judge turned out to be Phillip Forman, who knew Einstein and had administered the oath at Einstein's own citizenship hearing. Everything went smoothly until Forman happened to ask Gödel if he thought a dictatorship like the Nazi regime could happen in the U.S. Gödel then started to explain his discovery to Forman. Forman understood what was going on, cut Gödel off, and moved the hearing on to other questions and a routine conclusion. Gödel became a permanent member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1946. Around this time he stopped publishing, though he continued to work. He became a full professor at the Institute in 1953 and an emeritus professor in 1976. During his time at the institute, Gödel's interests turned to philosophy and physics. In 1949, he demonstrated the existence of solutions involving closed timelike curves, to Einstein's field equations in general relativity. He is said to have given this elaboration to Einstein as a present for his 70th birthday. His "rotating universes" would allow time travel to the past and caused Einstein to have doubts about his own theory. His solutions are known as the Gödel metric (an exact solution of the Einstein field equation). He studied and admired the works of Gottfried Leibniz, but came to believe that a hostile conspiracy had caused some of Leibniz's works to be suppressed. To a lesser extent he studied Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the early 1970s, Gödel circulated among his friends an elaboration of Leibniz's version of Anselm of Canterbury's ontological proof of God's existence. This is now known as Gödel's ontological proof. Awards and honours Gödel was awarded (with Julian Schwinger) the first Albert Einstein Award in 1951, and was also awarded the National Medal of Science, in 1974. Gödel was elected a resident member of the American Philosophical Society in 1961 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1968. He was a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Gödel Prize, an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, is named after him. Later life and death Later in his life, Gödel suffered periods of mental instability and illness. Following the assassination of his close friend Moritz Schlick, Gödel developed an obsessive fear of being poisoned, and would eat only food prepared by his wife Adele. Adele was hospitalized beginning in late 1977, and in her absence Gödel refused to eat; he weighed when he died of "malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance" in Princeton Hospital on January 14, 1978. He was buried in Princeton Cemetery. Adele died in 1981. Religious views Gödel believed that God was personal, and called his philosophy "rationalistic, idealistic, optimistic, and theological". Gödel believed in an afterlife, saying, "Of course this supposes that there are many relationships which today's science and received wisdom haven't any inkling of. But I am convinced of this [the afterlife], independently of any theology." It is "possible today to perceive, by pure reasoning" that it "is entirely consistent with known facts." "If the world is rationally constructed and has meaning, then there must be such a thing [as an afterlife]." In an unmailed answer to a questionnaire, Gödel described his religion as "baptized Lutheran (but not member of any religious congregation). My belief is theistic, not pantheistic, following Leibniz rather than Spinoza." Of religion(s) in general, he said: "Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not". According to his wife Adele, "Gödel, although he did not go to church, was religious and read the Bible in bed every Sunday morning", while of Islam, he said, "I like Islam: it is a consistent [or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded." Legacy Douglas Hofstadter wrote the 1979 book to celebrate the work and ideas of Gödel, M. C. Escher and Johann Sebastian Bach. It partly explores the ramifications of the fact that Gödel's incompleteness theorem can be applied to any Turing-complete computational system, which may include the human brain. The Kurt Gödel Society, founded in 1987, was named in his honor. It is an international organization for the promotion of research in logic, philosophy, and the history of mathematics. The University of Vienna hosts the Kurt Gödel Research Center for Mathematical Logic. The Association for Symbolic Logic has invited an annual Kurt Gödel lecturer each year since 1990. Gödel's Philosophical Notebooks are edited at the Kurt Gödel Research Centre which is situated at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany. Lou Jacobi plays Gödel in the 1994 film I.Q.Five volumes of Gödel's collected works have been published. The first two include his publications; the third includes unpublished manuscripts from his , and the final two include correspondence. In 2005 John Dawson published a biography of Gödel, Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel (A. K. Peters, Wellesley, MA, ). Stephen Budiansky's book about Gödel's life, Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel (W. W. Norton & Company, New York City, NY, ), was a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021. Gödel was also one of four mathematicians examined in David Malone's 2008 BBC documentary Dangerous Knowledge. Bibliography Important publications In German: 1930, "Die Vollständigkeit der Axiome des logischen Funktionenkalküls." Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 37: 349–60. 1931, "Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme, I." Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 38: 173–98. 1932, "Zum intuitionistischen Aussagenkalkül", Anzeiger Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien 69: 65–66. In English: 1940. The Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and of the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis with the Axioms of Set Theory. Princeton University Press. 1947. "What is Cantor's continuum problem?" The American Mathematical Monthly 54: 515–25. Revised version in Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, eds., 1984 (1964). Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings. Cambridge Univ. Press: 470–85. 1950, "Rotating Universes in General Relativity Theory." Proceedings of the international Congress of Mathematicians in Cambridge, Vol. 1, pp. 175–81. In English translation: Kurt Gödel, 1992. On Formally Undecidable Propositions Of Principia Mathematica And Related Systems, tr. B. Meltzer, with a comprehensive introduction by Richard Braithwaite. Dover reprint of the 1962 Basic Books edition. Kurt Gödel, 2000. On Formally Undecidable Propositions Of Principia Mathematica And Related Systems, tr. Martin Hirzel Jean van Heijenoort, 1967. A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931. Harvard Univ. Press. 1930. "The completeness of the axioms of the functional calculus of logic," 582–91. 1930. "Some metamathematical results on completeness and consistency," 595–96. Abstract to (1931). 1931. "On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems," 596–616. 1931a. "On completeness and consistency," 616–17. Collected Works: Oxford University Press: New York. Editor-in-chief: Solomon Feferman. Volume I: Publications 1929–1936 / Paperback: , Volume II: Publications 1938–1974 / Paperback: , Volume III: Unpublished Essays and Lectures / Paperback: , Volume IV: Correspondence, A–G , Volume V: Correspondence, H–Z . Philosophische Notizbücher / Philosophical Notebooks: De Gruyter: Berlin/München/Boston. Editor: . Volume 1: Philosophie I Maximen 0 / Philosophy I Maxims 0 . Volume 2: Zeiteinteilung (Maximen) I und II / Time Management (Maxims) I and II . Volume 3: Maximen III / Maxims III See also Gödel machine Gödel fuzzy logic Gödel–Löb logic Gödel Prize Gödel's ontological proof Infinite-valued logic List of Austrian scientists List of pioneers in computer science Mathematical Platonism Original proof of Gödel's completeness theorem Primitive recursive functional Strange loop Tarski's undefinability theorem World Logic Day Notes References . . Further reading Stephen Budiansky, 2021. Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel. W.W. Norton & Company. . . . . Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940. Princeton Univ. Press. Jaakko Hintikka, 2000. On Gödel. Wadsworth. Douglas Hofstadter, 1980. Gödel, Escher, Bach. Vintage. Stephen Kleene, 1967. Mathematical Logic. Dover paperback reprint c. 2001. Stephen Kleene, 1980. Introduction to Metamathematics. North Holland (Ishi Press paperback. 2009. ) J.R. Lucas, 1970. The Freedom of the Will. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Ernest Nagel and Newman, James R., 1958. Gödel's Proof. New York Univ. Press. Procházka, Jiří, 2006, 2006, 2008, 2008, 2010. Kurt Gödel: 1906–1978: Genealogie. ITEM, Brno. Volume I. Brno 2006, . In German, English. Volume II. Brno 2006, . In German, English. Volume III. Brno 2008, . In German, English. Volume IV. Brno, Princeton 2008, . In German, English Volume V, Brno, Princeton 2010, . In German, English. Procházka, Jiří, 2012. "Kurt Gödel: 1906–1978: Historie". ITEM, Brno, Wien, Princeton. Volume I. . In German, English. Ed Regis, 1987. Who Got Einstein's Office? Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. Raymond Smullyan, 1992. Godel's Incompleteness Theorems. Oxford University Press. Olga Taussky-Todd, 1983. Remembrances of Kurt Gödel. Engineering & Science, Winter 1988. Gödel, Alois, 2006. Brünn 1679–1684. ITEM, Brno 2006, edited by Jiří Procházka, Procházka, Jiří 2017. "Kurt Gödel: 1906–1978: Curriculum vitae". ITEM, Brno, Wien, Princeton 2017. Volume I. (). In German, English. Procházka, Jiří 2019. "Kurt Gödel 1906-1978: Curriculum vitae". ITEM, Brno, Wien, Princeton 2019. Volume II. (). In German, English. Procházka, Jiří 2020. "Kurt Gödel: 1906-1978. Curriculum vitae". ITEM, Brno, Wien, Princeton 2020. Volume III. (). In German, English. 223 Pages. Yourgrau, Palle, 1999. Gödel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the Gödel Universe. Chicago: Open Court. Yourgrau, Palle, 2004. A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein. Basic Books. . (Reviewed by John Stachel in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society'' (54 (7), pp. 861–68). External links Time Bandits: an article about the relationship between Gödel and Einstein by Jim Holt Notices of the AMS, April 2006, Volume 53, Number 4 Kurt Gödel Centenary Issue Paul Davies and Freeman Dyson discuss Kurt Godel (transcript) "Gödel and the Nature of Mathematical Truth" Edge: A Talk with Rebecca Goldstein on Kurt Gödel. It's Not All In The Numbers: Gregory Chaitin Explains Gödel's Mathematical Complexities. Gödel photo gallery. (archived) Kurt Gödel MacTutor History of Mathematics archive page National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir Category:1906 births Category:1978 deaths Category:20th-century American mathematicians Category:20th-century American philosophers Category:20th-century Austrian mathematicians Category:American relativity theorists Category:American Protestants Category:American logicians Category:American people of Moravian-German descent Category:Analytic philosophers Category:Austrian emigrants to the United States Category:Austrian logicians Category:Austrian people of Moravian-German descent Category:Austrian philosophers Category:Austrian Protestants Category:Mathematicians from Austria-Hungary Category:Burials at Princeton Cemetery Category:Deaths by starvation Category:Foreign Members of the Royal Society Category:Institute for Advanced Study faculty Category:National Medal of Science laureates Category:Ontologists Category:Scientists from Brno Category:People from the Margraviate of Moravia Category:People with acquired American citizenship Category:People with paranoid personality disorder Category:Platonists Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Protestant philosophers Category:Set theorists Category:Vienna Circle Category:University of Notre Dame faculty Category:University of Vienna alumni Category:Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy

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Kurt Gödel

Kurt Friedrich Godel (UK: , US: ; German: ['kUat 'go:dl] ( listen); April 28, 1906 - January 14, 1978) was an Austrian, and later American, logician, mathematician, and philosopher.

Childhood

Godel was born April 28, 1906, in Brunn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno, Czech Republic) into the ethnic German family of Rudolf Godel (1874-1929), the manager of a textile factory, and Marianne Godel (nee Handschuh, 1879-1966). Throughout his life, Godel would remain close to his mother; their correspondence was frequent and wide-ranging. At the time of his birth the city had a German-speaking majority which included his parents. His father was Catholic and his mother was Protestant and the children were raised Protestant. The ancestors of Kurt Godel were often active in Brunn's cultural life. For example, his grandfather Joseph Godel was a famous singer of that time and for some years a member of the "Brunner Mannergesangverein". Godel automatically became a Czechoslovak citizen at age 12 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke up at the end of World War I. According to his classmate Klepetar, like many residents of the predominantly German Sudetenlander, "Godel considered himself always Austrian and an exile in Czechoslovakia". He chose to become an Austrian citizen at age 23. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Godel automatically became a German citizen at age 32. After World War II, at the age of 42, he became an American citizen. In his family, young Kurt was known as Herr Warum ("Mr. Why") because of his insatiable curiosity. According to his brother Rudolf, at the age of six or seven Kurt suffered from rheumatic fever; he completely recovered, but for the rest of his life he remained convinced that his heart had suffered permanent damage. Beginning at age four, Godel suffered from "frequent episodes of poor health," which would continue for his entire life. Godel attended the Evangelische Volksschule, a Lutheran school in Brunn from 1912 to 1916, and was enrolled in the Deutsches Staats-Realgymnasium from 1916 to 1924, excelling with honors in all his subjects, particularly in mathematics, languages and religion. Although Kurt had first excelled in languages, he later became more interested in history and mathematics. His interest in mathematics increased when in 1920 his older brother Rudolf (born 1902) left for Vienna to go to medical school at the University of Vienna. During his teens, Kurt studied Gabelsberger shorthand, Goethe's Theory of Colours and criticisms of Isaac Newton, and the writings of Immanuel Kant. CANNOTANSWER

Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( , ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an immense effect upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when others such as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and David Hilbert were using logic and set theory to investigate the foundations of mathematics, building on earlier work by the likes of Richard Dedekind, Georg Cantor and Frege. Gödel's discoveries in the foundations of mathematics led to the proof of his completeness theorem in 1929 as part of his dissertation to earn a doctorate at the University of Vienna, and the publication of Gödel's incompleteness theorems two years later, in 1931. The first incompleteness theorem states that for any ω-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (for example, Peano arithmetic), there are true propositions about the natural numbers that can be neither proved nor disproved from the axioms. To prove this, Gödel developed a technique now known as Gödel numbering, which codes formal expressions as natural numbers. The second incompleteness theorem, which follows from the first, states that the system cannot prove its own consistency. Gödel also showed that neither the axiom of choice nor the continuum hypothesis can be disproved from the accepted Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, assuming that its axioms are consistent. The former result opened the door for mathematicians to assume the axiom of choice in their proofs. He also made important contributions to proof theory by clarifying the connections between classical logic, intuitionistic logic, and modal logic. Early life and education Childhood Gödel was born April 28, 1906, in Brünn (now Brno), Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic), into the German-speaking family of Rudolf Gödel (1874–1929), the managing director and part owner of a major textile firm, and Marianne Gödel (née Handschuh, 1879–1966). At the time of his birth the city had a German-speaking majority which included his parents. His father was Catholic and his mother was Protestant and the children were raised Protestant. The ancestors of Kurt Gödel were often active in Brünn's cultural life. For example, his grandfather Joseph Gödel was a famous singer in his time and for some years a member of the (Men's Choral Union of Brünn). Gödel automatically became a citizen of Czechoslovakia at age 12 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed following its defeat in the First World War. According to his classmate , like many residents of the predominantly German , "Gödel considered himself always Austrian and an exile in Czechoslovakia". In February 1929, he was granted release from his Czechoslovakian citizenship and then, in April, granted Austrian citizenship. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Gödel automatically became a German citizen at age 32. In 1948, after World War II, at the age of 42, he became an American citizen. In his family, the young Gödel was nicknamed ("Mr. Why") because of his insatiable curiosity. According to his brother Rudolf, at the age of six or seven, Kurt suffered from rheumatic fever; he completely recovered, but for the rest of his life he remained convinced that his heart had suffered permanent damage. Beginning at age four, Gödel suffered from "frequent episodes of poor health", which would continue for his entire life. Gödel attended the , a Lutheran school in Brünn from 1912 to 1916, and was enrolled in the from 1916 to 1924, excelling with honors in all his subjects, particularly in mathematics, languages and religion. Although Gödel had first excelled in languages, he later became more interested in history and mathematics. His interest in mathematics increased when in 1920 his older brother Rudolf (born 1902) left for Vienna, where he attended medical school at the University of Vienna. During his teens, Gödel studied Gabelsberger shorthand, Goethe's Theory of Colours and criticisms of Isaac Newton, and the writings of Immanuel Kant. Studies in Vienna At the age of 18, Gödel joined his brother at the University of Vienna. By that time, he had already mastered university-level mathematics. Although initially intending to study theoretical physics, he also attended courses on mathematics and philosophy.<ref>At the University of Vienna, Kurt Gödel attended several mathematics and philosophy courses side by side with Hermann Broch, who was then in his early forties. See: {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BFgpBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA27|title=Kurt Gödel: Das Album - The Album|author=Sigmund, Karl|author-link=Karl Sigmund|author2=Dawson Jr., John W.|author-link2=John W. Dawson Jr.|author3=Mühlberger, Kurt|page=27|publisher=Springer-Verlag|year=2007|isbn=978-3-8348-0173-9}}</ref> During this time, he adopted ideas of mathematical realism. He read Kant's , and participated in the Vienna Circle with Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap. Gödel then studied number theory, but when he took part in a seminar run by Moritz Schlick which studied Bertrand Russell's book Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, he became interested in mathematical logic. According to Gödel, mathematical logic was "a science prior to all others, which contains the ideas and principles underlying all sciences." Attending a lecture by David Hilbert in Bologna on completeness and consistency in mathematical systems may have set Gödel's life course. In 1928, Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann published (Principles of Mathematical Logic), an introduction to first-order logic in which the problem of completeness was posed: "Are the axioms of a formal system sufficient to derive every statement that is true in all models of the system?" This problem became the topic that Gödel chose for his doctoral work. In 1929, at the age of 23, he completed his doctoral dissertation under Hans Hahn's supervision. In it, he established his eponymous completeness theorem regarding the first-order predicate calculus. He was awarded his doctorate in 1930, and his thesis (accompanied by some additional work) was published by the Vienna Academy of Science. Career Incompleteness theorems In 1930 Gödel attended the Second Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences, held in Königsberg, 5–7 September. Here he delivered his incompleteness theorems. Gödel published his incompleteness theorems in (called in English "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of and Related Systems"). In that article, he proved for any computable axiomatic system that is powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (e.g., the Peano axioms or Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice), that: If a (logical or axiomatic formal) system is omega-consistent, it cannot be syntactically complete. The consistency of axioms cannot be proved within their own system. These theorems ended a half-century of attempts, beginning with the work of Gottlob Frege and culminating in and Hilbert's Program, to find a non-relatively consistent axiomatization sufficient for number theory (that was to serve as the foundation for other fields of mathematics). In hindsight, the basic idea at the heart of the incompleteness theorem is rather simple. Gödel essentially constructed a formula that claims that it is unprovable in a given formal system. If it were provable, it would be false. Thus there will always be at least one true but unprovable statement. That is, for any computably enumerable set of axioms for arithmetic (that is, a set that can in principle be printed out by an idealized computer with unlimited resources), there is a formula that is true of arithmetic, but which is not provable in that system. To make this precise, however, Gödel needed to produce a method to encode (as natural numbers) statements, proofs, and the concept of provability; he did this using a process known as Gödel numbering. In his two-page paper (1932) Gödel refuted the finite-valuedness of intuitionistic logic. In the proof, he implicitly used what has later become known as Gödel–Dummett intermediate logic (or Gödel fuzzy logic). Mid-1930s: further work and U.S. visits Gödel earned his habilitation at Vienna in 1932, and in 1933 he became a (unpaid lecturer) there. In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and over the following years the Nazis rose in influence in Austria, and among Vienna's mathematicians. In June 1936, Moritz Schlick, whose seminar had aroused Gödel's interest in logic, was assassinated by one of his former students, Johann Nelböck. This triggered "a severe nervous crisis" in Gödel. He developed paranoid symptoms, including a fear of being poisoned, and spent several months in a sanitarium for nervous diseases. In 1933, Gödel first traveled to the U.S., where he met Albert Einstein, who became a good friend. He delivered an address to the annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society. During this year, Gödel also developed the ideas of computability and recursive functions to the point where he was able to present a lecture on general recursive functions and the concept of truth. This work was developed in number theory, using Gödel numbering. In 1934, Gödel gave a series of lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, titled On undecidable propositions of formal mathematical systems. Stephen Kleene, who had just completed his PhD at Princeton, took notes of these lectures that have been subsequently published. Gödel visited the IAS again in the autumn of 1935. The travelling and the hard work had exhausted him and the next year he took a break to recover from a depressive episode. He returned to teaching in 1937. During this time, he worked on the proof of consistency of the axiom of choice and of the continuum hypothesis; he went on to show that these hypotheses cannot be disproved from the common system of axioms of set theory. He married (née Porkert, 1899–1981), whom he had known for over 10 years, on September 20, 1938. Gödel's parents had opposed their relationship because she was a divorced dancer, six years older than he was. Subsequently, he left for another visit to the United States, spending the autumn of 1938 at the IAS and publishing Consistency of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum-hypothesis with the axioms of set theory, a classic of modern mathematics. In that work he introduced the constructible universe, a model of set theory in which the only sets that exist are those that can be constructed from simpler sets. Gödel showed that both the axiom of choice (AC) and the generalized continuum hypothesis (GCH) are true in the constructible universe, and therefore must be consistent with the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms for set theory (ZF). This result has had considerable consequences for working mathematicians, as it means they can assume the axiom of choice when proving the Hahn–Banach theorem. Paul Cohen later constructed a model of ZF in which AC and GCH are false; together these proofs mean that AC and GCH are independent of the ZF axioms for set theory. Gödel spent the spring of 1939 at the University of Notre Dame. Princeton, Einstein, U.S. citizenship After the Anschluss on 12 March 1938, Austria had become a part of Nazi Germany. Germany abolished the title , so Gödel had to apply for a different position under the new order. His former association with Jewish members of the Vienna Circle, especially with Hahn, weighed against him. The University of Vienna turned his application down. His predicament intensified when the German army found him fit for conscription. World War II started in September 1939. Before the year was up, Gödel and his wife left Vienna for Princeton. To avoid the difficulty of an Atlantic crossing, the Gödels took the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Pacific, sailed from Japan to San Francisco (which they reached on March 4, 1940), then crossed the US by train to Princeton. There Gödel accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), which he had previously visited during 1933–34. Albert Einstein was also living at Princeton during this time. Gödel and Einstein developed a strong friendship, and were known to take long walks together to and from the Institute for Advanced Study. The nature of their conversations was a mystery to the other Institute members. Economist Oskar Morgenstern recounts that toward the end of his life Einstein confided that his "own work no longer meant much, that he came to the Institute merely ... to have the privilege of walking home with Gödel". Gödel and his wife, Adele, spent the summer of 1942 in Blue Hill, Maine, at the Blue Hill Inn at the top of the bay. Gödel was not merely vacationing but had a very productive summer of work. Using [volume 15] of Gödel's still-unpublished [working notebooks], John W. Dawson Jr. conjectures that Gödel discovered a proof for the independence of the axiom of choice from finite type theory, a weakened form of set theory, while in Blue Hill in 1942. Gödel's close friend Hao Wang supports this conjecture, noting that Gödel's Blue Hill notebooks contain his most extensive treatment of the problem. On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gödel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that could allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship; this has since been dubbed Gödel's Loophole. Einstein and Morgenstern were concerned that their friend's unpredictable behavior might jeopardize his application. The judge turned out to be Phillip Forman, who knew Einstein and had administered the oath at Einstein's own citizenship hearing. Everything went smoothly until Forman happened to ask Gödel if he thought a dictatorship like the Nazi regime could happen in the U.S. Gödel then started to explain his discovery to Forman. Forman understood what was going on, cut Gödel off, and moved the hearing on to other questions and a routine conclusion. Gödel became a permanent member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1946. Around this time he stopped publishing, though he continued to work. He became a full professor at the Institute in 1953 and an emeritus professor in 1976. During his time at the institute, Gödel's interests turned to philosophy and physics. In 1949, he demonstrated the existence of solutions involving closed timelike curves, to Einstein's field equations in general relativity. He is said to have given this elaboration to Einstein as a present for his 70th birthday. His "rotating universes" would allow time travel to the past and caused Einstein to have doubts about his own theory. His solutions are known as the Gödel metric (an exact solution of the Einstein field equation). He studied and admired the works of Gottfried Leibniz, but came to believe that a hostile conspiracy had caused some of Leibniz's works to be suppressed. To a lesser extent he studied Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the early 1970s, Gödel circulated among his friends an elaboration of Leibniz's version of Anselm of Canterbury's ontological proof of God's existence. This is now known as Gödel's ontological proof. Awards and honours Gödel was awarded (with Julian Schwinger) the first Albert Einstein Award in 1951, and was also awarded the National Medal of Science, in 1974. Gödel was elected a resident member of the American Philosophical Society in 1961 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1968. He was a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Gödel Prize, an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, is named after him. Later life and death Later in his life, Gödel suffered periods of mental instability and illness. Following the assassination of his close friend Moritz Schlick, Gödel developed an obsessive fear of being poisoned, and would eat only food prepared by his wife Adele. Adele was hospitalized beginning in late 1977, and in her absence Gödel refused to eat; he weighed when he died of "malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance" in Princeton Hospital on January 14, 1978. He was buried in Princeton Cemetery. Adele died in 1981. Religious views Gödel believed that God was personal, and called his philosophy "rationalistic, idealistic, optimistic, and theological". Gödel believed in an afterlife, saying, "Of course this supposes that there are many relationships which today's science and received wisdom haven't any inkling of. But I am convinced of this [the afterlife], independently of any theology." It is "possible today to perceive, by pure reasoning" that it "is entirely consistent with known facts." "If the world is rationally constructed and has meaning, then there must be such a thing [as an afterlife]." In an unmailed answer to a questionnaire, Gödel described his religion as "baptized Lutheran (but not member of any religious congregation). My belief is theistic, not pantheistic, following Leibniz rather than Spinoza." Of religion(s) in general, he said: "Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not". According to his wife Adele, "Gödel, although he did not go to church, was religious and read the Bible in bed every Sunday morning", while of Islam, he said, "I like Islam: it is a consistent [or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded." Legacy Douglas Hofstadter wrote the 1979 book to celebrate the work and ideas of Gödel, M. C. Escher and Johann Sebastian Bach. It partly explores the ramifications of the fact that Gödel's incompleteness theorem can be applied to any Turing-complete computational system, which may include the human brain. The Kurt Gödel Society, founded in 1987, was named in his honor. It is an international organization for the promotion of research in logic, philosophy, and the history of mathematics. The University of Vienna hosts the Kurt Gödel Research Center for Mathematical Logic. The Association for Symbolic Logic has invited an annual Kurt Gödel lecturer each year since 1990. Gödel's Philosophical Notebooks are edited at the Kurt Gödel Research Centre which is situated at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany. Lou Jacobi plays Gödel in the 1994 film I.Q.Five volumes of Gödel's collected works have been published. The first two include his publications; the third includes unpublished manuscripts from his , and the final two include correspondence. In 2005 John Dawson published a biography of Gödel, Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel (A. K. Peters, Wellesley, MA, ). Stephen Budiansky's book about Gödel's life, Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel (W. W. Norton & Company, New York City, NY, ), was a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021. Gödel was also one of four mathematicians examined in David Malone's 2008 BBC documentary Dangerous Knowledge. Bibliography Important publications In German: 1930, "Die Vollständigkeit der Axiome des logischen Funktionenkalküls." Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 37: 349–60. 1931, "Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme, I." Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 38: 173–98. 1932, "Zum intuitionistischen Aussagenkalkül", Anzeiger Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien 69: 65–66. In English: 1940. The Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and of the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis with the Axioms of Set Theory. Princeton University Press. 1947. "What is Cantor's continuum problem?" The American Mathematical Monthly 54: 515–25. Revised version in Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, eds., 1984 (1964). Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings. Cambridge Univ. Press: 470–85. 1950, "Rotating Universes in General Relativity Theory." Proceedings of the international Congress of Mathematicians in Cambridge, Vol. 1, pp. 175–81. In English translation: Kurt Gödel, 1992. On Formally Undecidable Propositions Of Principia Mathematica And Related Systems, tr. B. Meltzer, with a comprehensive introduction by Richard Braithwaite. Dover reprint of the 1962 Basic Books edition. Kurt Gödel, 2000. On Formally Undecidable Propositions Of Principia Mathematica And Related Systems, tr. Martin Hirzel Jean van Heijenoort, 1967. A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931. Harvard Univ. Press. 1930. "The completeness of the axioms of the functional calculus of logic," 582–91. 1930. "Some metamathematical results on completeness and consistency," 595–96. Abstract to (1931). 1931. "On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems," 596–616. 1931a. "On completeness and consistency," 616–17. Collected Works: Oxford University Press: New York. Editor-in-chief: Solomon Feferman. Volume I: Publications 1929–1936 / Paperback: , Volume II: Publications 1938–1974 / Paperback: , Volume III: Unpublished Essays and Lectures / Paperback: , Volume IV: Correspondence, A–G , Volume V: Correspondence, H–Z . Philosophische Notizbücher / Philosophical Notebooks: De Gruyter: Berlin/München/Boston. Editor: . Volume 1: Philosophie I Maximen 0 / Philosophy I Maxims 0 . Volume 2: Zeiteinteilung (Maximen) I und II / Time Management (Maxims) I and II . Volume 3: Maximen III / Maxims III See also Gödel machine Gödel fuzzy logic Gödel–Löb logic Gödel Prize Gödel's ontological proof Infinite-valued logic List of Austrian scientists List of pioneers in computer science Mathematical Platonism Original proof of Gödel's completeness theorem Primitive recursive functional Strange loop Tarski's undefinability theorem World Logic Day Notes References . . Further reading Stephen Budiansky, 2021. Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel. W.W. Norton & Company. . . . . Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940. Princeton Univ. Press. Jaakko Hintikka, 2000. On Gödel. Wadsworth. Douglas Hofstadter, 1980. Gödel, Escher, Bach. Vintage. Stephen Kleene, 1967. Mathematical Logic. Dover paperback reprint c. 2001. Stephen Kleene, 1980. Introduction to Metamathematics. North Holland (Ishi Press paperback. 2009. ) J.R. Lucas, 1970. The Freedom of the Will. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Ernest Nagel and Newman, James R., 1958. Gödel's Proof. New York Univ. Press. Procházka, Jiří, 2006, 2006, 2008, 2008, 2010. Kurt Gödel: 1906–1978: Genealogie. ITEM, Brno. Volume I. Brno 2006, . In German, English. Volume II. Brno 2006, . In German, English. Volume III. Brno 2008, . In German, English. Volume IV. Brno, Princeton 2008, . In German, English Volume V, Brno, Princeton 2010, . In German, English. Procházka, Jiří, 2012. "Kurt Gödel: 1906–1978: Historie". ITEM, Brno, Wien, Princeton. Volume I. . In German, English. Ed Regis, 1987. Who Got Einstein's Office? Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. Raymond Smullyan, 1992. Godel's Incompleteness Theorems. Oxford University Press. Olga Taussky-Todd, 1983. Remembrances of Kurt Gödel. Engineering & Science, Winter 1988. Gödel, Alois, 2006. Brünn 1679–1684. ITEM, Brno 2006, edited by Jiří Procházka, Procházka, Jiří 2017. "Kurt Gödel: 1906–1978: Curriculum vitae". ITEM, Brno, Wien, Princeton 2017. Volume I. (). In German, English. Procházka, Jiří 2019. "Kurt Gödel 1906-1978: Curriculum vitae". ITEM, Brno, Wien, Princeton 2019. Volume II. (). In German, English. Procházka, Jiří 2020. "Kurt Gödel: 1906-1978. Curriculum vitae". ITEM, Brno, Wien, Princeton 2020. Volume III. (). In German, English. 223 Pages. Yourgrau, Palle, 1999. Gödel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the Gödel Universe. Chicago: Open Court. Yourgrau, Palle, 2004. A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein. Basic Books. . (Reviewed by John Stachel in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society'' (54 (7), pp. 861–68). External links Time Bandits: an article about the relationship between Gödel and Einstein by Jim Holt Notices of the AMS, April 2006, Volume 53, Number 4 Kurt Gödel Centenary Issue Paul Davies and Freeman Dyson discuss Kurt Godel (transcript) "Gödel and the Nature of Mathematical Truth" Edge: A Talk with Rebecca Goldstein on Kurt Gödel. It's Not All In The Numbers: Gregory Chaitin Explains Gödel's Mathematical Complexities. Gödel photo gallery. (archived) Kurt Gödel MacTutor History of Mathematics archive page National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir Category:1906 births Category:1978 deaths Category:20th-century American mathematicians Category:20th-century American philosophers Category:20th-century Austrian mathematicians Category:American relativity theorists Category:American Protestants Category:American logicians Category:American people of Moravian-German descent Category:Analytic philosophers Category:Austrian emigrants to the United States Category:Austrian logicians Category:Austrian people of Moravian-German descent Category:Austrian philosophers Category:Austrian Protestants Category:Mathematicians from Austria-Hungary Category:Burials at Princeton Cemetery Category:Deaths by starvation Category:Foreign Members of the Royal Society Category:Institute for Advanced Study faculty Category:National Medal of Science laureates Category:Ontologists Category:Scientists from Brno Category:People from the Margraviate of Moravia Category:People with acquired American citizenship Category:People with paranoid personality disorder Category:Platonists Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Protestant philosophers Category:Set theorists Category:Vienna Circle Category:University of Notre Dame faculty Category:University of Vienna alumni Category:Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy

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X (American band)

X is an American punk rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1977, among the first wave of American punk. The original members are vocalist Exene Cervenka, vocalist/bassist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D.J. Bonebrake. The band released seven studio albums from 1980 to 1993. After a period of inactivity during the mid to late 1990s, X reunited in the early 2000s, and currently tours.

1985-1987: Commercial era and departure of Zoom

Despite the overwhelmingly positive critical reception for their first four albums, the band was frustrated by its lack of wider mainstream success. Zoom had also stated that he would leave the band unless its next album was more successful. The band decided to change producers in search of a more accessible sound. Their fifth record, Ain't Love Grand!, was produced by pop metal producer Michael Wagener. It featured a drastic change in sound, especially in the polished and layered production, while the band's punk roots were little in evidence, replaced by a countrified version of hard rock. The change in production was intended to bring the band more chart success, but although it received more mainstream radio play than their earlier releases, it did not represent a commercial breakthrough. Zoom left the group shortly thereafter in 1986, the same year in which the feature-length documentary film, X: The Unheard Music, was released. Zoom was initially replaced by Alvin, who had left the Blasters. The band then added a fifth member, guitarist Tony Gilkyson, formerly of the band Lone Justice. By the time the band released its sixth album, See How We Are, Alvin had already left the band, although he played on the record along with Gilkyson and wrote 4th of July for the band. Like Ain't Love Grand, the album's sound was far removed from the band's punk origins, yet featured a punchy, energetic, hard-rocking roots rock sound that in many ways represented a more natural progression from their earlier sound than the previous record had. After touring for the album, X released a live record of the tour, titled Live at the Whisky a Go-Go, and then went on an extended hiatus. Back in 1984, X had released a cover version of "Wild Thing" as a non-album single. In 1989, the song was re-released as the lead single from the soundtrack to the hit film Major League. It later became a staple at sporting events, particularly baseball games, and was used by Japanese professional wrestler Atsushi Onita after he founded Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling in 1989. CANNOTANSWER

X is an American punk rock band formed in Los Angeles. The original members are vocalist Exene Cervenka, vocalist-bassist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D. J. Bonebrake. The band released seven studio albums from 1980 to 1993. After a period of inactivity during the mid-to-late 1990s, X reunited in the early 2000s and continues to tour as of 2022. X achieved limited mainstream success but influenced various genres of music, including punk rock, Americana, and folk rock. They are considered to be one of the most influential bands of their era. In 2003, X's first two studio albums, Los Angeles and Wild Gift, were ranked by Rolling Stone as being among the 500 greatest albums of all time. Los Angeles was ranked 91st on Pitchforks Top 100 Albums of the 1980s. History 1977–1979: Formation and Dangerhouse era X was founded by bassist-singer Doe and guitarist Zoom. Doe brought his poetry-writing girlfriend Cervenka to band practices, and she eventually joined the band as a vocalist. Drummer Bonebrake was the last of the original members to join after leaving local group The Eyes; he also filled in on drums for Germs. X's first record deal was with independent label Dangerhouse, for which the band produced one single, "Adult Books"/"We're Desperate" (1978). A Dangerhouse session version of "Los Angeles" was also featured on a 1979 Dangerhouse 12-inch EP compilation called Yes L.A. (a play on the no-wave compilation No New York), a six-song picture disc that also featured other early L.A. punk bands The Eyes, The Germs, The Bags, The Alley Cats, and Black Randy and the Metrosquad. 1980–1981: Los Angeles and Wild Gift As the band became the flag bearer for the local scene, a larger independent label, Slash Records, signed the band. The result was their debut, Los Angeles (1980) which was produced by the Doors' keyboard player, Ray Manzarek. It sold well by the standards of independent labels. Much of X's early material had a rockabilly edge. Doe and Cervenka co-wrote most of the group's songs and their slightly off-kilter harmony vocals served as the group's most distinctive element. Their lyrics tended to be straight-out poetry; comparisons to Charles Bukowski and Raymond Chandler were made from the start. Their follow-up effort, Wild Gift (1981), was similar in musical style. It featured shorter, faster songs and is arguably their most stereotypically punk-sounding record. During 1981, both Doe and Bonebrake (along with Dave Alvin, guitarist of The Blasters) served as members of The Flesh Eaters, performing on that band's second album, A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die. 1982–1984: Elektra era and The Knitters X signed with major label Elektra in 1982 and released Under the Big Black Sun, which marked a departure from their trademark sound. While still fast and loud, with raw punk guitars, the album displayed evolving country leanings. The album was influenced by the death of Cervenka's elder sister Mirielle in a 1980 car accident. Three songs on the album ("Riding with Mary", "Come Back to Me" and the title track) all directly relate to the tragedy. A fourth, a high-speed version of Al Dubin and Joe Burke's "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes", was, years later, indirectly attributed to Cervenka's mournful state of mind. The stark black-and-white cover art and title were also a reflection of the somber mood of the band during this time. Cervenka has said it is her favorite X album. In 1983, the band slightly redefined their sound with the release of the album More Fun in the New World, making X somewhat more polished, eclectic and radio-ready than on previous albums. With the sound moving away from punk rock, the band's rockabilly influence became even more noticeable, along with some new elements: funk on the track "True Love Pt. II", and Woody Guthrie-influenced folk protest songs like "The New World" and "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts". The record received critical praise from Rolling Stone and Playboy, which had long been stalwart supporters of X and their sound. The Knitters, a side project, were composed of X minus Zoom, plus Alvin on guitar and Johnny Ray Bartel (of the Red Devils) on double bass, and released the Poor Little Critter on the Road album in 1985. The Knitters were devoted to folk and country music; music critic Denise Sullivan said their take on Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings" "may be the definitive version". The band's music was featured in three movie soundtracks during this period. "Los Angeles" and "Beyond and Back" were used in Wim Wenders' State of Things (1982). "Breathless" was used in the Richard Gere remake of the Godard film Breathless (1983). "Wild Thing" was used in the Charlie Sheen comedy Major League (1989). (Source; IMDB) 1985–1987: Commercial era and departure of Zoom Despite the overwhelmingly positive critical reception for their first four albums, the band was frustrated by its lack of wider mainstream success. Zoom had also said that he would leave the band unless its next album was more successful. The band decided to change producers in search of a more accessible sound. Their fifth record, Ain't Love Grand!, was produced by pop metal producer Michael Wagener. It featured a drastic change in sound, especially in the polished and layered production, while the band's punk roots were little in evidence, replaced by a countrified version of hard rock. The change in production was intended to bring the band more chart success, but although it received more mainstream radio play than their earlier releases, it did not represent a commercial breakthrough. "Burning House of Love", the album's first single, was a minor hit on the Billboard Top Rock Tracks chart, where it peaked at #26 in September 1985. Zoom left the group shortly thereafter in 1986, the same year in which the feature-length documentary film, X: The Unheard Music, was released. Zoom was initially replaced by Alvin, who had left the Blasters. The band then added a fifth member, guitarist Tony Gilkyson, formerly of the band Lone Justice. By the time the band released its sixth album, See How We Are, Alvin had already left the band, although he played on the record along with Gilkyson and wrote "4th of July" for the band. Like Ain't Love Grand, the album's sound was far removed from the band's punk origins, yet featured a punchy, energetic, hard-rocking roots rock sound that in many ways represented a more natural progression from their earlier sound than the previous album had. After touring for the album, X released a live album of the tour, titled Live at the Whisky a Go-Go, and then went on an extended hiatus. Back in 1984, X had released a cover version of "Wild Thing" as a non-album single. In 1989, the song was re-released as the lead single from the soundtrack to the hit film Major League. It later became a staple at sporting events, particularly baseball games, and was used by Japanese professional wrestler Atsushi Onita after he founded Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling in 1989. The song is now used as Jon Moxley's entrance music in All Elite Wrestling. 1993–1995: First reunion, Hey Zeus! and Unclogged X regrouped in the early 1990s to record their seventh studio album, Hey Zeus!, released in 1993 on the Big Life label. The album marked somewhat of a retreat from the increasingly roots rock direction that the band's past few records had gone in, instead featuring an eclectic alternative rock sound that fit in well with the then-current musical climate. Despite this, it failed to become a hit, although two of its songs, "Country at War" and "New Life," peaked at numbers 15 and 26 on the Billboard Modern Rock charts, respectively. In 1994, they contributed a cover of the Richard Thompson song "Shoot Out the Lights" to a Thompson tribute album called Beat the Retreat, which featured David Hidalgo of Los Lobos on electric guitar. On the same album, Doe sang harmony and played bass and Bonebrake played drums on Bob Mould's cover of "Turning of the Tide," and Bonebrake played drums on the title track, which was performed by the British folk artist June Tabor. The band released an acoustic live album, Unclogged, in 1995 on Infidelity Records. 1997–2004: Hiatus and second reunion In 1997, X released a compilation called Beyond and Back: The X Anthology, which focused heavily on the early years with Zoom and included a number of previously unreleased versions of songs that had appeared on their previous albums. At the same time, they also announced that they were disbanding. However, they did a farewell tour to promote the compilation in 1998, with Zoom returning on guitar. The original lineup also returned to the studio for the final time, with Manzarek reprising his role as producer, to record a cover of the Doors' "The Crystal Ship" for the soundtrack for The X-Files: Fight the Future. X: The Unheard Music was released on DVD in 2005, as was the concert DVD X – Live in Los Angeles, which commemorated the 25th anniversary of the band's landmark debut album, Los Angeles. 2005–2007: Reunion of The Knitters In 2005, Doe, Cervenka and Bonebrake reunited with Alvin and Bartel to release a second Knitters album, 20 years after the first, titled The Modern Sounds of the Knitters. In summer 2006, X toured North America on the "As the World Burns" tour with the Rollins Band and the Riverboat Gamblers. In the spring of 2008, the band, with all original members, embarked on their "13X31" tour with Skybombers and the Detroit Cobras. "13X31" was a reference to their 31st anniversary. 2008–present: Touring and first album in 27 years From 2004 onward, X have continued to perform frequently around North America. X appeared at the 2008 SXSW Festival (with footage of their performance made viewable on Crackle); the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 19, 2009; and the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Minehead, England from May 15–17, 2009. They were invited to perform at the latter by the festival's curators, the Breeders. In June 2009, the band publicly announced that Cervenka had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. However, she told the Orange County Register in 2011 that the doctor who originally diagnosed the disease believes he misdiagnosed her. Cervenka stated, "I've had so many doctors tell me I have MS, then some say I don't ... I don't even care anymore". In June 2010, X played a free show at the North by Northeast festival in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and headlined the third annual Roadshow Revival, a Johnny Cash tribute festival in Ventura, California. X performed at The Voodoo Experience 2011, held at City Park in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 28–30, 2011. The band also opened for Pearl Jam on their 2011 South and Central American tour in November and their European tour in June and July 2012. On September 2, 2012, X performed at the Budweiser Made in America Festival in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In July 2015, Zoom took a performing break to undergo treatment for bladder cancer, returning in November 2015. On March 4, 2016, X appeared on the episode "Show Me a Hero" of Adult Swim show Childrens Hospital. On October 13, 2017, the Grammy Museum at L.A. Live opened a new exhibit titled "X: 40 Years of Punk in Los Angeles", to run through February 25, 2018. In 2017, Cervenka announced that X had added Craig Packham of the Palominos to fill in on drums and rhythm guitar, because Bonebrake and Zoom were now playing vibes and saxophone, respectively. In 2018, the band released X – Live in Latin America via a Kickstarter campaign, to coincide with their 40th anniversary. The album was recorded during a 2011 tour where X was the opening band for Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam's sound engineer made the recordings, and presented them to X at the end of the tour. The album was produced by Rob Schnapf, and featured the four original members of X. In early 2019 Fat Possum Records released two new X songs as a single, followed by the "genuinely good" (per BrooklynVegan) new album Alphabetland on April 22, 2020. On February 9, 2021, Fat Possum released Xtras: two more tracks from the same recording sessions, one being an alternate version. Robby Krieger, of the Doors, played slide guitar on one track each of Alphabetland and of Xtras. Members Discography EPs 2009 – Merry Xmas from X Live albums 1988 – Live at the Whisky a Go-Go 1995 – Unclogged 2005 – X – Live in Los Angeles #175 US Billboard Top 200 2018 – X – Live in Latin America (Kickstarter special album) Compilations 1997 – Beyond and Back: The X Anthology 2004 – The Best: Make the Music Go Bang! Compilation appearances We're Desperate: The L.A. Scene (1976-79) (Rhino) (1993) - "We're Desperate", "Los Angeles" Filmography 1981 – The Decline of Western Civilization 1981 – Urgh! A Music War 1986 – X: The Unheard Music 2003 – Mayor of the Sunset Strip 2005 – X – Live in Los Angeles 2016 – Childrens Hospital References Further reading External links Category:Punk rock groups from California Category:Musical groups from Los Angeles Category:Musical groups established in 1977 Category:Musical quartets Category:1977 establishments in California Category:Slash Records artists Category:Dangerhouse Records artists Category:Elektra Records artists Category:Big Life artists Category:Rock music groups from California Category:Female-fronted musical groups

C_cadba23e981c493f89fa21cae4279179_1

X (American band)

X is an American punk rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1977, among the first wave of American punk. The original members are vocalist Exene Cervenka, vocalist/bassist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D.J. Bonebrake. The band released seven studio albums from 1980 to 1993. After a period of inactivity during the mid to late 1990s, X reunited in the early 2000s, and currently tours.

1982-1984: Elektra era and The Knitters

X then signed to Elektra in 1982 to release Under the Big Black Sun, which marked a slight departure from their trademark sound. While still fast and loud, with raw punk guitars, the album displayed evolving country leanings. The album was heavily influenced by the death of Cervenka's elder sister Mirielle (Mary) in a 1980 automobile accident. Three songs on the album ("Riding with Mary", "Come Back to Me" and the title track) all directly related to the tragedy. A fourth, a high-speed version of Al Dubin and Joe Burke's "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes", was, years later, indirectly attributed to Cervenka's mournful state of mind. The stark black-and-white cover art and title were also a reflection of the somber mood of the band during this time. Cervenka has said it is her favorite X album "You know, my favorite record is Under the Big Black Sun, so everything else is kind of . . . I'm saying if I had to sit down in a room and put on an X record--which I don't generally do--I have recently listened to some X records but I generally don't listen to myself--the record I would pick to listen to would be Under the Big Black Sun. In 1983, the band slightly redefined their sound with the release of the More Fun in the New World album, making X somewhat more polished, eclectic and radio-ready than on previous albums. With the sound moving away from punk rock, the band's rockabilly influence became even more noticeable, along with some new elements: funk on the track "True Love Pt. II", and Woody Guthrie-influenced folk protest songs like "The New World" and "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts". The record received critical praise from Rolling Stone and Playboy, which had long been stalwart supporters of X and their sound. The Knitters, a side project, were composed of X minus Zoom, plus Alvin on guitar and Johnny Ray Bartel (of the Red Devils) on double bass, and released the Poor Little Critter on the Road album in 1985. The Knitters were devoted to folk and country music; their take on Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings" "may be the definitive version". CANNOTANSWER

X is an American punk rock band formed in Los Angeles. The original members are vocalist Exene Cervenka, vocalist-bassist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D. J. Bonebrake. The band released seven studio albums from 1980 to 1993. After a period of inactivity during the mid-to-late 1990s, X reunited in the early 2000s and continues to tour as of 2022. X achieved limited mainstream success but influenced various genres of music, including punk rock, Americana, and folk rock. They are considered to be one of the most influential bands of their era. In 2003, X's first two studio albums, Los Angeles and Wild Gift, were ranked by Rolling Stone as being among the 500 greatest albums of all time. Los Angeles was ranked 91st on Pitchforks Top 100 Albums of the 1980s. History 1977–1979: Formation and Dangerhouse era X was founded by bassist-singer Doe and guitarist Zoom. Doe brought his poetry-writing girlfriend Cervenka to band practices, and she eventually joined the band as a vocalist. Drummer Bonebrake was the last of the original members to join after leaving local group The Eyes; he also filled in on drums for Germs. X's first record deal was with independent label Dangerhouse, for which the band produced one single, "Adult Books"/"We're Desperate" (1978). A Dangerhouse session version of "Los Angeles" was also featured on a 1979 Dangerhouse 12-inch EP compilation called Yes L.A. (a play on the no-wave compilation No New York), a six-song picture disc that also featured other early L.A. punk bands The Eyes, The Germs, The Bags, The Alley Cats, and Black Randy and the Metrosquad. 1980–1981: Los Angeles and Wild Gift As the band became the flag bearer for the local scene, a larger independent label, Slash Records, signed the band. The result was their debut, Los Angeles (1980) which was produced by the Doors' keyboard player, Ray Manzarek. It sold well by the standards of independent labels. Much of X's early material had a rockabilly edge. Doe and Cervenka co-wrote most of the group's songs and their slightly off-kilter harmony vocals served as the group's most distinctive element. Their lyrics tended to be straight-out poetry; comparisons to Charles Bukowski and Raymond Chandler were made from the start. Their follow-up effort, Wild Gift (1981), was similar in musical style. It featured shorter, faster songs and is arguably their most stereotypically punk-sounding record. During 1981, both Doe and Bonebrake (along with Dave Alvin, guitarist of The Blasters) served as members of The Flesh Eaters, performing on that band's second album, A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die. 1982–1984: Elektra era and The Knitters X signed with major label Elektra in 1982 and released Under the Big Black Sun, which marked a departure from their trademark sound. While still fast and loud, with raw punk guitars, the album displayed evolving country leanings. The album was influenced by the death of Cervenka's elder sister Mirielle in a 1980 car accident. Three songs on the album ("Riding with Mary", "Come Back to Me" and the title track) all directly relate to the tragedy. A fourth, a high-speed version of Al Dubin and Joe Burke's "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes", was, years later, indirectly attributed to Cervenka's mournful state of mind. The stark black-and-white cover art and title were also a reflection of the somber mood of the band during this time. Cervenka has said it is her favorite X album. In 1983, the band slightly redefined their sound with the release of the album More Fun in the New World, making X somewhat more polished, eclectic and radio-ready than on previous albums. With the sound moving away from punk rock, the band's rockabilly influence became even more noticeable, along with some new elements: funk on the track "True Love Pt. II", and Woody Guthrie-influenced folk protest songs like "The New World" and "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts". The record received critical praise from Rolling Stone and Playboy, which had long been stalwart supporters of X and their sound. The Knitters, a side project, were composed of X minus Zoom, plus Alvin on guitar and Johnny Ray Bartel (of the Red Devils) on double bass, and released the Poor Little Critter on the Road album in 1985. The Knitters were devoted to folk and country music; music critic Denise Sullivan said their take on Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings" "may be the definitive version". The band's music was featured in three movie soundtracks during this period. "Los Angeles" and "Beyond and Back" were used in Wim Wenders' State of Things (1982). "Breathless" was used in the Richard Gere remake of the Godard film Breathless (1983). "Wild Thing" was used in the Charlie Sheen comedy Major League (1989). (Source; IMDB) 1985–1987: Commercial era and departure of Zoom Despite the overwhelmingly positive critical reception for their first four albums, the band was frustrated by its lack of wider mainstream success. Zoom had also said that he would leave the band unless its next album was more successful. The band decided to change producers in search of a more accessible sound. Their fifth record, Ain't Love Grand!, was produced by pop metal producer Michael Wagener. It featured a drastic change in sound, especially in the polished and layered production, while the band's punk roots were little in evidence, replaced by a countrified version of hard rock. The change in production was intended to bring the band more chart success, but although it received more mainstream radio play than their earlier releases, it did not represent a commercial breakthrough. "Burning House of Love", the album's first single, was a minor hit on the Billboard Top Rock Tracks chart, where it peaked at #26 in September 1985. Zoom left the group shortly thereafter in 1986, the same year in which the feature-length documentary film, X: The Unheard Music, was released. Zoom was initially replaced by Alvin, who had left the Blasters. The band then added a fifth member, guitarist Tony Gilkyson, formerly of the band Lone Justice. By the time the band released its sixth album, See How We Are, Alvin had already left the band, although he played on the record along with Gilkyson and wrote "4th of July" for the band. Like Ain't Love Grand, the album's sound was far removed from the band's punk origins, yet featured a punchy, energetic, hard-rocking roots rock sound that in many ways represented a more natural progression from their earlier sound than the previous album had. After touring for the album, X released a live album of the tour, titled Live at the Whisky a Go-Go, and then went on an extended hiatus. Back in 1984, X had released a cover version of "Wild Thing" as a non-album single. In 1989, the song was re-released as the lead single from the soundtrack to the hit film Major League. It later became a staple at sporting events, particularly baseball games, and was used by Japanese professional wrestler Atsushi Onita after he founded Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling in 1989. The song is now used as Jon Moxley's entrance music in All Elite Wrestling. 1993–1995: First reunion, Hey Zeus! and Unclogged X regrouped in the early 1990s to record their seventh studio album, Hey Zeus!, released in 1993 on the Big Life label. The album marked somewhat of a retreat from the increasingly roots rock direction that the band's past few records had gone in, instead featuring an eclectic alternative rock sound that fit in well with the then-current musical climate. Despite this, it failed to become a hit, although two of its songs, "Country at War" and "New Life," peaked at numbers 15 and 26 on the Billboard Modern Rock charts, respectively. In 1994, they contributed a cover of the Richard Thompson song "Shoot Out the Lights" to a Thompson tribute album called Beat the Retreat, which featured David Hidalgo of Los Lobos on electric guitar. On the same album, Doe sang harmony and played bass and Bonebrake played drums on Bob Mould's cover of "Turning of the Tide," and Bonebrake played drums on the title track, which was performed by the British folk artist June Tabor. The band released an acoustic live album, Unclogged, in 1995 on Infidelity Records. 1997–2004: Hiatus and second reunion In 1997, X released a compilation called Beyond and Back: The X Anthology, which focused heavily on the early years with Zoom and included a number of previously unreleased versions of songs that had appeared on their previous albums. At the same time, they also announced that they were disbanding. However, they did a farewell tour to promote the compilation in 1998, with Zoom returning on guitar. The original lineup also returned to the studio for the final time, with Manzarek reprising his role as producer, to record a cover of the Doors' "The Crystal Ship" for the soundtrack for The X-Files: Fight the Future. X: The Unheard Music was released on DVD in 2005, as was the concert DVD X – Live in Los Angeles, which commemorated the 25th anniversary of the band's landmark debut album, Los Angeles. 2005–2007: Reunion of The Knitters In 2005, Doe, Cervenka and Bonebrake reunited with Alvin and Bartel to release a second Knitters album, 20 years after the first, titled The Modern Sounds of the Knitters. In summer 2006, X toured North America on the "As the World Burns" tour with the Rollins Band and the Riverboat Gamblers. In the spring of 2008, the band, with all original members, embarked on their "13X31" tour with Skybombers and the Detroit Cobras. "13X31" was a reference to their 31st anniversary. 2008–present: Touring and first album in 27 years From 2004 onward, X have continued to perform frequently around North America. X appeared at the 2008 SXSW Festival (with footage of their performance made viewable on Crackle); the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 19, 2009; and the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Minehead, England from May 15–17, 2009. They were invited to perform at the latter by the festival's curators, the Breeders. In June 2009, the band publicly announced that Cervenka had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. However, she told the Orange County Register in 2011 that the doctor who originally diagnosed the disease believes he misdiagnosed her. Cervenka stated, "I've had so many doctors tell me I have MS, then some say I don't ... I don't even care anymore". In June 2010, X played a free show at the North by Northeast festival in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and headlined the third annual Roadshow Revival, a Johnny Cash tribute festival in Ventura, California. X performed at The Voodoo Experience 2011, held at City Park in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 28–30, 2011. The band also opened for Pearl Jam on their 2011 South and Central American tour in November and their European tour in June and July 2012. On September 2, 2012, X performed at the Budweiser Made in America Festival in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In July 2015, Zoom took a performing break to undergo treatment for bladder cancer, returning in November 2015. On March 4, 2016, X appeared on the episode "Show Me a Hero" of Adult Swim show Childrens Hospital. On October 13, 2017, the Grammy Museum at L.A. Live opened a new exhibit titled "X: 40 Years of Punk in Los Angeles", to run through February 25, 2018. In 2017, Cervenka announced that X had added Craig Packham of the Palominos to fill in on drums and rhythm guitar, because Bonebrake and Zoom were now playing vibes and saxophone, respectively. In 2018, the band released X – Live in Latin America via a Kickstarter campaign, to coincide with their 40th anniversary. The album was recorded during a 2011 tour where X was the opening band for Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam's sound engineer made the recordings, and presented them to X at the end of the tour. The album was produced by Rob Schnapf, and featured the four original members of X. In early 2019 Fat Possum Records released two new X songs as a single, followed by the "genuinely good" (per BrooklynVegan) new album Alphabetland on April 22, 2020. On February 9, 2021, Fat Possum released Xtras: two more tracks from the same recording sessions, one being an alternate version. Robby Krieger, of the Doors, played slide guitar on one track each of Alphabetland and of Xtras. Members Discography EPs 2009 – Merry Xmas from X Live albums 1988 – Live at the Whisky a Go-Go 1995 – Unclogged 2005 – X – Live in Los Angeles #175 US Billboard Top 200 2018 – X – Live in Latin America (Kickstarter special album) Compilations 1997 – Beyond and Back: The X Anthology 2004 – The Best: Make the Music Go Bang! Compilation appearances We're Desperate: The L.A. Scene (1976-79) (Rhino) (1993) - "We're Desperate", "Los Angeles" Filmography 1981 – The Decline of Western Civilization 1981 – Urgh! A Music War 1986 – X: The Unheard Music 2003 – Mayor of the Sunset Strip 2005 – X – Live in Los Angeles 2016 – Childrens Hospital References Further reading External links Category:Punk rock groups from California Category:Musical groups from Los Angeles Category:Musical groups established in 1977 Category:Musical quartets Category:1977 establishments in California Category:Slash Records artists Category:Dangerhouse Records artists Category:Elektra Records artists Category:Big Life artists Category:Rock music groups from California Category:Female-fronted musical groups

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Alison Krauss

Alison Maria Krauss was born in Decatur, Illinois, to Fred and Louise Krauss. Her father was a German immigrant who came to the United States in 1952 and taught his native language. Her mother, of German and Italian descent, is the daughter of artists. Krauss grew up in the college town of Champaign, home to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

1992-1999: Rising success

Krauss' second Union Station album Every Time You Say Goodbye was released in 1992, and she went on to win her second Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album of the year. She then joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1993 at the age of 21. She was the youngest cast member at the time, and the first bluegrass artist to join the Opry in twenty-nine years. She also collaborated on a project with the Cox Family in 1994, a bluegrass album called I Know Who Holds Tomorrow. Mandolin and guitar player Dan Tyminski replaced Tim Stafford in Union Station in 1994. Late in the year, Krauss recorded with the band Shenandoah on its single "Somewhere in the Vicinity of the Heart", which brought her to the country music Top Ten for the first time and it won the Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. Also in 1994, Krauss collaborated with Suzy Bogguss, Kathy Mattea, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to contribute "Teach Your Children" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization. In 1997, she recorded vocals and violin for "Half a Mind", on Tommy Shaw's 7 Deadly Zens album. Now That I've Found You: A Collection, a compilation of older releases and some covers of her favorite works by other artists, was released in 1995. Some of these covers include Bad Company's "Oh Atlanta", The Foundations' & Dan Schafer's "Baby, Now That I've Found You", which was used in the Australian hit comedy movie The Castle, and The Beatles' "I Will". A cover of Keith Whitley's "When You Say Nothing at All" reached number three on the Billboard country chart; the album peaked in the top fifteen on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart, and sold two million copies to become Krauss' first double-platinum album. Krauss also was nominated for four Country Music Association Awards and won all of them. So Long So Wrong, another Union Station album, was released in 1997 and won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. One critic said its sound was "rather untraditional" and "likely [to] change quite a few ... minds about bluegrass." Included on the album is the track "It Doesn't Matter", which was featured in the second-season premiere episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and was included on the Buffy soundtrack in 1999. Her next solo release in 1999, Forget About It, included one of her two tracks to appear on the Billboard adult contemporary chart, "Stay". The album was certified gold and charted within the top seventy-five of the Billboard 200 and in the top five of the country chart. In addition, the track "That Kind of Love" was included in another episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. CANNOTANSWER

Alison Maria Krauss (born July 23, 1971) is an American bluegrass-country singer and fiddler. She entered the music industry at an early age, competing in local contests by the age of eight and recording for the first time at 14. She signed with Rounder Records in 1985 and released her first solo album in 1987. She was invited to join Union Station, releasing her first album with them as a group in 1989 and performing with them ever since. Krauss has released 14 albums, appeared on numerous soundtracks, and sparked a renewed interest in bluegrass music in the United States. Her soundtrack performances have led to further popularity, including the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, and the Cold Mountain soundtrack, which led to her performance at the 2004 Academy Awards. Platinum-selling Raising Sand (2007) was the first of her two collaborations with English rock singer Robert Plant. As of 2019, she has won 27 Grammy Awards from 42 nominations, ranking her fourth behind Beyoncé, Quincy Jones and classical conductor Georg Solti for most Grammy Award wins overall. Krauss was the singer and female artist with the most awards in Grammy history until Beyoncé won her 28th Grammy in 2021. When Krauss won her first Grammy in 1991, she was the second-youngest winner at that time. On November 21, 2019, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in September 2021. Early life Alison Maria Krauss was born in Decatur, Illinois, to Fred and Louise Krauss. Her father was a German immigrant who came to the United States in 1952 at age 12, and taught his native language while he earned a doctorate in psychology. He later went into the business of real estate. Her mother, an American of German and Italian descent, is the daughter of artists, and works as an illustrator of magazines and textbooks. Fred and Louise met while they were studying at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. After a brief residence in nearby Decatur, the family settled in Champaign, where Krauss was raised with her older brother, Viktor. Krauss's mother played banjo and acoustic guitar, so Krauss was exposed to folk music at home, and she heard rock and pop music on the radio: She liked Gary Numan's synth-pop song "Cars", and rock bands such as Foreigner, Bad Company, and Electric Light Orchestra. Her brother Viktor played piano and double bass in high school, launching a career as a jazz and rock multi-instrumentalist. At her mother's insistence, Krauss began studying classical violin at age five. Krauss was reluctant to spend time practicing, but she continued with classical lessons until she was eleven. Krauss said her mother "tried to find interesting things for me to do" and "wanted to get me involved in music, in addition to art and sports". Krauss was also very active in roller skating, and in her teens she finally decided on a career in music rather than roller derby. In mid-1979, Krauss's mother saw a notice for an upcoming fiddle competition at the Champaign County Fair, so she bought a bluegrass fiddle instruction book and the 1977 bluegrass album Duets by violinist Richard Greene. Krauss learned by ear to play several songs from the album, including "Tennessee Waltz", which she practiced on violin with her mother accompanying on guitar. Krauss entered the talent contest in the novice category at the age of eight, placing fourth. (This is where she first met fiddler Andrea Zonn, who won the junior division at age 10.) Krauss investigated the bluegrass genre more thoroughly after this, and she developed a knack for learning complex riffs by ear, quickly turning them into her own version. In 1981–82, Krauss performed with Marvin Lee Flessner's country dance band, in which she fiddled and sang. In September 1983, her parents bought her a custom violin made by hand in Missouri – her first adult-sized instrument. At 13, she won the Walnut Valley Festival Fiddle Championship, and the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass in America named her the "Most Promising Fiddler in the Midwest". She was also called "virtuoso" by Vanity Fair magazine. Krauss first met Dan Tyminski around 1984 at a festival held by the Society. Every current member of her band, Union Station, first met her at these festivals. Career 1985–1991: Early career Krauss made her recording debut in 1986 on the independent album, Different Strokes, in collaboration with Swamp Weiss and Jim Hoiles, and featuring her brother Viktor Krauss. From the age of 12 she performed with bassist and songwriter John Pennell in a band called "Silver Rail", replacing Andrea Zonn. Pennell later changed the band's name to Union Station after another band was discovered with the name Silver Rail. Later that year, she signed to Rounder Records, and in 1987, at 16, she released her debut album Too Late to Cry with Union Station as her backup band. Krauss' debut solo album was quickly followed by her first group album with Union Station in 1989, Two Highways. The album includes the traditional tunes "Wild Bill Jones" and "Beaumont Rag", along with a bluegrass interpretation of the Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider". Krauss' contract with Rounder required her to alternate between releasing a solo album and an album with Union Station, and she released the solo album I've Got That Old Feeling in 1990. It was her first album to rise onto the Billboard charts, peaking in the top seventy-five on the country chart. The album also was a notable point in her career as she earned her first Grammy Award, the single "Steel Rails" was her first single tracked by Billboard, and the title single "I've Got That Old Feeling" was the first song for which she recorded a music video. 1992–1999: Rising success Krauss' second Union Station album Every Time You Say Goodbye was released in 1992, and she went on to win her second Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album of the year. She then joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1993 at the age of 21. She was the youngest cast member at the time, and the first bluegrass artist to join the Opry in 29 years. She also collaborated on a project with the Cox Family in 1994, a bluegrass album called I Know Who Holds Tomorrow. Mandolin and guitar player Dan Tyminski replaced Tim Stafford in Union Station in 1994. Late in the year, Krauss recorded with the band Shenandoah on its single "Somewhere in the Vicinity of the Heart", which brought her to the country music Top Ten for the first time and it won the Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. Also in 1994, Krauss collaborated with Suzy Bogguss, Kathy Mattea, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to contribute "Teach Your Children" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization. In 1997, she recorded vocals and violin for "Half a Mind", on Tommy Shaw's 7 Deadly Zens album. Now That I've Found You: A Collection, a compilation of older releases and some covers of her favorite works by other artists, was released in 1995. Some of these covers include Bad Company's "Oh Atlanta", the Foundations' & Dan Schafer's "Baby, Now That I've Found You", which was used in the Australian hit comedy movie The Castle, and the Beatles' "I Will" with Tony Furtado. A cover of Keith Whitley's "When You Say Nothing at All" reached number three on the Billboard country chart; the album peaked in the top fifteen on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart, and sold two million copies to become Krauss' first double-platinum album. Krauss also was nominated for four Country Music Association Awards and won all of them. So Long So Wrong, another Union Station album, was released in 1997 and won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. One critic said its sound was "rather untraditional" and "likely [to] change quite a few ... minds about bluegrass". Included on the album is the track "It Doesn't Matter", which was featured in the second-season premiere episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and was included on the Buffy soundtrack in 1999. Her next solo release in 1999, Forget About It, included one of her two tracks to appear on the Billboard adult contemporary chart, "Stay". The album was certified gold and charted within the top seventy-five of the Billboard 200 and in the top five of the country chart. In addition, the track "That Kind of Love" was included in another episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 2000–present: Current career Adam Steffey left Union Station in 1998, and was replaced with renowned dobro player Jerry Douglas. Douglas had provided studio back-up to Krauss' records since 1987's Too Late to Cry. Their next album, New Favorite, was released on August 14, 2001. The album went on to win the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album, with the single "The Lucky One" winning a Grammy as well. New Favorite was followed up by the double platinum double album Live in 2002 and a release of a DVD of the same live performance in 2003. Both the album and the DVD were recorded during a performance at The Louisville Palace and both the album and DVD have been certified double Platinum. Also in 2002 she played a singing voice for one of the characters in the animated comedy film Eight Crazy Nights. Lonely Runs Both Ways was released in 2004, and eventually became another Alison Krauss & Union Station gold certified album. Ron Block described Lonely Runs Both Ways as "pretty much... what we've always done" in terms of song selection and the style, in which those songs were recorded. Krauss believes the group "was probably the most unprepared we've ever been" for the album and that songs were chosen as needed rather than planned beforehand. She also performed a duet with Brad Paisley on his album Mud on the Tires in the single "Whiskey Lullaby". The single was quickly ranked in the top fifty of the Billboard Hot 100 and the top five of the Hot Country Songs, and won the Country Music Association Awards for "Best Musical Event" and "Best Music Video" of the year. In 2007, Krauss and Robert Plant released the collaborative album titled Raising Sand. RIAA-certified platinum, the album was nominated for and won 5 Grammy Awards at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album, and Record of the Year ("Please Read the Letter"). Krauss and Plant recorded a Crossroads special in October 2007 for the Country Music Television network, which first aired on February 12, 2008. Returning with Union Station, Krauss released an album called Paper Airplane on April 12, 2011, the follow-up album to Lonely Runs Both Ways (2004). Mike Shipley, the recording and mixing engineer for the album, said that the album had a lengthy production time because of Krauss' non-stop migraines. Nevertheless, Paper Airplane became Krauss's highest-charting album in the U.S., reaching number three on the Billboard 200 on topping both the country and bluegrass album charts. In 2014, Krauss and her band Union Station toured with Willie Nelson and Family, with special guests Kacey Musgraves, and the Devil Makes Three. Capitol Records released Windy City, an album of country and bluegrass classics, produced by Buddy Cannon and her first solo release in 17 years, on February 17, 2017. Krauss received two nominations at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Country Solo Performance and Best American Roots Performance. In August 2021, Krauss announced she was releasing a sequel album to Raising Sand with Robert Plant called Raise the Roof. In addition to the album, Krauss and Plant are planning a 2022 tour. Other work Krauss has made guest appearances on other records on lead vocals, harmony vocals, and fiddle. In 1987, at the age of 15, she played fiddle on the album The Western Illinois Rag by Americana musician Chris Vallillo. In 1993 she recorded vocals for the Phish song "If I Could" in Los Angeles. In 1997 she sang harmony vocals in both English and Irish on the album Runaway Sunday by Irish traditional band Altan. In 1998 she played and sang on the title track of Hawaiian slack-key artist Ledward Kaapana's album, Waltz of the Wind. Krauss had her only number one hit in 2000, receiving vocal credit for "Buy Me a Rose". She has contributed to numerous motion picture soundtracks, most notably O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). She and Dan Tyminski contributed multiple tracks, including "I'll Fly Away" (with Gillian Welch), "Down to the River to Pray", and "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow". In the film, Tyminski's vocals on "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" were used for George Clooney's character. The soundtrack sold over seven million copies and won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2002. Both Krauss and the surprisingly popular album were credited with reviving interest in bluegrass. She has said, however, that she believes Americans already liked bluegrass and other less-heard musical genres, and that the film merely provided easy exposure to the music. She did not appear in the movie, at her own request, because she was pregnant during its filming. In 2007, Krauss released A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection, an album of new songs, soundtrack tunes, and duets with artists such as John Waite, James Taylor, Brad Paisley, and Natalie MacMaster. The album was successful commercially but given a lukewarm reception by critics. One of the tracks, "Missing You", a duet with Waite (and a cover of his hit single from 1984), was similarly received as a single. On August 11, television network Great American Country aired a one-hour special, Alison Krauss: A Hundred Miles or More, based on the album. Krauss appeared on Heart's March 2010 concert DVD Night at Sky Church, providing the lead vocals for the song "These Dreams". Other soundtracks for which Krauss has performed include Twister, The Prince of Egypt, Eight Crazy Nights, Mona Lisa Smile, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Alias, Bambi II and Cold Mountain. She contributed "Jubilee" to the 2004 documentary Paper Clips. The Cold Mountain songs she sang, "The Scarlet Tide" with T Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello, and "You Will Be My Ain True Love" with Sting, were each nominated for an Academy Award. She performed both songs at the 76th Academy Awards, the first with Costello and Burnett, and the other with Sting. She produced Nickel Creek's debut album (2000) and the follow-up This Side (2002), which won Krauss her first Grammy award as a producer. Krauss performed on Moody Bluegrass: A Nashville Tribute to the Moody Blues. She participated in Billy Childs' 2014 tribute album to Laura Nyro, Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro, performing on the track "And When I Die". Krauss also appears on Def Leppard's twelfth studio album, Diamond Star Halos, released March 2022, as a featured vocalist on the songs "This Guitar" and "Lifeless". Krauss duetted with High Valley on the group's 2023 single "Do This Life". Reception and influences Krauss' earliest musical experience was as an instrumentalist, though her style has grown to focus more on her vocals with a band providing most of the instrumentation. Musicians she enjoys include vocalists Lou Gramm of Foreigner and Paul Rodgers of Bad Company. Krauss' family listened to "folk records" while she was growing up, but she had friends who exposed her to groups such as AC/DC, Carly Simon, the Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and ELO. She cites Dolly Parton, with whom she has since collaborated a number of times, as a major influence. Some credit Krauss and Union Station, at least partially, with a recent revival of interest in bluegrass music in the United States. Despite being together for nearly two decades and winning numerous awards, she said the group was "just beginning right now" (in 2002) because "in spite of all the great things that have happened for the band, [she] feel[s] musically it's just really beginning". Although she alternates between solo releases and works with the band, she has said there is no difference in her involvement between the two. As a group, AKUS have been called "American favourites", "world-beaters", and "the tightest band around". While they have been successful as a group, many reviews note Krauss still "remains the undisputed star and rock-solid foundation" and have described her as the "band's focus" with an "angelic" voice that "flows like honey". Her work has been compared to that of the Cox Family, Bill Monroe, and Del McCoury, and has in turn been credited with influencing various "Newgrass" artists including Nickel Creek, for which she acted as record producer on two of their albums. In addition to her work with Nickel Creek, she has acted as producer to the Cox Family, Reba McEntire and Alan Jackson. Adam Sweeting of The Guardian has said Krauss and Union Station are "superb, when they stick to hoedowns and hillbilly music, but much less convincing, when they lurch towards the middle of the road". Blender magazine has said the "flavorless repertoire [Krauss] sings... steers her toward Lite FM". In addition, Q magazine and The Onion AV Club have said their newer releases are "pretty much the usual", and that although Krauss is generally "adventurous", these recent releases contain nothing to "alienate the masses". Voice, themes, and musical style Krauss possesses a soprano voice, which has been described as "angelic". She has said her musical influences include J. D. Crowe, Ricky Skaggs, and Tony Rice. Many of her songs are described as sad, and are often about love, especially lost love. Though Krauss has a close involvement with her group and a long career in music, she rarely performs music she has written herself. She has also described her general approach to constructing an album as starting with a single song and selecting other tracks based on the first, to give the final album a somewhat consistent theme and mood. She most commonly performs in the bluegrass and country genres, though she has had two songs on the adult contemporary charts, has worked with rock artists such as Phish and Sting, and is sometimes said to stray into pop music. Music videos Krauss did not think she would make music videos at the beginning of her career. After recording her first she was convinced it was so bad that she would never do another. Nonetheless, she has continued to make further videos. Many of the first videos she saw were by bluegrass artists. Dan Tyminski has noted that the video for Thriller was very popular at the time she was first exposed to music videos. She has made suggestions on the style or theme to some videos, though she tends to leave such decisions to the director of the particular video. The group chooses directors by seeking out people who have previously directed videos that band members have enjoyed. The director for a video to "If I Didn't Know Any Better" from Lonely Runs Both Ways, for example, was selected because Krauss enjoyed work he had done with Def Leppard and, she wondered, what he could do with their music. While style decisions are generally left to the various directors of the videos, many – including for "The Lucky One", "Restless", "Goodbye is All We Have", "New Favorite", and "If I Didn't Know Any Better" – follow a pattern. In all of these videos Krauss walks, sometimes interacting with other people, while the rest of the band follows her. Performances Krauss has said she used to dislike working in the studio, where she had to perform the same song repeatedly, but has come to like studio work roughly the same as live stage performances. Her own favorite concert experiences include watching three Foreigner concerts during a single tour, a Dolly Parton concert, and a Larry Sparks concert. She appeared on Austin City Limits in 1992 and opened the show in 1995 with Union Station. The New Favorite tour, after AKUS' album of the same name, was planned to start September 12, 2001 in Cincinnati, Ohio, but was delayed until September 28 in Savannah, Georgia following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Krauss took part in the Down from the Mountain tour in 2002, which featured many artists from the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack. Down from the Mountain was followed by the Great High Mountain Tour, which was composed of musicians from both O Brother and Cold Mountain, including Krauss. She has also given several notable smaller performances including at Carnegie Hall (with the Grand Ole Opry), on Lifetime Television in a concert of female performers, on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion, where she sang two songs not previously recorded on any of her albums, and a performance at the White House attended by then-President Bill Clinton and then-Vice President Al Gore. She has also been in the White House again, performing the song "When You Say Nothing at All" at country music performances. She also performed a tribute to the Everly Brothers at which she sang "All I Have to Do is Dream" with Emmylou Harris and "When Will I Be Loved" with Vince Gill. She was also invited by Taylor Swift to perform with her at the 2013 CMA's and by Joshua Bell to perform with him on a Christmas album; Bell said that "she (Krauss) is someone I've adored for so many years now". She performed at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. on January 10, 2015, as a part of "The Life and Songs of Emmylou Harris: An All Star Concert Celebration" which is a tribute to Emmylou Harris. Awards and honors Krauss has won twenty-seven Grammy Awards over the course of her career as a solo artist, as a group with Union Station, as a duet with Robert Plant, and as a record producer. As of 2021, she ranks fourth on the list of winners of the most Grammy Awards. She overtook Aretha Franklin for the most female wins at the 46th Grammy Awards, where Krauss won three, bringing her total at the time to seventeen (Franklin won her sixteenth that night). The Recording Academy (which presents the Grammy Awards) presented her with a special musical achievement honor in 2005. She has also won 14 International Bluegrass Music Association Awards, 9 Country Music Association Awards, 2 Gospel Music Association Awards, 2 CMT Music Awards, 2 Academy of Country Music Awards, and 1 Canadian Country Music Award. Country Music Television ranked Krauss 12th on their "40 Greatest Women of Country Music" list in 2002. At the 76th Academy Awards in February 2004, where she performed two nominated songs from the Cold Mountain soundtrack, Krauss was chosen by Hollywood shoe designer Stuart Weitzman to wear a pair of $2 million 'Cinderella' sandals with 4½ inch clear glass stiletto heels and two straps adorned with 565 Kwiat diamonds set in platinum. Feeling like a rather unglamorous choice, Krauss said, "When I first heard, I was like, 'What were they thinking?' I have the worst feet of anybody who will be there that night!" In addition to the fairy-tale-inspired shoes, Weitzman outfitted Krauss with a Palm Trēo 600 smartphone, bejeweled with 3,000 clear-and-topaz-colored Swarovski crystals. The shoes were returned, but Krauss kept the crystal-covered phone. Weitzman chose Krauss to show off his fashions at the urging of his daughters, who are fans of Krauss' music. In May 2012, Alison Krauss was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music. In March 2015, her hometown of Champaign, Illinois, designated the 400 block of West Hill Street as "Honorary Alison Krauss Way". Personal life Krauss was married to musician Pat Bergeson from 1997 to 2001. They had one child, born in 1999. Discography Studio albums 1986: Different Strokes (with Jim Hoiles and Swamp Weiss) 1987: Too Late to Cry 1989: Two Highways (with Union Station) 1990: I've Got That Old Feeling 1992: Every Time You Say Goodbye (with Union Station) 1994: I Know Who Holds Tomorrow (with the Cox Family) 1997: So Long So Wrong (with Union Station) 1999: Forget About It 2001: New Favorite (with Union Station) 2004: Lonely Runs Both Ways (with Union Station) 2007: Raising Sand (with Robert Plant) 2011: Paper Airplane (with Union Station) 2017: Windy City 2021: Raise the Roof (with Robert Plant) Filmography Notes a. Sources vary on birth place; see talk page discussion References External links Rounder Records site for Alison Krauss [ Alison Krauss] on Allmusic database Category:1971 births Category:Living people Category:Alison Krauss & Union Station members Category:American bluegrass fiddlers Category:American women country singers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Musicians from Champaign, Illinois Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Italian descent Category:Grand Ole Opry members Category:American performers of Christian music Category:American sopranos Category:Rounder Records artists Category:Musicians from Decatur, Illinois Category:20th-century American singers Category:20th-century American women singers Category:21st-century American singers Category:21st-century American women singers Category:Country musicians from Illinois Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients Category:Lyle Lovett and His Large Band members

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Curved Air

Curved Air are a pioneering English progressive rock group formed in 1970 by musicians from mixed artistic backgrounds, including classical, folk, and electronic sound. The resulting sound of the band was a mixture of progressive rock, folk rock, and fusion with classical elements. Along with High Tide and East of Eden, Curved Air were one of the first rock bands after It's a Beautiful Day and the United States of America to feature a violin. Curved Air released eight studio albums, the first three of which broke the UK Top 20, and had a hit single with "Back Street Luv" (1971) which reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart.

Stark Naked, the Car Thieves, and Curved Air

However, Darryl Way and Sonja Kristina remained interested in working together, and so Way brought in two more "Car Thieves", guitarist Mick Jacques and drummer Stewart Copeland. Though more members of this new lineup came from Stark Naked and the Car Thieves than Curved Air (Kristina being the only member not from the former band), they decided to adopt the Curved Air name for the same reasons that the Kristina/Wedgwood-led band had. With Darryl Way at the helm, this new band often employed the same classical and folk influences as the original band (and even played some of the original band's songs at their shows), but their core sound was rooted in pop, rhythm and blues, and hard rock. Miles Copeland III, still serving as Curved Air's manager, put the group on his own label, BTM. The band kicked off with a European tour, which started poorly. Way, a notorious perfectionist, grew impatient with the struggling of his bandmates, especially novice drummer Copeland. Then, for reasons no one could pinpoint, the musicians suddenly "clicked" with each other and the band caught fire, quickly becoming a popular and acclaimed live act. Their studio efforts were another story, however. Phil Kohn left and the band, unable to replace him in time for the sessions for Midnight Wire, relied on guest musicians to play both bass (John G Perry) and keyboards (Peter Wood). Norma Tager, a friend of Kristina's, penned the lyrics to the "Midnight Wire" songs. Kohn was later replaced by Tony Reeves, formerly of Colosseum and Greenslade, but the recording sessions for both Midnight Wire and 1976's Airborne were expensive and highly stressful for everyone involved. Both albums - as well as "Desiree", a single drawn from Airborne - failed to break the charts. Citing dissatisfaction with BTM Records' inability to support Curved Air financially, Way departed. Though Alex Richman from the Butts Band stepped in on keyboards, the loss of the band's de facto leader was a blow. This line-up's last-ditch attempt at a hit single, a cover version of "Baby Please Don't Go", was another flop. After months of gradually losing steam, Curved Air broke up so quietly that, by Sonja Kristina's recollections, most of the music press wrote off the band's absence as a "sabbatical". Copeland formed The Police, Reeves returned to work as a producer and played in semi-pro band Big Chief along with Jacques, and Kristina and Way both pursued solo careers. Kristina and Copeland maintained the close personal relationship they'd formed while bandmates and were married in 1982. CANNOTANSWER

Curved Air are an English progressive rock group formed in 1970 by musicians from mixed artistic backgrounds, including classical, folk and electronic sound. The resulting sound of the band is a mixture of progressive rock, folk rock, and fusion with classical elements. Curved Air released eight studio albums, the first three of which broke into the Top 20 in the UK Albums Chart, and had a hit single with "Back Street Luv" (1971) which reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart. Band history Sisyphus The group evolved out of the band Sisyphus, who played one of their early gigs in the ballroom of Leith Hill Place, Surrey for a masked ball and which was formed by Darryl Way (who studied violin at Dartington College and the Royal College of Music) and Francis Monkman, a member of the Royal Academy of Music. While wandering through an outlet store of the Orange Music Electronic Company, Monkman was intrigued by the sound of Way testing his first electrically amplified violin, and the two "got to talking." They discovered they had a lot in common, and in 1969 invited pianist Nick Simon who, along with bassist Rob Martin and drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa, completed the line-up of Sisyphus. "Darryl and Nick were very much into Spirit. One could cite them as a formative influence for Curved Air", Monkman later remembered. Many of the early Curved Air songs were written for Sisyphus, among them "Young Mother in Style" and "Screw". Sisyphus was hired to provide accompaniment for Galt MacDermot's new play, Who the Murderer Was, at the Mercury Theatre in Notting Hill Gate, serving as the pit band. Mark Hanau, an aspiring band manager at the time, saw the show and decided he wanted to manage Sisyphus. He felt that Sonja Kristina, an aspiring folk musician who he had seen in the London stage production of Hair, was the missing ingredient in the group. On 1 January 1970, Hanau contacted her through the singer and impresario Roy Guest. She listened to a cassette of the band's music and was impressed. With Kristina's joining and Nick Simon's departure, Sisyphus metamorphosed into Curved Air, named after the album A Rainbow in Curved Air by contemporary composer Terry Riley. The name was suggested by Monkman who, having played in the first London performance of In C, was a great fan of Riley. The band's new sound immediately came together, and the five-piece Curved Air was born, Sonja Kristina being both the band's voice and its sex symbol. From formation to first breakup After a series of intensive rehearsals in Martin's family home in Gloucestershire, the five-piece launched a well-received UK tour, supporting Black Sabbath at one point. The band toured with their own sound engineer, Shaun Davies (later the producer for Way's post-Curved Air band, Wolf), which allowed them to achieve a better on-stage sound mix than other groups with unusual combinations of instruments. Shaun's father, Guy Davies, made the perspex violins used by Way and later Jobson. Curved Air publicist Tony Brainsby fanned the enthusiastic audience response and a bidding war for the band ensued, and in summer 1970 Curved Air signed with Warner Bros., becoming the first British band on the company's roster. The band received a much-publicized advance of £100,000 and their debut album Air Conditioning was released in November notable for its being issued as the first commercially available LP picture disc in the UK. The album reached number 8 in the UK Albums Chart, preceded by a single, "It Happened Today". John Peel picked up on the band and they performed on several Peel radio Sessions and Roundhouse ‘Implosion’ events. Bass player Rob Martin left due to a hand injury, and was replaced by Ian Eyre. The band released "Back Street Luv" which reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart to become the band's most successful single to date. The Second Album peaked at number 11. A non-LP follow-up single, "Sarah's Concern", went by unnoticed. The band played three U.S. tours and built a cult following there. In the course of constant touring drummer Pilkington-Miksa became ill in late 1971 and, for several months, Barry de Souza, who band members knew from studio work, sat in for him. It was de Souza who played with Curved Air at the 1971 Beat Club German TV performance of "Back Street Luv", the televised version of which became well known. In late 1971, Sonja Kristina joined Faces, Soft Machine, Marc Bolan and David Bedford to do a Christmas radio show for the BBC. One highlighted performance was on 7 May 1971 when Curved Air was the opening act for B.B. King and Johnny Winter at the Warehouse in New Orleans. By the time of the third album's release, serious musical differences within the band emerged. According to Sonja Kristina's Cherry Red interview (2007), Francis was fascinated with overtones and natural harmonies, and "His other obsession is/was jamming... real 'out there' cosmic rock jamming. And that is not Darryl at all... He's a very disciplined perfectionist, he likes things to be as precise and exquisite as possible. Whereas Francis is completely the opposite way; he just wants to play and things just come out of the cosmos". As Monkman explained,Basically Darryl and I respect each others' work, but we don't really see eye-to-eye on most things. And we never really got the co-writing thing together. I wanted to get my first "epic" together, so it looks like a split forming at the time of the Second Album. In fact, the centre was never really solid after Rob left. This division was reflected in the arrangement of tracks on Second Album and Phantasmagoria; side A of both albums was occupied by music composed by Darryl Way, while side B was devoted solely to Monkman's compositions, with no true collaboration between the two writers. While working in the studio the band was in a dire condition. "I remember the moment when Clifford Davis, our manager after Mark Hanau, spelled out what we were going to have to do just to get somewhere near even. We felt burned out", Monkman later said. By the end of 1972 Monkman was a self-admitted "nervous wreck" and on the verge of physical and mental breakdown. He had to wear earplugs to go on the London Underground and went to a naturopath three times a week. Phantasmagoria was recorded with bassist/guitarist Mike Wedgwood, who replaced Eyre. The album's title was drawn from the Lewis Carroll poem of the same title. The album came out in April 1972 and reached number 20 in the UK Albums Chart. Curved Air split up, Way formed Darryl Way's Wolf, Pilkington-Miksa joined Kiki Dee's band, and Monkman moved into session work and was later to play in, among others, the supergroup Sky. The new Curved Air Having retained a good working relationship, Sonja Kristina and Mike Wedgwood formed a new band with Kirby Gregory (electric guitar), Eddie Jobson (keyboards, violin), and Jim Russell (drums). Jobson had come from a band called Fat Grapple, who had been one of Curved Air's support acts on tour. The new musicians brought more direct rock energy, with young prodigy Eddie Jobson, influenced by Curved Air, kept the classical blend strongly in the mix. On the suggestion of manager Clifford Davis, they continued using the name Curved Air with the approval and support of the departing band members. Kristina later commented:What I wanted to do with the band at the time was get more of a rock edge to it, and Kirby's guitar playing really excited me – he was just really wild. And Jim was the same way, a very solid rock drummer. Mike and I really wanted to continue, and it was our manager Clifford Davis who said we would do a better business continuing to call the band Curved Air. So we kept the name and followed along the same pattern as before, as a writer's band. Everybody in the new band contributed material except for Jim Russell, who really wasn't a writer. Before it had mainly been Darryl and Francis, but I had managed to get some of my compositions in. Whereas all three of the original Curved Air's albums had broken the UK top 20, the new band's sole album, Air Cut, failed to chart at the time. Not long after the release, Eddie Jobson was asked to replace Brian Eno in Roxy Music, so Kirby Gregory and Jim Russell both left the group to form Stretch. Sonja Kristina recorded a demo tape for Warner Brothers but they discontinued the contract. (These demos were later issued as part of the Lovechild record). Mike Wedgwood joined Caravan. Reunion In 1974 Chrysalis sued the band. "We had broken their contract on the advice of Clifford Davis, who said we could prove that they had not been acting in our best interests, but by then he was no longer our manager!" Monkman explained. In order to discharge an enormous unpaid VAT bill, in September 1974 the band's mainstays (Kristina, Way, Monkman, and Pilkington-Miksa) reunited for a three-week tour of the UK, put together by Darryl Way's manager, Miles Copeland III. The reunion interrupted Way's new band, Stark Naked and the Car Thieves, and since the bass slot for Curved Air needed filling, Way brought along the new band's bassist, Phil Kohn. The reunion tour saw Sonja Kristina play her role as Curved Air's sex symbol far more dramatically than she had before. Between the band's previous breakup and the reunion tour she had worked as a croupier at the London Playboy Club and returned to the stage with Curved Air in see through lace, feathers and beads, highlighting her sexuality. A live album and single were recorded during the lauded three week reunion tour, and they succeeded in paying off the tax bill. With their debts paid, Monkman and Pilkington-Miksa had no more reason to remain in the band. And so, Curved Air broke up for the third time in as many years. Stark Naked, the Car Thieves, and Curved Air However, Darryl Way wanted to continue Curved Air with Sonja Kristina. Way brought in two more "Car Thieves", guitarist Mick Jacques and drummer Stewart Copeland, Miles Copeland III's brother. Now more members of this new lineup came from Stark Naked and the Car Thieves than Curved Air . With Darryl Way at the helm, this new band often employed the same classical and folk influences as the original band and played the now classic Curved Air songs at their shows), but their core sound was rooted in pop, rhythm and blues, and hard rock. Miles Copeland III, still serving as Curved Air's manager, put the group on his own label, BTM. The band kicked off with a European tour, which started poorly. Way, a notorious perfectionist, grew impatient with the struggling of his bandmates, especially novice drummer Copeland. Eventually, the musicians found a way of working together and became a popular live act. The group struggled with studio work. Phil Kohn left and the band, unable to replace him in time for the sessions for Midnight Wire, relied on guest musicians to play both bass (John G Perry) and keyboards (Peter Wood). Norma Tager, a friend of Kristina's, penned the lyrics to the "Midnight Wire" songs. Kohn was later replaced by Tony Reeves, formerly of Colosseum and Greenslade, but the recording sessions for both Midnight Wire and 1976's Airborne were expensive and highly stressful for everyone involved. Both albums – as well as "Desiree", a single drawn from Airborne – failed to break the charts. Citing dissatisfaction with BTM Records' inability to support Curved Air financially, Way departed. Though Alex Richman from the Butts Band stepped in on keyboards, the loss of the band's de facto leader was a blow. This line-up's final release was a cover version of "Baby Please Don't Go” and although the shows were sold out and always successful the new recordings did not chart. After months of gradually losing steam, Curved Air broke up so quietly that, by Sonja Kristina's recollections, most of the music press wrote off the band's absence as a "sabbatical". Copeland formed The Police, Reeves returned to work as a producer and played in semi-pro band Big Chief along with Jacques, and Kristina and Way both pursued solo careers. Kristina and Copeland maintained the close personal relationship they had formed while bandmates and were married in 1982. Interim Curved Air as a group were largely inactive for the next three decades, though a handful of retrospective releases and compilations were released during this time. (Warner Bros. Records released the band's first compilation, The Best of Curved Air, in April 1976, though it naturally only contained material from the band's four Warner Bros. albums.) In 1984, Darryl Way asked Sonja Kristina to provide vocals to several of his solo recordings, two of which, "Renegade" and "We're Only Human", were released as a single under the Curved Air name. A third track, a cover of "O Fortuna", was released as a Sonja Kristina solo track on the b-side to "Walk on By", but was withdrawn due to objections from the Carl Orff estate. Yet another track, "As Long as There's a Spark", was originally recorded by Way and Kristina, but released as a Darryl Way solo track, with Way performing the vocals himself. Way and Kristina followed these recordings with a short tour in 1988, again under the Curved Air name. In 1990 the original Kristina, Way, Monkman and Pilkington-Miksa quartet gave a one-off reunion concert at the London's Town & Country, supported by Noden's Ictus. The performance, recorded by Francis Monkman, was captured on the Alive, 1990 album, released in 2000. Following the one-off reunion, guitarist Mike Gore instigated a series of jam sessions which involved three fifths of Curved Air's original lineup: Monkman, Pilkington-Miksa, and Martin. In 1991 several of these jams were recorded, ultimately being released as a Monkman solo album called Jam in 2002. 2008 onwards In early 2008, the band regrouped. On 4 May 2008, in a message to the Curved Air Yahoo Group, Kristina advised that the new line-up would be herself, Darryl Way (violin), Florian Pilkington-Miksa (drums), Andy Christie (guitar) and Chris Harris (bass). Francis Monkman, who was originally pictured with Kristina, Way and Pilkington-Miksa for the reunion, left the project. "Unfortunately, he didn't have the same vision as the rest of us as to how (the new project) should be approached and wasn't prepared to compromise, so our ways had to part", commented Way. Sonja Kristina confirmed, "Francis was in at the beginning but had extremely different ideas from Darryl about how he wanted this new Curved Air to prepare and develop. Eventually, he withdrew. We continued with Darryl as our musical director and producer." The new line-up played in Southern England, Italy and Malta in 2008. In 2008 a CD/box set Reborn was released, with 12 re-recorded Curved Air tracks and two new songs ("Coming Home" and "The Fury"). Two of the oldies, "Melinda" and "Elfin Boy", were reworked and produced by Marvin Ayres. As Way explained, the band had two reasons for this: they were never satisfied with the way those tracks were originally recorded and they wanted to have the product that they owned and were in control of. "Reborn was our way of preparing for the live work", Sonja Kristina added. On Friday, 13 June, Curved Air performed at the Isle of Wight Festival to a generally positive response. For the 2009 dates in Japan on 16 and 17 January at Club Citta, Kawasaki, the guitarist was Kit Morgan who replaced Christie. On 9 August 2009, Eddie Jobson stood in for Darryl Way at a one-off gig in Chislehurst. A live album consisting of recordings from the previous UK tour, Live Atmosphere, was released on 2 April 2012. Way was indisposed for their dates in October 2009 and Robert Norton (keyboards) and Paul Sax (violin) stood in for him. Sax had played on Sonja Kristina's 1991 album Songs from The Acid Folk and both Sax and Norton played on her 1995 album Harmonics of Love. "Robert Norton is exceptional – as is Paul Sax, a master violinist – one of the first entrants to the Yehudi Menuhin school – a passionate and brave performer very well qualified to step into Darryl's light ... Chris Harris is literally our root on bass and Kit Morgan the fire on guitar. Great chemistry and communication," Sonja Kristina commented. This lineup (Kristina, Pilkington-Miksa, Harris, Morgan, Sax and Norton) continued to gig as Curved Air until 2013. The band played at the London High Voltage Festival 2011 (23–24 July), alongside Spock's Beard, Jethro Tull, Dream Theater, and Queensrÿche, among others. In October 2013, Kirby Gregory returned to replace Kit Morgan on guitar. The new lineup (Kristina, Pilkington-Miksa, Harris, Gregory, Sax and Norton) initially played a couple of dates in the UK before recording a new studio album, North Star, released on 17 March 2014, supported by a 10-date tour from 1 March to 19 April with the Acoustic Strawbs and Martin Turner's Wishbone Ash. On 4 September 2015, Curved Air played a special concert at Under The Bridge, London, to mark the 45th Anniversary of the release of Air Conditioning. The album was played in full for the first time. The band was joined on stage by Darryl Way for "Vivaldi" and two other songs. Ian Eyre also played bass during "Back Street Luv". Kit Morgan returned to the band in November 2016, replacing Kirby Gregory, but left in August 2018 because of problems with his back, so former Purson guitarist George Hudson made his live debut with the band at The New Day Festival in Kent. Florian Pilkington-Miksa left in November 2017 and was replaced by Andy Tween. In 2019, Kirby Gregory returned on guitar in place of Hudson, and Grzegorz Gadziomski replaced Paul Sax on violin, both playing with the band at London's 100 Club on 17 October. Personnel Members Current members Sonja Kristina – vocals (1970–1976, 1984, 1988, 1990, 2008–present) Chris Harris – bass (2008–present) Robert Norton – keyboards (2009–present) Andy Tween – drums (2017–present) Grzegorz Gadziomski - violin (2019–present) Kirby Gregory – guitar, backing vocals (1972–1973, 2013–2016, 2019–present) Former members Darryl Way – violin, keyboards, backing vocals, guitars, drum machine (1970–1972, 1974–1976, 1984, 1988, 1990, 2008–2009) Francis Monkman – keyboards, guitar (1970–1972, 1974, 1990; died 2023) Florian Pilkington-Miksa – drums (1970–1972, 1974, 1990, 2008–2017) Rob Martin – bass guitar (1970; substitute - 1990) Ian Paul Eyre – bass guitar (1970–1971) (born 1951, died 2022) Mike Wedgwood – bass guitar, vocals, guitar (1971–1973) Eddie Jobson – keyboards, violin, backing vocals (1972–1973; substitute – 2009) Jim Russell – drums (1972–1973) Phil Kohn – bass guitar (1974–1975) Stewart Copeland – drums (1975–1976) Mick Jacques – guitars (1975–1976) Tony Reeves – bass, keyboards (1975–1976) Alex Richman – keyboards (1976) Andy Christie – guitar (2008–2009) Kit Morgan – guitar (2009–2013, 2016–2018) Paul Sax – violin (2009–2019) George Hudson – guitar (2018–2019) Substitute musicians Barry de Souza – drums (1971; filled in for Pilkington-Miksa) Lineups Timeline Discography Studio albums Other albums Singles References External links Category:Deram Records artists Category:English progressive rock groups Category:Musical groups established in 1969 Category:Warner Records artists Category:Female-fronted musical groups

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Curved Air

Curved Air are a pioneering English progressive rock group formed in 1970 by musicians from mixed artistic backgrounds, including classical, folk, and electronic sound. The resulting sound of the band was a mixture of progressive rock, folk rock, and fusion with classical elements. Along with High Tide and East of Eden, Curved Air were one of the first rock bands after It's a Beautiful Day and the United States of America to feature a violin. Curved Air released eight studio albums, the first three of which broke the UK Top 20, and had a hit single with "Back Street Luv" (1971) which reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart.

The new Curved Air

Having retained a good working relationship, Sonja Kristina and Mike Wedgwood formed a new band with Kirby Gregory (electric guitar), Eddie Jobson (keyboards, violin), and Jim Russell (drums). Jobson had come from a band called Fat Grapple, who had been one of Curved Air's support acts on tour. This new band played a much more conventional brand of rock than the former Curved Air, with almost none of the classical influences of that group. However, on the suggestion of manager Clifford Davis, they continued using the name Curved Air so as to give them a commercial leg up. Kristina later commented: What I wanted to do with the band at the time was get more of a rock edge to it, and Kirby's guitar playing really excited me - he was just really wild. And Jim was the same way, a very solid rock drummer. Mike and I really wanted to continue, and it was our manager Clifford Davis who said we would do a better business continuing to call the band Curved Air. So we kept the name and followed along the same pattern as before, as a writer's band. Everybody in the new band contributed material except for Jim Russell, who really wasn't a writer. Before it had mainly been Darryl and Francis, but I had managed to get some of my compositions in. The use of the Curved Air name was not enough, however. Whereas all three of the original Curved Air's albums had broken the UK top 20, the new band's sole album, Air Cut, failed to even chart. Due to artistic differences with Jobson, Kirby Gregory and Jim Russell both left the group to form Stretch. Warner Brothers realized that the current Curved Air was in essence not the same band they had signed, and so the remaining trio recorded a demo tape for the label. The demos failed to convince Warner Brothers, and they discontinued the contract. (These demos were later issued as part of the Lovechild record.) With no contract and only half a lineup, in summer 1973 Curved Air broke up. Jobson replaced Eno in Roxy Music, while Wedgwood joined Caravan. CANNOTANSWER

Curved Air are an English progressive rock group formed in 1970 by musicians from mixed artistic backgrounds, including classical, folk and electronic sound. The resulting sound of the band is a mixture of progressive rock, folk rock, and fusion with classical elements. Curved Air released eight studio albums, the first three of which broke into the Top 20 in the UK Albums Chart, and had a hit single with "Back Street Luv" (1971) which reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart. Band history Sisyphus The group evolved out of the band Sisyphus, who played one of their early gigs in the ballroom of Leith Hill Place, Surrey for a masked ball and which was formed by Darryl Way (who studied violin at Dartington College and the Royal College of Music) and Francis Monkman, a member of the Royal Academy of Music. While wandering through an outlet store of the Orange Music Electronic Company, Monkman was intrigued by the sound of Way testing his first electrically amplified violin, and the two "got to talking." They discovered they had a lot in common, and in 1969 invited pianist Nick Simon who, along with bassist Rob Martin and drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa, completed the line-up of Sisyphus. "Darryl and Nick were very much into Spirit. One could cite them as a formative influence for Curved Air", Monkman later remembered. Many of the early Curved Air songs were written for Sisyphus, among them "Young Mother in Style" and "Screw". Sisyphus was hired to provide accompaniment for Galt MacDermot's new play, Who the Murderer Was, at the Mercury Theatre in Notting Hill Gate, serving as the pit band. Mark Hanau, an aspiring band manager at the time, saw the show and decided he wanted to manage Sisyphus. He felt that Sonja Kristina, an aspiring folk musician who he had seen in the London stage production of Hair, was the missing ingredient in the group. On 1 January 1970, Hanau contacted her through the singer and impresario Roy Guest. She listened to a cassette of the band's music and was impressed. With Kristina's joining and Nick Simon's departure, Sisyphus metamorphosed into Curved Air, named after the album A Rainbow in Curved Air by contemporary composer Terry Riley. The name was suggested by Monkman who, having played in the first London performance of In C, was a great fan of Riley. The band's new sound immediately came together, and the five-piece Curved Air was born, Sonja Kristina being both the band's voice and its sex symbol. From formation to first breakup After a series of intensive rehearsals in Martin's family home in Gloucestershire, the five-piece launched a well-received UK tour, supporting Black Sabbath at one point. The band toured with their own sound engineer, Shaun Davies (later the producer for Way's post-Curved Air band, Wolf), which allowed them to achieve a better on-stage sound mix than other groups with unusual combinations of instruments. Shaun's father, Guy Davies, made the perspex violins used by Way and later Jobson. Curved Air publicist Tony Brainsby fanned the enthusiastic audience response and a bidding war for the band ensued, and in summer 1970 Curved Air signed with Warner Bros., becoming the first British band on the company's roster. The band received a much-publicized advance of £100,000 and their debut album Air Conditioning was released in November notable for its being issued as the first commercially available LP picture disc in the UK. The album reached number 8 in the UK Albums Chart, preceded by a single, "It Happened Today". John Peel picked up on the band and they performed on several Peel radio Sessions and Roundhouse ‘Implosion’ events. Bass player Rob Martin left due to a hand injury, and was replaced by Ian Eyre. The band released "Back Street Luv" which reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart to become the band's most successful single to date. The Second Album peaked at number 11. A non-LP follow-up single, "Sarah's Concern", went by unnoticed. The band played three U.S. tours and built a cult following there. In the course of constant touring drummer Pilkington-Miksa became ill in late 1971 and, for several months, Barry de Souza, who band members knew from studio work, sat in for him. It was de Souza who played with Curved Air at the 1971 Beat Club German TV performance of "Back Street Luv", the televised version of which became well known. In late 1971, Sonja Kristina joined Faces, Soft Machine, Marc Bolan and David Bedford to do a Christmas radio show for the BBC. One highlighted performance was on 7 May 1971 when Curved Air was the opening act for B.B. King and Johnny Winter at the Warehouse in New Orleans. By the time of the third album's release, serious musical differences within the band emerged. According to Sonja Kristina's Cherry Red interview (2007), Francis was fascinated with overtones and natural harmonies, and "His other obsession is/was jamming... real 'out there' cosmic rock jamming. And that is not Darryl at all... He's a very disciplined perfectionist, he likes things to be as precise and exquisite as possible. Whereas Francis is completely the opposite way; he just wants to play and things just come out of the cosmos". As Monkman explained,Basically Darryl and I respect each others' work, but we don't really see eye-to-eye on most things. And we never really got the co-writing thing together. I wanted to get my first "epic" together, so it looks like a split forming at the time of the Second Album. In fact, the centre was never really solid after Rob left. This division was reflected in the arrangement of tracks on Second Album and Phantasmagoria; side A of both albums was occupied by music composed by Darryl Way, while side B was devoted solely to Monkman's compositions, with no true collaboration between the two writers. While working in the studio the band was in a dire condition. "I remember the moment when Clifford Davis, our manager after Mark Hanau, spelled out what we were going to have to do just to get somewhere near even. We felt burned out", Monkman later said. By the end of 1972 Monkman was a self-admitted "nervous wreck" and on the verge of physical and mental breakdown. He had to wear earplugs to go on the London Underground and went to a naturopath three times a week. Phantasmagoria was recorded with bassist/guitarist Mike Wedgwood, who replaced Eyre. The album's title was drawn from the Lewis Carroll poem of the same title. The album came out in April 1972 and reached number 20 in the UK Albums Chart. Curved Air split up, Way formed Darryl Way's Wolf, Pilkington-Miksa joined Kiki Dee's band, and Monkman moved into session work and was later to play in, among others, the supergroup Sky. The new Curved Air Having retained a good working relationship, Sonja Kristina and Mike Wedgwood formed a new band with Kirby Gregory (electric guitar), Eddie Jobson (keyboards, violin), and Jim Russell (drums). Jobson had come from a band called Fat Grapple, who had been one of Curved Air's support acts on tour. The new musicians brought more direct rock energy, with young prodigy Eddie Jobson, influenced by Curved Air, kept the classical blend strongly in the mix. On the suggestion of manager Clifford Davis, they continued using the name Curved Air with the approval and support of the departing band members. Kristina later commented:What I wanted to do with the band at the time was get more of a rock edge to it, and Kirby's guitar playing really excited me – he was just really wild. And Jim was the same way, a very solid rock drummer. Mike and I really wanted to continue, and it was our manager Clifford Davis who said we would do a better business continuing to call the band Curved Air. So we kept the name and followed along the same pattern as before, as a writer's band. Everybody in the new band contributed material except for Jim Russell, who really wasn't a writer. Before it had mainly been Darryl and Francis, but I had managed to get some of my compositions in. Whereas all three of the original Curved Air's albums had broken the UK top 20, the new band's sole album, Air Cut, failed to chart at the time. Not long after the release, Eddie Jobson was asked to replace Brian Eno in Roxy Music, so Kirby Gregory and Jim Russell both left the group to form Stretch. Sonja Kristina recorded a demo tape for Warner Brothers but they discontinued the contract. (These demos were later issued as part of the Lovechild record). Mike Wedgwood joined Caravan. Reunion In 1974 Chrysalis sued the band. "We had broken their contract on the advice of Clifford Davis, who said we could prove that they had not been acting in our best interests, but by then he was no longer our manager!" Monkman explained. In order to discharge an enormous unpaid VAT bill, in September 1974 the band's mainstays (Kristina, Way, Monkman, and Pilkington-Miksa) reunited for a three-week tour of the UK, put together by Darryl Way's manager, Miles Copeland III. The reunion interrupted Way's new band, Stark Naked and the Car Thieves, and since the bass slot for Curved Air needed filling, Way brought along the new band's bassist, Phil Kohn. The reunion tour saw Sonja Kristina play her role as Curved Air's sex symbol far more dramatically than she had before. Between the band's previous breakup and the reunion tour she had worked as a croupier at the London Playboy Club and returned to the stage with Curved Air in see through lace, feathers and beads, highlighting her sexuality. A live album and single were recorded during the lauded three week reunion tour, and they succeeded in paying off the tax bill. With their debts paid, Monkman and Pilkington-Miksa had no more reason to remain in the band. And so, Curved Air broke up for the third time in as many years. Stark Naked, the Car Thieves, and Curved Air However, Darryl Way wanted to continue Curved Air with Sonja Kristina. Way brought in two more "Car Thieves", guitarist Mick Jacques and drummer Stewart Copeland, Miles Copeland III's brother. Now more members of this new lineup came from Stark Naked and the Car Thieves than Curved Air . With Darryl Way at the helm, this new band often employed the same classical and folk influences as the original band and played the now classic Curved Air songs at their shows), but their core sound was rooted in pop, rhythm and blues, and hard rock. Miles Copeland III, still serving as Curved Air's manager, put the group on his own label, BTM. The band kicked off with a European tour, which started poorly. Way, a notorious perfectionist, grew impatient with the struggling of his bandmates, especially novice drummer Copeland. Eventually, the musicians found a way of working together and became a popular live act. The group struggled with studio work. Phil Kohn left and the band, unable to replace him in time for the sessions for Midnight Wire, relied on guest musicians to play both bass (John G Perry) and keyboards (Peter Wood). Norma Tager, a friend of Kristina's, penned the lyrics to the "Midnight Wire" songs. Kohn was later replaced by Tony Reeves, formerly of Colosseum and Greenslade, but the recording sessions for both Midnight Wire and 1976's Airborne were expensive and highly stressful for everyone involved. Both albums – as well as "Desiree", a single drawn from Airborne – failed to break the charts. Citing dissatisfaction with BTM Records' inability to support Curved Air financially, Way departed. Though Alex Richman from the Butts Band stepped in on keyboards, the loss of the band's de facto leader was a blow. This line-up's final release was a cover version of "Baby Please Don't Go” and although the shows were sold out and always successful the new recordings did not chart. After months of gradually losing steam, Curved Air broke up so quietly that, by Sonja Kristina's recollections, most of the music press wrote off the band's absence as a "sabbatical". Copeland formed The Police, Reeves returned to work as a producer and played in semi-pro band Big Chief along with Jacques, and Kristina and Way both pursued solo careers. Kristina and Copeland maintained the close personal relationship they had formed while bandmates and were married in 1982. Interim Curved Air as a group were largely inactive for the next three decades, though a handful of retrospective releases and compilations were released during this time. (Warner Bros. Records released the band's first compilation, The Best of Curved Air, in April 1976, though it naturally only contained material from the band's four Warner Bros. albums.) In 1984, Darryl Way asked Sonja Kristina to provide vocals to several of his solo recordings, two of which, "Renegade" and "We're Only Human", were released as a single under the Curved Air name. A third track, a cover of "O Fortuna", was released as a Sonja Kristina solo track on the b-side to "Walk on By", but was withdrawn due to objections from the Carl Orff estate. Yet another track, "As Long as There's a Spark", was originally recorded by Way and Kristina, but released as a Darryl Way solo track, with Way performing the vocals himself. Way and Kristina followed these recordings with a short tour in 1988, again under the Curved Air name. In 1990 the original Kristina, Way, Monkman and Pilkington-Miksa quartet gave a one-off reunion concert at the London's Town & Country, supported by Noden's Ictus. The performance, recorded by Francis Monkman, was captured on the Alive, 1990 album, released in 2000. Following the one-off reunion, guitarist Mike Gore instigated a series of jam sessions which involved three fifths of Curved Air's original lineup: Monkman, Pilkington-Miksa, and Martin. In 1991 several of these jams were recorded, ultimately being released as a Monkman solo album called Jam in 2002. 2008 onwards In early 2008, the band regrouped. On 4 May 2008, in a message to the Curved Air Yahoo Group, Kristina advised that the new line-up would be herself, Darryl Way (violin), Florian Pilkington-Miksa (drums), Andy Christie (guitar) and Chris Harris (bass). Francis Monkman, who was originally pictured with Kristina, Way and Pilkington-Miksa for the reunion, left the project. "Unfortunately, he didn't have the same vision as the rest of us as to how (the new project) should be approached and wasn't prepared to compromise, so our ways had to part", commented Way. Sonja Kristina confirmed, "Francis was in at the beginning but had extremely different ideas from Darryl about how he wanted this new Curved Air to prepare and develop. Eventually, he withdrew. We continued with Darryl as our musical director and producer." The new line-up played in Southern England, Italy and Malta in 2008. In 2008 a CD/box set Reborn was released, with 12 re-recorded Curved Air tracks and two new songs ("Coming Home" and "The Fury"). Two of the oldies, "Melinda" and "Elfin Boy", were reworked and produced by Marvin Ayres. As Way explained, the band had two reasons for this: they were never satisfied with the way those tracks were originally recorded and they wanted to have the product that they owned and were in control of. "Reborn was our way of preparing for the live work", Sonja Kristina added. On Friday, 13 June, Curved Air performed at the Isle of Wight Festival to a generally positive response. For the 2009 dates in Japan on 16 and 17 January at Club Citta, Kawasaki, the guitarist was Kit Morgan who replaced Christie. On 9 August 2009, Eddie Jobson stood in for Darryl Way at a one-off gig in Chislehurst. A live album consisting of recordings from the previous UK tour, Live Atmosphere, was released on 2 April 2012. Way was indisposed for their dates in October 2009 and Robert Norton (keyboards) and Paul Sax (violin) stood in for him. Sax had played on Sonja Kristina's 1991 album Songs from The Acid Folk and both Sax and Norton played on her 1995 album Harmonics of Love. "Robert Norton is exceptional – as is Paul Sax, a master violinist – one of the first entrants to the Yehudi Menuhin school – a passionate and brave performer very well qualified to step into Darryl's light ... Chris Harris is literally our root on bass and Kit Morgan the fire on guitar. Great chemistry and communication," Sonja Kristina commented. This lineup (Kristina, Pilkington-Miksa, Harris, Morgan, Sax and Norton) continued to gig as Curved Air until 2013. The band played at the London High Voltage Festival 2011 (23–24 July), alongside Spock's Beard, Jethro Tull, Dream Theater, and Queensrÿche, among others. In October 2013, Kirby Gregory returned to replace Kit Morgan on guitar. The new lineup (Kristina, Pilkington-Miksa, Harris, Gregory, Sax and Norton) initially played a couple of dates in the UK before recording a new studio album, North Star, released on 17 March 2014, supported by a 10-date tour from 1 March to 19 April with the Acoustic Strawbs and Martin Turner's Wishbone Ash. On 4 September 2015, Curved Air played a special concert at Under The Bridge, London, to mark the 45th Anniversary of the release of Air Conditioning. The album was played in full for the first time. The band was joined on stage by Darryl Way for "Vivaldi" and two other songs. Ian Eyre also played bass during "Back Street Luv". Kit Morgan returned to the band in November 2016, replacing Kirby Gregory, but left in August 2018 because of problems with his back, so former Purson guitarist George Hudson made his live debut with the band at The New Day Festival in Kent. Florian Pilkington-Miksa left in November 2017 and was replaced by Andy Tween. In 2019, Kirby Gregory returned on guitar in place of Hudson, and Grzegorz Gadziomski replaced Paul Sax on violin, both playing with the band at London's 100 Club on 17 October. Personnel Members Current members Sonja Kristina – vocals (1970–1976, 1984, 1988, 1990, 2008–present) Chris Harris – bass (2008–present) Robert Norton – keyboards (2009–present) Andy Tween – drums (2017–present) Grzegorz Gadziomski - violin (2019–present) Kirby Gregory – guitar, backing vocals (1972–1973, 2013–2016, 2019–present) Former members Darryl Way – violin, keyboards, backing vocals, guitars, drum machine (1970–1972, 1974–1976, 1984, 1988, 1990, 2008–2009) Francis Monkman – keyboards, guitar (1970–1972, 1974, 1990; died 2023) Florian Pilkington-Miksa – drums (1970–1972, 1974, 1990, 2008–2017) Rob Martin – bass guitar (1970; substitute - 1990) Ian Paul Eyre – bass guitar (1970–1971) (born 1951, died 2022) Mike Wedgwood – bass guitar, vocals, guitar (1971–1973) Eddie Jobson – keyboards, violin, backing vocals (1972–1973; substitute – 2009) Jim Russell – drums (1972–1973) Phil Kohn – bass guitar (1974–1975) Stewart Copeland – drums (1975–1976) Mick Jacques – guitars (1975–1976) Tony Reeves – bass, keyboards (1975–1976) Alex Richman – keyboards (1976) Andy Christie – guitar (2008–2009) Kit Morgan – guitar (2009–2013, 2016–2018) Paul Sax – violin (2009–2019) George Hudson – guitar (2018–2019) Substitute musicians Barry de Souza – drums (1971; filled in for Pilkington-Miksa) Lineups Timeline Discography Studio albums Other albums Singles References External links Category:Deram Records artists Category:English progressive rock groups Category:Musical groups established in 1969 Category:Warner Records artists Category:Female-fronted musical groups

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Van Morrison

Sir George Ivan Morrison, OBE (born 31 August 1945) is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter, instrumentalist and producer. In 2016, he was knighted for his musical achievements and his services to tourism and charitable causes in Northern Ireland. Known as "Van the Man", Morrison started his professional career when, as a teenager in the late 1950s, he played a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands, covering the popular hits of that time. He rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them, with whom he recorded the garage band classic "Gloria".

Influence

Morrison's influence can readily be heard in the music of a diverse array of major artists and according to The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001), "his influence among rock singers/song writers is unrivaled by any living artist outside of that other prickly legend, Bob Dylan. Echoes of Morrison's rugged literateness and his gruff, feverish emotive vocals can be heard in latter day icons ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Elvis Costello". His influence includes U2 (Bono was quoted saying "I am in awe of a musician like Van Morrison. I had to stop listening to Van Morrison records about six months before we made The Unforgettable Fire because I didn't want his very original soul voice to overpower my own."); John Mellencamp ("Wild Night"); Jim Morrison; Joan Armatrading (the only musical influence she will acknowledge); Nick Cave; Rod Stewart; Tom Petty; Rickie Lee Jones (recognises both Laura Nyro and Van Morrison as the main influences on her career); Elton John; Graham Parker; Sinead O'Connor; Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy; Bob Seger ("I know Bruce Springsteen was very much affected by Van Morrison, and so was I." from Creem interview) ("I've Been Working"); Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners ("Jackie Wilson Said"); Jimi Hendrix ("Gloria"); Jeff Buckley ("The Way Young Lovers Do", "Sweet Thing"); Nick Drake; and numerous others, including the Counting Crows (their "sha-la-la" sequence in Mr Jones, is a tribute to Morrison). Morrison's influence reaches into the country music genre, with Hal Ketchum acknowledging, "He (Van Morrison) was a major influence in my life." Morrison's influence on the younger generation of singer-songwriters is pervasive: including Irish singer Damien Rice, who has been described as on his way to becoming the "natural heir to Van Morrison"; Ray Lamontagne; James Morrison; Paolo Nutini; Eric Lindell David Gray and Ed Sheeran are also several of the younger artists influenced by Morrison. Glen Hansard of the Irish rock band the Frames (who lists Van Morrison as being part of his holy trinity with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen) commonly covers his songs in concert. American rock band the Wallflowers have covered "Into the Mystic". Canadian blues-rock singer Colin James also covers the song frequently at his concerts. Actor and musician Robert Pattinson has said Van Morrison was his "influence for doing music in the first place". Morrison has shared the stage with Northern Irish singer-songwriter Duke Special, who admits Morrison has been a big influence. Overall, Morrison has typically been supportive of other artists, often willingly sharing the stage with them during his concerts. On the live album, A Night in San Francisco, he had as his special guests, among others, his childhood idols: Jimmy Witherspoon, John Lee Hooker and Junior Wells. Although he often expresses his displeasure (in interviews and songs) with the music industry and the media in general, he has been instrumental in promoting the careers of many other musicians and singers, such as James Hunter, and fellow Belfast-born brothers, Brian and Bap Kennedy. Morrison has also influenced the other arts: the German painter Johannes Heisig created a series of lithographs illustrating the book In the Garden - for Van Morrison, published by Stadtische Galerie Sonneberg, Germany, in 1997. CANNOTANSWER

Sir George Ivan Morrison (born 31 August 1945), known professionally as Van Morrison, is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose recording career spans seven decades. Morrison began performing as a teenager in the late-1950s, playing a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands, covering the popular hits of that time. Known as "Van the Man" to his fans, Morrison rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them, with whom he wrote and recorded "Gloria", which became a garage band staple. His solo career started under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967. After Berns's death, Warner Bros. Records bought Morrison's contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks (1968). While initially a poor seller, the album has become regarded as a classic. Moondance (1970) established Morrison as a major artist, and he built on his reputation throughout the 1970s with a series of acclaimed albums and live performances. Much of Morrison's music is structured around the conventions of soul music and early rhythm and blues. An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition, jazz and stream of consciousness narrative, such as the album Astral Weeks. The two strains together are sometimes referred to as "Celtic soul", and his music has been described as attaining "a kind of violent transcendence". Morrison's albums have performed well in Ireland and the UK, with more than 40 reaching the UK top 40. He has scored top ten albums in the UK in four consecutive decades, following the success of 2021's Latest Record Project, Volume 1. Eighteen of his albums have reached the top 40 in the United States, twelve of them between 1997 and 2017. Since turning 70 in 2015, he has released – on average – more than an album a year. He has received two Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, the 2017 Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2016, he was knighted for services to the music industry and to tourism in Northern Ireland. Life and career Early life and musical roots: 1945–1964 George Ivan Morrison was born on 31 August 1945, at 125 Hyndford Street, Bloomfield, Belfast, Northern Ireland, as the only child of George Morrison, a shipyard electrician, and Violet Stitt Morrison, who had been a singer and tap dancer in her youth. The previous occupant of the house was the writer Lee Child's father. Morrison's family were working class Protestants descended from the Ulster Scots population that settled in Belfast. From 1950 to 1956, Morrison, who began to be known as "Van" during this time, attended Elmgrove Primary School. His father had what was at the time one of the largest record collections in Northern Ireland (acquired during his time in Detroit, Michigan, in the early 1950s) and the young Morrison grew up listening to artists such as Jelly Roll Morton, Ray Charles, Lead Belly, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Solomon Burke; of whom he later said, "If it weren't for guys like Ray and Solomon, I wouldn't be where I am today. Those guys were the inspiration that got me going. If it wasn't for that kind of music, I couldn't do what I'm doing now." His father's record collection exposed him to various musical genres, such as the blues of Muddy Waters; the gospel of Mahalia Jackson; the jazz of Charlie Parker; the folk music of Woody Guthrie; and country music from Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, while the first record he ever bought was by blues musician Sonny Terry. When Lonnie Donegan had a hit with "Rock Island Line", written by Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly), Morrison felt he was familiar with and able to connect with skiffle music as he had been hearing Lead Belly before that. Morrison's father bought him his first acoustic guitar when he was eleven, and he learned to play rudimentary chords from the song book The Carter Family Style, edited by Alan Lomax. In 1957, at the age of twelve, Morrison formed his first band, a skiffle group, "The Sputniks", named after the satellite, Sputnik 1, that had been launched in October of that year by the Soviets. In 1958, the band played at some of the local cinemas, and Morrison took the lead, contributing most of the singing and arranging. Other short-lived groups followed – at fourteen, he formed Midnight Special, another modified skiffle band and played at a school concert. Then, when he heard Jimmy Giuffre playing saxophone on "The Train and The River", he talked his father into buying him a saxophone, and took lessons in tenor sax and music reading. Now playing the saxophone, Morrison joined with various local bands, including one called Deanie Sands and the Javelins, with whom he played guitar and shared singing. The line-up of the band was lead vocalist Deanie Sands, guitarist George Jones, and drummer and vocalist Roy Kane. Later the four main musicians of the Javelins, with the addition of Wesley Black as pianist, became known as the Monarchs. Morrison attended Orangefield Boys Secondary School, leaving in July 1960 with no qualifications. As a member of a working-class community, he was expected to get a regular full-time job, so after several short apprenticeship positions, he settled into a job as a window cleaner—later alluded to in his songs "Cleaning Windows" and "Saint Dominic's Preview". However, he had been developing his musical interests from an early age and continued playing with the Monarchs part-time. Young Morrison also played with the Harry Mack Showband, the Great Eight, with his older workplace friend, Geordie (G. D.) Sproule, whom he later named as one of his biggest influences. At age 17, Morrison toured Europe for the first time with the Monarchs, now calling themselves the International Monarchs. This Irish showband, with Morrison playing saxophone, guitar and harmonica, in addition to back-up duty on bass and drums, toured seamy clubs and US Army bases in Scotland, England and Germany, often playing five sets a night. While in Germany, the band recorded a single, "Boozoo Hully Gully"/"Twingy Baby", under the name Georgie and the Monarchs. This was Morrison's first recording, taking place in November 1963 at Ariola Studios in Cologne with Morrison on saxophone; it made the lower reaches of the German charts. Upon returning to Belfast in November 1963, the group disbanded, so Morrison connected with Geordie Sproule again and played with him in the Manhattan Showband along with guitarist Herbie Armstrong. When Armstrong auditioned to play with Brian Rossi and the Golden Eagles, later known as the Wheels, Morrison went along and was hired as a blues singer. Them: 1964–1966 The roots of Them, the band that first broke Morrison on the international scene, came in April 1964 when he responded to an advert for musicians to play at a new R&B club at the Maritime Hotel in College Square North – an old Belfast hostel frequented by sailors. The new club needed a band for its opening night; however, Morrison had left the Golden Eagles (the group with which he had been performing at the time), so he created a new band out of the Gamblers, an East Belfast group formed by Ronnie Millings, Billy Harrison and Alan Henderson in 1962. Eric Wrixon, still a schoolboy, was the piano player and keyboardist. Morrison played saxophone and harmonica and shared vocals with Billy Harrison. They followed Eric Wrixon's suggestion for a new name, and the Gamblers morphed into Them, their name taken from the Fifties horror movie Them! The band's strong R&B performances at the Maritime attracted attention. Them performed without a routine and Morrison ad libbed, creating his songs live as he performed. While the band did covers, they also played some of Morrison's early songs, such as "Could You Would You", which he had written in Camden Town while touring with the Manhattan Showband. The debut of Morrison's "Gloria" took place on stage here. Sometimes, depending on his mood, the song could last up to twenty minutes. Morrison has said, "Them lived and died on the stage at the Maritime Hotel", believing the band did not manage to capture the spontaneity and energy of their live performances on their records. The statement also reflected the instability of the Them line-up, with numerous members passing through the ranks after the definitive Maritime period. Morrison and Henderson remained the only constants, and a less successful version of Them soldiered on after Morrison's departure. Dick Rowe of Decca Records became aware of the band's performances, and signed Them to a standard two-year contract. In that period, they released two albums and ten singles, with two more singles released after Morrison departed the band. They had three chart hits, "Baby, Please Don't Go" (1964), "Here Comes the Night" (1965), and "Mystic Eyes" (1965), but it was the B-side of "Baby, Please Don't Go", the garage band classic "Gloria", that went on to become a rock standard covered by Patti Smith, the Doors, the Shadows of Knight, Jimi Hendrix and many others. Building on the success of their singles in the United States, and riding on the back of the British Invasion, Them undertook a two-month tour of America in May and June 1966 that included a residency from 30 May to 18 June at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles. The Doors were the supporting act on the last week, and Morrison's influence on the Doors singer Jim Morrison was noted by John Densmore in his book Riders on the Storm. Brian Hinton relates how "Jim Morrison learned quickly from his near namesake's stagecraft, his apparent recklessness, his air of subdued menace, the way he would improvise poetry to a rock beat, even his habit of crouching down by the bass drum during instrumental breaks." On the final night, the two Morrisons and the two bands jammed together on "Gloria". Toward the end of the tour the band members became involved in a dispute with their manager, Decca Records' Phil Solomon, over the revenues paid to them; that, coupled with the expiry of their work visas, meant the band returned from America dejected. After two more concerts in Ireland, Them split up. Morrison concentrated on writing some of the songs that would appear on Astral Weeks, while the remnants of the band reformed in 1967 and relocated in America. Start of solo career with Bang Records and "Brown Eyed Girl": 1967 Bert Berns, Them's producer and composer of their 1965 hit "Here Comes the Night", persuaded Morrison to return to New York to record solo for his new label, Bang Records. Morrison flew over and signed a contract he had not fully studied. During a two-day recording session at A & R Studios starting 28 March 1967, he recorded eight songs, originally intended to be used as four singles. Instead, these songs were released as the album Blowin' Your Mind! without Morrison's consultation. He said he only became aware of the album's release when a friend mentioned that he had bought a copy. Morrison was unhappy with the album and said he "had a different concept of it". "Brown Eyed Girl", one of the songs from Blowin' Your Mind!, was released as a single in mid-June 1967, reaching number ten in the US charts. "Brown Eyed Girl" became Morrison's most-played song. The song spent a total of sixteen weeks on the chart. It is considered to be Morrison's signature song. An evaluation in 2015 of downloads since 2004 and airplay since 2010 had "Brown Eyed Girl" as the most popular song of the entire 1960s decade. In 2000, it was listed at No. 21 on the Rolling Stone/MTV list of 100 Greatest Pop Songs and as No. 49 on VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Rock Songs. In 2010, "Brown Eyed Girl" was ranked No. 110 on the Rolling Stone magazine list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In January 2007, "Brown Eyed Girl" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Following the death of Berns in 1967, Morrison became involved in a contract dispute with Berns' widow, Ilene Berns, that prevented him from performing on stage or recording in the New York area. The song "Big Time Operators", released in 1993, is thought to allude to his dealings with the New York music business during this period. He moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and faced personal and financial problems; he had "slipped into a malaise" and had trouble finding concert bookings. He regained his professional footing through the few gigs he could find, and started recording with Warner Bros. Records. Warner Bros bought out Morrison's Bang contract with a $20,000 cash transaction that took place in an abandoned warehouse on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan. A clause required Morrison to submit 36 original songs within a year to Berns' music publishing company. He recorded them in one session on an out-of-tune guitar, with lyrics about subjects including ringworm and sandwiches. Ilene Berns thought the songs were "nonsense" and did not use them. The throwaway compositions came to be known as the "revenge" songs, and did not see official release until the 2017 compilation The Authorized Bang Collection. Astral Weeks: 1968 Morrison's first album for Warner Bros Records was Astral Weeks (which he had already performed in several clubs around Boston), a mystical song cycle, often considered to be his best work and one of the best albums of all time. Morrison has said, "When Astral Weeks came out, I was starving, literally." Released in 1968, the album originally received an indifferent response from the public, but it eventually achieved critical acclaim. The album is described by AllMusic's William Ruhlmann as hypnotic, meditative, and as possessing a unique musical power. It has been compared to French Impressionism and mystical Celtic poetry. A 2004 Rolling Stone magazine review begins with the words: "This is music of such enigmatic beauty that thirty-five years after its release, Astral Weeks still defies easy, admiring description." Alan Light later described Astral Weeks as "like nothing he had done previously—and really, nothing anyone had done previously. Morrison sings of lost love, death, and nostalgia for childhood in the Celtic soul that would become his signature." It has been placed on many lists of best albums of all time. In the 1995 Mojo list of 100 Best Albums, it was listed as number two and was number nineteen on the Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003. In December 2009, it was voted the top Irish album of all time by a poll of leading Irish musicians conducted by Hot Press magazine. Moondance to Into the Music: 1970–1979 Morrison's third solo album, Moondance, which was released in 1970, became his first million selling album and reached number twenty-nine on the Billboard charts. The style of Moondance stood in contrast to that of Astral Weeks. Whereas Astral Weeks had a sorrowful and vulnerable tone, Moondance restored a more optimistic and cheerful message to his music, which abandoned the previous record's abstract folk compositions in favour of more formally composed songs and a lively rhythm and blues style he expanded on throughout his career. The title track, although not released in the US as a single until 1977, received heavy play in FM radio formats. "Into the Mystic" has also gained a wide following over the years. "Come Running", which reached the American Top 40, rescued Morrison from what seemed then as Hot 100 obscurity. Moondance was both well received and favourably reviewed. Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus had a combined full page review in Rolling Stone, saying Morrison now had "the striking imagination of a consciousness that is visionary in the strongest sense of the word." "That was the type of band I dig," Morrison said of the Moondance sessions. "Two horns and a rhythm section – they're the type of bands that I like best." He produced the album himself as he felt like nobody else knew what he wanted. Moondance was listed at number sixty-five on the Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In March 2007, Moondance was listed as number seventy-two on the NARM Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list of the "Definitive 200". Over the next few years, he released a succession of albums, starting with a second one in 1970. His Band and the Street Choir had a freer, more relaxed sound than Moondance, but not the perfection, in the opinion of critic Jon Landau, who felt like "a few more numbers with a gravity of 'Street Choir' would have made this album as perfect as anyone could have stood." It contained the hit single "Domino", which charted at number nine in the Billboard Hot 100. In 1971, he released another well-received album, Tupelo Honey. This album produced the hit single "Wild Night" that was later covered by John Mellencamp and Meshell Ndegeocello. The title song has a notably country-soul feel about it and the album ended with another country tune, "Moonshine Whiskey". Morrison said he originally intended to make an all country album. The recordings were as live as possible – after rehearsing the songs the musicians would enter the studio and play a whole set in one take. His co-producer, Ted Templeman, described this recording process as the "scariest thing I've ever seen. When he's got something together, he wants to put it down right away with no overdubbing." Released in 1972, Saint Dominic's Preview revealed Morrison's break from the more accessible style of his previous three albums and moving back towards the more daring, adventurous, and meditative aspects of Astral Weeks. The combination of two styles of music demonstrated a versatility not previously found in his earlier albums. Two songs, "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)" and "Redwood Tree", reached the Hot 100 singles chart. The songs "Listen to the Lion" and "Almost Independence Day" are each over ten minutes long and employ the type of poetic imagery not heard since Astral Weeks. It was his highest-charting album in the US until his Top Ten debut on Billboard 200 in 2008. He released his next album, Hard Nose the Highway, in 1973, receiving mixed, but mostly negative, reviews. The album contained the popular song "Warm Love" but otherwise has been largely dismissed critically. In a 1973 Rolling Stone review, it was described as: "psychologically complex, musically somewhat uneven and lyrically excellent." During a three-week vacation visit to Ireland in October 1973, Morrison wrote seven of the songs that made up his next album, Veedon Fleece. Though it attracted scant initial attention, its critical stature grew markedly over the years—with Veedon Fleece now often considered to be one of Morrison's most impressive and poetic works. In a 2008 Rolling Stone review, Andy Greene writes that when released in late 1974: "it was greeted by a collective shrug by the rock critical establishment" and concludes: "He's released many wonderful albums since, but he's never again hit the majestic heights of this one." "You Don't Pull No Punches, but You Don't Push the River", one of the album's side closers, exemplifies the long, hypnotic, cryptic Morrison with its references to visionary poet William Blake and to the seemingly Grail-like Veedon Fleece object. Morrison took three years to release a follow-up album. After a decade without taking time off, he said in an interview, he needed to get away from music completely and ceased listening to it for several months. Also suffering from writer's block, he seriously considered leaving the music business for good. Speculation that an extended jam session would be released either under the title Mechanical Bliss, or Naked in the Jungle, or Stiff Upper Lip, came to nothing, and Morrison's next album was A Period of Transition in 1977, a collaboration with Dr. John, who had appeared at The Last Waltz concert with Morrison in 1976. The album received a mild critical reception and marked the beginning of a very prolific period of song making. Into the Music: The album's last four songs, "Angelou", "And the Healing Has Begun", and "It's All in the Game/You Know What They're Writing About" are a veritable tour-de-force with Morrison summoning every vocal trick at his disposal from Angelou's climactic shouts to the sexually-charged, half-mumbled monologue in "And the Healing Has Begun" to the barely audible whisper that is the album's final sound. --Scott Thomas Review The following year, Morrison released Wavelength; it became at that time the fastest-selling album of his career and soon went gold. The title track became a modest hit, peaking at number forty-two. Making use of 1970s synthesisers, it mimics the sounds of the shortwave radio stations he listened to in his youth. The opening track, "Kingdom Hall" – the name given by Jehovah's Witnesses to their places of worship – evoked Morrison's childhood experiences of religion with his mother, and foretold the religious themes that were more evident on his next album, Into the Music. Considered by AllMusic as "the definitive post-classic-era Morrison", Into the Music, was released in the last year of the 1970s. Songs on this album for the first time alluded to the healing power of music, which became an abiding interest of Morrison's. "Bright Side of the Road" was a joyful, uplifting song that featured on the soundtrack of the movie, Michael. Common One to Avalon Sunset: 1980–1989 With his next album, the new decade found Morrison following his muse into uncharted territory and sometimes merciless reviews. In February 1980, Morrison and a group of musicians travelled to Super Bear, a studio in the French Alps, to record (on the site of a former abbey) what is considered to be the most controversial album in his discography; later "Morrison admitted his original concept was even more esoteric than the final product." The album, Common One, consisted of six songs; the longest, "Summertime in England", lasted fifteen and a half minutes and ended with the words "Can you feel the silence?". NME magazine's Paul Du Noyer called the album "colossally smug and cosmically dull; an interminable, vacuous and drearily egotistical stab at spirituality: Into the muzak." Greil Marcus, whose previous writings had been favourably inclined towards Morrison, critically remarked: "It's Van acting the part of the 'mystic poet' he thinks he's supposed to be." Morrison insisted the album was never "meant to be a commercial album." Biographer Clinton Heylin concludes: "He would not attempt anything so ambitious again. Henceforth every radical idea would be tempered by some notion of commerciality." Later, critics reassessed the album more favourably with the success of "Summertime in England". Lester Bangs wrote in 1982, "Van was making holy music even though he thought he was, and us rock critics had made our usual mistake of paying too much attention to the lyrics." Morrison's next album, Beautiful Vision, released in 1982, had him returning once again to the music of his Northern Irish roots. Well received by the critics and public, it produced a minor UK hit single, "Cleaning Windows", that referenced one of Morrison's first jobs after leaving school. Several other songs on the album, "Vanlose Stairway", "She Gives Me Religion", and the instrumental, "Scandinavia" show the presence of a new personal muse in his life: a Danish public relations agent, who would share Morrison's spiritual interests and serve as a steadying influence on him throughout most of the 1980s. "Scandinavia", with Morrison on piano, was nominated in the Best Rock Instrumental Performance category for the 25th Annual Grammy Awards. Much of the music Morrison released throughout the 1980s continued to focus on the themes of spirituality and faith. His 1983 album, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, was "a move towards creating music for meditation" with synthesisers, uilleann pipes and flute sounds, and four of the tracks were instrumentals. The titling of the album and the presence of the instrumentals were noted to be indicative of Morrison's long-held belief that "it's not the words one uses but the force of conviction behind those words that matters." During this period of time, Morrison had studied Scientology and gave "Special Thanks" to L. Ron Hubbard on the album's credits. A Sense of Wonder, Morrison's 1985 album, pulled together the spiritual themes contained in his last four albums, which were defined in a Rolling Stone review as: "rebirth (Into the Music), deep contemplation and meditation (Common One); ecstasy and humility (Beautiful Vision); and blissful, mantra like languor (Inarticulate Speech of the Heart)." The single "Tore Down a la Rimbaud" was a reference to Rimbaud and an earlier bout of writer's block that Morrison had encountered in 1974. In 1985, Morrison also wrote the musical score for the movie Lamb starring Liam Neeson. Morrison's 1986 release, No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, was said to contain a "genuine holiness ... and musical freshness that needs to be set in context to understand." Critical response was favourable with a Sounds reviewer calling the album "his most intriguingly involved since Astral Weeks" and "Morrison at his most mystical, magical best." It contains the song "In the Garden" that, according to Morrison, had a "definite meditation process which is a 'form' of transcendental meditation as its basis. It's not TM". He entitled the album as a rebuttal to media attempts to place him in various creeds. In an interview in the Observer he told Anthony Denselow: After releasing the "No Guru" album, Morrison's music appeared less gritty and more adult contemporary with the well-received 1987 album, Poetic Champions Compose, considered to be one of his recording highlights of the 1980s. The romantic ballad from this album, "Someone Like You", has been featured subsequently in the soundtracks of several movies, including 1995's French Kiss, and in 2001, both Someone Like You and Bridget Jones's Diary. In 1988, he released Irish Heartbeat, a collection of traditional Irish folk songs recorded with the Irish group the Chieftains, which reached number 18 in the UK album charts. The title song, "Irish Heartbeat", was originally recorded on his 1983 album Inarticulate Speech of the Heart. The 1989 album, Avalon Sunset, which featured the hit duet with Cliff Richard "Whenever God Shines His Light" and the ballad "Have I Told You Lately" (on which "earthly love transmutes into that for God" (Hinton)), reached 13 on the UK album chart. Although considered to be a deeply spiritual album, it also contained "Daring Night", which "deals with full, blazing sex, whatever its churchy organ and gentle lilt suggest"(Hinton). Morrison's familiar themes of "God, woman, his childhood in Belfast and those enchanted moments when time stands still" were prominent in the songs. He can be heard calling out the change of tempo at the end of this song, repeating the numbers "1 – 4" to cue the chord changes (the first and fourth chord in the key of the music). He often completed albums in two days, frequently releasing first takes. The Best of Van Morrison to Back on Top: 1990–1999 The early to middle 1990s were commercially successful for Morrison with three albums reaching the top five of the UK charts, sold-out concerts, and a more visible public profile; but this period also marked a decline in the critical reception to his work. The decade began with the release of The Best of Van Morrison; compiled by Morrison himself, the album was focused on his hit singles, and became a multi-platinum success remaining a year and a half on the UK charts. AllMusic determined it to be "far and away the best selling album of his career." In 1991 he wrote and produced four songs for Tom Jones released on the Carrying A Torch album and performed a duet with Bob Dylan on BBC Arena special. The 1994 live double album A Night in San Francisco received favourable reviews as well as commercial success by reaching number eight on the UK charts. 1995's Days Like This also had large sales – though the critical reviews were not always favourable. This period also saw a number of side projects, including the live jazz performances of 1996's How Long Has This Been Going On, from the same year Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison, and 2000's The Skiffle Sessions – Live in Belfast 1998, all of which found Morrison paying tribute to his early musical influences. In 1997, Morrison released The Healing Game. The album received mixed reviews, with the lyrics being described as "tired" and "dull", though critic Greil Marcus praised the musical complexity of the album by saying: "It carries the listener into a musical home so perfect and complete he or she might have forgotten that music could call up such a place, and then populate it with people, acts, wishes, fears." The following year, Morrison finally released some of his previously unissued studio recordings in a two-disc set, The Philosopher's Stone. His next release, 1999's Back on Top, achieved a modest success, being his highest-charting album in the US since 1978's Wavelength. Down the Road to Keep It Simple: 2000–2009 Van Morrison continued to record and tour in the 2000s, often performing two or three times a week. He formed his own independent label, Exile Productions Ltd, which enables him to maintain full production control of each album he records, which he then delivers as a finished product to the recording label that he chooses, for marketing and distribution. In 2001, nine months into a tour with Linda Gail Lewis promoting their collaboration You Win Again, Lewis left the tour, later filing claims against Morrison for unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination. Both claims were later withdrawn, and Morrison's solicitor said, "(Mr Morrison's) pleased that these claims have finally been withdrawn. He accepted a full apology and comprehensive retraction which represents a complete vindication of his stance from the outset. Miss Lewis has given a full and categorical apology and retraction to Mr Morrison." Lewis' legal representative Christine Thompson said both parties had agreed to the terms of the settlement. The album Down the Road, released in May 2002, received a good critical reception and proved to be his highest-charting album in the US since 1972's Saint Dominic's Preview. It had a nostalgic tone, with its fifteen tracks representing the various musical genres Morrison had previously covered—including R&B, blues, country and folk; one of the tracks was written as a tribute to his late father George, who had played a pivotal role in nurturing his early musical tastes. Morrison's 2005 album, Magic Time, debuted at number twenty-five on the US Billboard 200 charts upon its May release, some forty years after Morrison first entered the public's eye as the frontman of Them. Rolling Stone listed it as number seventeen on The Top 50 Records of 2005. Also in July 2005, Morrison was named by Amazon as one of their top twenty-five all-time best-selling artists and inducted into the Amazon.com Hall of Fame. Later in the year, Morrison also donated a previously unreleased studio track to a charity album, Hurricane Relief: Come Together Now, which raised money for relief efforts intended for Gulf Coast victims devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Morrison composed the song, "Blue and Green", featuring Foggy Lyttle on guitar. This song was released in 2007 on the album, The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3 and also as a single in the UK. Van Morrison was a headline act at the international Celtic music festival, The Hebridean Celtic Festival in Stornoway, Outer Hebrides in the summer of 2005. He released an album with a country music theme, entitled Pay the Devil, on 7 March 2006 and appeared at the Ryman Auditorium, where the tickets sold out immediately after they went on sale. Pay the Devil debuted at number twenty-six on the Billboard 200 and peaked at number seven on Top Country Albums. Amazon Best of 2006 Editor's Picks in Country listed the country album at number ten in December 2006. Still promoting the country album, Morrison's performance as the headline act on the first night of the Austin City Limits Music Festival on 15 September 2006 was reviewed by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the top ten shows of the 2006 festival. In November 2006, a limited edition album, Live at Austin City Limits Festival, was issued by Exile Productions, Ltd. A later deluxe CD/DVD release of Pay the Devil, in the summer of 2006, contained tracks from the Ryman performance. In October 2006, Morrison had released his first commercial DVD, Live at Montreux 1980/1974, with concerts taken from two separate appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival. A new double CD compilation album, The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3, was released in June 2007 containing thirty-one tracks, some of which were previously unreleased. Morrison selected the tracks, which ranged from the 1993 album Too Long in Exile to the song "Stranded" from the 2005 album Magic Time. On 3 September 2007, Morrison's complete catalogue of albums from 1971 through 2002 were made available exclusively at the iTunes Store in Europe and Australia and during the first week of October 2007, the albums became available at the US iTunes Store. Still on Top – The Greatest Hits, a thirty-seven-track double CD compilation album, was released on 22 October 2007 in the UK on the Polydor label. On 29 October 2007, the album charted at number two on the Official UK Top 75 Albums—his highest UK charting. The November release in the US and Canada contains twenty-one selected tracks. The hits released on albums with the copyrights owned by Morrison as Exile Productions Ltd. — 1971 and later – had been remastered in 2007. Keep It Simple, Morrison's 33rd studio album of completely new material, was released by Exile/Polydor Records on 17 March 2008 in the UK and released by Exile/Lost Highway Records in the US and Canada on 1 April 2008. It comprised eleven self-penned tracks. Morrison promoted the album with a short US tour including an appearance at the SXSW music conference, and a UK concert broadcast on BBC Radio 2. In the first week of release Keep It Simple debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at number ten, Morrison's first Top Ten charting in the US. Born to Sing to Three Chords: 2010–2020 Morrison released two albums in the first half of the decade, followed by a further six in just five years, his productivity increasing noticeably as he turned 70. Born to Sing: No Plan B was released on 2 October 2012 on Blue Note Records. The album was recorded in Belfast, Morrison's birthplace and hometown. The first single from this album, "Open the Door (To Your Heart)", was released on 24 August 2012. A selection of Morrison's lyrics, Lit Up Inside, was published by City Lights Books in the US and Faber & Faber in the UK. The book was released on 2 October 2014 and an evening of words and music commenced at the Lyric Theatre, London on 17 November 2014 to mark its launch. Morrison himself selected his best and most iconic lyrics from a catalog of 50 years of writing. In 2015, Morrison sold the rights to most of his catalogue to Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music. This resulted in 33 of his albums being made available as digital releases and through all streaming services for the first time that August. His first album recorded with Sony under the new contract was Duets: Re-working the Catalogue, released on 24 March 2015 on the subsidiary, RCA Records. Morrison's 70th birthday in 2015 was marked by celebrations in his hometown of Belfast, commencing with BBC Radio Ulster presenting programs including "Top 70 Van Tracks" between 26 and 28 August. As the headline act ending the Eastside Arts Festival, Morrison performed two 70th-birthday concerts on Cyprus Avenue on his birthday 31 August. The first of the concerts was broadcast live on BBC Radio Ulster and a 60-minute BBC film of highlights from the concerts, entitled Up On Cyprus Avenue, was first shown on 4 September. The following year, on 30 September, Morrison released Keep Me Singing, his 36th studio album. "Too Late", the first single, was released on the same day. The songs are twelve originals and one cover and the album represents his first release of originals since Born to Sing: No Plan B in 2012. A short tour of the U.S. followed with six dates in October 2016, followed by a short tour of the U.K. with eight dates in October–December 2016, including a London show at The O2 Arena on 30 October. The U.S. tour resumed in January 2017 with five new dates in Las Vegas and Clearwater, Florida. Morrison's album Roll with the Punches was released on 22 September 2017. That July, he and Universal Music Group were sued by former professional wrestler Billy Two Rivers for using his likeness on its cover and promotional material without his permission. On 4 August, Two Rivers' lawyer said the parties had reached a preliminary agreement to settle the matter out of court. He released his 38th studio album, Versatile, on 1 December 2017. It features covers of nine classic jazz standards and seven original songs including his arrangement of the traditional "Skye Boat Song". He quickly followed up with his 39th studio album, You're Driving Me Crazy, released on 27 April 2018 via Sony Legacy Recordings. The album features a collaboration with Joey DeFrancesco on a mixture of blues and jazz classics that include eight Morrison originals from his back catalog. In October 2018, Morrison announced that his 40th studio album, The Prophet Speaks, would be released by Caroline International on 7 December 2018. A year later, in November 2019, he released his 41st studio album, Three Chords & the Truth. On 5 March 2020 Faber and Faber published Keep 'Er Lit, the second volume of Van Morrison's selected lyrics. It features a foreword of fellow poet Paul Muldoon and comprehends 120 songs from across his career. In November 2020 Morrison and Eric Clapton collaborated on a single called "Stand and Deliver", whose profits from sales will be donated to Morrison's Lockdown Financial Hardship Fund. Morrison will release a double album, Moving on Skiffle, in March 2023, according to his official website. Coronavirus controversy During the COVID-19 pandemic, Morrison made numerous statements against social distancing measures which affected live music events, and made calls to "fight pseudo-science". Continuing with this narrative, Morrison released three new songs in September 2020, which had messages of protest against COVID-19 lockdowns in the UK. Morrison accused the UK government of "taking our freedom". He had performed socially distanced concerts previously, but said that the shows were not a sign of "compliance". There have been calls in Belfast for Belfast City Council to revoke his Freedom of the City honour following the intervention: city councillor Emmet McDonough-Brown said that his lyrics were "undermining the guidance in place to protect lives and are ignorant of established science as we grapple with Covid-19." In addition, the Northern Ireland health minister, Robin Swann, accused Morrison of smearing public health practitioners and called Morrison's anti-lockdown songs "dangerous". In November 2021, Swann sued Morrison for defamation, over his comments that Swann was a "fraud" and "very dangerous" during COVID-19 restrictions in 2020. In 2022, Morrison issued legal proceedings against Swann over an opinion piece in Rolling Stone magazine that was critical of Morrison's anti-lockdown songs and actions. 2020s In March 2021, Morrison announced that his 42nd album, Latest Record Project, Volume 1, would be released by Exile Productions and BMG on 7 May. The 28-track album includes songs such as "Why Are You on Facebook?", "They Own The Media" and "Western Man". In addition to digitally, it was released as a 2-CD set and on triple vinyl. The album marked a return to the UK Top Ten for Morrison, making the 2020s the fourth consecutive decade in which he has achieved such success. The following year, What's It Gonna Take? explored many of the same themes, but was less successful commercially. In 2023, he returned to his roots with Moving on Skiffle. Van Morrison's songs were used extensively in Kenneth Branagh's Oscar-winning 2021 film Belfast: Morrison received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Down to Joy". Several tracks were also featured in Cherry, released the same year. Live performances 1970s By 1972, after being a performer for nearly ten years, Morrison began experiencing stage fright when performing for audiences of thousands, as opposed to the hundreds he had experienced in his early career. He became anxious on stage and had difficulty establishing eye contact with the audience. He once said in an interview about performing on stage, "I dig singing the songs but there are times when it's pretty agonising for me to be out there." After a brief break from music, he started appearing in clubs, regaining his ability to perform live, albeit with smaller audiences. The 1974 live double album It's Too Late to Stop Now has been called one of the greatest recordings of a live concert and has appeared on lists of greatest live albums of all time. Biographer Johnny Rogan wrote, "Morrison was in the midst of what was arguably his greatest phase as a performer." Performances on the album were from tapes made during a three-month tour of the US and Europe in 1973 with the backing group the Caledonia Soul Orchestra. Soon after recording the album, Morrison restructured the Caledonia Soul Orchestra into a smaller unit, the Caledonia Soul Express. On Thanksgiving Day 1976, Morrison performed at the farewell concert for the Band. It was his first live performance in several years, and he considered skipping his appearance until the last minute, even refusing to go on stage when they announced his name. His manager, Harvey Goldsmith, said he "literally kicked him out there." Morrison was on good terms with the members of the Band as near-neighbours in Woodstock, and they had the shared experience of stage fright. At the concert, he performed two songs. His first was a rendition of the classic Irish song "Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral". His second song was "Caravan", from his 1970 album Moondance. Greil Marcus, in attendance at the concert, wrote: "Van Morrison turned the show around ... singing to the rafters and ... burning holes in the floor. It was a triumph, and as the song ended Van began to kick his leg into the air out of sheer exuberance and he kicked his way right offstage like a Rockette. The crowd had given him a fine welcome and they cheered wildly when he left." The filmed concert served as the basis for Martin Scorsese's 1978 film, The Last Waltz. During his association with the Band, Morrison acquired the nicknames "Belfast Cowboy" and "Van the Man". On the Band's album Cahoots, as part of the duet "4% Pantomime" that Morrison sings with Richard Manuel (and that he co-wrote with Robbie Robertson), Manuel addresses him, "Oh, Belfast Cowboy". When he leaves the stage after performing "Caravan" on The Last Waltz, Robertson calls out "Van the Man!" 1990s On 21 July 1990, Morrison joined many other guests for Roger Waters' massive performance of The Wall – Live in Berlin. He sang "Comfortably Numb" with Roger Waters and several members from The Band: Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko. At concert's end, he and the other performers sang "The Tide Is Turning". The live audience was estimated at between three hundred thousand and half a million people, and it was broadcast live on television as well. Morrison performed before an estimated audience of sixty to eighty thousand people when US President Bill Clinton visited Belfast, Northern Ireland on 30 November 1995. His song "Days Like This" had become the official anthem for the Northern Irish peace movement. 2000s and live albums Van Morrison continued performing concerts throughout the year, rather than touring. Playing few of his best-known songs in concert, he has firmly resisted relegation to a nostalgia act. During a 2006 interview, he told Paul Sexton: On 7 and 8 November 2008, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, Morrison performed the entire Astral Weeks album live for the first time. The Astral Weeks band featured guitarist Jay Berliner, who had played on the album that was released forty years previously in November 1968. Also featured on piano was Roger Kellaway. A live album entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl resulted from these two performances. The new live album on CD was released on 24 February 2009, followed by a DVD from the performances. The DVD, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film was released via Amazon Exclusive on 19 May 2009. In February and March 2009, Morrison returned to the US for Astral Weeks Live concerts, interviews and TV appearances with concerts at Madison Square Garden and at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. He was interviewed by Don Imus on his Imus in the Morning radio show and put in guest appearances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Live with Regis and Kelly. Morrison continued with the Astral Weeks performances with two concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London in April and then returned to California in May 2009 performing the Astral Weeks songs at the Hearst Greek Theatre in Berkeley, the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, California and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Morrison filmed the concerts at the Orpheum Theatre so they could be viewed by Farrah Fawcett, confined to bed with cancer and thus unable to attend the concerts. In addition to It's Too Late to Stop Now and Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Morrison has released three other live albums: Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast in 1984; A Night in San Francisco in 1994 that Rolling Stone magazine felt stood out as: "the culmination of a career's worth of soul searching that finds Morrison's eyes turned toward heaven and his feet planted firmly on the ground"; and The Skiffle Sessions – Live in Belfast 1998 recorded with Lonnie Donegan and Chris Barber and released in 2000. Morrison was scheduled to perform at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary concert on 30 October 2009, but cancelled. In an interview on 26 October, Morrison told his host, Don Imus, he had planned to play "a couple of songs" with Eric Clapton (who had cancelled on 22 October due to gallstone surgery), and they would do something else together at "some other stage of the game". 2010s to present Morrison performed for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on 4 August 2010 as the headline act for the fundraiser and scheduled as second day headliner at the Feis 2011 Festival in London's Finsbury Park on 19 June 2011. He appeared in concert at Odyssey Arena in Belfast on 3 February and at the O2 in Dublin on 4 February 2012. He appeared at the 46th Montreux Jazz Festival as a headliner on 7 July 2012. In 2014, Morrison's former high school Orangefield High School, formerly known as Orangefield Boys' Secondary School closed its doors permanently. To mark the school's closure Morrison performed in the school assembly hall for three nights of concerts from 22 to 24 August. The performance on 22 August was exclusively for former teachers and pupils and the two remaining concerts were for members of the public The first night of the Nocturne Live concerts at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, UK on 25 June 2015, featured Morrison and Grammy Award-winning American Jazz vocalist and songwriter Gregory Porter. In June 2021, The Times noted that "fittingly for someone who has been so vocally opposed to the lockdown" resulting from the 2020–2021 coronavirus pandemic, "Van Morrison played one of the first big-scale concerts in London since events, albeit tentatively, started up again." Will Hodgkinson wrote that the show "was as good an argument for the return of live music as you could wish for." Collaborations Van Morrison has collaborated extensively with a variety of artists throughout his career. He has worked with many legends in soul and blues, including John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles, George Benson, Eric Clapton, Bobby Womack, and BB King, along with The Chieftains, Gregory Porter, Micheal Bublé, Joss Stone, Natalie Cole and Mark Knopfler. 1980s Morrison and the internationally renowned Irish folk band The Chieftains recorded the album Irish Heartbeat (1988). Consisting of Irish folk songs, it entered the UK Top 20. "Whenever God Shines His Light", on Avalon Sunset (1989), is a duet with Cliff Richard, which charted at No. 20 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 3 on the Irish Singles Chart. AllMusic critic Jason Ankeny found it to be a "standout opener" on the album. For critic Patrick Humphries, it was "the most manifest example of Morrison's Christian commitment," and while "not one of Morrison's most outstanding songs" it works as "a testament of faith". 1990s The decade saw an upsurge in Van Morrison's collaborations. He developed a close association with two vocal talents at opposite ends of their careers: Georgie Fame (with whom Morrison had already worked occasionally) lent his voice and Hammond organ skills to Morrison's band; and Brian Kennedy's vocals complemented the grizzled voice of Morrison, both in studio and live performances. He reunited with The Chieftains on their 1995 album, The Long Black Veil, with a reworking of Morrison's song "Have I Told You Lately" winning the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. He produced, and was featured on, several tracks with blues legend John Lee Hooker on Hooker's 1997 album, Don't Look Back. This album won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album in 1998, and the title track "Don't Look Back", a duet with Morrison, took the Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. The project capped a series of Morrison and Hooker collaborations that began in 1971 when they performed a duet on the title track of Hooker's 1972 album Never Get Out of These Blues Alive. On this album, Hooker also recorded a cover of Morrison's "T.B. Sheets". Morrison collaborated with Tom Jones on his 1999 album Reload, when the pair sang on Morrison's song, "Sometimes We Cry". 2000s to present Morrison delivered vocals on "The Last Laugh" on Mark Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelphia (2000), and that year also recorded a classic country music duet album, You Win Again with Linda Gail Lewis. The album received a three-star review from AllMusic, who called it "a roots effort that never sounds studied". In 2004, Morrison was one of the guests on Ray Charles' album Genius Loves Company. The pair performed Morrison's "Crazy Love". In 2015 he recorded an album of collaborations, Duets: Re-working the Catalogue, which featured, among others, Steve Winwood, Taj Mahal, Mavis Staples, Mick Hucknall, and Morrison's daughter Shana Morrison. Morrison also developed a partnership with Joey DeFrancesco, with the pair collaborating on a number of albums. During the COVID pandemic Morrison recorded tracks with Eric Clapton criticizing harm-reduction measures. Artistry Vocals Featuring his characteristic growl—a mix of folk, blues, soul, jazz, gospel, and Ulster Scots Celtic influences—Morrison is widely considered by many rock historians to be one of the most unusual and influential vocalists in the history of rock and roll. Critic Greil Marcus has said "no white man sings like Van Morrison." In his 2010 book, Marcus wrote, "As a physical fact, Morrison may have the richest and most expressive voice pop music has produced since Elvis Presley, and with a sense of himself as an artist that Elvis was always denied." As Morrison began live performances of the 40-year-old album Astral Weeks in 2008, there were comparisons to his youthful voice of 1968. His early voice was described as "flinty and tender, beseeching and plaintive". Forty years later, the difference in his vocal range and power were noticeable but reviewers and critic's comments were favourable: "Morrison's voice has expanded to fill his frame; a deeper, louder roar than the blue-eyed soul voice of his youth – softer on the diction – but none the less impressively powerful." Morrison also commented on the changes in his approach to singing: "The approach now is to sing from lower down [the diaphragm] so I do not ruin my voice. Before, I sang in the upper area of my throat, which tends to wreck the vocal cords over time. Singing from lower in the belly allows my resonance to carry far. I can stand four feet from a mic and be heard quite resonantly." Songwriting and lyrics Morrison has written hundreds of songs during his career with a recurring theme reflecting a nostalgic yearning for the carefree days of his childhood in Belfast. Some of his song titles derive from familiar locations in his childhood, such as "Cyprus Avenue" (a nearby street), "Orangefield" (the boys school he attended), and "On Hyndford Street" (where he was born). Also frequently present in Morrison's best love songs is a blending of the sacred-profane as evidenced in "Into the Mystic" and "So Quiet in Here". Beginning with his 1979 album, Into the Music, and the song "And the Healing Has Begun", a frequent theme of his music and lyrics has been based on his belief in the healing power of music combined with a form of mystic Christianity. This theme has become one of the predominant qualities of his work. His lyrics show an influence of the visionary poets William Blake and W. B. Yeats and others such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Biographer Brian Hinton believes "like any great poet from Blake to Seamus Heaney he takes words back to their origins in magic ... Indeed, Morrison is returning poetry to its earliest roots – as in Homer or Old English epics like Beowulf or the Psalms or folk song – in all of which words and music combine to form a new reality." Another biographer, John Collis, believes Morrison's style of jazz singing and repeating phrases preclude his lyrics from being regarded as poetry or as Collis asserts: "he is more likely to repeat a phrase like a mantra, or burst into scat singing. The words may often be prosaic, and so can hardly be poetry." Morrison has described his songwriting method by remarking: "I write from a different place. I do not even know what it is called or if it has a name. It just comes and I sculpt it, but it is also a lot of hard work doing the sculpting." Performance style Critic Greil Marcus argues that, given the truly distinctive breadth and complexity of Morrison's work, it is almost impossible to cast his work among that of others: "Morrison remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of rock & roll, a singer who cannot be pinned down, dismissed, or fitted into anyone's expectations." Or in the words of Jay Cocks: "He extends himself only to express himself. Alone among rock's great figures—and even in that company he is one of the greatest—Morrison is adamantly inward. And unique. Although he freely crosses musical boundaries— R&B, Celtic melodies, jazz, rave-up rock, hymns, down-and-dirty blues—he can unfailingly be found in the same strange place: on his own wavelength." His spiritually themed style of music first came into full expression with Astral Weeks in 1968 and he was noted to have remained a "master of his transcendental craft" in 2009 while performing the Astral Weeks songs live. This musical art form was based on stream of consciousness songwriting and emotional vocalising of lyrics that have no basis in normal structure or symmetry. His live performances are dependent on building dynamics with spontaneity between himself and his band, whom he controls with hand gestures throughout, sometimes signalling impromptu solos from a selected band member. The music and vocals build towards a hypnotic and trance-like state that depends on in-the-moment creativity. Scott Foundas with LA Weekly wrote "he seeks to transcend the apparent boundaries of any given song; to achieve a total freedom of form; to take himself, his band and the audience on a journey whose destination is anything but known." Greil Marcus wrote an entire book devoted to examining the moments in Morrison's music where he reaches this state of transcendence and explains: "But in his music the same sense of escape from ordinary limits – a reach for, or the achievement of, a kind of violent transcendence – can come from hesitations, repetitions of words or phrases, pauses, the way a musical change by another musician is turned by Morrison as a bandleader or seized on by him as a singer and changed into a sound that becomes an event in and of itself. In these moments, the self is left behind, and the sound, that "yarragh," becomes the active agent: a musical person, with its own mind, its own body." A book reviewer further described it as "This transcendent moment of music when the song and the singer are one thing not two, neither dependent on the other or separate from the other but melded to the other like one, like breath and life ..." Morrison has said he believes in the jazz improvisational technique of never performing a song the same way twice and except for the unique rendition of the Astral Weeks songs live, doesn't perform a concert from a preconceived set list. Morrison has said he prefers to perform at smaller venues or symphony halls noted for their good acoustics. His ban against alcoholic beverages, which made entertainment news during 2008, was an attempt to prevent the disruptive and distracting movement of audience members leaving their seats during the performances. In a 2009 interview, Morrison stated: "I do not consciously aim to take the listener anywhere. If anything, I aim to take myself there in my music. If the listener catches the wavelength of what I am saying or singing, or gets whatever point whatever line means to them, then I guess as a writer I may have done a day's work." Genre The music of Van Morrison has encompassed many genres since his early days as a blues and R&B singer in Belfast. Over the years he has recorded songs from a varying list of genres drawn from many influences and interests. As well as blues and R&B, his compositions and covers have moved between pop music, jazz, rock, folk, country, gospel, Irish folk and traditional, big band, skiffle, rock and roll, new age, classical and sometimes spoken word ("Coney Island") and instrumentals. Morrison defines himself as a soul singer. Morrison's music has been described by music journalist Alan Light as "Celtic soul", or what biographer Brian Hinton referred to as a new alchemy called "Caledonian soul." Another biographer, Ritchie Yorke quoted Morrison as believing that he has "the spirit of Caledonia in his soul and his music reflects it." According to Yorke, Morrison claimed to have discovered "a certain quality of soul" when he first visited Scotland (his Belfast ancestors were of Ulster Scots descent) and Morrison has said he believes there is some connection between soul music and Caledonia. Yorke said Morrison "discovered several years after he first began composing music that some of his songs lent themselves to a unique major modal scale (without sevenths) which of course is the same scale as that used by bagpipe players and old Irish and Scottish folk music." 'Caledonia' theme The name "Caledonia" has played a prominent role in Morrison's life and career. Biographer Ritchie Yorke had pointed out already by 1975 that Morrison has referred to Caledonia so many times in his career that he "seems to be obsessed with the word". In his 2009 biography, Erik Hage found "Morrison seemed deeply interested in his paternal Scottish roots during his early career, and later in the ancient countryside of England, hence his repeated use of the term Caledonia (an ancient Roman name for Scotland/northern Britain)". As well as being his daughter Shana's middle name, it is the name of his first production company, his studio, his publishing company, two of his backing groups, his parents' record store in Fairfax, California in the 1970s, and he also recorded a cover of the song "Caldonia" (with the name spelled "Caledonia") in 1974. Morrison used "Caledonia" in what has been called a quintessential Van Morrison moment in the song, "Listen to the Lion" with the lyrics, "And we sail, and we sail, way up to Caledonia". Morrison used "Caledonia" as a mantra in the live performance of the song "Astral Weeks" recorded at the two Hollywood Bowl concerts. As late as 2016's Keep Me Singing album, he recorded a self-penned instrumental entitled "Caledonia Swing." Influence Morrison's influence can readily be heard in the music of a diverse array of major artists. According to The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001), "his influence among rock singers/song writers is unrivaled by any living artist outside of that other prickly legend, Bob Dylan. Echoes of Morrison's rugged literateness and his gruff, feverish emotive vocals can be heard in latter day icons ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Elvis Costello". He has influenced an array of top tier performers, including U2, with Bono recalling, "I am in awe of a musician like Van Morrison. I had to stop listening to Van Morrison records about six months before we made The Unforgettable Fire because I didn't want his very original soul voice to overpower my own". He has inspired John Mellencamp ("Wild Night"); Jim Morrison; Joan Armatrading (the only musical influence she will acknowledge); Nick Cave; Rod Stewart; Tom Petty; Rickie Lee Jones (recognises both Laura Nyro and Van Morrison as the main influences on her career); Elton John; Graham Parker; Sinéad O'Connor; Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy; Bob Seger ("I know Bruce Springsteen was very much affected by Van Morrison, and so was I") Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners ("Jackie Wilson Said"); Jimi Hendrix ("Gloria"); Jeff Buckley ("The Way Young Lovers Do", "Sweet Thing"); Nick Drake; and numerous others, including Counting Crows (their "sha-la-la" sequence in Mr Jones is a tribute to Morrison). Morrison's influence reaches into the country music genre, with Hal Ketchum acknowledging, "He (Van Morrison) was a major influence in my life." Ray Manzarek of the Doors described Van Morrison as "our [the Doors] favourite singer". Morrison has typically been supportive of other artists, often willingly sharing the stage with them during his concerts. On the live album A Night in San Francisco, he had as his special guests, among others, his childhood idols: Jimmy Witherspoon, John Lee Hooker and Junior Wells. Although he often expresses his displeasure (in interviews and songs) with the music industry and the media in general, he has been instrumental in promoting the careers of many other musicians and singers, such as James Hunter, and fellow Belfast-born brothers Brian and Bap Kennedy. He has also influenced the visual arts: the German painter Johannes Heisig created a series of lithographs illustrating the book In the Garden – for Van Morrison, published by Städtische Galerie Sonneberg, Germany, in 1997. Next generation Morrison's influence on a younger generation of singer-songwriters is pervasive. The list of such singer-songwriters influenced by Morrison includes Irish singer Damien Rice, who has been described as on his way to becoming the "natural heir to Van Morrison"; Ray Lamontagne; James Morrison; Paolo Nutini; Eric Lindell David Gray and Ed Sheeran are also several of the younger artists influenced by Morrison. Glen Hansard of the Irish rock band the Frames (who lists Van Morrison as being part of his holy trinity with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen) commonly covers his songs in concert. American rock band the Wallflowers have covered "Into the Mystic". Canadian blues-rock singer Colin James also covers the song frequently at his concerts. Actor and musician Robert Pattinson has said Van Morrison was his "influence for doing music in the first place". Morrison has shared the stage with Northern Irish singer-songwriter Duke Special, who admits Morrison has been a big influence. Recognition and legacy Morrison has received several major music awards in his career, including two Grammy Awards, with five additional nominations (1982–2004); inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (January 1993), the Songwriters Hall of Fame (June 2003), and the Irish Music Hall of Fame (September 1999); and a Brit Award (February 1994). In addition he has received civil awards: an OBE (June 1996) and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1996). He has honorary doctorates from the University of Ulster (1992) and from Queen's University Belfast (July 2001). Halls of Fame The Hall of Fame inductions began in 1993 with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Morrison was the first living inductee not to attend his own ceremony, – Robbie Robertson from the Band accepted the award on his behalf. When Morrison became the initial musician inducted into the Irish Music Hall of Fame, Bob Geldof presented Morrison with the award. Morrison's third induction was into the Songwriters Hall of Fame for "recognition of his unique position as one of the most important songwriters of the past century". Ray Charles presented the award, following a performance during which the pair performed Morrison's "Crazy Love" from the album Moondance. Morrison's BRIT Award was for his Outstanding Contribution to British Music. Former Beirut hostage John McCarthy presented the award; while testifying to the importance of Morrison's song "Wonderful Remark" McCarthy called it "a song ... which was very important to us." Three of Morrison's songs appear in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll: "Brown Eyed Girl", "Madame George" and "Moondance". The Songwriter's Hall of Fame awarded Morrison the Johnny Mercer Award on 18 June 2015 at their 46th Annual Induction and Awards Dinner in New York City. Civil awards and honours Morrison received two civil awards in 1996: he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to music, and was also recognized with an award from the French government which made him an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Along with these state awards he has two honorary degrees in music: an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of Ulster, and an honorary doctorate in music from Queen's University in his hometown of Belfast. In 2013, Morrison was awarded the Freedom of Belfast, the highest honour the city can bestow. On 15 November 2013, Morrison became the 79th recipient of the award, presented at the Waterfront Hall for his career achievements. After receiving the award, he performed a free concert for residents who won tickets from a lottery system. In August 2014, a "Van Morrison Trail" was established in East Belfast by Morrison in partnership with the Connswater Community Greenway. It is a self-guided trail, which over the course of leads to eight places that were important to Morrison and inspirational to his music. Morrison was made a Knight Bachelor in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2015 for services to the music industry and to tourism in Northern Ireland. The ceremony was performed by Prince Charles. Industry recognition Other awards include an Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1995, the BMI ICON award in October 2004 for Morrison's "enduring influence on generations of music makers", and an Oscar Wilde: Honouring Irish Writing in Film award in 2007 for his contribution to over fifty films, presented by Al Pacino, who compared Morrison to Oscar Wilde – both "visionaries who push boundaries". He was voted the Best International Male Singer of 2007 at the inaugural International Awards in Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, London. In 2010, Morrison was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On 2 September 2014, Morrison was presented with the Legend award at the GQ Men of the Year ceremony at Royal Opera House in London. On 13 October 2014, Morrison received his fifth BMI Million-Air Award for 11 million radio plays of the song "Brown Eyed Girl", making it one of the Top 10 Songs of all time on US radio and television. Morrison has also received Million-Air awards for "Have I Told You Lately". In 2017, the Americana Music Association gave Van Morrison the Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting. Morrison was chosen to be honoured by Michael Dorf at his annual charity concert at Carnegie Hall. The Music of Van Morrison was performed on 21 March 2019 by twenty musical acts including Glen Hansard, Patti Smith and Bettye LaVette. In 2019, Morrison received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Jimmy Page during the International Achievement Summit in New York City. In 2022, Morrison and his song "Down to Joy" for "Belfast" were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 94th Academy Awards. Lists Morrison has also appeared in a number of "Greatest" lists, including the TIME magazine list of The All-Time 100 Albums, which contained Astral Weeks and Moondance, and he appeared at number thirteen on the list of WXPN's 885 All Time Greatest Artists. In 2000, Morrison ranked twenty-fifth on American cable music channel VH1's list of its "100 Greatest Artists of Rock and Roll". In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Van Morrison forty-second on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Paste ranked him twentieth in their list of "100 Greatest Living Songwriters" in 2006. Q ranked him twenty-second on their list of "100 Greatest Singers" in April 2007 and he was voted twenty-fourth on the November 2008 list of Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. Tribute albums No Prima Donna: The Songs of Van Morrison (1994) The Van Morrison Songbook (1997) Into the Mystic: An Instrumental Tribute to Van Morrison (2000) Vanthology: A Tribute to Van Morrison (2003) The String Quartet Tribute to Van Morrison (2003) Smooth Sax Tribute to Van Morrison (2005) Mystic Piano: Piano Tribute to Van Morrison (2006) Personal life Family and relationships Morrison lived in Belfast from birth until 1964, when he moved to London with the rock group Them. Three years later, he moved to New York after signing with Bang Records. Facing deportation due to visa problems, he managed to stay in the US when his American girlfriend Janet (Planet) Rigsbee, who had a son named Peter from a previous relationship, agreed to marry him. Once married, Morrison and his wife moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he found work performing in local clubs. The couple had one daughter in 1970, Shana Morrison, who has become a singer-songwriter. Morrison and his family moved around America, living in Boston; Woodstock, New York; and a hilltop home in Fairfax, California. His wife appeared on the cover of the album Tupelo Honey. They divorced in 1973. Morrison moved back to the UK in the late 1970s, first settling in London's Notting Hill Gate area. Later, he moved to Bath, where he purchased the Wool Hall studio in January 1994. He also has a home in the Irish seaside village of Dalkey near Dublin, where legal actions were taken against Morrison by two neighbours who objected to Morrison attempting to widen his driveway. The case was taken to court in 2001, with the initial rulings going against Morrison. Morrison pursued the matter all the way to the Irish Supreme Court, but his appeal was denied. A separate case in 2010, in which Morrison's then-wife Michelle took legal action against a different neighbour, who was building a balcony that she felt would overlook the Morrison home and intrude on their privacy, was withdrawn in 2015. Morrison met Irish socialite Michelle Rocca in the summer of 1992, and they often featured in the Dublin gossip columns, an unusual event for the reclusive Morrison. Rocca also appeared on one of his album covers, Days Like This. The couple married and have two children; a daughter was born in February 2006 and a son in August 2007. According to a statement posted on his website, they were divorced in March 2018. In December 2009, Morrison's tour manager Gigi Lee gave birth to a son, who she asserted was Morrison's and named after him. Lee announced the birth of the child on Morrison's official website, but Morrison denied paternity. Lee's son died in January 2011 from complications of diabetes, and Lee died soon after from throat cancer in October 2011. Morrison's father died in 1998, and his mother, Violet, died in 2016. Religion and spirituality Morrison and his family have been affiliated with St Donard's Parish Church, an Anglican congregation of the Church of Ireland located in east Belfast. During the Troubles, the area was described as "militantly Protestant", although Morrison's parents have always been freethinkers, with his father openly declaring himself an atheist and his mother being connected to Jehovah's Witnesses at one point. Van Morrison had been linked to Scientology in the early 1980s and even thanked its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, in one of his songs. Later, he became wary of religion, saying: "I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole." He also said it is important to distinguish spirituality from religion: "Spirituality is one thing, religion ... can mean anything from soup to nuts, you know? But it generally means an organisation, so I don't really like to use the word, because that's what it really means. It really means this church or that church ... but spirituality is different, because that's the individual." The Troubles Morrison left Northern Ireland before The Troubles started and distanced himself from the conflict, although later "yearned for" Protestant and Catholic reconciliation. In 1972, he gave an interview with the Dublin-based magazine Spotlight, in which he said, "I'm definitely Irish ... I don't think I want to go back to Belfast. I don't miss it with all the prejudice around. We're all the same and I think it's terrible what's happening. But I'd like to get a house in Ireland ... I'd like to spend a few months there every year." Discography Blowin' Your Mind! (1967) Astral Weeks (1968) Moondance (1970) His Band and the Street Choir (1970) Tupelo Honey (1971) Saint Dominic's Preview (1972) Hard Nose the Highway (1973) It's Too Late to Stop Now (1974; live) Veedon Fleece (1974) A Period of Transition (1977) Wavelength (1978) Into the Music (1979) Common One (1980) Beautiful Vision (1982) Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (1983) A Sense of Wonder (1985) No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986) Poetic Champions Compose (1987) Irish Heartbeat (In collaboration with The Chieftains) (1988) Avalon Sunset (1989) Enlightenment (1990) Hymns to the Silence (1991) Too Long in Exile (1993) Days Like This (1995) How Long Has This Been Going On (1995) Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison (1996) The Healing Game (1997) Back on Top (1999) You Win Again (2000) Down the Road (2002) What's Wrong with This Picture? (2003) Magic Time (2005) Pay the Devil (2006) Keep It Simple (2008) Born to Sing: No Plan B (2012) Duets: Re-working the Catalogue (2015) Keep Me Singing (2016) Roll with the Punches (2017) Versatile (2017) You're Driving Me Crazy (2018) The Prophet Speaks (2018) Three Chords & the Truth (2019) Latest Record Project, Volume 1 (2021) What's It Gonna Take? (2022) Moving on Skiffle (2023) See also List of people on the postage stamps of Ireland References Bibliography Collis, John (1996). Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, Little Brown and Company, Hage, Erik (2009). The Words and Music of Van Morrison, Praeger Publishers, Heylin, Clinton (2003). Can You Feel the Silence? Van Morrison: A New Biography, Chicago Review Press, Hinton, Brian (1997). Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison, Sanctuary, Marcus, Greil. 1992. "Van Morrison." In: The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll. Anthony DeCurtis and James Henke, with Holly George-Warren, eds. (original ed. Jim Miller): pp442–447. New York: Random House, Marcus, Greil (2010). When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison, Public Affairs, Moon, Tom (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, Workman Publishing Company, Rogan, Johnny (2006). Van Morrison: No Surrender, London: Vintage Books Rosenthal, Elizabeth. (2001) His Song: The Musical Journey of Elton John, Billboard Books, Turner, Steve (1993). Van Morrison: Too Late to Stop Now, Viking Penguin, Walsh, Ryan H. (2018) Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968, Penguin Press, Yorke, Ritchie (1975). Into The Music, London: Charisma Books, Further reading Brooks, Ken (1999). In Search of Van Morrison, Agenda, Buzacott, Martin; Ford, Andrew (2005) Speaking in Tongues: The Songs of Van Morrison, ABC, Dawe, Gerald (2007). My Mother-City, Belfast:Lagan Press – (Includes section on Van Morrison from previous edition, The Rest is History, Newry:Abbey Press, 1998) DeWitt, Howard A. (1983). Van Morrison: The Mystic's Music, Horizon Books, Mills, Peter (2010). Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Music and Lyrics of Van Morrison, Continuum, External links – official site Category:1945 births Category:Living people Category:Blues singer-songwriters Category:Brit Award winners Category:British record producers Category:British rhythm and blues boom musicians Category:British baritones Category:British soft rock musicians Category:Composers awarded knighthoods Category:Drummers from Northern Ireland Category:Male drummers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Guitarists from Northern Ireland Category:Country singers from Northern Ireland Category:Rock guitarists from Northern Ireland Category:Rock singers from Northern Ireland Category:British harmonica players Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Keyboardists from Northern Ireland Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Male singers from Northern Ireland Category:Mercury Records artists Category:Multi-instrumentalists from Northern Ireland Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:Officiers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Category:Musicians from Belfast Category:People from Dalkey Category:People from Topanga, California Category:People from Woodstock, New York Category:Rhythm guitarists Category:Saxophonists from Northern Ireland Category:Male saxophonists Category:Singers awarded knighthoods Category:Male singer-songwriters from Northern Ireland Category:Singer-songwriters from Northern Ireland Category:Skiffle musicians Category:Male songwriters from Northern Ireland Category:Them (band) members Category:Ulster Scots people Category:Warner Records artists Category:People from Fairfax, California Category:Male writers from Northern Ireland Category:21st-century saxophonists Category:Bang Records artists

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Van Morrison

Sir George Ivan Morrison, OBE (born 31 August 1945) is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter, instrumentalist and producer. In 2016, he was knighted for his musical achievements and his services to tourism and charitable causes in Northern Ireland. Known as "Van the Man", Morrison started his professional career when, as a teenager in the late 1950s, he played a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands, covering the popular hits of that time. He rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them, with whom he recorded the garage band classic "Gloria".

Songwriting and lyrics

Morrison has written hundreds of songs during his career with a recurring theme reflecting a nostalgic yearning for the carefree days of his childhood in Belfast. Some of his song titles derive from familiar locations in his childhood, such as "Cyprus Avenue" (a nearby street), "Orangefield" (the boys school he attended), and "On Hyndford Street" (where he was born). Also frequently present in Morrison's best love songs is a blending of the sacred-profane as evidenced in "Into the Mystic" and "So Quiet in Here". Beginning with his 1979 album, Into the Music and the song "And the Healing Has Begun", a frequent theme of his music and lyrics has been based on his belief in the healing power of music combined with a form of mystic Christianity. This theme has become one of the predominant qualities of his work. His lyrics show an influence of the visionary poets William Blake and W. B. Yeats and others such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Biographer Brian Hinton believes "like any great poet from Blake to Seamus Heaney he takes words back to their origins in magic...Indeed, Morrison is returning poetry to its earliest roots - as in Homer or Old English epics like Beowulf or the Psalms or folk song - in all of which words and music combine to form a new reality." Another biographer John Collis believes Morrison's style of jazz singing and repeating phrases preclude his lyrics from being regarded as poetry or as Collis asserts: "he is more likely to repeat a phrase like a mantra, or burst into scat singing. The words may often be prosaic, and so can hardly be poetry." Morrison has described his songwriting method by remarking that: "I write from a different place. I do not even know what it is called or if it has a name. It just comes and I sculpt it, but it is also a lot of hard work doing the sculpting." CANNOTANSWER

Sir George Ivan Morrison (born 31 August 1945), known professionally as Van Morrison, is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose recording career spans seven decades. Morrison began performing as a teenager in the late-1950s, playing a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands, covering the popular hits of that time. Known as "Van the Man" to his fans, Morrison rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them, with whom he wrote and recorded "Gloria", which became a garage band staple. His solo career started under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967. After Berns's death, Warner Bros. Records bought Morrison's contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks (1968). While initially a poor seller, the album has become regarded as a classic. Moondance (1970) established Morrison as a major artist, and he built on his reputation throughout the 1970s with a series of acclaimed albums and live performances. Much of Morrison's music is structured around the conventions of soul music and early rhythm and blues. An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition, jazz and stream of consciousness narrative, such as the album Astral Weeks. The two strains together are sometimes referred to as "Celtic soul", and his music has been described as attaining "a kind of violent transcendence". Morrison's albums have performed well in Ireland and the UK, with more than 40 reaching the UK top 40. He has scored top ten albums in the UK in four consecutive decades, following the success of 2021's Latest Record Project, Volume 1. Eighteen of his albums have reached the top 40 in the United States, twelve of them between 1997 and 2017. Since turning 70 in 2015, he has released – on average – more than an album a year. He has received two Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, the 2017 Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2016, he was knighted for services to the music industry and to tourism in Northern Ireland. Life and career Early life and musical roots: 1945–1964 George Ivan Morrison was born on 31 August 1945, at 125 Hyndford Street, Bloomfield, Belfast, Northern Ireland, as the only child of George Morrison, a shipyard electrician, and Violet Stitt Morrison, who had been a singer and tap dancer in her youth. The previous occupant of the house was the writer Lee Child's father. Morrison's family were working class Protestants descended from the Ulster Scots population that settled in Belfast. From 1950 to 1956, Morrison, who began to be known as "Van" during this time, attended Elmgrove Primary School. His father had what was at the time one of the largest record collections in Northern Ireland (acquired during his time in Detroit, Michigan, in the early 1950s) and the young Morrison grew up listening to artists such as Jelly Roll Morton, Ray Charles, Lead Belly, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Solomon Burke; of whom he later said, "If it weren't for guys like Ray and Solomon, I wouldn't be where I am today. Those guys were the inspiration that got me going. If it wasn't for that kind of music, I couldn't do what I'm doing now." His father's record collection exposed him to various musical genres, such as the blues of Muddy Waters; the gospel of Mahalia Jackson; the jazz of Charlie Parker; the folk music of Woody Guthrie; and country music from Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, while the first record he ever bought was by blues musician Sonny Terry. When Lonnie Donegan had a hit with "Rock Island Line", written by Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly), Morrison felt he was familiar with and able to connect with skiffle music as he had been hearing Lead Belly before that. Morrison's father bought him his first acoustic guitar when he was eleven, and he learned to play rudimentary chords from the song book The Carter Family Style, edited by Alan Lomax. In 1957, at the age of twelve, Morrison formed his first band, a skiffle group, "The Sputniks", named after the satellite, Sputnik 1, that had been launched in October of that year by the Soviets. In 1958, the band played at some of the local cinemas, and Morrison took the lead, contributing most of the singing and arranging. Other short-lived groups followed – at fourteen, he formed Midnight Special, another modified skiffle band and played at a school concert. Then, when he heard Jimmy Giuffre playing saxophone on "The Train and The River", he talked his father into buying him a saxophone, and took lessons in tenor sax and music reading. Now playing the saxophone, Morrison joined with various local bands, including one called Deanie Sands and the Javelins, with whom he played guitar and shared singing. The line-up of the band was lead vocalist Deanie Sands, guitarist George Jones, and drummer and vocalist Roy Kane. Later the four main musicians of the Javelins, with the addition of Wesley Black as pianist, became known as the Monarchs. Morrison attended Orangefield Boys Secondary School, leaving in July 1960 with no qualifications. As a member of a working-class community, he was expected to get a regular full-time job, so after several short apprenticeship positions, he settled into a job as a window cleaner—later alluded to in his songs "Cleaning Windows" and "Saint Dominic's Preview". However, he had been developing his musical interests from an early age and continued playing with the Monarchs part-time. Young Morrison also played with the Harry Mack Showband, the Great Eight, with his older workplace friend, Geordie (G. D.) Sproule, whom he later named as one of his biggest influences. At age 17, Morrison toured Europe for the first time with the Monarchs, now calling themselves the International Monarchs. This Irish showband, with Morrison playing saxophone, guitar and harmonica, in addition to back-up duty on bass and drums, toured seamy clubs and US Army bases in Scotland, England and Germany, often playing five sets a night. While in Germany, the band recorded a single, "Boozoo Hully Gully"/"Twingy Baby", under the name Georgie and the Monarchs. This was Morrison's first recording, taking place in November 1963 at Ariola Studios in Cologne with Morrison on saxophone; it made the lower reaches of the German charts. Upon returning to Belfast in November 1963, the group disbanded, so Morrison connected with Geordie Sproule again and played with him in the Manhattan Showband along with guitarist Herbie Armstrong. When Armstrong auditioned to play with Brian Rossi and the Golden Eagles, later known as the Wheels, Morrison went along and was hired as a blues singer. Them: 1964–1966 The roots of Them, the band that first broke Morrison on the international scene, came in April 1964 when he responded to an advert for musicians to play at a new R&B club at the Maritime Hotel in College Square North – an old Belfast hostel frequented by sailors. The new club needed a band for its opening night; however, Morrison had left the Golden Eagles (the group with which he had been performing at the time), so he created a new band out of the Gamblers, an East Belfast group formed by Ronnie Millings, Billy Harrison and Alan Henderson in 1962. Eric Wrixon, still a schoolboy, was the piano player and keyboardist. Morrison played saxophone and harmonica and shared vocals with Billy Harrison. They followed Eric Wrixon's suggestion for a new name, and the Gamblers morphed into Them, their name taken from the Fifties horror movie Them! The band's strong R&B performances at the Maritime attracted attention. Them performed without a routine and Morrison ad libbed, creating his songs live as he performed. While the band did covers, they also played some of Morrison's early songs, such as "Could You Would You", which he had written in Camden Town while touring with the Manhattan Showband. The debut of Morrison's "Gloria" took place on stage here. Sometimes, depending on his mood, the song could last up to twenty minutes. Morrison has said, "Them lived and died on the stage at the Maritime Hotel", believing the band did not manage to capture the spontaneity and energy of their live performances on their records. The statement also reflected the instability of the Them line-up, with numerous members passing through the ranks after the definitive Maritime period. Morrison and Henderson remained the only constants, and a less successful version of Them soldiered on after Morrison's departure. Dick Rowe of Decca Records became aware of the band's performances, and signed Them to a standard two-year contract. In that period, they released two albums and ten singles, with two more singles released after Morrison departed the band. They had three chart hits, "Baby, Please Don't Go" (1964), "Here Comes the Night" (1965), and "Mystic Eyes" (1965), but it was the B-side of "Baby, Please Don't Go", the garage band classic "Gloria", that went on to become a rock standard covered by Patti Smith, the Doors, the Shadows of Knight, Jimi Hendrix and many others. Building on the success of their singles in the United States, and riding on the back of the British Invasion, Them undertook a two-month tour of America in May and June 1966 that included a residency from 30 May to 18 June at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles. The Doors were the supporting act on the last week, and Morrison's influence on the Doors singer Jim Morrison was noted by John Densmore in his book Riders on the Storm. Brian Hinton relates how "Jim Morrison learned quickly from his near namesake's stagecraft, his apparent recklessness, his air of subdued menace, the way he would improvise poetry to a rock beat, even his habit of crouching down by the bass drum during instrumental breaks." On the final night, the two Morrisons and the two bands jammed together on "Gloria". Toward the end of the tour the band members became involved in a dispute with their manager, Decca Records' Phil Solomon, over the revenues paid to them; that, coupled with the expiry of their work visas, meant the band returned from America dejected. After two more concerts in Ireland, Them split up. Morrison concentrated on writing some of the songs that would appear on Astral Weeks, while the remnants of the band reformed in 1967 and relocated in America. Start of solo career with Bang Records and "Brown Eyed Girl": 1967 Bert Berns, Them's producer and composer of their 1965 hit "Here Comes the Night", persuaded Morrison to return to New York to record solo for his new label, Bang Records. Morrison flew over and signed a contract he had not fully studied. During a two-day recording session at A & R Studios starting 28 March 1967, he recorded eight songs, originally intended to be used as four singles. Instead, these songs were released as the album Blowin' Your Mind! without Morrison's consultation. He said he only became aware of the album's release when a friend mentioned that he had bought a copy. Morrison was unhappy with the album and said he "had a different concept of it". "Brown Eyed Girl", one of the songs from Blowin' Your Mind!, was released as a single in mid-June 1967, reaching number ten in the US charts. "Brown Eyed Girl" became Morrison's most-played song. The song spent a total of sixteen weeks on the chart. It is considered to be Morrison's signature song. An evaluation in 2015 of downloads since 2004 and airplay since 2010 had "Brown Eyed Girl" as the most popular song of the entire 1960s decade. In 2000, it was listed at No. 21 on the Rolling Stone/MTV list of 100 Greatest Pop Songs and as No. 49 on VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Rock Songs. In 2010, "Brown Eyed Girl" was ranked No. 110 on the Rolling Stone magazine list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In January 2007, "Brown Eyed Girl" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Following the death of Berns in 1967, Morrison became involved in a contract dispute with Berns' widow, Ilene Berns, that prevented him from performing on stage or recording in the New York area. The song "Big Time Operators", released in 1993, is thought to allude to his dealings with the New York music business during this period. He moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and faced personal and financial problems; he had "slipped into a malaise" and had trouble finding concert bookings. He regained his professional footing through the few gigs he could find, and started recording with Warner Bros. Records. Warner Bros bought out Morrison's Bang contract with a $20,000 cash transaction that took place in an abandoned warehouse on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan. A clause required Morrison to submit 36 original songs within a year to Berns' music publishing company. He recorded them in one session on an out-of-tune guitar, with lyrics about subjects including ringworm and sandwiches. Ilene Berns thought the songs were "nonsense" and did not use them. The throwaway compositions came to be known as the "revenge" songs, and did not see official release until the 2017 compilation The Authorized Bang Collection. Astral Weeks: 1968 Morrison's first album for Warner Bros Records was Astral Weeks (which he had already performed in several clubs around Boston), a mystical song cycle, often considered to be his best work and one of the best albums of all time. Morrison has said, "When Astral Weeks came out, I was starving, literally." Released in 1968, the album originally received an indifferent response from the public, but it eventually achieved critical acclaim. The album is described by AllMusic's William Ruhlmann as hypnotic, meditative, and as possessing a unique musical power. It has been compared to French Impressionism and mystical Celtic poetry. A 2004 Rolling Stone magazine review begins with the words: "This is music of such enigmatic beauty that thirty-five years after its release, Astral Weeks still defies easy, admiring description." Alan Light later described Astral Weeks as "like nothing he had done previously—and really, nothing anyone had done previously. Morrison sings of lost love, death, and nostalgia for childhood in the Celtic soul that would become his signature." It has been placed on many lists of best albums of all time. In the 1995 Mojo list of 100 Best Albums, it was listed as number two and was number nineteen on the Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003. In December 2009, it was voted the top Irish album of all time by a poll of leading Irish musicians conducted by Hot Press magazine. Moondance to Into the Music: 1970–1979 Morrison's third solo album, Moondance, which was released in 1970, became his first million selling album and reached number twenty-nine on the Billboard charts. The style of Moondance stood in contrast to that of Astral Weeks. Whereas Astral Weeks had a sorrowful and vulnerable tone, Moondance restored a more optimistic and cheerful message to his music, which abandoned the previous record's abstract folk compositions in favour of more formally composed songs and a lively rhythm and blues style he expanded on throughout his career. The title track, although not released in the US as a single until 1977, received heavy play in FM radio formats. "Into the Mystic" has also gained a wide following over the years. "Come Running", which reached the American Top 40, rescued Morrison from what seemed then as Hot 100 obscurity. Moondance was both well received and favourably reviewed. Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus had a combined full page review in Rolling Stone, saying Morrison now had "the striking imagination of a consciousness that is visionary in the strongest sense of the word." "That was the type of band I dig," Morrison said of the Moondance sessions. "Two horns and a rhythm section – they're the type of bands that I like best." He produced the album himself as he felt like nobody else knew what he wanted. Moondance was listed at number sixty-five on the Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In March 2007, Moondance was listed as number seventy-two on the NARM Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list of the "Definitive 200". Over the next few years, he released a succession of albums, starting with a second one in 1970. His Band and the Street Choir had a freer, more relaxed sound than Moondance, but not the perfection, in the opinion of critic Jon Landau, who felt like "a few more numbers with a gravity of 'Street Choir' would have made this album as perfect as anyone could have stood." It contained the hit single "Domino", which charted at number nine in the Billboard Hot 100. In 1971, he released another well-received album, Tupelo Honey. This album produced the hit single "Wild Night" that was later covered by John Mellencamp and Meshell Ndegeocello. The title song has a notably country-soul feel about it and the album ended with another country tune, "Moonshine Whiskey". Morrison said he originally intended to make an all country album. The recordings were as live as possible – after rehearsing the songs the musicians would enter the studio and play a whole set in one take. His co-producer, Ted Templeman, described this recording process as the "scariest thing I've ever seen. When he's got something together, he wants to put it down right away with no overdubbing." Released in 1972, Saint Dominic's Preview revealed Morrison's break from the more accessible style of his previous three albums and moving back towards the more daring, adventurous, and meditative aspects of Astral Weeks. The combination of two styles of music demonstrated a versatility not previously found in his earlier albums. Two songs, "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)" and "Redwood Tree", reached the Hot 100 singles chart. The songs "Listen to the Lion" and "Almost Independence Day" are each over ten minutes long and employ the type of poetic imagery not heard since Astral Weeks. It was his highest-charting album in the US until his Top Ten debut on Billboard 200 in 2008. He released his next album, Hard Nose the Highway, in 1973, receiving mixed, but mostly negative, reviews. The album contained the popular song "Warm Love" but otherwise has been largely dismissed critically. In a 1973 Rolling Stone review, it was described as: "psychologically complex, musically somewhat uneven and lyrically excellent." During a three-week vacation visit to Ireland in October 1973, Morrison wrote seven of the songs that made up his next album, Veedon Fleece. Though it attracted scant initial attention, its critical stature grew markedly over the years—with Veedon Fleece now often considered to be one of Morrison's most impressive and poetic works. In a 2008 Rolling Stone review, Andy Greene writes that when released in late 1974: "it was greeted by a collective shrug by the rock critical establishment" and concludes: "He's released many wonderful albums since, but he's never again hit the majestic heights of this one." "You Don't Pull No Punches, but You Don't Push the River", one of the album's side closers, exemplifies the long, hypnotic, cryptic Morrison with its references to visionary poet William Blake and to the seemingly Grail-like Veedon Fleece object. Morrison took three years to release a follow-up album. After a decade without taking time off, he said in an interview, he needed to get away from music completely and ceased listening to it for several months. Also suffering from writer's block, he seriously considered leaving the music business for good. Speculation that an extended jam session would be released either under the title Mechanical Bliss, or Naked in the Jungle, or Stiff Upper Lip, came to nothing, and Morrison's next album was A Period of Transition in 1977, a collaboration with Dr. John, who had appeared at The Last Waltz concert with Morrison in 1976. The album received a mild critical reception and marked the beginning of a very prolific period of song making. Into the Music: The album's last four songs, "Angelou", "And the Healing Has Begun", and "It's All in the Game/You Know What They're Writing About" are a veritable tour-de-force with Morrison summoning every vocal trick at his disposal from Angelou's climactic shouts to the sexually-charged, half-mumbled monologue in "And the Healing Has Begun" to the barely audible whisper that is the album's final sound. --Scott Thomas Review The following year, Morrison released Wavelength; it became at that time the fastest-selling album of his career and soon went gold. The title track became a modest hit, peaking at number forty-two. Making use of 1970s synthesisers, it mimics the sounds of the shortwave radio stations he listened to in his youth. The opening track, "Kingdom Hall" – the name given by Jehovah's Witnesses to their places of worship – evoked Morrison's childhood experiences of religion with his mother, and foretold the religious themes that were more evident on his next album, Into the Music. Considered by AllMusic as "the definitive post-classic-era Morrison", Into the Music, was released in the last year of the 1970s. Songs on this album for the first time alluded to the healing power of music, which became an abiding interest of Morrison's. "Bright Side of the Road" was a joyful, uplifting song that featured on the soundtrack of the movie, Michael. Common One to Avalon Sunset: 1980–1989 With his next album, the new decade found Morrison following his muse into uncharted territory and sometimes merciless reviews. In February 1980, Morrison and a group of musicians travelled to Super Bear, a studio in the French Alps, to record (on the site of a former abbey) what is considered to be the most controversial album in his discography; later "Morrison admitted his original concept was even more esoteric than the final product." The album, Common One, consisted of six songs; the longest, "Summertime in England", lasted fifteen and a half minutes and ended with the words "Can you feel the silence?". NME magazine's Paul Du Noyer called the album "colossally smug and cosmically dull; an interminable, vacuous and drearily egotistical stab at spirituality: Into the muzak." Greil Marcus, whose previous writings had been favourably inclined towards Morrison, critically remarked: "It's Van acting the part of the 'mystic poet' he thinks he's supposed to be." Morrison insisted the album was never "meant to be a commercial album." Biographer Clinton Heylin concludes: "He would not attempt anything so ambitious again. Henceforth every radical idea would be tempered by some notion of commerciality." Later, critics reassessed the album more favourably with the success of "Summertime in England". Lester Bangs wrote in 1982, "Van was making holy music even though he thought he was, and us rock critics had made our usual mistake of paying too much attention to the lyrics." Morrison's next album, Beautiful Vision, released in 1982, had him returning once again to the music of his Northern Irish roots. Well received by the critics and public, it produced a minor UK hit single, "Cleaning Windows", that referenced one of Morrison's first jobs after leaving school. Several other songs on the album, "Vanlose Stairway", "She Gives Me Religion", and the instrumental, "Scandinavia" show the presence of a new personal muse in his life: a Danish public relations agent, who would share Morrison's spiritual interests and serve as a steadying influence on him throughout most of the 1980s. "Scandinavia", with Morrison on piano, was nominated in the Best Rock Instrumental Performance category for the 25th Annual Grammy Awards. Much of the music Morrison released throughout the 1980s continued to focus on the themes of spirituality and faith. His 1983 album, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, was "a move towards creating music for meditation" with synthesisers, uilleann pipes and flute sounds, and four of the tracks were instrumentals. The titling of the album and the presence of the instrumentals were noted to be indicative of Morrison's long-held belief that "it's not the words one uses but the force of conviction behind those words that matters." During this period of time, Morrison had studied Scientology and gave "Special Thanks" to L. Ron Hubbard on the album's credits. A Sense of Wonder, Morrison's 1985 album, pulled together the spiritual themes contained in his last four albums, which were defined in a Rolling Stone review as: "rebirth (Into the Music), deep contemplation and meditation (Common One); ecstasy and humility (Beautiful Vision); and blissful, mantra like languor (Inarticulate Speech of the Heart)." The single "Tore Down a la Rimbaud" was a reference to Rimbaud and an earlier bout of writer's block that Morrison had encountered in 1974. In 1985, Morrison also wrote the musical score for the movie Lamb starring Liam Neeson. Morrison's 1986 release, No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, was said to contain a "genuine holiness ... and musical freshness that needs to be set in context to understand." Critical response was favourable with a Sounds reviewer calling the album "his most intriguingly involved since Astral Weeks" and "Morrison at his most mystical, magical best." It contains the song "In the Garden" that, according to Morrison, had a "definite meditation process which is a 'form' of transcendental meditation as its basis. It's not TM". He entitled the album as a rebuttal to media attempts to place him in various creeds. In an interview in the Observer he told Anthony Denselow: After releasing the "No Guru" album, Morrison's music appeared less gritty and more adult contemporary with the well-received 1987 album, Poetic Champions Compose, considered to be one of his recording highlights of the 1980s. The romantic ballad from this album, "Someone Like You", has been featured subsequently in the soundtracks of several movies, including 1995's French Kiss, and in 2001, both Someone Like You and Bridget Jones's Diary. In 1988, he released Irish Heartbeat, a collection of traditional Irish folk songs recorded with the Irish group the Chieftains, which reached number 18 in the UK album charts. The title song, "Irish Heartbeat", was originally recorded on his 1983 album Inarticulate Speech of the Heart. The 1989 album, Avalon Sunset, which featured the hit duet with Cliff Richard "Whenever God Shines His Light" and the ballad "Have I Told You Lately" (on which "earthly love transmutes into that for God" (Hinton)), reached 13 on the UK album chart. Although considered to be a deeply spiritual album, it also contained "Daring Night", which "deals with full, blazing sex, whatever its churchy organ and gentle lilt suggest"(Hinton). Morrison's familiar themes of "God, woman, his childhood in Belfast and those enchanted moments when time stands still" were prominent in the songs. He can be heard calling out the change of tempo at the end of this song, repeating the numbers "1 – 4" to cue the chord changes (the first and fourth chord in the key of the music). He often completed albums in two days, frequently releasing first takes. The Best of Van Morrison to Back on Top: 1990–1999 The early to middle 1990s were commercially successful for Morrison with three albums reaching the top five of the UK charts, sold-out concerts, and a more visible public profile; but this period also marked a decline in the critical reception to his work. The decade began with the release of The Best of Van Morrison; compiled by Morrison himself, the album was focused on his hit singles, and became a multi-platinum success remaining a year and a half on the UK charts. AllMusic determined it to be "far and away the best selling album of his career." In 1991 he wrote and produced four songs for Tom Jones released on the Carrying A Torch album and performed a duet with Bob Dylan on BBC Arena special. The 1994 live double album A Night in San Francisco received favourable reviews as well as commercial success by reaching number eight on the UK charts. 1995's Days Like This also had large sales – though the critical reviews were not always favourable. This period also saw a number of side projects, including the live jazz performances of 1996's How Long Has This Been Going On, from the same year Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison, and 2000's The Skiffle Sessions – Live in Belfast 1998, all of which found Morrison paying tribute to his early musical influences. In 1997, Morrison released The Healing Game. The album received mixed reviews, with the lyrics being described as "tired" and "dull", though critic Greil Marcus praised the musical complexity of the album by saying: "It carries the listener into a musical home so perfect and complete he or she might have forgotten that music could call up such a place, and then populate it with people, acts, wishes, fears." The following year, Morrison finally released some of his previously unissued studio recordings in a two-disc set, The Philosopher's Stone. His next release, 1999's Back on Top, achieved a modest success, being his highest-charting album in the US since 1978's Wavelength. Down the Road to Keep It Simple: 2000–2009 Van Morrison continued to record and tour in the 2000s, often performing two or three times a week. He formed his own independent label, Exile Productions Ltd, which enables him to maintain full production control of each album he records, which he then delivers as a finished product to the recording label that he chooses, for marketing and distribution. In 2001, nine months into a tour with Linda Gail Lewis promoting their collaboration You Win Again, Lewis left the tour, later filing claims against Morrison for unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination. Both claims were later withdrawn, and Morrison's solicitor said, "(Mr Morrison's) pleased that these claims have finally been withdrawn. He accepted a full apology and comprehensive retraction which represents a complete vindication of his stance from the outset. Miss Lewis has given a full and categorical apology and retraction to Mr Morrison." Lewis' legal representative Christine Thompson said both parties had agreed to the terms of the settlement. The album Down the Road, released in May 2002, received a good critical reception and proved to be his highest-charting album in the US since 1972's Saint Dominic's Preview. It had a nostalgic tone, with its fifteen tracks representing the various musical genres Morrison had previously covered—including R&B, blues, country and folk; one of the tracks was written as a tribute to his late father George, who had played a pivotal role in nurturing his early musical tastes. Morrison's 2005 album, Magic Time, debuted at number twenty-five on the US Billboard 200 charts upon its May release, some forty years after Morrison first entered the public's eye as the frontman of Them. Rolling Stone listed it as number seventeen on The Top 50 Records of 2005. Also in July 2005, Morrison was named by Amazon as one of their top twenty-five all-time best-selling artists and inducted into the Amazon.com Hall of Fame. Later in the year, Morrison also donated a previously unreleased studio track to a charity album, Hurricane Relief: Come Together Now, which raised money for relief efforts intended for Gulf Coast victims devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Morrison composed the song, "Blue and Green", featuring Foggy Lyttle on guitar. This song was released in 2007 on the album, The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3 and also as a single in the UK. Van Morrison was a headline act at the international Celtic music festival, The Hebridean Celtic Festival in Stornoway, Outer Hebrides in the summer of 2005. He released an album with a country music theme, entitled Pay the Devil, on 7 March 2006 and appeared at the Ryman Auditorium, where the tickets sold out immediately after they went on sale. Pay the Devil debuted at number twenty-six on the Billboard 200 and peaked at number seven on Top Country Albums. Amazon Best of 2006 Editor's Picks in Country listed the country album at number ten in December 2006. Still promoting the country album, Morrison's performance as the headline act on the first night of the Austin City Limits Music Festival on 15 September 2006 was reviewed by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the top ten shows of the 2006 festival. In November 2006, a limited edition album, Live at Austin City Limits Festival, was issued by Exile Productions, Ltd. A later deluxe CD/DVD release of Pay the Devil, in the summer of 2006, contained tracks from the Ryman performance. In October 2006, Morrison had released his first commercial DVD, Live at Montreux 1980/1974, with concerts taken from two separate appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival. A new double CD compilation album, The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3, was released in June 2007 containing thirty-one tracks, some of which were previously unreleased. Morrison selected the tracks, which ranged from the 1993 album Too Long in Exile to the song "Stranded" from the 2005 album Magic Time. On 3 September 2007, Morrison's complete catalogue of albums from 1971 through 2002 were made available exclusively at the iTunes Store in Europe and Australia and during the first week of October 2007, the albums became available at the US iTunes Store. Still on Top – The Greatest Hits, a thirty-seven-track double CD compilation album, was released on 22 October 2007 in the UK on the Polydor label. On 29 October 2007, the album charted at number two on the Official UK Top 75 Albums—his highest UK charting. The November release in the US and Canada contains twenty-one selected tracks. The hits released on albums with the copyrights owned by Morrison as Exile Productions Ltd. — 1971 and later – had been remastered in 2007. Keep It Simple, Morrison's 33rd studio album of completely new material, was released by Exile/Polydor Records on 17 March 2008 in the UK and released by Exile/Lost Highway Records in the US and Canada on 1 April 2008. It comprised eleven self-penned tracks. Morrison promoted the album with a short US tour including an appearance at the SXSW music conference, and a UK concert broadcast on BBC Radio 2. In the first week of release Keep It Simple debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at number ten, Morrison's first Top Ten charting in the US. Born to Sing to Three Chords: 2010–2020 Morrison released two albums in the first half of the decade, followed by a further six in just five years, his productivity increasing noticeably as he turned 70. Born to Sing: No Plan B was released on 2 October 2012 on Blue Note Records. The album was recorded in Belfast, Morrison's birthplace and hometown. The first single from this album, "Open the Door (To Your Heart)", was released on 24 August 2012. A selection of Morrison's lyrics, Lit Up Inside, was published by City Lights Books in the US and Faber & Faber in the UK. The book was released on 2 October 2014 and an evening of words and music commenced at the Lyric Theatre, London on 17 November 2014 to mark its launch. Morrison himself selected his best and most iconic lyrics from a catalog of 50 years of writing. In 2015, Morrison sold the rights to most of his catalogue to Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music. This resulted in 33 of his albums being made available as digital releases and through all streaming services for the first time that August. His first album recorded with Sony under the new contract was Duets: Re-working the Catalogue, released on 24 March 2015 on the subsidiary, RCA Records. Morrison's 70th birthday in 2015 was marked by celebrations in his hometown of Belfast, commencing with BBC Radio Ulster presenting programs including "Top 70 Van Tracks" between 26 and 28 August. As the headline act ending the Eastside Arts Festival, Morrison performed two 70th-birthday concerts on Cyprus Avenue on his birthday 31 August. The first of the concerts was broadcast live on BBC Radio Ulster and a 60-minute BBC film of highlights from the concerts, entitled Up On Cyprus Avenue, was first shown on 4 September. The following year, on 30 September, Morrison released Keep Me Singing, his 36th studio album. "Too Late", the first single, was released on the same day. The songs are twelve originals and one cover and the album represents his first release of originals since Born to Sing: No Plan B in 2012. A short tour of the U.S. followed with six dates in October 2016, followed by a short tour of the U.K. with eight dates in October–December 2016, including a London show at The O2 Arena on 30 October. The U.S. tour resumed in January 2017 with five new dates in Las Vegas and Clearwater, Florida. Morrison's album Roll with the Punches was released on 22 September 2017. That July, he and Universal Music Group were sued by former professional wrestler Billy Two Rivers for using his likeness on its cover and promotional material without his permission. On 4 August, Two Rivers' lawyer said the parties had reached a preliminary agreement to settle the matter out of court. He released his 38th studio album, Versatile, on 1 December 2017. It features covers of nine classic jazz standards and seven original songs including his arrangement of the traditional "Skye Boat Song". He quickly followed up with his 39th studio album, You're Driving Me Crazy, released on 27 April 2018 via Sony Legacy Recordings. The album features a collaboration with Joey DeFrancesco on a mixture of blues and jazz classics that include eight Morrison originals from his back catalog. In October 2018, Morrison announced that his 40th studio album, The Prophet Speaks, would be released by Caroline International on 7 December 2018. A year later, in November 2019, he released his 41st studio album, Three Chords & the Truth. On 5 March 2020 Faber and Faber published Keep 'Er Lit, the second volume of Van Morrison's selected lyrics. It features a foreword of fellow poet Paul Muldoon and comprehends 120 songs from across his career. In November 2020 Morrison and Eric Clapton collaborated on a single called "Stand and Deliver", whose profits from sales will be donated to Morrison's Lockdown Financial Hardship Fund. Morrison will release a double album, Moving on Skiffle, in March 2023, according to his official website. Coronavirus controversy During the COVID-19 pandemic, Morrison made numerous statements against social distancing measures which affected live music events, and made calls to "fight pseudo-science". Continuing with this narrative, Morrison released three new songs in September 2020, which had messages of protest against COVID-19 lockdowns in the UK. Morrison accused the UK government of "taking our freedom". He had performed socially distanced concerts previously, but said that the shows were not a sign of "compliance". There have been calls in Belfast for Belfast City Council to revoke his Freedom of the City honour following the intervention: city councillor Emmet McDonough-Brown said that his lyrics were "undermining the guidance in place to protect lives and are ignorant of established science as we grapple with Covid-19." In addition, the Northern Ireland health minister, Robin Swann, accused Morrison of smearing public health practitioners and called Morrison's anti-lockdown songs "dangerous". In November 2021, Swann sued Morrison for defamation, over his comments that Swann was a "fraud" and "very dangerous" during COVID-19 restrictions in 2020. In 2022, Morrison issued legal proceedings against Swann over an opinion piece in Rolling Stone magazine that was critical of Morrison's anti-lockdown songs and actions. 2020s In March 2021, Morrison announced that his 42nd album, Latest Record Project, Volume 1, would be released by Exile Productions and BMG on 7 May. The 28-track album includes songs such as "Why Are You on Facebook?", "They Own The Media" and "Western Man". In addition to digitally, it was released as a 2-CD set and on triple vinyl. The album marked a return to the UK Top Ten for Morrison, making the 2020s the fourth consecutive decade in which he has achieved such success. The following year, What's It Gonna Take? explored many of the same themes, but was less successful commercially. In 2023, he returned to his roots with Moving on Skiffle. Van Morrison's songs were used extensively in Kenneth Branagh's Oscar-winning 2021 film Belfast: Morrison received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Down to Joy". Several tracks were also featured in Cherry, released the same year. Live performances 1970s By 1972, after being a performer for nearly ten years, Morrison began experiencing stage fright when performing for audiences of thousands, as opposed to the hundreds he had experienced in his early career. He became anxious on stage and had difficulty establishing eye contact with the audience. He once said in an interview about performing on stage, "I dig singing the songs but there are times when it's pretty agonising for me to be out there." After a brief break from music, he started appearing in clubs, regaining his ability to perform live, albeit with smaller audiences. The 1974 live double album It's Too Late to Stop Now has been called one of the greatest recordings of a live concert and has appeared on lists of greatest live albums of all time. Biographer Johnny Rogan wrote, "Morrison was in the midst of what was arguably his greatest phase as a performer." Performances on the album were from tapes made during a three-month tour of the US and Europe in 1973 with the backing group the Caledonia Soul Orchestra. Soon after recording the album, Morrison restructured the Caledonia Soul Orchestra into a smaller unit, the Caledonia Soul Express. On Thanksgiving Day 1976, Morrison performed at the farewell concert for the Band. It was his first live performance in several years, and he considered skipping his appearance until the last minute, even refusing to go on stage when they announced his name. His manager, Harvey Goldsmith, said he "literally kicked him out there." Morrison was on good terms with the members of the Band as near-neighbours in Woodstock, and they had the shared experience of stage fright. At the concert, he performed two songs. His first was a rendition of the classic Irish song "Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral". His second song was "Caravan", from his 1970 album Moondance. Greil Marcus, in attendance at the concert, wrote: "Van Morrison turned the show around ... singing to the rafters and ... burning holes in the floor. It was a triumph, and as the song ended Van began to kick his leg into the air out of sheer exuberance and he kicked his way right offstage like a Rockette. The crowd had given him a fine welcome and they cheered wildly when he left." The filmed concert served as the basis for Martin Scorsese's 1978 film, The Last Waltz. During his association with the Band, Morrison acquired the nicknames "Belfast Cowboy" and "Van the Man". On the Band's album Cahoots, as part of the duet "4% Pantomime" that Morrison sings with Richard Manuel (and that he co-wrote with Robbie Robertson), Manuel addresses him, "Oh, Belfast Cowboy". When he leaves the stage after performing "Caravan" on The Last Waltz, Robertson calls out "Van the Man!" 1990s On 21 July 1990, Morrison joined many other guests for Roger Waters' massive performance of The Wall – Live in Berlin. He sang "Comfortably Numb" with Roger Waters and several members from The Band: Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko. At concert's end, he and the other performers sang "The Tide Is Turning". The live audience was estimated at between three hundred thousand and half a million people, and it was broadcast live on television as well. Morrison performed before an estimated audience of sixty to eighty thousand people when US President Bill Clinton visited Belfast, Northern Ireland on 30 November 1995. His song "Days Like This" had become the official anthem for the Northern Irish peace movement. 2000s and live albums Van Morrison continued performing concerts throughout the year, rather than touring. Playing few of his best-known songs in concert, he has firmly resisted relegation to a nostalgia act. During a 2006 interview, he told Paul Sexton: On 7 and 8 November 2008, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, Morrison performed the entire Astral Weeks album live for the first time. The Astral Weeks band featured guitarist Jay Berliner, who had played on the album that was released forty years previously in November 1968. Also featured on piano was Roger Kellaway. A live album entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl resulted from these two performances. The new live album on CD was released on 24 February 2009, followed by a DVD from the performances. The DVD, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film was released via Amazon Exclusive on 19 May 2009. In February and March 2009, Morrison returned to the US for Astral Weeks Live concerts, interviews and TV appearances with concerts at Madison Square Garden and at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. He was interviewed by Don Imus on his Imus in the Morning radio show and put in guest appearances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Live with Regis and Kelly. Morrison continued with the Astral Weeks performances with two concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London in April and then returned to California in May 2009 performing the Astral Weeks songs at the Hearst Greek Theatre in Berkeley, the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, California and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Morrison filmed the concerts at the Orpheum Theatre so they could be viewed by Farrah Fawcett, confined to bed with cancer and thus unable to attend the concerts. In addition to It's Too Late to Stop Now and Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Morrison has released three other live albums: Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast in 1984; A Night in San Francisco in 1994 that Rolling Stone magazine felt stood out as: "the culmination of a career's worth of soul searching that finds Morrison's eyes turned toward heaven and his feet planted firmly on the ground"; and The Skiffle Sessions – Live in Belfast 1998 recorded with Lonnie Donegan and Chris Barber and released in 2000. Morrison was scheduled to perform at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary concert on 30 October 2009, but cancelled. In an interview on 26 October, Morrison told his host, Don Imus, he had planned to play "a couple of songs" with Eric Clapton (who had cancelled on 22 October due to gallstone surgery), and they would do something else together at "some other stage of the game". 2010s to present Morrison performed for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on 4 August 2010 as the headline act for the fundraiser and scheduled as second day headliner at the Feis 2011 Festival in London's Finsbury Park on 19 June 2011. He appeared in concert at Odyssey Arena in Belfast on 3 February and at the O2 in Dublin on 4 February 2012. He appeared at the 46th Montreux Jazz Festival as a headliner on 7 July 2012. In 2014, Morrison's former high school Orangefield High School, formerly known as Orangefield Boys' Secondary School closed its doors permanently. To mark the school's closure Morrison performed in the school assembly hall for three nights of concerts from 22 to 24 August. The performance on 22 August was exclusively for former teachers and pupils and the two remaining concerts were for members of the public The first night of the Nocturne Live concerts at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, UK on 25 June 2015, featured Morrison and Grammy Award-winning American Jazz vocalist and songwriter Gregory Porter. In June 2021, The Times noted that "fittingly for someone who has been so vocally opposed to the lockdown" resulting from the 2020–2021 coronavirus pandemic, "Van Morrison played one of the first big-scale concerts in London since events, albeit tentatively, started up again." Will Hodgkinson wrote that the show "was as good an argument for the return of live music as you could wish for." Collaborations Van Morrison has collaborated extensively with a variety of artists throughout his career. He has worked with many legends in soul and blues, including John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles, George Benson, Eric Clapton, Bobby Womack, and BB King, along with The Chieftains, Gregory Porter, Micheal Bublé, Joss Stone, Natalie Cole and Mark Knopfler. 1980s Morrison and the internationally renowned Irish folk band The Chieftains recorded the album Irish Heartbeat (1988). Consisting of Irish folk songs, it entered the UK Top 20. "Whenever God Shines His Light", on Avalon Sunset (1989), is a duet with Cliff Richard, which charted at No. 20 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 3 on the Irish Singles Chart. AllMusic critic Jason Ankeny found it to be a "standout opener" on the album. For critic Patrick Humphries, it was "the most manifest example of Morrison's Christian commitment," and while "not one of Morrison's most outstanding songs" it works as "a testament of faith". 1990s The decade saw an upsurge in Van Morrison's collaborations. He developed a close association with two vocal talents at opposite ends of their careers: Georgie Fame (with whom Morrison had already worked occasionally) lent his voice and Hammond organ skills to Morrison's band; and Brian Kennedy's vocals complemented the grizzled voice of Morrison, both in studio and live performances. He reunited with The Chieftains on their 1995 album, The Long Black Veil, with a reworking of Morrison's song "Have I Told You Lately" winning the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. He produced, and was featured on, several tracks with blues legend John Lee Hooker on Hooker's 1997 album, Don't Look Back. This album won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album in 1998, and the title track "Don't Look Back", a duet with Morrison, took the Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. The project capped a series of Morrison and Hooker collaborations that began in 1971 when they performed a duet on the title track of Hooker's 1972 album Never Get Out of These Blues Alive. On this album, Hooker also recorded a cover of Morrison's "T.B. Sheets". Morrison collaborated with Tom Jones on his 1999 album Reload, when the pair sang on Morrison's song, "Sometimes We Cry". 2000s to present Morrison delivered vocals on "The Last Laugh" on Mark Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelphia (2000), and that year also recorded a classic country music duet album, You Win Again with Linda Gail Lewis. The album received a three-star review from AllMusic, who called it "a roots effort that never sounds studied". In 2004, Morrison was one of the guests on Ray Charles' album Genius Loves Company. The pair performed Morrison's "Crazy Love". In 2015 he recorded an album of collaborations, Duets: Re-working the Catalogue, which featured, among others, Steve Winwood, Taj Mahal, Mavis Staples, Mick Hucknall, and Morrison's daughter Shana Morrison. Morrison also developed a partnership with Joey DeFrancesco, with the pair collaborating on a number of albums. During the COVID pandemic Morrison recorded tracks with Eric Clapton criticizing harm-reduction measures. Artistry Vocals Featuring his characteristic growl—a mix of folk, blues, soul, jazz, gospel, and Ulster Scots Celtic influences—Morrison is widely considered by many rock historians to be one of the most unusual and influential vocalists in the history of rock and roll. Critic Greil Marcus has said "no white man sings like Van Morrison." In his 2010 book, Marcus wrote, "As a physical fact, Morrison may have the richest and most expressive voice pop music has produced since Elvis Presley, and with a sense of himself as an artist that Elvis was always denied." As Morrison began live performances of the 40-year-old album Astral Weeks in 2008, there were comparisons to his youthful voice of 1968. His early voice was described as "flinty and tender, beseeching and plaintive". Forty years later, the difference in his vocal range and power were noticeable but reviewers and critic's comments were favourable: "Morrison's voice has expanded to fill his frame; a deeper, louder roar than the blue-eyed soul voice of his youth – softer on the diction – but none the less impressively powerful." Morrison also commented on the changes in his approach to singing: "The approach now is to sing from lower down [the diaphragm] so I do not ruin my voice. Before, I sang in the upper area of my throat, which tends to wreck the vocal cords over time. Singing from lower in the belly allows my resonance to carry far. I can stand four feet from a mic and be heard quite resonantly." Songwriting and lyrics Morrison has written hundreds of songs during his career with a recurring theme reflecting a nostalgic yearning for the carefree days of his childhood in Belfast. Some of his song titles derive from familiar locations in his childhood, such as "Cyprus Avenue" (a nearby street), "Orangefield" (the boys school he attended), and "On Hyndford Street" (where he was born). Also frequently present in Morrison's best love songs is a blending of the sacred-profane as evidenced in "Into the Mystic" and "So Quiet in Here". Beginning with his 1979 album, Into the Music, and the song "And the Healing Has Begun", a frequent theme of his music and lyrics has been based on his belief in the healing power of music combined with a form of mystic Christianity. This theme has become one of the predominant qualities of his work. His lyrics show an influence of the visionary poets William Blake and W. B. Yeats and others such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Biographer Brian Hinton believes "like any great poet from Blake to Seamus Heaney he takes words back to their origins in magic ... Indeed, Morrison is returning poetry to its earliest roots – as in Homer or Old English epics like Beowulf or the Psalms or folk song – in all of which words and music combine to form a new reality." Another biographer, John Collis, believes Morrison's style of jazz singing and repeating phrases preclude his lyrics from being regarded as poetry or as Collis asserts: "he is more likely to repeat a phrase like a mantra, or burst into scat singing. The words may often be prosaic, and so can hardly be poetry." Morrison has described his songwriting method by remarking: "I write from a different place. I do not even know what it is called or if it has a name. It just comes and I sculpt it, but it is also a lot of hard work doing the sculpting." Performance style Critic Greil Marcus argues that, given the truly distinctive breadth and complexity of Morrison's work, it is almost impossible to cast his work among that of others: "Morrison remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of rock & roll, a singer who cannot be pinned down, dismissed, or fitted into anyone's expectations." Or in the words of Jay Cocks: "He extends himself only to express himself. Alone among rock's great figures—and even in that company he is one of the greatest—Morrison is adamantly inward. And unique. Although he freely crosses musical boundaries— R&B, Celtic melodies, jazz, rave-up rock, hymns, down-and-dirty blues—he can unfailingly be found in the same strange place: on his own wavelength." His spiritually themed style of music first came into full expression with Astral Weeks in 1968 and he was noted to have remained a "master of his transcendental craft" in 2009 while performing the Astral Weeks songs live. This musical art form was based on stream of consciousness songwriting and emotional vocalising of lyrics that have no basis in normal structure or symmetry. His live performances are dependent on building dynamics with spontaneity between himself and his band, whom he controls with hand gestures throughout, sometimes signalling impromptu solos from a selected band member. The music and vocals build towards a hypnotic and trance-like state that depends on in-the-moment creativity. Scott Foundas with LA Weekly wrote "he seeks to transcend the apparent boundaries of any given song; to achieve a total freedom of form; to take himself, his band and the audience on a journey whose destination is anything but known." Greil Marcus wrote an entire book devoted to examining the moments in Morrison's music where he reaches this state of transcendence and explains: "But in his music the same sense of escape from ordinary limits – a reach for, or the achievement of, a kind of violent transcendence – can come from hesitations, repetitions of words or phrases, pauses, the way a musical change by another musician is turned by Morrison as a bandleader or seized on by him as a singer and changed into a sound that becomes an event in and of itself. In these moments, the self is left behind, and the sound, that "yarragh," becomes the active agent: a musical person, with its own mind, its own body." A book reviewer further described it as "This transcendent moment of music when the song and the singer are one thing not two, neither dependent on the other or separate from the other but melded to the other like one, like breath and life ..." Morrison has said he believes in the jazz improvisational technique of never performing a song the same way twice and except for the unique rendition of the Astral Weeks songs live, doesn't perform a concert from a preconceived set list. Morrison has said he prefers to perform at smaller venues or symphony halls noted for their good acoustics. His ban against alcoholic beverages, which made entertainment news during 2008, was an attempt to prevent the disruptive and distracting movement of audience members leaving their seats during the performances. In a 2009 interview, Morrison stated: "I do not consciously aim to take the listener anywhere. If anything, I aim to take myself there in my music. If the listener catches the wavelength of what I am saying or singing, or gets whatever point whatever line means to them, then I guess as a writer I may have done a day's work." Genre The music of Van Morrison has encompassed many genres since his early days as a blues and R&B singer in Belfast. Over the years he has recorded songs from a varying list of genres drawn from many influences and interests. As well as blues and R&B, his compositions and covers have moved between pop music, jazz, rock, folk, country, gospel, Irish folk and traditional, big band, skiffle, rock and roll, new age, classical and sometimes spoken word ("Coney Island") and instrumentals. Morrison defines himself as a soul singer. Morrison's music has been described by music journalist Alan Light as "Celtic soul", or what biographer Brian Hinton referred to as a new alchemy called "Caledonian soul." Another biographer, Ritchie Yorke quoted Morrison as believing that he has "the spirit of Caledonia in his soul and his music reflects it." According to Yorke, Morrison claimed to have discovered "a certain quality of soul" when he first visited Scotland (his Belfast ancestors were of Ulster Scots descent) and Morrison has said he believes there is some connection between soul music and Caledonia. Yorke said Morrison "discovered several years after he first began composing music that some of his songs lent themselves to a unique major modal scale (without sevenths) which of course is the same scale as that used by bagpipe players and old Irish and Scottish folk music." 'Caledonia' theme The name "Caledonia" has played a prominent role in Morrison's life and career. Biographer Ritchie Yorke had pointed out already by 1975 that Morrison has referred to Caledonia so many times in his career that he "seems to be obsessed with the word". In his 2009 biography, Erik Hage found "Morrison seemed deeply interested in his paternal Scottish roots during his early career, and later in the ancient countryside of England, hence his repeated use of the term Caledonia (an ancient Roman name for Scotland/northern Britain)". As well as being his daughter Shana's middle name, it is the name of his first production company, his studio, his publishing company, two of his backing groups, his parents' record store in Fairfax, California in the 1970s, and he also recorded a cover of the song "Caldonia" (with the name spelled "Caledonia") in 1974. Morrison used "Caledonia" in what has been called a quintessential Van Morrison moment in the song, "Listen to the Lion" with the lyrics, "And we sail, and we sail, way up to Caledonia". Morrison used "Caledonia" as a mantra in the live performance of the song "Astral Weeks" recorded at the two Hollywood Bowl concerts. As late as 2016's Keep Me Singing album, he recorded a self-penned instrumental entitled "Caledonia Swing." Influence Morrison's influence can readily be heard in the music of a diverse array of major artists. According to The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001), "his influence among rock singers/song writers is unrivaled by any living artist outside of that other prickly legend, Bob Dylan. Echoes of Morrison's rugged literateness and his gruff, feverish emotive vocals can be heard in latter day icons ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Elvis Costello". He has influenced an array of top tier performers, including U2, with Bono recalling, "I am in awe of a musician like Van Morrison. I had to stop listening to Van Morrison records about six months before we made The Unforgettable Fire because I didn't want his very original soul voice to overpower my own". He has inspired John Mellencamp ("Wild Night"); Jim Morrison; Joan Armatrading (the only musical influence she will acknowledge); Nick Cave; Rod Stewart; Tom Petty; Rickie Lee Jones (recognises both Laura Nyro and Van Morrison as the main influences on her career); Elton John; Graham Parker; Sinéad O'Connor; Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy; Bob Seger ("I know Bruce Springsteen was very much affected by Van Morrison, and so was I") Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners ("Jackie Wilson Said"); Jimi Hendrix ("Gloria"); Jeff Buckley ("The Way Young Lovers Do", "Sweet Thing"); Nick Drake; and numerous others, including Counting Crows (their "sha-la-la" sequence in Mr Jones is a tribute to Morrison). Morrison's influence reaches into the country music genre, with Hal Ketchum acknowledging, "He (Van Morrison) was a major influence in my life." Ray Manzarek of the Doors described Van Morrison as "our [the Doors] favourite singer". Morrison has typically been supportive of other artists, often willingly sharing the stage with them during his concerts. On the live album A Night in San Francisco, he had as his special guests, among others, his childhood idols: Jimmy Witherspoon, John Lee Hooker and Junior Wells. Although he often expresses his displeasure (in interviews and songs) with the music industry and the media in general, he has been instrumental in promoting the careers of many other musicians and singers, such as James Hunter, and fellow Belfast-born brothers Brian and Bap Kennedy. He has also influenced the visual arts: the German painter Johannes Heisig created a series of lithographs illustrating the book In the Garden – for Van Morrison, published by Städtische Galerie Sonneberg, Germany, in 1997. Next generation Morrison's influence on a younger generation of singer-songwriters is pervasive. The list of such singer-songwriters influenced by Morrison includes Irish singer Damien Rice, who has been described as on his way to becoming the "natural heir to Van Morrison"; Ray Lamontagne; James Morrison; Paolo Nutini; Eric Lindell David Gray and Ed Sheeran are also several of the younger artists influenced by Morrison. Glen Hansard of the Irish rock band the Frames (who lists Van Morrison as being part of his holy trinity with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen) commonly covers his songs in concert. American rock band the Wallflowers have covered "Into the Mystic". Canadian blues-rock singer Colin James also covers the song frequently at his concerts. Actor and musician Robert Pattinson has said Van Morrison was his "influence for doing music in the first place". Morrison has shared the stage with Northern Irish singer-songwriter Duke Special, who admits Morrison has been a big influence. Recognition and legacy Morrison has received several major music awards in his career, including two Grammy Awards, with five additional nominations (1982–2004); inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (January 1993), the Songwriters Hall of Fame (June 2003), and the Irish Music Hall of Fame (September 1999); and a Brit Award (February 1994). In addition he has received civil awards: an OBE (June 1996) and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1996). He has honorary doctorates from the University of Ulster (1992) and from Queen's University Belfast (July 2001). Halls of Fame The Hall of Fame inductions began in 1993 with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Morrison was the first living inductee not to attend his own ceremony, – Robbie Robertson from the Band accepted the award on his behalf. When Morrison became the initial musician inducted into the Irish Music Hall of Fame, Bob Geldof presented Morrison with the award. Morrison's third induction was into the Songwriters Hall of Fame for "recognition of his unique position as one of the most important songwriters of the past century". Ray Charles presented the award, following a performance during which the pair performed Morrison's "Crazy Love" from the album Moondance. Morrison's BRIT Award was for his Outstanding Contribution to British Music. Former Beirut hostage John McCarthy presented the award; while testifying to the importance of Morrison's song "Wonderful Remark" McCarthy called it "a song ... which was very important to us." Three of Morrison's songs appear in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll: "Brown Eyed Girl", "Madame George" and "Moondance". The Songwriter's Hall of Fame awarded Morrison the Johnny Mercer Award on 18 June 2015 at their 46th Annual Induction and Awards Dinner in New York City. Civil awards and honours Morrison received two civil awards in 1996: he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to music, and was also recognized with an award from the French government which made him an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Along with these state awards he has two honorary degrees in music: an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of Ulster, and an honorary doctorate in music from Queen's University in his hometown of Belfast. In 2013, Morrison was awarded the Freedom of Belfast, the highest honour the city can bestow. On 15 November 2013, Morrison became the 79th recipient of the award, presented at the Waterfront Hall for his career achievements. After receiving the award, he performed a free concert for residents who won tickets from a lottery system. In August 2014, a "Van Morrison Trail" was established in East Belfast by Morrison in partnership with the Connswater Community Greenway. It is a self-guided trail, which over the course of leads to eight places that were important to Morrison and inspirational to his music. Morrison was made a Knight Bachelor in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2015 for services to the music industry and to tourism in Northern Ireland. The ceremony was performed by Prince Charles. Industry recognition Other awards include an Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1995, the BMI ICON award in October 2004 for Morrison's "enduring influence on generations of music makers", and an Oscar Wilde: Honouring Irish Writing in Film award in 2007 for his contribution to over fifty films, presented by Al Pacino, who compared Morrison to Oscar Wilde – both "visionaries who push boundaries". He was voted the Best International Male Singer of 2007 at the inaugural International Awards in Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, London. In 2010, Morrison was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On 2 September 2014, Morrison was presented with the Legend award at the GQ Men of the Year ceremony at Royal Opera House in London. On 13 October 2014, Morrison received his fifth BMI Million-Air Award for 11 million radio plays of the song "Brown Eyed Girl", making it one of the Top 10 Songs of all time on US radio and television. Morrison has also received Million-Air awards for "Have I Told You Lately". In 2017, the Americana Music Association gave Van Morrison the Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting. Morrison was chosen to be honoured by Michael Dorf at his annual charity concert at Carnegie Hall. The Music of Van Morrison was performed on 21 March 2019 by twenty musical acts including Glen Hansard, Patti Smith and Bettye LaVette. In 2019, Morrison received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Jimmy Page during the International Achievement Summit in New York City. In 2022, Morrison and his song "Down to Joy" for "Belfast" were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 94th Academy Awards. Lists Morrison has also appeared in a number of "Greatest" lists, including the TIME magazine list of The All-Time 100 Albums, which contained Astral Weeks and Moondance, and he appeared at number thirteen on the list of WXPN's 885 All Time Greatest Artists. In 2000, Morrison ranked twenty-fifth on American cable music channel VH1's list of its "100 Greatest Artists of Rock and Roll". In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Van Morrison forty-second on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Paste ranked him twentieth in their list of "100 Greatest Living Songwriters" in 2006. Q ranked him twenty-second on their list of "100 Greatest Singers" in April 2007 and he was voted twenty-fourth on the November 2008 list of Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. Tribute albums No Prima Donna: The Songs of Van Morrison (1994) The Van Morrison Songbook (1997) Into the Mystic: An Instrumental Tribute to Van Morrison (2000) Vanthology: A Tribute to Van Morrison (2003) The String Quartet Tribute to Van Morrison (2003) Smooth Sax Tribute to Van Morrison (2005) Mystic Piano: Piano Tribute to Van Morrison (2006) Personal life Family and relationships Morrison lived in Belfast from birth until 1964, when he moved to London with the rock group Them. Three years later, he moved to New York after signing with Bang Records. Facing deportation due to visa problems, he managed to stay in the US when his American girlfriend Janet (Planet) Rigsbee, who had a son named Peter from a previous relationship, agreed to marry him. Once married, Morrison and his wife moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he found work performing in local clubs. The couple had one daughter in 1970, Shana Morrison, who has become a singer-songwriter. Morrison and his family moved around America, living in Boston; Woodstock, New York; and a hilltop home in Fairfax, California. His wife appeared on the cover of the album Tupelo Honey. They divorced in 1973. Morrison moved back to the UK in the late 1970s, first settling in London's Notting Hill Gate area. Later, he moved to Bath, where he purchased the Wool Hall studio in January 1994. He also has a home in the Irish seaside village of Dalkey near Dublin, where legal actions were taken against Morrison by two neighbours who objected to Morrison attempting to widen his driveway. The case was taken to court in 2001, with the initial rulings going against Morrison. Morrison pursued the matter all the way to the Irish Supreme Court, but his appeal was denied. A separate case in 2010, in which Morrison's then-wife Michelle took legal action against a different neighbour, who was building a balcony that she felt would overlook the Morrison home and intrude on their privacy, was withdrawn in 2015. Morrison met Irish socialite Michelle Rocca in the summer of 1992, and they often featured in the Dublin gossip columns, an unusual event for the reclusive Morrison. Rocca also appeared on one of his album covers, Days Like This. The couple married and have two children; a daughter was born in February 2006 and a son in August 2007. According to a statement posted on his website, they were divorced in March 2018. In December 2009, Morrison's tour manager Gigi Lee gave birth to a son, who she asserted was Morrison's and named after him. Lee announced the birth of the child on Morrison's official website, but Morrison denied paternity. Lee's son died in January 2011 from complications of diabetes, and Lee died soon after from throat cancer in October 2011. Morrison's father died in 1998, and his mother, Violet, died in 2016. Religion and spirituality Morrison and his family have been affiliated with St Donard's Parish Church, an Anglican congregation of the Church of Ireland located in east Belfast. During the Troubles, the area was described as "militantly Protestant", although Morrison's parents have always been freethinkers, with his father openly declaring himself an atheist and his mother being connected to Jehovah's Witnesses at one point. Van Morrison had been linked to Scientology in the early 1980s and even thanked its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, in one of his songs. Later, he became wary of religion, saying: "I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole." He also said it is important to distinguish spirituality from religion: "Spirituality is one thing, religion ... can mean anything from soup to nuts, you know? But it generally means an organisation, so I don't really like to use the word, because that's what it really means. It really means this church or that church ... but spirituality is different, because that's the individual." The Troubles Morrison left Northern Ireland before The Troubles started and distanced himself from the conflict, although later "yearned for" Protestant and Catholic reconciliation. In 1972, he gave an interview with the Dublin-based magazine Spotlight, in which he said, "I'm definitely Irish ... I don't think I want to go back to Belfast. I don't miss it with all the prejudice around. We're all the same and I think it's terrible what's happening. But I'd like to get a house in Ireland ... I'd like to spend a few months there every year." Discography Blowin' Your Mind! (1967) Astral Weeks (1968) Moondance (1970) His Band and the Street Choir (1970) Tupelo Honey (1971) Saint Dominic's Preview (1972) Hard Nose the Highway (1973) It's Too Late to Stop Now (1974; live) Veedon Fleece (1974) A Period of Transition (1977) Wavelength (1978) Into the Music (1979) Common One (1980) Beautiful Vision (1982) Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (1983) A Sense of Wonder (1985) No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986) Poetic Champions Compose (1987) Irish Heartbeat (In collaboration with The Chieftains) (1988) Avalon Sunset (1989) Enlightenment (1990) Hymns to the Silence (1991) Too Long in Exile (1993) Days Like This (1995) How Long Has This Been Going On (1995) Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison (1996) The Healing Game (1997) Back on Top (1999) You Win Again (2000) Down the Road (2002) What's Wrong with This Picture? (2003) Magic Time (2005) Pay the Devil (2006) Keep It Simple (2008) Born to Sing: No Plan B (2012) Duets: Re-working the Catalogue (2015) Keep Me Singing (2016) Roll with the Punches (2017) Versatile (2017) You're Driving Me Crazy (2018) The Prophet Speaks (2018) Three Chords & the Truth (2019) Latest Record Project, Volume 1 (2021) What's It Gonna Take? (2022) Moving on Skiffle (2023) See also List of people on the postage stamps of Ireland References Bibliography Collis, John (1996). Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, Little Brown and Company, Hage, Erik (2009). The Words and Music of Van Morrison, Praeger Publishers, Heylin, Clinton (2003). Can You Feel the Silence? Van Morrison: A New Biography, Chicago Review Press, Hinton, Brian (1997). Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison, Sanctuary, Marcus, Greil. 1992. "Van Morrison." In: The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll. Anthony DeCurtis and James Henke, with Holly George-Warren, eds. (original ed. Jim Miller): pp442–447. New York: Random House, Marcus, Greil (2010). When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison, Public Affairs, Moon, Tom (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, Workman Publishing Company, Rogan, Johnny (2006). Van Morrison: No Surrender, London: Vintage Books Rosenthal, Elizabeth. (2001) His Song: The Musical Journey of Elton John, Billboard Books, Turner, Steve (1993). Van Morrison: Too Late to Stop Now, Viking Penguin, Walsh, Ryan H. (2018) Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968, Penguin Press, Yorke, Ritchie (1975). Into The Music, London: Charisma Books, Further reading Brooks, Ken (1999). In Search of Van Morrison, Agenda, Buzacott, Martin; Ford, Andrew (2005) Speaking in Tongues: The Songs of Van Morrison, ABC, Dawe, Gerald (2007). My Mother-City, Belfast:Lagan Press – (Includes section on Van Morrison from previous edition, The Rest is History, Newry:Abbey Press, 1998) DeWitt, Howard A. (1983). Van Morrison: The Mystic's Music, Horizon Books, Mills, Peter (2010). Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Music and Lyrics of Van Morrison, Continuum, External links – official site Category:1945 births Category:Living people Category:Blues singer-songwriters Category:Brit Award winners Category:British record producers Category:British rhythm and blues boom musicians Category:British baritones Category:British soft rock musicians Category:Composers awarded knighthoods Category:Drummers from Northern Ireland Category:Male drummers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Guitarists from Northern Ireland Category:Country singers from Northern Ireland Category:Rock guitarists from Northern Ireland Category:Rock singers from Northern Ireland Category:British harmonica players Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Keyboardists from Northern Ireland Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Male singers from Northern Ireland Category:Mercury Records artists Category:Multi-instrumentalists from Northern Ireland Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:Officiers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Category:Musicians from Belfast Category:People from Dalkey Category:People from Topanga, California Category:People from Woodstock, New York Category:Rhythm guitarists Category:Saxophonists from Northern Ireland Category:Male saxophonists Category:Singers awarded knighthoods Category:Male singer-songwriters from Northern Ireland Category:Singer-songwriters from Northern Ireland Category:Skiffle musicians Category:Male songwriters from Northern Ireland Category:Them (band) members Category:Ulster Scots people Category:Warner Records artists Category:People from Fairfax, California Category:Male writers from Northern Ireland Category:21st-century saxophonists Category:Bang Records artists

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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (often simply referred to as Laugh-In) is an American sketch comedy television program that ran for 140 episodes from January 22, 1968, to March 12, 1973, on the NBC television network. It was hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. Laugh-In originally aired as a one-time special on September 9, 1967, and was such a success that it was brought back as a series, replacing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on Mondays at 8 pm (ET). The title of the show was a play on the "love-ins" or "be-ins" of the 1960s hippie culture, terms that were, in turn, derived from "sit-ins", common in protests associated with civil rights and antiwar demonstrations of the time.

Memorable moments

The first season featured some of the first music videos seen on network TV, with cast members appearing in films set to the music of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Bee Gees, the Temptations, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, and the First Edition. During the September 16, 1968, episode, Richard Nixon, running for president, appeared for a few seconds with a disbelieving vocal inflection, asking "Sock it to me?" Nixon was not doused or assaulted. An invitation was extended to Nixon's opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, but he declined. According to George Schlatter, the show's creator, "Humphrey later said that not doing it may have cost him the election", and "[Nixon] said the rest of his life that appearing on Laugh-In is what got him elected. And I believe that. And I've had to live with that." In an episode of the ill-fated 1977 revival, a Nixon impersonator says "I invited the American people to sock-it-to-me.... you can stop now". On multiple occasions, producer George Schlatter attempted to get William F. Buckley Jr. to appear on the show, only to be refused each time until he suddenly agreed to an appearance. In the episode that aired December 28, 1970, Buckley appeared in an unusual sit-down segment (portions of which were scattered throughout the episode) flanked by Rowan and Martin and fielding questions from the cast (which included Lily Tomlin doing her Fast Talker shtick) and giving humorous answers to each. Near the end, when Rowan asked Buckley why he finally agreed to appear on the show, Buckley explained that Schlatter had written him "an irresistable letter" in which he promised to fly Buckley out to California "in an airplane with two right wings". At the end, Rowan thanked him for appearing, noting that "you can't be that smart without having a sense of humor, and you have a delightful one". CANNOTANSWER

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (often simply referred to as Laugh-In) was an American sketch comedy television program that ran for 140 episodes from January 22, 1968, to March 12, 1973, on the NBC television network, hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. It originally aired as a one-time special on September 9, 1967, and was such a success that it was brought back as a series, replacing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on Mondays at 8 pm (ET). It quickly became the most popular television show in the United States. The title of the show was a play on the 1960s hippie culture "love-ins" or the counterculture "be-ins", terms derived from the "sit-ins" common in protests associated with civil rights and antiwar demonstrations of the time. In 2002, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In was ranked number 42 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In the pilot episode, Dan Rowan explained the show's approach: "Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to television's first Laugh-In. Now for the past few years, we have all been hearing an awful lot about the various 'ins'. There have been be-ins, love-ins, and sleep-ins. This is a laugh-in and a laugh-in is a frame of mind. For the next hour, we would just like you to sit back and laugh and forget about the other ins." The good-natured, lighthearted and informal disposition of the show was thereby established. Laugh-In had its roots in the humor of vaudeville and burlesque, but its most direct influences were Olsen and Johnson's comedies (such as the free-form Broadway revue Hellzapoppin'), the innovative television works of Ernie Kovacs, and the topical satire of That Was The Week That Was. The show was characterized by a rapid-fire series of gags and sketches, many of which were politically charged or contained sexual innuendo. The co-hosts continued the exasperated straight man (Rowan) and "dumb guy" (Martin) act which they had established as nightclub comics. The show featured Gary Owens as the on-screen announcer, and an ensemble cast; Ruth Buzzi was part of the ensemble throughout the show's six year run, while others who appeared in at least three seasons included Judy Carne, Henry Gibson, Goldie Hawn, Arte Johnson, Jo Anne Worley, Alan Sues, Lily Tomlin, Dennis Allen and Richard Dawson. Episodes Laugh-In was designed to be very lightly structured and consisted mainly of short comedic sketches. Some of these would reappear multiple times throughout an episode with variations on a theme, while others involved reoccurring characters created by the cast. In others, castmembers and guest stars would simply appear as themselves, delivering jokes or reacting to a previous sketch. In addition to the announced guest star or stars of the evening, some recurring guest stars would appear unannounced multiple times through a season (which was easy to accomplish given the show's non-linear taping sessions). A trademark of the series was its (even shorter) blackout sketches, often involving rapid-fire cuts between two or more scenes or camera angles, set to a six-note musical sting (or at times, an elongated 16-note version). These were used as transitions into and out of commercials, among other places. The show started with a batch of sketches leading into Gary Owens' introduction segment, in which the cast and announced guest star(s) would appear behind open doors of the show's iconic, psychedelically painted "Joke Wall". Owens would also insert offbeat lines in his monotone, deadpan style, in the introductions and occasionally throughout the episode, generally facing a microphone to his side with one hand cupped to his ear (Owens's character loosened up and became "hipper" in later seasons). After more short sketches leading into and out of the first commercial break, Rowan and Martin would walk in front of the show's homebase set to introduce the show and have a dialogue, generally consisting of Martin frustrating Rowan by derailing his attempt to do a proper introduction via misunderstandings or digressions. Eventually, Rowan would end the introduction and invite the audience to the "Cocktail Party". This live to tape segment comprised all cast members and occasional surprise celebrities dancing before a 1960s "mod" party backdrop, delivering one- and two-line jokes interspersed with a few bars of dance music. (This was similar in format to the "Word Dance" segments of A Thurber Carnival, and would later be imitated on The Muppet Show.) Another weekly segment was "Laugh-In Looks At The News", which began with the female castmembers singing the segment's opening theme in a different costumed set piece each week, often with the help of the guest star. The news varied in presentation over the years, but in the earlier seasons started with Martin reading the "News of the Present", with Rowan providing "News of the Future" and sketches depicting the "News of the Past". Alan Sues, as his "Big Al" character, would provide a typically clueless sports report. "Mod, Mod World" was a group of sketches introduced by Rowan and Martin that fit into an announced theme. This segment is notable for being interspersed with film clips of some of the female castmembers (most frequently Carne and Hawn) performing go-go dancing in bikinis to the segment's burlesque-inspired theme, with the camera periodically zooming into jokes or images that had been drawn onto their bodies. The segment also usually included an additional musical number based on the topic, performed by castmembers at the beginning and end of the segment, as well as in short bridges between sketches. At the end of every show, after a final dialogue, Rowan turned to his co-host and said, "Say good night, Dick", to which Martin replied, "Good night, Dick!", leading into the final Joke Wall segment, in which the cast popped out of their doors and told jokes to the camera, each other, or Rowan and Martin, who stood in front. This would lead into and continue under the closing credits. One final batch of skits, including a closing appearance from Owens, and often an appearance from Arte Johnson's character, German soldier Wolfgang ("veeeeery eeenteresting!"), brought the episode to a conclusion. Other segments and recurring characters, listed below, would come and go throughout the years. Cast Pilot and season 1 The pilot featured Ruth Buzzi, Judy Carne, Henry Gibson, Larry Hovis, Arte Johnson, and Jo Anne Worley, all of whom continued as season one regulars (and, except for Hovis, several seasons thereafter), along with future guest stars Ken Berry, Pamela Austin, and Barbara Feldon. Gary Owens joined the cast in the proper first episode, as did Goldie Hawn, who was under contract to Good Morning World at the time of the pilot. Seasons 2 and 3 The second season had a handful of new people, including Alan Sues, Dave Madden, and Chelsea Brown. All of the new cast members from season two left at the end of that season except Sues, who stayed on until 1972. At the end of the 1968–69 season, Carne chose not to renew her contract, although she did make appearances during 1969–1970. Arte Johnson insisted on star billing, apart from the rest of the cast. The producer mollified him by having announcer Gary Owens read Johnson's credit as a separate sentence: "Starring Dan Rowan and Dick Martin! And Arte Johnson! With Ruth Buzzi ..." This maneuver gave Johnson star billing, but made it sound as though he was still part of the ensemble cast. The third season had several new people who only stayed on for that season, including Teresa Graves and Jeremy Lloyd. Lily Tomlin joined in the middle of the season and remained until the series ended. Johnny Brown made two appearances late, and stayed through seasons 4 and 5. Jo Anne Worley, Goldie Hawn, and Judy Carne left after the third season. Seasons 4 and 5 The 1970–71 season brought new additions to the cast, including tall, lanky, sad-eyed Dennis Allen, who stayed until the end; writer-actress Ann Elder; and tap dancer Barbara Sharma. Arte Johnson and Henry Gibson left the show after/during the fourth season, with former third season regular Teresa Graves making two consecutive appearances towards the end. The fifth season saw the return of former Hogan's Heroes stars Richard Dawson and Larry Hovis, both of whom had appeared in the first season; Dawson would remain until the series ended. The Joke Wall was briefly retired to start the season, with introductions moving to the Cocktail Party set, and the cast telling their show-closing jokes surrounded by celebrity and historical figure cutouts; after only a few episodes, the Joke Wall returned for the closing jokes. The show celebrated its 100th episode in its fifth season, with former regulars Carne, Worley, Johnson, Gibson, Graves, and frequent guest star Tiny Tim returning for the festivities; John Wayne was also on hand for his first cameo appearance since 1968. Season 6 For the show's final season (1972–73), Rowan and Martin assumed the executive producer roles from George Schlatter and Ed Friendly. Along with returnees Dawson, Owens, Buzzi, Allen, and occasional appearances from Tomlin, a new cast was brought in. This final season featured comedian Patti Deutsch, folksy singer-comedian Jud Strunk, ventriloquist act Willie Tyler and Lester, and giddy Goldie Hawn lookalike Sarah Kennedy, among others. Voice artist Frank Welker also made numerous appearances. Former regular Jo Anne Worley returned for two guest appearances, including the final episode. This last season was not included in the edited half-hour rerun package that was syndicated (through Lorimar Productions) to local stations in 1983 and later on Nick at Nite in 1987, ultimately appearing for the first time since its original run when the series began airing on Decades in 2017. Of the more than three dozen entertainers to join the cast, only Rowan, Martin, Owens, and Buzzi were there from beginning to end. However, Owens was not in the 1967 pilot and Buzzi was not present in two first-season episodes. Cast tenures All seasons: Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, Gary Owens, and Ruth Buzzi Season 1 (1968): Judy Carne, Arte Johnson, Pamela Austin, Eileen Brennan, Henry Gibson, Flip Wilson, Goldie Hawn, Larry Hovis, Roddy Maude-Roxby, Jo Anne Worley, Inga Neilsen, Paul Winchell, Tiny Tim Season 2 (1968–69): Judy Carne, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Goldie Hawn, Jo Anne Worley, Dave Madden, Alan Sues, Chelsea Brown, "Sweet Brother" Dick Whittington (through episode 14), Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall ("the Fun Couple"; through episode 11), Pigmeat Markham (through episode 14), Jack Riley (episodes 4, 7, 12, 13, 16), Muriel Landers (episodes 11 and 20), J.J. Barry (episodes 15–19), Byron Gilliam (dancer only), Barbi Benton (dancer only) Season 3 (1969–70): Judy Carne (through episode 11), Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Goldie Hawn, Alan Sues, Jo Anne Worley, Teresa Graves, Jeremy Lloyd, Pamela Rodgers, Byron Gilliam (through episode 11, but continued as a dancer & in occasional cameos), Lily Tomlin (from episode 15), Stu Gilliam (episodes 14, 16, 19, 20, 26), Johnny Brown (episodes 22 and 24) Season 4 (1970–71): Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson (through episode 10), Alan Sues, Lily Tomlin, Dennis Allen, Johnny Brown, Nancie Phillips (through episode 17), Barbara Sharma, Ann Elder, Harvey Jason (episodes 2 and 4), Glen Ash (episodes 10 and 11), Byron Gilliam (dancer only) Season 5 (1971–72): Alan Sues, Lily Tomlin, Dennis Allen, Johnny Brown, Ann Elder, Barbara Sharma, Larry Hovis, Richard Dawson, Moosie Drier, Byron Gilliam (dancer only), Barbi Benton (dancer only) Season 6 (1972–73): Lily Tomlin, Dennis Allen, Richard Dawson, Moosie Drier, Tod Bass, Patti Deutsch, Sarah Kennedy, Jud Strunk, Willie Tyler, Donna Jean Young, Frank Welker, Brian Bressler (through episode 10), Kathy Speirs (episodes 11 and 12), Lisa Farringer (from episode 13). Note: not all cast members appear in all episodes this season, and rotate with some frequency (for instance, Donna Jean Young appears in about half of the season's 24 episodes). Regular guest performers Jack Benny (seasons 2–4, 6) Johnny Carson (seasons 1–6) Carol Channing (seasons 3–5) Tony Curtis (seasons 2–3, 5) Sammy Davis, Jr. (seasons 1–4, 6) Phyllis Diller (seasons 2–4, 6) Barbara Feldon (seasons 1–2) Zsa Zsa Gabor (seasons 2–3) Peter Lawford (seasons 1–4; Lawford became Dan Rowan's son-in-law in 1971) Rich Little (seasons 2, 4, 6) Jill St. John (seasons 1, 3, 5–6) Tiny Tim (seasons 1–3, 5) John Wayne (seasons 1–2, 5–6) Flip Wilson (seasons 1–4) Henny Youngman (seasons 2, 5–6) Series writers The writers for Laugh-In were: George Schlatter, Larry Hovis (pilot only), Digby Wolfe, Paul W. Keyes, Hugh Wedlock, Jr. and Allan Manings, Chris Bearde (credited as Chris Beard), Phil Hahn and Jack Hanrahan, Coslough Johnson (Arte Johnson's twin brother), Marc London and David Panich, Dave Cox, Jim Carlson, Jack Mendelsohn and Jim Mulligan, Lorne Michaels and Hart Pomerantz, Jack Douglas, Jeremy Lloyd, John Carsey, Dennis Gren, Gene Farmer, John Rappaport and Stephen Spears, Jim Abell and Chet Dowling, Barry Took, E. Jack Kaplan, Larry Siegel, Jack S. Margolis, Don Reo and Allan Katz, Richard Goren (also credited as Rowby Greeber and Rowby Goren), Winston Moss, Gene Perret and Bill Richmond, Jack Wohl, Bob Howard and Bob DeVinney. Script supervisors for Laugh-In included Digby Wolfe (comedy consultant, season 1), Phil Hahn and Jack Hanrahan (season 2), Allan Manings (season 3), Marc London and David Panich (seasons 3–6), and Jim Mulligan (season 6). Musical direction and production numbers The musical director for Laugh-In was Ian Bernard. He wrote the opening theme music, "Inquisitive Tango" (used in Season 1 and again permanently from season 4), plus the infamous "What's the news across the nation" number. He wrote all the musical "play-ons" that introduced comedy sketches like Lily Tomlin's character, Edith Ann, the little girl who sat in a giant rocking chair, and Arte Johnson's old man character, Tyrone, who always got hit with a purse. He also appeared in many of the cocktail scenes where he directed the band as they stopped and started between jokes. Composer-lyricist Billy Barnes wrote all of the original musical production numbers in the show, and often appeared on-camera, accompanying Johnson, Buzzi, Worley, or Sues, on a golden grand piano. Barnes was the creator of the famous Billy Barnes Revues of the 1950s and 1960s, and composed such popular hits as "I Stayed Too Long at the Fair", recorded by Barbra Streisand and the jazz standard "Something Cool" recorded by June Christy. For the entire 141-episode series of Laugh-In, including the pilot, the show's musical coordinator was West Coast bebop jazz pianist and composer Russ Freeman. Post-production The show was recorded at NBC's Burbank facility using two-inch quadruplex videotape. As computer-controlled online editing had not been invented at the time, post-production video editing of the montage was achieved by the error-prone method of visualizing the recorded track with ferrofluid and cutting it with a razor blade or guillotine cutter and splicing with adhesive tape, in a manner similar to film editing. This had the incidental benefit of ensuring the preservation of the master tape, as a spliced tape could not be recycled for further use. Laugh-In editor Arthur Schneider won an Emmy Award in 1968 for his pioneering use of the "jump cut" – the unique editing style in which a sudden cut from one shot to another was made without a fade-out. When the series was restored for airing by the Trio Cable Network in 1996, the aforementioned edits became problematic for the editors, as the adhesive used on the source tape had deteriorated during 20+ years of storage, making many of the visual elements at the edit points unusable. This was corrected in digital re-editing by removing the problematic video at the edit point and then slowing down the video image just before the edit point; time-expanding the slowed-down section long enough to allot enough time to seamlessly reinsert the audio portion from the removed portion of video. Recurring sketches and characters Sketches Frequently recurring Laugh-In sketches included: "Sock it to me"; Judy Carne was often tricked into saying the phrase ("It may be rice wine to you, but it's sake to me!"), which invariably results in her (or other cast members) falling through a trap door, being doused with water, or playfully assaulted in various other manners. The phrase was also uttered by many of the cameo guest stars, most notably Richard Nixon, though they were almost never subjected to the same treatment as Carne. "The Farkel Family", a couple with numerous children, all of whom had bright red hair and large freckles similar to their "good friend and trusty neighbor" Ferd Berfel (Dick Martin). The sketch employed diversion humor, the writing paying more attention to the lines said by each player, using alliterative tongue-twisters ("That's a fine-looking Farkel flinger you found there, Frank"). Dan Rowan played father Frank Farkel the Third, Jo Anne Worley, Barbara Sharma and Patti Deutsch played his wife Fanny Farkel, Goldie Hawn played Sparkle Farkel, Arte Johnson played Frank Farkel the Fourth, and Ruth Buzzi played Flicker Farkel, who would only say "HIIIIII!" in a very high-pitched voice. Two of the children were twins named Simon and Gar Farkel, played by cast members of different races (Teresa Graves and Pamela Rodgers in the third season, Johnny Brown and Dennis Allen in the fourth season). All of the Farkel skits were written or co-written by David Panich. "Here Comes the Judge", originally portrayed by British comic Roddy Maude-Roxby, was a stuffy magistrate with a black robe and oversized judge's wig. Each sketch featured the judge trading barbs with a defendant brought him; on delivery of the punch line, he would strike the defendant with an inflated bladder balloon tied to the sleeve of his robe. For a time guest star Flip Wilson or Sammy Davis Jr. would introduce the sketch saying "Here come da judge!", which was a venerable catchphrase by nightclub comedian Pigmeat Markham. Surprised that his trademark had been appropriated, Markham asked producer George Schlatter to let him play the Judge himself; Schlatter agreed and Markham presided for one season. After Markham left, the sketch was briefly retired until Sammy Davis Jr. donned the judicial robe and wig during his guest appearances, introducing each sketch with a rap that always finished with "Here come da judge, here come da judge...". "Laugh-In Looks at the News", a parody of network newscasts, introduced by the female cast members in a highly un-journalistic production number. The sketch was originally called the Rowan and Martin Report (a take-off on the Huntley-Brinkley Report). The sketch itself featured Dick humorously reporting on current events, which then segued into Dan reporting on "News of the Past" and "News of the Future". The latter of these segments, on at least two occasions, correctly predicted future events, one being that Ronald Reagan would be president, and another that the Berlin Wall would finally come down in 1989. This segment was influenced by the BBC's That Was the Week That Was, and in turn inspired Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" segments (SNL creator Lorne Michaels was a Laugh-In writer early in his career). The News segments were followed by "Big Al" (Alan Sues) and his sports report in seasons 2–5. After Sues left the show, Jud Strunk took over the sports segment ("reporting from the sports capital of Farmington, Maine") by featuring films of oddly-named events which were actual sports films played backwards. An example is the "Cannonball Catch", featuring a backwards film of a bowling tournament where the "cannonballs" (bowling balls) are caught one-handed by the catcher (the bowler) after rolling up the alley. "New Talent Time" also called "Discovery of the Week" in later seasons. Introduced oddball variety acts (sometimes characters played by regular cast members) Tin Pan Alley musician Tiny Tim – The most notable of these acts, was introduced in episode 1 and shot to fame. Returned in the Season 1 finale & made several guest appearances after. Actor Paul Gilbert (adoptive father of actress Melissa Gilbert) appeared in three episodes as an inept French juggler, introduced as "Paul Jill-bare". 6'2" actress Inga Neilsen made appearances as a bugle/kazoo player who could only play one note of "Tiger Rag" & had to deal with Martin's advances. Martin, who hated all of the other New Talent acts would enthusiastically cheer her on despite the obvious lack of talent. Ventriloquist Paul Winchell appeared three times as "Lucky Pierre", whose puppets would fall apart or die on him. Arte Johnson would appear as his Pyotr Rosmenko character looking for big American break, singing gibberish in a Russian accent Murray Langston, who later achieved fame as the Gong Show's "Unknown Comic" Laugh-In writer Chris Bearde took the "New Talent" concept and later developed it into The Gong Show. "The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award" sardonically recognized actual dubious achievements by public individuals or institutions, the most frequent recipients being members or branches of the government. The trophy was a gilded left hand mounted on a trophy base with its extended index finger adorned with two small wings. "The Wonderful World of Whoopee Award" was a counterpart to the "Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award", described by Rowan as a citation "for the little man who manages to outfight or outfox the bureaucracy"; the statue was similar to the Finger of Fate, only it was a right hand (without wings on the index finger) pointing straight up, and with a hidden mechanism that when activated caused the finger to wave in a circular motion. "The C.F.G. Automat"; a vending machine whose title was an inside joke for cast members who referred to producer Schlatter as "Crazy (bleeping) George". The vending machine would distribute oddball items that were a play on the name. Examples: The 'pot pie' produced a cloud of smoke when the door was opened, then the pie floated away. The 'ladyfingers' was a woman's hand reaching out & tickling Arte's face while another 'ladyfingers' door opened & picked his pocket. Many episodes were interspersed with a recurring, short wordless gag in which an actor repeatedly tried to accomplish some simple task like entering an elevator, opening a window or door, watering a plant, etc., which would fail each time in a different, surprising way (the object would move unexpectedly, another part of the wall or room would move, water would squirt the actor in the face from the object, etc.) Another recurring wordless gag involved one or more actors walking around the street in a jerky fashion (using stop-motion or low shutter speed filming) holding and turning a bare steering wheel, as if they were driving a car or actually were a car, with various sound effects to simulate honking, back-ups, collisions with each other, etc. From season four on, a variety of sketches or jokes used the word "Foon", usually as part of the name of imaginary products or persons (e.g., Foon detergent, Mr. Foonman). (They did this with "Nern" in earlier seasons.) "Questions From The Audience / Dick's Costumes"; In the sixth season, Dan Rowan would ask the audience if anybody had any questions about the show or otherwise. As he was doing so (in which nobody in the audience ever spoke up), Dick Martin would come out wearing some kind of costume which Rowan would ask about, leading to a humorous exchange on the costume's subject matter. Characters Dan Rowan, in addition to hosting, provided the "News Of The Future" and also appears as General Bull Right, a far-right-wing representative of the military establishment and outlet for political humor. Dick Martin, in addition to hosting would also play a drunk Leonard Swizzle, husband of an equally drunk Doris Swizzle (Ruth Buzzi) and& a character always buzzing for an elevator on which the doors never closed in a normal way Announcer Gary Owens regularly stands in an old-time radio studio with his hand cupped over his ear, making announcements, often with little relation to the rest of the show, such as (in an overly-dramatic voice), "Earlier that evening ..." Arte Johnson: Wolfgang the German soldier – Wolfgang would often peer out from behind a potted palm and comment on the previous gag saying "Verrry in-te-res-ting", sometimes with comments such as "... but shtupid!" He eventually closed each show by talking to Lucille Ball and her husband Gary Morton, as well as the cast of Gunsmoke — both airing opposite Laugh-In on CBS; as well as whatever was on ABC. Johnson later repeated the line while playing Nazi-themed supervillain Virman Vundabar on an episode of Justice League Unlimited. Johnson also reprised his Wolfgang character in a series of skits for the second season of Sesame Street (1970–1971), and in 1980 for a series of small introductory skits with a plant on 3-2-1 Contact, during the "Growth/Decay" week. Tyrone F. Horneigh (pronounced "hor-NIGH", presumably to satisfy the censors) was a dirty old man coming on to Gladys Ormphby (Ruth Buzzi) seated on a park bench, who almost invariably clobbers him with her purse. Both Tyrone and Gladys later became animated characters (voiced by Johnson and Buzzi) in "The Nitwits" segments of the 1977 Saturday morning animated television show, Baggy Pants and the Nitwits. Pyotr Rosmenko, a Russian man, stands stiffly and nervously in an ill-fitting suit while commenting on differences between America and "the old country", such as "Here in America, is very good, everyone watch television. In old country, television watches you!" This type of joke has come to be known as the Russian reversal. Rabbi Shankar (a pun on Ravi Shankar) was an Indian guru who dresses in a Nehru jacket dispensing pseudomystical Eastern wisdom laden with bad puns. He held up two fingers in a peace sign whenever he spoke. An unnamed character in a yellow raincoat and hat, riding a tricycle and then falling over, was frequently used to link between sketches. The character was portrayed by many people besides Johnson, including his brother Coslough (a writer for the show), Alan Sues, and Johnny Brown. The Scandinavian Storyteller – spoke gibberish, including non-sensical 'Knock Knock' jokes in the Joke Wall. No one could ever understand him. Possibly inspiration for the Muppets' Swedish Chef character. Ruth Buzzi: Gladys Ormphby – A drab, relatively young spinster, she is the eternal target of Arte Johnson's Tyrone; when Johnson left the series, Gladys retreated into recurring daydreams, often involving marriages to historical figures, including Christopher Columbus and Benjamin Franklin (both played by Alan Sues). She typically hit people repeatedly with her purse. The character was recreated, along with Tyrone, in Baggy Pants and the Nitwits. Buzzi also performed as Gladys on Sesame Street and The Dean Martin Show, most notably in the Celebrity Roasts. Doris Swizzle – A seedy barfly, she is paired with her husband, Leonard Swizzle, played by Dick Martin. Kim Hither – An exceedingly friendly hooker, commonly seen in sketches or at the cocktail party propositioning people while leaning against a lamppost. Busy Buzzi – A cold and heartless old-style Hedda Hopper-type Hollywood gossip columnist. Kathleen Pullman – A wicked parody of televangelist Kathryn Kuhlman. This always helpful but overdramatic woman is always eager to help people. Laverne Blossom - A former silent movie star with dark make-up round the eyes. She often attends the cocktail party in the later seasons. Henry Gibson: The Poet held an oversized flower and nervously read offbeat poems. (His stage name was a play on the name of playwright Henrik Ibsen). The Parson – A character who makes ecclesiastical quips. In 1970, he officiated at a near-marriage for Tyrone and Gladys. Would frequently just pop up and utter the phrase "Marshall McLuhan, what are you doin'?". Also played a cub reporter for Busy Buzzi. While she was looking for a scoop, Gibson would come in with one (usually about Steve McQueen) which Buzzi would completely garble up to sound like something out of left field. Goldie Hawn is best known as the giggling "dumb blonde", stumbling over her lines, especially when she introduced Dan's "News of the Future". In the earliest episodes, she recited her dialogue sensibly and in her own voice, but as the series progressed, she adopted a Dumb Dora character with a higher-pitched giggle and a vacant expression, which endeared her to viewers. Frequently did a Donald Duck voice at inappropriate times, such as when she was expected to sing or doing ballet. Lily Tomlin: Ernestine/Miss Tomlin – An obnoxious telephone operator, she has no concern at all for her customers and constantly mispronounced their names. Her close friend is fellow telephone operator, Phenicia; and her boyfriend, Vito. She would boast of being a high school graduate. Tomlin later performed Ernestine on Saturday Night Live and Happy New Year, America. She also played the Ernestine character for a comedy album called This Is A Recording. At the suggestion of CFG, Ernestine began dialing with her middle finger in Season 4, sometimes blatantly flipping "the bird" to the camera as a result. Censors never caught on – "we know she's doing something wrong, we just can't put our finger on it!" Edith Ann – A -year-old child, she ends each of her short monologues with: "And that's the truth", followed by blowing a raspberry. Tomlin performs her skits in an oversized rocking chair that makes her appear small. Tomlin later performed Edith Ann on children's shows such as Sesame Street and The Electric Company. Mrs. Earbore (the "Tasteful Lady") – A prim society matron, Mrs. Earbore expressed quiet disapproval about a tasteless joke or remark, and then rose from her chair with her legs spread, getting doused with a bucket of water or the sound of her skirt ripping. Dotty – A crass and rude grocery checker who tended to annoy her customers at the store where she worked. Lula – A loud and boisterous woman with a Marie Antoinette hair-do who always loved a party. Suzie Sorority of the Silent Majority – clueless hippie college student who ended each bit with "Rah!" The Babbler – A character given to speaking exuberantly and at great length while digressing after every few words and never staying on one subject, producing an unbroken, incomprehensible monologue. Judy Carne had two characters known for their robotic speech and movement: Mrs. Robot in "Robot Theater" – A female companion to Arte Johnson's "Mr. Robot". The Talking Judy Doll – She is usually played with by Arte Johnson, who never heeded her warning: "Touch my little body, and I hit you!" The Sock-It-To-Me Girl in which she would usually end up being splashed with water and/or falling through a trap door and/or getting conked on the head by a large club or mallet and/or knocked out by a boxing glove on a spring. Jo Anne Worley sometimes sings off-the-wall songs using her loud operatic voice or displaying an advanced state of pregnancy, but is better remembered for her mock outrage at "chicken jokes" and her melodic outcry of "Bo-ring!". At the cocktail parties, she would talk about her never-seen married boyfriend/lover "Boris" (who, according to her in a Season 3 episode, was finally found out by his wife). Alan Sues: Big Al – A clueless and fey sports anchor, he loves ringing his "Featurette" bell, which he calls his "tinkle". He would dress in drag as his former co-star, Jo Anne Worley, including skits where he appeared as a "fairy godmother". imitating Worley's boisterous laugh and offering help or advice to a Cinderella-type character in a conversation full of double entendres. Uncle Al, the Kiddies' Pal – A short-tempered host of a children's show, he usually goes on the air with a hangover: "Oh, kiddies, Uncle Al had a lot of medicine last night." Whenever he got really agitated, he would yell to "Get Miss Twinkle on the phone!" Grabowski – a benchwarmer football player obviously not cut out for the sport. Ex: "He pushed me! He pushed me!... they all pushed me!" and "No, you can't wear your ballet slippers on the field, Grabowski!" Boomer – A self-absorbed "jock" bragging about his athletic exploits. Ambiguously gay saloon patron – while Dan and Dick ordered whiskey, he would saunter up to the bar and ask for a fruit punch or frozen daiquiri. In the last season where he was a regular, he would be the one who got water thrown on him after a ticking alarm clock went off (replacing Judy Carne as the one who always got drenched). Pamela Rodgers – "Your man in Washington"; she would give 'reports' from the Capitol that were usually double entendres to give the impression that the Congressmen were fooling around with her. Jeremy Lloyd – scrunched himself into an ultra-short character a la Toulouse-Lautrec. Dennis Allen: Lt. Peaches of the Fuzz – a stumble-bum police officer. Chaplain Bud Homily – a droll clergyman who often falls victim to his own sermons. Eric Clarified (a play on news commentator Eric Sevareid) – a correspondent for Laugh-In Looks at the News who further muddles up obfuscatory government statements he has been asked to clarify. Rowan would often throw to another correspondent (played by Sues) to analyze Eric Clarified's statements in turn. Barbara Sharma: The Burbank Metre Made – a dancing meter maid who tickets anything from trees to baby carriages. An aspiring actress who often plays foil in cocktail-party segments to another "high-society" character (Tomlin). In season four, a Ruby Keeler-esque dancer (and arch-nemesis of Johnson's Wolfgang) who often praises Vice President Spiro Agnew. Johnny Brown lent his impersonations of Ed Sullivan, Alfred Hitchcock, Ralph Kramden and the Kingfish from Amos 'n' Andy. Ann Elder as Pauline Rhetoric (a play on NBC reporter Pauline Frederick), the chief interviewer for the Laugh-In News segments. Moosie Drier and Todd Bass – Drier did the "kids news for kids" segment of the Laugh-In news. Bass teamed with Drier in Season 6 to read letters from a treehouse Larry Hovis – the Senator, the Texan, David Brinkley, Father Time Richard Dawson – W.C. Fields, Groucho Marx, Hawkins the Butler, who always started his piece by asking "Permission to ...?" and proceeded to fall over. Roddy Maude-Roxby, Pigmeat Markham – Here Come Da Judge (Roxby for Season 1, Markham for Season 2) Dave Madden – would always throw confetti after "a naughty thought", usually a punch line that was a double-entendre. Once while kissing Carne, confetti erupted around him Memorable moments The first season featured some of the first music videos seen on network TV, with cast members appearing in films set to the music of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Bee Gees, the Temptations, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, and the First Edition. During the September 16, 1968, episode, Richard Nixon, running for president, appeared for a few seconds with a disbelieving vocal inflection, asking "Sock it to me?" Nixon was not doused or assaulted. An invitation was extended to Nixon's opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, but he declined. According to George Schlatter, the show's creator, "Humphrey later said that not doing it may have cost him the election", and "[Nixon] said the rest of his life that appearing on Laugh-In is what got him elected. And I believe that. And I've had to live with that." In an episode of the ill-fated 1977 revival, Rich Little as Nixon says, "I invited the American people to sock-it-to-me.... you can stop now". After winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Cactus Flower, Goldie Hawn made a guest appearance in the third episode of the fourth season. She began the episode as an arrogant snob of an actress; however, a bucket of water thrown at her transformed her back to her giggling dumb blonde persona. On multiple occasions, producer George Schlatter attempted to get William F. Buckley Jr. to appear on the show, only to be refused each time until he suddenly agreed to an appearance. In the episode that aired December 28, 1970, Buckley appeared in an unusual sit-down segment (portions of which were scattered throughout the episode) flanked by Rowan and Martin and fielding questions from the cast (which included Lily Tomlin doing her Babbler and Ernestine shticks) and giving humorous answers to each. Near the end, when Rowan asked Buckley why he finally agreed to appear on the show, Buckley explained that Schlatter had written him "an irresistable letter" in which he promised to fly Buckley out to Burbank "in an airplane with two right wings". At the end, Rowan thanked him for appearing: "You can't be that smart without having a sense of humor, and you have a delightful one." The 100th episode featured John Wayne, Tiny Tim & the return of several former cast members. Wayne, with his ear cupped, read the line "and me, I'm Gary Owens" instead of Owens himself. Wayne also shook Tiny Tim's hand, pretending that his grip was too overpowering. Catchphrases In addition to those already mentioned, the show created numerous catchphrases: "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls! (a lesser-known set of reference books whose phonetically funny name helped both Laugh-In and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to poke fun at NBC censors) "You bet your sweet bippy!" (Dick Martin) "Ring my chimes!" (Flip Wilson) "Beautiful downtown Burbank" (various actors/characters, referring tongue-in-cheek to the Los Angeles suburb in which the NBC studios (and thus the program) were located; the same term was frequently used by Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson). "One ringy-dingy ... two ringy-dingys ..." (Ernestine's mimicking of the rings while she was waiting for someone to pick up the receiver on the other end of the telephone lines) "A gracious good afternoon. This is Miss Tomlin of the telephone company. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?" Ernestine's greeting to people whom she would call. She would then mispronounce the names of famous people: Gore Vidal was "Mr. Veedle", William F. Buckley was "Mr. F'buckley". Richard Nixon was simply "Milhouse". "I just wanna swing!" Gladys Ormphby's catchphrase "Was that another chicken joke?" – Jo Anne Worley's outraged cry, a takeoff on Polish jokes "Sock it to me!" experienced its greatest exposure on Laugh-In although the phrase had been featured in songs such as Aretha Franklin's 1967 "Respect" and Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels' 1966 "Sock It To Me, Baby!" "Blow in my ear and I'll follow you anywhere." "Now, that's a no-no!" "Morgul the Friendly Drelb" – a pink Abominable Snowman-like character that was introduced in the second episode and bombed so badly, his name was used in various announcements by Gary Owens for the rest of the series (usually at the end of the opening cast list – "Yours truly, Gary Owens, and Morgul as the Friendly Drelb!") and credited as the author of a paperback collection of the show's sketches. On the spin-off "Letters To Laugh-In", "Morgul" would reach out of the podium & hand Owens the card containing the next category in a manner similar to Thing on The Addams Family. "Want a Walnetto?" was a pick-up line Tyrone would try on Gladys, which always resulted in a purse drubbing. "Here come da Judge" "Verrry in-te-res-ting" (Wolfgang the soldier) "And that's the truth – PFFFFT!" (Edith Ann) "Go to your room!" – "Big kid" Dan's response to a particularly bad joke, as if to put that cast member in time out like a child. "He pushed me!" – usually said by Sues when another cast member would bump him. "Marshall McLuhan, what are you doin – uttered by Gibson randomly between sketches. "How does that grab you?" JoAnne Worley "Oh... that Henny Youngman" – preceded by cast members quoting a series of his punchlines in succession, but without the jokes leading up to them. "He was a much better person for that" – as "Sock it to me!" was phased out following Carne's departure, this became the line used for similar sketches "Well, I'll drink to that", "I did not know that!", "Whatever turns you on" and "That's funny, so did she" – Dick Martin "Goodnight, Lucy" – During the first three seasons, Laugh-In was scheduled opposite Lucille Ball's third television series, Here's Lucy. At the end of the show, one or more cast members would say, "Goodnight, Lucy." Dick Martin had been a regular cast member in the first season of Ball's second series, The Lucy Show. "Goodnight, Dick" – the closing portion of each episode of Seasons 1 and 2 and began with the guest star & numerous cameos all saying "Goodnight, Dick". Occasionally, one of the cameo actors would say "Who's Dick?". This shtick was revived in the sixth season, usually after the end credits. "Gotcha!" "Wr-r-r-ong!" – spoken in a cameo by Otto Preminger, subsequent cameo actors would repeat the line, mimicking Preminger's delivery of it. "How would I know? I've never been out with one" "I think I've got it too" – running gag where the person would say this & start scratching themselves for no particular reason. "Blah! Blah!" – staff writer Chet Dowling would appear at random in various episodes throughout the fourth season, wearing a tux and this was all he'd ever say. "That's not funny" "Wacker!" – this name became used often in sketches after the Bobby Darin episode of Season 2. Darin had done a sketch with Martin & hilariously proceeded to call him 'Wacker' throughout the rest of the show "I've Got A Secret" – paying homage to the long-running game show, a running gag during the first two seasons was to have celebrity cameos claiming to be a celebrity of the opposite gender "...and I've REALLY got a secret!". Examples were Joey Bishop stating "My name is Joey Heatherton...", James Garner as Loretta Young, Jill St. John as Jack Jones and each of the female cast members as Tiny Tim. Merchandise tie-ins and spin-offs A chain of Laugh-In restaurants opened in several states during 1968–69; primarily in Michigan, Ohio and Florida. Psychedelically themed like the show, they offered such menu items as Bippy Burgers, Is That A Chicken Joke Chicken, Fickle Finger Of Fate Fries, Beautiful Downtown Burbank Burgers, Fickle Finger Franks, Verrrry Interesting Sandwiches, I'll Drink To That beverages, Sock It To Me soups, Laugh-In Fortune Cookies and Here Come Da Fudge sundaes. Staff often rode around on red tricycles wearing yellow raincoats and hats. All locations were closed by the mid-1970's. Menus, french fry bags, sandwich wraps, napkins, salt and pepper shakers and other memorabilia are still sold on EBay. A humor magazine tie-in, Laugh-In Magazine, was published for one year (12 issues: October 1968 through October 1969—no issue was published December 1968), and a 1968-1972 syndicated newspaper comic strip was drawn by Roy Doty and eventually collected for a paperback reprint. The Laugh-In trading cards from Topps had a variety of items, such as a card with a caricature of Jo Anne Worley with a large open mouth. With a die-cut hole, the card became interactive; a finger could be inserted through the hole to simulate Worley's tongue. Little doors opened on Joke Wall cards to display punchlines. On Letters to Laugh-In, a short-lived spin-off daytime show hosted by Gary Owens, cast members read jokes sent in by viewers, which were scored by applause meter. The eventual winning joke was read by actress Jill St. John: "What do you get when you cross an elephant with a jar of peanut butter? A 500 pound sandwich that sticks to the roof of your mouth!" A cross-promotional episode of I Dream of Jeannie ("The Biggest Star in Hollywood", February 1969) features Judy Carne, Arte Johnson, Gary Owens, and producer George Schlatter playing themselves in a story about Jeannie being sought after to appear on Laugh-In. In 1969, a Laugh-In View-Master packet was issued by General Aniline and Film (GAF); The packet featured 21 3D images from the show. The horror spoof film The Maltese Bippy (1969) starring Dan Rowan and Dick Martin was loosely related to the series. Pamela Rodgers was the only Laugh-In cast member to co-star in the film. In 1969, Sears, Roebuck and Company produced a 15-minute short, Freeze-In, which starred series regulars Judy Carne and Arte Johnson. Made to capitalize on the popularity of the series, the short was made for Sears salesmen to introduce the new Kenmore freezer campaign. A dancing, bikini-clad Carne provided the opening titles with tattoos on her body. Two LPs of material from the show were released: the first on Epic Records (FXS-15118, 1968); the second, which did not feature Rowan or Martin, was entitled Laugh-In '69 and released on Reprise Records (RS 6335, 1969). DVD releases Between 2003 and 2004, Rhino Entertainment Company (under its Rhino Retrovision classic TV entertainment brand), under license from the rightsholder at the time, SFM Entertainment, released two The Best Of releases of the show, each containing six episodes presented in its original, uncut broadcast version. In 2003, Rhino, through direct-response marketing firm Guthy-Renker, also released a series of DVDs subtitled The Sock-It-To-Me Collection, with each DVD containing two episodes. On June 19, 2017, Time Life, another direct-response marketer, released Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1, in a deal with current rightsholder Proven Entertainment. The 38-disc set contains all 140 episodes of the series, complete and uncut, restored and remastered as well as many bonus features and a special 32-page collector's book. On September 5, 2017, Time Life began releasing individual complete season sets on DVD, beginning with the first season. This was followed by the second season on January 9, 2018, and the third season on March 6, 2018. The fourth season was released on May 8, 2018. Season 5 was released on July 10, 2018. Finally, Season 6 was released on September 4, 2018. Ratings TV season, ranking, average viewers per episode 1967–1968: #21 (21.3) 1968–1969: #1 (31.8) 1969–1970: #1 (26.3) 1970–1971: #13 (22.4) 1971–1972: #22 (21.4) 1972–1973: #51 (16.7) Revival In 1977, Schlatter and NBC briefly revived the property as a series of specials – titled simply Laugh-In – with a new cast. The standout was a then-unknown Robin Williams, whose starring role on ABC's Mork & Mindy one year later prompted NBC to rerun the specials as a summer series in 1979. Also featured were Wayland Flowers and Madame (as well as his other puppet, "Jiffy"), former child evangelist Marjoe Gortner, former Barney Miller actress June Gable, Good Times actor Ben Powers, Bill Rafferty of Real People and comedian Ed Bluestone. Rowan and Martin, who owned part of the Laugh-In franchise, were not involved in this project. They sued Schlatter for using the format without their permission, and won a judgment of $4.6 million in 1980. In 1987, George Schlatter attempted a revival of the program called George Schlatter's Comedy Club, the weekly half-hour program that appeared in syndication through King World Productions during the 1987-1988 television season. Featuring stand-up comedy routines alongside quick comedy sketches similar to Laugh-In, the series was hosted by Schlatter himself. In 2019, Netflix produced a special tribute to the original series entitled, Still Laugh-In: The Stars Celebrate. Tomlin, Buzzi and Worley appeared in the special. Retrospective criticism Critic's views in retrospect, while noting it being groundbreaking, have also indicated that it has not aged well. Various aspects of the show at the time come across as racist in current times. Other aspects stereotyped gay people and women. While the humour was appreciated by some at the time of release, with taste more sophisticated now, is not seen as humorous. While the show included black actors, and made some comments on racism about black people, at the same time, it was noted the show featured white actors portraying Asians in yellowface. Awards and honors Emmy Awards Won: 1968: Outstanding Musical or Variety Program, George Schlatter (for the September 9, 1967 special) 1968: Outstanding Musical or Variety Series, George Schlatter 1968: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Music or Variety, Chris Bearde, Phil Hahn, Jack Hanrahan, Coslough Johnson, Paul Keyes, Marc London, Allan Manings, David Panich, Hugh Wedlock, Jr., Digby Wolfe 1968: Outstanding Individual Achievement in Electronic Production – Arthur Schneider (tape editor) 1969: Outstanding Musical or Variety Series – Paul Keyes (producer), Carolyn Raskin (producer), Dick Martin (star), Dan Rowan (star) 1969: Special Classification Achievements – Individuals (Variety Performances), Arte Johnson 1971: Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Variety or Music, Mark Warren (episode #4.7 with Orson Welles) Nominated: 1968: Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Variety or Music, Bill Foster (pilot episode) 1968 Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Variety or Music, Gordon Wiles 1968: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Music or Variety, – Larry Hovis, Paul Keyes, Jim Mulligan, David Panich, George Schlatter, Digby Wolfe (pilot episode) 1969: Special Classification Achievements – Individuals (Variety Performances), Ruth Buzzi 1969: Special Classification Achievements – Individuals (Variety Performances), Goldie Hawn 1969: Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy, Variety or Music – Gordon Wiles (For episode on 3 February 1969) 1969: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy, Variety or Music – various writers (For episode on 3 February 1969) 1969: Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music – Billy Barnes (special material) 1969: Special Classification Achievements – Individuals (Variety Performances) – Ruth Buzzi 1969: Special Classification Achievements – Individuals (Variety Performances) – Goldie Hawn 1969: Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction and Scenic Design – Ken Johnson 1969: Outstanding Individual Achievement in Electronic Production – John Teele and Bruce Verran (video tape editors) 1969: Outstanding Individual Achievement in Electronic Production – Arthur Schneider (tape editor) 1970: Outstanding Variety or Musical Series – George Schlatter (executive producer), Carolyn Raskin (producer), Paul Keyes (producer), Dan Rowan (star), Dick Martin (star) 1970: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy, Variety or Music – various writers (For episode on 3 November 1969 with Buddy Hackett) 1970: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy, Variety or Music – various writers (For episode on 20 December 1969 with Nancy Sinatra) 1970: Special Classification of Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement – Individuals, Goldie Hawn 1970: Special Classification of Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement – Individuals, Arte Johnson 1970: Outstanding Achievement in Music, Lyrics and Special Material – Billy Barnes (composer) (For episode with Carol Channing) 1970: Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design – Michael Travis 1971: Outstanding Variety Series, Musical – George Schlatter (executive producer), Carolyn Raskin (producer), Paul Keyes (producer), Dan Rowan (star), Dick Martin (star) 1971: Special Classification of Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement – Individuals – Arte Johnson 1971: Special Classification of Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement – Individuals – Lily Tomlin 1971: Outstanding Achievement in Technical Direction and Electronic Camerawork – Marvin Ault (cameraman), Ray Figelski (cameraman), Louis Fusari (technical director), Jon Olson (cameraman), Tony Yarlett (cameraman) 1972: Outstanding Achievement by a Performer in Music or Variety, Ruth Buzzi 1972: Outstanding Achievement by a Performer in Music or Variety, Lily Tomlin 1972: Outstanding Achievement in Music, Lyrics and Special Material – Billy Barnes (For episode with Liza Minnelli) 1973: Outstanding Achievement by a Supporting Performer in Music or Variety – Lily Tomlin 1978: Outstanding Continuing or Single Performance by a Supporting Actress in Variety or Music, Bea Arthur (for episode on 25 October 1977) 1978: Outstanding Achievement in Video Tape Editing for a Series – Ed. J. Brennan (editor) (For show #6–8 February 1978) Golden Globe Award Won: 1973: Best Supporting Actress – Television, Ruth Buzzi 1969: Best TV Show Nominated: 1972: Best Supporting Actress – Television, Lily Tomlin 1971: Best Supporting Actor – Television, Henry Gibson 1970: Best TV Show – Musical/Comedy 1968: Best TV Show International and U.S. re-broadcasts The first four seasons were broadcast on BBC2 from January 1969 to November 1971. Some episodes from seasons 1, 2 and 3 were retransmitted during late 1983 and early 1984. Early broadcasts had to be shown with a black border, as technology was not available to render the 525-line NTSC video recording as a full-screen 625-line PAL picture. This issue was fixed for later broadcasts. The series was broadcast on RTÉ One. The series originally aired on the 0-10 Network in the 1960s and 1970s. It later appeared in re-runs on the Seven Network in the early 1980s. CTV aired the series at the same time as the NBC run. 1983 saw the first 70 one-hour shows syndicated to broadcast stations (the pilot, first three seasons and the first four episodes of season 4). Alternate recut half-hour shows were syndicated through Lorimar Television to local stations in 1983 and later on Nick at Nite in 1987 through August 1990. The Vivendi Universal-owned popular arts/pop culture entertainment cable network Trio started airing the show in its original one-hour form in the early 2000s; the same abbreviated 70 episode package was run. In September 2016, digital sub-network Decades started airing the show twice a day in its original one-hour format, complete with the NBC Peacock opening and 'snake' closing. The entire 6 season run was supplied by Proven Entertainment. In 2018, the original series became available in full on Amazon Prime Video. In 2020, the complete series became available on-demand on Tubi. As of 2023, four episodes air per weeknight on the Z Living channel. See also John Carpenter (game show contestant) References External links FBI file on Rowan and Martins Laugh-In TV Show Category:1968 American television series debuts Category:1973 American television series endings Category:1960s American sketch comedy television series Category:1960s American variety television series Category:1970s American sketch comedy television series Category:1970s American variety television series Category:Atco Records artists Category:English-language television shows Category:Epic Records artists Category:NBC original programming Category:Nielsen ratings winners Category:Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Series winners Category:Television shows adapted into comics

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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (often simply referred to as Laugh-In) is an American sketch comedy television program that ran for 140 episodes from January 22, 1968, to March 12, 1973, on the NBC television network. It was hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. Laugh-In originally aired as a one-time special on September 9, 1967, and was such a success that it was brought back as a series, replacing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on Mondays at 8 pm (ET). The title of the show was a play on the "love-ins" or "be-ins" of the 1960s hippie culture, terms that were, in turn, derived from "sit-ins", common in protests associated with civil rights and antiwar demonstrations of the time.

Seasons 4 and 5

The 1970-71 season brought new additions to the cast include tall, lanky, sad-eyed Dennis Allen, who alternately played quietly zany characters and straight man for anybody's jokes; comic actress Ann Elder, who also contributed to scripts, tap dancer Barbara Sharma, and Johnny Brown. Arte Johnson, who created many memorable characters, insisted on star billing, apart from the rest of the cast. The producer mollified him, but had announcer Gary Owens read Johnson's credit as a separate sentence: "Starring Dan Rowan and Dick Martin! And Arte Johnson! With Ruth Buzzi ..." This maneuver gave Johnson star billing, but made it sound like he was still part of the ensemble cast. Johnson left the show after the 1970-71 season. Henry Gibson also departed after the 1970-71 season. Johnson and he were replaced by former Hogan's Heroes stars Richard Dawson and Larry Hovis, both of whom had appeared occasionally in the first season. However, the loss of Johnson's many popular characters caused ratings to drop further. After winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Cactus Flower, Goldie Hawn made a guest appearance in the third episode of the fourth season. She began the episode as an arrogant snob of an actress; however, a bucket of water thrown at her transformed her back to her giggling dumb blonde persona. The show celebrated its 100th episode during the 1971-72 season, with Carne, Worley, Johnson, Gibson, Graves, and Tiny Tim all returning for the festivities. John Wayne was on hand for his first cameo appearance since 1968. CANNOTANSWER

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (often simply referred to as Laugh-In) was an American sketch comedy television program that ran for 140 episodes from January 22, 1968, to March 12, 1973, on the NBC television network, hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. It originally aired as a one-time special on September 9, 1967, and was such a success that it was brought back as a series, replacing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on Mondays at 8 pm (ET). It quickly became the most popular television show in the United States. The title of the show was a play on the 1960s hippie culture "love-ins" or the counterculture "be-ins", terms derived from the "sit-ins" common in protests associated with civil rights and antiwar demonstrations of the time. In 2002, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In was ranked number 42 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In the pilot episode, Dan Rowan explained the show's approach: "Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to television's first Laugh-In. Now for the past few years, we have all been hearing an awful lot about the various 'ins'. There have been be-ins, love-ins, and sleep-ins. This is a laugh-in and a laugh-in is a frame of mind. For the next hour, we would just like you to sit back and laugh and forget about the other ins." The good-natured, lighthearted and informal disposition of the show was thereby established. Laugh-In had its roots in the humor of vaudeville and burlesque, but its most direct influences were Olsen and Johnson's comedies (such as the free-form Broadway revue Hellzapoppin'), the innovative television works of Ernie Kovacs, and the topical satire of That Was The Week That Was. The show was characterized by a rapid-fire series of gags and sketches, many of which were politically charged or contained sexual innuendo. The co-hosts continued the exasperated straight man (Rowan) and "dumb guy" (Martin) act which they had established as nightclub comics. The show featured Gary Owens as the on-screen announcer, and an ensemble cast; Ruth Buzzi was part of the ensemble throughout the show's six year run, while others who appeared in at least three seasons included Judy Carne, Henry Gibson, Goldie Hawn, Arte Johnson, Jo Anne Worley, Alan Sues, Lily Tomlin, Dennis Allen and Richard Dawson. Episodes Laugh-In was designed to be very lightly structured and consisted mainly of short comedic sketches. Some of these would reappear multiple times throughout an episode with variations on a theme, while others involved reoccurring characters created by the cast. In others, castmembers and guest stars would simply appear as themselves, delivering jokes or reacting to a previous sketch. In addition to the announced guest star or stars of the evening, some recurring guest stars would appear unannounced multiple times through a season (which was easy to accomplish given the show's non-linear taping sessions). A trademark of the series was its (even shorter) blackout sketches, often involving rapid-fire cuts between two or more scenes or camera angles, set to a six-note musical sting (or at times, an elongated 16-note version). These were used as transitions into and out of commercials, among other places. The show started with a batch of sketches leading into Gary Owens' introduction segment, in which the cast and announced guest star(s) would appear behind open doors of the show's iconic, psychedelically painted "Joke Wall". Owens would also insert offbeat lines in his monotone, deadpan style, in the introductions and occasionally throughout the episode, generally facing a microphone to his side with one hand cupped to his ear (Owens's character loosened up and became "hipper" in later seasons). After more short sketches leading into and out of the first commercial break, Rowan and Martin would walk in front of the show's homebase set to introduce the show and have a dialogue, generally consisting of Martin frustrating Rowan by derailing his attempt to do a proper introduction via misunderstandings or digressions. Eventually, Rowan would end the introduction and invite the audience to the "Cocktail Party". This live to tape segment comprised all cast members and occasional surprise celebrities dancing before a 1960s "mod" party backdrop, delivering one- and two-line jokes interspersed with a few bars of dance music. (This was similar in format to the "Word Dance" segments of A Thurber Carnival, and would later be imitated on The Muppet Show.) Another weekly segment was "Laugh-In Looks At The News", which began with the female castmembers singing the segment's opening theme in a different costumed set piece each week, often with the help of the guest star. The news varied in presentation over the years, but in the earlier seasons started with Martin reading the "News of the Present", with Rowan providing "News of the Future" and sketches depicting the "News of the Past". Alan Sues, as his "Big Al" character, would provide a typically clueless sports report. "Mod, Mod World" was a group of sketches introduced by Rowan and Martin that fit into an announced theme. This segment is notable for being interspersed with film clips of some of the female castmembers (most frequently Carne and Hawn) performing go-go dancing in bikinis to the segment's burlesque-inspired theme, with the camera periodically zooming into jokes or images that had been drawn onto their bodies. The segment also usually included an additional musical number based on the topic, performed by castmembers at the beginning and end of the segment, as well as in short bridges between sketches. At the end of every show, after a final dialogue, Rowan turned to his co-host and said, "Say good night, Dick", to which Martin replied, "Good night, Dick!", leading into the final Joke Wall segment, in which the cast popped out of their doors and told jokes to the camera, each other, or Rowan and Martin, who stood in front. This would lead into and continue under the closing credits. One final batch of skits, including a closing appearance from Owens, and often an appearance from Arte Johnson's character, German soldier Wolfgang ("veeeeery eeenteresting!"), brought the episode to a conclusion. Other segments and recurring characters, listed below, would come and go throughout the years. Cast Pilot and season 1 The pilot featured Ruth Buzzi, Judy Carne, Henry Gibson, Larry Hovis, Arte Johnson, and Jo Anne Worley, all of whom continued as season one regulars (and, except for Hovis, several seasons thereafter), along with future guest stars Ken Berry, Pamela Austin, and Barbara Feldon. Gary Owens joined the cast in the proper first episode, as did Goldie Hawn, who was under contract to Good Morning World at the time of the pilot. Seasons 2 and 3 The second season had a handful of new people, including Alan Sues, Dave Madden, and Chelsea Brown. All of the new cast members from season two left at the end of that season except Sues, who stayed on until 1972. At the end of the 1968–69 season, Carne chose not to renew her contract, although she did make appearances during 1969–1970. Arte Johnson insisted on star billing, apart from the rest of the cast. The producer mollified him by having announcer Gary Owens read Johnson's credit as a separate sentence: "Starring Dan Rowan and Dick Martin! And Arte Johnson! With Ruth Buzzi ..." This maneuver gave Johnson star billing, but made it sound as though he was still part of the ensemble cast. The third season had several new people who only stayed on for that season, including Teresa Graves and Jeremy Lloyd. Lily Tomlin joined in the middle of the season and remained until the series ended. Johnny Brown made two appearances late, and stayed through seasons 4 and 5. Jo Anne Worley, Goldie Hawn, and Judy Carne left after the third season. Seasons 4 and 5 The 1970–71 season brought new additions to the cast, including tall, lanky, sad-eyed Dennis Allen, who stayed until the end; writer-actress Ann Elder; and tap dancer Barbara Sharma. Arte Johnson and Henry Gibson left the show after/during the fourth season, with former third season regular Teresa Graves making two consecutive appearances towards the end. The fifth season saw the return of former Hogan's Heroes stars Richard Dawson and Larry Hovis, both of whom had appeared in the first season; Dawson would remain until the series ended. The Joke Wall was briefly retired to start the season, with introductions moving to the Cocktail Party set, and the cast telling their show-closing jokes surrounded by celebrity and historical figure cutouts; after only a few episodes, the Joke Wall returned for the closing jokes. The show celebrated its 100th episode in its fifth season, with former regulars Carne, Worley, Johnson, Gibson, Graves, and frequent guest star Tiny Tim returning for the festivities; John Wayne was also on hand for his first cameo appearance since 1968. Season 6 For the show's final season (1972–73), Rowan and Martin assumed the executive producer roles from George Schlatter and Ed Friendly. Along with returnees Dawson, Owens, Buzzi, Allen, and occasional appearances from Tomlin, a new cast was brought in. This final season featured comedian Patti Deutsch, folksy singer-comedian Jud Strunk, ventriloquist act Willie Tyler and Lester, and giddy Goldie Hawn lookalike Sarah Kennedy, among others. Voice artist Frank Welker also made numerous appearances. Former regular Jo Anne Worley returned for two guest appearances, including the final episode. This last season was not included in the edited half-hour rerun package that was syndicated (through Lorimar Productions) to local stations in 1983 and later on Nick at Nite in 1987, ultimately appearing for the first time since its original run when the series began airing on Decades in 2017. Of the more than three dozen entertainers to join the cast, only Rowan, Martin, Owens, and Buzzi were there from beginning to end. However, Owens was not in the 1967 pilot and Buzzi was not present in two first-season episodes. Cast tenures All seasons: Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, Gary Owens, and Ruth Buzzi Season 1 (1968): Judy Carne, Arte Johnson, Pamela Austin, Eileen Brennan, Henry Gibson, Flip Wilson, Goldie Hawn, Larry Hovis, Roddy Maude-Roxby, Jo Anne Worley, Inga Neilsen, Paul Winchell, Tiny Tim Season 2 (1968–69): Judy Carne, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Goldie Hawn, Jo Anne Worley, Dave Madden, Alan Sues, Chelsea Brown, "Sweet Brother" Dick Whittington (through episode 14), Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall ("the Fun Couple"; through episode 11), Pigmeat Markham (through episode 14), Jack Riley (episodes 4, 7, 12, 13, 16), Muriel Landers (episodes 11 and 20), J.J. Barry (episodes 15–19), Byron Gilliam (dancer only), Barbi Benton (dancer only) Season 3 (1969–70): Judy Carne (through episode 11), Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Goldie Hawn, Alan Sues, Jo Anne Worley, Teresa Graves, Jeremy Lloyd, Pamela Rodgers, Byron Gilliam (through episode 11, but continued as a dancer & in occasional cameos), Lily Tomlin (from episode 15), Stu Gilliam (episodes 14, 16, 19, 20, 26), Johnny Brown (episodes 22 and 24) Season 4 (1970–71): Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson (through episode 10), Alan Sues, Lily Tomlin, Dennis Allen, Johnny Brown, Nancie Phillips (through episode 17), Barbara Sharma, Ann Elder, Harvey Jason (episodes 2 and 4), Glen Ash (episodes 10 and 11), Byron Gilliam (dancer only) Season 5 (1971–72): Alan Sues, Lily Tomlin, Dennis Allen, Johnny Brown, Ann Elder, Barbara Sharma, Larry Hovis, Richard Dawson, Moosie Drier, Byron Gilliam (dancer only), Barbi Benton (dancer only) Season 6 (1972–73): Lily Tomlin, Dennis Allen, Richard Dawson, Moosie Drier, Tod Bass, Patti Deutsch, Sarah Kennedy, Jud Strunk, Willie Tyler, Donna Jean Young, Frank Welker, Brian Bressler (through episode 10), Kathy Speirs (episodes 11 and 12), Lisa Farringer (from episode 13). Note: not all cast members appear in all episodes this season, and rotate with some frequency (for instance, Donna Jean Young appears in about half of the season's 24 episodes). Regular guest performers Jack Benny (seasons 2–4, 6) Johnny Carson (seasons 1–6) Carol Channing (seasons 3–5) Tony Curtis (seasons 2–3, 5) Sammy Davis, Jr. (seasons 1–4, 6) Phyllis Diller (seasons 2–4, 6) Barbara Feldon (seasons 1–2) Zsa Zsa Gabor (seasons 2–3) Peter Lawford (seasons 1–4; Lawford became Dan Rowan's son-in-law in 1971) Rich Little (seasons 2, 4, 6) Jill St. John (seasons 1, 3, 5–6) Tiny Tim (seasons 1–3, 5) John Wayne (seasons 1–2, 5–6) Flip Wilson (seasons 1–4) Henny Youngman (seasons 2, 5–6) Series writers The writers for Laugh-In were: George Schlatter, Larry Hovis (pilot only), Digby Wolfe, Paul W. Keyes, Hugh Wedlock, Jr. and Allan Manings, Chris Bearde (credited as Chris Beard), Phil Hahn and Jack Hanrahan, Coslough Johnson (Arte Johnson's twin brother), Marc London and David Panich, Dave Cox, Jim Carlson, Jack Mendelsohn and Jim Mulligan, Lorne Michaels and Hart Pomerantz, Jack Douglas, Jeremy Lloyd, John Carsey, Dennis Gren, Gene Farmer, John Rappaport and Stephen Spears, Jim Abell and Chet Dowling, Barry Took, E. Jack Kaplan, Larry Siegel, Jack S. Margolis, Don Reo and Allan Katz, Richard Goren (also credited as Rowby Greeber and Rowby Goren), Winston Moss, Gene Perret and Bill Richmond, Jack Wohl, Bob Howard and Bob DeVinney. Script supervisors for Laugh-In included Digby Wolfe (comedy consultant, season 1), Phil Hahn and Jack Hanrahan (season 2), Allan Manings (season 3), Marc London and David Panich (seasons 3–6), and Jim Mulligan (season 6). Musical direction and production numbers The musical director for Laugh-In was Ian Bernard. He wrote the opening theme music, "Inquisitive Tango" (used in Season 1 and again permanently from season 4), plus the infamous "What's the news across the nation" number. He wrote all the musical "play-ons" that introduced comedy sketches like Lily Tomlin's character, Edith Ann, the little girl who sat in a giant rocking chair, and Arte Johnson's old man character, Tyrone, who always got hit with a purse. He also appeared in many of the cocktail scenes where he directed the band as they stopped and started between jokes. Composer-lyricist Billy Barnes wrote all of the original musical production numbers in the show, and often appeared on-camera, accompanying Johnson, Buzzi, Worley, or Sues, on a golden grand piano. Barnes was the creator of the famous Billy Barnes Revues of the 1950s and 1960s, and composed such popular hits as "I Stayed Too Long at the Fair", recorded by Barbra Streisand and the jazz standard "Something Cool" recorded by June Christy. For the entire 141-episode series of Laugh-In, including the pilot, the show's musical coordinator was West Coast bebop jazz pianist and composer Russ Freeman. Post-production The show was recorded at NBC's Burbank facility using two-inch quadruplex videotape. As computer-controlled online editing had not been invented at the time, post-production video editing of the montage was achieved by the error-prone method of visualizing the recorded track with ferrofluid and cutting it with a razor blade or guillotine cutter and splicing with adhesive tape, in a manner similar to film editing. This had the incidental benefit of ensuring the preservation of the master tape, as a spliced tape could not be recycled for further use. Laugh-In editor Arthur Schneider won an Emmy Award in 1968 for his pioneering use of the "jump cut" – the unique editing style in which a sudden cut from one shot to another was made without a fade-out. When the series was restored for airing by the Trio Cable Network in 1996, the aforementioned edits became problematic for the editors, as the adhesive used on the source tape had deteriorated during 20+ years of storage, making many of the visual elements at the edit points unusable. This was corrected in digital re-editing by removing the problematic video at the edit point and then slowing down the video image just before the edit point; time-expanding the slowed-down section long enough to allot enough time to seamlessly reinsert the audio portion from the removed portion of video. Recurring sketches and characters Sketches Frequently recurring Laugh-In sketches included: "Sock it to me"; Judy Carne was often tricked into saying the phrase ("It may be rice wine to you, but it's sake to me!"), which invariably results in her (or other cast members) falling through a trap door, being doused with water, or playfully assaulted in various other manners. The phrase was also uttered by many of the cameo guest stars, most notably Richard Nixon, though they were almost never subjected to the same treatment as Carne. "The Farkel Family", a couple with numerous children, all of whom had bright red hair and large freckles similar to their "good friend and trusty neighbor" Ferd Berfel (Dick Martin). The sketch employed diversion humor, the writing paying more attention to the lines said by each player, using alliterative tongue-twisters ("That's a fine-looking Farkel flinger you found there, Frank"). Dan Rowan played father Frank Farkel the Third, Jo Anne Worley, Barbara Sharma and Patti Deutsch played his wife Fanny Farkel, Goldie Hawn played Sparkle Farkel, Arte Johnson played Frank Farkel the Fourth, and Ruth Buzzi played Flicker Farkel, who would only say "HIIIIII!" in a very high-pitched voice. Two of the children were twins named Simon and Gar Farkel, played by cast members of different races (Teresa Graves and Pamela Rodgers in the third season, Johnny Brown and Dennis Allen in the fourth season). All of the Farkel skits were written or co-written by David Panich. "Here Comes the Judge", originally portrayed by British comic Roddy Maude-Roxby, was a stuffy magistrate with a black robe and oversized judge's wig. Each sketch featured the judge trading barbs with a defendant brought him; on delivery of the punch line, he would strike the defendant with an inflated bladder balloon tied to the sleeve of his robe. For a time guest star Flip Wilson or Sammy Davis Jr. would introduce the sketch saying "Here come da judge!", which was a venerable catchphrase by nightclub comedian Pigmeat Markham. Surprised that his trademark had been appropriated, Markham asked producer George Schlatter to let him play the Judge himself; Schlatter agreed and Markham presided for one season. After Markham left, the sketch was briefly retired until Sammy Davis Jr. donned the judicial robe and wig during his guest appearances, introducing each sketch with a rap that always finished with "Here come da judge, here come da judge...". "Laugh-In Looks at the News", a parody of network newscasts, introduced by the female cast members in a highly un-journalistic production number. The sketch was originally called the Rowan and Martin Report (a take-off on the Huntley-Brinkley Report). The sketch itself featured Dick humorously reporting on current events, which then segued into Dan reporting on "News of the Past" and "News of the Future". The latter of these segments, on at least two occasions, correctly predicted future events, one being that Ronald Reagan would be president, and another that the Berlin Wall would finally come down in 1989. This segment was influenced by the BBC's That Was the Week That Was, and in turn inspired Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" segments (SNL creator Lorne Michaels was a Laugh-In writer early in his career). The News segments were followed by "Big Al" (Alan Sues) and his sports report in seasons 2–5. After Sues left the show, Jud Strunk took over the sports segment ("reporting from the sports capital of Farmington, Maine") by featuring films of oddly-named events which were actual sports films played backwards. An example is the "Cannonball Catch", featuring a backwards film of a bowling tournament where the "cannonballs" (bowling balls) are caught one-handed by the catcher (the bowler) after rolling up the alley. "New Talent Time" also called "Discovery of the Week" in later seasons. Introduced oddball variety acts (sometimes characters played by regular cast members) Tin Pan Alley musician Tiny Tim – The most notable of these acts, was introduced in episode 1 and shot to fame. Returned in the Season 1 finale & made several guest appearances after. Actor Paul Gilbert (adoptive father of actress Melissa Gilbert) appeared in three episodes as an inept French juggler, introduced as "Paul Jill-bare". 6'2" actress Inga Neilsen made appearances as a bugle/kazoo player who could only play one note of "Tiger Rag" & had to deal with Martin's advances. Martin, who hated all of the other New Talent acts would enthusiastically cheer her on despite the obvious lack of talent. Ventriloquist Paul Winchell appeared three times as "Lucky Pierre", whose puppets would fall apart or die on him. Arte Johnson would appear as his Pyotr Rosmenko character looking for big American break, singing gibberish in a Russian accent Murray Langston, who later achieved fame as the Gong Show's "Unknown Comic" Laugh-In writer Chris Bearde took the "New Talent" concept and later developed it into The Gong Show. "The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award" sardonically recognized actual dubious achievements by public individuals or institutions, the most frequent recipients being members or branches of the government. The trophy was a gilded left hand mounted on a trophy base with its extended index finger adorned with two small wings. "The Wonderful World of Whoopee Award" was a counterpart to the "Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award", described by Rowan as a citation "for the little man who manages to outfight or outfox the bureaucracy"; the statue was similar to the Finger of Fate, only it was a right hand (without wings on the index finger) pointing straight up, and with a hidden mechanism that when activated caused the finger to wave in a circular motion. "The C.F.G. Automat"; a vending machine whose title was an inside joke for cast members who referred to producer Schlatter as "Crazy (bleeping) George". The vending machine would distribute oddball items that were a play on the name. Examples: The 'pot pie' produced a cloud of smoke when the door was opened, then the pie floated away. The 'ladyfingers' was a woman's hand reaching out & tickling Arte's face while another 'ladyfingers' door opened & picked his pocket. Many episodes were interspersed with a recurring, short wordless gag in which an actor repeatedly tried to accomplish some simple task like entering an elevator, opening a window or door, watering a plant, etc., which would fail each time in a different, surprising way (the object would move unexpectedly, another part of the wall or room would move, water would squirt the actor in the face from the object, etc.) Another recurring wordless gag involved one or more actors walking around the street in a jerky fashion (using stop-motion or low shutter speed filming) holding and turning a bare steering wheel, as if they were driving a car or actually were a car, with various sound effects to simulate honking, back-ups, collisions with each other, etc. From season four on, a variety of sketches or jokes used the word "Foon", usually as part of the name of imaginary products or persons (e.g., Foon detergent, Mr. Foonman). (They did this with "Nern" in earlier seasons.) "Questions From The Audience / Dick's Costumes"; In the sixth season, Dan Rowan would ask the audience if anybody had any questions about the show or otherwise. As he was doing so (in which nobody in the audience ever spoke up), Dick Martin would come out wearing some kind of costume which Rowan would ask about, leading to a humorous exchange on the costume's subject matter. Characters Dan Rowan, in addition to hosting, provided the "News Of The Future" and also appears as General Bull Right, a far-right-wing representative of the military establishment and outlet for political humor. Dick Martin, in addition to hosting would also play a drunk Leonard Swizzle, husband of an equally drunk Doris Swizzle (Ruth Buzzi) and& a character always buzzing for an elevator on which the doors never closed in a normal way Announcer Gary Owens regularly stands in an old-time radio studio with his hand cupped over his ear, making announcements, often with little relation to the rest of the show, such as (in an overly-dramatic voice), "Earlier that evening ..." Arte Johnson: Wolfgang the German soldier – Wolfgang would often peer out from behind a potted palm and comment on the previous gag saying "Verrry in-te-res-ting", sometimes with comments such as "... but shtupid!" He eventually closed each show by talking to Lucille Ball and her husband Gary Morton, as well as the cast of Gunsmoke — both airing opposite Laugh-In on CBS; as well as whatever was on ABC. Johnson later repeated the line while playing Nazi-themed supervillain Virman Vundabar on an episode of Justice League Unlimited. Johnson also reprised his Wolfgang character in a series of skits for the second season of Sesame Street (1970–1971), and in 1980 for a series of small introductory skits with a plant on 3-2-1 Contact, during the "Growth/Decay" week. Tyrone F. Horneigh (pronounced "hor-NIGH", presumably to satisfy the censors) was a dirty old man coming on to Gladys Ormphby (Ruth Buzzi) seated on a park bench, who almost invariably clobbers him with her purse. Both Tyrone and Gladys later became animated characters (voiced by Johnson and Buzzi) in "The Nitwits" segments of the 1977 Saturday morning animated television show, Baggy Pants and the Nitwits. Pyotr Rosmenko, a Russian man, stands stiffly and nervously in an ill-fitting suit while commenting on differences between America and "the old country", such as "Here in America, is very good, everyone watch television. In old country, television watches you!" This type of joke has come to be known as the Russian reversal. Rabbi Shankar (a pun on Ravi Shankar) was an Indian guru who dresses in a Nehru jacket dispensing pseudomystical Eastern wisdom laden with bad puns. He held up two fingers in a peace sign whenever he spoke. An unnamed character in a yellow raincoat and hat, riding a tricycle and then falling over, was frequently used to link between sketches. The character was portrayed by many people besides Johnson, including his brother Coslough (a writer for the show), Alan Sues, and Johnny Brown. The Scandinavian Storyteller – spoke gibberish, including non-sensical 'Knock Knock' jokes in the Joke Wall. No one could ever understand him. Possibly inspiration for the Muppets' Swedish Chef character. Ruth Buzzi: Gladys Ormphby – A drab, relatively young spinster, she is the eternal target of Arte Johnson's Tyrone; when Johnson left the series, Gladys retreated into recurring daydreams, often involving marriages to historical figures, including Christopher Columbus and Benjamin Franklin (both played by Alan Sues). She typically hit people repeatedly with her purse. The character was recreated, along with Tyrone, in Baggy Pants and the Nitwits. Buzzi also performed as Gladys on Sesame Street and The Dean Martin Show, most notably in the Celebrity Roasts. Doris Swizzle – A seedy barfly, she is paired with her husband, Leonard Swizzle, played by Dick Martin. Kim Hither – An exceedingly friendly hooker, commonly seen in sketches or at the cocktail party propositioning people while leaning against a lamppost. Busy Buzzi – A cold and heartless old-style Hedda Hopper-type Hollywood gossip columnist. Kathleen Pullman – A wicked parody of televangelist Kathryn Kuhlman. This always helpful but overdramatic woman is always eager to help people. Laverne Blossom - A former silent movie star with dark make-up round the eyes. She often attends the cocktail party in the later seasons. Henry Gibson: The Poet held an oversized flower and nervously read offbeat poems. (His stage name was a play on the name of playwright Henrik Ibsen). The Parson – A character who makes ecclesiastical quips. In 1970, he officiated at a near-marriage for Tyrone and Gladys. Would frequently just pop up and utter the phrase "Marshall McLuhan, what are you doin'?". Also played a cub reporter for Busy Buzzi. While she was looking for a scoop, Gibson would come in with one (usually about Steve McQueen) which Buzzi would completely garble up to sound like something out of left field. Goldie Hawn is best known as the giggling "dumb blonde", stumbling over her lines, especially when she introduced Dan's "News of the Future". In the earliest episodes, she recited her dialogue sensibly and in her own voice, but as the series progressed, she adopted a Dumb Dora character with a higher-pitched giggle and a vacant expression, which endeared her to viewers. Frequently did a Donald Duck voice at inappropriate times, such as when she was expected to sing or doing ballet. Lily Tomlin: Ernestine/Miss Tomlin – An obnoxious telephone operator, she has no concern at all for her customers and constantly mispronounced their names. Her close friend is fellow telephone operator, Phenicia; and her boyfriend, Vito. She would boast of being a high school graduate. Tomlin later performed Ernestine on Saturday Night Live and Happy New Year, America. She also played the Ernestine character for a comedy album called This Is A Recording. At the suggestion of CFG, Ernestine began dialing with her middle finger in Season 4, sometimes blatantly flipping "the bird" to the camera as a result. Censors never caught on – "we know she's doing something wrong, we just can't put our finger on it!" Edith Ann – A -year-old child, she ends each of her short monologues with: "And that's the truth", followed by blowing a raspberry. Tomlin performs her skits in an oversized rocking chair that makes her appear small. Tomlin later performed Edith Ann on children's shows such as Sesame Street and The Electric Company. Mrs. Earbore (the "Tasteful Lady") – A prim society matron, Mrs. Earbore expressed quiet disapproval about a tasteless joke or remark, and then rose from her chair with her legs spread, getting doused with a bucket of water or the sound of her skirt ripping. Dotty – A crass and rude grocery checker who tended to annoy her customers at the store where she worked. Lula – A loud and boisterous woman with a Marie Antoinette hair-do who always loved a party. Suzie Sorority of the Silent Majority – clueless hippie college student who ended each bit with "Rah!" The Babbler – A character given to speaking exuberantly and at great length while digressing after every few words and never staying on one subject, producing an unbroken, incomprehensible monologue. Judy Carne had two characters known for their robotic speech and movement: Mrs. Robot in "Robot Theater" – A female companion to Arte Johnson's "Mr. Robot". The Talking Judy Doll – She is usually played with by Arte Johnson, who never heeded her warning: "Touch my little body, and I hit you!" The Sock-It-To-Me Girl in which she would usually end up being splashed with water and/or falling through a trap door and/or getting conked on the head by a large club or mallet and/or knocked out by a boxing glove on a spring. Jo Anne Worley sometimes sings off-the-wall songs using her loud operatic voice or displaying an advanced state of pregnancy, but is better remembered for her mock outrage at "chicken jokes" and her melodic outcry of "Bo-ring!". At the cocktail parties, she would talk about her never-seen married boyfriend/lover "Boris" (who, according to her in a Season 3 episode, was finally found out by his wife). Alan Sues: Big Al – A clueless and fey sports anchor, he loves ringing his "Featurette" bell, which he calls his "tinkle". He would dress in drag as his former co-star, Jo Anne Worley, including skits where he appeared as a "fairy godmother". imitating Worley's boisterous laugh and offering help or advice to a Cinderella-type character in a conversation full of double entendres. Uncle Al, the Kiddies' Pal – A short-tempered host of a children's show, he usually goes on the air with a hangover: "Oh, kiddies, Uncle Al had a lot of medicine last night." Whenever he got really agitated, he would yell to "Get Miss Twinkle on the phone!" Grabowski – a benchwarmer football player obviously not cut out for the sport. Ex: "He pushed me! He pushed me!... they all pushed me!" and "No, you can't wear your ballet slippers on the field, Grabowski!" Boomer – A self-absorbed "jock" bragging about his athletic exploits. Ambiguously gay saloon patron – while Dan and Dick ordered whiskey, he would saunter up to the bar and ask for a fruit punch or frozen daiquiri. In the last season where he was a regular, he would be the one who got water thrown on him after a ticking alarm clock went off (replacing Judy Carne as the one who always got drenched). Pamela Rodgers – "Your man in Washington"; she would give 'reports' from the Capitol that were usually double entendres to give the impression that the Congressmen were fooling around with her. Jeremy Lloyd – scrunched himself into an ultra-short character a la Toulouse-Lautrec. Dennis Allen: Lt. Peaches of the Fuzz – a stumble-bum police officer. Chaplain Bud Homily – a droll clergyman who often falls victim to his own sermons. Eric Clarified (a play on news commentator Eric Sevareid) – a correspondent for Laugh-In Looks at the News who further muddles up obfuscatory government statements he has been asked to clarify. Rowan would often throw to another correspondent (played by Sues) to analyze Eric Clarified's statements in turn. Barbara Sharma: The Burbank Metre Made – a dancing meter maid who tickets anything from trees to baby carriages. An aspiring actress who often plays foil in cocktail-party segments to another "high-society" character (Tomlin). In season four, a Ruby Keeler-esque dancer (and arch-nemesis of Johnson's Wolfgang) who often praises Vice President Spiro Agnew. Johnny Brown lent his impersonations of Ed Sullivan, Alfred Hitchcock, Ralph Kramden and the Kingfish from Amos 'n' Andy. Ann Elder as Pauline Rhetoric (a play on NBC reporter Pauline Frederick), the chief interviewer for the Laugh-In News segments. Moosie Drier and Todd Bass – Drier did the "kids news for kids" segment of the Laugh-In news. Bass teamed with Drier in Season 6 to read letters from a treehouse Larry Hovis – the Senator, the Texan, David Brinkley, Father Time Richard Dawson – W.C. Fields, Groucho Marx, Hawkins the Butler, who always started his piece by asking "Permission to ...?" and proceeded to fall over. Roddy Maude-Roxby, Pigmeat Markham – Here Come Da Judge (Roxby for Season 1, Markham for Season 2) Dave Madden – would always throw confetti after "a naughty thought", usually a punch line that was a double-entendre. Once while kissing Carne, confetti erupted around him Memorable moments The first season featured some of the first music videos seen on network TV, with cast members appearing in films set to the music of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Bee Gees, the Temptations, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, and the First Edition. During the September 16, 1968, episode, Richard Nixon, running for president, appeared for a few seconds with a disbelieving vocal inflection, asking "Sock it to me?" Nixon was not doused or assaulted. An invitation was extended to Nixon's opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, but he declined. According to George Schlatter, the show's creator, "Humphrey later said that not doing it may have cost him the election", and "[Nixon] said the rest of his life that appearing on Laugh-In is what got him elected. And I believe that. And I've had to live with that." In an episode of the ill-fated 1977 revival, Rich Little as Nixon says, "I invited the American people to sock-it-to-me.... you can stop now". After winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Cactus Flower, Goldie Hawn made a guest appearance in the third episode of the fourth season. She began the episode as an arrogant snob of an actress; however, a bucket of water thrown at her transformed her back to her giggling dumb blonde persona. On multiple occasions, producer George Schlatter attempted to get William F. Buckley Jr. to appear on the show, only to be refused each time until he suddenly agreed to an appearance. In the episode that aired December 28, 1970, Buckley appeared in an unusual sit-down segment (portions of which were scattered throughout the episode) flanked by Rowan and Martin and fielding questions from the cast (which included Lily Tomlin doing her Babbler and Ernestine shticks) and giving humorous answers to each. Near the end, when Rowan asked Buckley why he finally agreed to appear on the show, Buckley explained that Schlatter had written him "an irresistable letter" in which he promised to fly Buckley out to Burbank "in an airplane with two right wings". At the end, Rowan thanked him for appearing: "You can't be that smart without having a sense of humor, and you have a delightful one." The 100th episode featured John Wayne, Tiny Tim & the return of several former cast members. Wayne, with his ear cupped, read the line "and me, I'm Gary Owens" instead of Owens himself. Wayne also shook Tiny Tim's hand, pretending that his grip was too overpowering. Catchphrases In addition to those already mentioned, the show created numerous catchphrases: "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls! (a lesser-known set of reference books whose phonetically funny name helped both Laugh-In and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to poke fun at NBC censors) "You bet your sweet bippy!" (Dick Martin) "Ring my chimes!" (Flip Wilson) "Beautiful downtown Burbank" (various actors/characters, referring tongue-in-cheek to the Los Angeles suburb in which the NBC studios (and thus the program) were located; the same term was frequently used by Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson). "One ringy-dingy ... two ringy-dingys ..." (Ernestine's mimicking of the rings while she was waiting for someone to pick up the receiver on the other end of the telephone lines) "A gracious good afternoon. This is Miss Tomlin of the telephone company. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?" Ernestine's greeting to people whom she would call. She would then mispronounce the names of famous people: Gore Vidal was "Mr. Veedle", William F. Buckley was "Mr. F'buckley". Richard Nixon was simply "Milhouse". "I just wanna swing!" Gladys Ormphby's catchphrase "Was that another chicken joke?" – Jo Anne Worley's outraged cry, a takeoff on Polish jokes "Sock it to me!" experienced its greatest exposure on Laugh-In although the phrase had been featured in songs such as Aretha Franklin's 1967 "Respect" and Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels' 1966 "Sock It To Me, Baby!" "Blow in my ear and I'll follow you anywhere." "Now, that's a no-no!" "Morgul the Friendly Drelb" – a pink Abominable Snowman-like character that was introduced in the second episode and bombed so badly, his name was used in various announcements by Gary Owens for the rest of the series (usually at the end of the opening cast list – "Yours truly, Gary Owens, and Morgul as the Friendly Drelb!") and credited as the author of a paperback collection of the show's sketches. On the spin-off "Letters To Laugh-In", "Morgul" would reach out of the podium & hand Owens the card containing the next category in a manner similar to Thing on The Addams Family. "Want a Walnetto?" was a pick-up line Tyrone would try on Gladys, which always resulted in a purse drubbing. "Here come da Judge" "Verrry in-te-res-ting" (Wolfgang the soldier) "And that's the truth – PFFFFT!" (Edith Ann) "Go to your room!" – "Big kid" Dan's response to a particularly bad joke, as if to put that cast member in time out like a child. "He pushed me!" – usually said by Sues when another cast member would bump him. "Marshall McLuhan, what are you doin – uttered by Gibson randomly between sketches. "How does that grab you?" JoAnne Worley "Oh... that Henny Youngman" – preceded by cast members quoting a series of his punchlines in succession, but without the jokes leading up to them. "He was a much better person for that" – as "Sock it to me!" was phased out following Carne's departure, this became the line used for similar sketches "Well, I'll drink to that", "I did not know that!", "Whatever turns you on" and "That's funny, so did she" – Dick Martin "Goodnight, Lucy" – During the first three seasons, Laugh-In was scheduled opposite Lucille Ball's third television series, Here's Lucy. At the end of the show, one or more cast members would say, "Goodnight, Lucy." Dick Martin had been a regular cast member in the first season of Ball's second series, The Lucy Show. "Goodnight, Dick" – the closing portion of each episode of Seasons 1 and 2 and began with the guest star & numerous cameos all saying "Goodnight, Dick". Occasionally, one of the cameo actors would say "Who's Dick?". This shtick was revived in the sixth season, usually after the end credits. "Gotcha!" "Wr-r-r-ong!" – spoken in a cameo by Otto Preminger, subsequent cameo actors would repeat the line, mimicking Preminger's delivery of it. "How would I know? I've never been out with one" "I think I've got it too" – running gag where the person would say this & start scratching themselves for no particular reason. "Blah! Blah!" – staff writer Chet Dowling would appear at random in various episodes throughout the fourth season, wearing a tux and this was all he'd ever say. "That's not funny" "Wacker!" – this name became used often in sketches after the Bobby Darin episode of Season 2. Darin had done a sketch with Martin & hilariously proceeded to call him 'Wacker' throughout the rest of the show "I've Got A Secret" – paying homage to the long-running game show, a running gag during the first two seasons was to have celebrity cameos claiming to be a celebrity of the opposite gender "...and I've REALLY got a secret!". Examples were Joey Bishop stating "My name is Joey Heatherton...", James Garner as Loretta Young, Jill St. John as Jack Jones and each of the female cast members as Tiny Tim. Merchandise tie-ins and spin-offs A chain of Laugh-In restaurants opened in several states during 1968–69; primarily in Michigan, Ohio and Florida. Psychedelically themed like the show, they offered such menu items as Bippy Burgers, Is That A Chicken Joke Chicken, Fickle Finger Of Fate Fries, Beautiful Downtown Burbank Burgers, Fickle Finger Franks, Verrrry Interesting Sandwiches, I'll Drink To That beverages, Sock It To Me soups, Laugh-In Fortune Cookies and Here Come Da Fudge sundaes. Staff often rode around on red tricycles wearing yellow raincoats and hats. All locations were closed by the mid-1970's. Menus, french fry bags, sandwich wraps, napkins, salt and pepper shakers and other memorabilia are still sold on EBay. A humor magazine tie-in, Laugh-In Magazine, was published for one year (12 issues: October 1968 through October 1969—no issue was published December 1968), and a 1968-1972 syndicated newspaper comic strip was drawn by Roy Doty and eventually collected for a paperback reprint. The Laugh-In trading cards from Topps had a variety of items, such as a card with a caricature of Jo Anne Worley with a large open mouth. With a die-cut hole, the card became interactive; a finger could be inserted through the hole to simulate Worley's tongue. Little doors opened on Joke Wall cards to display punchlines. On Letters to Laugh-In, a short-lived spin-off daytime show hosted by Gary Owens, cast members read jokes sent in by viewers, which were scored by applause meter. The eventual winning joke was read by actress Jill St. John: "What do you get when you cross an elephant with a jar of peanut butter? A 500 pound sandwich that sticks to the roof of your mouth!" A cross-promotional episode of I Dream of Jeannie ("The Biggest Star in Hollywood", February 1969) features Judy Carne, Arte Johnson, Gary Owens, and producer George Schlatter playing themselves in a story about Jeannie being sought after to appear on Laugh-In. In 1969, a Laugh-In View-Master packet was issued by General Aniline and Film (GAF); The packet featured 21 3D images from the show. The horror spoof film The Maltese Bippy (1969) starring Dan Rowan and Dick Martin was loosely related to the series. Pamela Rodgers was the only Laugh-In cast member to co-star in the film. In 1969, Sears, Roebuck and Company produced a 15-minute short, Freeze-In, which starred series regulars Judy Carne and Arte Johnson. Made to capitalize on the popularity of the series, the short was made for Sears salesmen to introduce the new Kenmore freezer campaign. A dancing, bikini-clad Carne provided the opening titles with tattoos on her body. Two LPs of material from the show were released: the first on Epic Records (FXS-15118, 1968); the second, which did not feature Rowan or Martin, was entitled Laugh-In '69 and released on Reprise Records (RS 6335, 1969). DVD releases Between 2003 and 2004, Rhino Entertainment Company (under its Rhino Retrovision classic TV entertainment brand), under license from the rightsholder at the time, SFM Entertainment, released two The Best Of releases of the show, each containing six episodes presented in its original, uncut broadcast version. In 2003, Rhino, through direct-response marketing firm Guthy-Renker, also released a series of DVDs subtitled The Sock-It-To-Me Collection, with each DVD containing two episodes. On June 19, 2017, Time Life, another direct-response marketer, released Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1, in a deal with current rightsholder Proven Entertainment. The 38-disc set contains all 140 episodes of the series, complete and uncut, restored and remastered as well as many bonus features and a special 32-page collector's book. On September 5, 2017, Time Life began releasing individual complete season sets on DVD, beginning with the first season. This was followed by the second season on January 9, 2018, and the third season on March 6, 2018. The fourth season was released on May 8, 2018. Season 5 was released on July 10, 2018. Finally, Season 6 was released on September 4, 2018. Ratings TV season, ranking, average viewers per episode 1967–1968: #21 (21.3) 1968–1969: #1 (31.8) 1969–1970: #1 (26.3) 1970–1971: #13 (22.4) 1971–1972: #22 (21.4) 1972–1973: #51 (16.7) Revival In 1977, Schlatter and NBC briefly revived the property as a series of specials – titled simply Laugh-In – with a new cast. The standout was a then-unknown Robin Williams, whose starring role on ABC's Mork & Mindy one year later prompted NBC to rerun the specials as a summer series in 1979. Also featured were Wayland Flowers and Madame (as well as his other puppet, "Jiffy"), former child evangelist Marjoe Gortner, former Barney Miller actress June Gable, Good Times actor Ben Powers, Bill Rafferty of Real People and comedian Ed Bluestone. Rowan and Martin, who owned part of the Laugh-In franchise, were not involved in this project. They sued Schlatter for using the format without their permission, and won a judgment of $4.6 million in 1980. In 1987, George Schlatter attempted a revival of the program called George Schlatter's Comedy Club, the weekly half-hour program that appeared in syndication through King World Productions during the 1987-1988 television season. Featuring stand-up comedy routines alongside quick comedy sketches similar to Laugh-In, the series was hosted by Schlatter himself. In 2019, Netflix produced a special tribute to the original series entitled, Still Laugh-In: The Stars Celebrate. Tomlin, Buzzi and Worley appeared in the special. Retrospective criticism Critic's views in retrospect, while noting it being groundbreaking, have also indicated that it has not aged well. Various aspects of the show at the time come across as racist in current times. Other aspects stereotyped gay people and women. While the humour was appreciated by some at the time of release, with taste more sophisticated now, is not seen as humorous. While the show included black actors, and made some comments on racism about black people, at the same time, it was noted the show featured white actors portraying Asians in yellowface. Awards and honors Emmy Awards Won: 1968: Outstanding Musical or Variety Program, George Schlatter (for the September 9, 1967 special) 1968: Outstanding Musical or Variety Series, George Schlatter 1968: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Music or Variety, Chris Bearde, Phil Hahn, Jack Hanrahan, Coslough Johnson, Paul Keyes, Marc London, Allan Manings, David Panich, Hugh Wedlock, Jr., Digby Wolfe 1968: Outstanding Individual Achievement in Electronic Production – Arthur Schneider (tape editor) 1969: Outstanding Musical or Variety Series – Paul Keyes (producer), Carolyn Raskin (producer), Dick Martin (star), Dan Rowan (star) 1969: Special Classification Achievements – Individuals (Variety Performances), Arte Johnson 1971: Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Variety or Music, Mark Warren (episode #4.7 with Orson Welles) Nominated: 1968: Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Variety or Music, Bill Foster (pilot episode) 1968 Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Variety or Music, Gordon Wiles 1968: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Music or Variety, – Larry Hovis, Paul Keyes, Jim Mulligan, David Panich, George Schlatter, Digby Wolfe (pilot episode) 1969: Special Classification Achievements – Individuals (Variety Performances), Ruth Buzzi 1969: Special Classification Achievements – Individuals (Variety Performances), Goldie Hawn 1969: Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy, Variety or Music – Gordon Wiles (For episode on 3 February 1969) 1969: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy, Variety or Music – various writers (For episode on 3 February 1969) 1969: Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music – Billy Barnes (special material) 1969: Special Classification Achievements – Individuals (Variety Performances) – Ruth Buzzi 1969: Special Classification Achievements – Individuals (Variety Performances) – Goldie Hawn 1969: Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction and Scenic Design – Ken Johnson 1969: Outstanding Individual Achievement in Electronic Production – John Teele and Bruce Verran (video tape editors) 1969: Outstanding Individual Achievement in Electronic Production – Arthur Schneider (tape editor) 1970: Outstanding Variety or Musical Series – George Schlatter (executive producer), Carolyn Raskin (producer), Paul Keyes (producer), Dan Rowan (star), Dick Martin (star) 1970: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy, Variety or Music – various writers (For episode on 3 November 1969 with Buddy Hackett) 1970: Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy, Variety or Music – various writers (For episode on 20 December 1969 with Nancy Sinatra) 1970: Special Classification of Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement – Individuals, Goldie Hawn 1970: Special Classification of Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement – Individuals, Arte Johnson 1970: Outstanding Achievement in Music, Lyrics and Special Material – Billy Barnes (composer) (For episode with Carol Channing) 1970: Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design – Michael Travis 1971: Outstanding Variety Series, Musical – George Schlatter (executive producer), Carolyn Raskin (producer), Paul Keyes (producer), Dan Rowan (star), Dick Martin (star) 1971: Special Classification of Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement – Individuals – Arte Johnson 1971: Special Classification of Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement – Individuals – Lily Tomlin 1971: Outstanding Achievement in Technical Direction and Electronic Camerawork – Marvin Ault (cameraman), Ray Figelski (cameraman), Louis Fusari (technical director), Jon Olson (cameraman), Tony Yarlett (cameraman) 1972: Outstanding Achievement by a Performer in Music or Variety, Ruth Buzzi 1972: Outstanding Achievement by a Performer in Music or Variety, Lily Tomlin 1972: Outstanding Achievement in Music, Lyrics and Special Material – Billy Barnes (For episode with Liza Minnelli) 1973: Outstanding Achievement by a Supporting Performer in Music or Variety – Lily Tomlin 1978: Outstanding Continuing or Single Performance by a Supporting Actress in Variety or Music, Bea Arthur (for episode on 25 October 1977) 1978: Outstanding Achievement in Video Tape Editing for a Series – Ed. J. Brennan (editor) (For show #6–8 February 1978) Golden Globe Award Won: 1973: Best Supporting Actress – Television, Ruth Buzzi 1969: Best TV Show Nominated: 1972: Best Supporting Actress – Television, Lily Tomlin 1971: Best Supporting Actor – Television, Henry Gibson 1970: Best TV Show – Musical/Comedy 1968: Best TV Show International and U.S. re-broadcasts The first four seasons were broadcast on BBC2 from January 1969 to November 1971. Some episodes from seasons 1, 2 and 3 were retransmitted during late 1983 and early 1984. Early broadcasts had to be shown with a black border, as technology was not available to render the 525-line NTSC video recording as a full-screen 625-line PAL picture. This issue was fixed for later broadcasts. The series was broadcast on RTÉ One. The series originally aired on the 0-10 Network in the 1960s and 1970s. It later appeared in re-runs on the Seven Network in the early 1980s. CTV aired the series at the same time as the NBC run. 1983 saw the first 70 one-hour shows syndicated to broadcast stations (the pilot, first three seasons and the first four episodes of season 4). Alternate recut half-hour shows were syndicated through Lorimar Television to local stations in 1983 and later on Nick at Nite in 1987 through August 1990. The Vivendi Universal-owned popular arts/pop culture entertainment cable network Trio started airing the show in its original one-hour form in the early 2000s; the same abbreviated 70 episode package was run. In September 2016, digital sub-network Decades started airing the show twice a day in its original one-hour format, complete with the NBC Peacock opening and 'snake' closing. The entire 6 season run was supplied by Proven Entertainment. In 2018, the original series became available in full on Amazon Prime Video. In 2020, the complete series became available on-demand on Tubi. As of 2023, four episodes air per weeknight on the Z Living channel. See also John Carpenter (game show contestant) References External links FBI file on Rowan and Martins Laugh-In TV Show Category:1968 American television series debuts Category:1973 American television series endings Category:1960s American sketch comedy television series Category:1960s American variety television series Category:1970s American sketch comedy television series Category:1970s American variety television series Category:Atco Records artists Category:English-language television shows Category:Epic Records artists Category:NBC original programming Category:Nielsen ratings winners Category:Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Series winners Category:Television shows adapted into comics

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Steven Seagal

Steven Frederic Seagal was born in Lansing, Michigan on April 10, 1952, the son of medical technician Patricia (1930-2003) and high school math teacher Samuel Seagal (1928-1991). His mother was of Dutch, English, and German ancestry, while his paternal grandparents were Russian Jews who immigrated to the U.S. He also has Irish and Mongolian heritage. When Seagal was five years old, his parents relocated to Fullerton, California.

Martial arts

Seagal moved to Japan at some point between 1971 and 1973. The date of his journey has become a point of contention due to Seagal's statement that he studied with Morihei Uyeshiba, the founder of aikido, who died in 1969. Terry Dobson, a fifth-degree black belt who studied with the master from 1961 to 1969, dismissed this claim, saying, "That story is bull. [Back then] I never heard of Steven Seagal." By 1974 Seagal had returned California. That year he met Miyako Fujitani, a second-degree black belt and daughter of an Osaka aikido master who had come to Los Angeles to teach aikido. When Miyako returned to Osaka, Seagal went with her. The following year they married and had a son, Kentaro, and a daughter, Ayako. He taught at the school owned by Miyako's family (though he is often stated to have been the first non-Asian to open a dojo in Japan). As of 1990, Miyako and her brother still taught there, and her mother was the chairwoman. Seagal initially returned to Taos, New Mexico, with his student (and later film stuntman) Craig Dunn, where they opened a dojo, although Seagal spent much of his time pursuing other ventures. After another period in Japan, Seagal returned to the U.S. in 1983 with senior student Haruo Matsuoka. They opened an aikido dojo, initially in North Hollywood, California, but later moved it to the city of West Hollywood. Seagal left Matsuoka in charge of the dojo, which he ran until the two parted ways in 1997. Seagal helped train Brazilian Mixed Martial Artist Lyoto Machida, who credited Seagal for helping him perfect the front kick that he used to knock out Randy Couture at UFC 129 in May 2011. CANNOTANSWER

Steven Frederic Seagal (; born April 10, 1952) is an American-born actor, screenwriter, and martial artist. A 7th-dan black belt in aikido, he began his adult life as a martial arts instructor in Japan and eventually ended up running his father-in-law's dojo. He later moved to Los Angeles where he had the same profession. In 1988, Seagal made his acting debut in Above the Law. By 1991, he had starred in four films. Seagal also holds Serbian and Russian citizenship. In 1992, he played Navy SEAL counter-terrorist expert Casey Ryback in Under Siege. During the latter half of the 1990s, Seagal starred in three more feature films and the direct-to-video film The Patriot. Subsequently, his career shifted to mostly direct-to-video productions. He has since appeared in films and reality shows, including Steven Seagal: Lawman, which depicted Seagal performing duties as a reserve deputy sheriff. Seagal is a guitarist and has released two studio albums, Songs from the Crystal Cave and Mojo Priest, and performed on the scores of several of his films. He has worked with Stevie Wonder and Tony Rebel, who both performed on his debut album. He has been involved in a line of "therapeutic oil" products and energy drinks. Seagal is an environmentalist, animal rights activist, and supporter of 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso. He is a supporter of Vladimir Putin, to whom he once referred as "one of the great living world leaders". He was granted both Russian and Serbian citizenship in 2016. In 2018, he was appointed Russia's special envoy to the U.S. From 1996 to 2018, multiple women accused Seagal of sexual harassment or assault. Early life Steven Frederic Seagal was born in Lansing, Michigan, on April 10, 1952, the son of a medical technician and a mathematics teacher. His mother was of Irish descent, while his father was Jewish. His paternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants. During an interview for the Russian talk show Let Them Talk, Seagal stated that he has paternal ancestors from the Siberian city of Vladivostok, as well as Belarus and Saint Petersburg. He stated that genetic testing determined that he has Yakut and Buryat ancestry as well. When he was five years old, he moved with his parents to Fullerton, California. His mother later told People magazine that prior to the move Seagal was frail and suffered from asthma: "He was a puny kid back then. But he really thrived after the move [from Michigan]." Seagal attended Buena Park High School in Buena Park, California, and Fullerton College between 1970 and 1971. As a teen, he spent much time in his garage listening to loud rock music. While working with a friendly old Japanese man at a dojo in Garden Grove he was encouraged to visit Japan. Martial arts Seagal moved to Japan at some point between 1971 and 1973. By 1974, he had returned to California. That year he met Miyako Fujitani, a second-degree black belt and daughter of an Osaka aikido master who had come to Los Angeles to teach aikido. When Miyako returned to Osaka, Seagal went with her. In 1975 they married and had a son, Kentaro, and a daughter, Ayako. He taught at the school owned by Miyako's family. As of 1990, Miyako and her brother still taught there, and her mother was the chairwoman. Seagal returned to Taos, New Mexico, with his student (and later film stuntman) Craig Dunn, where they opened a dojo, although Seagal spent much of his time pursuing other ventures. After another period in Japan, Seagal returned to the U.S. in 1983 with senior student Haruo Matsuoka. They opened an aikido dojo, initially in North Hollywood, California, but later moved it to the city of West Hollywood. Seagal left Matsuoka in charge of the dojo, which the latter ran until the two parted ways in 1997. Seagal helped train Brazilian mixed martial artist Lyoto Machida, who credited Seagal for helping him perfect the front kick that he used to knock out Randy Couture at UFC 129 in May 2011. Career 1987–2002 In 1987, Seagal began work on his first film, Above the Law (titled Nico in Europe), with director Andrew Davis. Following its success, Seagal's subsequent movies were Hard to Kill, Marked for Death, and Out for Justice; all were box office hits, making him an action hero. Later, he achieved wider, mainstream success in 1992 with the release of Under Siege (1992), which reunited Seagal with director Andrew Davis. On April 20, 1991, Seagal hosted Season 16 Episode 18 of Saturday Night Live. The series' long-time executive producer Lorne Michaels and cast-members David Spade and Tim Meadows called Seagal the show's worst host ever. Spade and Meadows cited Seagal's humorlessness, his ill-treatment of the cast and writers, and his refusal to do a "Hans and Franz" sketch because the skit's title characters had previously said that they could "beat up Steven Seagal". Seagal has never been invited back to the show. Meadows commented, "He didn't realize that you can't tell somebody they're stupid on Wednesday and expect them to continue writing for you on Saturday." The cast and crew's difficulties with Seagal were later echoed on-air by Michaels during guest host Nicolas Cage's monologue in the September 26, 1992, Season 18 premiere. When Cage worried that he would do so poorly that the audience would regard him as "the biggest jerk who's ever been on the show", Michaels replied: "No, no. That would be Steven Seagal." Seagal directed and starred in On Deadly Ground (1994), featuring Michael Caine, R. Lee Ermey, and Billy Bob Thornton in minor supporting roles. The film emphasized environmental and spiritual themes, signaling a break with his previous persona as a genre-ready inner-city cop. On Deadly Ground was poorly received by critics, especially denouncing Seagal's long environmental speech in the film. Regardless, Seagal considers it one of the most important and relevant moments in his career. Seagal followed this with a sequel to one of his most successful films, Under Siege, titled Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995). In 1996, he had a role in the Kurt Russell film Executive Decision, portraying a special ops soldier who appears in only the film's first 45 minutes. The same year, he filmed a police drama The Glimmer Man (1996). In another environmentally conscious and commercially unsuccessful film, Fire Down Below (1997), he played an EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance agent fighting industrialists dumping toxic waste in the Kentucky hills. In 1998, Seagal made The Patriot, another environmental thriller which was his first direct-to-video release in the United States (though it was released theatrically in most of the world). Seagal produced this film with his own money, and the film was shot on-location on and near his farm in Montana. After producing Prince of Central Park, Seagal returned to cinema screens with the release of Exit Wounds in March 2001. The film had fewer martial arts scenes than Seagal's previous films, but it was a commercial success, taking almost $80 million worldwide. It was considered at the time to be a "comeback" for Seagal. However, Seagal was unable to capitalize on this success and his next two projects were both critical and commercial failures. The movie Ticker, co-starring Tom Sizemore and Dennis Hopper, was filmed in San Francisco before Exit Wounds, and went straight to DVD. Half Past Dead, starring hip hop star Ja Rule, made less than $20 million worldwide. 2003 to present day: direct-to-video films and television Other than his role as a villain in Robert Rodriguez's Machete (2010), almost all the films Seagal has made since the latter half of 2001 have been released direct-to-video (DTV) in North America, with some theatrical releases to other countries around the world. Seagal is credited as a producer and sometimes a writer on many of these DTV movies, which include Black Dawn, Belly of the Beast, Out of Reach, Submerged, Kill Switch, Urban Justice, Pistol Whipped, Against the Dark, Driven to Kill, A Dangerous Man, Born to Raise Hell, and The Keeper. Beyond the Law (2019) is one of Seagal's very few movies to have enjoyed a theater release in North America since Machete. In 2009, A&E Network premiered the reality television series Steven Seagal: Lawman, focusing on Seagal as a deputy in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. In the 2010s, Seagal's direct-to-video films increasingly started to become ensemble pieces, with Seagal playing minor or supporting roles, despite the fact that he often received top billing. Maximum Conviction, Force of Execution, Gutshot Straight, Code of Honor, Sniper Special Ops, The Asian Connection, The Perfect Weapon, Cartels, and China Salesman all exemplify this trend. This has led some commentators to criticize Seagal for his low-effort participation in movies which heavily promote his involvement. In 2011, Seagal produced and starred in an American television action series entitled True Justice. The series first aired on Nitro, a TV station in Spain, on May 12, 2011. It premiered in the UK on 5 USA, with the first episode broadcast July 20, 2011. April 26, 2012 the series was renewed for a second season airing on ReelzChannel July 4, 2012. In the UK, True Justice has been repackaged as a series of DVD "movies," with each disc editing together two episodes. Other ventures Music Seagal plays the guitar. His songs have been featured in several of his movies, including Fire Down Below and Ticker. Among his extensive collection are guitars previously owned by "the Kings"; Albert, BB, and Freddie, as well as Bo Diddley, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Jimi Hendrix. In 2005, he released his first album, Songs from the Crystal Cave, which has a mix of pop, world, country, and blues music. It features duets with Tony Rebel, Lt. Stichie, Lady Saw, and Stevie Wonder. The soundtrack to Seagal's 2005 film Into the Sun features several songs from the album. One of his album tracks, "Girl It's Alright", was also released as a single in several countries alongside an accompanying music video. Seagal's second album, titled Mojo Priest, was released in April 2006. Subsequently, he spent the summer of 2006 touring the United States and Europe with his band, Thunderbox, in support of the album. Law enforcement work Seagal has been a Reserve Deputy Chief in the Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, Sheriff's Office. In the late 1980s, after teaching the deputies martial arts, unarmed combat, and marksmanship, then-sheriff Harry Lee (1932–2007) asked Seagal to join the force. Seagal's rank in Louisiana was ceremonial. Steven Seagal: Lawman, a series which follows his work in the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, premiered on A&E on December 2, 2009. Seagal stated that "I've decided to work with A&E on this series now because I believe it's important to show the nation all the positive work being accomplished here in Louisiana—to see the passion and commitment that comes from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office in this post-Katrina environment." The series premiere drew 3.6 million viewers, ranking as best season opener for any original A&E series ever. On April 14, 2010, the series was suspended by Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand due to a sexual trafficking lawsuit filed against Seagal. The suit was later dropped. A&E resumed the show for the second season, which began on October 6, 2010. Production on Season 3 started in February 2011, with a change of location from Louisiana to Maricopa County, Arizona. Two episodes were scheduled to be aired, beginning on January 4, 2012. Shortly before the episodes were to be aired, Season 3 was suspended, with no explanations given. Season 3 premiered on January 2, 2014, but the show was not renewed for a fourth season. In October 2011, Seagal was sworn-in as the Sheriff department’s deputy sheriff of Hudspeth County, Texas, a law department responsible for patrolling a 98-mile stretch of the Texas-Mexico border. Business ventures In 2005, Seagal Enterprises began to market an energy drink known as "Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt", but it has since been discontinued. Seagal has also marketed an aftershave called "Scent of Action", and a range of knives and weapons. In 2013, Seagal joined newly formed Russian firearms manufacturer ORSIS, representing the company in both a promotional capacity as well as lobbying for the easement of US import restrictions on Russian sporting firearms. It was also announced he would work with the company to develop a signature long-range rifle known provisionally as "ORSIS by Steven Seagal". Personal life Seagal has an extensive sword collection, and at one time had a custom gun made for him once a month. Residences Seagal owns a home in the Mandeville Canyon section of Los Angeles, and a home in Louisiana. Religion Seagal is a Buddhist. In February 1997, Lama Penor Rinpoche from Palyul monastery announced that Seagal was a tulku, and specifically the reincarnation of Chungdrag Dorje, a 17th-century terton (treasure revealer) of the Nyingma, the oldest sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Citizenship Seagal reportedly holds citizenships in three countries: the United States, Serbia, and Russia. Born in the United States, he possesses jus soli U.S. citizenship. He was granted Serbian citizenship on January 11, 2016, following several visits to the country, and has been asked to teach aikido to the Serbian Special Forces. Seagal was granted Russian citizenship on November 3, 2016; according to government spokesman Dmitry Peskov, "He was asking quite insistently and over a lengthy period to be granted citizenship." While various media have cited Seagal and President Vladimir Putin as friends and Seagal stated that he "would like to consider [Putin] as a brother", Putin has distanced himself from Seagal; Peskov is reported to have said: "I wouldn't necessarily say he's a huge fan, but he's definitely seen some of his movies." Relationships and family While in Japan, Seagal married his first wife, Miyako Fujitani, the daughter of an aikido instructor. With Fujitani, he had a son, actor and model Kentaro Seagal, and a daughter, writer and actress Ayako Fujitani. Seagal left Miyako to move back to the United States. During this time, he met actress and model Kelly LeBrock, with whom he began an affair that led to Fujitani's granting him a divorce. Seagal was briefly married to actress Adrienne La Russa in 1984, but that marriage was annulled the same year over concerns that his divorce had not yet been finalized. LeBrock gave birth to Seagal's daughter Annaliza in early 1987. Seagal and LeBrock married in September 1987 and their son Dominic was born in June 1990. Their daughter Arissa was born in 1993. The following year, LeBrock filed for divorce citing "irreconcilable differences". Seagal is married to Mongolian Erdenetuya Batsukh (), better known as "Elle". They have one son together, Kunzang. From an early age, Elle trained as a dancer at the Children's Palace in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. After her graduation from high school and the Children's Palace, she pursued a career as a professional dancer. She won a number of dancing contests and was considered the top female dancer in Mongolia, excelling at ballroom dancing in particular. Elle first met Seagal in 2001, when she worked as his interpreter during his visit to Mongolia. Seagal has seven children from four relationships, two grandchildren by his eldest son, Kentaro and one granddaughter by his daughter Ayako Fujitani. In addition to his biological offspring, Seagal is the guardian of Yabshi Pan Rinzinwangmo, the only child of the 10th Panchen Lama of Tibet. When she studied in the United States, Seagal was her minder and bodyguard. Allegations and lawsuits Early 1990s In May 1991 (during the filming of Out for Justice), Warner Bros. employees Raenne Malone, Nicole Selinger, and Christine Keeve accused Seagal of sexual harassment. In return for remaining silent, Malone and another woman received around $50,000 each in an out-of-court settlement. Around the same time, at least four actresses said that Seagal had made sexual advances, typically during late-night "casting sessions". In another incident, Jenny McCarthy said that Seagal asked her to undress during an audition for Under Siege 2. 1995 lawsuit In 1995, Seagal was charged with employment discrimination, sexual harassment, and breach of contract. Cheryl Shuman filed a case against Seagal, accusing him of threatening and beating her during the filming of On Deadly Ground. In August 1995, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki dismissed the case, calling the claims "repetitive and unintelligible". 2010 lawsuit On April 12, 2010, 23-year-old Kayden Nguyen filed a lawsuit against Seagal in a Los Angeles County Superior Court, requesting more than one million dollars in damages. In her suit, Nguyen alleged Seagal engaged in sexual harassment, the illegal trafficking of females for sex, failure to prevent sexual harassment, and wrongful termination. Seagal denied the allegations, but his reality show Steven Seagal: Lawman was suspended while his attorneys resolved the case. On July 14, 2010, three months after Nguyen filed her suit, she withdrew her claim without explanation. 2011 lawsuit On August 30, 2011, Jesus Sanchez Llovera filed a lawsuit against Seagal over his part in a Maricopa county police raid with heavy weapons (notably including an army surplus tank) of Llovera's residence for suspicion of cockfighting. The incident was taped for Seagal's A&E reality show Steven Seagal: Lawman. Llovera was seeking $100,000 for damages caused during the raid and a letter of apology from Seagal to Llovera's children for the death of their family pet. Llovera claimed that his 11-month-old puppy was shot and killed during the raid. Llovera failed to file court-ordered paperwork after his attorney withdrew from the case and the lawsuit was dismissed in January 2013. 2017 allegations In 2017, actress Portia de Rossi accused Seagal of sexually harassing her during a movie audition. De Rossi alleged that during an audition in Seagal's office, he told her "how important it was to have chemistry off-screen" before unzipping his pants. On an April 18 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Katherine Heigl alleged on the final day of shooting for Under Siege 2 that Seagal told her that he had girlfriends the same age as the 16-year-old Heigl. Kimmel responded by displaying a photo from the film's promotional tour showing Seagal's hand on Heigl's chest while they posed for a photo. On November 9, 2017, Dutch model Faviola Dadis posted a statement on her Instagram account stating that she also had been sexually assaulted by Seagal years earlier. 2018 allegations and investigation On January 15, 2018, actress Rachel Grant publicly accused Seagal of sexually assaulting her in 2002, during pre-production on his direct-to-video film, Out for a Kill (2003), stating that she lost her job on the film after the incident. In February 2018, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office acknowledged that it was reviewing a potential sex-abuse case involving Seagal. In March 2018, Regina Simons publicly claimed that in 1993, when she was 18, Seagal raped her at his home when she arrived for what she thought was a wrap party for the movie On Deadly Ground. 2020 federal securities violation settlement On February 27, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced settled charges against Seagal for failing to disclose payments he received for promoting an investment in an initial coin offering (ICO) conducted by Bitcoiin2Gen (B2G). Seagal was promised $250,000 in cash and $750,000 worth of B2G tokens in exchange for his social media promotions and a press release in which he "wholeheartedly" endorsed the ICO, which violated the anti-touting provisions of federal securities laws. Without admitting or denying the SEC's findings, Seagal agreed to pay $157,000 in disgorgement, representing the actual payments he received for his promotions, plus prejudgment interest and a $157,000 penalty. Seagal also agreed not to promote any securities, digital or otherwise, for three years. Victim of attempted extortion Steven Seagal became embroiled in a legal case involving film producer Julius R. Nasso after Nasso attempted to extort Seagal. Nasso produced seven of Seagal's films beginning with Marked for Death in 1990. The two "became best friends", according to Seagal, and formed Seagal/Nasso Productions together. Their relationship became strained, however, and their partnership ended in 2000. Believing that Seagal owed him $3 million in compensation for backing out of a four-film deal, Nasso enlisted members of the Gambino crime family to threaten Seagal in an attempt to recoup money Nasso allegedly lost. Gambino family captain Anthony Ciccone first visited Seagal in Toronto during the filming of Exit Wounds in October 2000. In January 2001, Primo Cassarino and other gangsters picked up Seagal by car to bring him to a meeting with Ciccone at a Brooklyn restaurant. At the meeting, Ciccone reportedly told Seagal that he had a choice of making four promised movies with Nasso or paying Nasso a penalty of $150,000 per movie, and that if Seagal refused, Ciccone would kill him. Seagal, who later claimed that he brought a handgun to the meeting, was able to stall Ciccone and escape the meeting unharmed. Ciccone and Cassarino again visited Seagal at his home in Los Angeles the following month. In the spring of 2001, Seagal sought out another mobster, Genovese crime family captain Angelo Prisco, to act as a "peacemaker". He visited Prisco in prison at Rahway, New Jersey and paid Prisco's lawyer $10,000. On March 17, 2003, Cassarino, Ciccone and others were convicted of labor racketeering, extortion, and 63 other counts under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Seagal testified for the prosecution about the mobsters' extortion attempt. Nasso pleaded guilty to the charge of extortion conspiracy in August 2003. In February 2004, he was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, fined $75,000 and ordered to take mental health counselling on release from jail. In January 2008, Nasso agreed to drop a $60 million lawsuit against Seagal for an alleged breach of contract when the two settled out of court. Conflicts with stuntmen Seagal has been accused by former stunt performers who have worked with him, including Kane Hodder, Stephen Quadros, and Gene LeBell, of intentionally hitting stuntmen during scenes. Additionally, while serving as stunt coordinator for Out for Justice, LeBell allegedly got into an on-set altercation with Seagal over his mistreatment of some of the film's stunt performers. After the actor claimed that, due to his aikido training, he was "immune" to being choked unconscious, LeBell offered Seagal the opportunity to prove it. LeBell is said to have placed his arms around Seagal's neck, and once Seagal said "go", proceeded to choke him unconscious, with Seagal losing control of his bowels. Seagal bodyguard and stuntman Steven Lambert stated he was present and said that a confrontation did happen, during which Seagal elbowed LeBell before he could lock the hold on Seagal, after which LeBell flipped Seagal. LeBell was requested to confirm the on-set incident publicly in an interview with Ariel Helwani in 2012, but he avoided answering the question, albeit implying that it was true. He was quoted as "When we had a little altercation or difference of opinion, there were thirty stuntmen and cameramen that were watching. Sometimes Steven has a tendency to cheese off the wrong people, and you can get hurt doing that." On the other hand, when Seagal was asked about the incident, he directly denied the allegations, calling LeBell a "sick, pathological scumbag liar", and offered the name of a witness who could prove LeBell had fabricated the entire story. The claim garnered a heated response from LeBell's trainee Ronda Rousey, who said that Seagal was the one lying, and declared "If [Seagal] says anything bad about Gene to my face, I'd make him crap his pants a second time." Authentic or not, the reports of this incident led LeBell to be counted in 1992 as an additional member of Robert Wall's "Dirty Dozen", a group of martial artists willing to answer to a public challenge made by Seagal. LeBell however declined to participate, revealing the feud with Seagal was hurting him professionally. He did however criticize Seagal for his treatment of stuntmen, and left open the possibility of a professional fight if Seagal wanted to do it. Allegations of mistreatment towards stuntmen have continued throughout Seagal's later career, with both stuntman Peter Harris Kent (Arnold Schwarzenegger's stunt double) and Mike Leeder publicly criticizing his on-set antics. Actor John Leguizamo also claimed that during rehearsals on Executive Decision, in retaliation for laughing at him, Seagal caught him off guard and knocked him into a brick wall. Michael Jai White, who acted with him in a number of movies, stated that he routinely hit stunt men, and that he was known for it. He said they just accepted it. However, he stated that Seagal never hit him. Political views and activism Seagal lent his voice as a narrator for an activist film project, Medicine Lake Video. The project seeks to protect sacred tribal ground near Seagal's ranch in Siskiyou County. He also wrote an open letter to the leadership of Thailand in 2003, urging them to enact a law to prevent the torture of baby elephants. In 1999, Seagal was awarded a PETA Humanitarian Award. In a March 2014 interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Seagal described Vladimir Putin as "one of the great living world leaders". He expressed support for the annexation of Crimea by Russia. In July 2014, following calls for a boycott, Seagal was dropped from the lineup of the August Blues Festival in Haapsalu, Estonia. The Estonian musician Tõnis Mägi, the minister of Foreign Affairs, Urmas Paet, and Parliament's Foreign Affairs chairman Marko Mihkelson had all condemned inviting Seagal into the country, with Paet saying, "Steven Seagal has tried to actively participate in politics during the past few months and has done it in a way which is unacceptable to the majority of the world that respects democracy and the rule of law." In August 2014, Seagal appeared at a Night Wolves-organized show in Sevastopol, Crimea, supporting the Crimean annexation and depicting Ukraine as a country controlled by fascists. On November 3, Seagal was granted Russian citizenship by Putin. His views on Ukraine and Russian citizenship caused Ukraine to ban him from entering the country because he "committed socially dangerous actions". Seagal visited the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2015 and met with the country's long-time president, Ilham Aliyev. Seagal has expressed support for Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and dispute with neighboring Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Seagal spoke out against the protests during the United States national anthem by professional athletes, stating, "I believe in free speech, I believe that everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but I don't agree that they should hold the United States of America or the world hostage by taking a venue where people are tuning in to watch a football game and imposing their political views." He also expressed skepticism of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Not long after this, former two time World boxing heavyweight champion George Foreman would publicly challenge Seagal to an official 10 round MMA match in Las Vegas which Seagal promptly declined. In 2017, Seagal collaborated with a former chair of the Arizona Republican Party, Tom Morrissey, in writing a self-published conspiracy thriller novel, The Way of the Shadow Wolves: The Deep State And The Hijacking Of America, which featured a Tohono Shadow Wolf tracker working for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to foil a plot by Mexican drug cartels and the "deep state" to smuggle in Islamist terrorists to the United States through the U.S.–Mexico border. In October 2017, Seagal met with Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte while scouting locations in Manila for a possible film. During the visit, Seagal flashed Duterte's signature fist. In 2021, Seagal gave a katana to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry special envoy while visiting Canaima National Park. Maduro referred to Seagal as "my brother." On May 30, 2021, the pro-Kremlin systemic opposition party A Just Russia — Patriots — For Truth announced that Seagal had received an official membership card to the party. In March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Seagal visited Moscow where he organized his birthday party, attended by many people connected to Vladimir Putin, including some affected by international sanctions. This has been criticized as a dissenting action that came amidst the growing international boycott of Russia. In August 2022, he visited Olenivka in Donetsk Oblast, the site of the Olenivka prison massacre with Donetsk People's Republic leader Denis Pushilin, who claimed that Seagal was filming a documentary about the war in Donbass. Seagal also met with Leonid Slutsky. On February 27, 2023, he received the Russian Order of Friendship from Vladimir Putin for his "major contribution to the development of international cultural and humanitarian cooperation". Stunts Filmography Films Television Awards and nominations Discography 2005: Songs from the Crystal Cave 2006: Mojo Priest References External links Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century American guitarists Category:20th-century American male actors Category:20th-century American male musicians Category:21st-century American male actors Category:21st-century American male musicians Category:21st-century Russian male actors Category:21st-century Serbian male actors Category:Activists from California Category:American actor-politicians Category:American aikidoka Category:American Buddhists Category:American blues singers Category:American country singers Category:American deputy sheriffs Category:American drink industry businesspeople Category:American emigrants to Russia Category:American environmentalists Category:American expatriates in Japan Category:American kendoka Category:American male film actors Category:American male guitarists Category:American male judoka Category:American male karateka Category:American male singers Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American people of Jewish descent Category:American stunt performers Category:Businesspeople from California Category:Businesspeople from Louisiana Category:Businesspeople from Michigan Category:Converts to Buddhism Category:Country musicians from Louisiana Category:Country musicians from Michigan Category:Country musicians from Tennessee Category:Guitarists from Michigan Category:Male actors from Fullerton, California Category:Male actors from Lansing, Michigan Category:Naturalised citizens of Russia Category:Naturalized citizens of Serbia Category:Nyingma tulkus Category:Participants in American reality television series Category:People from Eltingville, Staten Island Category:People from Germantown, Tennessee Category:People from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana Category:People from Mandeville Canyon, Los Angeles Category:Tibetan Buddhists from the United States Category:People with multiple nationality

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Steven Seagal

Steven Frederic Seagal was born in Lansing, Michigan on April 10, 1952, the son of medical technician Patricia (1930-2003) and high school math teacher Samuel Seagal (1928-1991). His mother was of Dutch, English, and German ancestry, while his paternal grandparents were Russian Jews who immigrated to the U.S. He also has Irish and Mongolian heritage. When Seagal was five years old, his parents relocated to Fullerton, California.

1980s-1990s

In 1987, Seagal began work on his first film, Above the Law (titled Nico in Europe), with director Andrew Davis and reportedly as a favor to a former aikido student, the agent Michael Ovitz. Ovitz took Seagal to Warner Brothers to put on an aikido demonstration and the executives were impressed by him and offered him several scripts; Seagal turned them down but agreed to write what would become Above the Law. Following its success, Seagal's subsequent movies were Hard to Kill, Marked for Death, and Out for Justice, all box office hits, making him an action hero. Later, he achieved wider, mainstream success in 1992 with the release of Under Siege (1992). That film reunited Seagal with director Andrew Davis, and was a blockbuster in the U.S. and abroad, grossing $156.4 million worldwide. Seagal hosted the April 20, 1991 episode of the late night variety show Saturday Night Live, which aired as the 18th episode of the 16th season. Cast member David Spade regarded Seagal as the show's worst host during Spade's time there. Spade and co-star Tim Meadows cite Seagal's humorlessness, his ill treatment of the show's cast and writers, and his refusal to do a "Hans and Franz" sketch because that skit's title characters stated that they could beat up Seagal. Seagal was never invited back to the show following that episode. Meadows commented, "He didn't realize that you can't tell somebody they're stupid on Wednesday and expect them to continue writing for you on Saturday." The cast and crew's difficulties with Seagal were later echoed on-air by producer Lorne Michaels during guest host Nicolas Cage's monologue in the September 26, 1992 Season 18 premiere. When Cage worried that he would do so poorly that the audience would regard him as "the biggest jerk who's ever been on the show", Michaels replied, "No, no. That would be Steven Seagal." Seagal directed and starred in On Deadly Ground (1994), featuring Michael Caine, R. Lee Ermey and Billy Bob Thornton in minor supporting roles. The film emphasized environmental and spiritual themes, signaling a break with his previous persona as a genre-ready inner-city cop. On Deadly Ground was poorly received by critics, especially denouncing Seagal's long environmental speech in the film. Regardless, Seagal considers it one of the most important and relevant moments in his career. Seagal filmed a sequel to one of his most successful films, Under Siege, titled Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), and cop drama The Glimmer Man (1996). In 1996, he had a role in the Kurt Russell film Executive Decision, portraying a special ops soldier who only appears in the film's first 45 minutes. In another environmentally conscious and commercially unsuccessful film, Fire Down Below (1997), he was an EPA agent fighting industrialists dumping toxic waste in the Kentucky hills. This film ended his original multi-picture contract with Warner Bros. CANNOTANSWER

Steven Frederic Seagal (; born April 10, 1952) is an American-born actor, screenwriter, and martial artist. A 7th-dan black belt in aikido, he began his adult life as a martial arts instructor in Japan and eventually ended up running his father-in-law's dojo. He later moved to Los Angeles where he had the same profession. In 1988, Seagal made his acting debut in Above the Law. By 1991, he had starred in four films. Seagal also holds Serbian and Russian citizenship. In 1992, he played Navy SEAL counter-terrorist expert Casey Ryback in Under Siege. During the latter half of the 1990s, Seagal starred in three more feature films and the direct-to-video film The Patriot. Subsequently, his career shifted to mostly direct-to-video productions. He has since appeared in films and reality shows, including Steven Seagal: Lawman, which depicted Seagal performing duties as a reserve deputy sheriff. Seagal is a guitarist and has released two studio albums, Songs from the Crystal Cave and Mojo Priest, and performed on the scores of several of his films. He has worked with Stevie Wonder and Tony Rebel, who both performed on his debut album. He has been involved in a line of "therapeutic oil" products and energy drinks. Seagal is an environmentalist, animal rights activist, and supporter of 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso. He is a supporter of Vladimir Putin, to whom he once referred as "one of the great living world leaders". He was granted both Russian and Serbian citizenship in 2016. In 2018, he was appointed Russia's special envoy to the U.S. From 1996 to 2018, multiple women accused Seagal of sexual harassment or assault. Early life Steven Frederic Seagal was born in Lansing, Michigan, on April 10, 1952, the son of a medical technician and a mathematics teacher. His mother was of Irish descent, while his father was Jewish. His paternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants. During an interview for the Russian talk show Let Them Talk, Seagal stated that he has paternal ancestors from the Siberian city of Vladivostok, as well as Belarus and Saint Petersburg. He stated that genetic testing determined that he has Yakut and Buryat ancestry as well. When he was five years old, he moved with his parents to Fullerton, California. His mother later told People magazine that prior to the move Seagal was frail and suffered from asthma: "He was a puny kid back then. But he really thrived after the move [from Michigan]." Seagal attended Buena Park High School in Buena Park, California, and Fullerton College between 1970 and 1971. As a teen, he spent much time in his garage listening to loud rock music. While working with a friendly old Japanese man at a dojo in Garden Grove he was encouraged to visit Japan. Martial arts Seagal moved to Japan at some point between 1971 and 1973. By 1974, he had returned to California. That year he met Miyako Fujitani, a second-degree black belt and daughter of an Osaka aikido master who had come to Los Angeles to teach aikido. When Miyako returned to Osaka, Seagal went with her. In 1975 they married and had a son, Kentaro, and a daughter, Ayako. He taught at the school owned by Miyako's family. As of 1990, Miyako and her brother still taught there, and her mother was the chairwoman. Seagal returned to Taos, New Mexico, with his student (and later film stuntman) Craig Dunn, where they opened a dojo, although Seagal spent much of his time pursuing other ventures. After another period in Japan, Seagal returned to the U.S. in 1983 with senior student Haruo Matsuoka. They opened an aikido dojo, initially in North Hollywood, California, but later moved it to the city of West Hollywood. Seagal left Matsuoka in charge of the dojo, which the latter ran until the two parted ways in 1997. Seagal helped train Brazilian mixed martial artist Lyoto Machida, who credited Seagal for helping him perfect the front kick that he used to knock out Randy Couture at UFC 129 in May 2011. Career 1987–2002 In 1987, Seagal began work on his first film, Above the Law (titled Nico in Europe), with director Andrew Davis. Following its success, Seagal's subsequent movies were Hard to Kill, Marked for Death, and Out for Justice; all were box office hits, making him an action hero. Later, he achieved wider, mainstream success in 1992 with the release of Under Siege (1992), which reunited Seagal with director Andrew Davis. On April 20, 1991, Seagal hosted Season 16 Episode 18 of Saturday Night Live. The series' long-time executive producer Lorne Michaels and cast-members David Spade and Tim Meadows called Seagal the show's worst host ever. Spade and Meadows cited Seagal's humorlessness, his ill-treatment of the cast and writers, and his refusal to do a "Hans and Franz" sketch because the skit's title characters had previously said that they could "beat up Steven Seagal". Seagal has never been invited back to the show. Meadows commented, "He didn't realize that you can't tell somebody they're stupid on Wednesday and expect them to continue writing for you on Saturday." The cast and crew's difficulties with Seagal were later echoed on-air by Michaels during guest host Nicolas Cage's monologue in the September 26, 1992, Season 18 premiere. When Cage worried that he would do so poorly that the audience would regard him as "the biggest jerk who's ever been on the show", Michaels replied: "No, no. That would be Steven Seagal." Seagal directed and starred in On Deadly Ground (1994), featuring Michael Caine, R. Lee Ermey, and Billy Bob Thornton in minor supporting roles. The film emphasized environmental and spiritual themes, signaling a break with his previous persona as a genre-ready inner-city cop. On Deadly Ground was poorly received by critics, especially denouncing Seagal's long environmental speech in the film. Regardless, Seagal considers it one of the most important and relevant moments in his career. Seagal followed this with a sequel to one of his most successful films, Under Siege, titled Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995). In 1996, he had a role in the Kurt Russell film Executive Decision, portraying a special ops soldier who appears in only the film's first 45 minutes. The same year, he filmed a police drama The Glimmer Man (1996). In another environmentally conscious and commercially unsuccessful film, Fire Down Below (1997), he played an EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance agent fighting industrialists dumping toxic waste in the Kentucky hills. In 1998, Seagal made The Patriot, another environmental thriller which was his first direct-to-video release in the United States (though it was released theatrically in most of the world). Seagal produced this film with his own money, and the film was shot on-location on and near his farm in Montana. After producing Prince of Central Park, Seagal returned to cinema screens with the release of Exit Wounds in March 2001. The film had fewer martial arts scenes than Seagal's previous films, but it was a commercial success, taking almost $80 million worldwide. It was considered at the time to be a "comeback" for Seagal. However, Seagal was unable to capitalize on this success and his next two projects were both critical and commercial failures. The movie Ticker, co-starring Tom Sizemore and Dennis Hopper, was filmed in San Francisco before Exit Wounds, and went straight to DVD. Half Past Dead, starring hip hop star Ja Rule, made less than $20 million worldwide. 2003 to present day: direct-to-video films and television Other than his role as a villain in Robert Rodriguez's Machete (2010), almost all the films Seagal has made since the latter half of 2001 have been released direct-to-video (DTV) in North America, with some theatrical releases to other countries around the world. Seagal is credited as a producer and sometimes a writer on many of these DTV movies, which include Black Dawn, Belly of the Beast, Out of Reach, Submerged, Kill Switch, Urban Justice, Pistol Whipped, Against the Dark, Driven to Kill, A Dangerous Man, Born to Raise Hell, and The Keeper. Beyond the Law (2019) is one of Seagal's very few movies to have enjoyed a theater release in North America since Machete. In 2009, A&E Network premiered the reality television series Steven Seagal: Lawman, focusing on Seagal as a deputy in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. In the 2010s, Seagal's direct-to-video films increasingly started to become ensemble pieces, with Seagal playing minor or supporting roles, despite the fact that he often received top billing. Maximum Conviction, Force of Execution, Gutshot Straight, Code of Honor, Sniper Special Ops, The Asian Connection, The Perfect Weapon, Cartels, and China Salesman all exemplify this trend. This has led some commentators to criticize Seagal for his low-effort participation in movies which heavily promote his involvement. In 2011, Seagal produced and starred in an American television action series entitled True Justice. The series first aired on Nitro, a TV station in Spain, on May 12, 2011. It premiered in the UK on 5 USA, with the first episode broadcast July 20, 2011. April 26, 2012 the series was renewed for a second season airing on ReelzChannel July 4, 2012. In the UK, True Justice has been repackaged as a series of DVD "movies," with each disc editing together two episodes. Other ventures Music Seagal plays the guitar. His songs have been featured in several of his movies, including Fire Down Below and Ticker. Among his extensive collection are guitars previously owned by "the Kings"; Albert, BB, and Freddie, as well as Bo Diddley, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Jimi Hendrix. In 2005, he released his first album, Songs from the Crystal Cave, which has a mix of pop, world, country, and blues music. It features duets with Tony Rebel, Lt. Stichie, Lady Saw, and Stevie Wonder. The soundtrack to Seagal's 2005 film Into the Sun features several songs from the album. One of his album tracks, "Girl It's Alright", was also released as a single in several countries alongside an accompanying music video. Seagal's second album, titled Mojo Priest, was released in April 2006. Subsequently, he spent the summer of 2006 touring the United States and Europe with his band, Thunderbox, in support of the album. Law enforcement work Seagal has been a Reserve Deputy Chief in the Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, Sheriff's Office. In the late 1980s, after teaching the deputies martial arts, unarmed combat, and marksmanship, then-sheriff Harry Lee (1932–2007) asked Seagal to join the force. Seagal's rank in Louisiana was ceremonial. Steven Seagal: Lawman, a series which follows his work in the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, premiered on A&E on December 2, 2009. Seagal stated that "I've decided to work with A&E on this series now because I believe it's important to show the nation all the positive work being accomplished here in Louisiana—to see the passion and commitment that comes from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office in this post-Katrina environment." The series premiere drew 3.6 million viewers, ranking as best season opener for any original A&E series ever. On April 14, 2010, the series was suspended by Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand due to a sexual trafficking lawsuit filed against Seagal. The suit was later dropped. A&E resumed the show for the second season, which began on October 6, 2010. Production on Season 3 started in February 2011, with a change of location from Louisiana to Maricopa County, Arizona. Two episodes were scheduled to be aired, beginning on January 4, 2012. Shortly before the episodes were to be aired, Season 3 was suspended, with no explanations given. Season 3 premiered on January 2, 2014, but the show was not renewed for a fourth season. In October 2011, Seagal was sworn-in as the Sheriff department’s deputy sheriff of Hudspeth County, Texas, a law department responsible for patrolling a 98-mile stretch of the Texas-Mexico border. Business ventures In 2005, Seagal Enterprises began to market an energy drink known as "Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt", but it has since been discontinued. Seagal has also marketed an aftershave called "Scent of Action", and a range of knives and weapons. In 2013, Seagal joined newly formed Russian firearms manufacturer ORSIS, representing the company in both a promotional capacity as well as lobbying for the easement of US import restrictions on Russian sporting firearms. It was also announced he would work with the company to develop a signature long-range rifle known provisionally as "ORSIS by Steven Seagal". Personal life Seagal has an extensive sword collection, and at one time had a custom gun made for him once a month. Residences Seagal owns a home in the Mandeville Canyon section of Los Angeles, and a home in Louisiana. Religion Seagal is a Buddhist. In February 1997, Lama Penor Rinpoche from Palyul monastery announced that Seagal was a tulku, and specifically the reincarnation of Chungdrag Dorje, a 17th-century terton (treasure revealer) of the Nyingma, the oldest sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Citizenship Seagal reportedly holds citizenships in three countries: the United States, Serbia, and Russia. Born in the United States, he possesses jus soli U.S. citizenship. He was granted Serbian citizenship on January 11, 2016, following several visits to the country, and has been asked to teach aikido to the Serbian Special Forces. Seagal was granted Russian citizenship on November 3, 2016; according to government spokesman Dmitry Peskov, "He was asking quite insistently and over a lengthy period to be granted citizenship." While various media have cited Seagal and President Vladimir Putin as friends and Seagal stated that he "would like to consider [Putin] as a brother", Putin has distanced himself from Seagal; Peskov is reported to have said: "I wouldn't necessarily say he's a huge fan, but he's definitely seen some of his movies." Relationships and family While in Japan, Seagal married his first wife, Miyako Fujitani, the daughter of an aikido instructor. With Fujitani, he had a son, actor and model Kentaro Seagal, and a daughter, writer and actress Ayako Fujitani. Seagal left Miyako to move back to the United States. During this time, he met actress and model Kelly LeBrock, with whom he began an affair that led to Fujitani's granting him a divorce. Seagal was briefly married to actress Adrienne La Russa in 1984, but that marriage was annulled the same year over concerns that his divorce had not yet been finalized. LeBrock gave birth to Seagal's daughter Annaliza in early 1987. Seagal and LeBrock married in September 1987 and their son Dominic was born in June 1990. Their daughter Arissa was born in 1993. The following year, LeBrock filed for divorce citing "irreconcilable differences". Seagal is married to Mongolian Erdenetuya Batsukh (), better known as "Elle". They have one son together, Kunzang. From an early age, Elle trained as a dancer at the Children's Palace in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. After her graduation from high school and the Children's Palace, she pursued a career as a professional dancer. She won a number of dancing contests and was considered the top female dancer in Mongolia, excelling at ballroom dancing in particular. Elle first met Seagal in 2001, when she worked as his interpreter during his visit to Mongolia. Seagal has seven children from four relationships, two grandchildren by his eldest son, Kentaro and one granddaughter by his daughter Ayako Fujitani. In addition to his biological offspring, Seagal is the guardian of Yabshi Pan Rinzinwangmo, the only child of the 10th Panchen Lama of Tibet. When she studied in the United States, Seagal was her minder and bodyguard. Allegations and lawsuits Early 1990s In May 1991 (during the filming of Out for Justice), Warner Bros. employees Raenne Malone, Nicole Selinger, and Christine Keeve accused Seagal of sexual harassment. In return for remaining silent, Malone and another woman received around $50,000 each in an out-of-court settlement. Around the same time, at least four actresses said that Seagal had made sexual advances, typically during late-night "casting sessions". In another incident, Jenny McCarthy said that Seagal asked her to undress during an audition for Under Siege 2. 1995 lawsuit In 1995, Seagal was charged with employment discrimination, sexual harassment, and breach of contract. Cheryl Shuman filed a case against Seagal, accusing him of threatening and beating her during the filming of On Deadly Ground. In August 1995, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki dismissed the case, calling the claims "repetitive and unintelligible". 2010 lawsuit On April 12, 2010, 23-year-old Kayden Nguyen filed a lawsuit against Seagal in a Los Angeles County Superior Court, requesting more than one million dollars in damages. In her suit, Nguyen alleged Seagal engaged in sexual harassment, the illegal trafficking of females for sex, failure to prevent sexual harassment, and wrongful termination. Seagal denied the allegations, but his reality show Steven Seagal: Lawman was suspended while his attorneys resolved the case. On July 14, 2010, three months after Nguyen filed her suit, she withdrew her claim without explanation. 2011 lawsuit On August 30, 2011, Jesus Sanchez Llovera filed a lawsuit against Seagal over his part in a Maricopa county police raid with heavy weapons (notably including an army surplus tank) of Llovera's residence for suspicion of cockfighting. The incident was taped for Seagal's A&E reality show Steven Seagal: Lawman. Llovera was seeking $100,000 for damages caused during the raid and a letter of apology from Seagal to Llovera's children for the death of their family pet. Llovera claimed that his 11-month-old puppy was shot and killed during the raid. Llovera failed to file court-ordered paperwork after his attorney withdrew from the case and the lawsuit was dismissed in January 2013. 2017 allegations In 2017, actress Portia de Rossi accused Seagal of sexually harassing her during a movie audition. De Rossi alleged that during an audition in Seagal's office, he told her "how important it was to have chemistry off-screen" before unzipping his pants. On an April 18 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Katherine Heigl alleged on the final day of shooting for Under Siege 2 that Seagal told her that he had girlfriends the same age as the 16-year-old Heigl. Kimmel responded by displaying a photo from the film's promotional tour showing Seagal's hand on Heigl's chest while they posed for a photo. On November 9, 2017, Dutch model Faviola Dadis posted a statement on her Instagram account stating that she also had been sexually assaulted by Seagal years earlier. 2018 allegations and investigation On January 15, 2018, actress Rachel Grant publicly accused Seagal of sexually assaulting her in 2002, during pre-production on his direct-to-video film, Out for a Kill (2003), stating that she lost her job on the film after the incident. In February 2018, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office acknowledged that it was reviewing a potential sex-abuse case involving Seagal. In March 2018, Regina Simons publicly claimed that in 1993, when she was 18, Seagal raped her at his home when she arrived for what she thought was a wrap party for the movie On Deadly Ground. 2020 federal securities violation settlement On February 27, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced settled charges against Seagal for failing to disclose payments he received for promoting an investment in an initial coin offering (ICO) conducted by Bitcoiin2Gen (B2G). Seagal was promised $250,000 in cash and $750,000 worth of B2G tokens in exchange for his social media promotions and a press release in which he "wholeheartedly" endorsed the ICO, which violated the anti-touting provisions of federal securities laws. Without admitting or denying the SEC's findings, Seagal agreed to pay $157,000 in disgorgement, representing the actual payments he received for his promotions, plus prejudgment interest and a $157,000 penalty. Seagal also agreed not to promote any securities, digital or otherwise, for three years. Victim of attempted extortion Steven Seagal became embroiled in a legal case involving film producer Julius R. Nasso after Nasso attempted to extort Seagal. Nasso produced seven of Seagal's films beginning with Marked for Death in 1990. The two "became best friends", according to Seagal, and formed Seagal/Nasso Productions together. Their relationship became strained, however, and their partnership ended in 2000. Believing that Seagal owed him $3 million in compensation for backing out of a four-film deal, Nasso enlisted members of the Gambino crime family to threaten Seagal in an attempt to recoup money Nasso allegedly lost. Gambino family captain Anthony Ciccone first visited Seagal in Toronto during the filming of Exit Wounds in October 2000. In January 2001, Primo Cassarino and other gangsters picked up Seagal by car to bring him to a meeting with Ciccone at a Brooklyn restaurant. At the meeting, Ciccone reportedly told Seagal that he had a choice of making four promised movies with Nasso or paying Nasso a penalty of $150,000 per movie, and that if Seagal refused, Ciccone would kill him. Seagal, who later claimed that he brought a handgun to the meeting, was able to stall Ciccone and escape the meeting unharmed. Ciccone and Cassarino again visited Seagal at his home in Los Angeles the following month. In the spring of 2001, Seagal sought out another mobster, Genovese crime family captain Angelo Prisco, to act as a "peacemaker". He visited Prisco in prison at Rahway, New Jersey and paid Prisco's lawyer $10,000. On March 17, 2003, Cassarino, Ciccone and others were convicted of labor racketeering, extortion, and 63 other counts under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Seagal testified for the prosecution about the mobsters' extortion attempt. Nasso pleaded guilty to the charge of extortion conspiracy in August 2003. In February 2004, he was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, fined $75,000 and ordered to take mental health counselling on release from jail. In January 2008, Nasso agreed to drop a $60 million lawsuit against Seagal for an alleged breach of contract when the two settled out of court. Conflicts with stuntmen Seagal has been accused by former stunt performers who have worked with him, including Kane Hodder, Stephen Quadros, and Gene LeBell, of intentionally hitting stuntmen during scenes. Additionally, while serving as stunt coordinator for Out for Justice, LeBell allegedly got into an on-set altercation with Seagal over his mistreatment of some of the film's stunt performers. After the actor claimed that, due to his aikido training, he was "immune" to being choked unconscious, LeBell offered Seagal the opportunity to prove it. LeBell is said to have placed his arms around Seagal's neck, and once Seagal said "go", proceeded to choke him unconscious, with Seagal losing control of his bowels. Seagal bodyguard and stuntman Steven Lambert stated he was present and said that a confrontation did happen, during which Seagal elbowed LeBell before he could lock the hold on Seagal, after which LeBell flipped Seagal. LeBell was requested to confirm the on-set incident publicly in an interview with Ariel Helwani in 2012, but he avoided answering the question, albeit implying that it was true. He was quoted as "When we had a little altercation or difference of opinion, there were thirty stuntmen and cameramen that were watching. Sometimes Steven has a tendency to cheese off the wrong people, and you can get hurt doing that." On the other hand, when Seagal was asked about the incident, he directly denied the allegations, calling LeBell a "sick, pathological scumbag liar", and offered the name of a witness who could prove LeBell had fabricated the entire story. The claim garnered a heated response from LeBell's trainee Ronda Rousey, who said that Seagal was the one lying, and declared "If [Seagal] says anything bad about Gene to my face, I'd make him crap his pants a second time." Authentic or not, the reports of this incident led LeBell to be counted in 1992 as an additional member of Robert Wall's "Dirty Dozen", a group of martial artists willing to answer to a public challenge made by Seagal. LeBell however declined to participate, revealing the feud with Seagal was hurting him professionally. He did however criticize Seagal for his treatment of stuntmen, and left open the possibility of a professional fight if Seagal wanted to do it. Allegations of mistreatment towards stuntmen have continued throughout Seagal's later career, with both stuntman Peter Harris Kent (Arnold Schwarzenegger's stunt double) and Mike Leeder publicly criticizing his on-set antics. Actor John Leguizamo also claimed that during rehearsals on Executive Decision, in retaliation for laughing at him, Seagal caught him off guard and knocked him into a brick wall. Michael Jai White, who acted with him in a number of movies, stated that he routinely hit stunt men, and that he was known for it. He said they just accepted it. However, he stated that Seagal never hit him. Political views and activism Seagal lent his voice as a narrator for an activist film project, Medicine Lake Video. The project seeks to protect sacred tribal ground near Seagal's ranch in Siskiyou County. He also wrote an open letter to the leadership of Thailand in 2003, urging them to enact a law to prevent the torture of baby elephants. In 1999, Seagal was awarded a PETA Humanitarian Award. In a March 2014 interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Seagal described Vladimir Putin as "one of the great living world leaders". He expressed support for the annexation of Crimea by Russia. In July 2014, following calls for a boycott, Seagal was dropped from the lineup of the August Blues Festival in Haapsalu, Estonia. The Estonian musician Tõnis Mägi, the minister of Foreign Affairs, Urmas Paet, and Parliament's Foreign Affairs chairman Marko Mihkelson had all condemned inviting Seagal into the country, with Paet saying, "Steven Seagal has tried to actively participate in politics during the past few months and has done it in a way which is unacceptable to the majority of the world that respects democracy and the rule of law." In August 2014, Seagal appeared at a Night Wolves-organized show in Sevastopol, Crimea, supporting the Crimean annexation and depicting Ukraine as a country controlled by fascists. On November 3, Seagal was granted Russian citizenship by Putin. His views on Ukraine and Russian citizenship caused Ukraine to ban him from entering the country because he "committed socially dangerous actions". Seagal visited the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2015 and met with the country's long-time president, Ilham Aliyev. Seagal has expressed support for Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and dispute with neighboring Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Seagal spoke out against the protests during the United States national anthem by professional athletes, stating, "I believe in free speech, I believe that everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but I don't agree that they should hold the United States of America or the world hostage by taking a venue where people are tuning in to watch a football game and imposing their political views." He also expressed skepticism of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Not long after this, former two time World boxing heavyweight champion George Foreman would publicly challenge Seagal to an official 10 round MMA match in Las Vegas which Seagal promptly declined. In 2017, Seagal collaborated with a former chair of the Arizona Republican Party, Tom Morrissey, in writing a self-published conspiracy thriller novel, The Way of the Shadow Wolves: The Deep State And The Hijacking Of America, which featured a Tohono Shadow Wolf tracker working for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to foil a plot by Mexican drug cartels and the "deep state" to smuggle in Islamist terrorists to the United States through the U.S.–Mexico border. In October 2017, Seagal met with Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte while scouting locations in Manila for a possible film. During the visit, Seagal flashed Duterte's signature fist. In 2021, Seagal gave a katana to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry special envoy while visiting Canaima National Park. Maduro referred to Seagal as "my brother." On May 30, 2021, the pro-Kremlin systemic opposition party A Just Russia — Patriots — For Truth announced that Seagal had received an official membership card to the party. In March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Seagal visited Moscow where he organized his birthday party, attended by many people connected to Vladimir Putin, including some affected by international sanctions. This has been criticized as a dissenting action that came amidst the growing international boycott of Russia. In August 2022, he visited Olenivka in Donetsk Oblast, the site of the Olenivka prison massacre with Donetsk People's Republic leader Denis Pushilin, who claimed that Seagal was filming a documentary about the war in Donbass. Seagal also met with Leonid Slutsky. On February 27, 2023, he received the Russian Order of Friendship from Vladimir Putin for his "major contribution to the development of international cultural and humanitarian cooperation". Stunts Filmography Films Television Awards and nominations Discography 2005: Songs from the Crystal Cave 2006: Mojo Priest References External links Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century American guitarists Category:20th-century American male actors Category:20th-century American male musicians Category:21st-century American male actors Category:21st-century American male musicians Category:21st-century Russian male actors Category:21st-century Serbian male actors Category:Activists from California Category:American actor-politicians Category:American aikidoka Category:American Buddhists Category:American blues singers Category:American country singers Category:American deputy sheriffs Category:American drink industry businesspeople Category:American emigrants to Russia Category:American environmentalists Category:American expatriates in Japan Category:American kendoka Category:American male film actors Category:American male guitarists Category:American male judoka Category:American male karateka Category:American male singers Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American people of Jewish descent Category:American stunt performers Category:Businesspeople from California Category:Businesspeople from Louisiana Category:Businesspeople from Michigan Category:Converts to Buddhism Category:Country musicians from Louisiana Category:Country musicians from Michigan Category:Country musicians from Tennessee Category:Guitarists from Michigan Category:Male actors from Fullerton, California Category:Male actors from Lansing, Michigan Category:Naturalised citizens of Russia Category:Naturalized citizens of Serbia Category:Nyingma tulkus Category:Participants in American reality television series Category:People from Eltingville, Staten Island Category:People from Germantown, Tennessee Category:People from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana Category:People from Mandeville Canyon, Los Angeles Category:Tibetan Buddhists from the United States Category:People with multiple nationality

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Kevin Sydney

Kevin Sydney is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The Changeling has been depicted as a member of the X-Men. Created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Werner Roth, the character first appeared in The X-Men #35 (August 1967). Kevin Sydney first appeared as Changeling, a mutant shapeshifter.

Powers and abilities

Kevin Sydney is a mutant metamorph with the ability to alter his physical appearance and voice at will to resemble that of any person he chooses. His power could also transform the appearance of his costume as well, which was made of unstable molecules. Morph's mutation to shape-shift has also made it so that his body is a Play-doh-like substance and he can reattach limbs after they have been severed. He has limited telepathic abilities, which (in the original timeline) were enhanced by Professor X. As a side effect, he also gained limited telekinetic abilities. Upon choosing to work together and share his body with the energy mutant Proteus, Morph's powers appear to be amplified, at least enough to defeat a self-proclaimed god. Whether the two have access to Proteus' reality changing abilities has yet to be determined. He has also stated that his mutation gives him a high metabolism and makes him very hormonal. In Exiles #33 Sasquatch said she was never able to detect a scent on Morph and Sabretooth stated that while hunting Proteus in Morph's body, Morph stands out like a sore thumb in a crowd of "normal" people to Sabretooth's senses regardless of his form. It also appears he has the ability to fly as demonstrated in Exiles #27. Due to his shapeshifting ability he does not wear any actual clothing, and he takes joy in pointing this out. Kevin Sydney is a skilled actor, and a highly trained and efficient organizer of subversive activities. He carried various advanced weaponry of alien Siri design belonging to Factor Three, including a ray gun carried in a holster at his side. Though Morph is a prankster who downplays his intelligence, he is deceptively smart. He has a Master's degree in computer engineering, which he earned at Xavier's Institute. CANNOTANSWER

Kevin Sydney is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Werner Roth, the character first appeared in The X-Men #35 (Aug. 1967). Sydney first appeared as Changeling, a mutant shapeshifter. He was a short-lived adversary for the X-Men who subsequently joined Professor X and died shortly after, making him the first member of the X-Men to die in action. The character was reintroduced as Morph in the 1990s for X-Men: The Animated Series. An alternate reality version of the character under the codename Morph reappeared in the comics as part of the Exiles in 2001. Publication history The first run of appearances occurred in 1967–1968 when he appeared in The X-Men #37-42 as Changeling. Although dying at the end of this run, he was thought to have been seen as a ghost in Excalibur: The Possession (1991) and returned as a zombie in The Sensational She-Hulk #34-35 (1991–1992). The character was later reintroduced as an easygoing comic-relief character for X-Men: The Animated Series. According to showrunner Eric Lewald's behind-the-scenes book, Previously On X-Men: The Making of an Animated Series, the creators had intended for Thunderbird to be the series' early sacrifice, but they became uncomfortable with the idea of killing off a Native American character. Scanning the X-books for a substitute, the character Changeling was found and repurposed for the series. Sydney's codename was changed to Morph because DC Comics owned the trademark to "Changeling" when the series debuted. Morph's first comic book appearance was 1992's X-Men Adventures #1, which adapted the "Night of the Sentinels" TV pilot. Then in 1995, inspired by the character in the animated series, a new Morph was featured in the "Age of Apocalypse" crossover event, debuting in the one-shot comic X-Men Alpha. The character underwent a drastic change in appearance for this event, appearing white-skinned and hairless. Then in 2001, Marvel introduced an alternate-reality version of this Morph, from Earth-1081. He first appeared in Exiles #1. Fictional character biography Earth-616 character Kevin Sydney, known as "Changeling", originally worked for the villainous organization Factor Three. He acted as the Mutant Master's second-in-command in an effort to trigger World War III. After successfully capturing the heroic X-Men, the Mutant Master is exposed as an extraterrestrial and goes out of control. The mutants of Factor Three ultimately joined with the X-Men to defeat the Mutant Master. Following that group's defeat, Changeling sought to reform. He divulged to Professor X that he was suffering from an unspecified terminal illness with only a few months left to live and wished to atone for his misdeeds. Professor X recruited Changeling to act as a stand-in, unbeknownst to the X-Men, while the Professor isolated himself to prepare a defense against the alien Z'Nox's invasion. Changeling, masquerading as Professor X, led the X-Men's efforts to defeat the Subterranean Grotesk. He was mortally wounded in battle with Grotesk by the explosion of an oscillotron machine and, consequently, died preventing the destruction of Earth. The X-Men mourned the loss of Professor X until it was later revealed that it was, in fact, Changeling. When the mystical Darkhold was recreated, Changeling's spirit used the opportunity to possess Meggan. Angry that he used his remaining time helping the X-Men instead of seeking a cure for himself, Changeling sought revenge against Professor X. However, Merlyn later admits that the encounter was merely fantasy, having orchestrated the event to prepare Excalibur. Changeling is later raised from the dead as a zombie by Black Talon to form part of the team X-Humed (which also consisted of Harry Leland, Living Diamond, and Scaleface), and used to attack She-Hulk. He is able to break Talon's control of him long enough to allow She-Hulk to win and lay the zombies back to rest. Earth-1081 character Morph is a hero from Earth-1081 who was a member of the New Mutants, X-Men, and Avengers. He was a unique son of loving parents. Early on in life he managed to use his powers, and was able to give everyone what they wanted from him. Morph always used his power to joke around and keep everyone at ease with him, only comfortable to be himself around his parents. His mother died of lung cancer and Morph tried in every way to cheer up his emotionally distraught father (often acting in a childish way whenever his father wanted him to act serious), who, unable to let his suffering go, chose to enroll his son in a boarding school; luckily, that school happened to be the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. Promoted to the X-Men, Morph's sense of humor initially grated upon the much more serious team but eventually his humor and humility won them over. He was instrumental in many of the team's victories and was chosen to be part of a pilot program with the Avengers, along with the Beast, as a public representative of mutant-kind. Morph would return to the X-Men because, in his own words, "he missed his freaky mutant brothers and sisters." On a subsequent mission, Morph and the rest of the X-Men were facing off against a threat known only as Stonehenge when Morph became unhinged from time. The Exiles After becoming unhinged from time, the mysterious Timebroker appeared to him, explaining that his unhinging was the result of a chain of events that caused his reality to change. In that new reality a wounded Morph is unable to maintain his form, and is in a coma, being only a white muddy substance in Beast's lab. Hoping to save his own future, he becomes a member, and comic relief, of the Exiles, a group of universe-hopping heroes trying to save realities from ripples and alteration. Morph is a founding member of the Exiles and he is the only original member remaining throughout the series. He soon befriended the mutant Sunfire, and her death left him emotionally wrecked. Mojo's World The Exiles battled on, fixing reality after reality and struggling to keep it together. Following one of these missions the team was kidnapped by Mojo, the insane evil dictator of the Mojoverse. Mojo considered Morph the best entertainer he had ever seen and brought him back to entertain the masses. If he didn't, Mojo would kill his fellow Exile, Nocturne. Eventually, Nocturne was able to escape and set Morph free. Mojo went crazy and threatened to kill Morph's friends. An enraged Morph was on the verge of killing Mojo when the Timebroker stopped them. The Timebroker revealed Mojo had disrupted time but he was a necessary evil and could not be killed. Weapon X Morph continued to be the heart of the team until a mission in which Mimic was taken over by a Brood egg. During the battle, he killed Sunfire. Mimic was eventually cured but Morph was enraged. He was devastated by Sunfire's death and told Mimic he should have killed himself rather than let something like this happen. Morph stormed off and threatened to leave the team. Magik, an unlikely ally, followed and tried to calm him. The two connected and despite her past attitude during missions, Morph realized Illyana was just a scared girl trying to get home. He remained angry with Mimic but helped his team fight against the rogue reality-hopping team, Weapon X. Before the battle began, Magik attempted to switch sides, believing her team was weaker. Hyperion, the self-appointed leader of Weapon X, snapped her neck and Morph was driven into a rage. He attacked Hyperion, who attempted to blast Morph with his eyebeams, but Mimic saved him. During the brawl with Weapon X, Morph fought against an evil Ms. Marvel. Their battle caused a building to fall in on them, killing Ms. Marvel but Morph was able to survive. The Exiles were triumphant and the Timebroker told Morph he could finally go home. His mission was fulfilled. Morph considered the offer but asked if he could stay with his team. He realized they needed him and he could not leave them behind. The Timebroker agreed; Morph asked him not to tell the rest of the Exiles of his decision. Morph and Mimic reconciled since he realized that Sunfire's death was not Mimic's fault and that the Brood was controlling him. The team moved on. Proteus Morph helped the team take down Proteus by impersonating the Maestro and weakening Proteus with a steel strip in his head. Morph went to take down Proteus but Proteus knocked the steel plate out of his head and took over Morph's body in issue #80. When the Exiles tracked him to the "Heroes Reborn" world, cosmic entities "O" and "K" kidnapped him, saying his presence has tipped the balance of power. Using a tiara hooked to a brainwasher device, his teammate Blink managed if not to restore his consciousness, to brainwash Proteus, forcing him to act like Morph, and access to only Morph's memories, functionally "bringing him again to life." With Proteus trapped and believing he is Morph, he remained an Exile to continue fixing damaged realities. Considering Morph's body does not burn out like other hosts, Morph's consciousness is still active beneath Proteus. Also, Proteus is immune to metal while in Morph's body, since wearing a metal tiara during the "Heroes Reborn" world did not kill him. However, concerns about some discrepancies in "Morph's" behavior forced his teammates to plan regular brainwashings with the same device, and, eventually, put him in stasis whenever his behavior would change again. However, that device was destroyed when Psylocke and Sabretooth fought so intensely that they shook the Crystal Palace, causing a bookcase to fall on Morph's head, shattering the device. With the device shattered, it was only a matter of time before Proteus would re-emerge. During a confrontation where Proteus reawakened, he found himself lacking in power to defeat the adversary. About to be crushed, Proteus shouted aloud his desire to stay alive. In a vision, he saw a figure, almost identical to his own true, energy form, telling him to take its hand, and he would survive. Upon doing so, Proteus found himself full of even greater power, using it to defeat his god-like enemy. Afterward, it was revealed that this being was the personality and soul of the true Morph, having been in limbo, gaining strength within Proteus and his own body, who had before only been able to speak a few sentences through Proteus' control. Revealing to Proteus that he had the ability to eject him from his body, Morph gave Proteus the chance to work together and share his body and their powers, in order to do more good, something which Morph had discovered Proteus desired deep within him. Proteus accepted, and the two now work together harmoniously, better than either could be alone. However, soon after, when the New Exiles became immersed within the Crystal Palace, Proteus was absorbed in Morph's place, freeing Morph once and for all. Powers and abilities Kevin Sydney is a mutant metamorph with the ability to alter his physical appearance and voice at will to resemble that of any person he chooses. His power could also transform the appearance of his costume as well, which was made of unstable molecules. Morph's mutation to shape-shift has also made it so that his body is a Play-Doh-like substance and he can reattach limbs after they have been severed. He has limited telepathic abilities, which (in the original timeline) were enhanced by Professor X. As a side effect, he also gained limited telekinetic abilities. Upon choosing to work together and share his body with the energy mutant Proteus, Morph's powers appear to be amplified, at least enough to defeat a self-proclaimed god. Whether the two have access to Proteus' reality changing abilities has yet to be determined. He has also stated that his mutation gives him a high metabolism and makes him very hormonal. In Exiles #33 Sasquatch said she was never able to detect a scent on Morph and Sabretooth stated that while hunting Proteus in Morph's body, Morph stands out like a sore thumb in a crowd of "normal" people to Sabretooth's senses regardless of his form. It also appears he has the ability to fly as demonstrated in Exiles #27. Due to his shapeshifting ability he does not wear any actual clothing, and he takes joy in pointing this out. Kevin Sydney is a skilled actor, and a highly trained and efficient organizer of subversive activities. He carried various advanced weaponry of alien Siri design belonging to Factor Three, including a ray gun carried in a holster at his side. Though Morph is a prankster who downplays his intelligence, he is deceptively smart. He has a Master's degree in computer engineering, which he earned at Xavier's Institute. Other versions Changeling is the character's codename in the contiguous Marvel Universe, Earth-616. However, the character's reinvention as Morph in the X-Men animated series raised his profile such that alternate versions of the character, now also named Morph, began to appear in stories set in other universes. Age of Apocalypse In the Age of Apocalypse (AoA), Morph was, like his "regular Marvel Universe" counterpart Changeling, an early recruit of the X-Men. Unlike Changeling, Kevin Sydney of AoA never died while impersonating Professor X, because in the Age of Apocalypse Xavier died before the X-Men were ever founded. In the AoA timeline, Morph often agitated his teammates with his off-the-wall sense of humor and inappropriate timing; he describes himself as wanting to die with a smile on his face when his time comes. Despite his happy-go-lucky attitude, Morph has displayed signs of a softer, more empathetic side several times. For example, he morphed into Sabretooth in an effort to comfort Blink while she doubted her abilities, and he later gave Rogue the strength to endure against the horseman Holocaust by acting as her son. Shortly after the defeat of Apocalypse, he accompanied fellow X-Men Iceman, Wildchild and Exodus on an unspecified mission, during which they disappeared. Their fate has yet to be revealed, except for Wildchild, who has since joined a new team of Exiles. The Lost Generation A Morph is also seen as a member of First Line, set in Earth-616 but in the period after World War II. In other media Kevin Sydney / Morph appears in X-Men: The Animated Series, voiced by Ron Rubin. This version is a member of the X-Men and close friend of Wolverine, who claims Morph is the only one who can make him laugh, before he is seemingly killed by Sentinels in the two-part pilot episode "Night of the Sentinels". During production of the series, Sydney was originally going to appear under his original codename of Changeling, but according to series producer and director Larry Houston, they changed his codename to Morph due to trademark issues with DC Comics' character Beast Boy, who also went by Changeling. In the second season, Morph was resurrected by Mister Sinister, implanted with control devices to brainwash him, driven progressively insane by memories of his apparent death, and developed two personalities: one who loved his teammates and one who hated them for abandoning him. The latter personality embarks on a guerilla war against the X-Men until he is confronted by Wolverine and forced to flee to Muir Island, where Wolverine learns what happened to Morph, who betrays Sinister and flees once more, unable to accept his former team's camaraderie. In the second season finale "Reunion (Part 2)", Morph attempts to help the X-Men defeat Sinister, but he reactivates Morph's implants and forces him to fight the X-Men until Professor X enters Morph's mind and reminds him of his original allegiances. Morph breaks free of Sinister's control and shatters him before Professor X removes the implants. In the third season, Morph returns to Muir Island to recover from his mental instability. By the fourth season, he shows significant improvement, having received help from Moira MacTaggert, and rejoins the X-Men. Despite suffering from PTSD while fighting Sentinels, he would eventually overcome his trauma and defeat Master Mold, but leaves the X-Men due to concerns with his mental state and returns to MacTaggert's care, promising to return once he is ready. Following this, Morph makes cameo appearances in the episode "Beyond Good and Evil (Part 1)" as an attendee of Cyclops and Jean Grey's wedding and the series finale "Graduation Day" to assume Professor X's place while the real professor was dying from illness. The Exiles incarnation of Morph appears in Marvel Heroes, voiced by Tom Kenny. References External links Changeling at Marvel.com Kevin Sydney at Marvel Wolo UncannyXmen.net Character Profile on Changeling Category:Characters created by Roy Thomas Category:Comics characters introduced in 1967 Category:Fictional actors Category:Fictional characters with dissociative identity disorder Category:Fictional pranksters Category:Fictional schoolteachers Category:Male characters in comics Category:Marvel Comics characters who are shapeshifters Category:Marvel Comics LGBT superheroes Category:Marvel Comics male superheroes Category:Marvel Comics mutants Category:Marvel Comics telepaths Category:X-Men members

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Sven Hedin

Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, (19 February 1865 - 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer, and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Fran pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s.

Hedin and Nazi Germany

Hedin's conservative and pro-German views eventually translated into sympathy for the Third Reich, and this would draw him into increasing controversy towards the end of his life. Adolf Hitler had been an early admirer of Hedin, who was in turn impressed with Hitler's nationalism. He saw the German leader's rise to power as a revival of German fortunes, and welcomed its challenge against Soviet Communism. He was not an entirely uncritical supporter of the Nazis, however. His own views were shaped by traditionalist, Christian and conservative values, while National Socialism was in part a modern revolutionary-populist movement. Hedin objected to some aspects of National Socialist rule, and occasionally attempted to convince the German government to relent in its anti-religious and anti-Semitic campaigns. Hedin met Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists repeatedly and was in regular correspondence with them. The politely-worded correspondence usually concerned scheduling matters, birthday congratulations, Hedin's planned or completed publications, and requests by Hedin for pardons for people condemned to death, and for mercy, release and permission to leave the country for people interned in prisons or concentration camps. In correspondence with Joseph Goebbels and Hans Drager, Hedin was able to achieve the printing of the Daily Watchwords year after year. The Nazis attempted to achieve a close connection to Hedin by bestowing awards upon him. They asked him to present an address on Sport as a Teacher at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin's Olympic stadium. They made him an honorary member of the German-Swedish Union Berlin (German: Deutsch-Schwedischen Vereinigung Berlin e.V.) In 1938, they presented him with the City of Berlin's Badge of Honor (German: Ehrenplakette der Stadt Berlin). For his 75th birthday on 19 February 1940 they awarded him the Order of the German Eagle; shortly before that date it had been presented to Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. On New Year's Day 1943 they released the Oslo professor of philology and university rector Didrik Arup Seip from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Hedin's request in order to obtain Hedin's agreement to accept additional honors during the 470th anniversary of Munich University. On 15 January 1943, he received the Gold Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Goldmedaille der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). On 16 January 1943 he received an honorary doctorate from the faculty of natural sciences of Munich University. On the same day, the Nazis founded in his absence the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research located at Mittersill Castle, which was supposed to serve the long-term advancement of the scientific legacy of Hedin and Wilhelm Filchner as Asian experts. However, it was instead misused by Heinrich Himmler as an institute of the Research Association for German Genealogical Inheritance (Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.). On 21 January 1943, he was requested to sign the Golden Book of the city of Munich. Hedin supported the Nazis in his journalistic activities. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, he did not regret his collaboration with the Nazis because this cooperation had made it possible to rescue numerous Nazi victims from execution, or death in extermination camps. CANNOTANSWER

Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, (19 February 1865 – 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work. Overview At 15 years of age, Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. From that moment on, young Sven aspired to become an explorer. His studies under the German geographer and China expert, Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, awakened a love of Germany in Hedin and strengthened his resolve to undertake expeditions to Central Asia to explore the last uncharted areas of Asia. After obtaining a doctorate, learning several languages and dialects, and undertaking two trips through Persia, he ignored the advice of Ferdinand von Richthofen to continue his geographic studies to acquaint himself with geographical research methodology; the result was that Hedin had to leave the evaluation of his expedition results later to other scientists. Between 1894 and 1908, in three daring expeditions through the mountains and deserts of Central Asia, he mapped and researched parts of Chinese Turkestan (officially Xinjiang) and Tibet which had been unexplored by Europeans until then. Upon his return to Stockholm in 1909 he was received as triumphantly as Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. In 1902, he became the last Swede (to date) to be raised to the untitled nobility and was considered one of Sweden's most important personalities. As a member of two scientific academies, he had a voice in the selection of Nobel Prize winners for both science and literature. Hedin never married and had no children, rendering his family line now extinct. Hedin's expedition notes laid the foundations for a precise mapping of Central Asia. He was one of the first European scientific explorers to employ indigenous scientists and research assistants on his expeditions. Although primarily an explorer, he was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. However, as his main interest in archaeology was finding ancient cities, he had little interest in gathering data thorough scientific excavations. Of small stature, with a bookish, bespectacled appearance, Hedin nevertheless proved himself a determined explorer, surviving several close brushes with death from hostile forces and the elements over his long career. His scientific documentation and popular travelogues, illustrated with his own photographs, watercolor paintings and drawings, his adventure stories for young readers and his lecture tours abroad made him world-famous. As a renowned expert on Turkestan and Tibet, he was able to obtain unrestricted access to European and Asian monarchs and politicians as well as to their geographical societies and scholarly associations. They all sought to purchase his exclusive knowledge about the power vacuum in Central Asia with gold medals, diamond-encrusted grand crosses, honorary doctorates and splendid receptions, as well as with logistic and financial support for his expeditions. Hedin, in addition to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Sir Aurel Stein, was an active player in the British-Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game. Their travels were supported because they filled in the "white spaces" in contemporary maps, providing valuable information. Hedin was honored in ceremonies in: 1890 by King Oscar II of Sweden 1890 by Shah Nāser ad-Dīn Schah 1896, 1909 by Czar Nicholas II of Russia from 1898 frequently by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary 1902 by the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon 1903, 1914, 1917, 1926, 1936 by Kaiser Wilhelm II 1906 by the Viceroy of India Lord Minto 1907, 1926, 1933 by the 9th Panchen Lama Thubten Choekyi Nyima 1908 by Emperor Mutsuhito 1910 by Pope Pius X 1910 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt 1915 and subsequently by Hindenburg 1929 and 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek 1935, 1939, 1940 (twice) by Adolf Hitler. Hedin was, and remained, a figure of the 19th century who clung to its visions and methods also in the 20th century. This prevented him from discerning the fundamental social and political upheavals of the 20th century and aligning his thinking and actions accordingly. Concerned about the security of Scandinavia, he favored the Swedish Navy's construction of the battleship . In World War I he specifically allied himself in his publications with the German Empire and its conduct of the war. Because of this political involvement, his scientific reputation was damaged among the Allied powers, along with his memberships in their geographical societies and learned associations, as well as any support for his planned expeditions. After a less-than-successful lecture tour in 1923 through North America and Japan, he traveled on to Beijing to carry out an expedition to Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), but the region's unstable political situation thwarted this intention. He instead traveled through Mongolia by car and through Siberia aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway. With financial support from the governments of Sweden and Germany, he led, between 1927 and 1935, an international and interdisciplinary Sino-Swedish Expedition to carry out scientific investigations in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, with the participation of 37 scientists from six countries. Despite Chinese counter-demonstrations and after months of negotiations in the Republic of China, was he able to make the expedition also a Chinese one by obtaining Chinese research commissions and the participation of Chinese scientists. He also concluded a contract which guaranteed freedom of travel for this expedition which, because of its arms, 300 camels, and activities in a war theater, resembled an invading army. However, the financing remained Hedin's private responsibility. Because of failing health, the civil war in Chinese Turkestan, and a long period of captivity, Hedin, by then 70 years of age, had a difficult time after the currency depreciation of the Great Depression raising the money required for the expedition, the logistics for assuring the supplying of the expedition in an active war zone, and obtaining access for the expedition's participants to a research area intensely contested by local warlords. Nevertheless, the expedition was a scientific success. The archaeological artifacts which had been sent to Sweden were scientifically assessed for three years, after which they were returned to China under the terms of the contract. Starting in 1937, the scientific material assembled during the expedition was published in over 50 volumes by Hedin and other expedition participants, thereby making it available for worldwide research on eastern Asia. When he ran out of money to pay printing costs, he pawned his extensive and valuable library, which filled several rooms, making possible the publication of additional volumes. In 1935, Hedin made his exclusive knowledge about Central Asia available, not only to the Swedish government, but also to foreign governments such as China and Germany, in lectures and personal discussions with political representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and Adolf Hitler. Although he was not a National Socialist, Hedin's hope that Nazi Germany would protect Scandinavia from invasion by the Soviet Union, brought him in dangerous proximity to representatives of National Socialism, who exploited him as an author. This destroyed his reputation and put him into social and scientific isolation. However, in correspondence and personal conversations with leading Nazis, his successful intercessions achieved the pardoning of ten people condemned to death and the release or survival of Jews who had been deported to Nazi concentration camps. At the end of the war, United States Army troops deliberately confiscated documents relating to Hedin's planned Central Asia Atlas. The U.S. Army Map Service later solicited Hedin's assistance and financed the printing and publication of his life's work, the Central Asia Atlas. Whoever compares this atlas with Adolf Stielers Hand Atlas of 1891 can appreciate what Hedin accomplished between 1893 and 1935. Although Hedin's research was taboo in Germany and Sweden because of his conduct relating to Nazi Germany, and stagnated for decades in Germany, the scientific documentation of his expeditions was translated into Chinese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and incorporated into Chinese research. Following recommendations made by Hedin to the Chinese Nationalist government in 1935, the routes he selected were used to construct streets and train tracks, as well as dams and canals to irrigate new farms being established in the Tarim and Yanji basins in Xinjiang and the deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold discovered during the Sino-Swedish Expedition were opened up for mining. Among the discoveries of this expedition should also be counted the many Asian plants and animals unheard of until that date, as well as fossil remains of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Many were named after Hedin, the species-level scientific classification being hedini. But one discovery remained unknown to Chinese researchers until the turn of the millennium: in the Lop Nur desert, Hedin discovered in 1933 and 1934 ruins of signal towers which prove that the Great Wall of China once extended as far west as Xinjiang. From 1931 until his death in 1952, Hedin lived in Stockholm in a modern high-rise in a preferred location, the address being Norr Mälarstrand 66. He lived with his siblings in the upper three stories and from the balcony he had a wide view over Riddarfjärden Bay and Lake Mälaren to the island of Långholmen. In the entryway to the stairwell is to be found a decorative stucco relief map of Hedin's research area in Central Asia and a relief of the Lama temple, a copy of which he had brought to Chicago for the 1933 World's Fair. On 29 October 1952, Hedin's will granted the rights to his books and his extensive personal effects to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Sven Hedin Foundation established soon thereafter holds all the rights of ownership. Hedin died at Stockholm in 1952. The memorial service was attended by representatives of the Swedish royal household, the Swedish government, the Swedish Academy, and the diplomatic service. He is buried in the cemetery of Adolf Fredrik church in Stockholm. Biography Childhood influences Sven Hedin was born in Stockholm, the son of Ludwig Hedin, Chief Architect of Stockholm. When he was 15 years old Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Swedish Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. He describes this experience in his book My Life as an Explorer as follows: On 24 April 1880, the steamer Vega sailed into Stockholms ström. The entire city was illuminated. The buildings around the harbor glowed in the light of innumerable lamps and torches. Gas flames depicted the constellation of Vega on the castle. Amidst this sea of light the famous ship glided into the harbor. I was standing on the Södermalm heights with my parents and siblings, from which we had a superb view. I was gripped by great nervous tension. I will remember this day until I die, as it was decisive for my future. Thunderous jubilation resounded from quays, streets, windows and rooftops. "That is how I want to return home some day," I thought to myself. First trip to Iran (Persia) In May 1885, Hedin graduated from Beskowska secondary school in Stockholm. He then accepted an offer to accompany the student Erhard Sandgren as his private tutor to Baku, where Sandgren's father was working as an engineer in the oil fields of Robert Nobel. Afterward he attended a course in topography for general staff officers for one month in summer 1885 and took a few weeks of instruction in portrait drawing; this comprised his entire training in those areas. On 15 August 1885, he traveled to Baku with Erhard Sandgren and instructed him there for seven months, and he himself began to learn the Latin, French, German, Persian, Russian, English and Tatar languages. He later learned several Persian dialects as well as Turkish, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tibetan and some Chinese. On 6 April 1886, Hedin left Baku for Iran (then called Persia), traveling by paddle steamer over the Caspian Sea, riding through the Alborz Range to Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz and the harbor city of Bushehr. From there he took a ship up the Tigris River to Baghdad (then in Ottoman Empire), returning to Tehran via Kermanshah, and then travelling through the Caucasus and over the Black Sea to Constantinople. Hedin then returned to Sweden, arriving on 18 September 1886. In 1887, Hedin published a book about these travels entitled Through Persia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus. Studies From 1886 to 1888, Hedin studied under the geologist Waldemar Brøgger in Stockholm and Uppsala the subjects of geology, mineralogy, zoology and Latin. In December 1888, he became a Candidate in Philosophy. From October 1889 to March 1890 he studied in Berlin under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Second trip to Iran On 12 May 1890, he accompanied as interpreter and vice-consul a Swedish legation to Iran which was to present the Shah of Iran with the insignia of the Order of the Seraphim. As part of the Swedish legation, he was at an audience of the shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in Tehran. He spoke with him and later accompanied him to the Elburz Mountain Range. On 11 July 1890, he and three others climbed Mount Damavand where he collected primary material for his dissertation. Starting in September he traveled on the Silk Road via cities Mashhad, Ashgabat, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Kashgar to the western outskirts of the Taklamakan Desert. On the trip home, he visited the grave of the Russian Asian scholar, Nikolai Przhevalsky in Karakol on the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. On 29 March 1891, he was back in Stockholm. He published the books King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890 and Through Chorasan and Turkestan about this journey. Doctorate and career path On 27 April 1892, Hedin traveled to Berlin to continue his studies under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Beginning of July he went to University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, attending lectures by Alfred Kirchhoff. Yet in the same month, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a 28-page dissertation entitled Personal Observations of Damavand. This dissertation is a summary of one part of his book, King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890. Eric Wennerholm remarked on the subject: I can only come to the conclusion that Sven [Hedin] received his doctorate when he was 27 years old after studying for a grand total of only eight months and collecting primary material for one-and-a-half days on the snow-clad peak of Mount Damavand. Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen not only encouraged Hedin to absolve cursory studies, but also to become thoroughly acquainted with all branches of geographic science and the methodologies of the salient research work, so that he could later work as an explorer. Hedin abstained from doing this with an explanation he supplied in old age: I was not up to this challenge. I had gotten out onto the wild routes of Asia too early, I had perceived too much of the splendor and magnificence of the Orient, the silence of the deserts and the loneliness of long journeys. I could not get used to the idea of spending a long period of time back in school. Hedin had therewith decided to become an explorer. He was attracted to the idea of traveling to the last mysterious portions of Asia and filling in the gaps by mapping an area completely unknown in Europe. As an explorer, Hedin became important for the Asian and European powers, who courted him, invited him to give numerous lectures, and hoped to obtain from him in return topographic, economic and strategic information about inner Asia, which they considered part of their sphere of influence. As the era of discovery came to a close around 1920, Hedin contented himself with organizing the Sino-Swedish Expedition for qualified scientific explorers. First expedition Between 1893 and 1897, Hedin investigated the Pamir Mountains, travelling through the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang region, across the Taklamakan Desert, Lake Kara-Koshun and Lake Bosten, proceeding to study northern Tibet. He covered on this journey and mapped of them on 552 sheets. Approximately led through previously uncharted areas. He started out on this expedition on 16 October 1893, from Stockholm, traveling via Saint Petersburg and Tashkent to the Pamir Mountains. Several attempts to climb the high Muztagata—called the Father of the Glaciers—in the Pamir Mountains were unsuccessful. He remained in Kashgar until April 1895 and then left on 10 April with three local escorts from the village of Merket to cross the Taklamakan Desert via Tusluk to the Khotan River. Since their water supply was insufficient, seven camels died of thirst, as did two of his escorts (according to Hedin's dramatized and probably inaccurate account). Bruno Baumann traveled on this route in April 2000 with a camel caravan and ascertained that at least one of the escorts who, according to Hedin, had died of thirst had survived, and that it is impossible for a camel caravan traveling in springtime on this route to carry enough drinking water for both camels and travelers. According to other sources, Hedin had neglected to completely fill the drinking water containers for his caravan at the beginning of the expedition and set out for the desert with only half as much water as could actually be carried. When he noticed the mistake, it was too late to return. Obsessed by his urge to carry out his research, Hedin deserted the caravan and proceeded alone on horseback with his servant. When that escort also collapsed from thirst, Hedin left him behind as well, but managed to reach a water source at the last desperate moment. He did, however, return to his servant with water and rescued him. Nevertheless, his ruthless behavior earned him massive criticism. In January 1896, after a stopover in Kashgar, Hedin visited the 1,500-year-old abandoned cities of Dandan Oilik and Kara Dung, which are located northeast of Khotan in the Taklamakan Desert. At the beginning of March, he discovered Lake Bosten, one of the largest inland bodies of water in Central Asia. He reported that this lake is supplied by a single mighty feeder stream, the Kaidu River. He mapped Lake Kara-Koshun and returned on 27 May to Khotan. On 29 June, he started out from there with his caravan across northern Tibet and China to Beijing, where he arrived on 2 March 1897. He returned to Stockholm via Mongolia and Russia. Second expedition Another expedition in Central Asia followed in 1899–1902 through the Tarim Basin, Tibet and Kashmir to Calcutta. Hedin navigated the Yarkand, Tarim and Kaidu rivers and found the dry riverbed of the Kum-darja as well as the dried out lake bed of Lop Nur. Near Lop Nur, he discovered the ruins of the former walled royal city and later Chinese garrison town of Loulan, containing the brick building of the Imperial Chinese Army commander, a stupa, and 19 dwellings built of poplar wood. He also found a wooden wheel from a horse-drawn cart (called an arabas) as well as several hundred documents written on wood, paper and silk in the Kharosthi script. These provided information about the history of the city of Loulan, which had once been located on the shores of Lop Nur but had been abandoned around the year 330 CE because the lake had dried out, depriving the inhabitants of drinking water. During his travels in 1900 and 1901 he attempted in vain to reach the city of Lhasa, which was forbidden to Europeans. He continued to Leh, in Ladakh district, India. From Leh, Hedin's route took him to Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares to Calcutta, meeting there with George Nathaniel Curzon, England's then Viceroy to India. This expedition resulted in 1,149 pages of maps, on which Hedin depicted newly discovered lands. He was the first to describe yardang formations in the Lop Desert. Third expedition Between 1905 and 1908, Hedin investigated the Central Iranian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet and the Transhimalaya, which for a time was afterward called the Hedin Range. He visited the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloistered city of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse. Hedin was the first European to reach the Kailash region, including the sacred Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash, the midpoint of the earth according to Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The most important goal of the expedition was the search for the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra Rivers, both of which Hedin found. From India, he returned via Japan and Russia to Stockholm. He returned from this expedition with a collection of geological samples which are kept and studied in the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Munich University. These sedimentary rocks—such as breccia, conglomerate, limestone, and slate, as well as volcanic rock and granite—highlight the geological diversity of the regions visited by Hedin during this expedition. Mongolia In 1923, Hedin traveled to Beijing via the United States—where he visited the Grand Canyon—and the Empire of Japan. Because of political and social unrest in China, he had to abandon an expedition to Xinjiang. Instead, he traveled with Frans August Larson (called the "Duke of Mongolia") in November and December in a Dodge automobile from Peking through Mongolia via Ulan-Bator to Ulan-Ude, Russia and from there on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow. Fourth expedition Between 1927 and 1935, Hedin led an international Sino-Swedish Expedition which investigated the meteorological, topographic and prehistoric situation in Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Xinjiang. Hedin described it as a peripatetic university in which the participating scientists worked almost independently, while he—like a local manager—negotiated with local authorities, made decisions, organized whatever was necessary, raised funds and recorded the route followed. He gave archaeologists, astronomers, botanists, geographers, geologists, meteorologists and zoologists from Sweden, Germany and China an opportunity to participate in the expedition and carry out research in their areas of specialty. Hedin met Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, who thereupon became a patron of the expedition. The Sino-Swedish Expedition was honored with a Chinese postage stamp series which had a print run of 25,000. The four stamps show camels at a camp with the expedition flag and bear the Chinese text, "Postal Service of the Prosperous Middle Kingdom" and in Latin underneath, "Scientific Expedition to the Northwestern Province of China 1927–1933". A painting in the Beijing Palace Museum entitled Nomads in the Desert served as model for the series. Of the 25,000 sets, 4,000 were sold across the counter and 21,500 came into the possession of the expedition. Hedin used them to finance the expedition, selling them for a price of five dollars per set. The stamps were unwelcome at the time due to the high price Hedin was selling them at, but years later became valuable treasures among collectors. The first part of the expedition, from 1927 to 1932, led from Beijing via Baotou to Mongolia, over the Gobi Desert, through Xinjiang to Ürümqi, and into the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin. The expedition had a wealth of scientific results which are being published up to the present time. For example, the discovery of specific deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold reserves was of great economic relevance for China. In recognition of his achievements, the Berlin Geographical Society presented him with the Ferdinand von Richthofen Medal in 1933; the same honor was also awarded to Erich von Drygalski for his Gauss Expedition to the Antarctic; and to Alfred Philippson for his research on the Aegean Region. From the end of 1933 to 1934, Hedin led—on behalf of the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing—a Chinese expedition to investigate irrigation measures and draw up plans and maps for the construction of two roads suitable for automobiles along the Silk Road from Beijing to Xinjiang. Following his plans, major irrigation facilities were constructed, settlements erected, and roads built on the Silk Road from Beijing to Kashgar, which made it possible to completely bypass the rough terrain of Tarim Basin. One aspect of the geography of central Asia which intensively occupied Hedin for decades was what he called the "wandering lake" Lop Nur. In May 1934, he began a river expedition to this lake. For two months he navigated the Kaidu River and the Kum-Darja to Lop Nur, which had been filled with water since 1921. After the lake dried out in 1971 as a consequence of irrigation activities, the above-mentioned transportation link enabled the People's Republic of China to construct a nuclear weapon test site at Lop Nur. His caravan of truck lorries was hijacked by the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying who was retreating from northern Xinjiang along with his Kuomintang 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) from the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. While Hedin was detained by Ma Zhongying, he met General Ma Hushan, and Kemal Kaya Effendi. Ma Zhongying's adjutant claimed to Hedin that Ma Zhongying had the entire region of Tian-shan-nan-lu (southern Xinjiang) under his control and Sven could pass through safely without any trouble. Hedin did not believe his assertions. Some of Ma Zhongying's Tungan (Chinese speaking Muslim) troops attacked Hedin's expedition by shooting at their vehicles. For the return trip, Hedin selected the southern Silk Road route via Hotan to Xi'an, where the expedition arrived on 7 February 1935. He continued on to Beijing to meet with President Lin Sen and to Nanjing to Chiang Kai-shek. He celebrated his 70th birthday on 19 February 1935 in the presence of 250 members of the Kuomintang government, to whom he reported interesting facts about the Sino-Swedish Expedition. On this day, he was awarded the Brilliant Jade Order, Second Class. At the end of the expedition, Hedin was in a difficult financial situation. He had considerable debts at the German-Asian Bank in Beijing, which he repaid with the royalties and fees received for his books and lectures. In the months after his return, he held 111 lectures in 91 German cities as well as 19 lectures in neighboring countries. To accomplish this lecture tour, he covered a stretch as long as the equator, by train and by car—in a time period of five months. He met Adolf Hitler in Berlin before his lecture on 14 April 1935. Political views Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship , which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government. He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars. He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts. Hedin and Nazi Germany Hedin's conservative and pro-German views eventually translated into sympathy for the Third Reich, and this would draw him into increasing controversy towards the end of his life. Adolf Hitler had been an early admirer of Hedin, who was in turn impressed with Hitler's nationalism. He saw the German leader's rise to power as a revival of German fortunes, and welcomed its challenge against Soviet Communism. He was not an entirely uncritical supporter of the Nazis, however. His own views were shaped by traditionalist, Christian and conservative values, while National Socialism was in part a modern revolutionary-populist movement. Hedin objected to some aspects of National Socialist rule, and occasionally attempted to convince the German government to relent in its anti-religious and anti-Semitic campaigns. Hedin met Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazi Party leaders repeatedly and was in regular correspondence with them. The politely-worded correspondence usually concerned scheduling matters, birthday congratulations, Hedin's planned or completed publications, and requests by Hedin for pardons for people condemned to death, and for mercy, release and permission to leave the country for people interned in prisons or concentration camps. In correspondence with Joseph Goebbels and Hans Dräger, Hedin was able to achieve the printing of the Daily Watchwords year after year. Hedin directly interviewed Hitler in October 1939, one month after the invasion of Poland, where Hitler claimed that there could be peace if the United Kingdom and France recognized the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. On 29 October 1942, Hitler read Hedin's book entitled, America in the Battle of the Continents. In the book Hedin promoted the view that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939 and that Hitler had done everything in his power to prevent war. Moreover, Hedin argued that the origins of the Second World War lay not in German belligerence but in the Treaty of Versailles. This book deeply influenced Hitler and reaffirmed his views on the origins of the war and who was responsible for it. In a letter to Hedin the following day Hitler wrote, "I thank you warmly for the attention you have shown me. I have already read the book and welcome in particular that you so explicitly detailed the offers I made to Poland at the beginning of the War". Hitler continued, "without question, the individual guilty of this war, as you correctly state at the end of your book, is exclusively the American President Roosevelt." The Nazis attempted to achieve a close connection to Hedin by bestowing awards upon him—later scholars have noted that "honors were heaped upon this prominent sympathizer." They asked him to present an address on Sport as a Teacher at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin's Olympic Stadium. They made him an honorary member of the German-Swedish Union Berlin () In 1938, they presented him with the City of Berlin's Badge of Honor (). For his 75th birthday on 19 February 1940 they awarded him the Order of the German Eagle; shortly before that date it had been presented to Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. On New Year's Day 1943 they released the Oslo professor of philology and university rector Didrik Arup Seip from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Hedin's request to obtain Hedin's agreement to accept additional honors during the 470th anniversary of Munich University. On 15 January 1943, he received the Gold Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Goldmedaille der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). On 16 January 1943 he received an honorary doctorate from the faculty of natural sciences of Munich University. On the same day, the Nazis founded in his absence the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research located at Mittersill Castle, which was supposed to serve the long-term advancement of the scientific legacy of Hedin and Wilhelm Filchner as Asian experts. However, it was instead misused by Heinrich Himmler as an institute of the Research Association for German Genealogical Inheritance (Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.). On 21 January 1943, he was requested to sign the Golden Book of the city of Munich. Hedin supported the Nazis in his journalistic activities. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, he did not regret his collaboration with the Nazis because this cooperation had made it possible to rescue numerous Nazi victims from execution, or death in extermination camps. Senior Jewish German archeologist Werner Scheimberg, sent in the expedition by the Thule Society, "had been one of the companions of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin on his excursions in the East, with archaeological and to some extent esoteric purposes". Hedin was trying to discover the mythological place of Agartha and reproached the Polish explorer and visiting professor Antoni Ossendowski for having been gone where the Swedish explorer wasn't able to come, and thus was personally invited by Adolf Hitler in Berlin and honoured by the Führer during his 75th birthday feast. Criticism of National Socialism Johannes Paul wrote in 1954 about Hedin: Much of what happened in the early days of Nazi rule had his approval. However, he did not hesitate to criticize whenever he considered this to be necessary, particularly in cases of Jewish persecution, conflict with the churches and bars to freedom of science. In 1937 Hedin refused to publish his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden (Germany and World Peace) in Germany because the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda insisted on the deletion of Nazi-critical passages. In a letter Hedin wrote to State Secretary Walther Funk dated 16 April 1937, it becomes clear what his criticism of National Socialism was in this time before the establishment of extermination camps: When we first discussed my plan to write a book, I stated that I only wanted to write objectively, scientifically, possibly critically, according to my conscience, and you considered that to be completely acceptable and natural. Now I emphasized in a very friendly and mild form that the removal of distinguished Jewish professors who have performed great services for mankind is detrimental to Germany and that this has given rise to many agitators against Germany abroad. So I took this position only in the interest of Germany. My worry that the education of German youth, which I otherwise praise and admire everywhere, is deficient in questions of religion and the hereafter comes from my love and sympathy for the German nation, and as a Christian I consider it my duty to state this openly, and, to be sure, in the firm conviction that Luther’s nation, which is religious through and through, will understand me. So far I have never gone against my conscience and will not do it now either. Therefore, no deletions will be made. Hedin later published this book in Sweden. Efforts on behalf of deported Jews After he refused to remove his criticism of National Socialism from his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden, the Nazis confiscated the passports of Hedin's Jewish friend Alfred Philippson and his family in 1938 to prevent their intended departure to American exile and retain them in Germany as a bargaining chip when dealing with Hedin. The consequence was that Hedin expressed himself more favorably about Nazi Germany in his book Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, subjugated himself against his conscience to the censorship of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and published the book in Germany. On 8 June 1942, the Nazis increased the pressure on Hedin by deporting Alfred Philippson and his family to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. By doing so, they accomplished their goal of forcing Hedin against his conscience to write his book Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and other government agencies and to publish it in Germany in 1942. In return, the Nazis classified Alfred Philippson as "A-prominent" and granted his family privileges which enabled them to survive. For a long time Hedin was in correspondence with Alfred Philippson and regularly sent food parcels to him in Theresienstadt concentration camp. On 29 May 1946, Alfred Philippson wrote to him (translation, abbreviated quotation): My dear Hedin! Now that letters can be sent abroad I have the opportunity to write to you…. We frequently think with deep gratitude of our rescuer, who alone is responsible for our being able to survive the horrible period of three years of incarceration and hunger in Theresienstadt concentration camp, at my age a veritable wonder. You will have learned that we few survivors were finally liberated just a few days before our intended gassing. We, my wife, daughter and I, were then brought on 9–10 July 1945 in a bus of the city of Bonn here to our home town, almost half of which is now destroyed…. Hedin responded on 19 July 1946 (translation, abbreviated quotation): …It was wonderful to find out that our efforts were not in vain. In these difficult years we attempted to rescue over one hundred other unfortunate people who had been deported to Poland, but in most cases without success. We were however able to help a few Norwegians. My home in Stockholm was turned into something like an information and assistance office, and I was excellently supported by Dr. Paul Grassmann, press attaché in the German embassy in Stockholm. He too undertook everything possible to further this humanitarian work. But almost no case was as fortunate as yours, dear friend! And how wonderful, that you are back in Bonn…. The names and fates of the over one hundred deported Jews whom Hedin tried to save have not yet been researched. Efforts on behalf of deported Norwegians Hedin supported the cause of the Norwegian author Arnulf Øverland and for the Oslo professor of philology and university director Didrik Arup Seip, who were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He achieved the release of Didrik Arup Seip, but his efforts to free Arnulf Øverland were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Arnulf Øverland survived the concentration camp. Efforts on behalf of Norwegian activists After the third senate of the highest German military court (Reichskriegsgericht) in Berlin condemned to death for alleged espionage the ten Norwegians Sigurd Jakobsen, Gunnar Hellesen, Helge Børseth, Siegmund Brommeland, Peter Andree Hjelmervik, Siegmund Rasmussen, Gunnar Carlsen, Knud Gjerstad, Christian Oftedahl and Frithiof Lund on 24 February 1941, Hedin successfully appealed via Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst to Adolf Hitler for their reprieve. Their death sentences were converted on 17 June 1941 by Adolf Hitler to ten years of forced labor. The Norwegians Carl W. Mueller, Knud Naerum, Peder Fagerland, Ottar Ryan, Tor Gerrard Rydland, Hans Bernhard Risanger and Arne Sørvag who had been condemned to forced labor under the same charge received reduced sentences at Hedin's request. Unfortunately, Hans Bernhard Risanger died in prison just a few days before his release. Falkenhorst was condemned to death, by firing squad, by a British military court on 2 August 1946, because of his responsibility for passing on a Führerbefehl called the Commando Order. Hedin intervened on his behalf, achieving a pardon on 4 December 1946, with the argument that Falkenhorst had likewise striven to pardon the ten Norwegians condemned to death. Falkenhorst's death sentence was commuted to 20 years in prison. He was released early from Werl Prison on 13 July 1953. Awards Because of his outstanding services, Hedin was raised to the untitled nobility by King Oskar II in 1902, the last time any Swede was to receive a charter of nobility. Oskar II suggested that he prefix the name Hedin with one of the two common predicates of nobility in Sweden, "af" or "von", but Hedin abstained from doing so in his written response to the king. In many noble families in Sweden, it was customary to do without the title of nobility. The coat of arms of Hedin, together with those of some two thousand noble families, is to be found on a wall of the Great Hall in Riddarhuset, the assembly house of Swedish nobility in Stockholm's inner city, Gamla Stan. In 1905, Hedin was admitted to membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1909 to the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. From 1913 to 1952 he held the sixth of 18 chairs as an elected member of the Swedish Academy. In this position, he had a vote in the selection of Nobel Prize winners. He was an honorary member of numerous Swedish and foreign scientific societies and institutions which honored him with some 40 gold medals; 27 of these medals can be viewed in Stockholm in a display case in the Royal Coin Cabinet. He received honorary doctorates from Oxford (1909), Cambridge (1909), Heidelberg (1928), Uppsala (1935), and Munich (1943) universities and from the Handelshochschule Berlin (1931) (all Dr. phil. h.c.), from Breslau University (1915, Dr. jur. h.c.), and from Rostock University (1919, Dr. med. h.c.). Numerous countries presented him with medals. In Sweden he became a Commander 1st Class of the Royal Order of the North Star (KNO1kl) with a brilliant badge and Knight of the Royal Order of Vasa (RVO). In the United Kingdom he was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire by King Edward VII. As a foreigner, he was not authorized to use the associated title of Sir, but he could place the designation KCIE after his family name Hedin. Hedin was also a Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle. In his honor have been named a glacier, the Sven Hedin Glacier; a lunar crater Hedin; a genus of flowering plants, Hedinia; a species of the flowering plant, Gentiana hedini (now a synonym of Comastoma falcatum ); the beetles Longitarsus hedini and Coleoptera hedini; a butterfly, Fumea hedini Caradja; a spider, Dictyna hedini; a fossil hoofed mammal, Tsaidamotherium hedini; a fossil Therapsid (a "mammal-like reptile") Lystrosaurus hedini; and streets and squares in the cities of various countries (for example, "Hedinsgatan" at Tessinparken in Stockholm). A permanent exhibition of articles found by Hedin on his expeditions is located in the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum. In the Adolf Frederick church can be found the Sven Hedin memorial plaque by Liss Eriksson. The plaque was installed in 1959. On it, a globe with Asia to the fore can be seen, crowned with a camel. It bears the Swedish epitaph: The Sven Hedin Firn in North Greenland was named after him. Research on Hedin Source material A survey of the extensive sources for Hedin research shows that it would be difficult at present to come to a fair assessment of the personality and achievements of Hedin. Most of the source material has not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny. Even the DFG project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie had to restrict itself to a small selection and a random examination of the source material. The sources for Hedin research are located in numerous archives (and include primary literature, correspondence, newspaper articles, obituaries and secondary literature). Hedin's own publications amount to some 30,000 pages. There are about 2,500 drawings and watercolors, films and many photographs. To this should be added 25 volumes with travel and expedition notes and 145 volumes of the diaries he regularly maintained between 1930 and 1952, totaling 8,257 pages. The extensive holdings of the Hedin Foundation (Sven Hedins Stiftelse), which holds Hedin effects in trust, are to be found in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Hedin's correspondence is in the archive of the German Foreign Office in Bonn, in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, and above all in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Most of the correspondence in Hedin's estate is in the National Archives and accessible to researchers and the general public. It includes about 50,000 letters organized alphabetically according to country and sender as well as some 30,000 additional unsorted letters. The scientific effects as well as a collection of newspaper articles about Hedin organized by year (1895–1952) in 60 bound folios can be found in the Ethnographic Museum. The finds from Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang are, among other places, in Stockholm in the Ethnographic Museum (some 8,000 individual items), in the Institutes of Geology, Minearology and Paleontology of the Uppsala University, in the depots of the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich, and in the National Museum of China, Beijing. Hedin's documentation During his expeditions Hedin saw the focus of his work as being in field research. He recorded routes by plotting many thousands of kilometers of his caravan itinerary with the detail of a high resolution topographical map and supplemented them with innumerable altitude measurements and latitude and longitude data. At the same time he combined his field maps with panoramic drawings. He drafted the first precise maps of areas unresearched until that date: the Pamir mountains, the Taklamakan desert, Tibet, the Silk Road and the Himalayas. He was, as far as can be scientifically confirmed, the first European to recognize that the Himalayas were a continuous mountain range. He systematically studied the lakes of inner Asia, made careful climatological observations over many years, and started extensive collections of rocks, plants, animals and antiquities. Underway he prepared watercolor paintings, sketches, drawings and photographs, which he later published in his works. The photographs and maps with the highest quality printing are to be found in the original Swedish publications. Hedin prepared a scientific publication for each of his expeditions. The extent of documentation increased dramatically from expedition to expedition. His research report about the first expedition was published in 1900 as Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97 (Supplement 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen), Gotha 1900. The publication about the second expedition, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, increased to six text and two atlas volumes. Southern Tibet, the scientific publication on the third expedition, totalled twelve volumes, three of which were atlases. The results of the Sino-Swedish Expedition were published under the title of Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. This publication went through 49 editions. This documentation was splendidly produced, which made the price so high that only a few libraries and institutes were able to purchase it. The immense printing costs had to be borne for the most part by Hedin himself, as was also true for the cost of the expeditions. He used the fees and royalties which he received from his popular science books and for his lectures for the purpose. Hedin did not himself subject his documentation to scientific evaluation, but rather handed it over to other scientists for the purpose. Since he shared his experiences during his expeditions as popular science and incorporated them in a large number of lectures, travelogues, books for young people and adventure books, he became known to the general public. He soon became famous as one of the most well-recognized personalities of his time. D. Henze wrote the following about an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum entitled Sven Hedin, the last explorer: He was a pioneer and pathfinder in the transitional period to a century of specialized research. No other single person illuminated and represented unknown territories more extensively than he. His maps alone are a unique creation. And the artist did not take second place to the savant, who deep in the night rapidly and apparently without effort rapidly created awe inspiring works. The discipline of geography, at least in Germany, has so far only concerned itself with his popularized reports. The consistent inclusion of the enormous, still unmined treasures in his scientific work are yet to be incorporated in the regional geography of Asia. Current Hedin research A scientific assessment of Hedin's character and his relationship to National Socialism was undertaken in the late 1990s and early 2000s at Bonn University by Professor Hans Böhm, Dipl.-Geogr. Astrid Mehmel and Christoph Sieker M.A. as part of the DFG Project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie (Sven Hedin and German Geography). Literature Primary Scientific documentation Sven Hedin: Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97. Supplementary volume 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen. Gotha 1900. Sven Hedin: Scientific results of a journey in Central-Asia. 10 text and 2 map volumes. Stockholm 1904–1907. Volume 4 Sven Hedin: Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, Volume 1 1909 VOL. II Sven Hedin: Southern Tibet. 11 text and 3 map volumes. Stockholm 1917–1922. VOL. VIII Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. Over 50 volumes to date, contains primary and secondary literature. Stockholm 1937 ff. Sven Hedin: Central Asia atlas. Maps, Statens etnografiska museum. Stockholm 1966. (appeared in the series Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under the leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition; Ausgabe 47. 1. Geography; 1) Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa, Volume 1 THROUGH ASIA Through Asia, Volume 1 German editions a) Biography Verwehte Spuren. Orientfahrten des Reise-Bengt und anderer Reisenden im 17. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1923. b) Popular works Durch Asiens Wüsten. Drei Jahre auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-nor, Tibet und China, 2 vol., Leipzig 1899; neue Ausgabe Wiesbaden 1981. Im Herzen von Asien. Zehntausend Kilometer auf unbekannten Pfaden, 2 vol., Leipzig 1903. Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1904; new edition Wiesbaden 1980. Transhimalaja. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1909–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1985. Zu Land nach Indien durch Persien. Seistan und Bclutschistan, 2 vol., Leipzig 1910. Von Pol zu Pol, 3 vol., Leipzig 1911–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1980. Bagdad – Babylon – Ninive, Leipzig 1918 Jerusalem, Leipzig 1918. General Prschewalskij in Innerasien, Leipzig 1922. Meine erste Reise, Leipzig 1922. An der Schwelle Innerasiens, Leipzig 1923. Mount Everest, Leipzig 1923. Persien und Mesopotamien, zwei asiatische Probleme, Leipzig 1923. Von Peking nach Moskau, Leipzig 1924. Gran Canon. Mein Besuch im amerikanischen Wunderland, Leipzig 1926. Auf großer Fahrt. Meine Expedition mit Schweden, Deutschen und Chinesen durch die Wüste Gobi 1927– 1928, Leipzig 1929. Rätsel der Gobi. Die Fortsetzung der Großen Fahrt durch Innerasien in den Jahren 1928–1930, Leipzig 1931. Jehol, die Kaiserstadt, Leipzig 1932. Die Flucht des Großen Pferdes, Leipzig 1935. Die Seidenstraße, Leipzig 1936. Der wandernde See, Leipzig 1937. Im Verbotenen Land, Leipzig 1937 c) Political works Ein Warnungsruf, Leipzig 1912. Ein Volk in Waffen, Leipzig 1915. Nach Osten!, Leipzig 1916. Deutschland und der Weltfriede, Leipzig 1937 (unlike its translations, the original German edition of this title was printed but never delivered; only five copies were bound, one of which is in the possession of the F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden). Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente, Leipzig 1942 d) Autobiographical works Mein Leben als Entdecker, Leipzig 1926. Eroberungszüge in Tibet, Leipzig 1940. Ohne Auftrag in Berlin, Buenos Aires 1949; Tübingen-Stuttgart 1950. Große Männer, denen ich begegnete, 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1951. Meine Hunde in Asien, Wiesbaden 1953. Mein Leben als Zeichner, published by Gösta Montell in commemoration of Hedin's 100th birthday, Wiesbaden 1965. e) Fiction Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt, 2 vol., Leipzig 1921–1923. Most German publications on Hedin were translated by F.A. Brockhaus Verlag from Swedish into German. To this extent Swedish editions are the original text. Often after the first edition appeared, F.A. Brockhaus Verlag published abridged versions with the same title. Hedin had not only an important business relationship with the publisher Albert Brockhaus, but also a close friendship. Their correspondence can be found in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm. There is a publication on this subject: Sven Hedin, Albert Brockhaus: Sven Hedin und Albert Brockhaus. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1942. Bibliography Willy Hess: Die Werke Sven Hedins. Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses. Sven Hedin – Leben und Briefe, Vol. I. Stockholm 1962. likewise.: First Supplement. Stockholm 1965 Manfred Kleiner: Sven Anders Hedin 1865–1952 – eine Bibliografie der Sekundärliteratur. Self-published Manfred Kleinert, Princeton 2001. Biographies Detlef Brennecke: Sven Hedin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, 1991. Johannes Paul: Abenteuerliche Lebensreise – Sieben biografische Essays. including: Sven Hedin. Der letzte Entdeckungsreisende. Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden 1954, pp. 317–378. Alma Hedin: Mein Bruder Sven. Nach Briefen und Erinnerungen. Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1925. Eric Wennerholm: Sven Hedin 1865–1952. F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden 1978. Axel Odelberg: Äventyr på Riktigt Berättelsen om Upptäckaren Sven Hedin. Norstedts, Stockholm 2008 (new biography in Swedish, 600 pages). Hedin and National Socialism Mehmel, Astrid: Sven Hedin und nationalsozialistische Expansionspolitik. In: Geopolitik. Grenzgänge im Zeitgeist Bd. 1 .1 1890 bis 1945 ed. by Irene Diekmann, Peter Krüger und Julius H. Schoeps, Potsdam 2000, pp. 189–238. Danielsson, S.K.: The Intellectual Unmasked: Sven Hedin's Political Life from Pan-Germanism to National Socialism. Dissertation, Minnesota, 2005. References Further reading Tommy Lundmark (2014) Sven Hedin institutet. En rasbiologisk upptäcksresa i Tredje riket. ) (Swedish) External links Scanned works Excellent bibliography, listing publications and further literature , article on Sven Hedin, available also as PDF British Indian intelligence on Sven Hedin. National Archives of India (1928) Category:1865 births Category:1952 deaths Category:Scientists from Stockholm Category:Explorers of Asia Category:Explorers of Central Asia Category:Explorers of Tibet Category:Geopoliticians Category:History of Tibet Category:Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences Category:Members of the Swedish Academy Category:Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences Category:Swedish explorers Category:Swedish geographers Category:Swedish topographers Category:Swedish nobility Category:Swedish people of Jewish descent Category:Swedish Christians Category:Swedish sinologists Category:Stockholm University alumni Category:Uppsala University alumni Category:Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Category:Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni Category:Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal Category:Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire Category:Commanders First Class of the Order of the Polar Star Category:Knights of the Order of Vasa Category:Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Category:Swedish monarchists Category:Explorers of Iran Category:Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin Category:Victoria Medal recipients Category:Explorers of India Category:Members of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala

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Sven Hedin

Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, (19 February 1865 - 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer, and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Fran pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s.

Political views

Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government. He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars. He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts. CANNOTANSWER

Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, (19 February 1865 – 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work. Overview At 15 years of age, Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. From that moment on, young Sven aspired to become an explorer. His studies under the German geographer and China expert, Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, awakened a love of Germany in Hedin and strengthened his resolve to undertake expeditions to Central Asia to explore the last uncharted areas of Asia. After obtaining a doctorate, learning several languages and dialects, and undertaking two trips through Persia, he ignored the advice of Ferdinand von Richthofen to continue his geographic studies to acquaint himself with geographical research methodology; the result was that Hedin had to leave the evaluation of his expedition results later to other scientists. Between 1894 and 1908, in three daring expeditions through the mountains and deserts of Central Asia, he mapped and researched parts of Chinese Turkestan (officially Xinjiang) and Tibet which had been unexplored by Europeans until then. Upon his return to Stockholm in 1909 he was received as triumphantly as Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. In 1902, he became the last Swede (to date) to be raised to the untitled nobility and was considered one of Sweden's most important personalities. As a member of two scientific academies, he had a voice in the selection of Nobel Prize winners for both science and literature. Hedin never married and had no children, rendering his family line now extinct. Hedin's expedition notes laid the foundations for a precise mapping of Central Asia. He was one of the first European scientific explorers to employ indigenous scientists and research assistants on his expeditions. Although primarily an explorer, he was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. However, as his main interest in archaeology was finding ancient cities, he had little interest in gathering data thorough scientific excavations. Of small stature, with a bookish, bespectacled appearance, Hedin nevertheless proved himself a determined explorer, surviving several close brushes with death from hostile forces and the elements over his long career. His scientific documentation and popular travelogues, illustrated with his own photographs, watercolor paintings and drawings, his adventure stories for young readers and his lecture tours abroad made him world-famous. As a renowned expert on Turkestan and Tibet, he was able to obtain unrestricted access to European and Asian monarchs and politicians as well as to their geographical societies and scholarly associations. They all sought to purchase his exclusive knowledge about the power vacuum in Central Asia with gold medals, diamond-encrusted grand crosses, honorary doctorates and splendid receptions, as well as with logistic and financial support for his expeditions. Hedin, in addition to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Sir Aurel Stein, was an active player in the British-Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game. Their travels were supported because they filled in the "white spaces" in contemporary maps, providing valuable information. Hedin was honored in ceremonies in: 1890 by King Oscar II of Sweden 1890 by Shah Nāser ad-Dīn Schah 1896, 1909 by Czar Nicholas II of Russia from 1898 frequently by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary 1902 by the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon 1903, 1914, 1917, 1926, 1936 by Kaiser Wilhelm II 1906 by the Viceroy of India Lord Minto 1907, 1926, 1933 by the 9th Panchen Lama Thubten Choekyi Nyima 1908 by Emperor Mutsuhito 1910 by Pope Pius X 1910 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt 1915 and subsequently by Hindenburg 1929 and 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek 1935, 1939, 1940 (twice) by Adolf Hitler. Hedin was, and remained, a figure of the 19th century who clung to its visions and methods also in the 20th century. This prevented him from discerning the fundamental social and political upheavals of the 20th century and aligning his thinking and actions accordingly. Concerned about the security of Scandinavia, he favored the Swedish Navy's construction of the battleship . In World War I he specifically allied himself in his publications with the German Empire and its conduct of the war. Because of this political involvement, his scientific reputation was damaged among the Allied powers, along with his memberships in their geographical societies and learned associations, as well as any support for his planned expeditions. After a less-than-successful lecture tour in 1923 through North America and Japan, he traveled on to Beijing to carry out an expedition to Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), but the region's unstable political situation thwarted this intention. He instead traveled through Mongolia by car and through Siberia aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway. With financial support from the governments of Sweden and Germany, he led, between 1927 and 1935, an international and interdisciplinary Sino-Swedish Expedition to carry out scientific investigations in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, with the participation of 37 scientists from six countries. Despite Chinese counter-demonstrations and after months of negotiations in the Republic of China, was he able to make the expedition also a Chinese one by obtaining Chinese research commissions and the participation of Chinese scientists. He also concluded a contract which guaranteed freedom of travel for this expedition which, because of its arms, 300 camels, and activities in a war theater, resembled an invading army. However, the financing remained Hedin's private responsibility. Because of failing health, the civil war in Chinese Turkestan, and a long period of captivity, Hedin, by then 70 years of age, had a difficult time after the currency depreciation of the Great Depression raising the money required for the expedition, the logistics for assuring the supplying of the expedition in an active war zone, and obtaining access for the expedition's participants to a research area intensely contested by local warlords. Nevertheless, the expedition was a scientific success. The archaeological artifacts which had been sent to Sweden were scientifically assessed for three years, after which they were returned to China under the terms of the contract. Starting in 1937, the scientific material assembled during the expedition was published in over 50 volumes by Hedin and other expedition participants, thereby making it available for worldwide research on eastern Asia. When he ran out of money to pay printing costs, he pawned his extensive and valuable library, which filled several rooms, making possible the publication of additional volumes. In 1935, Hedin made his exclusive knowledge about Central Asia available, not only to the Swedish government, but also to foreign governments such as China and Germany, in lectures and personal discussions with political representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and Adolf Hitler. Although he was not a National Socialist, Hedin's hope that Nazi Germany would protect Scandinavia from invasion by the Soviet Union, brought him in dangerous proximity to representatives of National Socialism, who exploited him as an author. This destroyed his reputation and put him into social and scientific isolation. However, in correspondence and personal conversations with leading Nazis, his successful intercessions achieved the pardoning of ten people condemned to death and the release or survival of Jews who had been deported to Nazi concentration camps. At the end of the war, United States Army troops deliberately confiscated documents relating to Hedin's planned Central Asia Atlas. The U.S. Army Map Service later solicited Hedin's assistance and financed the printing and publication of his life's work, the Central Asia Atlas. Whoever compares this atlas with Adolf Stielers Hand Atlas of 1891 can appreciate what Hedin accomplished between 1893 and 1935. Although Hedin's research was taboo in Germany and Sweden because of his conduct relating to Nazi Germany, and stagnated for decades in Germany, the scientific documentation of his expeditions was translated into Chinese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and incorporated into Chinese research. Following recommendations made by Hedin to the Chinese Nationalist government in 1935, the routes he selected were used to construct streets and train tracks, as well as dams and canals to irrigate new farms being established in the Tarim and Yanji basins in Xinjiang and the deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold discovered during the Sino-Swedish Expedition were opened up for mining. Among the discoveries of this expedition should also be counted the many Asian plants and animals unheard of until that date, as well as fossil remains of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Many were named after Hedin, the species-level scientific classification being hedini. But one discovery remained unknown to Chinese researchers until the turn of the millennium: in the Lop Nur desert, Hedin discovered in 1933 and 1934 ruins of signal towers which prove that the Great Wall of China once extended as far west as Xinjiang. From 1931 until his death in 1952, Hedin lived in Stockholm in a modern high-rise in a preferred location, the address being Norr Mälarstrand 66. He lived with his siblings in the upper three stories and from the balcony he had a wide view over Riddarfjärden Bay and Lake Mälaren to the island of Långholmen. In the entryway to the stairwell is to be found a decorative stucco relief map of Hedin's research area in Central Asia and a relief of the Lama temple, a copy of which he had brought to Chicago for the 1933 World's Fair. On 29 October 1952, Hedin's will granted the rights to his books and his extensive personal effects to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Sven Hedin Foundation established soon thereafter holds all the rights of ownership. Hedin died at Stockholm in 1952. The memorial service was attended by representatives of the Swedish royal household, the Swedish government, the Swedish Academy, and the diplomatic service. He is buried in the cemetery of Adolf Fredrik church in Stockholm. Biography Childhood influences Sven Hedin was born in Stockholm, the son of Ludwig Hedin, Chief Architect of Stockholm. When he was 15 years old Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Swedish Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. He describes this experience in his book My Life as an Explorer as follows: On 24 April 1880, the steamer Vega sailed into Stockholms ström. The entire city was illuminated. The buildings around the harbor glowed in the light of innumerable lamps and torches. Gas flames depicted the constellation of Vega on the castle. Amidst this sea of light the famous ship glided into the harbor. I was standing on the Södermalm heights with my parents and siblings, from which we had a superb view. I was gripped by great nervous tension. I will remember this day until I die, as it was decisive for my future. Thunderous jubilation resounded from quays, streets, windows and rooftops. "That is how I want to return home some day," I thought to myself. First trip to Iran (Persia) In May 1885, Hedin graduated from Beskowska secondary school in Stockholm. He then accepted an offer to accompany the student Erhard Sandgren as his private tutor to Baku, where Sandgren's father was working as an engineer in the oil fields of Robert Nobel. Afterward he attended a course in topography for general staff officers for one month in summer 1885 and took a few weeks of instruction in portrait drawing; this comprised his entire training in those areas. On 15 August 1885, he traveled to Baku with Erhard Sandgren and instructed him there for seven months, and he himself began to learn the Latin, French, German, Persian, Russian, English and Tatar languages. He later learned several Persian dialects as well as Turkish, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tibetan and some Chinese. On 6 April 1886, Hedin left Baku for Iran (then called Persia), traveling by paddle steamer over the Caspian Sea, riding through the Alborz Range to Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz and the harbor city of Bushehr. From there he took a ship up the Tigris River to Baghdad (then in Ottoman Empire), returning to Tehran via Kermanshah, and then travelling through the Caucasus and over the Black Sea to Constantinople. Hedin then returned to Sweden, arriving on 18 September 1886. In 1887, Hedin published a book about these travels entitled Through Persia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus. Studies From 1886 to 1888, Hedin studied under the geologist Waldemar Brøgger in Stockholm and Uppsala the subjects of geology, mineralogy, zoology and Latin. In December 1888, he became a Candidate in Philosophy. From October 1889 to March 1890 he studied in Berlin under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Second trip to Iran On 12 May 1890, he accompanied as interpreter and vice-consul a Swedish legation to Iran which was to present the Shah of Iran with the insignia of the Order of the Seraphim. As part of the Swedish legation, he was at an audience of the shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in Tehran. He spoke with him and later accompanied him to the Elburz Mountain Range. On 11 July 1890, he and three others climbed Mount Damavand where he collected primary material for his dissertation. Starting in September he traveled on the Silk Road via cities Mashhad, Ashgabat, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Kashgar to the western outskirts of the Taklamakan Desert. On the trip home, he visited the grave of the Russian Asian scholar, Nikolai Przhevalsky in Karakol on the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. On 29 March 1891, he was back in Stockholm. He published the books King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890 and Through Chorasan and Turkestan about this journey. Doctorate and career path On 27 April 1892, Hedin traveled to Berlin to continue his studies under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Beginning of July he went to University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, attending lectures by Alfred Kirchhoff. Yet in the same month, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a 28-page dissertation entitled Personal Observations of Damavand. This dissertation is a summary of one part of his book, King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890. Eric Wennerholm remarked on the subject: I can only come to the conclusion that Sven [Hedin] received his doctorate when he was 27 years old after studying for a grand total of only eight months and collecting primary material for one-and-a-half days on the snow-clad peak of Mount Damavand. Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen not only encouraged Hedin to absolve cursory studies, but also to become thoroughly acquainted with all branches of geographic science and the methodologies of the salient research work, so that he could later work as an explorer. Hedin abstained from doing this with an explanation he supplied in old age: I was not up to this challenge. I had gotten out onto the wild routes of Asia too early, I had perceived too much of the splendor and magnificence of the Orient, the silence of the deserts and the loneliness of long journeys. I could not get used to the idea of spending a long period of time back in school. Hedin had therewith decided to become an explorer. He was attracted to the idea of traveling to the last mysterious portions of Asia and filling in the gaps by mapping an area completely unknown in Europe. As an explorer, Hedin became important for the Asian and European powers, who courted him, invited him to give numerous lectures, and hoped to obtain from him in return topographic, economic and strategic information about inner Asia, which they considered part of their sphere of influence. As the era of discovery came to a close around 1920, Hedin contented himself with organizing the Sino-Swedish Expedition for qualified scientific explorers. First expedition Between 1893 and 1897, Hedin investigated the Pamir Mountains, travelling through the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang region, across the Taklamakan Desert, Lake Kara-Koshun and Lake Bosten, proceeding to study northern Tibet. He covered on this journey and mapped of them on 552 sheets. Approximately led through previously uncharted areas. He started out on this expedition on 16 October 1893, from Stockholm, traveling via Saint Petersburg and Tashkent to the Pamir Mountains. Several attempts to climb the high Muztagata—called the Father of the Glaciers—in the Pamir Mountains were unsuccessful. He remained in Kashgar until April 1895 and then left on 10 April with three local escorts from the village of Merket to cross the Taklamakan Desert via Tusluk to the Khotan River. Since their water supply was insufficient, seven camels died of thirst, as did two of his escorts (according to Hedin's dramatized and probably inaccurate account). Bruno Baumann traveled on this route in April 2000 with a camel caravan and ascertained that at least one of the escorts who, according to Hedin, had died of thirst had survived, and that it is impossible for a camel caravan traveling in springtime on this route to carry enough drinking water for both camels and travelers. According to other sources, Hedin had neglected to completely fill the drinking water containers for his caravan at the beginning of the expedition and set out for the desert with only half as much water as could actually be carried. When he noticed the mistake, it was too late to return. Obsessed by his urge to carry out his research, Hedin deserted the caravan and proceeded alone on horseback with his servant. When that escort also collapsed from thirst, Hedin left him behind as well, but managed to reach a water source at the last desperate moment. He did, however, return to his servant with water and rescued him. Nevertheless, his ruthless behavior earned him massive criticism. In January 1896, after a stopover in Kashgar, Hedin visited the 1,500-year-old abandoned cities of Dandan Oilik and Kara Dung, which are located northeast of Khotan in the Taklamakan Desert. At the beginning of March, he discovered Lake Bosten, one of the largest inland bodies of water in Central Asia. He reported that this lake is supplied by a single mighty feeder stream, the Kaidu River. He mapped Lake Kara-Koshun and returned on 27 May to Khotan. On 29 June, he started out from there with his caravan across northern Tibet and China to Beijing, where he arrived on 2 March 1897. He returned to Stockholm via Mongolia and Russia. Second expedition Another expedition in Central Asia followed in 1899–1902 through the Tarim Basin, Tibet and Kashmir to Calcutta. Hedin navigated the Yarkand, Tarim and Kaidu rivers and found the dry riverbed of the Kum-darja as well as the dried out lake bed of Lop Nur. Near Lop Nur, he discovered the ruins of the former walled royal city and later Chinese garrison town of Loulan, containing the brick building of the Imperial Chinese Army commander, a stupa, and 19 dwellings built of poplar wood. He also found a wooden wheel from a horse-drawn cart (called an arabas) as well as several hundred documents written on wood, paper and silk in the Kharosthi script. These provided information about the history of the city of Loulan, which had once been located on the shores of Lop Nur but had been abandoned around the year 330 CE because the lake had dried out, depriving the inhabitants of drinking water. During his travels in 1900 and 1901 he attempted in vain to reach the city of Lhasa, which was forbidden to Europeans. He continued to Leh, in Ladakh district, India. From Leh, Hedin's route took him to Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares to Calcutta, meeting there with George Nathaniel Curzon, England's then Viceroy to India. This expedition resulted in 1,149 pages of maps, on which Hedin depicted newly discovered lands. He was the first to describe yardang formations in the Lop Desert. Third expedition Between 1905 and 1908, Hedin investigated the Central Iranian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet and the Transhimalaya, which for a time was afterward called the Hedin Range. He visited the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloistered city of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse. Hedin was the first European to reach the Kailash region, including the sacred Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash, the midpoint of the earth according to Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The most important goal of the expedition was the search for the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra Rivers, both of which Hedin found. From India, he returned via Japan and Russia to Stockholm. He returned from this expedition with a collection of geological samples which are kept and studied in the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Munich University. These sedimentary rocks—such as breccia, conglomerate, limestone, and slate, as well as volcanic rock and granite—highlight the geological diversity of the regions visited by Hedin during this expedition. Mongolia In 1923, Hedin traveled to Beijing via the United States—where he visited the Grand Canyon—and the Empire of Japan. Because of political and social unrest in China, he had to abandon an expedition to Xinjiang. Instead, he traveled with Frans August Larson (called the "Duke of Mongolia") in November and December in a Dodge automobile from Peking through Mongolia via Ulan-Bator to Ulan-Ude, Russia and from there on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow. Fourth expedition Between 1927 and 1935, Hedin led an international Sino-Swedish Expedition which investigated the meteorological, topographic and prehistoric situation in Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Xinjiang. Hedin described it as a peripatetic university in which the participating scientists worked almost independently, while he—like a local manager—negotiated with local authorities, made decisions, organized whatever was necessary, raised funds and recorded the route followed. He gave archaeologists, astronomers, botanists, geographers, geologists, meteorologists and zoologists from Sweden, Germany and China an opportunity to participate in the expedition and carry out research in their areas of specialty. Hedin met Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, who thereupon became a patron of the expedition. The Sino-Swedish Expedition was honored with a Chinese postage stamp series which had a print run of 25,000. The four stamps show camels at a camp with the expedition flag and bear the Chinese text, "Postal Service of the Prosperous Middle Kingdom" and in Latin underneath, "Scientific Expedition to the Northwestern Province of China 1927–1933". A painting in the Beijing Palace Museum entitled Nomads in the Desert served as model for the series. Of the 25,000 sets, 4,000 were sold across the counter and 21,500 came into the possession of the expedition. Hedin used them to finance the expedition, selling them for a price of five dollars per set. The stamps were unwelcome at the time due to the high price Hedin was selling them at, but years later became valuable treasures among collectors. The first part of the expedition, from 1927 to 1932, led from Beijing via Baotou to Mongolia, over the Gobi Desert, through Xinjiang to Ürümqi, and into the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin. The expedition had a wealth of scientific results which are being published up to the present time. For example, the discovery of specific deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold reserves was of great economic relevance for China. In recognition of his achievements, the Berlin Geographical Society presented him with the Ferdinand von Richthofen Medal in 1933; the same honor was also awarded to Erich von Drygalski for his Gauss Expedition to the Antarctic; and to Alfred Philippson for his research on the Aegean Region. From the end of 1933 to 1934, Hedin led—on behalf of the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing—a Chinese expedition to investigate irrigation measures and draw up plans and maps for the construction of two roads suitable for automobiles along the Silk Road from Beijing to Xinjiang. Following his plans, major irrigation facilities were constructed, settlements erected, and roads built on the Silk Road from Beijing to Kashgar, which made it possible to completely bypass the rough terrain of Tarim Basin. One aspect of the geography of central Asia which intensively occupied Hedin for decades was what he called the "wandering lake" Lop Nur. In May 1934, he began a river expedition to this lake. For two months he navigated the Kaidu River and the Kum-Darja to Lop Nur, which had been filled with water since 1921. After the lake dried out in 1971 as a consequence of irrigation activities, the above-mentioned transportation link enabled the People's Republic of China to construct a nuclear weapon test site at Lop Nur. His caravan of truck lorries was hijacked by the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying who was retreating from northern Xinjiang along with his Kuomintang 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) from the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. While Hedin was detained by Ma Zhongying, he met General Ma Hushan, and Kemal Kaya Effendi. Ma Zhongying's adjutant claimed to Hedin that Ma Zhongying had the entire region of Tian-shan-nan-lu (southern Xinjiang) under his control and Sven could pass through safely without any trouble. Hedin did not believe his assertions. Some of Ma Zhongying's Tungan (Chinese speaking Muslim) troops attacked Hedin's expedition by shooting at their vehicles. For the return trip, Hedin selected the southern Silk Road route via Hotan to Xi'an, where the expedition arrived on 7 February 1935. He continued on to Beijing to meet with President Lin Sen and to Nanjing to Chiang Kai-shek. He celebrated his 70th birthday on 19 February 1935 in the presence of 250 members of the Kuomintang government, to whom he reported interesting facts about the Sino-Swedish Expedition. On this day, he was awarded the Brilliant Jade Order, Second Class. At the end of the expedition, Hedin was in a difficult financial situation. He had considerable debts at the German-Asian Bank in Beijing, which he repaid with the royalties and fees received for his books and lectures. In the months after his return, he held 111 lectures in 91 German cities as well as 19 lectures in neighboring countries. To accomplish this lecture tour, he covered a stretch as long as the equator, by train and by car—in a time period of five months. He met Adolf Hitler in Berlin before his lecture on 14 April 1935. Political views Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship , which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government. He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars. He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts. Hedin and Nazi Germany Hedin's conservative and pro-German views eventually translated into sympathy for the Third Reich, and this would draw him into increasing controversy towards the end of his life. Adolf Hitler had been an early admirer of Hedin, who was in turn impressed with Hitler's nationalism. He saw the German leader's rise to power as a revival of German fortunes, and welcomed its challenge against Soviet Communism. He was not an entirely uncritical supporter of the Nazis, however. His own views were shaped by traditionalist, Christian and conservative values, while National Socialism was in part a modern revolutionary-populist movement. Hedin objected to some aspects of National Socialist rule, and occasionally attempted to convince the German government to relent in its anti-religious and anti-Semitic campaigns. Hedin met Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazi Party leaders repeatedly and was in regular correspondence with them. The politely-worded correspondence usually concerned scheduling matters, birthday congratulations, Hedin's planned or completed publications, and requests by Hedin for pardons for people condemned to death, and for mercy, release and permission to leave the country for people interned in prisons or concentration camps. In correspondence with Joseph Goebbels and Hans Dräger, Hedin was able to achieve the printing of the Daily Watchwords year after year. Hedin directly interviewed Hitler in October 1939, one month after the invasion of Poland, where Hitler claimed that there could be peace if the United Kingdom and France recognized the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. On 29 October 1942, Hitler read Hedin's book entitled, America in the Battle of the Continents. In the book Hedin promoted the view that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939 and that Hitler had done everything in his power to prevent war. Moreover, Hedin argued that the origins of the Second World War lay not in German belligerence but in the Treaty of Versailles. This book deeply influenced Hitler and reaffirmed his views on the origins of the war and who was responsible for it. In a letter to Hedin the following day Hitler wrote, "I thank you warmly for the attention you have shown me. I have already read the book and welcome in particular that you so explicitly detailed the offers I made to Poland at the beginning of the War". Hitler continued, "without question, the individual guilty of this war, as you correctly state at the end of your book, is exclusively the American President Roosevelt." The Nazis attempted to achieve a close connection to Hedin by bestowing awards upon him—later scholars have noted that "honors were heaped upon this prominent sympathizer." They asked him to present an address on Sport as a Teacher at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin's Olympic Stadium. They made him an honorary member of the German-Swedish Union Berlin () In 1938, they presented him with the City of Berlin's Badge of Honor (). For his 75th birthday on 19 February 1940 they awarded him the Order of the German Eagle; shortly before that date it had been presented to Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. On New Year's Day 1943 they released the Oslo professor of philology and university rector Didrik Arup Seip from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Hedin's request to obtain Hedin's agreement to accept additional honors during the 470th anniversary of Munich University. On 15 January 1943, he received the Gold Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Goldmedaille der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). On 16 January 1943 he received an honorary doctorate from the faculty of natural sciences of Munich University. On the same day, the Nazis founded in his absence the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research located at Mittersill Castle, which was supposed to serve the long-term advancement of the scientific legacy of Hedin and Wilhelm Filchner as Asian experts. However, it was instead misused by Heinrich Himmler as an institute of the Research Association for German Genealogical Inheritance (Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.). On 21 January 1943, he was requested to sign the Golden Book of the city of Munich. Hedin supported the Nazis in his journalistic activities. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, he did not regret his collaboration with the Nazis because this cooperation had made it possible to rescue numerous Nazi victims from execution, or death in extermination camps. Senior Jewish German archeologist Werner Scheimberg, sent in the expedition by the Thule Society, "had been one of the companions of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin on his excursions in the East, with archaeological and to some extent esoteric purposes". Hedin was trying to discover the mythological place of Agartha and reproached the Polish explorer and visiting professor Antoni Ossendowski for having been gone where the Swedish explorer wasn't able to come, and thus was personally invited by Adolf Hitler in Berlin and honoured by the Führer during his 75th birthday feast. Criticism of National Socialism Johannes Paul wrote in 1954 about Hedin: Much of what happened in the early days of Nazi rule had his approval. However, he did not hesitate to criticize whenever he considered this to be necessary, particularly in cases of Jewish persecution, conflict with the churches and bars to freedom of science. In 1937 Hedin refused to publish his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden (Germany and World Peace) in Germany because the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda insisted on the deletion of Nazi-critical passages. In a letter Hedin wrote to State Secretary Walther Funk dated 16 April 1937, it becomes clear what his criticism of National Socialism was in this time before the establishment of extermination camps: When we first discussed my plan to write a book, I stated that I only wanted to write objectively, scientifically, possibly critically, according to my conscience, and you considered that to be completely acceptable and natural. Now I emphasized in a very friendly and mild form that the removal of distinguished Jewish professors who have performed great services for mankind is detrimental to Germany and that this has given rise to many agitators against Germany abroad. So I took this position only in the interest of Germany. My worry that the education of German youth, which I otherwise praise and admire everywhere, is deficient in questions of religion and the hereafter comes from my love and sympathy for the German nation, and as a Christian I consider it my duty to state this openly, and, to be sure, in the firm conviction that Luther’s nation, which is religious through and through, will understand me. So far I have never gone against my conscience and will not do it now either. Therefore, no deletions will be made. Hedin later published this book in Sweden. Efforts on behalf of deported Jews After he refused to remove his criticism of National Socialism from his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden, the Nazis confiscated the passports of Hedin's Jewish friend Alfred Philippson and his family in 1938 to prevent their intended departure to American exile and retain them in Germany as a bargaining chip when dealing with Hedin. The consequence was that Hedin expressed himself more favorably about Nazi Germany in his book Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, subjugated himself against his conscience to the censorship of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and published the book in Germany. On 8 June 1942, the Nazis increased the pressure on Hedin by deporting Alfred Philippson and his family to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. By doing so, they accomplished their goal of forcing Hedin against his conscience to write his book Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and other government agencies and to publish it in Germany in 1942. In return, the Nazis classified Alfred Philippson as "A-prominent" and granted his family privileges which enabled them to survive. For a long time Hedin was in correspondence with Alfred Philippson and regularly sent food parcels to him in Theresienstadt concentration camp. On 29 May 1946, Alfred Philippson wrote to him (translation, abbreviated quotation): My dear Hedin! Now that letters can be sent abroad I have the opportunity to write to you…. We frequently think with deep gratitude of our rescuer, who alone is responsible for our being able to survive the horrible period of three years of incarceration and hunger in Theresienstadt concentration camp, at my age a veritable wonder. You will have learned that we few survivors were finally liberated just a few days before our intended gassing. We, my wife, daughter and I, were then brought on 9–10 July 1945 in a bus of the city of Bonn here to our home town, almost half of which is now destroyed…. Hedin responded on 19 July 1946 (translation, abbreviated quotation): …It was wonderful to find out that our efforts were not in vain. In these difficult years we attempted to rescue over one hundred other unfortunate people who had been deported to Poland, but in most cases without success. We were however able to help a few Norwegians. My home in Stockholm was turned into something like an information and assistance office, and I was excellently supported by Dr. Paul Grassmann, press attaché in the German embassy in Stockholm. He too undertook everything possible to further this humanitarian work. But almost no case was as fortunate as yours, dear friend! And how wonderful, that you are back in Bonn…. The names and fates of the over one hundred deported Jews whom Hedin tried to save have not yet been researched. Efforts on behalf of deported Norwegians Hedin supported the cause of the Norwegian author Arnulf Øverland and for the Oslo professor of philology and university director Didrik Arup Seip, who were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He achieved the release of Didrik Arup Seip, but his efforts to free Arnulf Øverland were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Arnulf Øverland survived the concentration camp. Efforts on behalf of Norwegian activists After the third senate of the highest German military court (Reichskriegsgericht) in Berlin condemned to death for alleged espionage the ten Norwegians Sigurd Jakobsen, Gunnar Hellesen, Helge Børseth, Siegmund Brommeland, Peter Andree Hjelmervik, Siegmund Rasmussen, Gunnar Carlsen, Knud Gjerstad, Christian Oftedahl and Frithiof Lund on 24 February 1941, Hedin successfully appealed via Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst to Adolf Hitler for their reprieve. Their death sentences were converted on 17 June 1941 by Adolf Hitler to ten years of forced labor. The Norwegians Carl W. Mueller, Knud Naerum, Peder Fagerland, Ottar Ryan, Tor Gerrard Rydland, Hans Bernhard Risanger and Arne Sørvag who had been condemned to forced labor under the same charge received reduced sentences at Hedin's request. Unfortunately, Hans Bernhard Risanger died in prison just a few days before his release. Falkenhorst was condemned to death, by firing squad, by a British military court on 2 August 1946, because of his responsibility for passing on a Führerbefehl called the Commando Order. Hedin intervened on his behalf, achieving a pardon on 4 December 1946, with the argument that Falkenhorst had likewise striven to pardon the ten Norwegians condemned to death. Falkenhorst's death sentence was commuted to 20 years in prison. He was released early from Werl Prison on 13 July 1953. Awards Because of his outstanding services, Hedin was raised to the untitled nobility by King Oskar II in 1902, the last time any Swede was to receive a charter of nobility. Oskar II suggested that he prefix the name Hedin with one of the two common predicates of nobility in Sweden, "af" or "von", but Hedin abstained from doing so in his written response to the king. In many noble families in Sweden, it was customary to do without the title of nobility. The coat of arms of Hedin, together with those of some two thousand noble families, is to be found on a wall of the Great Hall in Riddarhuset, the assembly house of Swedish nobility in Stockholm's inner city, Gamla Stan. In 1905, Hedin was admitted to membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1909 to the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. From 1913 to 1952 he held the sixth of 18 chairs as an elected member of the Swedish Academy. In this position, he had a vote in the selection of Nobel Prize winners. He was an honorary member of numerous Swedish and foreign scientific societies and institutions which honored him with some 40 gold medals; 27 of these medals can be viewed in Stockholm in a display case in the Royal Coin Cabinet. He received honorary doctorates from Oxford (1909), Cambridge (1909), Heidelberg (1928), Uppsala (1935), and Munich (1943) universities and from the Handelshochschule Berlin (1931) (all Dr. phil. h.c.), from Breslau University (1915, Dr. jur. h.c.), and from Rostock University (1919, Dr. med. h.c.). Numerous countries presented him with medals. In Sweden he became a Commander 1st Class of the Royal Order of the North Star (KNO1kl) with a brilliant badge and Knight of the Royal Order of Vasa (RVO). In the United Kingdom he was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire by King Edward VII. As a foreigner, he was not authorized to use the associated title of Sir, but he could place the designation KCIE after his family name Hedin. Hedin was also a Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle. In his honor have been named a glacier, the Sven Hedin Glacier; a lunar crater Hedin; a genus of flowering plants, Hedinia; a species of the flowering plant, Gentiana hedini (now a synonym of Comastoma falcatum ); the beetles Longitarsus hedini and Coleoptera hedini; a butterfly, Fumea hedini Caradja; a spider, Dictyna hedini; a fossil hoofed mammal, Tsaidamotherium hedini; a fossil Therapsid (a "mammal-like reptile") Lystrosaurus hedini; and streets and squares in the cities of various countries (for example, "Hedinsgatan" at Tessinparken in Stockholm). A permanent exhibition of articles found by Hedin on his expeditions is located in the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum. In the Adolf Frederick church can be found the Sven Hedin memorial plaque by Liss Eriksson. The plaque was installed in 1959. On it, a globe with Asia to the fore can be seen, crowned with a camel. It bears the Swedish epitaph: The Sven Hedin Firn in North Greenland was named after him. Research on Hedin Source material A survey of the extensive sources for Hedin research shows that it would be difficult at present to come to a fair assessment of the personality and achievements of Hedin. Most of the source material has not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny. Even the DFG project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie had to restrict itself to a small selection and a random examination of the source material. The sources for Hedin research are located in numerous archives (and include primary literature, correspondence, newspaper articles, obituaries and secondary literature). Hedin's own publications amount to some 30,000 pages. There are about 2,500 drawings and watercolors, films and many photographs. To this should be added 25 volumes with travel and expedition notes and 145 volumes of the diaries he regularly maintained between 1930 and 1952, totaling 8,257 pages. The extensive holdings of the Hedin Foundation (Sven Hedins Stiftelse), which holds Hedin effects in trust, are to be found in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Hedin's correspondence is in the archive of the German Foreign Office in Bonn, in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, and above all in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Most of the correspondence in Hedin's estate is in the National Archives and accessible to researchers and the general public. It includes about 50,000 letters organized alphabetically according to country and sender as well as some 30,000 additional unsorted letters. The scientific effects as well as a collection of newspaper articles about Hedin organized by year (1895–1952) in 60 bound folios can be found in the Ethnographic Museum. The finds from Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang are, among other places, in Stockholm in the Ethnographic Museum (some 8,000 individual items), in the Institutes of Geology, Minearology and Paleontology of the Uppsala University, in the depots of the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich, and in the National Museum of China, Beijing. Hedin's documentation During his expeditions Hedin saw the focus of his work as being in field research. He recorded routes by plotting many thousands of kilometers of his caravan itinerary with the detail of a high resolution topographical map and supplemented them with innumerable altitude measurements and latitude and longitude data. At the same time he combined his field maps with panoramic drawings. He drafted the first precise maps of areas unresearched until that date: the Pamir mountains, the Taklamakan desert, Tibet, the Silk Road and the Himalayas. He was, as far as can be scientifically confirmed, the first European to recognize that the Himalayas were a continuous mountain range. He systematically studied the lakes of inner Asia, made careful climatological observations over many years, and started extensive collections of rocks, plants, animals and antiquities. Underway he prepared watercolor paintings, sketches, drawings and photographs, which he later published in his works. The photographs and maps with the highest quality printing are to be found in the original Swedish publications. Hedin prepared a scientific publication for each of his expeditions. The extent of documentation increased dramatically from expedition to expedition. His research report about the first expedition was published in 1900 as Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97 (Supplement 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen), Gotha 1900. The publication about the second expedition, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, increased to six text and two atlas volumes. Southern Tibet, the scientific publication on the third expedition, totalled twelve volumes, three of which were atlases. The results of the Sino-Swedish Expedition were published under the title of Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. This publication went through 49 editions. This documentation was splendidly produced, which made the price so high that only a few libraries and institutes were able to purchase it. The immense printing costs had to be borne for the most part by Hedin himself, as was also true for the cost of the expeditions. He used the fees and royalties which he received from his popular science books and for his lectures for the purpose. Hedin did not himself subject his documentation to scientific evaluation, but rather handed it over to other scientists for the purpose. Since he shared his experiences during his expeditions as popular science and incorporated them in a large number of lectures, travelogues, books for young people and adventure books, he became known to the general public. He soon became famous as one of the most well-recognized personalities of his time. D. Henze wrote the following about an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum entitled Sven Hedin, the last explorer: He was a pioneer and pathfinder in the transitional period to a century of specialized research. No other single person illuminated and represented unknown territories more extensively than he. His maps alone are a unique creation. And the artist did not take second place to the savant, who deep in the night rapidly and apparently without effort rapidly created awe inspiring works. The discipline of geography, at least in Germany, has so far only concerned itself with his popularized reports. The consistent inclusion of the enormous, still unmined treasures in his scientific work are yet to be incorporated in the regional geography of Asia. Current Hedin research A scientific assessment of Hedin's character and his relationship to National Socialism was undertaken in the late 1990s and early 2000s at Bonn University by Professor Hans Böhm, Dipl.-Geogr. Astrid Mehmel and Christoph Sieker M.A. as part of the DFG Project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie (Sven Hedin and German Geography). Literature Primary Scientific documentation Sven Hedin: Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97. Supplementary volume 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen. Gotha 1900. Sven Hedin: Scientific results of a journey in Central-Asia. 10 text and 2 map volumes. Stockholm 1904–1907. Volume 4 Sven Hedin: Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, Volume 1 1909 VOL. II Sven Hedin: Southern Tibet. 11 text and 3 map volumes. Stockholm 1917–1922. VOL. VIII Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. Over 50 volumes to date, contains primary and secondary literature. Stockholm 1937 ff. Sven Hedin: Central Asia atlas. Maps, Statens etnografiska museum. Stockholm 1966. (appeared in the series Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under the leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition; Ausgabe 47. 1. Geography; 1) Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa, Volume 1 THROUGH ASIA Through Asia, Volume 1 German editions a) Biography Verwehte Spuren. Orientfahrten des Reise-Bengt und anderer Reisenden im 17. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1923. b) Popular works Durch Asiens Wüsten. Drei Jahre auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-nor, Tibet und China, 2 vol., Leipzig 1899; neue Ausgabe Wiesbaden 1981. Im Herzen von Asien. Zehntausend Kilometer auf unbekannten Pfaden, 2 vol., Leipzig 1903. Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1904; new edition Wiesbaden 1980. Transhimalaja. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1909–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1985. Zu Land nach Indien durch Persien. Seistan und Bclutschistan, 2 vol., Leipzig 1910. Von Pol zu Pol, 3 vol., Leipzig 1911–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1980. Bagdad – Babylon – Ninive, Leipzig 1918 Jerusalem, Leipzig 1918. General Prschewalskij in Innerasien, Leipzig 1922. Meine erste Reise, Leipzig 1922. An der Schwelle Innerasiens, Leipzig 1923. Mount Everest, Leipzig 1923. Persien und Mesopotamien, zwei asiatische Probleme, Leipzig 1923. Von Peking nach Moskau, Leipzig 1924. Gran Canon. Mein Besuch im amerikanischen Wunderland, Leipzig 1926. Auf großer Fahrt. Meine Expedition mit Schweden, Deutschen und Chinesen durch die Wüste Gobi 1927– 1928, Leipzig 1929. Rätsel der Gobi. Die Fortsetzung der Großen Fahrt durch Innerasien in den Jahren 1928–1930, Leipzig 1931. Jehol, die Kaiserstadt, Leipzig 1932. Die Flucht des Großen Pferdes, Leipzig 1935. Die Seidenstraße, Leipzig 1936. Der wandernde See, Leipzig 1937. Im Verbotenen Land, Leipzig 1937 c) Political works Ein Warnungsruf, Leipzig 1912. Ein Volk in Waffen, Leipzig 1915. Nach Osten!, Leipzig 1916. Deutschland und der Weltfriede, Leipzig 1937 (unlike its translations, the original German edition of this title was printed but never delivered; only five copies were bound, one of which is in the possession of the F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden). Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente, Leipzig 1942 d) Autobiographical works Mein Leben als Entdecker, Leipzig 1926. Eroberungszüge in Tibet, Leipzig 1940. Ohne Auftrag in Berlin, Buenos Aires 1949; Tübingen-Stuttgart 1950. Große Männer, denen ich begegnete, 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1951. Meine Hunde in Asien, Wiesbaden 1953. Mein Leben als Zeichner, published by Gösta Montell in commemoration of Hedin's 100th birthday, Wiesbaden 1965. e) Fiction Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt, 2 vol., Leipzig 1921–1923. Most German publications on Hedin were translated by F.A. Brockhaus Verlag from Swedish into German. To this extent Swedish editions are the original text. Often after the first edition appeared, F.A. Brockhaus Verlag published abridged versions with the same title. Hedin had not only an important business relationship with the publisher Albert Brockhaus, but also a close friendship. Their correspondence can be found in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm. There is a publication on this subject: Sven Hedin, Albert Brockhaus: Sven Hedin und Albert Brockhaus. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1942. Bibliography Willy Hess: Die Werke Sven Hedins. Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses. Sven Hedin – Leben und Briefe, Vol. I. Stockholm 1962. likewise.: First Supplement. Stockholm 1965 Manfred Kleiner: Sven Anders Hedin 1865–1952 – eine Bibliografie der Sekundärliteratur. Self-published Manfred Kleinert, Princeton 2001. Biographies Detlef Brennecke: Sven Hedin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, 1991. Johannes Paul: Abenteuerliche Lebensreise – Sieben biografische Essays. including: Sven Hedin. Der letzte Entdeckungsreisende. Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden 1954, pp. 317–378. Alma Hedin: Mein Bruder Sven. Nach Briefen und Erinnerungen. Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1925. Eric Wennerholm: Sven Hedin 1865–1952. F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden 1978. Axel Odelberg: Äventyr på Riktigt Berättelsen om Upptäckaren Sven Hedin. Norstedts, Stockholm 2008 (new biography in Swedish, 600 pages). Hedin and National Socialism Mehmel, Astrid: Sven Hedin und nationalsozialistische Expansionspolitik. In: Geopolitik. Grenzgänge im Zeitgeist Bd. 1 .1 1890 bis 1945 ed. by Irene Diekmann, Peter Krüger und Julius H. Schoeps, Potsdam 2000, pp. 189–238. Danielsson, S.K.: The Intellectual Unmasked: Sven Hedin's Political Life from Pan-Germanism to National Socialism. Dissertation, Minnesota, 2005. References Further reading Tommy Lundmark (2014) Sven Hedin institutet. En rasbiologisk upptäcksresa i Tredje riket. ) (Swedish) External links Scanned works Excellent bibliography, listing publications and further literature , article on Sven Hedin, available also as PDF British Indian intelligence on Sven Hedin. National Archives of India (1928) Category:1865 births Category:1952 deaths Category:Scientists from Stockholm Category:Explorers of Asia Category:Explorers of Central Asia Category:Explorers of Tibet Category:Geopoliticians Category:History of Tibet Category:Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences Category:Members of the Swedish Academy Category:Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences Category:Swedish explorers Category:Swedish geographers Category:Swedish topographers Category:Swedish nobility Category:Swedish people of Jewish descent Category:Swedish Christians Category:Swedish sinologists Category:Stockholm University alumni Category:Uppsala University alumni Category:Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Category:Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni Category:Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal Category:Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire Category:Commanders First Class of the Order of the Polar Star Category:Knights of the Order of Vasa Category:Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Category:Swedish monarchists Category:Explorers of Iran Category:Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin Category:Victoria Medal recipients Category:Explorers of India Category:Members of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala

C_ee3b5ed0e1d947daa08b75d71fde6e43_1

Horslips

Horslips are an Irish Celtic rock band that compose, arrange and perform songs frequently inspired by traditional Irish airs, jigs and reels. The group are regarded as 'founding fathers of Celtic rock' for their fusion of traditional Irish music with rock music and went on to inspire many local and international acts. They formed in 1970 and 'retired' in 1980 for an extended period. The name originated from a spoonerism on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse which became "The Four Poxmen of The Horslypse".

Further activities

Johnny Fean continued to play live music with Stephen Travers, formerly of The Miami Showband. After his retirement, Eamon Carr went on to become a producer of young rock talent in the mid-1980s, and also forming his own record label called Hotwire (which sponsored noted acts such as the punk rock group The Golden Horde). He also did a number of specialist DJ slots on radio before morphing into a music/sports journalist with the Evening Herald in Dublin. More recently he presented on a Dublin station 'Carr's Cocktail Shack' in which he played American music of the 1950s and 1960s. In 2008, Carr and Henry McCullough co-wrote a new bunch of songs. A resulting album entitled Poor Man's Moon was released on 1 September 2008. Also in 2008, Carr released his first book, The Origami Crow, Journey Into Japan, World Cup Summer 2002, a book that is at once a travel log about his journey to Japan, a poetry collection, an homage to Japanese poet Basho, heralded by many as the creator of Haiku, and also has some sports commentary thrown in. Barry Devlin directed for the screen and been a drama writer for radio and screen, as can be seen from his credits on the IMDB and for the radio detective drama Baldi He produced a number of U2 videos in the mid-1980s. Examples of his screen writing are evident in the joint RTE/BBC production Ballykissangel and ITV's The Darling Buds of May. Jim Lockhart is head of production at RTE 2fm and has also done some production work and music arrangement. Charles O'Connor owns two antique shops in Whitby, England. O'Connor continued to record folk and traditional music in his home recording studio. CANNOTANSWER

Horslips are an Irish Celtic rock band that compose, arrange and perform songs frequently inspired by traditional Irish airs, jigs and reels. The group are regarded as 'founding fathers of Celtic rock' for their fusion of traditional Irish music with rock music and went on to inspire many local and international acts. They formed in 1970 and 'retired' in 1980 for an extended period. The name originated from a spoonerism on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse which became "The Four Poxmen of The Horslypse". Although Horslips had limited commercial success when the band was playing in the 70s, there was a revival of interest in their music in the late 1990s and they came to be regarded as one of the defining bands of the Celtic rock genre. There have since been small scale reunions including appearances on The Late Late Show and RTÉ's Other Voices. The band reformed for two Irish shows in the Odyssey Arena in Belfast and the 3Arena in Dublin at the end of 2009, and have continued to play shows since then. Band members Jim Lockhart (born 3 February 1948), from James's St in Dublin, studied Economics and Politics at University College Dublin. He fell under the influence of Seán Ó Riada, wanting to build an orchestral sound out of Irish music. He plays keyboards, pipes, whistles and flute. He did vocals on a select number of songs, mainly in Manx or Irish. Eamon Carr (born 12 November 1948), is from Kells, County Meath. He was one of the founding members of a poetry and beat performance group called Tara Telephone in Dublin in the late 60s that also published the quarterly literary journal Capella. He is the drummer in the band. Charles O'Connor, (Born 7 September 1948) from Middlesbrough in the UK plays concertina, mandolin, fiddle and both electric and slide guitar. He also shares the main vocal tasks with Barry Devlin and Johnny Fean. Barry Devlin (born 27 November 1946), from Ardboe in County Tyrone, once trained as a Columban priest. He left this to study English in University College Dublin and afterwards joined a graphics company as a screenwriter. He is the band's bass player, shares vocals, and is its unofficial front man. Johnny Fean (17 November 1951 – 28 April 2023) spent his childhood in the city of Limerick and in Shannon, County Clare. He soon mastered guitar, banjo, mandolin and harmonica. In his teens, he played in sessions in Limerick and County Clare. Fean developed his listening tastes from rock to blues and incorporated it into his guitar style. In his late teens he played in a group called Sweet Street, with Joe O'Donnell on electric fiddle and Eugene Wallace. He later played in Jeremiah Henry, a rock and blues band. His idols were Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. He left Jeremiah Henry in 1970 to play traditional music again in Limerick. Original run Formation and line-ups Barry Devlin, Eamon Carr and Charles O'Connor met when they worked at the Ark advertising company in Dublin. They were cajoled into pretending to be a band for a Harp Lager commercial but needed a keyboard player. Devlin said he knew a Jim Lockhart who would fit the bill. The four enjoyed the act so much that they decided to try being proper rock performers. They joined guitarist Declan Sinnott, a colleague of Eamon Carr's from poetry performance and musical group Tara Telephone and, briefly, Gene Mulvaney, to form Horslips (originally Horslypse) in 1970. The band went professional on St Patrick's Day 1972 having shed Mulvaney and released a single, "Johnny's Wedding", on their own record label, Oats. Declan Sinnott left soon after, primarily due to his annoyance at the group appearing in an advert for Mirinda orange drink (shot in the grounds of Ardmore Studios Bray in Easter 1972). Sinnott was replaced by Gus Guest, who appeared on the group's second single "Green Gravel", but departed shortly thereafter. Johnny Fean then replaced Guest, and the 'classic' Horslips line-up that would appear on all future releases was set. Main career Album approach Horslips designed their own artwork, wrote sleeve-notes and researched the legends that they made into concept albums. They established their own record label, Oats, and licensed the recordings through Atco, RCA and DJM for release outside Ireland. They kept their base in Ireland, unlike previous Irish bands. First album In October 1972, Horslips went to Longfield House in Tipperary and recorded their first album, Happy to Meet – Sorry to Part, in the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. On this first album the melodies were mostly traditional. Jim Lockhart was on keyboards and gradually mastered other instruments including uillean pipes. Eamon Carr was on drums, including the Irish bodhrán. Happy To Meet, Sorry To Part was the fastest-selling album for eight years in Ireland. The sleeve was an elaborate concertina-shaped fold-out design. The Táin The Abbey Theatre in Dublin asked the band to provide the background for a stage adaptation of "The Táin". They leapt at the opportunity. "Táin Bó Cúailnge" (The Cattle-Raid of Cooley) is a tenth-century story written in Old and Middle Irish. It tells of an ancient war between Ulster and Connacht. The Táin was released in 1973 and had more original material alongside the traditional tunes, and greater emphasis on rock. In the same year a single, "Dearg Doom", went to number one in Germany. Later albums Dancehall Sweethearts followed in 1974, and also balanced folk with rock. Their fourth album, The Unfortunate Cup of Tea, drifted toward pop music and was generally considered less successful. RCA ended their funding deal for the group in 1975. The group funded their next venture themselves and went back to basics. Drive The Cold Winter Away (also 1975) was their most traditional album to date. They signed with DJM Records worldwide through A&R man Frank Neilson. The Book of Invasions: A Celtic Symphony (1976), like The Táin, was an adaptation of Irish legends built into a complex story. It became their only entry in the UK Albums Chart, where it peaked at No. 39 in 1977. US and later work Ever ambitious, the band now tried to make it in the United States. They brought in Jim Slye to become their manager. He later sold their publishing rights to William McBurney for £4,000. In 1977 they produced Aliens, about the experience of the Irish in nineteenth-century America. They toured Britain, Germany, Canada and the United States. The night they played the Albert Hall in London was described by one critic as the loudest gig there since Hendrix. The Man Who Built America (1978), produced by Steve Katz of Blood, Sweat and Tears and Blues Project fame, concerned Irish emigration to the US and received considerable airplay but broad approval was missing. The heavier sound did bring some acceptance in America but they lost their folk base and their freshness. Short Stories, Tall Tales (1979) was their last studio album and was panned by the record company and critics alike. "The Last Time" At a time when The Troubles were at its peak, Horslips played gigs in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland without prejudice and were accepted everywhere. Their last recordings were from live performances at the Whitla Hall in Belfast April and May 1980. A few months later, on 12 October 1980 they played their final gig in the Ulster Hall. They made no public announcement. They simply gave an encore — the Rolling Stones' song "The Last Time" (this was a reference to the recording studio of their first album) and the final act was Charles O'Connor throwing his mangled fiddle into the audience. Ten years after they formed, they disbanded. Musical life after the break up Even before Horslips ended, Johnny Fean, Eamon Carr and two others founded the Zen Alligators in 1980. They played straight rock and soul on the Irish circuit, and they recorded several singles. Another spin-off group called Host contained Fean, O'Connor and Carr. They issued one album, Tryal, in 1984, and two singles. The final album that had a Fean/Carr collaboration in the 1980s was The Last Bandits in the World (1986). Barry Devlin issued a solo album called Breaking Star Codes in 1983 with some help from Jim Lockhart. The album had 12 songs, each based, loosely, on the signs of the zodiac. Further Lockhart/Devlin collaborations included the theme tune to the popular RTÉ drama series Glenroe. In 1986, Johnny Fean moved to England. An English indie band called Jacobites (1983 to 1986) consisted of Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth. Their 1986 album Ragged School had Johnny on guitar. He also played sporadically with a Horslips tribute band Spirit of Horslips and pub gigs with pick up three-piece The Treat, which sometimes featured former Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell instead of Fean. In 1990, the electric guitar intro to "Dearg Doom" was used for Put 'Em Under Pressure, Ireland's 1990 World Cup song, written by Larry Mullen and featuring the Republic of Ireland national football team and Moya Brennan. This use of the intro may be better known in Ireland than the original. Charles O'Connor released an instrumental album, Angel on the Mantelpiece, in collaboration with Paul Whittaker in 1997. Further activities Johnny Fean continued to play live music with Stephen Travers, formerly of The Miami Showband. After his retirement, Eamon Carr went on to become a producer of young rock talent in the mid-1980s, and also formed his own record label called Hotwire (which sponsored noted acts such as the punk rock group The Golden Horde). He also did a number of specialist DJ slots on radio before morphing into a music/sports journalist with the Evening Herald in Dublin. More recently he presented on a Dublin station 'Carr's Cocktail Shack' in which he played American music of the 1950s and 1960s. In 2008, Carr and Henry McCullough co-wrote a new bunch of songs. A resulting album entitled Poor Man's Moon was released on 1 September 2008. Also in 2008, Carr released his first book, The Origami Crow, Journey Into Japan, World Cup Summer 2002, a book that is at once a travel log about his journey to Japan, a poetry collection, an homage to Japanese poet Bashō, and also has some sports commentary thrown in. Barry Devlin directed for the screen and been a drama writer for radio and screen, as can be seen from his credits on the IMDB and for the radio detective drama Baldi He produced a number of U2 videos in the mid-1980s. Examples of his screen writing are evident in the joint RTÉ/BBC production Ballykissangel and ITV's The Darling Buds of May. Jim Lockhart is head of production at RTÉ 2fm and has also done some production work and music arrangement. Charles O'Connor owns two antique shops in Whitby, England. O'Connor continued to record folk and traditional music in his home recording studio. Releases and copyright issues For 20 years William McBurney, head of Belfast-based Outlet Records for over 40 years, received royalties from the sales of vinyl and CDs, including many compilations. He claimed that he bought the rights in good faith from Jim Slye, who managed Horslips from the late 1970s until the band's final gig. However, the quality of these releases left much to be desired. Shoddy artwork and poor sound meant that most of these releases were sold at bargain prices, leaving the five former band members disillusioned. They fought back and on 7 March 1999 won a court victory in Belfast for copyright ownership and a substantial financial settlement. Horslips are now once again fully in control of their music and they released the entire back catalogue on CD in 2000/2001 with updated artwork and digitally remastered sound. Returns First revival: 2004 to 2006 In March 2004, three Horslips enthusiasts, Jim Nelis, Stephen Ferris and Paul Callaghan, put on an exhibition of Horslips memorabilia in The Orchard Gallery in Derry. It was opened by the band, who played five songs acoustically. Buoyed by this first public appearance in 24 years, Horslips returned to the studio in Westmeath to produce a studio album, Roll Back, in the summer of 2004. Described as "Horslips Unplugged", the album contained acoustic reworkings of many of their best-known songs. The same exhibition moved to Drogheda in October 2005, courtesy of longtime fan Paddy Goodwin, and was formally opened on 6 October by a tribute band, Horslypse, composed of nine teenage musicians. Horslips did a version of "Furniture". The exhibition moved to Belfast in February and March 2006 and there were plans for a New York showing in 2007. In February 2008, the exhibition opened in Ballinamore in County Leitrim, and in July it opened in Ballybofey in Donegal. A double DVD entitled Return of the Dancehall Sweethearts came out in November 2005. Disc one is a documentary and disc two was live footage of the band from the 1970s, including promo videos and slots on The Old Grey Whistle Test. In December 2005, the band played in front of an invited audience for the recording of the RTÉ television program Other Voices in Dingle in County Kerry. Part of the set included three songs done "full-on" - the first time the band had played live and electric since October 1980. The last Horslips' event in this phase of their career was a TG4 tribute show recorded and broadcast live on 25 March 2006 before a live invited studio audience. A number of Irish personalities were interviewed, in Irish, about what the band meant to them and how Horslips shaped modern Irish music. 2009 reunion to 2012 On 2 July 2009, it was announced that Horslips would reunite for two shows, their first 'open public' gigs since 1980. The band played the Odyssey Arena in Belfast on 3 December and the 3Arena in Dublin on 5 December. Drummer Eamon Carr did not play the concerts, citing personal reasons, though he was fully supportive and remains a fifth member. His place was taken by Johnny Fean's brother Ray Fean. Recordings from these shows were released on the DVD/CD 'Live at the O2' in November 2010. The O2 Arena has since been renamed as The 3Arena. The Irish band Something Happens were the support act for the show in The 3Arena. The band played two invitation-only warm up gigs in McHugh's of Drogheda on 26 and 27 November. The band was set to play at "Live at the Marquee" Cork City on 26 June 2010, but the concert was cancelled due to Jim Lockhart falling ill. In November and December 2010, Horslips, again with Ray Fean on percussion, returned with a four gig tour of Ireland. These included the INEC (Ireland's National Event Centre) in Killarney (27 November), the Royal Theatre in Castlebar (28 November), the Waterfront Hall in Belfast (1 December) and culminated in a return to the O2 Arena on 4 December. They played at the 2011 Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow's "Old Fruitmarket" on 18 January. On 10 February 2010, it was announced that Horslips would be special guests under Fairport Convention at Fairport's Cropredy Convention 2011. They performed on 13 August. On St Patrick's Day, 17 March 2011, the band played a BBC concert with the Ulster Orchestra at Belfast's Waterfront Hall. Later in 2011, they played the London Feis festival in Finsbury Park (Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 June), sharing the bill with many other luminaries like Christy Moore, Van Morrison, and Bob Dylan. Final concerts On 3 June 2012, Horslips performed as the headline act at the Rory Gallagher Tribute Festival in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, and on 25 and 26 August, they played two shows in Ireland's National Concert Hall with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Biographical book and album On 4 November 2013, Horslips released their biography Tall Tales. The book was written by Mark Cunningham and features interviews with the band. A double album featuring all the group's singles released outside Ireland, called Biography, was also released. On the Summer Solstice (21 June) 2014, Horslips played at Dunluce Castle, near Portrush in Northern Ireland, and in August of that year, they played at Milkmarket in Limerick. After Horslips On 12 March 2019, two of the band, Barry Devlin and Jim Lockhart, played at an event in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, to commemorate the occupation by radical students of the administration block at University College, Dublin, 50 years before. They joined the house band for the night, made up of members of Chris Meehan and his Redneck Friends, along with other well-known musicians, actors and performers who had been involved in the events of 1969, when the building that is now the NCH was part of UCD. On 11 and 12 May 2019, with Charles retired from music, original members Barry, Johnny and Jim plus Ray Fean (drums) played two concerts at Belfast's Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, at Custom House Square. The shows were promoted as 'Barry Devlin, Johnny Fean & Jim Lockhart from Horslips'. Johnny Fean died in April 2023. Discography Original studio albums Happy to Meet – Sorry to Part (1972) The Táin (1973) Dancehall Sweethearts (1974) The Unfortunate Cup of Tea (1975) Drive the Cold Winter Away (1975) The Book of Invasions (1976) UK No. 39 Aliens (1977) U.S. No. 98 The Man Who Built America (1978) U.S. No. 155 Short Stories/Tall Tales (1979) Roll Back (2004) Compilation albums Tracks from the Vaults (1977) The Horslips Story - Straight from the Horse's Mouth (1989) Treasury (2009) Biography (2013) Live albums Horslips Live (1976) The Belfast Gigs (1980) Live at the O2 (2010) Live with the Ulster Orchestra (2011) Box Sets More Than You Can Chew (2023) Books Tall Tales (2013) References External links Official website for Horslips Official website for Johnny Fean and Steve Travers Come Back Horslips Fansite Carr's Cocktail Shack Radio Website Tara Telephone Archival History Fansite Performance and Interview Pt.1 Interview Pt.2 Horslips page on Irish Rockers website Category:Irish progressive rock groups Category:Celtic rock music Category:Irish folk rock groups Category:Celtic fusion musicians Category:Musical groups established in 1970 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 1980 Category:Atco Records artists Category:DJM Records artists

C_ee3b5ed0e1d947daa08b75d71fde6e43_0

Horslips

Horslips are an Irish Celtic rock band that compose, arrange and perform songs frequently inspired by traditional Irish airs, jigs and reels. The group are regarded as 'founding fathers of Celtic rock' for their fusion of traditional Irish music with rock music and went on to inspire many local and international acts. They formed in 1970 and 'retired' in 1980 for an extended period. The name originated from a spoonerism on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse which became "The Four Poxmen of The Horslypse".

Return

In March 2004, three Horslips enthusiasts, Jim Nelis, Stephen Ferris and Paul Callaghan, put on an exhibition of Horslips memorabilia in The Orchard Gallery in Derry. It was opened by the band, who played five songs acoustically. Buoyed by this first public appearance in 24 years, Horslips returned to the studio in Westmeath to produce a studio album, Roll Back, in the summer of 2004. Described as "Horslips Unplugged", the album contained acoustic reworkings of many of their best-known songs. The same exhibition moved to Drogheda in October 2005, courtesy of longtime fan Paddy Goodwin, and was formally opened on 6 October by a tribute band, Horslypse, composed of nine teenage musicians. Horslips did a version of "Furniture". The exhibition moved to Belfast in February and March 2006 and there were plans for a New York showing in 2007. In February 2008, the exhibition opened in Ballinamore in County Leitrim, and in July it opened in Ballybofey in Donegal. A double DVD entitled Return of the Dancehall Sweethearts came out in November 2005. Disc one is a documentary and disc two was live footage of the band from the 1970s, including promo videos and slots on The Old Grey Whistle Test. In December 2005, the band played in front of an invited audience for the recording of the RTE television program Other Voices in Dingle in County Kerry. Part of the set included three songs done "full-on" - the first time the band had played live and electric since October 1980. The last Horslips' event in this phase of their career was a TG4 tribute show recorded and broadcast live on 25 March 2006 before a live invited studio audience. A number of Irish personalities were interviewed, in Irish, about what the band meant to them and how Horslips shaped modern Irish music. CANNOTANSWER

Horslips are an Irish Celtic rock band that compose, arrange and perform songs frequently inspired by traditional Irish airs, jigs and reels. The group are regarded as 'founding fathers of Celtic rock' for their fusion of traditional Irish music with rock music and went on to inspire many local and international acts. They formed in 1970 and 'retired' in 1980 for an extended period. The name originated from a spoonerism on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse which became "The Four Poxmen of The Horslypse". Although Horslips had limited commercial success when the band was playing in the 70s, there was a revival of interest in their music in the late 1990s and they came to be regarded as one of the defining bands of the Celtic rock genre. There have since been small scale reunions including appearances on The Late Late Show and RTÉ's Other Voices. The band reformed for two Irish shows in the Odyssey Arena in Belfast and the 3Arena in Dublin at the end of 2009, and have continued to play shows since then. Band members Jim Lockhart (born 3 February 1948), from James's St in Dublin, studied Economics and Politics at University College Dublin. He fell under the influence of Seán Ó Riada, wanting to build an orchestral sound out of Irish music. He plays keyboards, pipes, whistles and flute. He did vocals on a select number of songs, mainly in Manx or Irish. Eamon Carr (born 12 November 1948), is from Kells, County Meath. He was one of the founding members of a poetry and beat performance group called Tara Telephone in Dublin in the late 60s that also published the quarterly literary journal Capella. He is the drummer in the band. Charles O'Connor, (Born 7 September 1948) from Middlesbrough in the UK plays concertina, mandolin, fiddle and both electric and slide guitar. He also shares the main vocal tasks with Barry Devlin and Johnny Fean. Barry Devlin (born 27 November 1946), from Ardboe in County Tyrone, once trained as a Columban priest. He left this to study English in University College Dublin and afterwards joined a graphics company as a screenwriter. He is the band's bass player, shares vocals, and is its unofficial front man. Johnny Fean (17 November 1951 – 28 April 2023) spent his childhood in the city of Limerick and in Shannon, County Clare. He soon mastered guitar, banjo, mandolin and harmonica. In his teens, he played in sessions in Limerick and County Clare. Fean developed his listening tastes from rock to blues and incorporated it into his guitar style. In his late teens he played in a group called Sweet Street, with Joe O'Donnell on electric fiddle and Eugene Wallace. He later played in Jeremiah Henry, a rock and blues band. His idols were Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. He left Jeremiah Henry in 1970 to play traditional music again in Limerick. Original run Formation and line-ups Barry Devlin, Eamon Carr and Charles O'Connor met when they worked at the Ark advertising company in Dublin. They were cajoled into pretending to be a band for a Harp Lager commercial but needed a keyboard player. Devlin said he knew a Jim Lockhart who would fit the bill. The four enjoyed the act so much that they decided to try being proper rock performers. They joined guitarist Declan Sinnott, a colleague of Eamon Carr's from poetry performance and musical group Tara Telephone and, briefly, Gene Mulvaney, to form Horslips (originally Horslypse) in 1970. The band went professional on St Patrick's Day 1972 having shed Mulvaney and released a single, "Johnny's Wedding", on their own record label, Oats. Declan Sinnott left soon after, primarily due to his annoyance at the group appearing in an advert for Mirinda orange drink (shot in the grounds of Ardmore Studios Bray in Easter 1972). Sinnott was replaced by Gus Guest, who appeared on the group's second single "Green Gravel", but departed shortly thereafter. Johnny Fean then replaced Guest, and the 'classic' Horslips line-up that would appear on all future releases was set. Main career Album approach Horslips designed their own artwork, wrote sleeve-notes and researched the legends that they made into concept albums. They established their own record label, Oats, and licensed the recordings through Atco, RCA and DJM for release outside Ireland. They kept their base in Ireland, unlike previous Irish bands. First album In October 1972, Horslips went to Longfield House in Tipperary and recorded their first album, Happy to Meet – Sorry to Part, in the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. On this first album the melodies were mostly traditional. Jim Lockhart was on keyboards and gradually mastered other instruments including uillean pipes. Eamon Carr was on drums, including the Irish bodhrán. Happy To Meet, Sorry To Part was the fastest-selling album for eight years in Ireland. The sleeve was an elaborate concertina-shaped fold-out design. The Táin The Abbey Theatre in Dublin asked the band to provide the background for a stage adaptation of "The Táin". They leapt at the opportunity. "Táin Bó Cúailnge" (The Cattle-Raid of Cooley) is a tenth-century story written in Old and Middle Irish. It tells of an ancient war between Ulster and Connacht. The Táin was released in 1973 and had more original material alongside the traditional tunes, and greater emphasis on rock. In the same year a single, "Dearg Doom", went to number one in Germany. Later albums Dancehall Sweethearts followed in 1974, and also balanced folk with rock. Their fourth album, The Unfortunate Cup of Tea, drifted toward pop music and was generally considered less successful. RCA ended their funding deal for the group in 1975. The group funded their next venture themselves and went back to basics. Drive The Cold Winter Away (also 1975) was their most traditional album to date. They signed with DJM Records worldwide through A&R man Frank Neilson. The Book of Invasions: A Celtic Symphony (1976), like The Táin, was an adaptation of Irish legends built into a complex story. It became their only entry in the UK Albums Chart, where it peaked at No. 39 in 1977. US and later work Ever ambitious, the band now tried to make it in the United States. They brought in Jim Slye to become their manager. He later sold their publishing rights to William McBurney for £4,000. In 1977 they produced Aliens, about the experience of the Irish in nineteenth-century America. They toured Britain, Germany, Canada and the United States. The night they played the Albert Hall in London was described by one critic as the loudest gig there since Hendrix. The Man Who Built America (1978), produced by Steve Katz of Blood, Sweat and Tears and Blues Project fame, concerned Irish emigration to the US and received considerable airplay but broad approval was missing. The heavier sound did bring some acceptance in America but they lost their folk base and their freshness. Short Stories, Tall Tales (1979) was their last studio album and was panned by the record company and critics alike. "The Last Time" At a time when The Troubles were at its peak, Horslips played gigs in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland without prejudice and were accepted everywhere. Their last recordings were from live performances at the Whitla Hall in Belfast April and May 1980. A few months later, on 12 October 1980 they played their final gig in the Ulster Hall. They made no public announcement. They simply gave an encore — the Rolling Stones' song "The Last Time" (this was a reference to the recording studio of their first album) and the final act was Charles O'Connor throwing his mangled fiddle into the audience. Ten years after they formed, they disbanded. Musical life after the break up Even before Horslips ended, Johnny Fean, Eamon Carr and two others founded the Zen Alligators in 1980. They played straight rock and soul on the Irish circuit, and they recorded several singles. Another spin-off group called Host contained Fean, O'Connor and Carr. They issued one album, Tryal, in 1984, and two singles. The final album that had a Fean/Carr collaboration in the 1980s was The Last Bandits in the World (1986). Barry Devlin issued a solo album called Breaking Star Codes in 1983 with some help from Jim Lockhart. The album had 12 songs, each based, loosely, on the signs of the zodiac. Further Lockhart/Devlin collaborations included the theme tune to the popular RTÉ drama series Glenroe. In 1986, Johnny Fean moved to England. An English indie band called Jacobites (1983 to 1986) consisted of Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth. Their 1986 album Ragged School had Johnny on guitar. He also played sporadically with a Horslips tribute band Spirit of Horslips and pub gigs with pick up three-piece The Treat, which sometimes featured former Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell instead of Fean. In 1990, the electric guitar intro to "Dearg Doom" was used for Put 'Em Under Pressure, Ireland's 1990 World Cup song, written by Larry Mullen and featuring the Republic of Ireland national football team and Moya Brennan. This use of the intro may be better known in Ireland than the original. Charles O'Connor released an instrumental album, Angel on the Mantelpiece, in collaboration with Paul Whittaker in 1997. Further activities Johnny Fean continued to play live music with Stephen Travers, formerly of The Miami Showband. After his retirement, Eamon Carr went on to become a producer of young rock talent in the mid-1980s, and also formed his own record label called Hotwire (which sponsored noted acts such as the punk rock group The Golden Horde). He also did a number of specialist DJ slots on radio before morphing into a music/sports journalist with the Evening Herald in Dublin. More recently he presented on a Dublin station 'Carr's Cocktail Shack' in which he played American music of the 1950s and 1960s. In 2008, Carr and Henry McCullough co-wrote a new bunch of songs. A resulting album entitled Poor Man's Moon was released on 1 September 2008. Also in 2008, Carr released his first book, The Origami Crow, Journey Into Japan, World Cup Summer 2002, a book that is at once a travel log about his journey to Japan, a poetry collection, an homage to Japanese poet Bashō, and also has some sports commentary thrown in. Barry Devlin directed for the screen and been a drama writer for radio and screen, as can be seen from his credits on the IMDB and for the radio detective drama Baldi He produced a number of U2 videos in the mid-1980s. Examples of his screen writing are evident in the joint RTÉ/BBC production Ballykissangel and ITV's The Darling Buds of May. Jim Lockhart is head of production at RTÉ 2fm and has also done some production work and music arrangement. Charles O'Connor owns two antique shops in Whitby, England. O'Connor continued to record folk and traditional music in his home recording studio. Releases and copyright issues For 20 years William McBurney, head of Belfast-based Outlet Records for over 40 years, received royalties from the sales of vinyl and CDs, including many compilations. He claimed that he bought the rights in good faith from Jim Slye, who managed Horslips from the late 1970s until the band's final gig. However, the quality of these releases left much to be desired. Shoddy artwork and poor sound meant that most of these releases were sold at bargain prices, leaving the five former band members disillusioned. They fought back and on 7 March 1999 won a court victory in Belfast for copyright ownership and a substantial financial settlement. Horslips are now once again fully in control of their music and they released the entire back catalogue on CD in 2000/2001 with updated artwork and digitally remastered sound. Returns First revival: 2004 to 2006 In March 2004, three Horslips enthusiasts, Jim Nelis, Stephen Ferris and Paul Callaghan, put on an exhibition of Horslips memorabilia in The Orchard Gallery in Derry. It was opened by the band, who played five songs acoustically. Buoyed by this first public appearance in 24 years, Horslips returned to the studio in Westmeath to produce a studio album, Roll Back, in the summer of 2004. Described as "Horslips Unplugged", the album contained acoustic reworkings of many of their best-known songs. The same exhibition moved to Drogheda in October 2005, courtesy of longtime fan Paddy Goodwin, and was formally opened on 6 October by a tribute band, Horslypse, composed of nine teenage musicians. Horslips did a version of "Furniture". The exhibition moved to Belfast in February and March 2006 and there were plans for a New York showing in 2007. In February 2008, the exhibition opened in Ballinamore in County Leitrim, and in July it opened in Ballybofey in Donegal. A double DVD entitled Return of the Dancehall Sweethearts came out in November 2005. Disc one is a documentary and disc two was live footage of the band from the 1970s, including promo videos and slots on The Old Grey Whistle Test. In December 2005, the band played in front of an invited audience for the recording of the RTÉ television program Other Voices in Dingle in County Kerry. Part of the set included three songs done "full-on" - the first time the band had played live and electric since October 1980. The last Horslips' event in this phase of their career was a TG4 tribute show recorded and broadcast live on 25 March 2006 before a live invited studio audience. A number of Irish personalities were interviewed, in Irish, about what the band meant to them and how Horslips shaped modern Irish music. 2009 reunion to 2012 On 2 July 2009, it was announced that Horslips would reunite for two shows, their first 'open public' gigs since 1980. The band played the Odyssey Arena in Belfast on 3 December and the 3Arena in Dublin on 5 December. Drummer Eamon Carr did not play the concerts, citing personal reasons, though he was fully supportive and remains a fifth member. His place was taken by Johnny Fean's brother Ray Fean. Recordings from these shows were released on the DVD/CD 'Live at the O2' in November 2010. The O2 Arena has since been renamed as The 3Arena. The Irish band Something Happens were the support act for the show in The 3Arena. The band played two invitation-only warm up gigs in McHugh's of Drogheda on 26 and 27 November. The band was set to play at "Live at the Marquee" Cork City on 26 June 2010, but the concert was cancelled due to Jim Lockhart falling ill. In November and December 2010, Horslips, again with Ray Fean on percussion, returned with a four gig tour of Ireland. These included the INEC (Ireland's National Event Centre) in Killarney (27 November), the Royal Theatre in Castlebar (28 November), the Waterfront Hall in Belfast (1 December) and culminated in a return to the O2 Arena on 4 December. They played at the 2011 Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow's "Old Fruitmarket" on 18 January. On 10 February 2010, it was announced that Horslips would be special guests under Fairport Convention at Fairport's Cropredy Convention 2011. They performed on 13 August. On St Patrick's Day, 17 March 2011, the band played a BBC concert with the Ulster Orchestra at Belfast's Waterfront Hall. Later in 2011, they played the London Feis festival in Finsbury Park (Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 June), sharing the bill with many other luminaries like Christy Moore, Van Morrison, and Bob Dylan. Final concerts On 3 June 2012, Horslips performed as the headline act at the Rory Gallagher Tribute Festival in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, and on 25 and 26 August, they played two shows in Ireland's National Concert Hall with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Biographical book and album On 4 November 2013, Horslips released their biography Tall Tales. The book was written by Mark Cunningham and features interviews with the band. A double album featuring all the group's singles released outside Ireland, called Biography, was also released. On the Summer Solstice (21 June) 2014, Horslips played at Dunluce Castle, near Portrush in Northern Ireland, and in August of that year, they played at Milkmarket in Limerick. After Horslips On 12 March 2019, two of the band, Barry Devlin and Jim Lockhart, played at an event in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, to commemorate the occupation by radical students of the administration block at University College, Dublin, 50 years before. They joined the house band for the night, made up of members of Chris Meehan and his Redneck Friends, along with other well-known musicians, actors and performers who had been involved in the events of 1969, when the building that is now the NCH was part of UCD. On 11 and 12 May 2019, with Charles retired from music, original members Barry, Johnny and Jim plus Ray Fean (drums) played two concerts at Belfast's Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, at Custom House Square. The shows were promoted as 'Barry Devlin, Johnny Fean & Jim Lockhart from Horslips'. Johnny Fean died in April 2023. Discography Original studio albums Happy to Meet – Sorry to Part (1972) The Táin (1973) Dancehall Sweethearts (1974) The Unfortunate Cup of Tea (1975) Drive the Cold Winter Away (1975) The Book of Invasions (1976) UK No. 39 Aliens (1977) U.S. No. 98 The Man Who Built America (1978) U.S. No. 155 Short Stories/Tall Tales (1979) Roll Back (2004) Compilation albums Tracks from the Vaults (1977) The Horslips Story - Straight from the Horse's Mouth (1989) Treasury (2009) Biography (2013) Live albums Horslips Live (1976) The Belfast Gigs (1980) Live at the O2 (2010) Live with the Ulster Orchestra (2011) Box Sets More Than You Can Chew (2023) Books Tall Tales (2013) References External links Official website for Horslips Official website for Johnny Fean and Steve Travers Come Back Horslips Fansite Carr's Cocktail Shack Radio Website Tara Telephone Archival History Fansite Performance and Interview Pt.1 Interview Pt.2 Horslips page on Irish Rockers website Category:Irish progressive rock groups Category:Celtic rock music Category:Irish folk rock groups Category:Celtic fusion musicians Category:Musical groups established in 1970 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 1980 Category:Atco Records artists Category:DJM Records artists

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Eurythmics

Eurythmics were a British music duo consisting of members Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart. Stewart and Lennox were both previously in the band The Tourists (originally known as The Catch), who split up in 1980; Eurythmics were formed that year in Wagga Wagga. The duo released their first album, In the Garden, in 1981 to little fanfare, but went on to achieve global success with their second album Sweet Dreams

1990-98: Hiatus and solo careers

After strenuous years of touring and recording (Eurythmics had released eight studio albums in eight years), a rift had developed between the duo and Eurythmics disbanded, although no formal notice was given. Stewart began writing film soundtracks and had a big international hit in 1990 with the instrumental track "Lily Was Here" (featuring saxophonist Candy Dulfer). The single reached no.6 in the UK and the Top 20 throughout much of Europe, as well as in Australia and the US. He also formed a band called The Spiritual Cowboys, releasing two albums with this group in the early 1990s. Lennox took time off from her career to have a baby and to consider a life after Eurythmics. Accordingly, the duo had very little communication with each other from 1991 to 1998. In 1991, Eurythmics' Greatest Hits collection was released, entering the UK album chart at No. 1 and spending a total of 10 weeks at that position, as well as becoming a massive worldwide seller. New remixes of "Sweet Dreams" and "Love Is a Stranger" were also released as singles at this time. During 1993, a live album entitled Live 1983-1989 featuring recordings from various years throughout Eurythmics' career was also released. In 1992, Lennox released her first solo album, Diva. The album was a critical and popular success, entering the UK album chart at no.1 and achieving quadruple platinum status (more than any Eurythmics studio album had done), as well as producing a string of five hit singles. She followed this up in 1995 with her second album, Medusa, an album of cover versions. It became her second number one album in the UK, reaching double platinum status both there and in the US. Stewart, meanwhile, released the solo albums Greetings from the Gutter (1995), and Sly-Fi (1998), but neither was commercially successful. CANNOTANSWER

Eurythmics were a British pop duo consisting of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. They were both previously in the Tourists, a band which broke up in 1980. The duo released their first studio album, In the Garden, in 1981 to little success, but went on to achieve global acclaim when their second album Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), was released in 1983. The title track became a worldwide hit, reaching No.2 in the UK Singles Chart and No. 6 in Australia, before hitting No. 1 in Canada and the US Billboard Hot 100. The duo went on to release a string of hit singles and albums, including "Love Is a Stranger", "There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)" and "Here Comes the Rain Again", before they split up in 1990. Stewart became a sought-after record producer, while Lennox began a solo recording career in 1992 with her debut album Diva. After almost a decade apart, Eurythmics reunited to record their ninth album, Peace, released in late 1999. They reunited again in 2005 to release the single "I've Got a Life", as part of a new compilation album, Ultimate Collection. Eurythmics have sold an estimated 75 million records worldwide. The duo have won an MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist in 1984, the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1987, the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 1999, and in 2005 were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame. In 2020 both Lennox and Stewart were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2022, the duo were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. History 1976–1982: Formation and In the Garden Lennox and Stewart met in 1975 in a restaurant in London, where Lennox worked at that time. They first played together in 1976 in the punk rock band the Catch. After releasing one single as the Catch in 1977, the band evolved into the Tourists. Stewart and Lennox were also romantically involved. The Tourists achieved some commercial success, but the experience was reportedly an unhappy one. Personal and musical tensions existed within the group, whose main songwriter was Peet Coombes, and legal wrangling happened with the band's management, publishers and record labels. Lennox and Stewart felt the fixed band line-up was an inadequate vehicle to explore their experimental creative leanings and decided their next project should be much more flexible and free from artistic compromise. They were interested in creating pop music, but wanted freedom to experiment with electronics and the avant-garde. It was in a hotel in Wagga Wagga, Australia, while playing around with a portable mini-synthesizer that Lennox and Stewart decided to become a duo. Calling themselves Eurythmics (after the pedagogical exercise system that Lennox had encountered as a child), they decided to keep themselves as the only permanent members and songwriters, and involve others in the collaboration "on the basis of mutual compatibility and availability". The duo signed to RCA Records. At this time, Lennox and Stewart also split as a couple. During the period that Lennox and Stewart were in the Tourists, and later as Eurythmics, they were managed by Kenny Smith and Sandra Turnbull of Hyper Kinetics Ltd. They recorded their first album, In the Garden, in Cologne with Conny Plank (who had produced the later Tourists sessions). The album, released in October 1981, mixed psychedelic, krautrock and electropop influences, and featured contributions from Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit (of Can), drummer Clem Burke (of Blondie), Robert Görl (of D.A.F.), and flautist Tim Wheater. A couple of the songs were co-written by guitarist Roger Pomphrey (later a TV director). The album was not a commercial success (though the debut single "Never Gonna Cry Again" made the UK charts at No. 63). Lennox and Stewart then activated their new Eurythmics mode of operation by touring the record as a duo, accompanied by backing tracks and electronics, carted around the country by themselves in a horse-box. During 1982, the duo retreated to Chalk Farm in London and used a bank loan to establish a small eight-track studio above a picture framing factory, giving them freedom to record without having to pay expensive studio fees. They began to employ much more electronics in their music, collaborating with Raynard Faulkner and Adam Williams, recording many tracks in the studio and playing live using various line-up permutations. However, the three new singles they released that year ("This Is the House", "The Walk" and "Love Is a Stranger") all performed badly on initial release in the UK. Although their mode of operation had given them the creative freedom they desired, commercial success still eluded them and the responsibility of personally running so many of their affairs (down to transporting their own stage equipment) took its toll. Lennox apparently suffered at least one nervous breakdown during this period, while Stewart was hospitalised with a collapsed lung. 1983–1984: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) and Touch Eurythmics' commercial breakthrough came with their second album, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), released in January 1983. The successful title track featured a dark and powerful sequenced synth bass line and a dramatic video that introduced the now orange crew-cut Lennox to audiences. The song reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming one of the year's biggest sellers, No. 6 in Australia, and later topped the Canadian chart and US Billboard Hot 100. The band's fortunes changed immensely from this moment on, and Lennox quickly became a pop icon, gracing the covers of numerous magazines including Rolling Stone. Their previous single, "Love Is a Stranger", was also re-released and became another chart success. The video for the song saw Lennox in many different character guises, a concept she would employ in various subsequent videos. The album's working title was Invisible Hands (as was a track left off the album), inspiring the name of the British independent company Invisible Hands Music – known for releasing music by Hugh Cornwell, Mick Karn and Hazel O'Connor. The album also featured a cover of the 1968 Sam & Dave hit "Wrap It Up", performed as a duet between Lennox and Green Gartside of Scritti Politti. The duo quickly recorded a follow-up album, Touch, which was released in November 1983. It became the duo's first No. 1 album in the UK, and also spawned three major hit singles. "Who's That Girl?" was a top 3 hit in the UK, the video depicting Lennox as both a blonde chanteuse and as a gender-bending Elvis Presley clone. It also featured cameo appearances by Hazel O'Connor, Bananarama (including Stewart's future wife, Siobhan Fahey), Kate Garner of Haysi Fantayzee, Thereza Bazar of Dollar, Jay Aston and Cheryl Baker of Bucks Fizz, Kiki Dee, Jacquie O'Sullivan and the gender-bending pop singer Marilyn, who would go on to musical success of his own that same year. The upbeat, calypso-flavoured "Right by Your Side" showed a different side of Eurythmics altogether and also made the Top 10, and "Here Comes the Rain Again" (No. 8 in the UK, No. 4 in the US) was an orchestral/synth ballad (with orchestrations by Michael Kamen). In 1984 RCA released Touch Dance, an EP of remixes of four of the tracks from Touch, aimed at the club market. The remixes were by prominent New York City producers Francois Kevorkian and John "Jellybean" Benitez. Also released in 1984 was Eurythmics' soundtrack album 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother). Virgin Films had contracted the band to provide a soundtrack for Michael Radford's modern film adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. However, Radford later said that the music had been "foisted" on his film against his wishes, and that Virgin had replaced most of Dominic Muldowney's original orchestral score with the Eurythmics soundtrack (including the song "Julia", which was heard during the end credits). Nevertheless, the record was presented as "music derived from the original score of Eurythmics for the Michael Radford film version of Orwell's 1984". Eurythmics charged that they had been misled by the film's producers as well, and the album was withdrawn from the market for a period while matters were litigated. The album's first single, "Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)", was a top 5 hit in the UK, Australia and across Europe, and a major dance success in the United States. 1985–1986: Be Yourself Tonight and new musical direction The duo's next album, Be Yourself Tonight, was produced in a week in Paris and spent 4 weeks at No. 1 in Australia. It showcased much more of a "band style" and a centred sound (with an R&B influence), with real drums, brass, and much more guitar from Stewart. Almost a dozen other musicians were enlisted, including members of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers, guest harmonica from Stevie Wonder, bass guitar from Dean Garcia, string arrangements by Michael Kamen, and Lennox singing duets with Aretha Franklin and Elvis Costello. It continued the duo's transatlantic chart domination in 1985, and contained four hit singles: "Would I Lie to You?" was a US Billboard top five hit and Australian No. 1, while "There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)" (featuring Wonder's harmonica contribution) became their first and only UK No. 1 single. The feminist anthem "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" (a duet with Aretha Franklin, though originally intended for Tina Turner), and "It's Alright (Baby's Coming Back)" also rode high in the charts. In September 1985, Eurythmics performed "Would I Lie to You?" at the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards at the Radio City Music Hall in New York. 1986–1990: Revenge, Savage and We Too Are One Eurythmics released their next album, Revenge, in 1986. The album continued their move towards a band sound, verging on an AOR-pop/rock sound. Sales continued to be strong in the UK and internationally, but were somewhat slower in the US, though "Missionary Man" reached No. 14 on the US Hot 100 chart and went all the way to No. 1 on the US Album Oriented Rock chart (AOR). Revenge would eventually certify double Platinum in the UK and Gold in the US, and spend 40 weeks in the Australian top 10 where it reached No. 2. The band went on a massive worldwide tour in support of the album, and a live concert video from the Australian leg of the tour was released. In 1987, Lennox and Stewart released the album Savage. This saw a fairly radical change within the group's sound, being based mainly around programmed samples and drum loops (Lennox would later say that where Revenge was more of a Stewart album in sound, Savage was more of a Lennox one). Lyrically the songs showed an even darker, more obsessive side to Lennox's writing. A video album was also made, directed by Sophie Muller, with a video for each song. This was largely a concept piece, following characters portrayed by Lennox, specifically one of a frustrated housewife-turned-vamp (as exemplified in "Beethoven (I Love to Listen To)", a UK top 30 and Australian No. 13 hit). The brazen, sexually charged rocker "I Need a Man" remains a Eurythmics staple, as does "You Have Placed a Chill in My Heart". Much less commercial than the two previous albums, Savage was mostly ignored in the US, although rock radio in more progressive markets supported "I Need a Man". In the duo's native UK however, the album was a top 10 success and was certified Platinum. In 1989, Eurythmics released the album We Too Are One, which entered the UK Album Chart at No. 1 (their second No. 1 album after Touch) and gave the duo four UK Top 30 hit singles. The album was a return to the rock/pop sound of their mid-80s albums and was certified Double Platinum in the UK, and reached No. 7 in Australia, but was less successful in the US (although the single "Don't Ask Me Why" grazed the Billboard Top 40). Other singles from the album included "Revival", "The King and Queen of America" and "Angel". Accompanying the album, the duo conducted their Revival world tour from 8 September 1989 to 25 January 1990. Parts of the tour (both on and off-stage) were interspersed with promo videos for Eurythmics' 1990 video album We Two Are One Too. 1990–1998: Hiatus and solo careers After strenuous years of touring and recording (Eurythmics had released eight studio albums in eight years), a rift had developed between the duo and Eurythmics disbanded, although no formal notice was given. Stewart began writing film soundtracks and had a big international hit in 1990 with the instrumental track "Lily Was Here" (featuring saxophonist Candy Dulfer). The single reached No. 6 in the UK and the Top 20 throughout much of Europe and the US, and top 10 in Australia. A soundtrack of the same name was also released, produced and largely written by Stewart. He formed a band called the Spiritual Cowboys, releasing two albums with this group in the early 1990s. Lennox took time off from her career to have a baby and to consider a life after Eurythmics. Accordingly, the duo had very little communication with each other from 1991 to 1998. In 1991, Eurythmics' Greatest Hits collection was released, entering the UK album chart at No. 1 and spending a total of 10 weeks at that position, plus 7 weeks at No. 1 in Australia as well as becoming a massive worldwide seller. New remixes of "Sweet Dreams" and "Love Is a Stranger" were also released as singles at this time. During 1993, a live album entitled Live 1983–1989 featuring recordings from various years throughout Eurythmics' career was also released. In 1992, Lennox released her first solo album, Diva. The album was a critical and popular success, entering the UK album chart at No. 1 and achieving quadruple platinum status (more than any Eurythmics studio album had done), as well as producing a string of five hit singles. She followed this up in 1995 with her second album, Medusa, an album of cover versions. It became her second No. 1 album in the UK, reaching double platinum status both there and in the US. Stewart, meanwhile, released the solo albums Greetings from the Gutter (1995), and Sly-Fi (1998), but neither was commercially successful. 1999–2005: Peace and Ultimate Collection In the late 1990s, Eurythmics reunited and recorded a new album, Peace, which was released in 1999. The single "I Saved the World Today" reached No. 11 in the UK Singles Chart, and a remix of "17 Again" gave the duo their first chart-topper on the US Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. The band also embarked on a world tour, dubbed the "Peacetour", to support the album. The tour started on 18 September 1999 at Cologne's Kölnarena and ended on 6 December 1999 at the London Docklands Arena (which was filmed and released on video and DVD). All proceeds from the tour went to Greenpeace and Amnesty International. The year 2000 saw numerous European festival appearances by Eurythmics (at Germany's Rock am Ring, among others). In 2001, Stewart performed with U2 for the America: A Tribute to Heroes benefit concert. In 2002, he collaborated with Bryan Ferry on his album Frantic. In June 2003, Lennox released her third solo album, entitled Bare, which was a top 5 hit in the UK and the US., with three tracks reaching the top of the US Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. She also recorded the song "Into the West" for Peter Jackson's film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, where it appeared as the closing theme and earned Lennox the Academy Award for Best Song. In November 2003, Eurythmics played three songs at the 46664 in Cape Town, South Africa, for which Stewart was one of the primary organisers. They played an unplugged version of "Here Comes the Rain Again", "7 Seconds" with Youssou N'Dour and "Sweet Dreams". Stewart collaborated with Rolling Stones vocalist Mick Jagger on the soundtrack to the movie Alfie, released in 2004, including the critically acclaimed "Old Habits Die Hard", which won a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song from a Motion Picture. On 7 November 2005, Eurythmics released Ultimate Collection, a remastered greatest hits package with two new songs. One of them, "I've Got a Life", was released as a single and reached No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart as well as spending three consecutive weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Dance Music/Club Play in the US. Lennox and Stewart appeared on a number of TV shows to promote their new compilation album, which was a Top 5 hit and certified Platinum in the UK. On 14 November 2005, the duo's label, RCA, re-released their eight studio albums in remastered and expanded editions featuring rare B-sides, remixes and unreleased songs. The remasters were made available separately with expanded artwork, and also together in a collector's box set, entitled Boxed. However, the 1984 soundtrack album 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother) was not included in this re-release campaign as Virgin Records holds the rights to that album. Also in 2005, Eurythmics were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame. In 2007, Lennox resumed her solo career with her fourth album, Songs of Mass Destruction, which was a top 10 success in the UK and the US. In 2009, she released her first solo "greatest hits" package, The Annie Lennox Collection. The same year, Lennox stated that although she and Stewart remain friends, she does not foresee any further Eurythmics projects in the future. In an interview with Reuters in September 2012, Stewart was quizzed on whether a new Eurythmics album is in the works, to which he replied: "We're not talking about one right now, but never say never." He added that he was considering developing a musical based on the music of Eurythmics. 2014: Beatles tribute concert Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart performed as a duo for "The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles". The event was recorded at the Los Angeles Convention Center on 27 January 2014, the day after the Grammy Awards. They performed the Beatles song "The Fool on the Hill". 2019: Sting's 30th We'll Be Together benefit concert Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, billed as Eurythmics, performed at Sting's 30th We'll Be Together benefit concert in aid of his Rainforest Foundation Fund on 9 December 2019 at New York City's Beacon Theatre. The group played "Would I Lie to You?", "Here Comes the Rain Again", and "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", before returning to join in the finale performance of Journey’s "Don't Stop Believin' along with the night's other performers. 2022: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart performed as Eurythmics at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California performing "Would I Lie To You", "Missionary Man" and "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" as part of the 2022 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. They were inducted by U2's the Edge. Discography In the Garden (1981) Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (1983) Touch (1983) 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother) (1984, soundtrack) Be Yourself Tonight (1985) Revenge (1986) Savage (1987) We Too Are One (1989) Peace (1999) Concert tours Sweet Dreams Tour (1983) Touch Tour (1983–1984) Revenge Tour (1986–1987) Revival Tour (1989–1990) Peace Tour (1999) Awards Billboard Music Awards !Ref. |- | 1983 | "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" | Top Hot 100 Song | | |- | 1984 | rowspan=6|Themselves | Top Disco Artist – Duo/Group | | |- | rowspan=9|1985 | Top Artist | | rowspan=9| |- | Top Billboard 200 Artist | |- | Top Hot 100 Artist | |- | Top Hot 100 Artist – Duo/Group | |- | Top Dance Club Play Artist | |- | rowspan=2|Be Yourself Tonight | Top Billboard 200 Album | |- | Top Compact Disk | |- | "Would I Lie to You?" | Top Hot 100 Song | |- | "Sexcrime" | Top Dance Play Single | |- | rowspan=2|1986 | rowspan=2|Themselves | Top Billboard 200 Artist | | rowspan=2| |- | Top Hot 100 Artist | Brit Awards |- |1984 |Themselves |Best British Group | |- |rowspan="2" |1986 |Be Yourself Tonight |Best British Album | |- |rowspan="3" |Themselves |rowspan="3" |Best British Group | |- |1987 | |- |rowspan="3" |1990 | |- |We Too Are One |Best British Album | |- |"Don't Ask Me Why" |Best British Video | |- |1999 |Themselves |Outstanding Contribution to British Music | |- | 2010 | "There Must Be an Angel" | Live Performance of 30 Years | Grammy Awards |- | 1984 ||Themselves |Best New Artist | |- | 1985 |Eurythmics Sweet Dreams: The Video Album |Best Video Album | |- |rowspan="2"| 1986 |"Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" (with Aretha Franklin) |Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal | |- |"Would I Lie to You?" |rowspan="2"|Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal | |- | 1987 |"Missionary Man" | |- | 1990 |Savage |rowspan="2"|Best Music Video – Long Form | |- | 1991 |We Two Are One Too | MTV Video Music Awards |- |1984 |"Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" |Best New Artist | |- |rowspan=5|1985 |rowspan=5|"Would I Lie to You?" |Best Stage Performance | |- |Best Overall Performance | |- |Best Choreography | |- |Best Editing | |- |rowspan=2|Best Group Video | |- |rowspan=5|1987 |rowspan=5|"Missionary Man" | |- |Best Concept Video | |- |Most Experimental Video | |- |Best Special Effects | |- |Best Editing | |- |rowspan=2|1988 |"I Need a Man" |Best Group Video | |- |"You Have Placed a Chill in My Heart" |Best Direction | Music & Media Year-End Awards !Ref. |- | 1987 | Themselves | Group of the Year | | 1984: Ivor Novello Award – Songwriters of the Year 1987: Ivor Novello Award – Songwriters of the Year 1987: Ivor Novello Award – Best Contemporary Song for "It's Alright (Baby's Coming Back)" 2000: Silver Clef Award 2000: ASCAP Award for "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" 2003: Kindred Spirit Music Award 2005: Inducted into UK Music Hall of Fame 2008: ASCAP Award for "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" 2009: ASCAP Award for "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" 2010: ASCAP Award for "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" References External links Category:19 Recordings artists Category:1980 establishments in England Category:Brit Award winners Category:New wave duos Category:English pop music duos Category:English new wave musical groups Category:English synth-pop groups Category:British synth-pop new wave groups Category:Dance-rock musical groups Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Male–female musical duos Category:Musical groups disestablished in 1990 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 2005 Category:Musical groups established in 1980 Category:Musical groups from London Category:Musical groups reestablished in 1999 Category:RCA Records artists Category:Female-fronted musical groups Category:Second British Invasion artists

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Willie Stargell

Stargell was born in Earlsboro, Oklahoma, but later moved to Florida with an aunt after his parents divorced. Later, he returned to Alameda, California, to live with his mother. He attended Encinal High School, where his baseball teammates included future MLB players Tommy Harper and Curt Motton. Stargell signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization and entered minor league baseball in 1959.

Long home runs

At one time, Stargell held the record for the longest home run in nearly half of the NL parks. On August 5, 1969, Stargell hit a home run off of Alan Foster that left the stadium and measured 507 feet, the longest home run ever hit at Dodger Stadium. He hit a second home run out of Dodger Stadium on May 8, 1973, against Andy Messersmith, measured 470 feet. Dodger starter Don Sutton said of Stargell, "I never saw anything like it. He doesn't just hit pitchers, he takes away their dignity." Only four other home runs have been hit out of Dodger Stadium. On June 25, 1971, Stargell hit the longest home run in Veterans Stadium history during a 14-4 Pirates win over the Philadelphia Phillies. The spot where the ball landed (the shot came in the second inning and chased starting pitcher Jim Bunning) was eventually marked with a yellow star with a black "S" inside a white circle until Stargell's 2001 death, when the white circle was painted black. The star remained in place until the stadium's 2004 demolition. In 1978, against Wayne Twitchell of the Montreal Expos, Stargell hit the only fair ball ever to reach the club deck of Olympic Stadium. The seat where the ball landed (the home run was measured at 535 feet) was replaced with a yellow seat, while the other seats in the upper deck are red. Upon the Expos departure in 2004, the seat was removed and sent to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. Bob Prince, the colorful longtime Pirate radio announcer would greet a Stargell home run with the phrase "Chicken on the Hill". This referred to Stargell's ownership of a chicken restaurant in Pittsburgh's Hill District. For a time, whenever he homered, Stargell's restaurant would give away free chicken to all patrons present in the restaurant at the time of the home run, in a promotion dubbed "Chicken on the Hill with Will". Prince himself once promised free chicken to listeners if Stargell hit a home run; Stargell did homer and Prince picked up a $400 bill at the restaurant. CANNOTANSWER

Wilver Dornell Stargell (March 6, 1940 – April 9, 2001), nicknamed "Pops" later in his career, was an American professional baseball left fielder and first baseman who spent all of his 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) (1962–1982) with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Among the most feared power hitters in baseball history, Stargell had the most home runs (296) of any player in the 1970s decade. During his career, he batted .282 with 2,232 hits, 1,194 runs, 423 doubles, 475 home runs, and 1,540 runs batted in, helping his team win six National League (NL) East division titles, two NL pennants, and two World Series championships in 1971 and 1979, both over the Baltimore Orioles. Stargell was a seven-time All-Star and two-time NL home run leader. In 1979, he became the first and currently only player to win the NL Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award, the NL Championship Series MVP Award and the World Series MVP Award in one season. In 1982, the Pirates retired his uniform number 8. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988. Early life Stargell was born in Earlsboro, Oklahoma, but later moved to Florida with an aunt after his parents divorced. Later, he returned to Alameda, California, to live with his mother. He attended Encinal High School, where his baseball teammates included future MLB players Tommy Harper and Curt Motton. Stargell signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization and entered minor league baseball in 1959. Stargell played for farm teams in New Mexico, North Dakota, Iowa, Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio. While on the road with some of those teams, Stargell was not allowed to stay in the same accommodations as the white players. Lodging for black players was located in the poor black areas of those towns. While in Plainview, Texas, he was accosted at gunpoint by a man who threatened his life if he played in that night's game. Stargell played and nothing came of the incident. He might have quit baseball over the racial difficulties that he experienced, but he was encouraged by letters he received from friend and baseball scout Bob Zuk. MLB career Beloved in Pittsburgh for his style of play and affable manner, Stargell hit seven of the 18 balls ever hit over Forbes Field's 86-foot-high right-field stands and several of the upper-tier home runs at its successor, Three Rivers Stadium. Though he became quickly known as Willie Stargell, his autograph suggests that he preferred his given name, Wilver. Biographer Frank Garland relates that Stargell's family and friends called him Wilver and that Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully also made a point of using Stargell's given name. Scully said that because he used the name Wilver, he became Stargell's mother's favorite broadcaster. Standing with long arms and a unique bat-handling practice of holding only the knob of the bat with his lower hand to provide extra bat extension, Stargell seemed larger than most batters. Stargell's swings seemed designed to hit home runs of Ruthian proportions. When most batters used a simple lead-weighted bat in the on-deck circle, Stargell took to warming up with a sledgehammer. While standing in the batter's box, he would windmill his bat until the pitcher started his windup. 1960s Stargell made his MLB debut at the end of the 1962 season at the age of 22. His 1963 rookie season was lackluster, but he enjoyed much more success the following season, his first as an everyday player. Stargell began and ended the season as the Pirates' everyday left-fielder, but spent extended periods playing first base as well. He hit the first home run at Shea Stadium in the first game played in that stadium on April 17, 1964. He made his first of seven trips to the All-Star Game that year. He returned to the All-Star Game the next two seasons, hitting over 100 runs batted in (RBI) in both years, and finishing respectively 14th and 15th in MVP voting. He won the first of the three NL Player of the Month awards of his career in June 1965 (.330, 10 HR, 35 RBI). Frequent offseason conditioning problems came to a head in 1967, when Stargell showed up to spring training at a weight of 235 pounds. The team mandated that he diet to get down to a weight of 215 pounds. His batting average dropped more than 40 points that season from .315 in 1966 to .271 in 1967; his home run total was reduced from 33 in 1966 to 20 in 1967. The team had a personal trainer work with Stargell before the 1968 season to get him in the best shape of his career, but Stargell had a poor season and manager Larry Shepard criticized Stargell's physique as too muscular. He finished out the decade with a strong performance in 1969 (.307, 29 HR, 92 RBI), and finished 21st in MVP voting. 1970s Stargell enjoyed another fine season in 1970, batting .264 with 31 home runs and 85 RBIs and finishing 15th in MVP voting. On August 1 of that year, Stargell collected five extra-base hits—three doubles and two home runs—in the Pirates' 20–10 victory over the Atlanta Braves at Fulton County Stadium. He became the third player, after Lou Boudreau in and Joe Adcock in , to collect five extra-base hits in one game. In the same game, teammate Bob Robertson also collected five hits, including a home run; not until Andrew McCutchen and Garrett Jones in would two Pirates collect five hits in the same game. The 1970 Pirates won the National League East title for their first postseason berth since winning the 1960 World Series. They were swept in that year's NLCS by the Cincinnati Reds, but not before Stargell collected six hits in 12 at-bats, the most hits by either team in this series. Stargell's career moved to another level in 1971. At age 31, he won the first of his two home-run titles in 1971; his 48 edged out Hank Aaron's 47 on the final week of the season and, to date, trail only Ralph Kiner's 54 and 51 in and , respectively, for most by a Pirate in one season. He won the final two NL Player of the Month awards of his career in April (.347, 11 HR, 27 RBI) and in June (.333, 11 HR, 36 RBI); yet he did not win the MVP award, finishing second to Joe Torre. In seven of the next nine seasons, Stargell finished in the top 10 in MVP voting, as his career moved onto a Hall of Fame track. He was a member of the Pirates' World Championship team, the Pirates defeating the Baltimore Orioles in seven games. The Pirates lost the first two games of that series, which Stargell said that media began referring to as "the St. Valentine's Day Massacre" before Pittsburgh's comeback. Stargell continued to post excellent numbers in 1972 (.293, 33, 112) finishing third in MVP voting behind Johnny Bench and Billy Williams. In 1973, Stargell achieved the rare feat of simultaneously leading the league in both doubles and homers. Stargell had more than 40 of each; he was the first player to chalk up this 40-40 accomplishment since Hank Greenberg in 1940; other players have done so since (notably Albert Belle, the only 50-50 player). Stargell won his second home-run title that year, edging out three Atlanta Braves: Davey Johnson's 43, Darrell Evans' 41 and Aaron's 40. He also led the league in runs batted in and slugging percentage. For the third year in a row, he was narrowly edged out of the MVP award, as Pete Rose took the honor. Beginning in 1975, after years of experimenting at the position, Stargell moved permanently to first base. He never played another game in the outfield. In 1977, Stargell hit his 400th career home run on June 29 against the St. Louis Cardinals. Stargell originated the practice of giving his teammates embroidered "Stargell stars" for their caps after a nice play or a good game. The practice began during the turbulent 1978 season, when the Pirates came from fourth place and 11.5 games behind in mid-August, to challenge the first-place Philadelphia Phillies for the division title. The season was scheduled to end in a dramatic, four-game showdown against the Phillies in Pittsburgh, in which the Pirates had to win all four games to claim the title. Following a Pirate sweep of the Friday-night double-header, Stargell belted a grand slam in the bottom of the first inning of the season's penultimate game to give the Pirates an early 4–1 lead, although the Pirates relinquished that lead later in the game and fell two runs short after a four-run rally in the bottom of the ninth inning, thus eliminating themselves from contention for the pennant. Stargell called that 1978 team his favorite team ever, and predicted that the Pirates would win the World Series the following year. The Pirates did win the World Series in 1979, in a similar style as they had ended the 1978 season: from last place in the NL East at the end of April, the Pirates clawed their way into a first-place battle with the Montreal Expos during the latter half of the season. They excited fans with numerous come-from-behind victories along the way (many during their final at-bat) to claim the division pennant on the last day of the season. At his urging as captain, the team adopted the Sister Sledge hit song "We Are Family" as the team anthem. Then, his play on the field inspired his teammates and earned him the MVP awards in both the NLCS and the World Series. Stargell capped off the year by hitting a dramatic home run in Baltimore during the late innings of a close Game 7 to seal a Pirates' championship. The home run was his third of the series and, coincidentally, credited Stargell with the winning runs in both Game 7s of the two postseason meetings between the Pirates and the Orioles (1971 and 1979). The 1979 World Series victory also made the Pirates the only franchise in baseball history to twice recover from a three-games-to-one deficit and win a World Series (previously they had done so in 1925 against the Washington Senators). For the series, Stargell went 12-for-30; along with his three home runs, he also recorded four doubles for 25 total bases, which remains tied as a World Series record, Reggie Jackson having set it in the 1977 World Series, and his seven extra-base hits (three HRs and four doubles) in the 1979 World Series also set a record. In addition to his NLCS and World Series MVP awards, Stargell finally took home the elusive MVP award (as co-winner along with St. Louis' Keith Hernandez) at the age of 39. Stargell is the only player to have won all three MVP trophies in a single year. He shared the Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sportsmen of the Year" award with NFL quarterback Terry Bradshaw, who also played at Three Rivers Stadium, for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Pirates manager Chuck Tanner said of Stargell, "Having him on your ball club is like having a diamond ring on your finger." Teammate Al Oliver once said, "If he asked us to jump off the Fort Pitt Bridge, we would ask him what kind of dive he wanted. That's how much respect we have for the man." 1980s Stargell played until 1982, but he never appeared in more than 74 games after 1979. He retired with 475 home runs despite playing much of his career at Forbes Field, whose center field distance was . Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente estimated, perhaps generously, that Stargell hit 400 fly balls to the warning track in left and center fields during his eight seasons in the park. The short fence in right field ( to the foul pole) at Forbes Field was guarded by a screen more than high which ran from the right-field line to the mark in right center. Three Rivers Stadium, a neutral hitter's park, boosted Stargell's power numbers. The Pirates moved into Three Rivers in mid-1970, and he hit 310 of his 475 career home runs from 1970 until his retirement, despite turning 30 in 1970. Stargell's two home run titles came in his first three years at Three Rivers. Stargell's last game was on October 3, 1982, at Three Rivers Stadium against the Montreal Expos. Batting leadoff, he hit a single off Steve Rogers. He was then pinch run by Doug Frobel and subsequently was replaced by Richie Hebner at first base. Long home runs At one time, Stargell held the record for the longest home run in nearly half of the NL parks. On August 5, 1969, Stargell hit a home run off Alan Foster that left the stadium and measured 507 feet, the longest home run hit at Dodger Stadium. He hit a second home run out of Dodger Stadium on May 8, 1973, against Andy Messersmith, measured at . Dodger Hall of Famer Don Sutton said of Stargell, "I never saw anything like it. He doesn't just hit pitchers, he takes away their dignity." Only four other home runs have been hit out of Dodger Stadium. On June 25, 1971, Stargell hit the longest home run in Veterans Stadium history during a 14–4 Pirates win over the Philadelphia Phillies. The shot came in the second inning and chased starting pitcher Jim Bunning out of the game. The spot where the ball landed was eventually marked with a yellow star with a black "S" inside a white circle until Stargell's 2001 death, when the white circle was painted black. The star remained in place until the stadium's 2004 demolition. In 1978, against Wayne Twitchell of the Montreal Expos, Stargell hit the only fair ball to reach the club deck of Olympic Stadium. The seat where the ball landed (the home run was measured at ) was replaced with a yellow seat, while the other seats in the upper deck are red. Upon the Expos departure in 2004, the seat was removed and sent to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. Bob Prince, the colorful longtime Pirate radio announcer, would greet a Stargell home run with the phrase "Chicken on the Hill". This referred to Stargell's ownership of a chicken restaurant in Pittsburgh's Hill District. For a time, whenever he homered, Stargell's restaurant would give away free chicken to all patrons present in the restaurant at the time of the home run, in a promotion dubbed "Chicken on the Hill with Will". Prince himself once promised free chicken to listeners if Stargell hit a home run; Stargell did homer and Prince picked up a $400 bill at the restaurant. Later life After retirement, Stargell spent two years as a first base coach for the Atlanta Braves from 1986 to 1988, wearing his customary #8. He was the first minor-league hitting coach for Chipper Jones. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988, his first year of eligibility. He had an awkward interaction with the Pirates that season when the team wanted to schedule a Willie Stargell Night to honor his Hall of Fame election. Stargell refused to participate in the team's plans, still stinging from the team's refusal to even consider him for its managerial job that season. In the 1985 trial of alleged cocaine dealer Curtis Strong, Stargell was accused by Dale Berra and John Milner (both former Pirates teammates) of distributing "greenies" (amphetamines) to players. Berra said that he obtained amphetamines from Stargell and Bill Madlock; he said he could get them from Stargell "on any given day I asked him for one." Stargell strongly denied these accusations. Commissioner Peter Ueberroth later cleared Stargell and Madlock of any wrongdoing. Stargell returned to the Pittsburgh club in 1997 as an aide to Cam Bonifay, the team's general manager. He also worked as a special baseball adviser to Pirates owner Kevin McClatchy, who called Stargell "the ultimate class act". Stargell was hospitalized for three weeks in 1999 to treat undisclosed medical problems with one of his organs. A source close to the Pirates blamed Stargell's health problems on his gaining weight after retiring as a player. Stargell lost some of that weight, but gained weight again while working for the Pittsburgh front office. After years of suffering from a kidney disorder, he died of complications related to a stroke in Wilmington, North Carolina, on April 9, 2001. In his later life, Stargell had also suffered from hypertension and heart failure. A segment of Stargell's bowel was removed more than two years before he died. He had been in the hospital recovering from gallbladder surgery at the time of his death. On April 7, 2001, two days before Stargell died, a larger-than-life statue of him was unveiled at the Pirates' new stadium, PNC Park, as part of the opening-day ceremonies. As his death occurred on the same day as the official opening of the stadium against the Reds, the statue served as a de facto memorial for Stargell. Legacy The Pirates retired his number 8 on September 6, 1982. In 1999, he ranked 81st on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was also nominated as a finalist for the MLB All-Century Team. He threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the 1994 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Stargell also threw out the ceremonial last pitch at Three Rivers Stadium before the team's move after the 2000 season. After Stargell died, Joe Morgan said, "When I played, there were 600 baseball players, and 599 of them loved Willie Stargell. He's the only guy I could have said that about. He never made anybody look bad and he never said anything bad about anybody." The Willie Stargell Foundation was established to promote research and treatment for kidney disease. Champion Enterprises sponsors a Willie Stargell Memorial Awards Banquet which raises money for disadvantaged children in Pittsburgh. Stargell also worked to raise awareness of sickle cell anemia. He formed the Black Athletes Foundation (BAF) shortly after President Richard M. Nixon identified the disease as a "national health problem" in the early 1970s. For a decade, BAF, renamed the Willie Stargell Foundation, raised research money and public awareness about the disease. Starting in 1981, sickle cell awareness and fundraising was gradually being assumed by The Sickle Cell Society Inc. The Willie Stargell Foundation transitioned to raising money for treatment of and research into kidney disease. Wilver “Willie” Stargell Avenue (formerly Tinker Avenue) is a major thoroughfare in his adolescent home of Alameda, California, connecting to the former Naval Air Station Alameda, and Stargell is honored with a plaque and plaza at its intersection with Fifth Street. See also List of Major League Baseball career hits leaders List of Major League Baseball players to hit for the cycle Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame List of Major League Baseball home run records List of Major League Baseball career home run leaders List of Major League Baseball career doubles leaders List of Major League Baseball career runs scored leaders List of Major League Baseball career runs batted in leaders List of Major League Baseball career total bases leaders List of Major League Baseball annual runs batted in leaders List of Major League Baseball annual home run leaders List of Major League Baseball annual doubles leaders List of Major League Baseball players who spent their entire career with one franchise References Further reading External links , or Retrosheet Category:1940 births Category:2001 deaths Category:African-American baseball coaches Category:African-American baseball players Category:Águilas Cibaeñas players Category:American expatriate baseball players in the Dominican Republic Category:American people of Seminole descent Category:Asheville Tourists players Category:Atlanta Braves coaches Category:Baseball players from Oklahoma Category:Columbus Jets players Category:Grand Forks Chiefs players Category:Major League Baseball first base coaches Category:Major League Baseball first basemen Category:Major League Baseball hitting coaches Category:Major League Baseball left fielders Category:Major League Baseball players with retired numbers Category:National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees Category:National League All-Stars Category:National League home run champions Category:National League RBI champions Category:Sportspeople from Alameda, California Category:People from Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma Category:Pittsburgh Pirates players Category:Pittsburgh Pirates coaches Category:Roswell Pirates players Category:San Angelo Pirates players Category:National League Most Valuable Player Award winners Category:World Series Most Valuable Player Award winners Category:National League Championship Series MVPs Category:American sportsmen Category:Baseball players from California Category:20th-century African-American sportspeople

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Laura Schlessinger

Schlessinger was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. She was raised in Brooklyn and later on Long Island. Her parents were Monroe "Monty" Schlessinger, a civil engineer, and Yolanda (nee Ceccovini) Schlessinger, an Italian Catholic war bride. Schlessinger has said her father was charming and her mother beautiful as a young woman.

Marriage and family life

Schlessinger met and married Michael F. Rudolph, a dentist, in 1972 while she was attending Columbia University. The couple had a Unitarian ceremony. Separating from Rudolph, Schlessinger moved to Encino, California in 1975 when she obtained a job in the science department at the University of Southern California. Their divorce was finalized in 1977. In 1975, while working in the labs at USC, she met Lewis G. Bishop, a professor of neurophysiology who was married and the father of three children. Bishop separated from his wife and began living with Schlessinger the same year. Speaking as one who went through and has personal experience with the social problems associated with such lifestyle choices, Schlessinger has vociferously proclaimed her disapproval of unwed couples "shacking up" and having children out of wedlock, helping others to not make the bad choices in the first place. According to her friend Shelly Herman, "Laura lived with Lew for about nine years before she was married to him." "His divorce was final in 1979. Bishop and Schlessinger married in 1985. Herman says that Schlessinger told her she was pregnant at the time, which Herman recalls as "particularly joyful because of the happy news." Schlessinger's only child, a son named Deryk, was born in November 1985. Schlessinger's husband, Lewis G. Bishop, died November 2, 2015, after being ill for 1.5 years. Schlessinger was estranged from her sister for years, and many thought she was an only child. She had not spoken to her mother for 18 to 20 years before her mother's death in 2002 from heart disease. Her mother's remains were found in her Beverly Hills condo approximately two months after she died, and lay unclaimed for some time in the Los Angeles morgue before Schlessinger had them picked up for burial. Concerning the day that she heard about her mother's death, she said: "Apparently she had no friends and none of her neighbors were close, so nobody even noticed! How sad." In 2006, Schlessinger wrote that she had been attacked in a "vulgar, inhumane manner by media types" because of the circumstances surrounding her mother's death, and that false allegations had been made that she was unfit to dispense advice based on family values. She said that she had not mourned the deaths of either of her parents because she had no emotional bond to them. CANNOTANSWER

Laura Catherine Schlessinger (born January 16, 1947) is an American talk radio host and author. The Dr. Laura Program, heard weekdays for three hours on Sirius XM Radio, consists mainly of her responses to callers' requests for personal advice and often features her short monologues on social and political topics. Her website says that her show "preaches, teaches, and nags about morals, values, and ethics." She is an inductee to the National Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago. Schlessinger used to combine her local radio career in Los Angeles with a private practice as a marriage and family counselor, but after going into national radio syndication, she concentrated her efforts on The Dr. Laura Program heard each weekday, and on writing self-help books. The books Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives and The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands are among her bestselling works. A short-lived television talk show hosted by Schlessinger was launched in 2000. In August 2010, she announced that she would end her syndicated radio show in December 2010. Her show moved to the Sirius XM Stars satellite radio channel on January 3, 2011. Schlessinger announced a "multiyear" deal to be on satellite radio. On November 5, 2018, her radio program moved to the Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111. Early life Schlessinger was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. She was raised in Brooklyn and later on Long Island. Her parents were Monroe "Monty" Schlessinger, a Jewish American civil engineer, and Yolanda (née Ceccovini) Schlessinger, a Catholic war bride from Italy. Schlessinger has said her father was charming and her mother beautiful as a young woman. She has a sister, Cindy, who is 11 years her junior. Schlessinger has described her childhood environment as unloving and unpleasant, and her family as dysfunctional. She has ascribed some of the difficulty to extended family rejection of her parents' mixed faith Jewish-Catholic marriage. Schlessinger said her father was "petty, insensitive, mean, thoughtless, demeaning, and downright unloving". She described her mother as a person with "pathological pride", who "was never grateful", who "would always find something to criticize," and who "constantly expressed disdain for men, sex, and love". She credited her father with giving her the drive to succeed. Schlessinger attended Westbury High School and Jericho High School, where she showed an interest in science. She received a bachelor's degree from Stony Brook University. Moving to Columbia University for graduate studies, she earned a master's and PhD in physiology in 1974. Her doctoral thesis was on insulin's effects on laboratory rats. After she began dispensing personal advice on the radio, she obtained training and certification in marriage and family counseling from the University of Southern California, where she worked in the biology department, and a therapist's license from the State of California. In addition, she opened up a part-time practice as a marriage and family therapist. Radio career Schlessinger's first appearance on radio was in 1975 when she called in to a KABC show hosted by Bill Ballance. Impressed by her quick wit and sense of humor, Ballance began featuring her in a weekly segment. Schlessinger's stint on Ballance's show led to her own shows on a series of small radio stations. By 1979, she was on the air Sunday evenings from 9:00 to midnight on KWIZ in Santa Ana, California. That year, the Los Angeles Times described her show as dealing with all types of emotional problems, "though sex therapy is the show's major focus". In the late 1980s, Schlessinger was filling in for Barbara De Angelis' noon-time, relationship-oriented talk show in Los Angeles on KFI, while working weekends at KGIL in San Fernando. Her big break came when Sally Jessy Raphael began working at ABC Radio, and Maurice Tunick, former vice president of talk programming for the ABC Radio Networks, needed a regular substitute for Raphael's evening personal-advice show. Tunick chose Schlessinger to fill in for Raphael. Schlessinger began broadcasting a daily show on KFI, which was nationally syndicated in 1994 by Synergy, a company owned by Schlessinger and her husband. In 1997, Synergy sold its rights to the show to Jacor Communications, Inc., for $71.5 million. Later, Jacor merged with Clear Channel Communications and a company co-owned by Schlessinger, Take on the Day, LLC, acquired the production rights. The show became a joint effort between Take on the Day, which produced it, Talk Radio Network, which syndicated and marketed it to radio stations, and Premiere Radio Networks, (a subsidiary of Clear Channel), which provided satellite facilities and handled advertising sales. As of September 2009, Schlessinger broadcast from her home in Santa Barbara, California, with KFWB as her flagship station. Podcasts and live streams of the show have been available on her website for a monthly fee, and the show was also on XM Satellite Radio. At its peak, The Dr. Laura Program was the second-highest-rated radio show after The Rush Limbaugh Show, and was heard on more than 450 radio stations. Writing in 1998, Leslie Bennett described the popularity of the show: In 2010—her last year on terrestrial radio—she was still No. 5. In May 2002, the show still had an audience of more than 10 million, but had lost several million listeners in the previous two years as it was dropped by WABC and other affiliates, and was moved from day to night in cities such as Seattle and Boston. These losses were attributed in part to Schlessinger's shift from giving relationship advice to lecturing on morality and conservative politics. Pressure from gay rights groups caused dozens of sponsors to drop the radio show, as well. In 2006, Schlessinger's show was being aired on about 200 stations. As of 2009, it was tied for third place along with The Glenn Beck Program and The Savage Nation. Schlessinger used "Hot Talkin' Big Shot", a song by country and blues singer and songwriter Nikki Hornsby, for several years as cue music for her radio program and for a national radio commercial advertising for the show. She also used "New Attitude" by Patti LaBelle. On August 17, 2010, during an appearance on Larry King Live, Schlessinger announced the end of her radio show, saying that her motivation was to "regain her First Amendment rights", and that she wanted to be able to say what is on her mind without "some special interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent." Several of her affiliates and major sponsors had dropped her show after her on-air use of a racial epithet on August 10 (see below). Specifically, she said, "[n-word n-word n-word] is what you hear [in rap]." On January 3, 2011, Schlessinger's show moved exclusively to Sirius XM Radio. She currently offers a short podcast of the "Call of the Day" from her SiriusXM daily show, and it is ranked in the top 25 "Kids and Family" podcasts on iTunes Television show In 1999, Schlessinger signed a deal with Paramount Domestic Television to produce a syndicated talk show titled Dr. Laura, which was carried in major markets by CBS's owned and operated stations and in 96% of the nation's markets overall for fall 2000. This was viewed as something of a coup by Paramount, as they felt that a popular personality such as Schlessinger could be the spark they needed to sell themselves as a daytime syndication powerhouse rivaling King World and Warner Bros. Television, which distributed the popular topical talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show and the variety talk show The Rosie O'Donnell Show. Leading up to the September 11, 2000, premiere of Dr. Laura, Schlessinger created a significant amount of controversy. In the months before the premiere of her TV show, Schlessinger called homosexuality a "biological error", said that homosexuality was acceptable as long as it was not public, and said that homosexuals should adopt older children. She also expressed her view that "a huge portion of the male homosexual populace is predatory on young boys." Schlessinger was frequently criticized in LGBT media for these views. Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, an LGBT media watchdog group, began monitoring Schlessinger's on-air comments about LGBT people, posting transcripts of relevant shows on its website. In March 2000, a group of gay activists launched StopDrLaura.com, an online campaign with the purpose of convincing Paramount to cancel Dr. Laura prior to its premiere. The group protested at Paramount studios, stating her views were offensively bigoted. StopDrLaura.com organized protests in 34 cities in the U.S. and Canada, and picked up on an advertiser boycott of the radio and the TV shows started by another grass-roots organization which called itself "Silence Of The Slams" operating its boycott through AOL Hometown. On Yom Kippur in 2000, Dr. Laura said she "deeply [regretted] the hurt this situation has caused the gay and lesbian community" and asked for forgiveness, while abstaining from offering a retraction of her words. Dr. Laura premiered to low ratings and unkind reviews. Critics and viewers complained that the format had been dumbed down and did not stand out from any other daytime talk show. The biting rhetoric that worked well on radio seemed overly harsh for face-to-face discourse, owing to the normal sympathetic nature of most other daytime hosts; the radical change in Schlessinger's demeanor from her radio persona left viewers cold. The television show failed to generate the energy and interest of Schlessinger's radio show. The credibility of Schlessinger's television program also suffered during its first month, when the New York Post reported that Schlessinger had used show staff to falsely pose as guests on the show. A September 25, 2000, episode named "Readin', Writin', and Cheatin'" featured a so-called college student who specialized in professional note-taking. On the next day's show, "Getting to the Altar," the same guest appeared in different hair and makeup and said she was a woman living with her boyfriend. In fact, the woman was San-D Duchas, a researcher for the show whose name appeared in the closing credits of the shows on which she posed as a guest. By November 2000, advertisers that had committed to Schlessinger's show had pulled their support due to plummeting ratings. CBS was displeased enough with the ratings that it began looking to either drop the series or move it to late-night slots on its stations within two months of its premiere. Other stations outside of CBS did the same thing, while others moved it to weaker sister stations. Dr. Laura aired its last first-run episode on March 30, 2001, on the stations that continued to air it, with reruns continuing until September 2001. In 2004, Schlessinger said that although the money and celebrity in television is greater, it is not as meaningful or intimate as radio, and for her, television was a "terrible experience". Publications Columns For several years, Schlessinger wrote a weekly column syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate that was carried in many newspapers, and in Jewish World Review. She discontinued the column in July 2000, citing lack of time due to her upcoming television show. She wrote a monthly column for WorldNetDaily between 2002 and 2004, with one entry in 2006. In 2006, Schlessinger joined the Santa Barbara News-Press, writing biweekly columns dealing with Santa Barbara news, as well as general news and cultural issues discussed on her radio show. She suspended the column in mid-2007, resumed writing it later, then discontinued it in December 2008. She currently writes columns on her blog, on a variety of topics. Books Schlessinger has written 13 books for adults and four for children. Several follow the mold of her successful Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives, with similarly named books giving advice for men, couples, and parents, while others are more moral in orientation. Magazine For several years, Schlessinger published a monthly magazine, Dr. Laura Perspective. She was the editor, her husband a contributing photographer, and her son the creative consultant. The magazine has ceased publication. Schlessinger was invited to the editorial board of Skeptic magazine in 1994 after taking a stand against recovered memory therapy, but resigned abruptly in 1998 after it published an issue on The God Question, insisting to its publisher Michael Shermer that there can be no question about God's existence. Website Schlessinger has a website that contains hints for stay-at-home parents, her blog, a reading list, and streaming audio of her shows (by subscription only). When it was started, 310,000 people tried to access it simultaneously and it crashed. Certain aspects of feminism are often discussed on her website; she was a self-proclaimed feminist in the 1970s, but is now opposed to feminism. Charitable work Schlessinger created the Laura Schlessinger Foundation to help abused and neglected children in 1998. Schlessinger regularly asked her on-air audience to donate items for My Stuff bags, which go to children in need. All other donations came from other people or groups, usually in the form of donated items for the bags. Per the foundation's reports, money not used for operations was directed toward pro-life organizations, such as crisis pregnancy centers. In September 2004, Schlessinger announced that she was closing down the foundation because it had become too difficult and costly for her husband and her to underwrite, and they wished to devote their "energies and resources to other pressing needs". In 2007, Schlessinger began fundraising for Operation Family Fund, an organization that aids the families of fallen or seriously injured veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2008, she helped raise more than $1 million for the organization. In 2017, Dr. Laura began donating proceeds from the sale of jewelry and glass art she designs and hand makes to Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation, a charitable organization that provides college scholarships to military children who lost a parent in the line of duty. Awards She was the first woman to win the Marconi Award for Network/Syndicated Personality of the Year (1997). In 1998 she received the American Women in Radio & Television's Genii Award. She was on the Forbes top 100 list of celebrities in 2000 with estimated earnings of $13 million. In September 2002, the industry magazine Talkers named Schlessinger as the seventh-greatest radio talk-show host of all time. In 2005 and 2008, Schlessinger received a National Heritage award from the National Council of Young Israel in March 2001. She also received the National Religious Broadcasters Chairman's Award, and has lectured on the national conservative circuit. She was the commencement speaker at Hillsdale College in June 2002, and was awarded an honorary degree as a doctor of tradition and culture. In 2007, Schlessinger was given an Exceptional Public Service award by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In 2008, Talkers presented her with an award for outstanding community service by a radio talk-show host. Schlessinger most recently was named to the National Radio Hall of Fame, Class of 2018. Schlessinger and Nanci Donnelan (the Fabulous Sports Babe) are the first two women with their own national radio shows to be inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. Religious beliefs Born to a Jewish father and an Italian Catholic mother, Schlessinger was raised in Brooklyn in a home that was without religion. Schlessinger was not religious until she started to practice Conservative Judaism in 1996. In 1998, Schlessinger, Bishop, and their son converted to Orthodox Judaism. and began instruction under Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. During this time, Schlessinger sometimes used Jewish law and examples to advise her callers about their moral dilemmas. She occasionally clarified ethical and moral issues with her local Orthodox Rabbi Moshe D. Bryski, before mentioning them on the air. She was embraced by many in the politically conservative segment of Orthodox Judaism for bringing more awareness of Orthodoxy to her radio show. Some of her expressed views were explicitly religious and are referenced her 1999 book The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God's Laws in Everyday Life. In July 2003, Schlessinger announced on her show that she was no longer an Orthodox Jew, but that she was still Jewish. Marriage and family life Schlessinger met and married Michael F. Rudolph, a dentist, in 1972 while she was attending Columbia University. The couple had a Unitarian ceremony. Separating from Rudolph, Schlessinger moved to Encino, California in 1975, when she obtained a job in the science department at the University of Southern California. Their divorce was finalized in 1977. In 1975, while working in the labs at USC, she met Lewis G. Bishop, a professor of neurophysiology, who was married and the father of three children. Bishop separated from his wife and began living with Schlessinger the same year. Schlessinger has vociferously proclaimed her disapproval of unwed couples "shacking up" and having children out of wedlock. According to her friend Shelly Herman, "Laura lived with Lew for about nine years before she was married to him." His divorce was final in 1979. Bishop and Schlessinger married in 1985. Herman says that Schlessinger told her she was pregnant at the time, which Herman recalls as "particularly joyful because of the happy news." Schlessinger's only child, a son named Deryk, was born in November 1985. Schlessinger's husband died November 2, 2015, after being ill for 1.5 years. In the late 1980s, when her son was almost 4, Schlessinger began training in Hapkido under Sayed Qubadi, and had earned a black belt in that art by 1993. Schlessinger was estranged from her sister for years, and many thought she was an only child. She had not spoken to her mother for 18 to 20 years before her mother's death in 2002 from heart disease. Her mother's remains were found in her Beverly Hills condo about two months after she died, and lay unclaimed for some time in the Los Angeles morgue before Schlessinger had them picked up for burial. Concerning the day that she heard about her mother's death, she said: "Apparently she had no friends and none of her neighbors were close, so nobody even noticed! How sad." In 2006, Schlessinger wrote that she had been attacked in a "vulgar, inhumane manner by media types" because of the circumstances surrounding her mother's death, and that false allegations had been made that she was unfit to dispense advice based on family values. She said that she had not mourned the deaths of either of her parents because she had no emotional bond to them. Controversies Libel lawsuit In 1998, Schlessinger was in a Costa Mesa surf shop with her son when she began perusing the skateboarding magazine Big Brother. On her radio program, Schlessinger declared the magazine to be "stealth pornography". When the owner of the store publicly denied that she found pornography in his store, Schlessinger sued him for lying, claiming that his denial had hurt her reputation. When the case went to court, the judge dismissed her suit, but the shop owner's $4 million defamation countersuit lodged for hurting the reputation of his store was allowed to stand. The suit has since been settled, but the terms of the settlement have not been revealed. Internet publication of nude photos In 1998, Schlessinger's early radio mentor, Bill Ballance, sold nude photos of Schlessinger to a company specializing in internet porn. The photos were taken in the mid-1970s, while Schlessinger was involved in a brief affair with the then-married Ballance. Schlessinger sued after the photos were posted on the internet, claiming invasion of privacy and copyright violation. The court ruled that Schlessinger did not own the rights to the photos. She did not appeal the ruling. She told her radio audience that she was embarrassed, but that the photos were taken when she was going through a divorce and had "no moral authority." Opposition to homosexuality Over the years, Schlessinger expressed opposition to homosexuality based on biblical scripture, at one point referring to homosexual behavior as "products of a biological disorder". Her rhetoric eventually prompted an open letter penned in the year 2000 responding to her position that used text of Bible decrees. Use of racial slur On August 10, 2010, Nita Hanson, a black woman married to a white man, called Schlessinger's show to ask for advice on how to deal with a husband who did not care when she was the subject of racist comments by acquaintances. Schlessinger first replied that "some people are hypersensitive" and asked for some examples from the caller. Hanson informed Schlessinger that her acquaintances had stated, "How you black people do this? You black people like doing that." Schlessinger responded that her examples were not racist and that "a lot of blacks only voted for Obama simply because he was half black. Didn't matter what he was going to do in office; it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise." Schlessinger continued by telling the caller that she had a "chip on [her] shoulder," was "sensitive," and also, "Don't NAACP me," and, "a lot of what I hear from black-think ... it's really distressing and disturbing." When the caller noted that she was referred to as the "n-word" by the individuals in question, Schlessinger complained that blacks are fine with cordially using the slur among themselves, but that it was wrong when whites used it to slur them. In doing so, she uttered "nigger" 11 times, albeit not directed at the caller. She discussed the word and its use by blacks and in black media. When Hanson asked, "Is it ever OK to say that word?" Schlessinger responded, "It depends how it's said. Black guys talking to each other seem to think it's OK." After the call Schlessinger said, "If you're that hypersensitive about color and don't have a sense of humor, don't marry out of your race." Early that evening, she wrote an apology to Los Angeles Radio People online journalist Don Barrett. A day later, as soon as she was back on the air, Schlessinger apologized. Hanson questioned the motivation and sincerity of Schlessinger's apology, believing it to be result of being "caught." Hanson also said that Schlessinger did not apologize for her comments on interracial marriage. Schlessinger announced in August 2010 that, while not retiring from radio, she would end her radio show at the end of 2010: In 2011, she began broadcasting on satellite radio with Sirius XM. Her program is also available as a podcast at iTunes and from her own website. Bibliography Advice books: Religious books: Children's books Why Do You Love Me?. With Martha Lambers, illustrated by Daniel McFeeley. HarperCollins. 1999. pp. 40. . But I Waaannt It!. Illustrated by Daniel McFeeley. HarperCollins. 2000. pp 40. . Growing Up Is Hard. Illustrated by Daniel McFeeley. HarperCollins. 2001. pp. 40. . Where's God? Illustrated by Daniel McFeeley. HarperCollins. 2003. pp. 40. . Fictional portrayals In January 1992, Schlessinger played herself in the Quantum Leap season four episode "Roberto!". In 1999, Schlessinger was parodied as Dr. Nora on the sitcom Frasier. The character was portrayed as having dogmatic and fundamentalist social views that promoted social conservatism. The character was also shown to have a degree that belies her therapeutic advice and was estranged from her mother. A fictional, non-speaking depiction of Schlessinger is briefly seen in The Simpsons eleventh season episode "Treehouse of Horror X", as one of the useless people put on a rocketship headed for the Sun. In 2000, in the episode "The Midterms" on The West Wing, the fictional "Dr. Jenna Jacobs" is scolded by President Bartlet, who criticizes her views on homosexuality, and points out she is not a doctor in any field related to morality, ethics, medicine or theology. He quotes from the Bible to point out the inconsistency of condemning certain sins but not others. Show creator Aaron Sorkin admitted to modeling Bartlet's diatribe on an anonymous "Letter to Dr. Laura," which was a popular viral email at the time. A fictionalised version of Schlessinger is featured as an antagonist in the 2000 animated series Queer Duck. In 2001, Schlessinger was portrayed on the claymation show Celebrity Deathmatch on the episode, "A Night of Vomit". She was in a fight with Ellen DeGeneres; she lost. See also Culture war Talk radio in the United States Joy Browne – radio psychologist Toni Grant – radio psychologist Santa Barbara News-Press controversy References External links Official website Category:Living people Category:American children's writers Category:American columnists Category:American family and parenting writers Category:American writers of Italian descent Category:American political commentators Category:American self-help writers Category:American social commentators Category:American social psychologists Category:American social workers Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American women radio presenters Category:American television talk show hosts Category:American women children's writers Category:Celebrity doctors Category:Columbia University alumni Category:Converts to Judaism from atheism or agnosticism Category:Female critics of feminism Category:Jewish American writers Category:Jewish women writers Category:Writers from Brooklyn Category:Radio personalities from Los Angeles Category:Radio personalities from New York City Category:Stony Brook University alumni Category:University of Southern California alumni Category:Journalists from New York City Category:American women non-fiction writers Category:American women columnists Category:21st-century American Jews Category:21st-century American women Category:1947 births Category:American women journalists Category:Radio controversies Category:Race-related controversies in radio Category:American hapkido practitioners

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Pete Pihos

Pihos was born in 1923 in Orlando, Florida. His parents, Louis and Mary Pihos, were Greek immigrants. In August 1937, when Pihos was 13 years old, his father, the operator of an all-night restaurant in Orlando, was murdered. His body was discovered behind the counter of the restaurant with his skull fractured in 12 places.

1945 and 1946 seasons

When Pihos returned to Indiana after his military service, he played at the fullback position for the 1945 Indiana Hoosiers football team that compiled the only undefeated record (9-0-1) in Indiana football history, won the program's first Big Ten Conference championship, and finished the season ranked No. 4 in the final AP Poll. He had only two days of practice before his first game back, Indiana's second game of the season, against Northwestern. He scored Indiana's only touchdown in the game, when he caught a pass at the Northwestern five-yard line and dragged three defenders with him over the goal-line. He scored the first two touchdowns in Indiana's 26-0 win over Purdue in the final game of the year. Pihos finished the season having carried the ball 92 times for 410 yards and seven touchdowns. He earned first-team All-America honors from Yank, the Army Weekly magazine, and finished eighth in voting for the Heisman Trophy. As a senior, Pihos played three positions (fullback, halfback, and quarterback) and was named the most valuable player on the 1946 Indiana Hoosiers football team. In a show of versatility, and despite suffering from a throat infection and thigh injury during the 1946 season, he carried the ball 76 times for 262 rushing yards, completed seven of twelve passes for 84 passing yards, had ten catches for 213 receiving yards, and scored eight touchdowns. He ended his college career by scoring three touchdowns against the Purdue Boilermakers, helping the Hoosiers win the Old Oaken Bucket for that year. Pihos finished third in the voting for the Chicago Tribune Silver Football as the most valuable player in the Big Nine Conference. In four seasons at Indiana, Pihos scored 138 points, which was then the school's all-time scoring record. He also broke Indiana career records for touchdowns and receptions. Bo McMillin, Indiana's head football coach since 1934, called Pihos "the greatest all-around football player our team has known in my time at Indiana." CANNOTANSWER

Peter Louis Pihos (; October 22, 1923August 16, 2011) was an American football player and coach. Pihos played college football, principally as an end and fullback, for Indiana University from 1942 to 1943 and 1945 to 1946. He was selected as a first-team All-American in 1942, 1943, and 1945. His college playing career was interrupted by service in the United States Army during World War II. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1966, the first Indiana player to be so honored. Pihos played professional football as an end in the National Football League (NFL) for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1947 to 1955. While with the Eagles, he helped the team win back-to-back NFL championships in 1948 and 1949. He was selected six times to play in the Pro Bowl (1950–1955) and six times as a first-team All-Pro (1948, 1949, 1952–1955). During his career, he was one of the NFL's leading receivers. He was named to the NFL 1940s All-Decade Team in 1969 and inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1970. After his playing career was over, Pihos was the head football coach for National Agricultural College (later renamed Delaware Valley University) from 1956 to 1958. He also held coaching positions with Tulane University (assistant coach, 1959–1960) and the Richmond Rebels (head coach, 1964–1965). Early life Pihos was born in 1923 in Orlando, Florida. His parents, Louis and Mary Pihos, were Greek immigrants. In August 1937, when Pihos was 13 years old, his father, the operator of an all-night restaurant in Orlando, was murdered. His body was discovered behind the counter of the restaurant with his skull fractured in 12 places. Police concluded he had been struck with a meat cleaver or axe. A young truck driver was arrested and charged with the murder but was not convicted. Pihos attended Orlando High School where he played football as a tackle and basketball as a guard. When he was a junior in high school, his mother moved the family to Chicago, where he attended Austin High School. College and World War II 1942 and 1943 seasons Pihos attended the Indiana University and played for the Indiana Hoosiers football team, first as an end in 1942 and 1943. As a sophomore in 1942, Pihos caught 17 passes for 295 yards. He scored the only touchdown in a 7–0 upset victory over the seventh-ranked Minnesota Golden Gophers, which came in the game's closing minutes and ended Minnesota's hope of a third straight Big Ten Conference title. He was named to the All-America team selected based on the votes of 1,706 fellow players, earned honorable mention on the United Press (UP) All-America team, and was a second-team selection on the UP's All-Big Ten team. As a junior in 1943, Pihos caught 20 passes for 265 yards and four touchdowns and scored two rushing touchdowns. He led the Hoosiers to a 34–0 victory over Wisconsin; after catching a touchdown pass from Bob Hoernschemeyer in the first half, head coach Bo McMillin moved him into the backfield for the second half where he scored two rushing touchdowns. He was named a first-team All-American by Sporting News, Collier's Weekly, and The New York Sun. He was also a unanimous selection by conference coaches as a first-team end on the 1943 All-Big Nine Conference football team. On January 1, 1944, Pihos and teammate Bob Hoernschemeyer played for the East team in the East–West Shrine Game, with Hoernschemeyer throwing a touchdown pass to Pihos in a 13–13 tie game. World War II Pihos was drafted into the United States Army in January 1944. He served in the 35th Infantry Division under George S. Patton. Commissioned as a second lieutenant on the battlefield, he was awarded the Bronze Star and Silver Star medals for bravery. He was granted a furlough to return to Indiana University in September 1945 while awaiting his final discharge. 1945 and 1946 seasons When Pihos returned to Indiana after his military service, he played at the fullback position for the 1945 Indiana Hoosiers football team that compiled the only undefeated record (9–0–1) in Indiana football history, won the program's first Big Ten Conference championship, and finished the season ranked No. 4 in the final AP Poll. He had only two days of practice before his first game back, Indiana's second game of the season, against Northwestern. He scored Indiana's only touchdown in the game, when he caught a pass at the Northwestern five-yard line and dragged three defenders with him over the goal-line. He scored the first two touchdowns in Indiana's 26–0 win over Purdue in the final game of the year. Pihos finished the season having carried the ball 92 times for 410 yards and seven touchdowns. He earned first-team All-America honors from Yank, the Army Weekly magazine, and finished eighth in voting for the Heisman Trophy. As a senior, Pihos played three positions (fullback, halfback, and quarterback) and was named the most valuable player on the 1946 Indiana Hoosiers football team. In a show of versatility, and despite suffering from a throat infection and thigh injury during the 1946 season, he carried the ball 76 times for 262 rushing yards, completed seven of 12 passes for 84 passing yards, had ten catches for 213 receiving yards, and scored eight touchdowns. He ended his college career by scoring three touchdowns against the Purdue Boilermakers, helping the Hoosiers win the Old Oaken Bucket for that year. Pihos finished third in the voting for the Chicago Tribune Silver Football as the most valuable player in the Big Nine Conference. In four seasons at Indiana, Pihos scored 138 points, which was then the school's all-time scoring record. He also broke Indiana career records for touchdowns and receptions. Bo McMillin, Indiana's head football coach since 1934, called Pihos "the greatest all-around football player our team has known in my time at Indiana." Professional football player Pihos was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles in the fifth round (41st overall pick) of the 1945 NFL Draft, but he continued to play for Indiana in 1945 and 1946. In February 1947, he signed to join the Eagles after his graduation in June. In his first NFL season, he caught 23 passes for 382 yards and seven touchdowns. He also blocked a punt by Sammy Baugh and returned it 26 yards for a touchdown against the Washington Redskins. The Eagles made it to the NFL Championship Game in each of Pihos' first three seasons with the team. In 1947, the team captured its first division championship. In the playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers for the Eastern Division title, Pihos blocked a punt to set up the first touchdown in the Eagles' 21–0 win. The Eagles then lost 28–21 to the Chicago Cardinals in the 1947 NFL Championship Game. Pihos caught three passes for 27 yards in that game and intercepted a pass while playing defense. The Eagles then won consecutive NFL championship games in 1948 and 1949. Pihos scored the only offensive touchdown of the 1949 championship game via a 31-yard reception in the second quarter during a heavy downpour. Pihos' 766 receiving yards and 11 receiving touchdowns in 1948 were both the second-most in the NFL that season. He earned first-team All-Pro recognition in 1948 from United Press (UP), New York Daily News, Chicago Herald-American, and Pro Football Illustrated and in 1949 from the International News Service, UP, Associated Press, and New York Daily News. He was invited to his first of six-straight Pro Bowls after the 1950 season. In 1951, Pihos led the Eagles in receptions and receiving yards and intercepted two passes as a defensive end. Pihos caught only 12 passes and scored only one touchdown in 1952, causing the Eagles front office to suspect he was washed up. However, he still managed to make the Pro Bowl and earn first-team All-Pro honors by the AP as a defensive end. Not willing take a pay cut and be an exclusive defensive end, he trained heavily during the off-season prior to 1953. He went on to have his greatest statistical success over the next three seasons, which were ultimately his final three; he recorded similar statistics over that three-year span (185 receptions, 2,785 yards, and 27 touchdowns) to his first six seasons (188 receptions, 2,834 yards, and 34 touchdowns). Pihos led the NFL in receptions in each of his final three seasons, in receiving yards twice, and in receiving touchdowns once. In 1953, he became the third different player to record a "triple crown" in receiving; he led the NFL in receptions (63), receiving yards (1,049), and receiving touchdowns (10) that season. In November 1955, Pihos announced that the current season would be his last as a player. In his final NFL game, on December 11 against the Chicago Bears, he caught 11 passes for 114 yards. He retired after playing in the Pro Bowl that January, in which he caught four passes and scored the East's first touchdown by out-leaping defender Jack Christiansen to snag a 12-yard pass from Eddie LeBaron. During his nine seasons of play with the Eagles, Pihos missed just one game. Coaching career National Agricultural In March 1956, shortly after retiring from the NFL, Pihos was hired as the head football coach at National Agricultural College (later renamed Delaware Valley University) in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. He had been an advisory coach for the college in 1955 and also taught classes in business law. He remained in the position for three years and led the 1958 National Aggies to a 5–2–1 record. His contract was not renewed after the 1958 season. Tulane In August 1959, Pihos was hired as an assistant coach under head coach Andy Pilney for the Tulane Green Wave football team. He was given responsibility for coaching the ends. He spent two years coaching at Tulane with the team compiling 3–6–1 records in both 1959 and 1960. In December 1960, Pihos resigned his position at Tulane. Cincinnati In February 1961, Pihos was hired by a group seeking to secure a professional football franchise for Cincinnati in the American Football League (AFL) for the 1962 season. He was the general manager of the enterprise and was also slated to be head coach of the proposed team. However, when the AFL announced its expansion plans for 1962, Cincinnati was not awarded a franchise. Semipro and minor league football In 1962 and 1963, Pihos served as the head coach of the Hammonton Bakers, a semipro football team in Hammonton, New Jersey. In 1964, Pihos served as the head coach of the Richmond Rebels of the Atlantic Coast Football League. He remained with the Rebels in 1965 as the team joined the Continental Football League. He led the Rebels to records of 8–5–1 in 1964 and 6–8 in 1965. He stepped down as the coach of the Rebels in February 1966. Honors Pihos received numerous honors for his accomplishments as a football player. His honors include the following: In October 1961, he was named to the Helms Athletic Foundation's Major League Football Hall of Fame. In February 1966, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. He was the first Indiana Hoosiers football player to receive the honor. In a halftime ceremony during the opening game of Indiana's 1966 season, the school presented Pihos with a special citation for his contribution to the university through football. In August 1969, as part of the NFL's 50th anniversary, the Pro Football Hall of Fame selected all-decade teams for each of the league's first five decades. Pihos was selected as an end on the NFL 1940s All-Decade Team. In February 1970, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. At the induction ceremony in August 1970, a telegram was presented from Vice President Spiro Agnew calling Pihos "the golden Greek of football" and "the most durable and versatile football player" of his time. In 1978, Pihos was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame. In 1982, he was one of the inaugural inductees into the Indiana Hoosiers Hall of Fame. In November 1987, he was one of the 11 inaugural inductees into the Philadelphia Eagles Honor Roll. Family and later years Pihos was married four times. In May 1944, he married Dorothea Lansing at the First Methodist Chapel in Bloomington, Indiana. Pihos was at that time a private in the Army stationed at Camp Reynolds. They met while both were students at Indiana University. She became a pediatrician. They were divorced in 1949. Pihos was next married in December 1949 to model Mary Cecile Clark, also known as Cecile Chandler. He and his second wife separated in 1965 and were divorced in 1967. He was married for a third time to Charlotte Berlings Wolfe in November 1967. His fourth marriage was to Donna Ballenger. After retiring from football, Pihos had a business career. As of 1970, he was a vice president of Regal Home Improvement Co. in Richmond, Virginia. In 1977, he was living in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and was employed as a vice president of Franklin National Life Insurance Co. In 2001, Pihos was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. In 2004, he was victimized by a con artist who acquired Pihos' lifetime collection of sports memorabilia in exchange for $30,000 in bogus checks. He spent his last years at the Grace Healthcare nursing home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He died there at age 87 in August 2011. His neurologist opined that Pihos' dementia was caused by blows to the head during his career as a football player. Pihos was buried at Bethel United Methodist Church Cemetery in Winston-Salem. Pihos' daughter Melissa Pihos made a series of documentary films about her father. She began in 2010 with a documentary short titled Dear Dad juxtaposing photos and footage from his days as a football player with images of him as he fought the disease. She also created Pihos: A Moving Biography, exploring aspects of her father's life and his struggle with Alzheimer's disease through film and dance. Her efforts culminated in a feature-length documentary titled Pihos: A Life in Five Movements. References External links Category:1923 births Category:2011 deaths Category:American football ends Category:Continental Football League coaches Category:Delaware Valley Aggies football coaches Category:Indiana Hoosiers football players Category:Philadelphia Eagles players Category:Tulane Green Wave football coaches Category:Eastern Conference Pro Bowl players Category:College Football Hall of Fame inductees Category:Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees Category:United States Army personnel of World War II Category:American people of Greek descent Category:United States Army officers Category:Coaches of American football from Illinois Category:Coaches of American football from Florida Category:Players of American football from Chicago Category:Players of American football from Orlando, Florida Category:Deaths from Alzheimer's disease Category:Neurological disease deaths in North Carolina

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Pete Pihos

Pihos was born in 1923 in Orlando, Florida. His parents, Louis and Mary Pihos, were Greek immigrants. In August 1937, when Pihos was 13 years old, his father, the operator of an all-night restaurant in Orlando, was murdered. His body was discovered behind the counter of the restaurant with his skull fractured in 12 places.

Professional football player

Pihos was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles in the fifth round (41st overall pick) of the 1945 NFL Draft, but he continued to play for Indiana in 1945 and 1946. In February 1947, he signed to join the Eagles after his graduation in June. In his first NFL season, he caught 23 passes for 382 yards and seven touchdowns. He also blocked a punt by Sammy Baugh and returned it 26 yards for a touchdown against the Washington Redskins. The Eagles made it to the NFL Championship Game in each of Pihos' first three seasons with the team. In 1947, the team captured its first division championship. In the playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers for the Eastern Division title, Pihos blocked a punt to set up the first touchdown in the Eagles' 21-0 win. The Eagles then lost 28-21 to the Chicago Cardinals in the 1947 NFL Championship Game. Pihos caught three passes for 27 yards in that game and intercepted a pass while playing defense. The Eagles then won consecutive NFL championship games in 1948 and 1949. Pihos scored the only offensive touchdown of the 1949 championship game via a 31-yard reception in the second quarter during a heavy downpour. Pihos' 766 receiving yards and 11 receiving touchdowns in 1948 were both the second-most in the NFL that season. He earned first-team All-Pro recognition in 1948 from United Press (UP), New York Daily News, Chicago Herald-American, and Pro Football Illustrated and in 1949 from the International News Service, UP, Associated Press, and New York Daily News. He was invited to his first of six-straight Pro Bowls after the 1950 season. In 1951, Pihos led the Eagles in receptions and receiving yards and intercepted two passes as a defensive end. Pihos caught only 12 passes and scored only one touchdown in 1952, causing the Eagles front office to suspect he was washed up. However, he still managed to make the Pro Bowl and earn first-team All-Pro honors by the AP as a defensive end. Not willing take a pay cut and be an exclusive defensive end, Pihos trained heavily during the off-season prior to 1953. He went on to have his greatest statistical success over the next three seasons, which were ultimately his final three; he recorded similar statistics over that three-year span (185 receptions, 2,785 yards, and 27 touchdowns) to his first six seasons (188 receptions, 2,834 yards, and 34 touchdowns). Pihos led the NFL in receptions in each of his final three seasons, in receiving yards twice, and in receiving touchdowns once. In 1953, he became the third different player to record a "triple crown" in receiving; he led the NFL in receptions (63), receiving yards (1,049), and receiving touchdowns (10) that season. In November 1955, Pihos announced that the current season would be his last as a player. In his final NFL game, on December 11 against the Chicago Bears, he caught 11 passes for 114 yards. He retired after playing in the Pro Bowl that January, in which he caught four passes and scored the East's first touchdown by out-leaping defender Jack Christiansen to snag a 12-yard pass from Eddie LeBaron. During his nine seasons of play with the Eagles, Pihos missed just one game. CANNOTANSWER

Peter Louis Pihos (; October 22, 1923August 16, 2011) was an American football player and coach. Pihos played college football, principally as an end and fullback, for Indiana University from 1942 to 1943 and 1945 to 1946. He was selected as a first-team All-American in 1942, 1943, and 1945. His college playing career was interrupted by service in the United States Army during World War II. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1966, the first Indiana player to be so honored. Pihos played professional football as an end in the National Football League (NFL) for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1947 to 1955. While with the Eagles, he helped the team win back-to-back NFL championships in 1948 and 1949. He was selected six times to play in the Pro Bowl (1950–1955) and six times as a first-team All-Pro (1948, 1949, 1952–1955). During his career, he was one of the NFL's leading receivers. He was named to the NFL 1940s All-Decade Team in 1969 and inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1970. After his playing career was over, Pihos was the head football coach for National Agricultural College (later renamed Delaware Valley University) from 1956 to 1958. He also held coaching positions with Tulane University (assistant coach, 1959–1960) and the Richmond Rebels (head coach, 1964–1965). Early life Pihos was born in 1923 in Orlando, Florida. His parents, Louis and Mary Pihos, were Greek immigrants. In August 1937, when Pihos was 13 years old, his father, the operator of an all-night restaurant in Orlando, was murdered. His body was discovered behind the counter of the restaurant with his skull fractured in 12 places. Police concluded he had been struck with a meat cleaver or axe. A young truck driver was arrested and charged with the murder but was not convicted. Pihos attended Orlando High School where he played football as a tackle and basketball as a guard. When he was a junior in high school, his mother moved the family to Chicago, where he attended Austin High School. College and World War II 1942 and 1943 seasons Pihos attended the Indiana University and played for the Indiana Hoosiers football team, first as an end in 1942 and 1943. As a sophomore in 1942, Pihos caught 17 passes for 295 yards. He scored the only touchdown in a 7–0 upset victory over the seventh-ranked Minnesota Golden Gophers, which came in the game's closing minutes and ended Minnesota's hope of a third straight Big Ten Conference title. He was named to the All-America team selected based on the votes of 1,706 fellow players, earned honorable mention on the United Press (UP) All-America team, and was a second-team selection on the UP's All-Big Ten team. As a junior in 1943, Pihos caught 20 passes for 265 yards and four touchdowns and scored two rushing touchdowns. He led the Hoosiers to a 34–0 victory over Wisconsin; after catching a touchdown pass from Bob Hoernschemeyer in the first half, head coach Bo McMillin moved him into the backfield for the second half where he scored two rushing touchdowns. He was named a first-team All-American by Sporting News, Collier's Weekly, and The New York Sun. He was also a unanimous selection by conference coaches as a first-team end on the 1943 All-Big Nine Conference football team. On January 1, 1944, Pihos and teammate Bob Hoernschemeyer played for the East team in the East–West Shrine Game, with Hoernschemeyer throwing a touchdown pass to Pihos in a 13–13 tie game. World War II Pihos was drafted into the United States Army in January 1944. He served in the 35th Infantry Division under George S. Patton. Commissioned as a second lieutenant on the battlefield, he was awarded the Bronze Star and Silver Star medals for bravery. He was granted a furlough to return to Indiana University in September 1945 while awaiting his final discharge. 1945 and 1946 seasons When Pihos returned to Indiana after his military service, he played at the fullback position for the 1945 Indiana Hoosiers football team that compiled the only undefeated record (9–0–1) in Indiana football history, won the program's first Big Ten Conference championship, and finished the season ranked No. 4 in the final AP Poll. He had only two days of practice before his first game back, Indiana's second game of the season, against Northwestern. He scored Indiana's only touchdown in the game, when he caught a pass at the Northwestern five-yard line and dragged three defenders with him over the goal-line. He scored the first two touchdowns in Indiana's 26–0 win over Purdue in the final game of the year. Pihos finished the season having carried the ball 92 times for 410 yards and seven touchdowns. He earned first-team All-America honors from Yank, the Army Weekly magazine, and finished eighth in voting for the Heisman Trophy. As a senior, Pihos played three positions (fullback, halfback, and quarterback) and was named the most valuable player on the 1946 Indiana Hoosiers football team. In a show of versatility, and despite suffering from a throat infection and thigh injury during the 1946 season, he carried the ball 76 times for 262 rushing yards, completed seven of 12 passes for 84 passing yards, had ten catches for 213 receiving yards, and scored eight touchdowns. He ended his college career by scoring three touchdowns against the Purdue Boilermakers, helping the Hoosiers win the Old Oaken Bucket for that year. Pihos finished third in the voting for the Chicago Tribune Silver Football as the most valuable player in the Big Nine Conference. In four seasons at Indiana, Pihos scored 138 points, which was then the school's all-time scoring record. He also broke Indiana career records for touchdowns and receptions. Bo McMillin, Indiana's head football coach since 1934, called Pihos "the greatest all-around football player our team has known in my time at Indiana." Professional football player Pihos was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles in the fifth round (41st overall pick) of the 1945 NFL Draft, but he continued to play for Indiana in 1945 and 1946. In February 1947, he signed to join the Eagles after his graduation in June. In his first NFL season, he caught 23 passes for 382 yards and seven touchdowns. He also blocked a punt by Sammy Baugh and returned it 26 yards for a touchdown against the Washington Redskins. The Eagles made it to the NFL Championship Game in each of Pihos' first three seasons with the team. In 1947, the team captured its first division championship. In the playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers for the Eastern Division title, Pihos blocked a punt to set up the first touchdown in the Eagles' 21–0 win. The Eagles then lost 28–21 to the Chicago Cardinals in the 1947 NFL Championship Game. Pihos caught three passes for 27 yards in that game and intercepted a pass while playing defense. The Eagles then won consecutive NFL championship games in 1948 and 1949. Pihos scored the only offensive touchdown of the 1949 championship game via a 31-yard reception in the second quarter during a heavy downpour. Pihos' 766 receiving yards and 11 receiving touchdowns in 1948 were both the second-most in the NFL that season. He earned first-team All-Pro recognition in 1948 from United Press (UP), New York Daily News, Chicago Herald-American, and Pro Football Illustrated and in 1949 from the International News Service, UP, Associated Press, and New York Daily News. He was invited to his first of six-straight Pro Bowls after the 1950 season. In 1951, Pihos led the Eagles in receptions and receiving yards and intercepted two passes as a defensive end. Pihos caught only 12 passes and scored only one touchdown in 1952, causing the Eagles front office to suspect he was washed up. However, he still managed to make the Pro Bowl and earn first-team All-Pro honors by the AP as a defensive end. Not willing take a pay cut and be an exclusive defensive end, he trained heavily during the off-season prior to 1953. He went on to have his greatest statistical success over the next three seasons, which were ultimately his final three; he recorded similar statistics over that three-year span (185 receptions, 2,785 yards, and 27 touchdowns) to his first six seasons (188 receptions, 2,834 yards, and 34 touchdowns). Pihos led the NFL in receptions in each of his final three seasons, in receiving yards twice, and in receiving touchdowns once. In 1953, he became the third different player to record a "triple crown" in receiving; he led the NFL in receptions (63), receiving yards (1,049), and receiving touchdowns (10) that season. In November 1955, Pihos announced that the current season would be his last as a player. In his final NFL game, on December 11 against the Chicago Bears, he caught 11 passes for 114 yards. He retired after playing in the Pro Bowl that January, in which he caught four passes and scored the East's first touchdown by out-leaping defender Jack Christiansen to snag a 12-yard pass from Eddie LeBaron. During his nine seasons of play with the Eagles, Pihos missed just one game. Coaching career National Agricultural In March 1956, shortly after retiring from the NFL, Pihos was hired as the head football coach at National Agricultural College (later renamed Delaware Valley University) in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. He had been an advisory coach for the college in 1955 and also taught classes in business law. He remained in the position for three years and led the 1958 National Aggies to a 5–2–1 record. His contract was not renewed after the 1958 season. Tulane In August 1959, Pihos was hired as an assistant coach under head coach Andy Pilney for the Tulane Green Wave football team. He was given responsibility for coaching the ends. He spent two years coaching at Tulane with the team compiling 3–6–1 records in both 1959 and 1960. In December 1960, Pihos resigned his position at Tulane. Cincinnati In February 1961, Pihos was hired by a group seeking to secure a professional football franchise for Cincinnati in the American Football League (AFL) for the 1962 season. He was the general manager of the enterprise and was also slated to be head coach of the proposed team. However, when the AFL announced its expansion plans for 1962, Cincinnati was not awarded a franchise. Semipro and minor league football In 1962 and 1963, Pihos served as the head coach of the Hammonton Bakers, a semipro football team in Hammonton, New Jersey. In 1964, Pihos served as the head coach of the Richmond Rebels of the Atlantic Coast Football League. He remained with the Rebels in 1965 as the team joined the Continental Football League. He led the Rebels to records of 8–5–1 in 1964 and 6–8 in 1965. He stepped down as the coach of the Rebels in February 1966. Honors Pihos received numerous honors for his accomplishments as a football player. His honors include the following: In October 1961, he was named to the Helms Athletic Foundation's Major League Football Hall of Fame. In February 1966, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. He was the first Indiana Hoosiers football player to receive the honor. In a halftime ceremony during the opening game of Indiana's 1966 season, the school presented Pihos with a special citation for his contribution to the university through football. In August 1969, as part of the NFL's 50th anniversary, the Pro Football Hall of Fame selected all-decade teams for each of the league's first five decades. Pihos was selected as an end on the NFL 1940s All-Decade Team. In February 1970, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. At the induction ceremony in August 1970, a telegram was presented from Vice President Spiro Agnew calling Pihos "the golden Greek of football" and "the most durable and versatile football player" of his time. In 1978, Pihos was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame. In 1982, he was one of the inaugural inductees into the Indiana Hoosiers Hall of Fame. In November 1987, he was one of the 11 inaugural inductees into the Philadelphia Eagles Honor Roll. Family and later years Pihos was married four times. In May 1944, he married Dorothea Lansing at the First Methodist Chapel in Bloomington, Indiana. Pihos was at that time a private in the Army stationed at Camp Reynolds. They met while both were students at Indiana University. She became a pediatrician. They were divorced in 1949. Pihos was next married in December 1949 to model Mary Cecile Clark, also known as Cecile Chandler. He and his second wife separated in 1965 and were divorced in 1967. He was married for a third time to Charlotte Berlings Wolfe in November 1967. His fourth marriage was to Donna Ballenger. After retiring from football, Pihos had a business career. As of 1970, he was a vice president of Regal Home Improvement Co. in Richmond, Virginia. In 1977, he was living in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and was employed as a vice president of Franklin National Life Insurance Co. In 2001, Pihos was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. In 2004, he was victimized by a con artist who acquired Pihos' lifetime collection of sports memorabilia in exchange for $30,000 in bogus checks. He spent his last years at the Grace Healthcare nursing home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He died there at age 87 in August 2011. His neurologist opined that Pihos' dementia was caused by blows to the head during his career as a football player. Pihos was buried at Bethel United Methodist Church Cemetery in Winston-Salem. Pihos' daughter Melissa Pihos made a series of documentary films about her father. She began in 2010 with a documentary short titled Dear Dad juxtaposing photos and footage from his days as a football player with images of him as he fought the disease. She also created Pihos: A Moving Biography, exploring aspects of her father's life and his struggle with Alzheimer's disease through film and dance. Her efforts culminated in a feature-length documentary titled Pihos: A Life in Five Movements. References External links Category:1923 births Category:2011 deaths Category:American football ends Category:Continental Football League coaches Category:Delaware Valley Aggies football coaches Category:Indiana Hoosiers football players Category:Philadelphia Eagles players Category:Tulane Green Wave football coaches Category:Eastern Conference Pro Bowl players Category:College Football Hall of Fame inductees Category:Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees Category:United States Army personnel of World War II Category:American people of Greek descent Category:United States Army officers Category:Coaches of American football from Illinois Category:Coaches of American football from Florida Category:Players of American football from Chicago Category:Players of American football from Orlando, Florida Category:Deaths from Alzheimer's disease Category:Neurological disease deaths in North Carolina

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Bonnie Raitt

Raitt was born in Burbank, California. She is the daughter of the Broadway musical star John Raitt and his first wife, the pianist Marjorie Haydock, and was raised in the Quaker tradition. She began playing guitar at Camp Regis-Apple Jack in Paul Smiths, NY, at an early age. Later she gained notice for her bottleneck-style guitar playing.

1977-1988

1977's Sweet Forgiveness album gave Raitt her first commercial breakthrough when it yielded a hit single in her remake of "Runaway." Recast as a heavy rhythm and blues recording based on a rhythmic groove inspired by Al Green, Raitt's version of "Runaway" was disparaged by many critics. However, the song's commercial success prompted a bidding war for Raitt between Warner Bros. and Columbia Records. "There was this big Columbia-Warner war going on at the time", recalled Raitt in a 1990 interview. "James Taylor had just left Warner Bros. and made a big album for Columbia...And then, Warner signed Paul Simon away from Columbia, and they didn't want me to have a hit record for Columbia - no matter what! So, I renegotiated my contract, and they basically matched Columbia's offer. Frankly the deal was a really big deal." Warner Brothers held higher expectations for Raitt's next album, The Glow, in 1979, but it was released to poor reviews as well as modest sales. Raitt would have one commercial success in 1979 when she helped organize the five Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The shows spawned the three-record gold album No Nukes, as well as a Warner Brothers feature film of the same name. The shows featured co-founders Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, John Hall, and Raitt as well as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Doobie Brothers, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Gil Scott-Heron, and numerous others. For her next record, 1982's Green Light, Raitt made a conscious attempt to revisit the sound of her earlier records. However, to her surprise, many of her peers and the media compared her new sound to the burgeoning new wave movement. The album received her strongest reviews in years, but her sales did not improve and this would have a severe impact on her relationship with Warner Brothers. CANNOTANSWER

Bonnie Lynn Raitt (; born November 8, 1949) is an American blues singer and guitarist. In 1971, Raitt released her self-titled debut album. Following this, she released a series of critically acclaimed roots-influenced albums that incorporated elements of blues, rock, folk, and country. She was also a frequent session player and collaborator with other artists, including Warren Zevon, Little Feat, Jackson Browne, The Pointer Sisters, John Prine and Leon Russell. In 1989, after several years of limited commercial success, she had a major hit with her tenth studio album Nick of Time, which included the song of the same name. The album reached number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has since been selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry. Her following two albums, Luck of the Draw (1991) and Longing in Their Hearts (1994), were multimillion sellers, generating several hit singles, including "Something to Talk About", "Love Sneakin' Up On You", and the ballad "I Can't Make You Love Me" (with Bruce Hornsby on piano). Her 2022 single "Just Like That" won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year. As of 2023, Raitt has received 13 competitive Grammy Awards, from 30 nominations, as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She ranked No. 50 on Rolling Stones list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time", and ranked No. 89 on the magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Australian country music artist Graeme Connors has said "Bonnie Raitt does something with a lyric no one else can do; she bends it and twists it right into your heart." In 2000, Raitt was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She has also received the Icon Award from the Billboard Women in Music Awards, and the MusiCares Person of the Year from The Recording Academy. Early life Bonnie Lynn Raitt was born on November 8, 1949, in Burbank, California. Her mother, Marge Goddard (née Haydock), was a pianist, while her father, John Raitt, was an actor in musical productions including Oklahoma! and The Pajama Game. Raitt is of Scottish ancestry; her ancestors constructed Rait Castle near Nairn. As a child, Raitt would often play with her two brothers, Steve and David, and was a self-described tomboy. John Raitt's job as a theater actor meant Bonnie did not interact with him as much as she would have liked. Raitt grew to resent her mother, as she became the main authority figure of the household whenever John was away. Raitt's musically inclined parents had a strong influence on her life. From a young age, she and her brothers were encouraged to pursue music. Initially Raitt played the piano but was intimidated by her mother's abilities. She instead began playing a Stella guitar, which she received as a Christmas gift in 1957 at the age of eight. Raitt did not take lessons, and instead took influence from the American folk music revival of the 1950s. She was also influenced by the beatnik movement, stating: "It represented my whole belief ... I'd grow my hair real long so I looked like a beatnik." From ages eight through fifteen, Raitt and her brothers attended a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains called Camp Regis. It was there where Raitt learned of her musical talents, when camp counselors would ask her to play in front of the campers. Learning how to play songs from folk albums then became a hobby for Raitt. As a teenager, Raitt was self-conscious about her weight and her freckles, and saw music as an escape from reality. "That was my saving grace. I just sat in my room and played my guitar,” said Raitt. After graduating from Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1967, Raitt entered Radcliffe College of Harvard University, majoring in Social Relations and African studies. She said her "plan was to travel to Tanzania, where President Julius Nyerere was creating a government based on democracy and socialism". She was the lead singer in a campus music group called the "Revolutionary Music Collective" founded by songwriter Bob Telson which played for striking Harvard students during the Student strike of 1970. Raitt befriended blues promoter Dick Waterman. During her second year of college, Raitt left school for a semester and moved to Philadelphia with Waterman and other local musicians. Raitt said it was an "opportunity that changed everything." Career 1970–1976 In the summer of 1970, she played with her brother David on stand-up bass with Mississippi Fred McDowell at the Philadelphia Folk Festival as well as opening for John Hammond at the Gaslight Cafe in New York. She was seen by a reporter from Newsweek, who began to spread the word about her performance. Scouts from major record companies were soon attending her shows to watch her play. She eventually accepted an offer from Warner Bros., who soon released her debut album, Bonnie Raitt, in 1971. The album was warmly received by the music press, with many writers praising her skills as an interpreter and as a bottleneck guitarist; at the time, few women in popular music had strong reputations as guitarists. While admired by those who saw her perform, and respected by her peers, Raitt gained little public acclaim for her work. Her critical stature continued to grow but record sales remained modest. Her second album, Give It Up, was released in 1972 to positive reviews. One journalist described the album as "an excellent set" and "established the artist as an inventive and sympathetic interpreter". However, it did not change her commercial fortunes. 1973's Takin' My Time was also met with critical acclaim, but these notices were not matched by the sales. Raitt began to receive greater press coverage, including a 1975 cover story for Rolling Stone, but with 1974's Streetlights, reviews for her work were becoming increasingly mixed. By this point, Raitt was already experimenting with different producers and different styles, and she began to adopt a more mainstream sound that continued through 1975's Home Plate. In 1976, Raitt made an appearance on Warren Zevon's eponymous album. She came to know Lowell George of the band Little Feat and was strongly influenced by his style of playing slide guitar with a pre-amp compressor. B.B. King once called Raitt the "best damn slide player working today". 1977–1988 1977's Sweet Forgiveness album gave Raitt her first commercial breakthrough, when it yielded a hit single in her remake of "Runaway". Recast as a heavy rhythm and blues recording based on a rhythmic groove inspired by Al Green, Raitt's version of "Runaway" was disparaged by many critics. However, the song's commercial success prompted a bidding war for Raitt between Warner Bros. and Columbia Records. "There was this big Columbia–Warner war going on at the time", recalled Raitt in a 1990 interview. "James Taylor had just left Warner Bros. and made a big album for Columbia... And then, Warner signed Paul Simon away from Columbia, and they didn't want me to have a hit record for Columbia – no matter what! So, I renegotiated my contract, and they basically matched Columbia's offer. Frankly the deal was a really big deal." Warner Brothers held higher expectations for Raitt's next album, The Glow, in 1979, but it was released to poor reviews as well as modest sales. Raitt had one commercial success in 1979 when she helped organize the five Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The shows spawned the three-record gold album No Nukes, as well as a Warner Brothers feature film of the same name. The shows featured co-founders Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, John Hall, and Raitt as well as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Doobie Brothers, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Gil Scott-Heron, and others. In 1980, she appeared as herself in the Paramount film Urban Cowboy where she sang "Don't It Make You Wanna Dance". For her next record, 1982's Green Light, Raitt made a conscious attempt to revisit the sound of her earlier records. However, to her surprise, many of her peers and the media compared her new sound to the burgeoning new wave movement. The album received her strongest reviews in years, but her sales did not improve and this had a severe impact on her relationship with Warner Brothers. Tongue and Groove and release from Warner Brothers In 1983, Raitt was finishing work on her follow-up album, Tongue and Groove. The day after mastering was completed on Tongue & Groove, the record company dropped Raitt from its roster, not being happy with her commercial performance up to that point. The album was shelved and not released, and Raitt was left without a record contract. At this time Raitt was also struggling with alcohol and drug abuse problems. Despite her personal and professional problems, Raitt continued to tour and participate in political activism. In 1985, she sang and appeared in the video of "Sun City", the anti-apartheid song written and produced by guitarist Steven Van Zandt. Along with her participation in Farm Aid and Amnesty International concerts, Raitt traveled to Moscow, Russia in 1987 to participate in the first joint Soviet/American Peace Concert, later shown on the Showtime cable network. Also in 1987, Raitt organized a benefit in Los Angeles for Countdown '87 to Stop Contra Aid. The benefit featured herself, along with Don Henley, Herbie Hancock, and others. Two years after being dropped from Warner Brothers Records, the label notified Raitt of their plans to release the Tongue and Groove album. "I said it wasn't really fair," recalled Raitt. "I think at this point they felt kind of bad. I mean, I was out there touring on my savings to keep my name up, and my ability to draw was less and less. So they agreed to let me go in and recut half of it, and that's when it came out as Nine Lives." A critical and commercial disappointment, Nine Lives, released in 1986, was Raitt's last new recording for Warner Brothers. In late 1987, Raitt joined singers k.d. lang and Jennifer Warnes as background vocalists for Roy Orbison's television special, Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night. Following this highly acclaimed broadcast, Raitt began working on new material. By then, she was clean and sober, having resolved her problems with substance abuse. She later credited Stevie Ray Vaughan for his help in a Minnesota State Fair concert the night after Vaughan's 1990 death. During this time, Raitt considered signing with the Prince-owned Paisley Park Records, but they could not come to an agreement and negotiations fell through. Instead, she began recording a bluesy mix of pop and rock songs under the production guidance of Don Was at Capitol Records. Raitt had met Was through Hal Wilner, who was putting together Stay Awake, a tribute album to Disney music for A&M. Was and Wilner both wanted Raitt to sing lead on an adult-contemporary arrangement created by Was for "Baby Mine", the lullaby from Dumbo. Raitt was very pleased with the sessions, and she asked Was to produce her next album. 1989–1999: Commercial breakthrough After working with Was on the Stay Awake album, Raitt's management, Gold Mountain, approached numerous labels about a new record deal and found interest from Capitol Records. Raitt was signed to Capitol by A&R executive Tim Devine. With her first Capitol Records release, and after nearly twenty years in the business, Raitt achieved commercial success with Nick of Time, her tenth overall album of her career. Released in the spring of 1989, Nick of Time went to number one on the U.S. album chart following Raitt's Grammy sweep in early 1990. This album has also been voted number 230 in the Rolling Stone list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Raitt later stated that her 10th try was "my first sober album." At the same time, Raitt received a fourth Grammy Award for her duet "I'm in the Mood" with John Lee Hooker on his album The Healer. Nick of Time was also the first of many of her recordings to feature her longtime rhythm section of Ricky Fataar and James "Hutch" Hutchinson (although previously Fataar had played on her Green Light album and Hutchinson had worked on Nine Lives), both of whom continue to record and tour with her. Since its release in 1989, Nick of Time has currently sold over five million copies in the US alone. Raitt followed up this success with three more Grammy Awards for her next album, 1991's Luck of the Draw, which sold seven million copies in the United States. Three years later, in 1994, she added two more Grammys with her album Longing in Their Hearts, her second number one album, that sold two million copies in the US. Raitt's collaboration with Don Was amicably came to an end with 1995's live release Road Tested. Released to solid reviews, it was certified gold in the US. "Rock Steady" was a hit written by Bryan Adams and Gretchen Peters in 1995. The song was written as a duet with Bryan Adams and Bonnie Raitt for her Road Tested tour, which also became one of her albums. The original demo version of the song appears on Adams' 1996 single "Let's Make a Night to Remember". For her next studio album, Raitt hired Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake as her producers. "I loved working with Don Was but I wanted to give myself and my fans a stretch and do something different," Raitt stated. Her work with Froom and Blake was released on Fundamental in 1998. 2000–2007 In March 2000, Raitt was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Silver Lining was released in 2002. In the US, it reached number 13 on the Billboard chart and was later certified Gold. It contains the singles "I Can't Help You Now", "Time of Our Lives", and the title track. All three singles charted within the top 40 of the US Adult Contemporary chart. On March 19, 2002, Bonnie Raitt received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the recording industry, located at 1750 N. Vine Street. In 2003 Capitol Records released the compilation album The Best of Bonnie Raitt. It contains songs from her prior Capitol albums from 1989 to 2002 including Nick of Time, Luck of the Draw, Longing in Their Hearts, Road Tested, Fundamental, and Silver Lining. Raitt was featured on the album True Love by Toots and the Maytals, which won the Grammy Award in 2004 for Best Reggae Album. Souls Alike was released in September 2005. In the US, it reached the top 20 on the Billboard chart. It contains the singles "I Will Not Be Broken" and "I Don't Want Anything to Change", which both charted in the top 40 of the US Adult Contemporary chart. In 2006, she released the live DVD/CD Bonnie Raitt and Friends, which was filmed as part of the critically acclaimed VH1 Classic Decades Rock Live! concert series, featuring special guests Keb' Mo', Alison Krauss, Ben Harper, Jon Cleary, and Norah Jones. The DVD was released by Capitol Records on August 15. Bonnie Raitt and Friends, which was recorded live in Atlantic City, NJ on September 30, 2005, features never-before-seen performance and interview footage, including four duets not included in the VH1 Classic broadcast of the concert. The accompanying CD features 11 tracks, including the radio single "Two Lights in the Nighttime" (featuring Ben Harper). In 2007, Raitt contributed to Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino. With Jon Cleary, she sang a medley of "I'm in Love Again" and "All by Myself" by Fats Domino. Raitt is interviewed on screen and appears in performance footage in the 2005 documentary film Make It Funky!, which presents a history of New Orleans music and its influence on rhythm and blues, rock and roll, funk and jazz. In the film, Raitt performs "What is Success" with Allen Toussaint and band, a song he wrote and that Raitt included on her 1974 album Streetlights. 2008–present Raitt appeared on the June 7, 2008 broadcast of Garrison Keillor's radio program A Prairie Home Companion. She performed two blues songs with Keb' Mo': "No Getting Over You" and "There Ain't Nothin' in Ramblin'". Raitt also sang "Dimming of the Day" with Richard Thompson. This show, along with another one with Raitt and her band in October 2006, is archived on the Prairie Home Companion website. Raitt appeared in the 2011 documentary Reggae Got Soul: The Story of Toots and the Maytals, which was featured on the BBC and described as "The untold story of one of the most influential artists ever to come out of Jamaica". In February 2012, Raitt performed a duet with Alicia Keys at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards in 2012 honoring Etta James. In April 2012, Raitt released her first studio album since 2005, entitled Slipstream. It charted at Number 6 on the US Billboard 200 chart marking her first top ten album since 1994's Longing in Their Hearts. The album was described as "one of the best of her 40-year career" by American Songwriter magazine. In September 2012, Raitt was featured in a campaign called "30 Songs / 30 Days" to support Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a multi-platform media project inspired by a project outlined in a book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. In 2013, she appeared on Foy Vance's album Joy of Nothing. On May 30, 2015, Leon Russell, Bonnie Raitt and Ivan Neville gave a performance at The Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, California to raise cash for Marty Grebb who was battling cancer. Grebb had played on some of their albums. In February 2016, Raitt released her seventeenth studio album Dig In Deep. The album charted at number 11 on the US Billboard 200 chart and received favorable reviews. The album features the single "Gypsy in Me" as well as a cover of the INXS song "Need You Tonight". Raitt cancelled the first leg of her 2018 spring-summer touring schedule due to a recently discovered medical issue requiring surgical intervention. She reported that a "full recovery" is expected and that she planned to resume touring with already-scheduled dates in June 2018. In 2022, Raitt announced the title of her 21st studio album would be Just Like That.... The record was released on April 22, 2022, and coincided with the beginning of a nationwide tour that ran through November 2022. Preceding the album, Raitt released "Made Up Mind", a song originally written by Canadian roots duo The Bros. Landreth, as the lead single. The title track of the album won for Song of the Year at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2023. The song also won in the Best American Roots Song category. Artistry Raitt possesses a contralto vocal range. Music journalist Robert Christgau described Raitt's voice as not particularly beautiful but "textured", capable of shouting, crooning, "carry[ing] a tune or fill[ing] a room". Christgau likened her vocal style to "a loving woman who has the touch, soft and hard at the right times in the right places". Journalist Will Hermes described Raitt's voice as warm and precise. Describing her as a "A master interpreter of other writers’ songs", Chris Hansen Orf of The Arizona Republic note that Raitt is equally skilled at singing blues, folk, country, rock and pop music. Kevin McKeough of the Chicago Tribune observed that blues has "remained the bedrock of all of Raitt's musical excursions", with her voice alternating between "sigh to a call to a sustained cry". Discussing the ability of a singer to make use of her voice, singer Linda Ronstadt stated "Of my own peers, Bonnie Raitt has way more musicianship than I do." Singer and guitarist David Crosby has said that Raitt is his favorite singer of all time. Personal life Raitt has taken sabbaticals, including after the deaths of her parents, brother, and best friend. She has said "When I went through a lot of loss, I took a hiatus." Raitt and actor Michael O'Keefe were married on April 27, 1991. They announced their divorce on November 9, 1999, with a factor appearing to be that their careers caused considerable time apart. Drug and alcohol use and recovery Raitt used alcohol and drugs, but began psychotherapy and joined Alcoholics Anonymous in the late 1980s. "I thought I had to live that partying lifestyle in order to be authentic," she said, "but in fact if you keep it up too long, all you're going to be is sloppy or dead." She became clean in 1987. She has credited Stevie Ray Vaughan for breaking her substance abuse, saying that what gave her the courage to admit her alcohol problem and stop drinking was seeing that Stevie Ray Vaughan was an even better musician when sober. She has also said that she stopped because she realized that the "late night life" was not working for her. In 1989, she said, "I really feel like some angels have been carrying me around. I just have more focus and more discipline, and consequently more self-respect." Political activism Raitt's political involvement goes back to the early 1970s. Her 1972 album Give It Up had a dedication "to the people of North Vietnam ..." printed on the back. Raitt's web site urges fans to learn more about preserving the environment. She was a founding member of Musicians United for Safe Energy in 1979 and a catalyst for the larger anti-nuclear movement, becoming involved with groups like the Abalone Alliance and Alliance for Survival. In 1994 at the urging of Dick Waterman, Raitt funded the replacement of a headstone for one of her mentors, blues guitarist Fred McDowell through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund. Raitt later financed memorial headstones in Mississippi for musicians Memphis Minnie, Sam Chatmon, and Tommy Johnson again with the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund. In 2002, Raitt signed on as an official supporter of Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit organization that provides free musical instruments and free lessons to children in public schools throughout the U.S. She has visited children in the program and sits on the organization's board of directors as an honorary member. At the Stockholm Jazz Festival in July 2004, Raitt dedicated a performance of "Your Good Thing (Is About to End)", from her 1979 album The Glow, to sitting (and later re-elected) U.S. President George W. Bush. She was quoted as saying "We're gonna sing this for George Bush because he's out of here, people!". In 2008, Raitt donated a song to the Aid Still Required's CD to assist with relief efforts in Southeast Asia from the 2004 tsunami. Raitt worked with Reverb, a non-profit environmental organization, for her 2005 fall/winter and 2006 spring/summer/fall tours. Raitt is part of the No Nukes group, which opposes the expansion of nuclear power. In 2007, No Nukes recorded a music video of a new version of the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth". During the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Raitt, along with Jackson Browne and bassist James "Hutch" Hutchinson, performed at campaign appearances for candidate John Edwards. During the 2016 Democratic primary campaign, Raitt endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Discography Bonnie Raitt (1971) Give It Up (1972) Takin' My Time (1973) Streetlights (1974) Home Plate (1975) Sweet Forgiveness (1977) The Glow (1979) Green Light (1982) Nine Lives (1986) Nick of Time (1989) Luck of the Draw (1991) Longing in Their Hearts (1994) Fundamental (1998) Silver Lining (2002) Souls Alike (2005) Slipstream (2012) Dig In Deep (2016) Just Like That... (2022) Guitar Raitt's principal touring guitar is a customized Fender Stratocaster that she nicknamed Brownie. This became the basis for a signature model in 1996. Raitt was the first female musician to receive a signature Fender line. Awards Grammy Awards |- | 1980 |"You're Gonna Get What's Coming" |rowspan="3"|Best Female Rock Vocal Performance | |- | 1983 |"Green Light" | |- | 1987 |"No Way to Treat a Lady" | |- |rowspan="4"| 1990 |rowspan="2"|Nick of Time |Album of the Year | |- |Best Female Rock Vocal Performance | |- |"Nick of Time" |Best Female Pop Vocal Performance | |- |"I'm in the Mood" (with John Lee Hooker) |Best Traditional Blues Recording | |- |rowspan="6"| 1992 |rowspan="2"|Luck of the Draw |Album of the Year | |- |Best Rock Vocal Solo Performance | |- |rowspan="2"|"Something to Talk About" |Record of the Year | |- |Best Female Pop Vocal Performance | |- |"Good Man, Good Woman" |Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal | |- |Bonnie Raitt |MusiCares Person of the Year | |- |rowspan="5"| 1995 |rowspan="2"|Longing in Their Hearts |Album of the Year | |- |Best Pop Vocal Album | |- |rowspan="2"|"Love Sneakin' Up On You" |Record of the Year | |- |Best Female Rock Vocal Performance | |- |"Longing in Their Hearts" |Best Female Pop Vocal Performance | |- |1996 |"You Got It" |Best Female Pop Vocal Performance | |- |rowspan="3"|1997 |Road Tested |Best Rock Album | |- |"Burning Down the House" |Best Female Rock Vocal Performance | |- |"SRV Shuffle" |Best Rock Instrumental Performance | |- | 1999 |"Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" (with Jackson Browne) |Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals | |- | 2003 |"Gnawin' on It" |rowspan="2"|Best Female Rock Vocal Performance | |- | 2004 | "Time of Our Lives" | |- | 2006 |"I Will Not Be Broken" |Best Female Pop Vocal Performance | |- |2013 |Slipstream |Best Americana Album | |- |2022 |Herself |Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award | |- : Not a Grammy Award, but awarded by The Recording Academy |rowspan="4"| 2023 |rowspan="2"| "Just Like That" |Song of the Year | |- |Best American Roots Song | |- |Just Like That... |Best Americana Album | |- |"Made Up Mind" |Best Americana Performance | |} Americana Music Honors and Awards |- |2012 |Herself |Lifetime Achievement Award for Performance | |- |2016 |Herself |Artist of the Year | |} Rock and Roll Hall of Fame |- |2000 |Herself |Hall of Fame induction | |} Other awards In 1992, Raitt was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music. In 1997, Raitt was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal. In 2017, Raitt was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Guitar Museum. In 2018, Raitt received the People's Voice Award from the Folk Alliance International Awards in recognition of her activism. In 2022, Raitt received the Icon Award at the Billboard Women in Music Awards. References Citations General references External links Fansite: Bonnie's Pride and Joy [ Allmusic Guide Profile] Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:American alternative country singers Category:American women country singers Category:American country singer-songwriters Category:American anti–nuclear power activists Category:American blues guitarists Category:American blues pianists Category:American women pianists Category:American blues singer-songwriters Category:American women rock singers Category:American women singer-songwriters Category:American folk rock musicians Category:American feminists Category:American folk singers Category:American humanitarians Category:Women humanitarians Category:Record producers from California Category:American rock songwriters Category:Blues rock musicians Category:Electric blues musicians Category:Feminist musicians Category:Fingerstyle guitarists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Slide guitarists Category:Proponents of Christian feminism Category:Radcliffe College alumni Category:Capitol Records artists Category:Warner Music Group artists Category:Warner Records artists Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:Activists from California Category:Country musicians from California Category:Guitarists from California Category:Musicians from Burbank, California Category:Singer-songwriters from California Category:21st-century American pianists Category:20th-century American women singers Category:21st-century American women singers Category:20th-century American pianists Category:American women record producers Category:20th-century American women guitarists Category:20th-century American guitarists Category:21st-century American women guitarists Category:21st-century American guitarists Category:Proper Records artists Category:20th-century American singers Category:21st-century American singers Category:American contraltos Category:American activists

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Stephen Hillenburg

Stephen McDannell Hillenburg (born August 21, 1961) is an American cartoonist, animator, writer, producer, director, and former marine biologist. He is the creator of the Nickelodeon television series SpongeBob SquarePants (1999-present) which he has also directed, produced, and written. It has gone on to become one of the longest-running American television series as well as the highest-rated show ever to air on Nickelodeon. Born in Lawton, Oklahoma and raised in Anaheim, California, Hillenburg became fascinated with the ocean as a child and also developed an interest in art.

Personal life

Hillenburg's wife, Karen, is a chef who teaches at the New School of Cooking in Culver City, California. Hillenburg deems her to be the funniest person that he knows. The couple have a son named Clay (born c. 1998). Hillenburg formerly resided in Hollywood and in Pasadena, and now lives with his family in San Marino, California. His hobbies include surfing, snorkeling, scuba diving, and performing "noisy rock music" on his guitar. He would jam with his son who is a drummer which, according to Hillenburg, is "a great way to bond with each other." He also enjoys birdwatching at home, but says that he was always "an ocean freak". According to his colleagues, Hillenburg is "a perfectionist workaholic". He is also known for his private nature. Julia Pistor, co-producer of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, noted that Hillenburg is "very shy". She went on to say, "He doesn't want people to know about his life or family. He's just a really funny, down-to-earth guy with a dry sense of humor who puts his family first and keeps us on our toes in keeping our corporate integrity." Hillenburg said about himself, "I make animation because I like to draw and create things. I have no real interest to be on camera or to be a celebrity. It's not that I don't like people, but I like having my privacy." In March 2017, Hillenburg disclosed that he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a terminal illness that affects and causes the death of neurons that control the brain and the spinal cord. He released a statement to the Variety magazine after his diagnosis, in which he affirmed that he would continue to work on SpongeBob SquarePants "for as long as [he is] able." He stated further, "My family and I are grateful for the outpouring of love and support. We ask that our sincere request for privacy be honored during this time." Hillenburg is currently in the early stages of the disease, according to a source close to him. CANNOTANSWER

Stephen McDannell Hillenburg (August 21, 1961 – November 26, 2018) was an American animator, writer, producer, director, and marine science educator. He is known for creating the Nickelodeon animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants, on which he served as the showrunner for the first three seasons of the show, and which has become the fifth-longest-running American animated series. Born in Lawton, Oklahoma and raised in Anaheim, California, Hillenburg became fascinated with the ocean as a child and developed an interest in art. He started his professional career in 1984, instructing marine biology at the Orange County Marine Institute, where he wrote The Intertidal Zone, an informative picture book about tide-pool animals, which he used to educate his students. In 1989, two years after leaving teaching, he enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts to pursue a career in animation. He was later offered a job on the Nickelodeon animated television series Rocko's Modern Life (19931996) after his success with The Green Beret and Wormholes (both 1992), short films that he made while studying animation. In 1994, Hillenburg began developing The Intertidal Zone characters and concepts for what became SpongeBob SquarePants, which has aired continuously since 1999. He also directed The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004), which he originally intended to be the series finale. He then resigned as showrunner, but Nickelodeon continued to produce more episodes after he left the series. He resumed making short films with Hollywood Blvd., USA in 2013 but was credited as an executive producer for SpongeBob SquarePants. He co-wrote the story for the second film adaptation of the series, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, released in 2015. Besides his two Emmy Awards and six Annie Awards for SpongeBob SquarePants, Hillenburg also received other recognition, such as an accolade from Heal the Bay for his efforts in elevating marine life awareness and the Television Animation Award from the National Cartoonists Society. Hillenburg announced he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2017 but stated he would continue working on SpongeBob SquarePants as long as possible. He died from the disease on November 26, 2018, at the age of 57. Early life and education Stephen McDannell Hillenburg was born on August21, 1961 at Fort Sill, a United States Army post in Lawton, Oklahoma, where his father, Kelly N. Hillenburg Jr., worked for the U.S. military. His mother, Nancy (née Dufour), taught visually impaired students. When he was a year old, the family moved to Orange County, California, where his father began a career as a draftsman and designer in the aerospace industry. His younger brother, Bryan, eventually became a draftsman/designer as well. When an interviewer asked Hillenburg to describe himself as a child, he replied that he was "probably well-meaning and naive like all kids." His passion for sea life can be traced to his childhood, when films by Jacques Cousteau, a French oceanographer, made a strong impression on him. Hillenburg said that Cousteau "provided a view into that world", which he had not known existed. He liked to explore tide pools as a child, bringing home objects that "should have been left there and that ended up dying and smelling really bad." Hillenburg also developed his interest in art at a young age. His first drawing was of an orange slice. An illustration which he drew in third grade, depicting "a bunch of army men... kissing and hugging instead of fighting", brought him the first praise for his artwork, when his teacher commended it. "Of course, this is 1970... She liked it because, I mean, obviously that was in the middle of [the Vietnam War]. She was, I would imagine, not a hundred percent for the war like a lot of people then. ...I had no idea about the implications, really, because I just thought it was a funny idea. I remember that still, that moment when she said, 'oh my gosh, look at that'", Hillenburg elaborated. It was then when he knew he "had some [creative] skill". He asserted that his artistry came from his mother's side, despite his father being a draftsman, noting that his maternal grandmother was "really, really gifted" and a "great painter". In the 1970s, someone took Hillenburg to the International Tournée of Animation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was "knocked out" by the foreign animated films, including Dutch animator Paul Driessen's The Killing of an Egg (1977). "That was the film that I thought was uniquely strange and that lodged itself in my head early on," he recounted. He attended Savanna High School in Anaheim, describing himself as a "band geek" who played the trumpet. At age 15, he snorkeled for the first time; Hillenburg took part in a "dive program" at Woods Coves in Laguna Beach, as part of the Regional Occupational Program at Savanna. This experience, as well as subsequent dives, reinforced his interest in, and led to his decision to study, marine biology in college: "The switch clicked and I decided I wanted to be a marine biologist, but I also liked being an artist." Some of his high-school teachers, who knew of his interest in art and fascination with the ocean, advised him otherwise, saying: "You should just draw fish." However, the idea of drawing fish seemed boring to him and he was more riveted by "making weird, little paintings". During a few summers after finishing high school, he worked as a fry cook and lobster boiler at a fast-food seafood restaurant in Maine. (This later inspired SpongeBob SquarePants' occupation in the television series, which he would begin developing in 1994.) Hillenburg went to Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, as a marine-science major. He minored in art, and claimed that "[he] blossomed as a painter in Humboldt." In 1984, he earned his bachelor's degree in natural-resource planning and interpretation, with an emphasis on marine resources. He intended to take a master's degree, but said it would be in art: "Initially I think I assumed that if I went to school for art I would never have any way of making a living, so I thought it might be smarter to keep art my passion and hobby and study something else. But by the time I got to the end of my undergrad work, I realized I should be in art." Early career After graduating from college, Hillenburg held various jobs in 1984, including as a park service attendant in Utah and an art director in San Francisco, before landing the job he wanted: teaching children. He hoped to work in a national park on the coast, and eventually found a job at the Orange County Marine Institute (now the Ocean Institute), an organization in Dana Point, California, dedicated to educating the public about marine science and maritime history. Hillenburg was a marine biology teacher there for three years: "We taught tide-pool ecology, nautical history, diversity and adaptation. Working there, I saw how enamored kids are with undersea life, especially with tide-pool creatures." He stayed at the Dana Point Marina and was also a staff artist. Although "[i]t was a great experience" for him, he realized he was more interested in art than his chosen profession. While working there, one of the educational directors asked him if he would be interested in creating an educational comic book about the animal life of tidal pools. He created a comic called The Intertidal Zone, which he used to teach his students. It featured anthropomorphic forms of sea life, many of which would evolve into SpongeBob SquarePants characters—including "Bob the Sponge", the comic's co-host, who resembled an actual sea sponge, as opposed to his later SpongeBob SquarePants character, who resembles a kitchen sponge. He tried to get the comic published, but the publishers he approached turned him down. During this time, Hillenburg also started attending animation festivals such as the International Tournée of Animation and Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation, where student films from the California Institute of the Arts (colloquially called CalArts) were shown. He determined that he wanted to pursue a career in that field. He had planned to take a master's degree in art, but instead of "going back to school for painting", he left his job in 1987 to become an animator. Hillenburg enrolled in CalArts' Experimental Animation Program in 1989. About this decision, he said: "Changing careers like that is scary, but the irony is that animation is a pretty healthy career right now and science education is more of a struggle." He studied under Jules Engel, the founding director of the program, whom he considered his "Art Dad" and mentor. Impressed by The Intertidal Zone, Engel accepted him into the program. Hillenburg said, "[Engel] also was a painter, so I think he saw my paintings and could easily say, 'Oh, this guy could fit in to this program.' I don't have any [prior experience in] animation really." Hillenburg graduated in 1992, earning a Master of Fine Arts in experimental animation. During his time at CalArts, he briefly drew comics for the surfing magazine KEMA in 1990. Animation career Early works Hillenburg made his first animated works, short films The Green Beret (1991) and Wormholes (1992), while at CalArts. The Green Beret was about a physically challenged Girl Scout with enormous fists who toppled houses and destroyed neighborhoods while trying to sell Girl Scout cookies. Wormholes was his seven-minute thesis film, about the theory of relativity. He described the latter as "a poetic animated film based on relativistic phenomena" in his grant proposal in 1991 to the Princess Grace Foundation, which assists emerging artists in American theater, dance, and film. The foundation agreed to fund the effort, providing Hillenburg with a Graduate Film Scholarship. "It meant a lot," he said in 2003. "They funded one of the projects I'm most proud of, even with SpongeBob. It provided me the opportunity just to make a film that was personal, and what I would call independent, and free of some of the commercial needs." Wormholes was shown at several international animation festivals, including the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, the Hiroshima International Animation Festival, the Los Angeles International Animation Celebration, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and the Ottawa International Animation Festival, where it won Best Concept. LA Weekly called the film "road-trippy" and "Zap-comical", while Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it "inventive". Hillenburg explained that "anything goes" in experimental animation. Although this allowed him to explore alternatives to conventional methods of filmmaking, he still ventured to employ "an industry style"; he preferred to traditionally animate his films (where each frame is drawn by hand) rather than, for instance, make cartoons "by filming piles of sand changing". He made at least one other short film as an animation student, but its title is unspecified. Rocko's Modern Life Hillenburg's first professional job in the animation business was as a director on Rocko's Modern Life (19931996), Nickelodeon's first in-house cartoon production. He "ended up finding work in the industry and got a job" at the television network after he met the show's creator, Joe Murray, at the 1992 Ottawa International Animation Festival, where Wormholes and Murray's My Dog Zero were both in competition. Murray, who was looking for people to direct Rocko's Modern Life at the time, saw Hillenburg's film and offered him a directorial role on the television series. He "[had] friends that [gave him] a hard time about [the offer]. ... but doors opened when [he] stepped into the animation world," so he accepted it. He "was planning on being a starving artist": "[I spent] several thousand dollars to make a film and [realized] I may not make it backI had loans out. Fortunately, Joe Murray saw my film... and he took a huge chance," Hillenburg related. Hillenburg worked closely with Murray on Rocko's Modern Life for its whole run on the air. Aside from directing, he also produced, wrote and storyboarded for some episodes, and served as the executive story editor. In particular, the third season episode "Fish-N-Chumps" was co-written and directed by Hillenburg, and involved Rocko, Heffer, and Filburt going on a fishing trip, oblivious to the fact that a pair of anthropomorphic sea creatures are attempting to catch them from underwater; this would foreshadow his later work with SpongeBob. In 1995, during the fourth and final season of Rocko, Hillenburg was promoted to creative director, where he helped oversee pre- and post-production. Working on the series enabled him to repay his loans. He later related that he "learned a great deal about writing and producing animation for TV" from his stint on Rocko's Modern Life. SpongeBob SquarePants Creation Some evidence shows that the idea for SpongeBob SquarePants dates back to 1986, during Hillenburg's time at the Orange County Marine Institute. He indicated that children's television series such as The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse (19871988) and Pee-wee's Playhouse (19861991) "sparked something in [him]." He continued, "I don't know if this is true for everybody else, but it always seems like, for me, I'll start thinking about something and it takes about ten years to actually have it happen, or have someone else believe in it... It took me a few years to get [SpongeBob SquarePants] together." During the production of Rocko's Modern Life, Martin Olson, one of the writers, read The Intertidal Zone and encouraged Hillenburg to create a television series with a similar concept. At that point, he had not even considered creating his own series: "After watching Joe [Murray] tear his hair out a lot, dealing with all the problems that came up, I thought I would never want to produce a show of my own." However, he realized that if he ever did, this would be the best approach: "For all those years it seemed like I was doing these two totally separate things. I wondered what it all meant. I didn't see a synthesis. It was great when [my two interests] all came together in [a show]. I felt relieved that I hadn't wasted a lot of time doing something that I then abandoned to do something else. It has been pretty rewarding," Hillenburg said in 2002. He claimed that he finally decided to create a series as he was driving to the beach on the Santa Monica Freeway one day. As he was developing the show's concept, Hillenburg remembered his teaching experience at the Orange County Marine Institute and how mesmerized children were by tide-pool animals, including crabs, octopuses, starfish, and sponges. It came to him that the series should take place underwater, with a focus on those creatures: "I wanted to create a small town underwater where the characters were more like us than like fish. They have fire. They take walks. They drive. They have pets and holidays." It suited what Hillenburg liked for a show, "something that was fantastic but believable." He also wanted his series to stand out from most popular cartoons of the time exemplified by buddy comedies such as The Ren & Stimpy Show (19911995). As a result, he decided to focus on one main character: the weirdest sea creature that he could think of. This led him to the sponge: "I wanted to do a show about a character that was an innocent, and so I focused on a sea sponge because it's a funny animal, a strange one." In 1994, Hillenburg began to further develop some characters from The Intertidal Zone, including Bob the Sponge. Bob the Sponge is the comic's "announcer". He resembles an actual sea sponge, and at first Hillenburg continued this design because it "was the correct thing to do biologically as a marine-science teacher." In determining the new character's personality, he drew inspiration from innocent, childlike figures that he enjoyed, such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Jerry Lewis, Pee-wee Herman, Abbott and Costello, and The Three Stooges. He then considered modeling the character after a kitchen sponge, and realized that this idea would match the character's square personality perfectly: "[I]t looked so funny. I think as far as cartoon language goes he was easier to recognize. He seemed to fit the character type I was looking fora somewhat nerdy, squeaky clean oddball." To voice the central character of the series, Hillenburg turned to Tom Kenny, whose career in animation had begun with his on Rocko's Modern Life. Elements of Kenny's own personality were employed in further developing the character. While pitching the cartoon to executives at Nickelodeon, Hillenburg donned a Hawaiian shirt, brought along an "underwater terrarium with models of the characters", and played Hawaiian music to set the theme. Nickelodeon executive Eric Coleman described the setup as "pretty amazing". Although Derek Drymon, creative director of SpongeBob SquarePants, described the pitch as stressful, he said it went "very well". Nickelodeon approved and gave Hillenburg money to produce the show. Broadcast SpongeBob SquarePants was Nickelodeon's first original Saturday-morning cartoon. It first aired as a preview on May 1, 1999, and officially premiered on July 17 of the same year. Hillenburg noted that the show's premise "is that innocence prevailswhich I don't think it always does in real life." It has received positive reviews from critics, and has been noted for its appeal to different age groups. James Poniewozik of Time magazine described the titular character as "the anti-Bart Simpson, temperamentally and physically: his head is as squared-off and neat as Bart's is unruly, and he has a personality to matchconscientious, optimistic and blind to the faults in the world and those around him." On the other hand, The New York Times critic Joyce Millman said that the show "is clever without being impenetrable to young viewers and goofy without boring grown-ups to tears. It's the most charming toon on television, and one of the weirdest. ...Like Pee-wee's Playhouse, SpongeBob joyfully dances on the fine line between childhood and adulthood, guilelessness and camp, the warped and the sweet." SpongeBob SquarePants was an immediate hit. Within its first month on air, it overtook Pokémon (1997) as the highest-rated Saturday morning children's series. By the end of 2001, the show boasted the highest ratings of any children's series on television. Nickelodeon began adding SpongeBob SquarePants to its Monday-through-Thursday prime-time block. This programming change increased the number of older viewers significantly. By May 2002, the show's total viewership reached more than 61 million, 20 million of which were aged 18 to 49. Hillenburg did not expect the show would be very popular even to adults: "I never imagined that it would get to this point. When you set out to do a show about a sponge, you can't anticipate this kind of craze. We just try to make ourselves laugh, then ask if it's appropriate for children. I can tell you that we hoped it would be liked by adults. But we really thought the best we could hope for was a college audience." SpongeBob SquarePants has gone on to become the longest-running series on Nickelodeon. "Ten years. I never imagined working on the show to this date and this long. It never was possible to conceive that. ...I really figured we might get a season and a cult following, and that might be it," Hillenburg said in 2009 during the show's tenth anniversary. Its popularity has made it a media franchise, which is the most-distributed property of MTV Networks. , it has generated $12 billion in merchandising revenue. Departure In 2002, Hillenburg halted production of the show after the third season was completed to focus on the making of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie which was released in 2004: "I don't want to try and do a movie and the series at the same time. We have 60 episodes and that is probably as many as [Nickelodeon] really needs. It is a standard number for a show like this. I have done a little research and people say it is just crazy doing a series and movie at the same time. I would rather concentrate on doing a good job on the movie," he noted. He directed the film from a story that he conceived with five other writer-animators from the series: Paul Tibbitt, Derek Drymon, Aaron Springer, Kent Osborne, and Tim Hill. The writers created a mythical hero's quest: the search for a stolen crown, which brings SpongeBob and his best friend Patrick to the surface. In 2003, during the production of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, his mentor Jules Engel died at the age of 94. Hillenburg dedicated the film to his memory. He said that Engel "truly was the most influential artistic person in [his] life." The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie grossed $140 million worldwide, and received positive reviews from critics. The review-aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes rates it 68 percent positive based on 125 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. Its consensus states in summary, "Surreally goofy and entertaining for both children and their parents." After completing the film, Hillenburg wanted to end the series "so [it] wouldn't jump the shark." "We're working on episodes 40 through 60 right now, and I always looked at that as a typical run for an animated show. [The Ren & Stimpy Show] lasted about that long, for example. And I thought now was a good time to step aside and look at a different project. I personally think it's good not to go to the point where people don't want to see your show anymore," Hillenburg said in 2002. However, Nickelodeon wanted to produce more episodes: "The show was such a cash cow for the station that it couldn't afford not to," storyboard director Sam Henderson observed. Initially Hillenburg doubted that the network would continue the show without him, saying: "I think [Nickelodeon executives] respect that my contribution is important. I think they would want to maintain the original concept and quality." Consequently, he resigned as the showrunner and appointed his trusted staff member Paul Tibbitt to the role. Although he no longer had a direct involvement producing SpongeBob SquarePants, he retained his position as an executive producer and maintained an advisory role, reviewing each episode. Tibbitt started out as a supervising producer but rose up to executive producer when Hillenburg went into semi-retirement in 2004. While he was on the show, he voiced Potty the Parrot and sat in with Derek Drymon at the record studio to direct the voice actors while they were recording. During the fourth season, Tibbitt took on voicing for Potty, while Andrea Romano replaced the two as the voice director. In 2014, Tibbitt announced on his Twitter account that Hillenburg would return to the show. However, he did not specify what position the former showrunner would hold. As early as 2012, Hillenburg had already been contributing to another film based on the series, which was first reported in 2011 and officially announced the following year, with Tibbitt as director. Tibbitt also wrote the story with Hillenburg, who "[had] been in the studio everyday working with [the crew]." Besides writing, Hillenburg also executive-produced. He said in 2014: "Actually when [the film] wraps, I want to get back to the show. ...it is getting harder and harder to come up with stories. So Paul [Tibbitt] and I are really going to brainstorm and come up with fresh material." Called The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, the second film adaptation was released in 2015 to positive critical reception, currently holding a Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 80 percent and an average rating of 6.5/10. It earned $323.4 million worldwide, becoming the second highest-grossing film based on an animated television show, behind The Simpsons Movie (2007). Other pursuits In 1998, Hillenburg formed United Plankton Pictures Inc., a television and film production company, which produces SpongeBob SquarePants and related media. From 2011 to 2018, the company published SpongeBob Comics, a comic-book series based on the cartoon. Hillenburg announced the venture in a 2011 press release, where he said, "I'm hoping that fans will enjoy finally having a SpongeBob comic book from me." Various cartoonists, including James Kochalka, Hilary Barta, Graham Annable, Gregg Schigiel, and Jacob Chabot, have contributed to issues of the comic. According to Jeff Lenburg, in his book Who's Who in Animated Cartoons, Hillenburg was co-writing and co-directing a second animated feature film based on Rob Zombie's comic-book series, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, which was slated for a 2006 release. He helped to write Diggs Tailwagger, a 2007 pilot by Derek Drymon. Hillenburg stated in 2009 that he was developing two other television projects that he did not want to discuss. In 2010, he began working on Hollywood Blvd., USA, a new short film for animation festivals. In making the two-minute film, he videotaped people walking and animated them in walk cycles. Hillenburg said in 2012, "I hope to get [the film] done. It takes forever." He was aiming to finish it that fall. In 2013, three years after production began, Hollywood Blvd., USA was released to festivals. Hillenburg characterized it as a "personal film" and said that "it's not a narrative. It's just really about people in our town." Personal life In 1998, Hillenburg married Karen Umland, a Southern Californian chef who teaches at the New School of Cooking in Culver City. He deemed her the funniest person he knew, and the character of Karen Plankton was named after her. Also in 1998, their first and only child, son Clay, was born. Hillenburg formerly resided in Hollywood and Pasadena, and lived with his family in San Marino, California until his death. His hobbies included surfing, snorkeling, scuba diving, swimming, and performing "noisy rock music" on his guitar. He jammed with his son, who is a drummer, which Hillenburg called "a great way to bond with each other." He also enjoyed birdwatching at home, but said that he was always "an ocean freak". He was known informally as "Steve" among his family, friends, and fans. According to his colleagues, he was "a perfectionist workaholic", and was also known for his private nature. Julia Pistor, co-producer of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, noted that Hillenburg was "very shy". She said: "He doesn't want people to know about his life or family. He's just a really funny, down-to-earth guy with a dry sense of humor who puts his family first and keeps us on our toes in keeping our corporate integrity." Hillenburg said about himself: "I make animation because I like to draw and create things. I have no real interest to be on camera or to be a celebrity. It's not that I don't like people, but I like having my privacy." Philanthropy Hillenburg, with his wife Karen endowed numerous projects and organizations through the United Plankton Charitable Trust, which they established in 2005, naming after Hillenburg's United Plankton Pictures. It supports areas of their personal interest, giving under $500,000 annually . Grantees include large, established arts-related organizations such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound, in which Karen is co-chair. Health accounts for most of their grantmaking; they had gifted Planned Parenthood (where Karen has been on the board of directors ) and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, among other national health organizations. In education, they have donated to schools, including the Polytechnic School in Pasadena (which their son attended), CalArts, and Humboldt State University. Donations to the latter helped fund the HSU Marine Lab and the Stephen Hillenburg Marine Science Research Award Endowment, which the couple created in 2018 to support the university's marine-science research students. The previous year, the Princess Grace Foundation introduced the Stephen Hillenburg Animation Scholarship, an annual grant from the Hillenburgs to emerging animators. Illness and death Hillenburg disclosed to Variety magazine in March 2017 that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), even though he continued to work on SpongeBob SquarePants for as long as he was able. He added: "My family and I are grateful for the outpouring of love and support. We ask that our sincere request for privacy be honored during this time." Hillenburg was in the early stages of the disease at the time, according to a source close to him. During his last days as executive producer, he had difficulty speaking, and it ultimately got to the point where Hillenburg stopped going to his office due to the progression of the illness. Hillenburg did not succumb to the disease until November 26, 2018, at the age of 57. According to his death certificate, his body was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California the next day. SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run were dedicated to his memory. Legacy During the halftime show for Super Bowl LIII, the performing band Maroon 5 arranged to use a clip from the SpongeBob episode "Band Geeks" (which uses the song "Sweet Victory" as part of a spoof of a football halftime show) during their show as a means to pay tribute to Hillenburg. A full clip of the "Sweet Victory" song, including a dedication to Hillenburg, was played inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium, but not during the game, which angered many fans. The song was later included in a promo for ViacomCBS's Paramount+ streaming service during Super Bowl LV. The TV special SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout and the theatrical film The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run are dedicated to him and his career. In 2019, a spin-off of SpongeBob SquarePants, Kamp Koral, began production, featuring younger versions of the characters attending summer camp. Former showrunner Paul Tibbitt stated that Hillenburg would have disliked the idea; he commented, "Steve [Hillenburg] would always say to me, 'You know, one of these days, they're going to want to make SpongeBob Babies. That's when I'm out of here.'" Tibbitt also released a statement stating, "I do not mean any disrespect to my colleagues who are working on this show ... [but] they all know full well Steve would have hated this." The concept of Kamp Koral came from a season 12 meeting in October 2018, a month before Hillenburg died. Hillenburg is credited as the creator of Kamp Koral, and is credited on other spin-offs as the characters' creator. Awards and honors In 1992, one of Hillenburg's early works, Wormholes, won for Best Concept at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. For SpongeBob SquarePants, Hillenburg was nominated for 17 Emmy Awards, winning in the categories of Outstanding Special Class Animated Program and Outstanding Sound Editing – Animation in 2010 and 2014, respectively. The show has also received several other awards and nominations, including 17 Annie Award nominations, winning six times, as well as winning two British Academy Children's Awards, out of four nominations. In 2002, SpongeBob SquarePants won its first TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Children's Programming nomination. In 2001, Heal the Bay, an environmental nonprofit organization, honored Hillenburg with its Walk the Talk award. He was recognized for raising public awareness of marine life through SpongeBob SquarePants. The following year, Hillenburg was given the Television Animation Award from the National Cartoonists Society, and the Princess Grace Statue Award from the Princess Grace Foundation. In 2018, Hillenburg received the Winsor McCay Award at the 45th Annie Awards, and a special recognition at the 45th Daytime Emmy Awards "for his contribution and impact made in the animation field and within the broadcast industry." The marine demosponge species Clathria hillenburgi, known from mangrove habitats off the coast of Paraíba, Brazil, was named in honor of Stephen Hillenburg. On November 18, 2021, Hillenburg was honored with a bench and historical plaque at his alma mater Savannah High School in Anaheim, California. The project was a collaboration between the Hillenburg family, Anaheim Historical Society, and YouTube personality Griffin Hansen. Karen Hillenburg specifically chose a bright yellow bench that "she thought perfectly captured her husband's warmth and goofiness". The memorial was dedicated one day before Savanna High School's 60th anniversary at a school-wide assembly hosted by Hansen and principal Michael Pooley. The event was attended by Karen and Clay Hillenburg, as well as members of Spongebob Squarepants' cast and crew including Tom Kenny, Jill Talley, Rodger Bumpass, Bill Fagerbakke, Clancy Brown, Mr. Lawrence, Marc Ceccarelli, and Derek Drymon. Filmography Film Television References Further reading External links Stephen Hillenburg at the Nickelodeon Animation Studio website Category:1961 births Category:2018 deaths Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American painters Category:20th-century American educators Category:20th-century American biologists Category:21st-century American male actors Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century American painters Category:21st-century male artists Category:21st-century American scientists Category:American animators Category:American art directors Category:American cartoonists Category:American comics artists Category:American experimental filmmakers Category:American illustrators Category:American male painters Category:American male screenwriters Category:American male television writers Category:American male voice actors Category:American marine biologists Category:American storyboard artists Category:American surrealist artists Category:American television directors Category:American television producers Category:American television writers Category:American voice directors Category:American patrons of the arts Category:American animated film directors Category:American animated film producers Category:Animators from California Category:Animators from Oklahoma Category:Annie Award winners Category:Burials at sea Category:California Institute of the Arts alumni Category:Creative directors Category:Deaths from motor neuron disease Category:Neurological disease deaths in California Category:Educators from California Category:Educators from Oklahoma Category:Film directors from California Category:Film directors from Oklahoma Category:Film producers from California Category:Film producers from Oklahoma Category:California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt alumni Category:Male actors from California Category:Male actors from Oklahoma Category:Nickelodeon Animation Studio people Category:Painters from California Category:Painters from Oklahoma Category:Patrons of schools Category:People from Anaheim, California Category:People from Fort Sill, Oklahoma Category:People from Hollywood, Los Angeles Category:People from Lawton, Oklahoma Category:People from Pasadena, California Category:People from San Marino, California Category:Philanthropists from California Category:Philanthropists from Oklahoma Category:Princess Grace Awards winners Category:Scientists from California Category:Scientists from Oklahoma Category:Screenwriters from California Category:Screenwriters from Oklahoma Category:Showrunners Category:Television producers from California Category:Television show creators Category:American people of Belgian descent Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Irish descent

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Stephen Hillenburg

Stephen McDannell Hillenburg (born August 21, 1961) is an American cartoonist, animator, writer, producer, director, and former marine biologist. He is the creator of the Nickelodeon television series SpongeBob SquarePants (1999-present) which he has also directed, produced, and written. It has gone on to become one of the longest-running American television series as well as the highest-rated show ever to air on Nickelodeon. Born in Lawton, Oklahoma and raised in Anaheim, California, Hillenburg became fascinated with the ocean as a child and also developed an interest in art.

Early career

After graduating from college, Hillenburg held various jobs in 1984, including as a park service attendant in Utah and an art director in San Francisco, before landing the job he wanted: teaching children. He hoped to work in a national park on the coast, and eventually found a job at the Orange County Marine Institute (now known as the Ocean Institute), an organization in Dana Point, California that is dedicated to educating the public about marine science and maritime history. Hillenburg was a marine-biology teacher there for three years: "We taught tide-pool ecology, nautical history, diversity and adaptation. Working there, I saw how enamored kids are with undersea life, especially with tide-pool creatures." He stayed at the Dana Point Marina and was also a staff artist. Although "[i]t was a great experience" for him, during this period, Hillenburg realized he was more interested in art than his chosen profession. While working there, he was asked by one of the educational directors if he would be interested in creating an educational comic book about the animal life of tidal pools. He created a comic called The Intertidal Zone, which he used to teach his students. It featured anthropomorphic forms of sea life, many of which would evolve into SpongeBob SquarePants characters--including "Bob the Sponge", the comic's co-host, who resembled an actual sea sponge, as opposed to his later SpongeBob SquarePants character, who resembles a kitchen sponge. He tried to get the comic published, but was turned down by the publishers that he approached. At one point during his tenure with the Orange County Marine Institute, Hillenburg started going to animation festivals such as the International Tournee of Animation and Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation where, at one of those, films made by California Institute of the Arts (colloquially called CalArts) students were shown. He determined that he wanted to pursue a career in that field. Hillenburg had planned to take a master's degree in art, but instead of "going back to school for painting", he left his job in 1987 to become an animator. In 1989, Hillenburg enrolled in the Experimental Animation Program at CalArts. About this decision, he said: "Changing careers like that is scary, but the irony is that animation is a pretty healthy career right now and science education is more of a struggle." He studied under Jules Engel, the founding director of the program, whom he considers his "Art Dad" and mentor. Engel accepted him into the program impressed by The Intertidal Zone. Hillenburg said, "[Engel] also was a painter, so I think he saw my paintings and could easily say, 'Oh, this guy could fit in to this program.' I don't have any [prior experience in] animation really." Hillenburg graduated in 1992, earning a Master of Fine Arts in experimental animation. CANNOTANSWER

Stephen McDannell Hillenburg (August 21, 1961 – November 26, 2018) was an American animator, writer, producer, director, and marine science educator. He is known for creating the Nickelodeon animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants, on which he served as the showrunner for the first three seasons of the show, and which has become the fifth-longest-running American animated series. Born in Lawton, Oklahoma and raised in Anaheim, California, Hillenburg became fascinated with the ocean as a child and developed an interest in art. He started his professional career in 1984, instructing marine biology at the Orange County Marine Institute, where he wrote The Intertidal Zone, an informative picture book about tide-pool animals, which he used to educate his students. In 1989, two years after leaving teaching, he enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts to pursue a career in animation. He was later offered a job on the Nickelodeon animated television series Rocko's Modern Life (19931996) after his success with The Green Beret and Wormholes (both 1992), short films that he made while studying animation. In 1994, Hillenburg began developing The Intertidal Zone characters and concepts for what became SpongeBob SquarePants, which has aired continuously since 1999. He also directed The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004), which he originally intended to be the series finale. He then resigned as showrunner, but Nickelodeon continued to produce more episodes after he left the series. He resumed making short films with Hollywood Blvd., USA in 2013 but was credited as an executive producer for SpongeBob SquarePants. He co-wrote the story for the second film adaptation of the series, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, released in 2015. Besides his two Emmy Awards and six Annie Awards for SpongeBob SquarePants, Hillenburg also received other recognition, such as an accolade from Heal the Bay for his efforts in elevating marine life awareness and the Television Animation Award from the National Cartoonists Society. Hillenburg announced he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2017 but stated he would continue working on SpongeBob SquarePants as long as possible. He died from the disease on November 26, 2018, at the age of 57. Early life and education Stephen McDannell Hillenburg was born on August21, 1961 at Fort Sill, a United States Army post in Lawton, Oklahoma, where his father, Kelly N. Hillenburg Jr., worked for the U.S. military. His mother, Nancy (née Dufour), taught visually impaired students. When he was a year old, the family moved to Orange County, California, where his father began a career as a draftsman and designer in the aerospace industry. His younger brother, Bryan, eventually became a draftsman/designer as well. When an interviewer asked Hillenburg to describe himself as a child, he replied that he was "probably well-meaning and naive like all kids." His passion for sea life can be traced to his childhood, when films by Jacques Cousteau, a French oceanographer, made a strong impression on him. Hillenburg said that Cousteau "provided a view into that world", which he had not known existed. He liked to explore tide pools as a child, bringing home objects that "should have been left there and that ended up dying and smelling really bad." Hillenburg also developed his interest in art at a young age. His first drawing was of an orange slice. An illustration which he drew in third grade, depicting "a bunch of army men... kissing and hugging instead of fighting", brought him the first praise for his artwork, when his teacher commended it. "Of course, this is 1970... She liked it because, I mean, obviously that was in the middle of [the Vietnam War]. She was, I would imagine, not a hundred percent for the war like a lot of people then. ...I had no idea about the implications, really, because I just thought it was a funny idea. I remember that still, that moment when she said, 'oh my gosh, look at that'", Hillenburg elaborated. It was then when he knew he "had some [creative] skill". He asserted that his artistry came from his mother's side, despite his father being a draftsman, noting that his maternal grandmother was "really, really gifted" and a "great painter". In the 1970s, someone took Hillenburg to the International Tournée of Animation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was "knocked out" by the foreign animated films, including Dutch animator Paul Driessen's The Killing of an Egg (1977). "That was the film that I thought was uniquely strange and that lodged itself in my head early on," he recounted. He attended Savanna High School in Anaheim, describing himself as a "band geek" who played the trumpet. At age 15, he snorkeled for the first time; Hillenburg took part in a "dive program" at Woods Coves in Laguna Beach, as part of the Regional Occupational Program at Savanna. This experience, as well as subsequent dives, reinforced his interest in, and led to his decision to study, marine biology in college: "The switch clicked and I decided I wanted to be a marine biologist, but I also liked being an artist." Some of his high-school teachers, who knew of his interest in art and fascination with the ocean, advised him otherwise, saying: "You should just draw fish." However, the idea of drawing fish seemed boring to him and he was more riveted by "making weird, little paintings". During a few summers after finishing high school, he worked as a fry cook and lobster boiler at a fast-food seafood restaurant in Maine. (This later inspired SpongeBob SquarePants' occupation in the television series, which he would begin developing in 1994.) Hillenburg went to Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, as a marine-science major. He minored in art, and claimed that "[he] blossomed as a painter in Humboldt." In 1984, he earned his bachelor's degree in natural-resource planning and interpretation, with an emphasis on marine resources. He intended to take a master's degree, but said it would be in art: "Initially I think I assumed that if I went to school for art I would never have any way of making a living, so I thought it might be smarter to keep art my passion and hobby and study something else. But by the time I got to the end of my undergrad work, I realized I should be in art." Early career After graduating from college, Hillenburg held various jobs in 1984, including as a park service attendant in Utah and an art director in San Francisco, before landing the job he wanted: teaching children. He hoped to work in a national park on the coast, and eventually found a job at the Orange County Marine Institute (now the Ocean Institute), an organization in Dana Point, California, dedicated to educating the public about marine science and maritime history. Hillenburg was a marine biology teacher there for three years: "We taught tide-pool ecology, nautical history, diversity and adaptation. Working there, I saw how enamored kids are with undersea life, especially with tide-pool creatures." He stayed at the Dana Point Marina and was also a staff artist. Although "[i]t was a great experience" for him, he realized he was more interested in art than his chosen profession. While working there, one of the educational directors asked him if he would be interested in creating an educational comic book about the animal life of tidal pools. He created a comic called The Intertidal Zone, which he used to teach his students. It featured anthropomorphic forms of sea life, many of which would evolve into SpongeBob SquarePants characters—including "Bob the Sponge", the comic's co-host, who resembled an actual sea sponge, as opposed to his later SpongeBob SquarePants character, who resembles a kitchen sponge. He tried to get the comic published, but the publishers he approached turned him down. During this time, Hillenburg also started attending animation festivals such as the International Tournée of Animation and Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation, where student films from the California Institute of the Arts (colloquially called CalArts) were shown. He determined that he wanted to pursue a career in that field. He had planned to take a master's degree in art, but instead of "going back to school for painting", he left his job in 1987 to become an animator. Hillenburg enrolled in CalArts' Experimental Animation Program in 1989. About this decision, he said: "Changing careers like that is scary, but the irony is that animation is a pretty healthy career right now and science education is more of a struggle." He studied under Jules Engel, the founding director of the program, whom he considered his "Art Dad" and mentor. Impressed by The Intertidal Zone, Engel accepted him into the program. Hillenburg said, "[Engel] also was a painter, so I think he saw my paintings and could easily say, 'Oh, this guy could fit in to this program.' I don't have any [prior experience in] animation really." Hillenburg graduated in 1992, earning a Master of Fine Arts in experimental animation. During his time at CalArts, he briefly drew comics for the surfing magazine KEMA in 1990. Animation career Early works Hillenburg made his first animated works, short films The Green Beret (1991) and Wormholes (1992), while at CalArts. The Green Beret was about a physically challenged Girl Scout with enormous fists who toppled houses and destroyed neighborhoods while trying to sell Girl Scout cookies. Wormholes was his seven-minute thesis film, about the theory of relativity. He described the latter as "a poetic animated film based on relativistic phenomena" in his grant proposal in 1991 to the Princess Grace Foundation, which assists emerging artists in American theater, dance, and film. The foundation agreed to fund the effort, providing Hillenburg with a Graduate Film Scholarship. "It meant a lot," he said in 2003. "They funded one of the projects I'm most proud of, even with SpongeBob. It provided me the opportunity just to make a film that was personal, and what I would call independent, and free of some of the commercial needs." Wormholes was shown at several international animation festivals, including the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, the Hiroshima International Animation Festival, the Los Angeles International Animation Celebration, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and the Ottawa International Animation Festival, where it won Best Concept. LA Weekly called the film "road-trippy" and "Zap-comical", while Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it "inventive". Hillenburg explained that "anything goes" in experimental animation. Although this allowed him to explore alternatives to conventional methods of filmmaking, he still ventured to employ "an industry style"; he preferred to traditionally animate his films (where each frame is drawn by hand) rather than, for instance, make cartoons "by filming piles of sand changing". He made at least one other short film as an animation student, but its title is unspecified. Rocko's Modern Life Hillenburg's first professional job in the animation business was as a director on Rocko's Modern Life (19931996), Nickelodeon's first in-house cartoon production. He "ended up finding work in the industry and got a job" at the television network after he met the show's creator, Joe Murray, at the 1992 Ottawa International Animation Festival, where Wormholes and Murray's My Dog Zero were both in competition. Murray, who was looking for people to direct Rocko's Modern Life at the time, saw Hillenburg's film and offered him a directorial role on the television series. He "[had] friends that [gave him] a hard time about [the offer]. ... but doors opened when [he] stepped into the animation world," so he accepted it. He "was planning on being a starving artist": "[I spent] several thousand dollars to make a film and [realized] I may not make it backI had loans out. Fortunately, Joe Murray saw my film... and he took a huge chance," Hillenburg related. Hillenburg worked closely with Murray on Rocko's Modern Life for its whole run on the air. Aside from directing, he also produced, wrote and storyboarded for some episodes, and served as the executive story editor. In particular, the third season episode "Fish-N-Chumps" was co-written and directed by Hillenburg, and involved Rocko, Heffer, and Filburt going on a fishing trip, oblivious to the fact that a pair of anthropomorphic sea creatures are attempting to catch them from underwater; this would foreshadow his later work with SpongeBob. In 1995, during the fourth and final season of Rocko, Hillenburg was promoted to creative director, where he helped oversee pre- and post-production. Working on the series enabled him to repay his loans. He later related that he "learned a great deal about writing and producing animation for TV" from his stint on Rocko's Modern Life. SpongeBob SquarePants Creation Some evidence shows that the idea for SpongeBob SquarePants dates back to 1986, during Hillenburg's time at the Orange County Marine Institute. He indicated that children's television series such as The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse (19871988) and Pee-wee's Playhouse (19861991) "sparked something in [him]." He continued, "I don't know if this is true for everybody else, but it always seems like, for me, I'll start thinking about something and it takes about ten years to actually have it happen, or have someone else believe in it... It took me a few years to get [SpongeBob SquarePants] together." During the production of Rocko's Modern Life, Martin Olson, one of the writers, read The Intertidal Zone and encouraged Hillenburg to create a television series with a similar concept. At that point, he had not even considered creating his own series: "After watching Joe [Murray] tear his hair out a lot, dealing with all the problems that came up, I thought I would never want to produce a show of my own." However, he realized that if he ever did, this would be the best approach: "For all those years it seemed like I was doing these two totally separate things. I wondered what it all meant. I didn't see a synthesis. It was great when [my two interests] all came together in [a show]. I felt relieved that I hadn't wasted a lot of time doing something that I then abandoned to do something else. It has been pretty rewarding," Hillenburg said in 2002. He claimed that he finally decided to create a series as he was driving to the beach on the Santa Monica Freeway one day. As he was developing the show's concept, Hillenburg remembered his teaching experience at the Orange County Marine Institute and how mesmerized children were by tide-pool animals, including crabs, octopuses, starfish, and sponges. It came to him that the series should take place underwater, with a focus on those creatures: "I wanted to create a small town underwater where the characters were more like us than like fish. They have fire. They take walks. They drive. They have pets and holidays." It suited what Hillenburg liked for a show, "something that was fantastic but believable." He also wanted his series to stand out from most popular cartoons of the time exemplified by buddy comedies such as The Ren & Stimpy Show (19911995). As a result, he decided to focus on one main character: the weirdest sea creature that he could think of. This led him to the sponge: "I wanted to do a show about a character that was an innocent, and so I focused on a sea sponge because it's a funny animal, a strange one." In 1994, Hillenburg began to further develop some characters from The Intertidal Zone, including Bob the Sponge. Bob the Sponge is the comic's "announcer". He resembles an actual sea sponge, and at first Hillenburg continued this design because it "was the correct thing to do biologically as a marine-science teacher." In determining the new character's personality, he drew inspiration from innocent, childlike figures that he enjoyed, such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Jerry Lewis, Pee-wee Herman, Abbott and Costello, and The Three Stooges. He then considered modeling the character after a kitchen sponge, and realized that this idea would match the character's square personality perfectly: "[I]t looked so funny. I think as far as cartoon language goes he was easier to recognize. He seemed to fit the character type I was looking fora somewhat nerdy, squeaky clean oddball." To voice the central character of the series, Hillenburg turned to Tom Kenny, whose career in animation had begun with his on Rocko's Modern Life. Elements of Kenny's own personality were employed in further developing the character. While pitching the cartoon to executives at Nickelodeon, Hillenburg donned a Hawaiian shirt, brought along an "underwater terrarium with models of the characters", and played Hawaiian music to set the theme. Nickelodeon executive Eric Coleman described the setup as "pretty amazing". Although Derek Drymon, creative director of SpongeBob SquarePants, described the pitch as stressful, he said it went "very well". Nickelodeon approved and gave Hillenburg money to produce the show. Broadcast SpongeBob SquarePants was Nickelodeon's first original Saturday-morning cartoon. It first aired as a preview on May 1, 1999, and officially premiered on July 17 of the same year. Hillenburg noted that the show's premise "is that innocence prevailswhich I don't think it always does in real life." It has received positive reviews from critics, and has been noted for its appeal to different age groups. James Poniewozik of Time magazine described the titular character as "the anti-Bart Simpson, temperamentally and physically: his head is as squared-off and neat as Bart's is unruly, and he has a personality to matchconscientious, optimistic and blind to the faults in the world and those around him." On the other hand, The New York Times critic Joyce Millman said that the show "is clever without being impenetrable to young viewers and goofy without boring grown-ups to tears. It's the most charming toon on television, and one of the weirdest. ...Like Pee-wee's Playhouse, SpongeBob joyfully dances on the fine line between childhood and adulthood, guilelessness and camp, the warped and the sweet." SpongeBob SquarePants was an immediate hit. Within its first month on air, it overtook Pokémon (1997) as the highest-rated Saturday morning children's series. By the end of 2001, the show boasted the highest ratings of any children's series on television. Nickelodeon began adding SpongeBob SquarePants to its Monday-through-Thursday prime-time block. This programming change increased the number of older viewers significantly. By May 2002, the show's total viewership reached more than 61 million, 20 million of which were aged 18 to 49. Hillenburg did not expect the show would be very popular even to adults: "I never imagined that it would get to this point. When you set out to do a show about a sponge, you can't anticipate this kind of craze. We just try to make ourselves laugh, then ask if it's appropriate for children. I can tell you that we hoped it would be liked by adults. But we really thought the best we could hope for was a college audience." SpongeBob SquarePants has gone on to become the longest-running series on Nickelodeon. "Ten years. I never imagined working on the show to this date and this long. It never was possible to conceive that. ...I really figured we might get a season and a cult following, and that might be it," Hillenburg said in 2009 during the show's tenth anniversary. Its popularity has made it a media franchise, which is the most-distributed property of MTV Networks. , it has generated $12 billion in merchandising revenue. Departure In 2002, Hillenburg halted production of the show after the third season was completed to focus on the making of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie which was released in 2004: "I don't want to try and do a movie and the series at the same time. We have 60 episodes and that is probably as many as [Nickelodeon] really needs. It is a standard number for a show like this. I have done a little research and people say it is just crazy doing a series and movie at the same time. I would rather concentrate on doing a good job on the movie," he noted. He directed the film from a story that he conceived with five other writer-animators from the series: Paul Tibbitt, Derek Drymon, Aaron Springer, Kent Osborne, and Tim Hill. The writers created a mythical hero's quest: the search for a stolen crown, which brings SpongeBob and his best friend Patrick to the surface. In 2003, during the production of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, his mentor Jules Engel died at the age of 94. Hillenburg dedicated the film to his memory. He said that Engel "truly was the most influential artistic person in [his] life." The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie grossed $140 million worldwide, and received positive reviews from critics. The review-aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes rates it 68 percent positive based on 125 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. Its consensus states in summary, "Surreally goofy and entertaining for both children and their parents." After completing the film, Hillenburg wanted to end the series "so [it] wouldn't jump the shark." "We're working on episodes 40 through 60 right now, and I always looked at that as a typical run for an animated show. [The Ren & Stimpy Show] lasted about that long, for example. And I thought now was a good time to step aside and look at a different project. I personally think it's good not to go to the point where people don't want to see your show anymore," Hillenburg said in 2002. However, Nickelodeon wanted to produce more episodes: "The show was such a cash cow for the station that it couldn't afford not to," storyboard director Sam Henderson observed. Initially Hillenburg doubted that the network would continue the show without him, saying: "I think [Nickelodeon executives] respect that my contribution is important. I think they would want to maintain the original concept and quality." Consequently, he resigned as the showrunner and appointed his trusted staff member Paul Tibbitt to the role. Although he no longer had a direct involvement producing SpongeBob SquarePants, he retained his position as an executive producer and maintained an advisory role, reviewing each episode. Tibbitt started out as a supervising producer but rose up to executive producer when Hillenburg went into semi-retirement in 2004. While he was on the show, he voiced Potty the Parrot and sat in with Derek Drymon at the record studio to direct the voice actors while they were recording. During the fourth season, Tibbitt took on voicing for Potty, while Andrea Romano replaced the two as the voice director. In 2014, Tibbitt announced on his Twitter account that Hillenburg would return to the show. However, he did not specify what position the former showrunner would hold. As early as 2012, Hillenburg had already been contributing to another film based on the series, which was first reported in 2011 and officially announced the following year, with Tibbitt as director. Tibbitt also wrote the story with Hillenburg, who "[had] been in the studio everyday working with [the crew]." Besides writing, Hillenburg also executive-produced. He said in 2014: "Actually when [the film] wraps, I want to get back to the show. ...it is getting harder and harder to come up with stories. So Paul [Tibbitt] and I are really going to brainstorm and come up with fresh material." Called The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, the second film adaptation was released in 2015 to positive critical reception, currently holding a Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 80 percent and an average rating of 6.5/10. It earned $323.4 million worldwide, becoming the second highest-grossing film based on an animated television show, behind The Simpsons Movie (2007). Other pursuits In 1998, Hillenburg formed United Plankton Pictures Inc., a television and film production company, which produces SpongeBob SquarePants and related media. From 2011 to 2018, the company published SpongeBob Comics, a comic-book series based on the cartoon. Hillenburg announced the venture in a 2011 press release, where he said, "I'm hoping that fans will enjoy finally having a SpongeBob comic book from me." Various cartoonists, including James Kochalka, Hilary Barta, Graham Annable, Gregg Schigiel, and Jacob Chabot, have contributed to issues of the comic. According to Jeff Lenburg, in his book Who's Who in Animated Cartoons, Hillenburg was co-writing and co-directing a second animated feature film based on Rob Zombie's comic-book series, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, which was slated for a 2006 release. He helped to write Diggs Tailwagger, a 2007 pilot by Derek Drymon. Hillenburg stated in 2009 that he was developing two other television projects that he did not want to discuss. In 2010, he began working on Hollywood Blvd., USA, a new short film for animation festivals. In making the two-minute film, he videotaped people walking and animated them in walk cycles. Hillenburg said in 2012, "I hope to get [the film] done. It takes forever." He was aiming to finish it that fall. In 2013, three years after production began, Hollywood Blvd., USA was released to festivals. Hillenburg characterized it as a "personal film" and said that "it's not a narrative. It's just really about people in our town." Personal life In 1998, Hillenburg married Karen Umland, a Southern Californian chef who teaches at the New School of Cooking in Culver City. He deemed her the funniest person he knew, and the character of Karen Plankton was named after her. Also in 1998, their first and only child, son Clay, was born. Hillenburg formerly resided in Hollywood and Pasadena, and lived with his family in San Marino, California until his death. His hobbies included surfing, snorkeling, scuba diving, swimming, and performing "noisy rock music" on his guitar. He jammed with his son, who is a drummer, which Hillenburg called "a great way to bond with each other." He also enjoyed birdwatching at home, but said that he was always "an ocean freak". He was known informally as "Steve" among his family, friends, and fans. According to his colleagues, he was "a perfectionist workaholic", and was also known for his private nature. Julia Pistor, co-producer of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, noted that Hillenburg was "very shy". She said: "He doesn't want people to know about his life or family. He's just a really funny, down-to-earth guy with a dry sense of humor who puts his family first and keeps us on our toes in keeping our corporate integrity." Hillenburg said about himself: "I make animation because I like to draw and create things. I have no real interest to be on camera or to be a celebrity. It's not that I don't like people, but I like having my privacy." Philanthropy Hillenburg, with his wife Karen endowed numerous projects and organizations through the United Plankton Charitable Trust, which they established in 2005, naming after Hillenburg's United Plankton Pictures. It supports areas of their personal interest, giving under $500,000 annually . Grantees include large, established arts-related organizations such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound, in which Karen is co-chair. Health accounts for most of their grantmaking; they had gifted Planned Parenthood (where Karen has been on the board of directors ) and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, among other national health organizations. In education, they have donated to schools, including the Polytechnic School in Pasadena (which their son attended), CalArts, and Humboldt State University. Donations to the latter helped fund the HSU Marine Lab and the Stephen Hillenburg Marine Science Research Award Endowment, which the couple created in 2018 to support the university's marine-science research students. The previous year, the Princess Grace Foundation introduced the Stephen Hillenburg Animation Scholarship, an annual grant from the Hillenburgs to emerging animators. Illness and death Hillenburg disclosed to Variety magazine in March 2017 that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), even though he continued to work on SpongeBob SquarePants for as long as he was able. He added: "My family and I are grateful for the outpouring of love and support. We ask that our sincere request for privacy be honored during this time." Hillenburg was in the early stages of the disease at the time, according to a source close to him. During his last days as executive producer, he had difficulty speaking, and it ultimately got to the point where Hillenburg stopped going to his office due to the progression of the illness. Hillenburg did not succumb to the disease until November 26, 2018, at the age of 57. According to his death certificate, his body was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California the next day. SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run were dedicated to his memory. Legacy During the halftime show for Super Bowl LIII, the performing band Maroon 5 arranged to use a clip from the SpongeBob episode "Band Geeks" (which uses the song "Sweet Victory" as part of a spoof of a football halftime show) during their show as a means to pay tribute to Hillenburg. A full clip of the "Sweet Victory" song, including a dedication to Hillenburg, was played inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium, but not during the game, which angered many fans. The song was later included in a promo for ViacomCBS's Paramount+ streaming service during Super Bowl LV. The TV special SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout and the theatrical film The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run are dedicated to him and his career. In 2019, a spin-off of SpongeBob SquarePants, Kamp Koral, began production, featuring younger versions of the characters attending summer camp. Former showrunner Paul Tibbitt stated that Hillenburg would have disliked the idea; he commented, "Steve [Hillenburg] would always say to me, 'You know, one of these days, they're going to want to make SpongeBob Babies. That's when I'm out of here.'" Tibbitt also released a statement stating, "I do not mean any disrespect to my colleagues who are working on this show ... [but] they all know full well Steve would have hated this." The concept of Kamp Koral came from a season 12 meeting in October 2018, a month before Hillenburg died. Hillenburg is credited as the creator of Kamp Koral, and is credited on other spin-offs as the characters' creator. Awards and honors In 1992, one of Hillenburg's early works, Wormholes, won for Best Concept at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. For SpongeBob SquarePants, Hillenburg was nominated for 17 Emmy Awards, winning in the categories of Outstanding Special Class Animated Program and Outstanding Sound Editing – Animation in 2010 and 2014, respectively. The show has also received several other awards and nominations, including 17 Annie Award nominations, winning six times, as well as winning two British Academy Children's Awards, out of four nominations. In 2002, SpongeBob SquarePants won its first TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Children's Programming nomination. In 2001, Heal the Bay, an environmental nonprofit organization, honored Hillenburg with its Walk the Talk award. He was recognized for raising public awareness of marine life through SpongeBob SquarePants. The following year, Hillenburg was given the Television Animation Award from the National Cartoonists Society, and the Princess Grace Statue Award from the Princess Grace Foundation. In 2018, Hillenburg received the Winsor McCay Award at the 45th Annie Awards, and a special recognition at the 45th Daytime Emmy Awards "for his contribution and impact made in the animation field and within the broadcast industry." The marine demosponge species Clathria hillenburgi, known from mangrove habitats off the coast of Paraíba, Brazil, was named in honor of Stephen Hillenburg. On November 18, 2021, Hillenburg was honored with a bench and historical plaque at his alma mater Savannah High School in Anaheim, California. The project was a collaboration between the Hillenburg family, Anaheim Historical Society, and YouTube personality Griffin Hansen. Karen Hillenburg specifically chose a bright yellow bench that "she thought perfectly captured her husband's warmth and goofiness". The memorial was dedicated one day before Savanna High School's 60th anniversary at a school-wide assembly hosted by Hansen and principal Michael Pooley. The event was attended by Karen and Clay Hillenburg, as well as members of Spongebob Squarepants' cast and crew including Tom Kenny, Jill Talley, Rodger Bumpass, Bill Fagerbakke, Clancy Brown, Mr. Lawrence, Marc Ceccarelli, and Derek Drymon. Filmography Film Television References Further reading External links Stephen Hillenburg at the Nickelodeon Animation Studio website Category:1961 births Category:2018 deaths Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American painters Category:20th-century American educators Category:20th-century American biologists Category:21st-century American male actors Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century American painters Category:21st-century male artists Category:21st-century American scientists Category:American animators Category:American art directors Category:American cartoonists Category:American comics artists Category:American experimental filmmakers Category:American illustrators Category:American male painters Category:American male screenwriters Category:American male television writers Category:American male voice actors Category:American marine biologists Category:American storyboard artists Category:American surrealist artists Category:American television directors Category:American television producers Category:American television writers Category:American voice directors Category:American patrons of the arts Category:American animated film directors Category:American animated film producers Category:Animators from California Category:Animators from Oklahoma Category:Annie Award winners Category:Burials at sea Category:California Institute of the Arts alumni Category:Creative directors Category:Deaths from motor neuron disease Category:Neurological disease deaths in California Category:Educators from California Category:Educators from Oklahoma Category:Film directors from California Category:Film directors from Oklahoma Category:Film producers from California Category:Film producers from Oklahoma Category:California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt alumni Category:Male actors from California Category:Male actors from Oklahoma Category:Nickelodeon Animation Studio people Category:Painters from California Category:Painters from Oklahoma Category:Patrons of schools Category:People from Anaheim, California Category:People from Fort Sill, Oklahoma Category:People from Hollywood, Los Angeles Category:People from Lawton, Oklahoma Category:People from Pasadena, California Category:People from San Marino, California Category:Philanthropists from California Category:Philanthropists from Oklahoma Category:Princess Grace Awards winners Category:Scientists from California Category:Scientists from Oklahoma Category:Screenwriters from California Category:Screenwriters from Oklahoma Category:Showrunners Category:Television producers from California Category:Television show creators Category:American people of Belgian descent Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Irish descent

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ABBA

ABBA (Swedish pronunciation: [2ab:a]) were a Swedish pop group, formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Faltskog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad: the group name derives from the first letter in each of their names. They became one of the most commercially successful acts in the history of popular music, topping the charts worldwide from 1974 to 1982. ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 at The Dome in Brighton, UK, giving Sweden its first triumph in the contest. They are the most successful group to have taken part in the competition.

Eurovision Song Contest 1974

As the group entered the Melodifestivalen with "Ring Ring" but failed to qualify as the 1973 Swedish entry, Stig Anderson immediately started planning for the 1974 contest. Ulvaeus, Andersson and Stig Anderson believed in the possibilities of using the Eurovision Song Contest as a way to make the music business aware of them as songwriters, as well as the band itself. In late 1973, they were invited by Swedish television to contribute a song for the Melodifestivalen 1974 and from a number of new songs, the upbeat song "Waterloo" was chosen; the group was now inspired by the growing glam rock scene in England. ABBA won their national heats on Swedish television on 9 February 1974, and with this third attempt were far more experienced and better prepared for the Eurovision Song Contest. Winning the 1974 Contest on 6 April 1974 gave ABBA the chance to tour Europe and perform on major television shows; thus the band saw the "Waterloo" single chart in many European countries. "Waterloo" was ABBA's first number-one single in big markets such as the UK and West Germany. In the United States, the song peaked at number-six on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, paving the way for their first album and their first trip as a group there. Albeit a short promotional visit, it included their first performance on American television, The Mike Douglas Show. The album Waterloo only peaked at number 145 on the Billboard 200 chart, but received unanimous high praise from the US critics: Los Angeles Times called it "a compelling and fascinating debut album that captures the spirit of mainstream pop quite effectively ... an immensely enjoyable and pleasant project", while Creem characterised it as "a perfect blend of exceptional, lovable compositions". ABBA's follow-up single, "Honey, Honey", peaked at number 27 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and was a number-two hit in West Germany. However, in the United Kingdom, ABBA's British record label, Epic, decided to re-release a remixed version of "Ring Ring" instead of "Honey, Honey", and a cover version of the latter by Sweet Dreams peaked at number 10. Both records debuted on the UK chart within one week of each other. "Ring Ring" failed to reach the Top 30 in the United Kingdom, increasing growing speculation that the group was simply a Eurovision one-hit wonder. CANNOTANSWER

ABBA ( , , formerly named Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid or Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Frida) are a Swedish supergroup formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The group's name is an acronym of the first letters of their first names arranged as a palindrome. They are one of the most popular and successful musical groups of all time, and are one of the best-selling music acts in the history of popular music, topping the charts worldwide from 1974 to 1982, and in 2022. In , ABBA were 's first winner of the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Waterloo", which in 2005 was chosen as the best song in the competition's history as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the contest. During the band's main active years, it consisted of two married couples: Fältskog and Ulvaeus, and Lyngstad and Andersson. With the increase of their popularity, their personal lives suffered, which eventually resulted in the collapse of both marriages. The relationship changes were reflected in the group's music, with later compositions featuring darker and more introspective lyrics. After ABBA disbanded in December 1982, Andersson and Ulvaeus continued their success writing music for multiple audiences including stage, musicals and movies, while Fältskog and Lyngstad pursued solo careers. Ten years after the group broke up, a compilation, ABBA Gold, was released, becoming a worldwide best-seller. In 1999, ABBA's music was adapted into Mamma Mia!, a stage musical that toured worldwide and, as of April 2022, is still in the top-ten longest running productions on both Broadway (closed in 2015) and the West End (still running). A film of the same name, released in 2008, became the highest-grossing film in the United Kingdom that year. A sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, was released in 2018. In 2016, the group reunited and started working on a digital avatar concert tour. Newly recorded songs were announced in 2018. Voyage, their first new album in 40 years, was released on 5 November 2021 to positive critical reviews and strong sales in numerous countries. ABBA Voyage, a concert residency featuring ABBA as virtual avatars, opened in May 2022 in London. ABBA are among the best-selling music artists in history, with record sales estimated to be between 150 million to 385 million sold worldwide and the group were ranked 3rd best-selling singles artists in the United Kingdom with a total of 11.3 million singles sold by 3 November 2012. In May 2023 ABBA were awarded the BRIT Billion Award which celebrates those who have surpassed the milestone of one billion UK streams in their career. ABBA were the first group from a non-English-speaking country to achieve consistent success in the charts of English-speaking countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Republic of Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. They are the best-selling Swedish band of all time and the best-selling band originating in continental Europe. ABBA had eight consecutive number-one albums in the UK. The group also enjoyed significant success in Latin America and recorded a collection of their hit songs in Spanish. ABBA were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002. The group were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, the first recording artists to receive this honour from outside an Anglophonic country. In 2015, their song "Dancing Queen" was inducted into the Recording Academy's Grammy Hall of Fame. History 1958–1970: Before ABBA Member origins and collaboration Benny Andersson (born 16 December 1946 in Stockholm, Sweden) became (at age 18) a member of a popular Swedish pop-rock group, the Hep Stars, that performed, among other things, covers of international hits. The Hep Stars were known as "the Swedish Beatles". They also set up Hep House, their equivalent of Apple Corps. Andersson played the keyboard and eventually started writing original songs for his band, many of which became major hits, including "No Response", which hit number three in 1965, and "Sunny Girl", "Wedding", and "Consolation", all of which hit number one in 1966. Andersson also had a fruitful songwriting collaboration with Lasse Berghagen, with whom he wrote his first Svensktoppen entry, "Sagan om lilla Sofie" ("The tale of Little Sophie") in 1968. Björn Ulvaeus (born 25 April 1945 in Gothenburg, Sweden) also began his musical career at the age of 18 (as a singer and guitarist), when he fronted the Hootenanny Singers, a popular Swedish folk–skiffle group. Ulvaeus started writing English-language songs for his group and even had a brief solo career alongside. The Hootenanny Singers and the Hep Stars sometimes crossed paths while touring. In June 1966, Ulvaeus and Andersson decided to write a song together. Their first attempt was "Isn't It Easy to Say", a song that was later recorded by the Hep Stars. Stig Anderson was the manager of the Hootenanny Singers and founder of the Polar Music label. He saw potential in the collaboration, and encouraged them to write more. The two also began playing occasionally with the other's bands on stage and on record, although it was not until 1969 that the pair wrote and produced some of their first real hits together: "Ljuva sextital" ("Sweet Sixties"), recorded by Brita Borg, and the Hep Stars' 1969 hit "Speleman" ("Fiddler"). Andersson wrote and submitted the song "Hej, Clown" for Melodifestivalen 1969, the national festival to select the Swedish entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. The song tied for first place, but re-voting relegated Andersson's song to second place. On that occasion Andersson briefly met his future spouse, singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who also participated in the contest. A month later, the two had become a couple. As their respective bands began to break up during 1969, Andersson and Ulvaeus teamed up and recorded their first album together in 1970, called Lycka ("Happiness"), which included original songs sung by both men. Their partners were often present in the recording studio, and sometimes added backing vocals; Fältskog even co-wrote a song with the two. Ulvaeus still occasionally recorded and performed with the Hootenanny Singers until the middle of 1974, and Andersson took part in producing their records. Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad (born 15 November 1945 in Bjørkåsen in Ballangen, Norway) sang from the age of 13 with various dance bands, and worked mainly in a jazz-oriented cabaret style. She also formed her own band, the Anni-Frid Four. In the middle of 1967, she won a national talent competition with "En ledig dag" ("A Day Off"), a Swedish version of the bossa nova song "A Day in Portofino", which is included in the EMI compilation Frida 1967–1972. The first prize was a recording contract with EMI Sweden and to perform live on the most popular TV shows in the country. This TV performance, amongst many others, is included in the -hour documentary Frida – The DVD. Lyngstad released several schlager style singles on EMI with mixed success. When Benny Andersson started to produce her recordings in 1971, she had her first number-one single, "Min egen stad" ("My Own Town"), written by Benny and featuring all the future ABBA members on backing vocals. Lyngstad toured and performed regularly in the folkpark circuit and made appearances on radio and TV. She had a second number-one single with "Man Vill Ju Leva Lite Dessemellan" in late 1972. She had met Ulvaeus briefly in 1963 during a talent contest, and Fältskog during a TV show in early 1968. Lyngstad linked up with her future bandmates in 1969. On 1 March 1969, she participated in the Melodifestival, where she met Andersson for the first time. A few weeks later they met again during a concert tour in southern Sweden and they soon became a couple. Andersson produced her single "Peter Pan" in September 1969—her first collaboration with Benny & Björn, as they had written the song. Andersson would then produce Lyngstad's debut studio album, Frida, which was released in March 1971. Lyngstad also played in several revues and cabaret shows in Stockholm between 1969 and 1973. After ABBA formed, she recorded another successful album in 1975, Frida ensam, which included the original Swedish rendition of "Fernando", a hit on the Swedish radio charts before the English version was released by ABBA. Agnetha Fältskog (born 5 April 1950 in Jönköping, Sweden) sang with a local dance band headed by Bernt Enghardt who sent a demo recording of the band to Karl Gerhard Lundkvist. The demo tape featured a song written and sung by Agnetha: "Jag var så kär" ("I Was So in Love"). Lundkvist was so impressed with her voice that he was convinced she would be a star. After going through considerable effort to locate the singer, he arranged for Agnetha to come to Stockholm and to record two of her own songs. This led to Agnetha at the age of 18 having a number-one record in Sweden with a self-composed song, which later went on to sell over 80,000 copies. She was soon noticed by the critics and songwriters as a talented singer/songwriter of schlager style songs. Fältskog's main inspiration in her early years was singers such as Connie Francis. Along with her own compositions, she recorded covers of foreign hits and performed them on tours in Swedish folkparks. Most of her biggest hits were self-composed, which was quite unusual for a female singer in the 1960s. Agnetha released four solo LPs between 1968 and 1971. She had many successful singles in the Swedish charts. During filming of a Swedish TV special in May 1969, Fältskog met Ulvaeus and they married on 6 July 1971. Fältskog and Ulvaeus eventually were involved in each other's recording sessions, and soon even Andersson and Lyngstad added backing vocals to Fältskog's third studio album, Som jag är ("As I Am") (1970). In 1972, Fältskog starred as Mary Magdalene in the original Swedish production of Jesus Christ Superstar and attracted favourable reviews. Between 1967 and 1975, Fältskog released five studio albums. First live performance and the start of "Festfolket" An attempt at combining their talents occurred in April 1970 when the two couples went on holiday together to the island of Cyprus. What started as singing for fun on the beach ended up as an improvised live performance in front of the United Nations soldiers stationed on the island. Andersson and Ulvaeus were at this time recording their first album together, Lycka, which was to be released in September 1970. Fältskog and Lyngstad added backing vocals on several tracks during June, and the idea of their working together saw them launch a stage act, "Festfolket" (which translates from Swedish to "Party People" and in pronunciation also "engaged couples"), on 1 November 1970 in Gothenburg. The cabaret show attracted generally negative reviews, except for the performance of the Andersson and Ulvaeus hit "Hej, gamle man" ("Hello, Old Man")–the first Björn and Benny recording to feature all four. They also performed solo numbers from respective albums, but the lukewarm reception convinced the foursome to shelve plans for working together for the time being, and each soon concentrated on individual projects again. First record together "Hej, gamle man" "Hej, gamle man", a song about an old Salvation Army soldier, became the quartet's first hit. The record was credited to Björn & Benny and reached number five on the sales charts and number one on Svensktoppen, staying on the latter chart (which was not a chart linked to sales or airplay) for 15 weeks. It was during 1971 that the four artists began working together more, adding vocals to the others' recordings. Fältskog, Andersson and Ulvaeus toured together in May, while Lyngstad toured on her own. Frequent recording sessions brought the foursome closer together during the summer. 1970–1973: Forming the group After the 1970 release of Lycka, two more singles credited to "Björn & Benny" were released in Sweden, "Det kan ingen doktor hjälpa" ("No Doctor Can Help with That") and "Tänk om jorden vore ung" ("Imagine If Earth Was Young"), with more prominent vocals by Fältskog and Lyngstad–and moderate chart success. Fältskog and Ulvaeus, now married, started performing together with Andersson on a regular basis at the Swedish folkparks in the middle of 1971. Stig Anderson, founder and owner of Polar Music, was determined to break into the mainstream international market with music by Andersson and Ulvaeus. "One day the pair of you will write a song that becomes a worldwide hit," he predicted. Stig Anderson encouraged Ulvaeus and Andersson to write a song for Melodifestivalen, and after two rejected entries in 1971, Andersson and Ulvaeus submitted their new song "Säg det med en sång" ("Say It with a Song") for the 1972 contest, choosing newcomer Lena Anderson to perform. The song came in third place, encouraging Stig Anderson, and became a hit in Sweden. The first signs of foreign success came as a surprise, as the Andersson and Ulvaeus single "She's My Kind of Girl" was released through Epic Records in Japan in March 1972, giving the duo a Top 10 hit. Two more singles were released in Japan, "En Carousel" ("En Karusell" in Scandinavia, an earlier version of "Merry-Go-Round") and "Love Has Its Ways" (a song they wrote with Kōichi Morita). First hit as Björn, Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid Ulvaeus and Andersson persevered with their songwriting and experimented with new sounds and vocal arrangements. "People Need Love" was released in June 1972, featuring guest vocals by the women, who were now given much greater prominence. Stig Anderson released it as a single, credited to Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid. The song peaked at number 17 in the Swedish combined single and album charts, enough to convince them they were on to something. The single also became the first record to chart for the quartet in the United States, where it peaked at number 114 on the Cashbox singles chart and number 117 on the Record World singles chart. Labelled as Björn & Benny (with Svenska Flicka) meaning Swedish Girl, it was released there through Playboy Records. According to Stig Anderson, "People Need Love" could have been a much bigger American hit, but a small label like Playboy Records did not have the distribution resources to meet the demand for the single from retailers and radio programmers. "Ring Ring" In 1973, the band and their manager Stig Anderson decided to have another try at Melodifestivalen, this time with the song "Ring Ring". The studio sessions were handled by Michael B. Tretow, who experimented with a "wall of sound" production technique that became a distinctive new sound thereafter associated with ABBA. Stig Anderson arranged an English translation of the lyrics by Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody and they thought this would be a success. However, on 10 February 1973, the song came third in Melodifestivalen; thus it never reached the Eurovision Song Contest itself. Nevertheless, the group released their debut studio album, also called Ring Ring. The album did well and the "Ring Ring" single was a hit in many parts of Europe and also in South Africa. However, Stig Anderson felt that the true breakthrough could only come with a UK or US hit. When Agnetha Fältskog gave birth to her daughter Linda in 1973, she was replaced for a short period by Inger Brundin on a trip to West Germany. Official naming In 1973, Stig Anderson, tired of unwieldy names, started to refer to the group privately and publicly as ABBA (a palindrome). At first, this was a play on words, as Abba is also the name of a well-known fish-canning company in Sweden, and itself an abbreviation. However, since the fish-canners were unknown outside Sweden, Anderson came to believe the name would work in international markets. A competition to find a suitable name for the group was held in a Gothenburg newspaper and it was officially announced in the summer that the group were to be known as "ABBA". The group negotiated with the canners for the rights to the name. Fred Bronson reported for Billboard that Fältskog told him in a 1988 interview that "[ABBA] had to ask permission and the factory said, 'O.K., as long as you don't make us feel ashamed for what you're doing. "ABBA" is an acronym formed from the first letters of each group member's first name: Agnetha, Björn, Benny, Anni-Frid, although there has never been any official confirmation of who each letter in the sequence refers to. The earliest known example of "ABBA" written on paper is on a recording session sheet from the Metronome Studio in Stockholm dated 16 October 1973. This was first written as "Björn, Benny, Agnetha & Frida", but was subsequently crossed out with "ABBA" written in large letters on top. Official logo Their official logo, distinct with the backward "B", was designed by Rune Söderqvist, who designed most of ABBA's record sleeves. The ambigram first appeared on the French compilation album, Golden Double Album, released in May 1976 by Disques Vogue, and would henceforth be used for all official releases. The idea for the official logo was made by the German photographer on a velvet jumpsuit photo shoot for the teenage magazine Bravo. In the photo, the ABBA members held giant initial letters of their names. After the pictures were made, Heilemann found out that Benny Andersson reversed his letter "B;" this prompted discussions about the mirrored "B", and the members of ABBA agreed on the mirrored letter. From 1976 onward, the first "B" in the logo version of the name was "mirror-image" reversed on the band's promotional material, thus becoming the group's registered trademark. Following their acquisition of the group's catalogue, PolyGram began using variations of the ABBA logo, employing a different font. In 1992, Polygram added a crown emblem to it for the first release of the ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits compilation. After Universal Music purchased PolyGram (and, thus, ABBA's label Polar Music International), control of the group's catalogue returned to Stockholm. Since then, the original logo has been reinstated on all official products. 1973–1976: Breakthrough Eurovision Song Contest 1974 As the group entered the Melodifestivalen with "Ring Ring" but failed to qualify as the 1973 Swedish entry, Stig Anderson immediately started planning for the 1974 contest. Ulvaeus, Andersson and Stig Anderson believed in the possibilities of using the Eurovision Song Contest as a way to make the music business aware of them as songwriters, as well as the band itself. In late 1973, they were invited by Swedish television to contribute a song for the Melodifestivalen 1974 and from a number of new songs, the upbeat song "Waterloo" was chosen; the group were now inspired by the growing glam rock scene in England. ABBA won their nation's hearts on Swedish television on 9 February 1974, and with this third attempt were far more experienced and better prepared for the Eurovision Song Contest. Winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest on 6 April 1974 (and singing "Waterloo" in English instead of their native tongue) gave ABBA the chance to tour Europe and perform on major television shows; thus the band saw the "Waterloo" single chart in many European countries. Following their success at the Eurovision Song Contest, ABBA spent an evening of glory partying in the appropriately named first-floor Napoleon suite of The Grand Brighton Hotel. "Waterloo" was ABBA's first major hit in numerous countries, becoming their first number-one single in nine western and northern European countries, including the big markets of the UK and West Germany, and in South Africa. It also made the top ten in several other countries, including rising to number three in Spain, number four in Australia and France, and number seven in Canada. In the United States, the song peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, paving the way for their first album and their first trip as a group there. Albeit a short promotional visit, it included their first performance on American television, The Mike Douglas Show. The album Waterloo only peaked at number 145 on the Billboard 200 chart, but received unanimous high praise from the US critics: Los Angeles Times called it "a compelling and fascinating debut album that captures the spirit of mainstream pop quite effectively ... an immensely enjoyable and pleasant project", while Creem characterised it as "a perfect blend of exceptional, lovable compositions". ABBA's follow-up single, "Honey, Honey", peaked at number 27 on the US Billboard Hot 100, reached the top twenty in several other countries, and was a number-two hit in West Germany although it only reached the top 30 in Australia and the US. In the United Kingdom, ABBA's British record label, Epic, decided to re-release a remixed version of "Ring Ring" instead of "Honey, Honey", and a cover version of the latter by Sweet Dreams peaked at number 10. Both records debuted on the UK chart within one week of each other. "Ring Ring" failed to reach the Top 30 in the UK, increasing growing speculation that the group were simply a Eurovision one-hit wonder. Post-Eurovision In November 1974, ABBA embarked on their first European tour, playing dates in Denmark, West Germany and Austria. It was not as successful as the band had hoped, since most of the venues did not sell out. Due to a lack of demand, they were even forced to cancel a few shows, including a sole concert scheduled in Switzerland. The second leg of the tour, which took them through Scandinavia in January 1975, was very different. They played to full houses everywhere and finally got the reception they had aimed for. Live performances continued in the middle of 1975 when ABBA embarked on a fourteen open-air date tour of Sweden and Finland. Their Stockholm show at the Gröna Lund amusement park had an estimated audience of 19,200. Björn Ulvaeus later said, "If you look at the singles we released straight after Waterloo, we were trying to be more like The Sweet, a semi-glam rock group, which was stupid because we were always a pop group." In late 1974, "So Long" was released as a single in the United Kingdom but it received no airplay from Radio 1 and failed to chart in the UK; the only countries in which it was successful were Austria, Sweden and Germany, reaching the top ten in the first two and number 21 in the latter. In the middle of 1975, ABBA released "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do", which again received little airplay on Radio 1, but did manage to climb to number 38 on the UK chart, while making top five in several northern and western European countries, and number one in South Africa. Later that year, the release of their self-titled third studio album ABBA and single "SOS" brought back their chart presence in the UK, where the single hit number six and the album peaked at number 13. "SOS" also became ABBA's second number-one single in Germany, their third in Australia and their first in France, plus reached number two in several other European countries, including Italy. Success was further solidified with "Mamma Mia" reaching number-one in the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia and the top two in a few other western and northern European countries. In the United States, both "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" and "SOS" peaked at number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with the latter picking up the BMI Award along the way as one of the most played songs on American radio in 1975. "Mamma Mia", however, stalled at number 32. In Canada, the three songs rose to number 12, nine and 18, respectively. The success of the group in the United States had until that time been limited to single releases. By early 1976, the group already had four Top 30 singles on the US charts, but the album market proved to be tough to crack. The eponymous ABBA album generated three American hits, but it only peaked at number 165 on the Cashbox album chart and number 174 on the Billboard 200 chart. Opinions were voiced, by Creem in particular, that in the US ABBA had endured "a very sloppy promotional campaign". Nevertheless, the group enjoyed warm reviews from the American press. Cashbox went as far as saying that "there is a recurrent thread of taste and artistry inherent in Abba's marketing, creativity and presentation that makes it almost embarrassing to critique their efforts", while Creem wrote: "SOS is surrounded on this LP by so many good tunes that the mind boggles." In Australia, the airing of the music videos for "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" and "Mamma Mia" on the nationally broadcast TV pop show Countdown (which premiered in November 1974) saw the band rapidly gain enormous popularity, and Countdown become a key promoter of the group via their distinctive music videos. This started an immense interest for ABBA in Australia, resulting in "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" staying at number one for three weeks, then "SOS" spending a week there, followed by "Mamma Mia" staying there for ten weeks, and the album holding down the number one position for months. The three songs were also successful in nearby New Zealand with the first two topping that chart and the third reaching number two. 1976–1981: Superstardom Greatest Hits and Arrival In March 1976, the band released the compilation album Greatest Hits. It became their first UK number-one album, and also took ABBA into the Top 50 on the US album charts for the first time, eventually selling more than a million copies there. Also included on Greatest Hits was a new single, "Fernando", which went to number-one in at least thirteen countries all over the world, including the UK, Germany, France, Australia, South Africa and Mexico, and the top five in most other significant markets, including, at number four, becoming their biggest hit to date in Canada; the single went on to sell over 10 million copies worldwide. In Australia, "Fernando" occupied the top position for a then record breaking 14 weeks (and stayed in the chart for 40 weeks), and was the longest-running chart-topper there for over 40 years until it was overtaken by Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" in May 2017. It still remains as one of the best-selling singles of all time in Australia. Also in 1976, the group received its first international prize, with "Fernando" being chosen as the "Best Studio Recording of 1975". In the United States, "Fernando" reached the Top 10 of the Cashbox Top 100 singles chart and number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. It topped the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, ABBA's first American number-one single on any chart. At the same time, a compilation named The Very Best of ABBA was released in Germany, becoming a number-one album there whereas the Greatest Hits compilation which followed a few months later ascended to number two in Germany, despite all similarities with The Very Best album. The group's fourth studio album, Arrival, a number-one best-seller in parts of Europe, the UK and Australia, and a number-three hit in Canada and Japan, represented a new level of accomplishment in both songwriting and studio work, prompting rave reviews from more rock-oriented UK music weeklies such as Melody Maker and New Musical Express, and mostly appreciative notices from US critics. Hit after hit flowed from Arrival: "Money, Money, Money", another number-one in Germany, France, Australia and other countries of western and northern Europe, plus number two in the UK; and, "Knowing Me, Knowing You", ABBA's sixth consecutive German number-one, as well as another UK number-one, plus a top five hit in many other countries, although it was only a number nine hit in Australia and France. The real sensation was the first single, "Dancing Queen", not only topping the charts in loyal markets like the UK, Germany, Sweden, several other western and northern European countries, and Australia, but also reaching number-one in the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and Japan, and the top ten in France, Spain and Italy. All three songs were number-one hits in Mexico. In South Africa, ABBA had astounding success with each of "Fernando", "Dancing Queen" and "Knowing Me, Knowing You" being among the top 20 best-selling singles for 1976–77. In 1977, Arrival was nominated for the inaugural BRIT Award in the category "Best International Album of the Year". By this time ABBA were popular in the UK, most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In Frida – The DVD, Lyngstad explains how she and Fältskog developed as singers, as ABBA's recordings grew more complex over the years. The band's mainstream popularity in the United States would remain on a comparatively smaller scale, and "Dancing Queen" became the only Billboard Hot 100 number-one single for ABBA (though it immediately became, and remains to this day, a major gay anthem) with "Knowing Me, Knowing You" later peaking at number seven; "Money, Money, Money", however, had barely charted there or in Canada (where "Knowing Me, Knowing You" had reached number five). They did, however, get three more singles to the number-one position on other Billboard US charts, including Billboard Adult Contemporary and Hot Dance Club Play). Nevertheless, Arrival finally became a true breakthrough release for ABBA on the US album market where it peaked at number 20 on the Billboard 200 chart and was certified gold by RIAA. European and Australian tour In January 1977, ABBA embarked on their first major tour. The group's status had changed dramatically and they were clearly regarded as superstars. They opened their much anticipated tour in Oslo, Norway, on 28 January, and mounted a lavishly produced spectacle that included a few scenes from their self-written mini-operetta The Girl with the Golden Hair. The concert attracted immense media attention from across Europe and Australia. They continued the tour through Western Europe, visiting Gothenburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Essen, Hanover, and Hamburg and ending with shows in the United Kingdom in Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and two sold-out concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall. Tickets for these two shows were available only by mail application and it was later revealed that the box-office received 3.5 million requests for tickets, enough to fill the venue 580 times. Along with praise ("ABBA turn out to be amazingly successful at reproducing their records", wrote Creem), there were complaints that "ABBA performed slickly...but with a zero personality coming across from a total of 16 people on stage" (Melody Maker). One of the Royal Albert Hall concerts was filmed as a reference for the filming of the Australian tour for what became ABBA: The Movie, though it is not exactly known how much of the concert was filmed. After the European leg of the tour, in March 1977, ABBA played 11 dates in Australia before a total of 160,000 people. The opening concert in Sydney at the Sydney Showground on 3 March to an audience of 20,000 was marred by torrential rain with Lyngstad slipping on the wet stage during the concert. However, all four members would later recall this concert as the most memorable of their career. Upon their arrival in Melbourne, a civic reception was held at the Melbourne Town Hall and ABBA appeared on the balcony to greet an enthusiastic crowd of 6,000. In Melbourne, the group gave three concerts at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl with 14,500 at each including the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and his family. At the first Melbourne concert, an additional 16,000 people gathered outside the fenced-off area to listen to the concert. In Adelaide, the group performed one concert at Football Park in front of 20,000 people, with another 10,000 listening outside. During the first of five concerts in Perth, there was a bomb scare with everyone having to evacuate the Entertainment Centre. The trip was accompanied by mass hysteria and unprecedented media attention ("Swedish ABBA stirs box-office in Down Under tour...and the media coverage of the quartet rivals that set to cover the upcoming Royal tour of Australia", wrote Variety), and is captured on film in ABBA: The Movie, directed by Lasse Hallström. The Australian tour and its subsequent ABBA: The Movie produced some ABBA lore, as well. Fältskog's blonde good looks had long made her the band's "pin-up girl", a role she disdained. During the Australian tour, she performed in a skin-tight white jumpsuit, causing one Australian newspaper to use the headline "Agnetha's bottom tops dull show". When asked about this at a news conference, she replied: "Don't they have bottoms in Australia?" ABBA: The Album In December 1977, ABBA followed up Arrival with the more ambitious fifth album, ABBA: The Album, released to coincide with the debut of ABBA: The Movie. Although the album was less well received by UK reviewers, it did spawn more worldwide hits: "The Name of the Game" and "Take a Chance on Me", which both topped the UK charts and racked up impressive sales in most countries, although "The Name of the Game" was generally the more successful in the Nordic countries and Down Under, while "Take a Chance on Me" was more successful in North America and the German-speaking countries. "The Name of the Game" was a number two hit in the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden while also making the Top 5 in Finland, Norway, New Zealand and Australia, while only peaking at numbers 10, 12 and 15 in Mexico, the US and Canada. "Take a Chance on Me" was a number one hit in Austria, Belgium and Mexico, made the Top 3 in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, while only reaching numbers 12 and 14 in Australia and New Zealand, respectively. Both songs were Top 10 hits in countries as far afield as Rhodesia and South Africa, as well as in France. Although "Take a Chance on Me" did not top the American charts, it proved to be ABBA's biggest hit single there, selling more copies than "Dancing Queen". The drop in sales in Australia was felt to be inevitable by industry observers as an "Abba-Fever" that had existed there for almost three years could only last so long as adolescents would naturally begin to move away from a group so deified by both their parents and grandparents. A third single, "Eagle", was released in continental Europe and Down Under becoming a number one hit in Belgium and a Top 10 hit in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and South Africa, but barely charting Down Under. The B-side of "Eagle" was "Thank You for the Music", and it was belatedly released as an A-side single in the both the United Kingdom and Ireland in 1983. "Thank You for the Music" has become one of the best loved and best known ABBA songs without being released as a single during the group's lifetime. ABBA: The Album topped the album charts in the UK, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, while ascending to the Top 5 in Australia, Germany, Austria, Finland and Rhodesia, and making the Top 10 in Canada and Japan. Sources also indicate that sales in Poland exceeded 1 million copies and that sales demand in Russia could not be met by the supply available. The album peaked at number 14 in the US. Polar Music Studio formation By 1978, ABBA were one of the biggest bands in the world. They converted a vacant cinema into the Polar Music Studio, a state-of-the-art studio in Stockholm. The studio was used by several other bands; notably Genesis' Duke and Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door were recorded there. During May 1978, the group went to the United States for a promotional campaign, performing alongside Andy Gibb on Olivia Newton-John's TV show. Recording sessions for the single "Summer Night City" were an uphill struggle, but upon release the song became another hit for the group. The track would set the stage for ABBA's foray into disco with their next album. On 9 January 1979, the group performed "Chiquitita" at the Music for UNICEF Concert held at the United Nations General Assembly to celebrate UNICEF's Year of the Child. ABBA donated the copyright of this worldwide hit to the UNICEF; see Music for UNICEF Concert. The single was released the following week, and reached number-one in ten countries. North American and European tours In mid-January 1979, Ulvaeus and Fältskog announced they were getting divorced. The news caused interest from the media and led to speculation about the band's future. ABBA assured the press and their fan base they were continuing their work as a group and that the divorce would not affect them. Nonetheless, the media continued to confront them with this in interviews. To escape the media swirl and concentrate on their writing, Andersson and Ulvaeus secretly travelled to Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, where for two weeks they prepared their next album's songs. The group's sixth studio album, Voulez-Vous, was released in April 1979, with its title track recorded at the famous Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, with the assistance of recording engineer Tom Dowd amongst others. The album topped the charts across Europe and in Japan and Mexico, hit the Top 10 in Canada and Australia and the Top 20 in the US. While none of the singles from the album reached number one on the UK chart, the lead single, "Chiquitita", and the fourth single, "I Have a Dream", both ascended to number two, and the other two, "Does Your Mother Know" and "Angeleyes" (with "Voulez-Vous", released as a double A-side) both made the top 5. All four singles reached number one in Belgium, although the last three did not chart in Sweden or Norway. "Chiquitita", which was featured in the Music for UNICEF Concert after which ABBA decided to donate half of the royalties from the song to UNICEF, topped the singles charts in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Spain, Mexico, South Africa, Rhodesia and New Zealand, rose to number two in Sweden, and made the Top 5 in Germany, Austria, Norway and Australia, although it only reached number 29 in the US. "I Have a Dream" was a sizeable hit reaching number one in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria, number three in South Africa, and number four in Germany, although it only reached number 64 in Australia. In Canada, "I Have a Dream" became ABBA's second number one on the RPM Adult Contemporary chart (after "Fernando" hit the top previously) although it did not chart in the US. "Does Your Mother Know", a rare song in which Ulvaeus sings lead vocals, was a Top 5 hit in the Netherlands and Finland, and a Top 10 hit in Germany, Switzerland, Australia, although it only reached number 27 in New Zealand. It did better in North America than "Chiquitita", reaching number 12 in Canada and number 19 in the US, and made the Top 20 in Japan. "Voulez-Vous" was a Top 10 hit in the Netherlands and Switzerland, a Top 20 hit in Germany and Finland, but only peaked in the 80s in Australia, Canada and the US. Also in 1979, the group released their second compilation album, Greatest Hits Vol. 2, which featured a brand new track: "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)", which was a Top 3 hit in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Finland and Norway, and returned ABBA to the Top 10 in Australia. Greatest Hits Vol. 2 went to number one in the UK, Belgium, Canada and Japan while making the Top 5 in several other countries, but only reaching number 20 in Australia and number 46 in the US. In the Soviet Union during the late 1970s, the group were paid in oil commodities because of an embargo on the rouble. On 13 September 1979, ABBA began ABBA: The Tour at Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton, Canada, with a full house of 14,000. "The voices of the band, Agnetha's high sauciness combined with round, rich lower tones of Anni-Frid, were excellent...Technically perfect, melodically correct and always in perfect pitch...The soft lower voice of Anni-Frid and the high, edgy vocals of Agnetha were stunning", raved Edmonton Journal. During the next four weeks they played a total of 17 sold-out dates, 13 in the United States and four in Canada. The last scheduled ABBA concert in the United States in Washington, D.C. was cancelled due to emotional distress Fältskog experienced during the flight from New York to Boston. The group's private plane was subjected to extreme weather conditions and was unable to land for an extended period. They appeared at the Boston Music Hall for the performance 90 minutes late. The tour ended with a show in Toronto, Canada at Maple Leaf Gardens before a capacity crowd of 18,000. "ABBA plays with surprising power and volume; but although they are loud, they're also clear, which does justice to the signature vocal sound... Anyone who's been waiting five years to see Abba will be well satisfied", wrote Record World. On 19 October 1979, the tour resumed in Western Europe where the band played 23 sold-out gigs, including six sold-out nights at London's Wembley Arena. Progression In March 1980, ABBA travelled to Japan where upon their arrival at Narita International Airport, they were besieged by thousands of fans. The group performed eleven concerts to full houses, including six shows at Tokyo's Budokan. This tour was the last "on the road" adventure of their career. In July 1980, ABBA released the single "The Winner Takes It All", the group's eighth UK chart topper (and their first since 1978). The song is widely misunderstood as being written about Ulvaeus and Fältskog's marital tribulations; Ulvaeus wrote the lyrics, but has stated they were not about his own divorce; Fältskog has repeatedly stated she was not the loser in their divorce. In the United States, the single peaked at number-eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and became ABBA's second Billboard Adult Contemporary number-one. It was also re-recorded by Andersson and Ulvaeus with a slightly different backing track, by French chanteuse Mireille Mathieu at the end of 1980 – as "Bravo tu as gagné", with French lyrics by Alain Boublil. November the same year saw the release of ABBA's seventh album Super Trouper, which reflected a certain change in ABBA's style with more prominent use of synthesizers and increasingly personal lyrics. It set a record for the most pre-orders ever received for a UK album after one million copies were ordered before release. The second single from the album, "Super Trouper", also hit number-one in the UK, becoming the group's ninth and final UK chart-topper. Another track from the album, "Lay All Your Love on Me", released in 1981 as a Twelve-inch single only in selected territories, managed to top the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart and peaked at number-seven on the UK singles chart becoming, at the time, the highest ever charting 12-inch release in UK chart history. Also in 1980, ABBA recorded a compilation of Spanish-language versions of their hits called Gracias Por La Música. This was released in Spanish-speaking countries as well as in Japan and Australia. The album became a major success, and along with the Spanish version of "Chiquitita", this signalled the group's breakthrough in Latin America. ABBA Oro: Grandes Éxitos, the Spanish equivalent of ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits, was released in 1999. 1981–1982: The Visitors and later performances In January 1981, Ulvaeus married Lena Källersjö, and manager Stig Anderson celebrated his 50th birthday with a party. For this occasion, ABBA recorded the track "Hovas Vittne" (a pun on the Swedish name for Jehovah's Witness and Anderson's birthplace, Hova) as a tribute to him, and released it only on 200 red vinyl copies, to be distributed to the guests attending the party. This single has become a sought-after collectable. In mid-February 1981, Andersson and Lyngstad announced they were filing for divorce. Information surfaced that their marriage had been an uphill struggle for years, and Benny had already met another woman, Mona Nörklit, whom he married in November 1981. Andersson and Ulvaeus had songwriting sessions in early 1981, and recording sessions began in mid-March. At the end of April, the group recorded a TV special, Dick Cavett Meets ABBA with the US talk show host Dick Cavett. The Visitors, ABBA's eighth studio album, showed a songwriting maturity and depth of feeling distinctly lacking from their earlier recordings but still placing the band squarely in the pop genre, with catchy tunes and harmonies. Although not revealed at the time of its release, the album's title track, according to Ulvaeus, refers to the secret meetings held against the approval of totalitarian governments in Soviet-dominated states, while other tracks address topics like failed relationships, the threat of war, ageing, and loss of innocence. The album's only major single release, "One of Us", proved to be the last of ABBA's nine number-one singles in Germany, this being in December 1981; and the swansong of their sixteen Top 5 singles on the South African chart. "One of Us" was also ABBA's final Top 3 hit in the UK, reaching number-three on the UK Singles Chart. Although it topped the album charts across most of Europe, including Ireland, the UK and Germany, The Visitors was not as commercially successful as its predecessors, showing a commercial decline in previously loyal markets such as France, Australia and Japan. A track from the album, "When All Is Said and Done", was released as a single in North America, Australia and New Zealand, and fittingly became ABBA's final Top 40 hit in the US (debuting on the US charts on 31 December 1981), while also reaching the US Adult Contemporary Top 10, and number-four on the RPM Adult Contemporary chart in Canada. The song's lyrics, as with "The Winner Takes It All" and "One of Us", dealt with the painful experience of separating from a long-term partner, though it looked at the trauma more optimistically. With the now publicised story of Andersson and Lyngstad's divorce, speculation increased of tension within the band. Also released in the United States was the title track of The Visitors, which hit the Top Ten on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart. Later recording sessions In the spring of 1982, songwriting sessions had started and the group came together for more recordings. Plans were not completely clear, but a new album was discussed and the prospect of a small tour suggested. The recording sessions in May and June 1982 were a struggle, and only three songs were eventually recorded: "You Owe Me One", "I Am the City" and "Just Like That". Andersson and Ulvaeus were not satisfied with the outcome, so the tapes were shelved and the group took a break for the summer. Back in the studio again in early August, the group had changed plans for the rest of the year: they settled for a Christmas release of a double album compilation of all their past single releases to be named The Singles: The First Ten Years. New songwriting and recording sessions took place, and during October and December, they released the singles "The Day Before You Came"/"Cassandra" and "Under Attack"/"You Owe Me One", the A-sides of which were included on the compilation album. Neither single made the Top 20 in the United Kingdom, though "The Day Before You Came" became a Top 5 hit in many European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. The album went to number one in the UK and Belgium, Top 5 in the Netherlands and Germany and Top 20 in many other countries. "Under Attack", the group's final release before disbanding, was a Top 5 hit in the Netherlands and Belgium. "I Am the City" and "Just Like That" were left unreleased on The Singles: The First Ten Years for possible inclusion on the next projected studio album, though this never came to fruition. "I Am the City" was eventually released on the compilation album More ABBA Gold in 1993, while "Just Like That" has been recycled in new songs with other artists produced by Andersson and Ulvaeus. A reworked version of the verses ended up in the musical Chess. The chorus section of "Just Like That" was eventually released on a retrospective box set in 1994, as well as in the ABBA Undeleted medley featured on disc 9 of The Complete Studio Recordings. Despite a number of requests from fans, Ulvaeus and Andersson are still refusing to release ABBA's version of "Just Like That" in its entirety, even though the complete version has surfaced on bootlegs. The group travelled to London to promote The Singles: The First Ten Years in the first week of November 1982, appearing on Saturday Superstore and The Late, Late Breakfast Show, and also to West Germany in the second week, to perform on Show Express. On 19 November 1982, ABBA appeared for the last time in Sweden on the TV programme Nöjesmaskinen, and on 11 December 1982, they made their last performance ever, transmitted to the UK on Noel Edmonds' The Late, Late Breakfast Show, through a live link from a TV studio in Stockholm. Later performances Andersson and Ulvaeus began collaborating with Tim Rice in early 1983 on writing songs for the musical project Chess, while Fältskog and Lyngstad both concentrated on international solo careers. While Andersson and Ulvaeus were working on the musical, a further co-operation among the three of them came with the musical Abbacadabra that was produced in France for television. It was a children's musical using 14 ABBA songs. Alain and Daniel Boublil, who wrote Les Misérables, had been in touch with Stig Anderson about the project, and the TV musical was aired over Christmas on French TV and later a Dutch version was also broadcast. Boublil previously also wrote the French lyric for Mireille Mathieu's version of "The Winner Takes It All". Lyngstad, who had recently moved to Paris, participated in the French version, and recorded a single, "Belle", a duet with French singer Daniel Balavoine. The song was a cover of ABBA's 1976 instrumental track "Arrival". As the single "Belle" sold well in France, Cameron Mackintosh wanted to stage an English-language version of the show in London, with the French lyrics translated by David Wood and Don Black; Andersson and Ulvaeus got involved in the project, and contributed with one new song, "I Am the Seeker". "Abbacadabra" premiered on 8 December 1983 at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in London, to mixed reviews and full houses for eight weeks, closing on 21 January 1984. Lyngstad was also involved in this production, recording "Belle" in English as "Time", a duet with actor and singer B. A. Robertson: the single sold well, and was produced and recorded by Mike Batt. In May 1984, Lyngstad performed "I Have a Dream" with a children's choir at the United Nations Organisation Gala, in Geneva, Switzerland. All four members made their (at the time, final) public appearance as four friends more than as ABBA in January 1986, when they recorded a video of themselves performing an acoustic version of "Tivedshambo" (which was the first song written by their manager Stig Anderson), for a Swedish TV show honouring Anderson on his 55th birthday. The four had not seen each other for more than two years. That same year they also performed privately at another friend's 40th birthday: their old tour manager, Claes af Geijerstam. They sang a self-written song titled "Der Kleine Franz" that was later to resurface in Chess. Also in 1986, ABBA Live was released, featuring selections of live performances from the group's 1977 and 1979 tours. The four members were guests at the 50th birthday of Görel Hanser in 1999. Hanser was a long-time friend of all four, and also former secretary of Stig Anderson. Honouring Görel, ABBA performed a Swedish birthday song "Med en enkel tulipan" a cappella. Andersson has on several occasions performed ABBA songs. In June 1992, he and Ulvaeus appeared with U2 at a Stockholm concert, singing the chorus of "Dancing Queen", and a few years later during the final performance of the B & B in Concert in Stockholm, Andersson joined the cast for an encore at the piano. Andersson frequently adds an ABBA song to the playlist when he performs with his BAO band. He also played the piano during new recordings of the ABBA songs "Like an Angel Passing Through My Room" with opera singer Anne Sofie von Otter, and "When All Is Said and Done" with Swede Viktoria Tolstoy. In 2002, Andersson and Ulvaeus both performed an a cappella rendition of the first verse of "Fernando" as they accepted their Ivor Novello award in London. Lyngstad performed and recorded an a cappella version of "Dancing Queen" with the Swedish group the Real Group in 1993, and also re-recorded "I Have a Dream" with Swiss singer Dan Daniell in 2003. Break and reunion ABBA never officially announced the end of the group or an indefinite break, but it was long considered dissolved after their final public performance together in 1982. Their final public performance together as ABBA before their 2016 reunion was on the British TV programme The Late, Late Breakfast Show (live from Stockholm) on 11 December 1982. While reminiscing on "The Day Before You Came", Ulvaeus said: "we might have continued for a while longer if that had been a number one". In January 1983, Fältskog started recording sessions for a solo album, as Lyngstad had successfully released her album Something's Going On some months earlier. Ulvaeus and Andersson, meanwhile, started songwriting sessions for the musical Chess. In interviews at the time, Björn and Benny denied the split of ABBA ("Who are we without our ladies? Initials of Brigitte Bardot?"), and Lyngstad and Fältskog kept claiming in interviews that ABBA would come together for a new album repeatedly during 1983 and 1984. Internal strife between the group and their manager escalated and the band members sold their shares in Polar Music during 1983. Except for a TV appearance in 1986, the foursome did not come together publicly again until they were reunited at the Swedish premiere of the Mamma Mia! movie on 4 July 2008. The individual members' endeavours shortly before and after their final public performance coupled with the collapse of both marriages and the lack of significant activity in the following few years after that widely suggested that the group had broken up. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph following the premiere, Ulvaeus and Andersson said that there was nothing that could entice them back on stage again. Ulvaeus said: "We will never appear on stage again. [...] There is simply no motivation to re-group. Money is not a factor and we would like people to remember us as we were. Young, exuberant, full of energy and ambition. I remember Robert Plant saying Led Zeppelin were a cover band now because they cover all their own stuff. I think that hit the nail on the head." However, on 3 January 2011, Fältskog, long considered to be the most reclusive member of the group and a major obstacle to any reunion, raised the possibility of reuniting for a one-off engagement. She admitted that she has not yet brought the idea up to the other three members. In April 2013, she reiterated her hopes for reunion during an interview with Die Zeit, stating: "If they ask me, I'll say yes." In a May 2013 interview, Fältskog, aged 63 at the time, stated that an ABBA reunion would never occur: "I think we have to accept that it will not happen, because we are too old and each one of us has their own life. Too many years have gone by since we stopped, and there's really no meaning in putting us together again". Fältskog further explained that the band members remained on amicable terms: "It's always nice to see each other now and then and to talk a little and to be a little nostalgic." In an April 2014 interview, Fältskog, when asked about whether the band might reunite for a new recording said: "It's difficult to talk about this because then all the news stories will be: 'ABBA is going to record another song!' But as long as we can sing and play, then why not? I would love to, but it's up to Björn and Benny." Resurgence of public interest The same year the members of ABBA went their separate ways, the French production of a "tribute" show (a children's TV musical named Abbacadabra using 14 ABBA songs) spawned new interest in the group's music. After receiving little attention during the mid-to-late-1980s, ABBA's music experienced a resurgence in the early 1990s due to the UK synth-pop duo Erasure, who released Abba-esque, a four track extended play release featuring cover versions of ABBA songs which topped several European charts in 1992. As U2 arrived in Stockholm for a concert in June of that year, the band paid homage to ABBA by inviting Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson to join them on stage for a rendition of "Dancing Queen", playing guitar and keyboards. September 1992 saw the release of ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits, a new compilation album. The single "Dancing Queen" received radio airplay in the UK in the middle of 1992 to promote the album. The song returned to the Top 20 of the UK singles chart in August that year, this time peaking at number 16. With sales of 30 million, Gold is the best-selling ABBA album, as well as one of the best-selling albums worldwide. With sales of 5.5 million copies it is the second-highest selling album of all time in the UK, after Queen's Greatest Hits. More ABBA Gold: More ABBA Hits, a follow-up to Gold, was released in 1993. In 1994, two Australian cult films caught the attention of the world's media, both focusing on admiration for ABBA: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel's Wedding. The same year, Thank You for the Music, a four-disc box set comprising all the group's hits and stand-out album tracks, was released with the involvement of all four members. "By the end of the twentieth century," American critic Chuck Klosterman wrote a decade later, "it was far more contrarian to hate ABBA than to love them." ABBA were soon recognised and embraced by other acts: Evan Dando of the Lemonheads recorded a cover version of "Knowing Me, Knowing You"; Sinéad O'Connor and Boyzone's Stephen Gately have recorded "Chiquitita"; Tanita Tikaram, Blancmange and Steven Wilson paid tribute to "The Day Before You Came". Cliff Richard covered "Lay All Your Love on Me", while Dionne Warwick, Peter Cetera, Frank Sidebottom and Celebrity Skin recorded their versions of "SOS". US alternative-rock musician Marshall Crenshaw has also been known to play a version of "Knowing Me, Knowing You" in concert appearances, while legendary English Latin pop songwriter Richard Daniel Roman has recognised ABBA as a major influence. Swedish metal guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen covered "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" with slightly altered lyrics. Two different compilation albums of ABBA songs have been released. ABBA: A Tribute coincided with the 25th anniversary celebration and featured 17 songs, some of which were recorded especially for this release. Notable tracks include Go West's "One of Us", Army of Lovers "Hasta Mañana", Information Society's "Lay All Your Love on Me", Erasure's "Take a Chance on Me" (with MC Kinky), and Lyngstad's a cappella duet with the Real Group of "Dancing Queen". A second 12-track album was released in 1999, titled ABBAmania, with proceeds going to the Youth Music charity in England. It featured all new cover versions: notable tracks were by Madness ("Money, Money, Money"), Culture Club ("Voulez-Vous"), the Corrs ("The Winner Takes It All"), Steps ("Lay All Your Love on Me", "I Know Him So Well"), and a medley titled "Thank ABBA for the Music" performed by several artists and as featured on the Brits Awards that same year. In 1998, an ABBA tribute group was formed, the ABBA Teens, which was subsequently renamed the A-Teens to allow the group some independence. The group's first album, The ABBA Generation, consisting solely of ABBA covers reimagined as 1990s pop songs, was a worldwide success and so were subsequent albums. The group disbanded in 2004 due to a gruelling schedule and intentions to go solo. In Sweden, the growing recognition of the legacy of Andersson and Ulvaeus resulted in the 1998 B & B Concerts, a tribute concert (with Swedish singers who had worked with the songwriters through the years) showcasing not only their ABBA years, but hits both before and after ABBA. The concert was a success, and was ultimately released on CD. It later toured Scandinavia and even went to Beijing in the People's Republic of China for two concerts. In 2000 ABBA were reported to have turned down an offer of approximately one billion US dollars to do a reunion tour consisting of 100 concerts. For the semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2004, staged in Istanbul 30 years after ABBA had won the contest in Brighton, all four members made cameo appearances in a special comedy video made for the interval act, titled Our Last Video Ever. Other well-known stars such as Rik Mayall, Cher and Iron Maiden's Eddie also made appearances in the video. It was not included in the official DVD release of the 2004 Eurovision contest, but was issued as a separate DVD release, retitled The Last Video at the request of the former ABBA members. The video was made using puppet models of the members of the band. The video has surpassed 13 million views on YouTube as of November 2020. In 2005, all four members of ABBA appeared at the Stockholm premiere of the musical Mamma Mia!. On 22 October 2005, at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest, "Waterloo" was chosen as the best song in the competition's history. In the same month, American singer Madonna released the single "Hung Up", which contains a sample of the keyboard melody from ABBA's 1979 song "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)"; the song was a smash hit, peaking at number one in at least 50 countries. On 4 July 2008, all four ABBA members were reunited at the Swedish premiere of the film Mamma Mia!. It was only the second time all of them had appeared together in public since 1986. During the appearance, they re-emphasised that they intended never to officially reunite, citing the opinion of Robert Plant that the re-formed Led Zeppelin was more like a cover band of itself than the original band. Ulvaeus stated that he wanted the band to be remembered as they were during the peak years of their success. Gold returned to number-one in the UK album charts for the fifth time on 3 August 2008. On 14 August 2008, the Mamma Mia! The Movie film soundtrack went to number-one on the US Billboard charts, ABBA's first US chart-topping album. During the band's heyday, the highest album chart position they had ever achieved in America was number 14. In November 2008, all eight studio albums, together with a ninth of rare tracks, were released as The Albums. It hit several charts, peaking at number-four in Sweden and reaching the Top 10 in several other European territories. In 2008, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, in collaboration with Universal Music Group Sweden AB, released SingStar ABBA on both the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 games consoles, as part of the SingStar music video games. The PS2 version features 20 ABBA songs, while 25 songs feature on the PS3 version. On 22 January 2009, Fältskog and Lyngstad appeared together on stage to receive the Swedish music award "Rockbjörnen" (for "lifetime achievement"). In an interview, the two women expressed their gratitude for the honorary award and thanked their fans. On 25 November 2009, PRS for Music announced that the British public voted ABBA as the band they would most like to see re-form. On 27 January 2010, ABBAWORLD, a 25-room touring exhibition featuring interactive and audiovisual activities, debuted at Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London. According to the exhibition's website, ABBAWORLD is "approved and fully supported" by the band members. "Mamma Mia" was released as one of the first few non-premium song selections for the online RPG game Bandmaster. On 17 May 2011, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" was added as a non-premium song selection for the Bandmaster Philippines server. On 15 November 2011, Ubisoft released a dancing game called ABBA: You Can Dance for the Wii. In January 2012, Universal Music announced the re-release of ABBA's final album The Visitors, featuring a previously unheard track "From a Twinkling Star to a Passing Angel". A book titled ABBA: The Official Photo Book was published in early 2014 to mark the 40th anniversary of the band's Eurovision victory. The book reveals that part of the reason for the band's outrageous costumes was that Swedish tax laws at the time allowed the cost of garish outfits that were not suitable for daily wear to be tax deductible. 2016–2022: Reunion, Voyage, and ABBAtars On 20 January 2016, all four members of ABBA made a public appearance at Mamma Mia! The Party in Stockholm. On 6 June 2016, the quartet appeared together at a private party at Berns Salonger in Stockholm, which was held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Andersson and Ulvaeus's first meeting. Fältskog and Lyngstad performed live, singing "The Way Old Friends Do" before they were joined on stage by Andersson and Ulvaeus. British manager Simon Fuller announced in a statement in October 2016 that the group would be reuniting to work on a new "digital entertainment experience". The project would feature the members in their "life-like" avatar form, called ABBAtars, based on their late 1970s tour and would be set to launch by the spring of 2019. In May 2017, a sequel to the 2008 movie Mamma Mia!, titled Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, was announced; the film was released on 20 July 2018. Cher, who appeared in the movie, also released Dancing Queen, an ABBA cover album, in September 2018. In June 2017, a blue plaque outside Brighton Dome was set to commemorate their 1974 Eurovision win. On 27 April 2018, all four original members of ABBA made a joint announcement that they had recorded two new songs, titled "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down", to feature in a TV special set to air later that year. In September 2018, Ulvaeus stated that the two new songs, as well as the TV special, now called ABBA: Thank You for the Music, An All-Star Tribute, would not be released until 2019. The TV special was later revealed to be scrapped by 2018, as Andersson and Ulvaeus rejected Fuller's project, and instead partnered with visual effects company Industrial Light and Magic to prepare the ABBAtars for a music video and a concert. In January 2019, it was revealed that neither song would be released before the summer. Andersson hinted at the possibility of a third song. In June 2019, Ulvaeus announced that the first new song and video containing the ABBAtars would be released in November 2019. In September, he stated in an interview that there were now five new ABBA songs to be released in 2020. In early 2020, Andersson confirmed that he was aiming for the songs to be released in September 2020. In April 2020, Ulvaeus gave an interview saying that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the avatar project had been delayed. Five out of the eight original songs written by Benny for the new album had been recorded by the two female members, and the release of a new £15 million music video with new unseen technology was under consideration. In May 2020, it was announced that ABBA's entire studio discography would be released on coloured vinyl for the first time, in a box set titled ABBA: The Studio Albums. In July 2020, Ulvaeus revealed that the release of the new ABBA recordings had been delayed until 2021. On 22 September 2020, all four ABBA members reunited at Ealing Studios in London to continue working on the avatar project and filming for the tour. Ulvaeus confirmed that the avatar tour would be scheduled for 2022. When questioned if the new recordings were definitely coming out in 2021, Björn said "There will be new music this year, that is definite, it's not a case anymore of it might happen, it will happen." On 26 August 2021, a new website was launched, with the title ABBA Voyage. On the page, visitors were prompted to subscribe "to be the first in line to hear more about ABBA Voyage". Simultaneously with the launch of the webpage, new ABBA Voyage social media accounts were launched, and billboards around London started to appear, all showing the date "02.09.21", leading to expectation of what was to be revealed on that date. On 29 August, the band officially joined TikTok with a video of Benny Andersson playing "Dancing Queen" on the piano, and media reported on a new album to be announced on 2 September. On that date, Voyage, their first new album in 40 years, was announced to be released on 5 November 2021, along with ABBA Voyage, a concert residency in a custom-built venue at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London featuring the motion capture digital avatars of the four band members alongside a 10-piece live band, starting 27 May 2022. Fältskog stated that the Voyage album and tour are likely to be their last. The announcement of the new album was accompanied by the release of the singles "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down". The music video for "I Still Have Faith in You", featuring footage of the band during their performing years and a first look at the ABBAtars, earned over a million views in its first three hours. "Don't Shut Me Down" became the first ABBA release since October 1978 to top the singles chart in Sweden. In October 2021, the third single "Just a Notion" was released, and it was announced that ABBA would split for good after the release of Voyage. However, in an interview with BBC Radio 2 on 11 November, Lyngstad stated "don't be too sure" that Voyage is the final ABBA album. Also, in an interview with BBC News on 5 November, Andersson stated "if they [the ladies] twist my arm I might change my mind." The fourth single from the album, "Little Things", was released on 3 December. In May 2022, after the premiere of ABBA Voyage, Andersson stated in an interview with Variety that "nothing is going to happen after this", confirming the residency as ABBA's final group collaboration. In April 2023, longtime ABBA guitarist Lasse Wellander died at the age of 70; Wellander played on seven of the group's nine studio albums, including Voyage. Artistry Recording process ABBA were perfectionists in the studio, working on tracks until they got them right rather than leaving them to come back to later on. They spent the bulk of their time within the studio; in separate 2021 interviews Ulvaeus stated they may have toured for only 6 months while Andersson said they played fewer than 100 shows during the band's career. The band created a basic rhythm track with a drummer, guitarist and bass player, and overlaid other arrangements and instruments. Vocals were then added, and orchestra overdubs were usually left until last. Fältskog and Lyngstad contributed ideas at the studio stage. Andersson and Ulvaeus played them the backing tracks and they made comments and suggestions. According to Fältskog, she and Lyngstad had the final say in how the lyrics were shaped. After vocals and overdubs were done, the band took up to five days to mix a song. Fashion, style, videos, advertising campaigns ABBA was widely noted for the colourful and trend-setting costumes its members wore. The reason for the wild costumes was Swedish tax law: the cost of the clothes was deductible only if they could not be worn other than for performances. In their early years, group member Anni-Frid Lyngstad designed and even hand sewed the outfits. Later, as their success grew, they used professional theatrical clothes designer Owe Sandström together with tailor Lars Wigenius with Lyngstad continuing to suggest ideas whilst co-ordinating the outfits with concert set designs. Choreography by Graham Tainton also contributed to their performance style. The videos that accompanied some of the band's biggest hits are often cited as being among the earliest examples of the genre. Most of ABBA's videos (and ABBA: The Movie) were directed by Lasse Hallström, who would later direct the films My Life as a Dog, The Cider House Rules and Chocolat. ABBA made videos because their songs were hits in many different countries and personal appearances were not always possible. This was also done in an effort to minimise travelling, particularly to countries that would have required extremely long flights. Fältskog and Ulvaeus had two young children and Fältskog, who was also afraid of flying, was very reluctant to leave her children for such a long time. ABBA's manager, Stig Anderson, realised the potential of showing a simple video clip on television to publicise a single or album, thereby allowing easier and quicker exposure than a concert tour. Some of these videos have become classics because of the 1970s-era costumes and early video effects, such as the grouping of the band members in different combinations of pairs, overlapping one singer's profile with the other's full face, and the contrasting of one member against another. In 1976, ABBA participated in an advertising campaign to promote the Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.'s brand, National, in Australia. The campaign was also broadcast in Japan. Five commercial spots, each of approximately one minute, were produced, each presenting the "National Song" performed by ABBA using the melody and instrumental arrangements of "Fernando" and revised lyrics. Political use of ABBA's music In September 2010, band members Andersson and Ulvaeus criticised the right-wing Danish People's Party (DF) for using the ABBA song "Mamma Mia" (with modified lyrics referencing Pia Kjærsgaard) at rallies. The band threatened to file a lawsuit against the DF, saying they never allowed their music to be used politically and that they had absolutely no interest in supporting the party. Their record label Universal Music later said that no legal action would be taken because an agreement had been reached. Success in the United States During their active career, from 1972 to 1982, 20 of ABBA's singles entered the Billboard Hot 100; 14 of these made the Top 40 (13 on the Cashbox Top 100), with 10 making the Top 20 on both charts. A total of four of those singles reached the Top 10, including "Dancing Queen", which reached number one in April 1977. While "Fernando" and "SOS" did not break the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 (reaching number 13 and 15 respectively), they did reach the Top 10 on Cashbox ("Fernando") and Record World ("SOS") charts. Both "Dancing Queen" and "Take a Chance on Me" were certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of over one million copies each. The group also had 12 Top 20 singles on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart with two of them, "Fernando" and "The Winner Takes It All", reaching number one. "Lay All Your Love on Me" was ABBA's fourth number-one single on a Billboard chart, topping the Hot Dance Club Play chart. Ten ABBA albums have made their way into the top half of the Billboard 200 album chart, with eight reaching the Top 50, five reaching the Top 20 and one reaching the Top 10. In November 2021, Voyage became ABBA's highest-charting album on the Billboard 200 peaking at No. 2. Five albums received RIAA gold certification (more than 500,000 copies sold), while three acquired platinum status (selling more than one million copies). The compilation album ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits topped the Billboard Top Pop Catalog Albums chart in August 2008 (15 years after it was first released in the US in 1993), becoming the group's first number-one album ever on any of the Billboard album charts. It has sold 6 million copies there. On 15 March 2010, ABBA were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bee Gees members Barry Gibb and Robin Gibb. The ceremony was held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The group were represented by Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson. in November 2021, ABBA received a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year. The single, "I Still Have Faith In You", from the album, Voyage, was their first ever nomination. Members Agnetha Fältskog – lead and backing vocals Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad – lead and backing vocals Björn Ulvaeus – guitars, backing and lead vocals Benny Andersson – keyboards, synthesizers, piano, accordion, backing and lead vocals The members of ABBA were married as follows: Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus from 1971 to 1979; Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad from 1978 to 1981. For their subsequent marriages, see their articles. In addition to the four members of ABBA, other musicians regularly played on their studio recordings, live appearances and concert performances. These include: Rutger Gunnarsson (1972–1982) bass guitar and string arrangements Ola Brunkert (1972–1981) drums (1972–1980) bass guitar Janne Schaffer (1972–1982) lead electric guitar (1972–1979) drums Malando Gassama (1973–1979) percussion Lasse Wellander (1974–2021) lead electric guitar Anders Eljas (1977) keyboards on tour and all the band's orchestration (1978–1982) percussion (1980–2021) drums ABBA-related tributes Musical groups Abbaesque – an Irish ABBA tribute band. A-Teens – a pop music group from Stockholm, Sweden. Björn Again – an Australian tribute band; notable as the earliest-formed ABBA tribute band (1988) and, as of 2021, still currently touring. Gabba – an ABBA–Ramones tribute band that covers the former in the style of the latter, the name being a reference to the Ramones catchphrase "Gabba Gabba Hey". Media Saturday Night (1975) (TV) – Season 1 Episode 5 (Hosted by Robert Klein with Musical Numbers by ABBA and Loudon Wainwright III) Abbacadabra – A French children's musical based on songs from ABBA Abba-esque – A 1992 cover EP by Erasure Abbasalutely – A compilation album released in 1995 as a tribute album to ABBA Brit Awards 99 – featuring the first performance of the UK Top 10 medley "Thank ABBA for the Music" Mamma Mia! – A musical stage show based on songs of ABBA Mamma Mia! – A film adaptation of the musical stage show Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again – A prequel/sequel to the original film ABBAmania – An ITV programme and tribute album to ABBA released in 1999 ABBA: You Can Dance – A dance video game released by Ubisoft in 2011 with songs from ABBA and also a spin-off of Just Dance video game series Dancing Queen – A 2018 cover album by Cher Discography Studio albums Ring Ring (1973) Waterloo (1974) ABBA (1975) Arrival (1976) The Album (1977) Voulez-Vous (1979) Super Trouper (1980) The Visitors (1981) Voyage (2021) Tours Concert tours Swedish Folkpark Tour (1973) European Tour (1974–1975) European & Australian Tour (1977) ABBA: The Tour (1979–1980) Concert residencies ABBA Voyage (2022–2024) Awards and nominations See also ABBA: The Museum ABBA City Walks – Stockholm City Museum ABBAMAIL List of best-selling music artists List of Swedes in music Music of Sweden Popular music in Sweden Citations References Bibliography Further reading Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Judy Craymer: Mamma Mia! How Can I Resist You?: The Inside Story of Mamma Mia! and the Songs of ABBA. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006 Carl Magnus Palm. ABBA – The Complete Recording Sessions (1994) Carl Magnus Palm (2000). From "ABBA" to "Mamma Mia!" Elisabeth Vincentelli: ABBA Treasures: A Celebration of the Ultimate Pop Group. Omnibus Press, 2010, Oldham, Andrew, Calder, Tony & Irvin, Colin (1995) "ABBA: The Name of the Game", Potiez, Jean-Marie (2000). ABBA – The Book Simon Sheridan: The Complete ABBA. Titan Books, 2012, Anna Henker (ed.), Astrid Heyde (ed.): Abba – Das Lexikon. Northern Europe Institut, Humboldt-University Berlin, 2015 (German) Steve Harnell (ed.): Classic Pop Presents Abba: A Celebration. Classic Pop Magazine (special edition), November 2016 Documentaries A for ABBA. BBC, 20 July 1993 Thierry Lecuyer, Jean-Marie Potiez: Thank You ABBA. Willow Wil Studios/A2C Video, 1993 Barry Barnes: ABBA − The History. Polar Music International AB, 1999 Chris Hunt: The Winner Takes it All − The ABBA Story. Littlestar Services/lambic Productions, 1999 Steve Cole, Chris Hunt: Super Troupers − Thirty Years of ABBA. BBC, 2004 The Joy of ABBA. BBC 4, 27 December 2013 (BBC page) Carl Magnus Palm, Roger Backlund: ABBA – When Four Became One. SVT, 2 January 2012 Carl Magnus Palm, Roger Backlund: ABBA – Absolute Image. SVT, 2 January 2012 ABBA – Bang a boomerang. ABC 1, 30 January 2013 (ABC page) ABBA: When All Is Said and Done, 2017 . Sunday Night (7 News), 1 October 2019 External links The Secret Majesty of ABBA. Variety, 22 July 2018 ABBA's Essential, Influential Melancholy. NPR, 23 May 2015 What's Behind ABBA's Staying Power?. Smithsonian, 20 July 2018 ABBA – The Articles – ABBA news from throughout the world Category:1972 establishments in Sweden Category:Atlantic Records artists Category:English-language singers from Sweden Category:Epic Records artists Category:Eurodisco groups Category:Eurovision Song Contest entrants for Sweden Category:Eurovision Song Contest entrants of 1974 Category:Eurovision Song Contest winners Category:Melodifestivalen contestants Category:Melodifestivalen winners Category:Musical groups disestablished in 1982 Category:Musical groups established in 1972 Category:Musical groups from Stockholm Category:Musical groups reestablished in 2016 Category:Musical quartets Category:Palindromes Category:RCA Records artists Category:Schlager groups Category:Swedish dance music groups Category:Swedish pop music groups Category:Swedish pop rock music groups Category:Swedish-language singers Category:Swedish co-ed groups

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ABBA

ABBA (Swedish pronunciation: [2ab:a]) were a Swedish pop group, formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Faltskog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad: the group name derives from the first letter in each of their names. They became one of the most commercially successful acts in the history of popular music, topping the charts worldwide from 1974 to 1982. ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 at The Dome in Brighton, UK, giving Sweden its first triumph in the contest. They are the most successful group to have taken part in the competition.

1976-1981: Superstardom

In March 1976, the band released the compilation album Greatest Hits, despite having had only six top 40 hits in the United Kingdom and the United States. Nevertheless, it became their first UK number-one album, and also took ABBA into the Top 50 on the US album charts for the first time, eventually selling more than a million copies there. At the same time, Germany released a compilation named The Very Best of ABBA, also becoming a number-one album there whereas the Greatest Hits compilation followed a few months later to number-two on the German charts, despite all similarities with The Very Best album. Also included on Greatest Hits was a new single, "Fernando", which went to number-one in at least thirteen countries worldwide, including the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia, and the single went on to sell over 10 million copies worldwide. In Australia, the song occupied the top position for 14 weeks (and stayed in the chart for 40 weeks), tying with the Beatles' "Hey Jude" for longest-running number-one, and making "Fernando" one of the best-selling singles of all time in Australia. That same year, the group received its first international prize, with "Fernando" being chosen as the "Best Studio Recording of 1975". In the United States, "Fernando" reached the Top 10 of the Cashbox Top 100 singles chart and number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also topped the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, ABBA's first American number-one single on any chart. The group's fourth studio album, Arrival, a number-one best-seller in Europe and Australia, represented a new level of accomplishment in both songwriting and studio work, prompting rave reviews from more rock-oriented UK music weeklies such as Melody Maker and New Musical Express, and mostly appreciative notices from US critics. Hit after hit flowed from Arrival: "Money, Money, Money", another number-one in Germany and Australia, and "Knowing Me, Knowing You", ABBA's sixth consecutive German number-one as well as another UK number-one. The real sensation was "Dancing Queen", not only topping the charts in loyal markets the UK, Germany and Australia, but also reaching number-one in the United States. In South Africa, ABBA had astounding success with "Fernando", "Dancing Queen" and "Knowing Me, Knowing You" being among the top 20 best-selling singles for 1976-77. In 1977, Arrival was nominated for the inaugural BRIT Award in the category "Best International Album of the Year". By this time ABBA were popular in the United Kingdom, most of Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In Frida - The DVD, Lyngstad explains how she and Faltskog developed as singers, as ABBA's recordings grew more complex over the years. The band's popularity in the United States would remain on a comparatively smaller scale, and "Dancing Queen" became the only Billboard Hot 100 number-one single ABBA had there (they did, however, get three more singles to the number-one position on other Billboard charts, including Billboard Adult Contemporary and Hot Dance Club Play). Nevertheless, Arrival finally became a true breakthrough release for ABBA on the US album market where it peaked at number 20 on the Billboard 200 chart and was certified gold by RIAA. CANNOTANSWER

ABBA ( , , formerly named Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid or Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Frida) are a Swedish supergroup formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The group's name is an acronym of the first letters of their first names arranged as a palindrome. They are one of the most popular and successful musical groups of all time, and are one of the best-selling music acts in the history of popular music, topping the charts worldwide from 1974 to 1982, and in 2022. In , ABBA were 's first winner of the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Waterloo", which in 2005 was chosen as the best song in the competition's history as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the contest. During the band's main active years, it consisted of two married couples: Fältskog and Ulvaeus, and Lyngstad and Andersson. With the increase of their popularity, their personal lives suffered, which eventually resulted in the collapse of both marriages. The relationship changes were reflected in the group's music, with later compositions featuring darker and more introspective lyrics. After ABBA disbanded in December 1982, Andersson and Ulvaeus continued their success writing music for multiple audiences including stage, musicals and movies, while Fältskog and Lyngstad pursued solo careers. Ten years after the group broke up, a compilation, ABBA Gold, was released, becoming a worldwide best-seller. In 1999, ABBA's music was adapted into Mamma Mia!, a stage musical that toured worldwide and, as of April 2022, is still in the top-ten longest running productions on both Broadway (closed in 2015) and the West End (still running). A film of the same name, released in 2008, became the highest-grossing film in the United Kingdom that year. A sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, was released in 2018. In 2016, the group reunited and started working on a digital avatar concert tour. Newly recorded songs were announced in 2018. Voyage, their first new album in 40 years, was released on 5 November 2021 to positive critical reviews and strong sales in numerous countries. ABBA Voyage, a concert residency featuring ABBA as virtual avatars, opened in May 2022 in London. ABBA are among the best-selling music artists in history, with record sales estimated to be between 150 million to 385 million sold worldwide and the group were ranked 3rd best-selling singles artists in the United Kingdom with a total of 11.3 million singles sold by 3 November 2012. In May 2023 ABBA were awarded the BRIT Billion Award which celebrates those who have surpassed the milestone of one billion UK streams in their career. ABBA were the first group from a non-English-speaking country to achieve consistent success in the charts of English-speaking countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Republic of Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. They are the best-selling Swedish band of all time and the best-selling band originating in continental Europe. ABBA had eight consecutive number-one albums in the UK. The group also enjoyed significant success in Latin America and recorded a collection of their hit songs in Spanish. ABBA were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002. The group were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, the first recording artists to receive this honour from outside an Anglophonic country. In 2015, their song "Dancing Queen" was inducted into the Recording Academy's Grammy Hall of Fame. History 1958–1970: Before ABBA Member origins and collaboration Benny Andersson (born 16 December 1946 in Stockholm, Sweden) became (at age 18) a member of a popular Swedish pop-rock group, the Hep Stars, that performed, among other things, covers of international hits. The Hep Stars were known as "the Swedish Beatles". They also set up Hep House, their equivalent of Apple Corps. Andersson played the keyboard and eventually started writing original songs for his band, many of which became major hits, including "No Response", which hit number three in 1965, and "Sunny Girl", "Wedding", and "Consolation", all of which hit number one in 1966. Andersson also had a fruitful songwriting collaboration with Lasse Berghagen, with whom he wrote his first Svensktoppen entry, "Sagan om lilla Sofie" ("The tale of Little Sophie") in 1968. Björn Ulvaeus (born 25 April 1945 in Gothenburg, Sweden) also began his musical career at the age of 18 (as a singer and guitarist), when he fronted the Hootenanny Singers, a popular Swedish folk–skiffle group. Ulvaeus started writing English-language songs for his group and even had a brief solo career alongside. The Hootenanny Singers and the Hep Stars sometimes crossed paths while touring. In June 1966, Ulvaeus and Andersson decided to write a song together. Their first attempt was "Isn't It Easy to Say", a song that was later recorded by the Hep Stars. Stig Anderson was the manager of the Hootenanny Singers and founder of the Polar Music label. He saw potential in the collaboration, and encouraged them to write more. The two also began playing occasionally with the other's bands on stage and on record, although it was not until 1969 that the pair wrote and produced some of their first real hits together: "Ljuva sextital" ("Sweet Sixties"), recorded by Brita Borg, and the Hep Stars' 1969 hit "Speleman" ("Fiddler"). Andersson wrote and submitted the song "Hej, Clown" for Melodifestivalen 1969, the national festival to select the Swedish entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. The song tied for first place, but re-voting relegated Andersson's song to second place. On that occasion Andersson briefly met his future spouse, singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who also participated in the contest. A month later, the two had become a couple. As their respective bands began to break up during 1969, Andersson and Ulvaeus teamed up and recorded their first album together in 1970, called Lycka ("Happiness"), which included original songs sung by both men. Their partners were often present in the recording studio, and sometimes added backing vocals; Fältskog even co-wrote a song with the two. Ulvaeus still occasionally recorded and performed with the Hootenanny Singers until the middle of 1974, and Andersson took part in producing their records. Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad (born 15 November 1945 in Bjørkåsen in Ballangen, Norway) sang from the age of 13 with various dance bands, and worked mainly in a jazz-oriented cabaret style. She also formed her own band, the Anni-Frid Four. In the middle of 1967, she won a national talent competition with "En ledig dag" ("A Day Off"), a Swedish version of the bossa nova song "A Day in Portofino", which is included in the EMI compilation Frida 1967–1972. The first prize was a recording contract with EMI Sweden and to perform live on the most popular TV shows in the country. This TV performance, amongst many others, is included in the -hour documentary Frida – The DVD. Lyngstad released several schlager style singles on EMI with mixed success. When Benny Andersson started to produce her recordings in 1971, she had her first number-one single, "Min egen stad" ("My Own Town"), written by Benny and featuring all the future ABBA members on backing vocals. Lyngstad toured and performed regularly in the folkpark circuit and made appearances on radio and TV. She had a second number-one single with "Man Vill Ju Leva Lite Dessemellan" in late 1972. She had met Ulvaeus briefly in 1963 during a talent contest, and Fältskog during a TV show in early 1968. Lyngstad linked up with her future bandmates in 1969. On 1 March 1969, she participated in the Melodifestival, where she met Andersson for the first time. A few weeks later they met again during a concert tour in southern Sweden and they soon became a couple. Andersson produced her single "Peter Pan" in September 1969—her first collaboration with Benny & Björn, as they had written the song. Andersson would then produce Lyngstad's debut studio album, Frida, which was released in March 1971. Lyngstad also played in several revues and cabaret shows in Stockholm between 1969 and 1973. After ABBA formed, she recorded another successful album in 1975, Frida ensam, which included the original Swedish rendition of "Fernando", a hit on the Swedish radio charts before the English version was released by ABBA. Agnetha Fältskog (born 5 April 1950 in Jönköping, Sweden) sang with a local dance band headed by Bernt Enghardt who sent a demo recording of the band to Karl Gerhard Lundkvist. The demo tape featured a song written and sung by Agnetha: "Jag var så kär" ("I Was So in Love"). Lundkvist was so impressed with her voice that he was convinced she would be a star. After going through considerable effort to locate the singer, he arranged for Agnetha to come to Stockholm and to record two of her own songs. This led to Agnetha at the age of 18 having a number-one record in Sweden with a self-composed song, which later went on to sell over 80,000 copies. She was soon noticed by the critics and songwriters as a talented singer/songwriter of schlager style songs. Fältskog's main inspiration in her early years was singers such as Connie Francis. Along with her own compositions, she recorded covers of foreign hits and performed them on tours in Swedish folkparks. Most of her biggest hits were self-composed, which was quite unusual for a female singer in the 1960s. Agnetha released four solo LPs between 1968 and 1971. She had many successful singles in the Swedish charts. During filming of a Swedish TV special in May 1969, Fältskog met Ulvaeus and they married on 6 July 1971. Fältskog and Ulvaeus eventually were involved in each other's recording sessions, and soon even Andersson and Lyngstad added backing vocals to Fältskog's third studio album, Som jag är ("As I Am") (1970). In 1972, Fältskog starred as Mary Magdalene in the original Swedish production of Jesus Christ Superstar and attracted favourable reviews. Between 1967 and 1975, Fältskog released five studio albums. First live performance and the start of "Festfolket" An attempt at combining their talents occurred in April 1970 when the two couples went on holiday together to the island of Cyprus. What started as singing for fun on the beach ended up as an improvised live performance in front of the United Nations soldiers stationed on the island. Andersson and Ulvaeus were at this time recording their first album together, Lycka, which was to be released in September 1970. Fältskog and Lyngstad added backing vocals on several tracks during June, and the idea of their working together saw them launch a stage act, "Festfolket" (which translates from Swedish to "Party People" and in pronunciation also "engaged couples"), on 1 November 1970 in Gothenburg. The cabaret show attracted generally negative reviews, except for the performance of the Andersson and Ulvaeus hit "Hej, gamle man" ("Hello, Old Man")–the first Björn and Benny recording to feature all four. They also performed solo numbers from respective albums, but the lukewarm reception convinced the foursome to shelve plans for working together for the time being, and each soon concentrated on individual projects again. First record together "Hej, gamle man" "Hej, gamle man", a song about an old Salvation Army soldier, became the quartet's first hit. The record was credited to Björn & Benny and reached number five on the sales charts and number one on Svensktoppen, staying on the latter chart (which was not a chart linked to sales or airplay) for 15 weeks. It was during 1971 that the four artists began working together more, adding vocals to the others' recordings. Fältskog, Andersson and Ulvaeus toured together in May, while Lyngstad toured on her own. Frequent recording sessions brought the foursome closer together during the summer. 1970–1973: Forming the group After the 1970 release of Lycka, two more singles credited to "Björn & Benny" were released in Sweden, "Det kan ingen doktor hjälpa" ("No Doctor Can Help with That") and "Tänk om jorden vore ung" ("Imagine If Earth Was Young"), with more prominent vocals by Fältskog and Lyngstad–and moderate chart success. Fältskog and Ulvaeus, now married, started performing together with Andersson on a regular basis at the Swedish folkparks in the middle of 1971. Stig Anderson, founder and owner of Polar Music, was determined to break into the mainstream international market with music by Andersson and Ulvaeus. "One day the pair of you will write a song that becomes a worldwide hit," he predicted. Stig Anderson encouraged Ulvaeus and Andersson to write a song for Melodifestivalen, and after two rejected entries in 1971, Andersson and Ulvaeus submitted their new song "Säg det med en sång" ("Say It with a Song") for the 1972 contest, choosing newcomer Lena Anderson to perform. The song came in third place, encouraging Stig Anderson, and became a hit in Sweden. The first signs of foreign success came as a surprise, as the Andersson and Ulvaeus single "She's My Kind of Girl" was released through Epic Records in Japan in March 1972, giving the duo a Top 10 hit. Two more singles were released in Japan, "En Carousel" ("En Karusell" in Scandinavia, an earlier version of "Merry-Go-Round") and "Love Has Its Ways" (a song they wrote with Kōichi Morita). First hit as Björn, Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid Ulvaeus and Andersson persevered with their songwriting and experimented with new sounds and vocal arrangements. "People Need Love" was released in June 1972, featuring guest vocals by the women, who were now given much greater prominence. Stig Anderson released it as a single, credited to Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid. The song peaked at number 17 in the Swedish combined single and album charts, enough to convince them they were on to something. The single also became the first record to chart for the quartet in the United States, where it peaked at number 114 on the Cashbox singles chart and number 117 on the Record World singles chart. Labelled as Björn & Benny (with Svenska Flicka) meaning Swedish Girl, it was released there through Playboy Records. According to Stig Anderson, "People Need Love" could have been a much bigger American hit, but a small label like Playboy Records did not have the distribution resources to meet the demand for the single from retailers and radio programmers. "Ring Ring" In 1973, the band and their manager Stig Anderson decided to have another try at Melodifestivalen, this time with the song "Ring Ring". The studio sessions were handled by Michael B. Tretow, who experimented with a "wall of sound" production technique that became a distinctive new sound thereafter associated with ABBA. Stig Anderson arranged an English translation of the lyrics by Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody and they thought this would be a success. However, on 10 February 1973, the song came third in Melodifestivalen; thus it never reached the Eurovision Song Contest itself. Nevertheless, the group released their debut studio album, also called Ring Ring. The album did well and the "Ring Ring" single was a hit in many parts of Europe and also in South Africa. However, Stig Anderson felt that the true breakthrough could only come with a UK or US hit. When Agnetha Fältskog gave birth to her daughter Linda in 1973, she was replaced for a short period by Inger Brundin on a trip to West Germany. Official naming In 1973, Stig Anderson, tired of unwieldy names, started to refer to the group privately and publicly as ABBA (a palindrome). At first, this was a play on words, as Abba is also the name of a well-known fish-canning company in Sweden, and itself an abbreviation. However, since the fish-canners were unknown outside Sweden, Anderson came to believe the name would work in international markets. A competition to find a suitable name for the group was held in a Gothenburg newspaper and it was officially announced in the summer that the group were to be known as "ABBA". The group negotiated with the canners for the rights to the name. Fred Bronson reported for Billboard that Fältskog told him in a 1988 interview that "[ABBA] had to ask permission and the factory said, 'O.K., as long as you don't make us feel ashamed for what you're doing. "ABBA" is an acronym formed from the first letters of each group member's first name: Agnetha, Björn, Benny, Anni-Frid, although there has never been any official confirmation of who each letter in the sequence refers to. The earliest known example of "ABBA" written on paper is on a recording session sheet from the Metronome Studio in Stockholm dated 16 October 1973. This was first written as "Björn, Benny, Agnetha & Frida", but was subsequently crossed out with "ABBA" written in large letters on top. Official logo Their official logo, distinct with the backward "B", was designed by Rune Söderqvist, who designed most of ABBA's record sleeves. The ambigram first appeared on the French compilation album, Golden Double Album, released in May 1976 by Disques Vogue, and would henceforth be used for all official releases. The idea for the official logo was made by the German photographer on a velvet jumpsuit photo shoot for the teenage magazine Bravo. In the photo, the ABBA members held giant initial letters of their names. After the pictures were made, Heilemann found out that Benny Andersson reversed his letter "B;" this prompted discussions about the mirrored "B", and the members of ABBA agreed on the mirrored letter. From 1976 onward, the first "B" in the logo version of the name was "mirror-image" reversed on the band's promotional material, thus becoming the group's registered trademark. Following their acquisition of the group's catalogue, PolyGram began using variations of the ABBA logo, employing a different font. In 1992, Polygram added a crown emblem to it for the first release of the ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits compilation. After Universal Music purchased PolyGram (and, thus, ABBA's label Polar Music International), control of the group's catalogue returned to Stockholm. Since then, the original logo has been reinstated on all official products. 1973–1976: Breakthrough Eurovision Song Contest 1974 As the group entered the Melodifestivalen with "Ring Ring" but failed to qualify as the 1973 Swedish entry, Stig Anderson immediately started planning for the 1974 contest. Ulvaeus, Andersson and Stig Anderson believed in the possibilities of using the Eurovision Song Contest as a way to make the music business aware of them as songwriters, as well as the band itself. In late 1973, they were invited by Swedish television to contribute a song for the Melodifestivalen 1974 and from a number of new songs, the upbeat song "Waterloo" was chosen; the group were now inspired by the growing glam rock scene in England. ABBA won their nation's hearts on Swedish television on 9 February 1974, and with this third attempt were far more experienced and better prepared for the Eurovision Song Contest. Winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest on 6 April 1974 (and singing "Waterloo" in English instead of their native tongue) gave ABBA the chance to tour Europe and perform on major television shows; thus the band saw the "Waterloo" single chart in many European countries. Following their success at the Eurovision Song Contest, ABBA spent an evening of glory partying in the appropriately named first-floor Napoleon suite of The Grand Brighton Hotel. "Waterloo" was ABBA's first major hit in numerous countries, becoming their first number-one single in nine western and northern European countries, including the big markets of the UK and West Germany, and in South Africa. It also made the top ten in several other countries, including rising to number three in Spain, number four in Australia and France, and number seven in Canada. In the United States, the song peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, paving the way for their first album and their first trip as a group there. Albeit a short promotional visit, it included their first performance on American television, The Mike Douglas Show. The album Waterloo only peaked at number 145 on the Billboard 200 chart, but received unanimous high praise from the US critics: Los Angeles Times called it "a compelling and fascinating debut album that captures the spirit of mainstream pop quite effectively ... an immensely enjoyable and pleasant project", while Creem characterised it as "a perfect blend of exceptional, lovable compositions". ABBA's follow-up single, "Honey, Honey", peaked at number 27 on the US Billboard Hot 100, reached the top twenty in several other countries, and was a number-two hit in West Germany although it only reached the top 30 in Australia and the US. In the United Kingdom, ABBA's British record label, Epic, decided to re-release a remixed version of "Ring Ring" instead of "Honey, Honey", and a cover version of the latter by Sweet Dreams peaked at number 10. Both records debuted on the UK chart within one week of each other. "Ring Ring" failed to reach the Top 30 in the UK, increasing growing speculation that the group were simply a Eurovision one-hit wonder. Post-Eurovision In November 1974, ABBA embarked on their first European tour, playing dates in Denmark, West Germany and Austria. It was not as successful as the band had hoped, since most of the venues did not sell out. Due to a lack of demand, they were even forced to cancel a few shows, including a sole concert scheduled in Switzerland. The second leg of the tour, which took them through Scandinavia in January 1975, was very different. They played to full houses everywhere and finally got the reception they had aimed for. Live performances continued in the middle of 1975 when ABBA embarked on a fourteen open-air date tour of Sweden and Finland. Their Stockholm show at the Gröna Lund amusement park had an estimated audience of 19,200. Björn Ulvaeus later said, "If you look at the singles we released straight after Waterloo, we were trying to be more like The Sweet, a semi-glam rock group, which was stupid because we were always a pop group." In late 1974, "So Long" was released as a single in the United Kingdom but it received no airplay from Radio 1 and failed to chart in the UK; the only countries in which it was successful were Austria, Sweden and Germany, reaching the top ten in the first two and number 21 in the latter. In the middle of 1975, ABBA released "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do", which again received little airplay on Radio 1, but did manage to climb to number 38 on the UK chart, while making top five in several northern and western European countries, and number one in South Africa. Later that year, the release of their self-titled third studio album ABBA and single "SOS" brought back their chart presence in the UK, where the single hit number six and the album peaked at number 13. "SOS" also became ABBA's second number-one single in Germany, their third in Australia and their first in France, plus reached number two in several other European countries, including Italy. Success was further solidified with "Mamma Mia" reaching number-one in the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia and the top two in a few other western and northern European countries. In the United States, both "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" and "SOS" peaked at number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with the latter picking up the BMI Award along the way as one of the most played songs on American radio in 1975. "Mamma Mia", however, stalled at number 32. In Canada, the three songs rose to number 12, nine and 18, respectively. The success of the group in the United States had until that time been limited to single releases. By early 1976, the group already had four Top 30 singles on the US charts, but the album market proved to be tough to crack. The eponymous ABBA album generated three American hits, but it only peaked at number 165 on the Cashbox album chart and number 174 on the Billboard 200 chart. Opinions were voiced, by Creem in particular, that in the US ABBA had endured "a very sloppy promotional campaign". Nevertheless, the group enjoyed warm reviews from the American press. Cashbox went as far as saying that "there is a recurrent thread of taste and artistry inherent in Abba's marketing, creativity and presentation that makes it almost embarrassing to critique their efforts", while Creem wrote: "SOS is surrounded on this LP by so many good tunes that the mind boggles." In Australia, the airing of the music videos for "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" and "Mamma Mia" on the nationally broadcast TV pop show Countdown (which premiered in November 1974) saw the band rapidly gain enormous popularity, and Countdown become a key promoter of the group via their distinctive music videos. This started an immense interest for ABBA in Australia, resulting in "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" staying at number one for three weeks, then "SOS" spending a week there, followed by "Mamma Mia" staying there for ten weeks, and the album holding down the number one position for months. The three songs were also successful in nearby New Zealand with the first two topping that chart and the third reaching number two. 1976–1981: Superstardom Greatest Hits and Arrival In March 1976, the band released the compilation album Greatest Hits. It became their first UK number-one album, and also took ABBA into the Top 50 on the US album charts for the first time, eventually selling more than a million copies there. Also included on Greatest Hits was a new single, "Fernando", which went to number-one in at least thirteen countries all over the world, including the UK, Germany, France, Australia, South Africa and Mexico, and the top five in most other significant markets, including, at number four, becoming their biggest hit to date in Canada; the single went on to sell over 10 million copies worldwide. In Australia, "Fernando" occupied the top position for a then record breaking 14 weeks (and stayed in the chart for 40 weeks), and was the longest-running chart-topper there for over 40 years until it was overtaken by Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" in May 2017. It still remains as one of the best-selling singles of all time in Australia. Also in 1976, the group received its first international prize, with "Fernando" being chosen as the "Best Studio Recording of 1975". In the United States, "Fernando" reached the Top 10 of the Cashbox Top 100 singles chart and number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. It topped the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, ABBA's first American number-one single on any chart. At the same time, a compilation named The Very Best of ABBA was released in Germany, becoming a number-one album there whereas the Greatest Hits compilation which followed a few months later ascended to number two in Germany, despite all similarities with The Very Best album. The group's fourth studio album, Arrival, a number-one best-seller in parts of Europe, the UK and Australia, and a number-three hit in Canada and Japan, represented a new level of accomplishment in both songwriting and studio work, prompting rave reviews from more rock-oriented UK music weeklies such as Melody Maker and New Musical Express, and mostly appreciative notices from US critics. Hit after hit flowed from Arrival: "Money, Money, Money", another number-one in Germany, France, Australia and other countries of western and northern Europe, plus number two in the UK; and, "Knowing Me, Knowing You", ABBA's sixth consecutive German number-one, as well as another UK number-one, plus a top five hit in many other countries, although it was only a number nine hit in Australia and France. The real sensation was the first single, "Dancing Queen", not only topping the charts in loyal markets like the UK, Germany, Sweden, several other western and northern European countries, and Australia, but also reaching number-one in the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and Japan, and the top ten in France, Spain and Italy. All three songs were number-one hits in Mexico. In South Africa, ABBA had astounding success with each of "Fernando", "Dancing Queen" and "Knowing Me, Knowing You" being among the top 20 best-selling singles for 1976–77. In 1977, Arrival was nominated for the inaugural BRIT Award in the category "Best International Album of the Year". By this time ABBA were popular in the UK, most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In Frida – The DVD, Lyngstad explains how she and Fältskog developed as singers, as ABBA's recordings grew more complex over the years. The band's mainstream popularity in the United States would remain on a comparatively smaller scale, and "Dancing Queen" became the only Billboard Hot 100 number-one single for ABBA (though it immediately became, and remains to this day, a major gay anthem) with "Knowing Me, Knowing You" later peaking at number seven; "Money, Money, Money", however, had barely charted there or in Canada (where "Knowing Me, Knowing You" had reached number five). They did, however, get three more singles to the number-one position on other Billboard US charts, including Billboard Adult Contemporary and Hot Dance Club Play). Nevertheless, Arrival finally became a true breakthrough release for ABBA on the US album market where it peaked at number 20 on the Billboard 200 chart and was certified gold by RIAA. European and Australian tour In January 1977, ABBA embarked on their first major tour. The group's status had changed dramatically and they were clearly regarded as superstars. They opened their much anticipated tour in Oslo, Norway, on 28 January, and mounted a lavishly produced spectacle that included a few scenes from their self-written mini-operetta The Girl with the Golden Hair. The concert attracted immense media attention from across Europe and Australia. They continued the tour through Western Europe, visiting Gothenburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Essen, Hanover, and Hamburg and ending with shows in the United Kingdom in Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and two sold-out concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall. Tickets for these two shows were available only by mail application and it was later revealed that the box-office received 3.5 million requests for tickets, enough to fill the venue 580 times. Along with praise ("ABBA turn out to be amazingly successful at reproducing their records", wrote Creem), there were complaints that "ABBA performed slickly...but with a zero personality coming across from a total of 16 people on stage" (Melody Maker). One of the Royal Albert Hall concerts was filmed as a reference for the filming of the Australian tour for what became ABBA: The Movie, though it is not exactly known how much of the concert was filmed. After the European leg of the tour, in March 1977, ABBA played 11 dates in Australia before a total of 160,000 people. The opening concert in Sydney at the Sydney Showground on 3 March to an audience of 20,000 was marred by torrential rain with Lyngstad slipping on the wet stage during the concert. However, all four members would later recall this concert as the most memorable of their career. Upon their arrival in Melbourne, a civic reception was held at the Melbourne Town Hall and ABBA appeared on the balcony to greet an enthusiastic crowd of 6,000. In Melbourne, the group gave three concerts at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl with 14,500 at each including the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and his family. At the first Melbourne concert, an additional 16,000 people gathered outside the fenced-off area to listen to the concert. In Adelaide, the group performed one concert at Football Park in front of 20,000 people, with another 10,000 listening outside. During the first of five concerts in Perth, there was a bomb scare with everyone having to evacuate the Entertainment Centre. The trip was accompanied by mass hysteria and unprecedented media attention ("Swedish ABBA stirs box-office in Down Under tour...and the media coverage of the quartet rivals that set to cover the upcoming Royal tour of Australia", wrote Variety), and is captured on film in ABBA: The Movie, directed by Lasse Hallström. The Australian tour and its subsequent ABBA: The Movie produced some ABBA lore, as well. Fältskog's blonde good looks had long made her the band's "pin-up girl", a role she disdained. During the Australian tour, she performed in a skin-tight white jumpsuit, causing one Australian newspaper to use the headline "Agnetha's bottom tops dull show". When asked about this at a news conference, she replied: "Don't they have bottoms in Australia?" ABBA: The Album In December 1977, ABBA followed up Arrival with the more ambitious fifth album, ABBA: The Album, released to coincide with the debut of ABBA: The Movie. Although the album was less well received by UK reviewers, it did spawn more worldwide hits: "The Name of the Game" and "Take a Chance on Me", which both topped the UK charts and racked up impressive sales in most countries, although "The Name of the Game" was generally the more successful in the Nordic countries and Down Under, while "Take a Chance on Me" was more successful in North America and the German-speaking countries. "The Name of the Game" was a number two hit in the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden while also making the Top 5 in Finland, Norway, New Zealand and Australia, while only peaking at numbers 10, 12 and 15 in Mexico, the US and Canada. "Take a Chance on Me" was a number one hit in Austria, Belgium and Mexico, made the Top 3 in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, while only reaching numbers 12 and 14 in Australia and New Zealand, respectively. Both songs were Top 10 hits in countries as far afield as Rhodesia and South Africa, as well as in France. Although "Take a Chance on Me" did not top the American charts, it proved to be ABBA's biggest hit single there, selling more copies than "Dancing Queen". The drop in sales in Australia was felt to be inevitable by industry observers as an "Abba-Fever" that had existed there for almost three years could only last so long as adolescents would naturally begin to move away from a group so deified by both their parents and grandparents. A third single, "Eagle", was released in continental Europe and Down Under becoming a number one hit in Belgium and a Top 10 hit in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and South Africa, but barely charting Down Under. The B-side of "Eagle" was "Thank You for the Music", and it was belatedly released as an A-side single in the both the United Kingdom and Ireland in 1983. "Thank You for the Music" has become one of the best loved and best known ABBA songs without being released as a single during the group's lifetime. ABBA: The Album topped the album charts in the UK, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, while ascending to the Top 5 in Australia, Germany, Austria, Finland and Rhodesia, and making the Top 10 in Canada and Japan. Sources also indicate that sales in Poland exceeded 1 million copies and that sales demand in Russia could not be met by the supply available. The album peaked at number 14 in the US. Polar Music Studio formation By 1978, ABBA were one of the biggest bands in the world. They converted a vacant cinema into the Polar Music Studio, a state-of-the-art studio in Stockholm. The studio was used by several other bands; notably Genesis' Duke and Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door were recorded there. During May 1978, the group went to the United States for a promotional campaign, performing alongside Andy Gibb on Olivia Newton-John's TV show. Recording sessions for the single "Summer Night City" were an uphill struggle, but upon release the song became another hit for the group. The track would set the stage for ABBA's foray into disco with their next album. On 9 January 1979, the group performed "Chiquitita" at the Music for UNICEF Concert held at the United Nations General Assembly to celebrate UNICEF's Year of the Child. ABBA donated the copyright of this worldwide hit to the UNICEF; see Music for UNICEF Concert. The single was released the following week, and reached number-one in ten countries. North American and European tours In mid-January 1979, Ulvaeus and Fältskog announced they were getting divorced. The news caused interest from the media and led to speculation about the band's future. ABBA assured the press and their fan base they were continuing their work as a group and that the divorce would not affect them. Nonetheless, the media continued to confront them with this in interviews. To escape the media swirl and concentrate on their writing, Andersson and Ulvaeus secretly travelled to Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, where for two weeks they prepared their next album's songs. The group's sixth studio album, Voulez-Vous, was released in April 1979, with its title track recorded at the famous Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, with the assistance of recording engineer Tom Dowd amongst others. The album topped the charts across Europe and in Japan and Mexico, hit the Top 10 in Canada and Australia and the Top 20 in the US. While none of the singles from the album reached number one on the UK chart, the lead single, "Chiquitita", and the fourth single, "I Have a Dream", both ascended to number two, and the other two, "Does Your Mother Know" and "Angeleyes" (with "Voulez-Vous", released as a double A-side) both made the top 5. All four singles reached number one in Belgium, although the last three did not chart in Sweden or Norway. "Chiquitita", which was featured in the Music for UNICEF Concert after which ABBA decided to donate half of the royalties from the song to UNICEF, topped the singles charts in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Spain, Mexico, South Africa, Rhodesia and New Zealand, rose to number two in Sweden, and made the Top 5 in Germany, Austria, Norway and Australia, although it only reached number 29 in the US. "I Have a Dream" was a sizeable hit reaching number one in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria, number three in South Africa, and number four in Germany, although it only reached number 64 in Australia. In Canada, "I Have a Dream" became ABBA's second number one on the RPM Adult Contemporary chart (after "Fernando" hit the top previously) although it did not chart in the US. "Does Your Mother Know", a rare song in which Ulvaeus sings lead vocals, was a Top 5 hit in the Netherlands and Finland, and a Top 10 hit in Germany, Switzerland, Australia, although it only reached number 27 in New Zealand. It did better in North America than "Chiquitita", reaching number 12 in Canada and number 19 in the US, and made the Top 20 in Japan. "Voulez-Vous" was a Top 10 hit in the Netherlands and Switzerland, a Top 20 hit in Germany and Finland, but only peaked in the 80s in Australia, Canada and the US. Also in 1979, the group released their second compilation album, Greatest Hits Vol. 2, which featured a brand new track: "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)", which was a Top 3 hit in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Finland and Norway, and returned ABBA to the Top 10 in Australia. Greatest Hits Vol. 2 went to number one in the UK, Belgium, Canada and Japan while making the Top 5 in several other countries, but only reaching number 20 in Australia and number 46 in the US. In the Soviet Union during the late 1970s, the group were paid in oil commodities because of an embargo on the rouble. On 13 September 1979, ABBA began ABBA: The Tour at Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton, Canada, with a full house of 14,000. "The voices of the band, Agnetha's high sauciness combined with round, rich lower tones of Anni-Frid, were excellent...Technically perfect, melodically correct and always in perfect pitch...The soft lower voice of Anni-Frid and the high, edgy vocals of Agnetha were stunning", raved Edmonton Journal. During the next four weeks they played a total of 17 sold-out dates, 13 in the United States and four in Canada. The last scheduled ABBA concert in the United States in Washington, D.C. was cancelled due to emotional distress Fältskog experienced during the flight from New York to Boston. The group's private plane was subjected to extreme weather conditions and was unable to land for an extended period. They appeared at the Boston Music Hall for the performance 90 minutes late. The tour ended with a show in Toronto, Canada at Maple Leaf Gardens before a capacity crowd of 18,000. "ABBA plays with surprising power and volume; but although they are loud, they're also clear, which does justice to the signature vocal sound... Anyone who's been waiting five years to see Abba will be well satisfied", wrote Record World. On 19 October 1979, the tour resumed in Western Europe where the band played 23 sold-out gigs, including six sold-out nights at London's Wembley Arena. Progression In March 1980, ABBA travelled to Japan where upon their arrival at Narita International Airport, they were besieged by thousands of fans. The group performed eleven concerts to full houses, including six shows at Tokyo's Budokan. This tour was the last "on the road" adventure of their career. In July 1980, ABBA released the single "The Winner Takes It All", the group's eighth UK chart topper (and their first since 1978). The song is widely misunderstood as being written about Ulvaeus and Fältskog's marital tribulations; Ulvaeus wrote the lyrics, but has stated they were not about his own divorce; Fältskog has repeatedly stated she was not the loser in their divorce. In the United States, the single peaked at number-eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and became ABBA's second Billboard Adult Contemporary number-one. It was also re-recorded by Andersson and Ulvaeus with a slightly different backing track, by French chanteuse Mireille Mathieu at the end of 1980 – as "Bravo tu as gagné", with French lyrics by Alain Boublil. November the same year saw the release of ABBA's seventh album Super Trouper, which reflected a certain change in ABBA's style with more prominent use of synthesizers and increasingly personal lyrics. It set a record for the most pre-orders ever received for a UK album after one million copies were ordered before release. The second single from the album, "Super Trouper", also hit number-one in the UK, becoming the group's ninth and final UK chart-topper. Another track from the album, "Lay All Your Love on Me", released in 1981 as a Twelve-inch single only in selected territories, managed to top the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart and peaked at number-seven on the UK singles chart becoming, at the time, the highest ever charting 12-inch release in UK chart history. Also in 1980, ABBA recorded a compilation of Spanish-language versions of their hits called Gracias Por La Música. This was released in Spanish-speaking countries as well as in Japan and Australia. The album became a major success, and along with the Spanish version of "Chiquitita", this signalled the group's breakthrough in Latin America. ABBA Oro: Grandes Éxitos, the Spanish equivalent of ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits, was released in 1999. 1981–1982: The Visitors and later performances In January 1981, Ulvaeus married Lena Källersjö, and manager Stig Anderson celebrated his 50th birthday with a party. For this occasion, ABBA recorded the track "Hovas Vittne" (a pun on the Swedish name for Jehovah's Witness and Anderson's birthplace, Hova) as a tribute to him, and released it only on 200 red vinyl copies, to be distributed to the guests attending the party. This single has become a sought-after collectable. In mid-February 1981, Andersson and Lyngstad announced they were filing for divorce. Information surfaced that their marriage had been an uphill struggle for years, and Benny had already met another woman, Mona Nörklit, whom he married in November 1981. Andersson and Ulvaeus had songwriting sessions in early 1981, and recording sessions began in mid-March. At the end of April, the group recorded a TV special, Dick Cavett Meets ABBA with the US talk show host Dick Cavett. The Visitors, ABBA's eighth studio album, showed a songwriting maturity and depth of feeling distinctly lacking from their earlier recordings but still placing the band squarely in the pop genre, with catchy tunes and harmonies. Although not revealed at the time of its release, the album's title track, according to Ulvaeus, refers to the secret meetings held against the approval of totalitarian governments in Soviet-dominated states, while other tracks address topics like failed relationships, the threat of war, ageing, and loss of innocence. The album's only major single release, "One of Us", proved to be the last of ABBA's nine number-one singles in Germany, this being in December 1981; and the swansong of their sixteen Top 5 singles on the South African chart. "One of Us" was also ABBA's final Top 3 hit in the UK, reaching number-three on the UK Singles Chart. Although it topped the album charts across most of Europe, including Ireland, the UK and Germany, The Visitors was not as commercially successful as its predecessors, showing a commercial decline in previously loyal markets such as France, Australia and Japan. A track from the album, "When All Is Said and Done", was released as a single in North America, Australia and New Zealand, and fittingly became ABBA's final Top 40 hit in the US (debuting on the US charts on 31 December 1981), while also reaching the US Adult Contemporary Top 10, and number-four on the RPM Adult Contemporary chart in Canada. The song's lyrics, as with "The Winner Takes It All" and "One of Us", dealt with the painful experience of separating from a long-term partner, though it looked at the trauma more optimistically. With the now publicised story of Andersson and Lyngstad's divorce, speculation increased of tension within the band. Also released in the United States was the title track of The Visitors, which hit the Top Ten on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart. Later recording sessions In the spring of 1982, songwriting sessions had started and the group came together for more recordings. Plans were not completely clear, but a new album was discussed and the prospect of a small tour suggested. The recording sessions in May and June 1982 were a struggle, and only three songs were eventually recorded: "You Owe Me One", "I Am the City" and "Just Like That". Andersson and Ulvaeus were not satisfied with the outcome, so the tapes were shelved and the group took a break for the summer. Back in the studio again in early August, the group had changed plans for the rest of the year: they settled for a Christmas release of a double album compilation of all their past single releases to be named The Singles: The First Ten Years. New songwriting and recording sessions took place, and during October and December, they released the singles "The Day Before You Came"/"Cassandra" and "Under Attack"/"You Owe Me One", the A-sides of which were included on the compilation album. Neither single made the Top 20 in the United Kingdom, though "The Day Before You Came" became a Top 5 hit in many European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. The album went to number one in the UK and Belgium, Top 5 in the Netherlands and Germany and Top 20 in many other countries. "Under Attack", the group's final release before disbanding, was a Top 5 hit in the Netherlands and Belgium. "I Am the City" and "Just Like That" were left unreleased on The Singles: The First Ten Years for possible inclusion on the next projected studio album, though this never came to fruition. "I Am the City" was eventually released on the compilation album More ABBA Gold in 1993, while "Just Like That" has been recycled in new songs with other artists produced by Andersson and Ulvaeus. A reworked version of the verses ended up in the musical Chess. The chorus section of "Just Like That" was eventually released on a retrospective box set in 1994, as well as in the ABBA Undeleted medley featured on disc 9 of The Complete Studio Recordings. Despite a number of requests from fans, Ulvaeus and Andersson are still refusing to release ABBA's version of "Just Like That" in its entirety, even though the complete version has surfaced on bootlegs. The group travelled to London to promote The Singles: The First Ten Years in the first week of November 1982, appearing on Saturday Superstore and The Late, Late Breakfast Show, and also to West Germany in the second week, to perform on Show Express. On 19 November 1982, ABBA appeared for the last time in Sweden on the TV programme Nöjesmaskinen, and on 11 December 1982, they made their last performance ever, transmitted to the UK on Noel Edmonds' The Late, Late Breakfast Show, through a live link from a TV studio in Stockholm. Later performances Andersson and Ulvaeus began collaborating with Tim Rice in early 1983 on writing songs for the musical project Chess, while Fältskog and Lyngstad both concentrated on international solo careers. While Andersson and Ulvaeus were working on the musical, a further co-operation among the three of them came with the musical Abbacadabra that was produced in France for television. It was a children's musical using 14 ABBA songs. Alain and Daniel Boublil, who wrote Les Misérables, had been in touch with Stig Anderson about the project, and the TV musical was aired over Christmas on French TV and later a Dutch version was also broadcast. Boublil previously also wrote the French lyric for Mireille Mathieu's version of "The Winner Takes It All". Lyngstad, who had recently moved to Paris, participated in the French version, and recorded a single, "Belle", a duet with French singer Daniel Balavoine. The song was a cover of ABBA's 1976 instrumental track "Arrival". As the single "Belle" sold well in France, Cameron Mackintosh wanted to stage an English-language version of the show in London, with the French lyrics translated by David Wood and Don Black; Andersson and Ulvaeus got involved in the project, and contributed with one new song, "I Am the Seeker". "Abbacadabra" premiered on 8 December 1983 at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in London, to mixed reviews and full houses for eight weeks, closing on 21 January 1984. Lyngstad was also involved in this production, recording "Belle" in English as "Time", a duet with actor and singer B. A. Robertson: the single sold well, and was produced and recorded by Mike Batt. In May 1984, Lyngstad performed "I Have a Dream" with a children's choir at the United Nations Organisation Gala, in Geneva, Switzerland. All four members made their (at the time, final) public appearance as four friends more than as ABBA in January 1986, when they recorded a video of themselves performing an acoustic version of "Tivedshambo" (which was the first song written by their manager Stig Anderson), for a Swedish TV show honouring Anderson on his 55th birthday. The four had not seen each other for more than two years. That same year they also performed privately at another friend's 40th birthday: their old tour manager, Claes af Geijerstam. They sang a self-written song titled "Der Kleine Franz" that was later to resurface in Chess. Also in 1986, ABBA Live was released, featuring selections of live performances from the group's 1977 and 1979 tours. The four members were guests at the 50th birthday of Görel Hanser in 1999. Hanser was a long-time friend of all four, and also former secretary of Stig Anderson. Honouring Görel, ABBA performed a Swedish birthday song "Med en enkel tulipan" a cappella. Andersson has on several occasions performed ABBA songs. In June 1992, he and Ulvaeus appeared with U2 at a Stockholm concert, singing the chorus of "Dancing Queen", and a few years later during the final performance of the B & B in Concert in Stockholm, Andersson joined the cast for an encore at the piano. Andersson frequently adds an ABBA song to the playlist when he performs with his BAO band. He also played the piano during new recordings of the ABBA songs "Like an Angel Passing Through My Room" with opera singer Anne Sofie von Otter, and "When All Is Said and Done" with Swede Viktoria Tolstoy. In 2002, Andersson and Ulvaeus both performed an a cappella rendition of the first verse of "Fernando" as they accepted their Ivor Novello award in London. Lyngstad performed and recorded an a cappella version of "Dancing Queen" with the Swedish group the Real Group in 1993, and also re-recorded "I Have a Dream" with Swiss singer Dan Daniell in 2003. Break and reunion ABBA never officially announced the end of the group or an indefinite break, but it was long considered dissolved after their final public performance together in 1982. Their final public performance together as ABBA before their 2016 reunion was on the British TV programme The Late, Late Breakfast Show (live from Stockholm) on 11 December 1982. While reminiscing on "The Day Before You Came", Ulvaeus said: "we might have continued for a while longer if that had been a number one". In January 1983, Fältskog started recording sessions for a solo album, as Lyngstad had successfully released her album Something's Going On some months earlier. Ulvaeus and Andersson, meanwhile, started songwriting sessions for the musical Chess. In interviews at the time, Björn and Benny denied the split of ABBA ("Who are we without our ladies? Initials of Brigitte Bardot?"), and Lyngstad and Fältskog kept claiming in interviews that ABBA would come together for a new album repeatedly during 1983 and 1984. Internal strife between the group and their manager escalated and the band members sold their shares in Polar Music during 1983. Except for a TV appearance in 1986, the foursome did not come together publicly again until they were reunited at the Swedish premiere of the Mamma Mia! movie on 4 July 2008. The individual members' endeavours shortly before and after their final public performance coupled with the collapse of both marriages and the lack of significant activity in the following few years after that widely suggested that the group had broken up. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph following the premiere, Ulvaeus and Andersson said that there was nothing that could entice them back on stage again. Ulvaeus said: "We will never appear on stage again. [...] There is simply no motivation to re-group. Money is not a factor and we would like people to remember us as we were. Young, exuberant, full of energy and ambition. I remember Robert Plant saying Led Zeppelin were a cover band now because they cover all their own stuff. I think that hit the nail on the head." However, on 3 January 2011, Fältskog, long considered to be the most reclusive member of the group and a major obstacle to any reunion, raised the possibility of reuniting for a one-off engagement. She admitted that she has not yet brought the idea up to the other three members. In April 2013, she reiterated her hopes for reunion during an interview with Die Zeit, stating: "If they ask me, I'll say yes." In a May 2013 interview, Fältskog, aged 63 at the time, stated that an ABBA reunion would never occur: "I think we have to accept that it will not happen, because we are too old and each one of us has their own life. Too many years have gone by since we stopped, and there's really no meaning in putting us together again". Fältskog further explained that the band members remained on amicable terms: "It's always nice to see each other now and then and to talk a little and to be a little nostalgic." In an April 2014 interview, Fältskog, when asked about whether the band might reunite for a new recording said: "It's difficult to talk about this because then all the news stories will be: 'ABBA is going to record another song!' But as long as we can sing and play, then why not? I would love to, but it's up to Björn and Benny." Resurgence of public interest The same year the members of ABBA went their separate ways, the French production of a "tribute" show (a children's TV musical named Abbacadabra using 14 ABBA songs) spawned new interest in the group's music. After receiving little attention during the mid-to-late-1980s, ABBA's music experienced a resurgence in the early 1990s due to the UK synth-pop duo Erasure, who released Abba-esque, a four track extended play release featuring cover versions of ABBA songs which topped several European charts in 1992. As U2 arrived in Stockholm for a concert in June of that year, the band paid homage to ABBA by inviting Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson to join them on stage for a rendition of "Dancing Queen", playing guitar and keyboards. September 1992 saw the release of ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits, a new compilation album. The single "Dancing Queen" received radio airplay in the UK in the middle of 1992 to promote the album. The song returned to the Top 20 of the UK singles chart in August that year, this time peaking at number 16. With sales of 30 million, Gold is the best-selling ABBA album, as well as one of the best-selling albums worldwide. With sales of 5.5 million copies it is the second-highest selling album of all time in the UK, after Queen's Greatest Hits. More ABBA Gold: More ABBA Hits, a follow-up to Gold, was released in 1993. In 1994, two Australian cult films caught the attention of the world's media, both focusing on admiration for ABBA: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel's Wedding. The same year, Thank You for the Music, a four-disc box set comprising all the group's hits and stand-out album tracks, was released with the involvement of all four members. "By the end of the twentieth century," American critic Chuck Klosterman wrote a decade later, "it was far more contrarian to hate ABBA than to love them." ABBA were soon recognised and embraced by other acts: Evan Dando of the Lemonheads recorded a cover version of "Knowing Me, Knowing You"; Sinéad O'Connor and Boyzone's Stephen Gately have recorded "Chiquitita"; Tanita Tikaram, Blancmange and Steven Wilson paid tribute to "The Day Before You Came". Cliff Richard covered "Lay All Your Love on Me", while Dionne Warwick, Peter Cetera, Frank Sidebottom and Celebrity Skin recorded their versions of "SOS". US alternative-rock musician Marshall Crenshaw has also been known to play a version of "Knowing Me, Knowing You" in concert appearances, while legendary English Latin pop songwriter Richard Daniel Roman has recognised ABBA as a major influence. Swedish metal guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen covered "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" with slightly altered lyrics. Two different compilation albums of ABBA songs have been released. ABBA: A Tribute coincided with the 25th anniversary celebration and featured 17 songs, some of which were recorded especially for this release. Notable tracks include Go West's "One of Us", Army of Lovers "Hasta Mañana", Information Society's "Lay All Your Love on Me", Erasure's "Take a Chance on Me" (with MC Kinky), and Lyngstad's a cappella duet with the Real Group of "Dancing Queen". A second 12-track album was released in 1999, titled ABBAmania, with proceeds going to the Youth Music charity in England. It featured all new cover versions: notable tracks were by Madness ("Money, Money, Money"), Culture Club ("Voulez-Vous"), the Corrs ("The Winner Takes It All"), Steps ("Lay All Your Love on Me", "I Know Him So Well"), and a medley titled "Thank ABBA for the Music" performed by several artists and as featured on the Brits Awards that same year. In 1998, an ABBA tribute group was formed, the ABBA Teens, which was subsequently renamed the A-Teens to allow the group some independence. The group's first album, The ABBA Generation, consisting solely of ABBA covers reimagined as 1990s pop songs, was a worldwide success and so were subsequent albums. The group disbanded in 2004 due to a gruelling schedule and intentions to go solo. In Sweden, the growing recognition of the legacy of Andersson and Ulvaeus resulted in the 1998 B & B Concerts, a tribute concert (with Swedish singers who had worked with the songwriters through the years) showcasing not only their ABBA years, but hits both before and after ABBA. The concert was a success, and was ultimately released on CD. It later toured Scandinavia and even went to Beijing in the People's Republic of China for two concerts. In 2000 ABBA were reported to have turned down an offer of approximately one billion US dollars to do a reunion tour consisting of 100 concerts. For the semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2004, staged in Istanbul 30 years after ABBA had won the contest in Brighton, all four members made cameo appearances in a special comedy video made for the interval act, titled Our Last Video Ever. Other well-known stars such as Rik Mayall, Cher and Iron Maiden's Eddie also made appearances in the video. It was not included in the official DVD release of the 2004 Eurovision contest, but was issued as a separate DVD release, retitled The Last Video at the request of the former ABBA members. The video was made using puppet models of the members of the band. The video has surpassed 13 million views on YouTube as of November 2020. In 2005, all four members of ABBA appeared at the Stockholm premiere of the musical Mamma Mia!. On 22 October 2005, at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest, "Waterloo" was chosen as the best song in the competition's history. In the same month, American singer Madonna released the single "Hung Up", which contains a sample of the keyboard melody from ABBA's 1979 song "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)"; the song was a smash hit, peaking at number one in at least 50 countries. On 4 July 2008, all four ABBA members were reunited at the Swedish premiere of the film Mamma Mia!. It was only the second time all of them had appeared together in public since 1986. During the appearance, they re-emphasised that they intended never to officially reunite, citing the opinion of Robert Plant that the re-formed Led Zeppelin was more like a cover band of itself than the original band. Ulvaeus stated that he wanted the band to be remembered as they were during the peak years of their success. Gold returned to number-one in the UK album charts for the fifth time on 3 August 2008. On 14 August 2008, the Mamma Mia! The Movie film soundtrack went to number-one on the US Billboard charts, ABBA's first US chart-topping album. During the band's heyday, the highest album chart position they had ever achieved in America was number 14. In November 2008, all eight studio albums, together with a ninth of rare tracks, were released as The Albums. It hit several charts, peaking at number-four in Sweden and reaching the Top 10 in several other European territories. In 2008, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, in collaboration with Universal Music Group Sweden AB, released SingStar ABBA on both the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 games consoles, as part of the SingStar music video games. The PS2 version features 20 ABBA songs, while 25 songs feature on the PS3 version. On 22 January 2009, Fältskog and Lyngstad appeared together on stage to receive the Swedish music award "Rockbjörnen" (for "lifetime achievement"). In an interview, the two women expressed their gratitude for the honorary award and thanked their fans. On 25 November 2009, PRS for Music announced that the British public voted ABBA as the band they would most like to see re-form. On 27 January 2010, ABBAWORLD, a 25-room touring exhibition featuring interactive and audiovisual activities, debuted at Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London. According to the exhibition's website, ABBAWORLD is "approved and fully supported" by the band members. "Mamma Mia" was released as one of the first few non-premium song selections for the online RPG game Bandmaster. On 17 May 2011, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" was added as a non-premium song selection for the Bandmaster Philippines server. On 15 November 2011, Ubisoft released a dancing game called ABBA: You Can Dance for the Wii. In January 2012, Universal Music announced the re-release of ABBA's final album The Visitors, featuring a previously unheard track "From a Twinkling Star to a Passing Angel". A book titled ABBA: The Official Photo Book was published in early 2014 to mark the 40th anniversary of the band's Eurovision victory. The book reveals that part of the reason for the band's outrageous costumes was that Swedish tax laws at the time allowed the cost of garish outfits that were not suitable for daily wear to be tax deductible. 2016–2022: Reunion, Voyage, and ABBAtars On 20 January 2016, all four members of ABBA made a public appearance at Mamma Mia! The Party in Stockholm. On 6 June 2016, the quartet appeared together at a private party at Berns Salonger in Stockholm, which was held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Andersson and Ulvaeus's first meeting. Fältskog and Lyngstad performed live, singing "The Way Old Friends Do" before they were joined on stage by Andersson and Ulvaeus. British manager Simon Fuller announced in a statement in October 2016 that the group would be reuniting to work on a new "digital entertainment experience". The project would feature the members in their "life-like" avatar form, called ABBAtars, based on their late 1970s tour and would be set to launch by the spring of 2019. In May 2017, a sequel to the 2008 movie Mamma Mia!, titled Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, was announced; the film was released on 20 July 2018. Cher, who appeared in the movie, also released Dancing Queen, an ABBA cover album, in September 2018. In June 2017, a blue plaque outside Brighton Dome was set to commemorate their 1974 Eurovision win. On 27 April 2018, all four original members of ABBA made a joint announcement that they had recorded two new songs, titled "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down", to feature in a TV special set to air later that year. In September 2018, Ulvaeus stated that the two new songs, as well as the TV special, now called ABBA: Thank You for the Music, An All-Star Tribute, would not be released until 2019. The TV special was later revealed to be scrapped by 2018, as Andersson and Ulvaeus rejected Fuller's project, and instead partnered with visual effects company Industrial Light and Magic to prepare the ABBAtars for a music video and a concert. In January 2019, it was revealed that neither song would be released before the summer. Andersson hinted at the possibility of a third song. In June 2019, Ulvaeus announced that the first new song and video containing the ABBAtars would be released in November 2019. In September, he stated in an interview that there were now five new ABBA songs to be released in 2020. In early 2020, Andersson confirmed that he was aiming for the songs to be released in September 2020. In April 2020, Ulvaeus gave an interview saying that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the avatar project had been delayed. Five out of the eight original songs written by Benny for the new album had been recorded by the two female members, and the release of a new £15 million music video with new unseen technology was under consideration. In May 2020, it was announced that ABBA's entire studio discography would be released on coloured vinyl for the first time, in a box set titled ABBA: The Studio Albums. In July 2020, Ulvaeus revealed that the release of the new ABBA recordings had been delayed until 2021. On 22 September 2020, all four ABBA members reunited at Ealing Studios in London to continue working on the avatar project and filming for the tour. Ulvaeus confirmed that the avatar tour would be scheduled for 2022. When questioned if the new recordings were definitely coming out in 2021, Björn said "There will be new music this year, that is definite, it's not a case anymore of it might happen, it will happen." On 26 August 2021, a new website was launched, with the title ABBA Voyage. On the page, visitors were prompted to subscribe "to be the first in line to hear more about ABBA Voyage". Simultaneously with the launch of the webpage, new ABBA Voyage social media accounts were launched, and billboards around London started to appear, all showing the date "02.09.21", leading to expectation of what was to be revealed on that date. On 29 August, the band officially joined TikTok with a video of Benny Andersson playing "Dancing Queen" on the piano, and media reported on a new album to be announced on 2 September. On that date, Voyage, their first new album in 40 years, was announced to be released on 5 November 2021, along with ABBA Voyage, a concert residency in a custom-built venue at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London featuring the motion capture digital avatars of the four band members alongside a 10-piece live band, starting 27 May 2022. Fältskog stated that the Voyage album and tour are likely to be their last. The announcement of the new album was accompanied by the release of the singles "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down". The music video for "I Still Have Faith in You", featuring footage of the band during their performing years and a first look at the ABBAtars, earned over a million views in its first three hours. "Don't Shut Me Down" became the first ABBA release since October 1978 to top the singles chart in Sweden. In October 2021, the third single "Just a Notion" was released, and it was announced that ABBA would split for good after the release of Voyage. However, in an interview with BBC Radio 2 on 11 November, Lyngstad stated "don't be too sure" that Voyage is the final ABBA album. Also, in an interview with BBC News on 5 November, Andersson stated "if they [the ladies] twist my arm I might change my mind." The fourth single from the album, "Little Things", was released on 3 December. In May 2022, after the premiere of ABBA Voyage, Andersson stated in an interview with Variety that "nothing is going to happen after this", confirming the residency as ABBA's final group collaboration. In April 2023, longtime ABBA guitarist Lasse Wellander died at the age of 70; Wellander played on seven of the group's nine studio albums, including Voyage. Artistry Recording process ABBA were perfectionists in the studio, working on tracks until they got them right rather than leaving them to come back to later on. They spent the bulk of their time within the studio; in separate 2021 interviews Ulvaeus stated they may have toured for only 6 months while Andersson said they played fewer than 100 shows during the band's career. The band created a basic rhythm track with a drummer, guitarist and bass player, and overlaid other arrangements and instruments. Vocals were then added, and orchestra overdubs were usually left until last. Fältskog and Lyngstad contributed ideas at the studio stage. Andersson and Ulvaeus played them the backing tracks and they made comments and suggestions. According to Fältskog, she and Lyngstad had the final say in how the lyrics were shaped. After vocals and overdubs were done, the band took up to five days to mix a song. Fashion, style, videos, advertising campaigns ABBA was widely noted for the colourful and trend-setting costumes its members wore. The reason for the wild costumes was Swedish tax law: the cost of the clothes was deductible only if they could not be worn other than for performances. In their early years, group member Anni-Frid Lyngstad designed and even hand sewed the outfits. Later, as their success grew, they used professional theatrical clothes designer Owe Sandström together with tailor Lars Wigenius with Lyngstad continuing to suggest ideas whilst co-ordinating the outfits with concert set designs. Choreography by Graham Tainton also contributed to their performance style. The videos that accompanied some of the band's biggest hits are often cited as being among the earliest examples of the genre. Most of ABBA's videos (and ABBA: The Movie) were directed by Lasse Hallström, who would later direct the films My Life as a Dog, The Cider House Rules and Chocolat. ABBA made videos because their songs were hits in many different countries and personal appearances were not always possible. This was also done in an effort to minimise travelling, particularly to countries that would have required extremely long flights. Fältskog and Ulvaeus had two young children and Fältskog, who was also afraid of flying, was very reluctant to leave her children for such a long time. ABBA's manager, Stig Anderson, realised the potential of showing a simple video clip on television to publicise a single or album, thereby allowing easier and quicker exposure than a concert tour. Some of these videos have become classics because of the 1970s-era costumes and early video effects, such as the grouping of the band members in different combinations of pairs, overlapping one singer's profile with the other's full face, and the contrasting of one member against another. In 1976, ABBA participated in an advertising campaign to promote the Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.'s brand, National, in Australia. The campaign was also broadcast in Japan. Five commercial spots, each of approximately one minute, were produced, each presenting the "National Song" performed by ABBA using the melody and instrumental arrangements of "Fernando" and revised lyrics. Political use of ABBA's music In September 2010, band members Andersson and Ulvaeus criticised the right-wing Danish People's Party (DF) for using the ABBA song "Mamma Mia" (with modified lyrics referencing Pia Kjærsgaard) at rallies. The band threatened to file a lawsuit against the DF, saying they never allowed their music to be used politically and that they had absolutely no interest in supporting the party. Their record label Universal Music later said that no legal action would be taken because an agreement had been reached. Success in the United States During their active career, from 1972 to 1982, 20 of ABBA's singles entered the Billboard Hot 100; 14 of these made the Top 40 (13 on the Cashbox Top 100), with 10 making the Top 20 on both charts. A total of four of those singles reached the Top 10, including "Dancing Queen", which reached number one in April 1977. While "Fernando" and "SOS" did not break the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 (reaching number 13 and 15 respectively), they did reach the Top 10 on Cashbox ("Fernando") and Record World ("SOS") charts. Both "Dancing Queen" and "Take a Chance on Me" were certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of over one million copies each. The group also had 12 Top 20 singles on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart with two of them, "Fernando" and "The Winner Takes It All", reaching number one. "Lay All Your Love on Me" was ABBA's fourth number-one single on a Billboard chart, topping the Hot Dance Club Play chart. Ten ABBA albums have made their way into the top half of the Billboard 200 album chart, with eight reaching the Top 50, five reaching the Top 20 and one reaching the Top 10. In November 2021, Voyage became ABBA's highest-charting album on the Billboard 200 peaking at No. 2. Five albums received RIAA gold certification (more than 500,000 copies sold), while three acquired platinum status (selling more than one million copies). The compilation album ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits topped the Billboard Top Pop Catalog Albums chart in August 2008 (15 years after it was first released in the US in 1993), becoming the group's first number-one album ever on any of the Billboard album charts. It has sold 6 million copies there. On 15 March 2010, ABBA were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bee Gees members Barry Gibb and Robin Gibb. The ceremony was held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The group were represented by Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson. in November 2021, ABBA received a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year. The single, "I Still Have Faith In You", from the album, Voyage, was their first ever nomination. Members Agnetha Fältskog – lead and backing vocals Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad – lead and backing vocals Björn Ulvaeus – guitars, backing and lead vocals Benny Andersson – keyboards, synthesizers, piano, accordion, backing and lead vocals The members of ABBA were married as follows: Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus from 1971 to 1979; Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad from 1978 to 1981. For their subsequent marriages, see their articles. In addition to the four members of ABBA, other musicians regularly played on their studio recordings, live appearances and concert performances. These include: Rutger Gunnarsson (1972–1982) bass guitar and string arrangements Ola Brunkert (1972–1981) drums (1972–1980) bass guitar Janne Schaffer (1972–1982) lead electric guitar (1972–1979) drums Malando Gassama (1973–1979) percussion Lasse Wellander (1974–2021) lead electric guitar Anders Eljas (1977) keyboards on tour and all the band's orchestration (1978–1982) percussion (1980–2021) drums ABBA-related tributes Musical groups Abbaesque – an Irish ABBA tribute band. A-Teens – a pop music group from Stockholm, Sweden. Björn Again – an Australian tribute band; notable as the earliest-formed ABBA tribute band (1988) and, as of 2021, still currently touring. Gabba – an ABBA–Ramones tribute band that covers the former in the style of the latter, the name being a reference to the Ramones catchphrase "Gabba Gabba Hey". Media Saturday Night (1975) (TV) – Season 1 Episode 5 (Hosted by Robert Klein with Musical Numbers by ABBA and Loudon Wainwright III) Abbacadabra – A French children's musical based on songs from ABBA Abba-esque – A 1992 cover EP by Erasure Abbasalutely – A compilation album released in 1995 as a tribute album to ABBA Brit Awards 99 – featuring the first performance of the UK Top 10 medley "Thank ABBA for the Music" Mamma Mia! – A musical stage show based on songs of ABBA Mamma Mia! – A film adaptation of the musical stage show Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again – A prequel/sequel to the original film ABBAmania – An ITV programme and tribute album to ABBA released in 1999 ABBA: You Can Dance – A dance video game released by Ubisoft in 2011 with songs from ABBA and also a spin-off of Just Dance video game series Dancing Queen – A 2018 cover album by Cher Discography Studio albums Ring Ring (1973) Waterloo (1974) ABBA (1975) Arrival (1976) The Album (1977) Voulez-Vous (1979) Super Trouper (1980) The Visitors (1981) Voyage (2021) Tours Concert tours Swedish Folkpark Tour (1973) European Tour (1974–1975) European & Australian Tour (1977) ABBA: The Tour (1979–1980) Concert residencies ABBA Voyage (2022–2024) Awards and nominations See also ABBA: The Museum ABBA City Walks – Stockholm City Museum ABBAMAIL List of best-selling music artists List of Swedes in music Music of Sweden Popular music in Sweden Citations References Bibliography Further reading Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Judy Craymer: Mamma Mia! How Can I Resist You?: The Inside Story of Mamma Mia! and the Songs of ABBA. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006 Carl Magnus Palm. ABBA – The Complete Recording Sessions (1994) Carl Magnus Palm (2000). From "ABBA" to "Mamma Mia!" Elisabeth Vincentelli: ABBA Treasures: A Celebration of the Ultimate Pop Group. Omnibus Press, 2010, Oldham, Andrew, Calder, Tony & Irvin, Colin (1995) "ABBA: The Name of the Game", Potiez, Jean-Marie (2000). ABBA – The Book Simon Sheridan: The Complete ABBA. Titan Books, 2012, Anna Henker (ed.), Astrid Heyde (ed.): Abba – Das Lexikon. Northern Europe Institut, Humboldt-University Berlin, 2015 (German) Steve Harnell (ed.): Classic Pop Presents Abba: A Celebration. Classic Pop Magazine (special edition), November 2016 Documentaries A for ABBA. BBC, 20 July 1993 Thierry Lecuyer, Jean-Marie Potiez: Thank You ABBA. Willow Wil Studios/A2C Video, 1993 Barry Barnes: ABBA − The History. Polar Music International AB, 1999 Chris Hunt: The Winner Takes it All − The ABBA Story. Littlestar Services/lambic Productions, 1999 Steve Cole, Chris Hunt: Super Troupers − Thirty Years of ABBA. BBC, 2004 The Joy of ABBA. BBC 4, 27 December 2013 (BBC page) Carl Magnus Palm, Roger Backlund: ABBA – When Four Became One. SVT, 2 January 2012 Carl Magnus Palm, Roger Backlund: ABBA – Absolute Image. SVT, 2 January 2012 ABBA – Bang a boomerang. ABC 1, 30 January 2013 (ABC page) ABBA: When All Is Said and Done, 2017 . Sunday Night (7 News), 1 October 2019 External links The Secret Majesty of ABBA. Variety, 22 July 2018 ABBA's Essential, Influential Melancholy. NPR, 23 May 2015 What's Behind ABBA's Staying Power?. Smithsonian, 20 July 2018 ABBA – The Articles – ABBA news from throughout the world Category:1972 establishments in Sweden Category:Atlantic Records artists Category:English-language singers from Sweden Category:Epic Records artists Category:Eurodisco groups Category:Eurovision Song Contest entrants for Sweden Category:Eurovision Song Contest entrants of 1974 Category:Eurovision Song Contest winners Category:Melodifestivalen contestants Category:Melodifestivalen winners Category:Musical groups disestablished in 1982 Category:Musical groups established in 1972 Category:Musical groups from Stockholm Category:Musical groups reestablished in 2016 Category:Musical quartets Category:Palindromes Category:RCA Records artists Category:Schlager groups Category:Swedish dance music groups Category:Swedish pop music groups Category:Swedish pop rock music groups Category:Swedish-language singers Category:Swedish co-ed groups

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James O'Keefe

James Edward O'Keefe III (born June 28, 1984) is an American conservative political activist. He produces secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters with figures and workers in academic, governmental and social service organizations, purporting to show abusive or allegedly illegal behavior by employees and/or representatives of those organizations. He has been criticized for selectively editing videos to misrepresent the context of conversations and the subjects' responses, creating the false impression that people said or did things they did not. He gained national attention for his video recordings of workers at Association of Community Organizations for Reform

Senator Mary Landrieu (2010)

O'Keefe and colleagues were arrested in New Orleans in January 2010 and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony, at the office of United States Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat. His three fellow activists, who were dressed as telephone repairmen when apprehended, included Robert Flanagan, the son of William Flanagan, acting U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Louisiana. The four men were charged with malicious intent to damage the phone system. O'Keefe stated that he had entered Landrieu's office to investigate complaints that she was ignoring phone calls from constituents during the debate over President Barack Obama's health care bill. The charges in the case were reduced from a felony to a single misdemeanor count of entering a federal building under false pretenses. O'Keefe and the others pleaded guilty on May 26. O'Keefe was sentenced to three years' probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine. The other three men received lesser sentences. In August 2013, O'Keefe revisited the incident by releasing a video entitled: "a confrontation with former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten on the campus of Tulane University". Letten is a former Republican U.S. Attorney who recused himself from the Landrieu incident because he knew the father of one of the men involved. The video shows Letten accusing O'Keefe of "terrorizing" Letten's wife at their home, of harassing him, and trespassing on the Tulane campus. He called O'Keefe a "coward" and a "spud", and referred to O'Keefe and his companions as "hobbits" and "scum". CANNOTANSWER

James Edward O'Keefe III (born June 28, 1984) is an American political activist and provocateur who founded Project Veritas, a far-right activist group that uses deceptive editing and information gathering techniques to attack mainstream media organizations and progressive groups. Both O'Keefe and Project Veritas have produced secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters in academic, governmental, and social service organizations, purporting to show abusive or illegal behavior by representatives of those organizations; the recordings are often selectively edited to misrepresent the context of the conversations and the subjects' responses. O'Keefe served as chairman until he separated from the organization in February 2023 amid controversy over his handling of finances and his management style. O’Keefe first gained national attention for his selectively edited video recordings of workers at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) offices in 2009, his arrest and misdemeanor guilty plea in 2010 for entering the federal office of then-U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) under false pretenses, and the release of misleading videos of conversations with two high-ranking, now former, NPR executives in 2011. When his videos – heavily edited to portray ACORN workers seemingly aiding a couple in criminal planning – were publicized, the U.S. Congress voted to freeze funds for the non-profit. The national controversy resulted in the non-profit also losing most of its private funding before investigations of the videos concluded no illegal activity occurred. In March 2010, ACORN was close to bankruptcy and had to close or rename most of its offices. Shortly thereafter, the California State Attorney General's Office and the US Government Accountability Office released their related investigative reports. The Attorney General's Office found that O'Keefe had misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers in California and that the workers had not broken any laws. A preliminary probe by the GAO found that ACORN had managed its federal funds appropriately. One of the fired ACORN workers sued O'Keefe for invasion of privacy; O'Keefe issued an apology and agreed to pay $100,000 in a settlement. O'Keefe has gained support from right-wing and conservative media and interest groups, as well as from the far right. In 2009, Andrew Breitbart commissioned him for the option to publish new videos exclusively on BigGovernment. The Project Veritas board fired O'Keefe in February 2023 for what it said was financial malfeasance with donor money. On March 15, 2023, O'Keefe launched a new organization called O'Keefe Media Group. Early life and education James Edward O'Keefe III was born in Bergen County, New Jersey, the elder of two children of James, a materials engineer, and Deborah O'Keefe, a physical therapist. He has a younger sister. O'Keefe grew up in Westwood, New Jersey. His home was politically "conservative but not rigidly so", according to his father. He graduated from Westwood High School, where he showed an early interest in the arts, theater and journalism. He attained Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America. O'Keefe started at Rutgers University in 2002 and majored in philosophy. Beginning in his sophomore year, he wrote a bi-weekly opinion column for The Daily Targum, the university's student paper. He left the Targum and founded the Rutgers Centurion, a conservative student paper supported by a $500 "Balance in the Media" grant from The Leadership Institute. For his first video, he and other Centurion writers met with Rutgers dining staff to demand the banning of the cereal Lucky Charms from dining halls because of its offense to Irish Americans. O'Keefe said the leprechaun mascot presented a stereotype. He intended to have officials lose either way: to appear insensitive to an ethnic group, or to look silly by agreeing to ban Lucky Charms. They expected to be thrown out of school, but the Rutgers official was courteous, took notes, and said their concerns would be considered. Rutgers staff say the cereal was never taken off the menu. Career After graduating from Rutgers, O'Keefe worked for a year at the Leadership Institute (LI) in Arlington, Virginia, under media specialist Ben Wetmore, whom O'Keefe calls his mentor. The institute sent him to colleges to train students to start conservative independent newspapers, but, after a year LI officials asked him to leave. According to LI president and founder Morton Blackwell, O'Keefe was "very effective and very enthusiastic" but after a year he was asked to leave because officials felt his activist work threatened the group's nonprofit status by trying to influence legislation. O'Keefe has produced and distributed secretly recorded and misleadingly edited videos and audio files made during staged encounters with targeted entities or individuals. His work takes the form of undercover stings targeted at liberal groups and politicians. He sought to "embarrass" and "damage" his targets, such as Landrieu and ACORN. He has sought to maximize publicity by releasing secretly recorded videos over several days or months, often in relation to funding authorizations or significant political actions related to the subject organization. Many videos received widespread media coverage sparking significant reactions, most notably videos of ACORN that resulted in the Congress quickly freezing funds, two executive agencies canceling contracts, and several ACORN workers being fired, and videos of National Public Radio (NPR) executives that led to the resignation of CEO Vivian Schiller, shortly before Congressional funding hearings involving NPR. In January 2010, O'Keefe began a column on Breitbarts website, BigGovernment. Andrew Breitbart stated in an interview that he paid O'Keefe a salary for his "life rights" to gain release of O'Keefe's videos first on his website. In 2010, O'Keefe formed a new organization, Project Veritas, whose stated mission is "to investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society." Much of the funding for Project Veritas comes from anonymous donations through Donors Trust, a conservative, American nonprofit donor-advised fund, which according to its promotional materials, says that it will "keep your charitable giving private, especially gifts funding sensitive or controversial issues." Prominent donors include the Trump Foundation, which, in May 2015, donated $10,000. O'Keefe is a conservative activist with mainstream conservative pro-market and anti-government views, although he has described himself as a "progressive radical", because he wants to change things, "not conserve them". He considers himself a muckraker. O'Keefe has expressed admiration for the philosophy of G. K. Chesterton and for a free press. Major activities Planned Parenthood recordings (2008) In 2006, O'Keefe met Lila Rose, the founder of an anti-abortion group on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus. They secretly recorded encounters in Planned Parenthood clinics in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, in which Rose posed as a 15-year-old girl impregnated by a 23-year-old male. Rose and O'Keefe made two videos incorporating heavily edited versions of the recordings and released them on YouTube. the video omitted the portions of the full conversation in which a Planned Parenthood employee asked Rose to consult her mother about the pregnancy and another employee told Rose, "We have to follow the laws". Rose took down the videos after Planned Parenthood sent her a cease and desist letter in May 2007 asserting that the videos violated California's voice recording laws, which required consent from all recorded parties. In 2007, O'Keefe phoned several Planned Parenthood clinics and secretly recorded the conversations. He posed as a donor, asking if his donations would be applied to needs of minority women, accompanied by race-related remarks such as "there's way too many black people in Ohio". The recordings portrayed Planned Parenthood clinic workers in six states agreeing to accept his donation under his conditions. After the release of the recordings, African-American leaders called for withdrawal of public financing of the organization. The Idaho clinic responded with an apology for "the manner in which this offensive call was handled". Planned Parenthood issued an official statement emphasizing that "97 percent of its services are focused on providing contraceptives, breast and cervical cancer screenings and sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment — not abortions". ACORN videos (2009) In September 2009, O'Keefe and his associate, Hannah Giles, published edited hidden camera recordings in which Giles posed as a prostitute and O'Keefe as her boyfriend, a law student, in an attempt to elicit damaging responses from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an advocacy organization for people of low and moderate income. Washington Post correspondents Darryl Fears and Carol D. Leonnig reported that O'Keefe "said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives" and that "[p]oliticians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization." According to The Washington Post, ACORN registered people mostly from the Latino and African American groups. The videos were recorded during the summer of 2009 and appeared to show low-level ACORN employees in six cities providing advice to Giles and O'Keefe on how to avoid detection by authorities of tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. He framed the undercover recordings with a preface of him dressed in a "pimp" outfit, which he also wore in TV media interviews. This gave viewers, including the media, the impression that he had dressed that way when speaking to ACORN workers. However, he actually entered the ACORN offices in conservative street clothes (the sleeve of his dress shirt is visible on camera). ACORN employees at two of the six offices visited by O'Keefe and Giles reported his activities to the police after he left. O'Keefe selectively edited and manipulated his recordings of ACORN employees, and distorted the chronology of events. Several journalists and media outlets have expressed regret for not properly scrutinizing and vetting his work. Reception and lawsuit After the videos were released through the fall of 2009, the U.S. Congress quickly voted to freeze federal funding to ACORN. The Census Bureau and the IRS terminated their contract relationships with ACORN. By December 2009, an external investigation of ACORN was published which cleared the organization of any illegality, while noting that its poor management practices contributed to unprofessional actions by some low-level employees. In March 2010, ACORN announced it would dissolve due to loss of funding from government and especially private sources. On March 1, 2010, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes found there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff in New York. The California Attorney General's Office granted O'Keefe and Giles limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for providing the full, unedited videotapes related to ACORN offices in California. On the basis of the edited videotape which O'Keefe released, Vera appeared to be a willing participant in helping with O'Keefe's plan to smuggle young women into the United States illegally. However, authorities confirmed that Vera immediately contacted them about O'Keefe and that he had also encouraged O'Keefe to share as much information as possible about his scheme and gather further evidence of O'Keefe's purported illegal activities, which could then be used by prosecutors to bring charges against O'Keefe for attempted human trafficking. Due to O'Keefe's release of the dubiously edited video, intentionally designed to "prove" that ACORN employees were ready and willing to engage in illicit activities, Vera lost his job and was falsely accused of being engaged in human trafficking. O'Keefe said that he "regrets any pain" caused by his actions, though O'Keefe's lawyer dismissed any claimed injury incurred by Vera and stated that the payment was a "nuisance settlement". O'Keefe moved for summary judgment in his favor, arguing that the plaintiff had no reasonable expectation that the conversation would be private. In August 2012, the federal judge hearing the case denied O'Keefe's motion for summary judgment. The judge ruled that O'Keefe had "misled plaintiff to believe that the conversation would remain confidential by posing as a client seeking services from ACORN and asking whether their conversation was confidential." On March 5, 2013, O'Keefe agreed to pay $100,000 to former California ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera for breaking state law prohibiting surreptitious recording, and acknowledged in the settlement that at the time he published his video he was unaware that Vera had notified the police about the incident. The settlement contained the following apology: "O'Keefe regrets any pain suffered by Mr. Vera or his family." On June 14, 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published its report finding no evidence that ACORN, or any of its related organizations, had mishandled any of the $40 million in federal money which they had received in recent years. Senator Mary Landrieu (2010) O'Keefe and colleagues were arrested in the Hale Boggs Federal Complex in New Orleans in January 2010 and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony, at the office of United States Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat. His three fellow activists, who were dressed as telephone repairmen when apprehended, included Robert Flanagan, the son of William Flanagan, acting U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Louisiana. The four men were charged with malicious intent to damage the phone system. O'Keefe stated that he had entered Landrieu's office to investigate complaints that she was ignoring phone calls from constituents during the debate over President Barack Obama's health care bill. The charges in the case were reduced from a felony to a single misdemeanor count of entering a federal building under false pretenses. O'Keefe and the others pleaded guilty on May 26. O'Keefe was sentenced to three years' probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine. The three other men received lesser sentences. Another consequence is that O'Keefe is barred from soliciting donations from Florida residents, because of state law applicable to people found guilty of fraud. In August 2013, O'Keefe revisited the incident by releasing a video entitled: "a confrontation with former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten on the campus of Tulane University". Letten is a former Republican U.S. Attorney who recused himself from the Landrieu incident because he knew the father of one of the men involved. The video shows Letten accusing O'Keefe of "terrorizing" Letten's wife at their home, of harassing him, and trespassing on the Tulane campus. He called O'Keefe a "coward" and a "spud", and referred to O'Keefe and his companions as "hobbits" and "scum". NPR video (2011) On March 8, 2011, shortly before the US Congress was to vote on funding for National Public Radio (NPR), O'Keefe released a heavily edited video of a discussion with Ronald Schiller, NPR's senior vice president for fundraising, and associate Betsy Liley. Raw content was secretly recorded by O'Keefe's partners Ken Larrey and Shaughn Adeleye. NPR responded by stating that Schiller's remarks were presented out of sequence and that he said that he would speak personally, and not for NPR. Schiller said some highly placed Republicans believed the Republican Party had been hijacked by a radical group (the Tea Party) that they characterized as "Islamophobic" and "seriously racist, racist people", and while Schiller did not disagree, according to NPR, O'Keefe's editing made it appear those were Schiller's opinions. Schiller then says that unlike establishment Republicans, the growing Tea Party movement in the party "is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian — I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move." Later in the edited video, Schiller seems to say he believes NPR "would be better off in the long run without federal funding", explaining that removal of federal funding would allow NPR more independence and remove the widely held misconception that NPR is significantly funded by the public. But on the raw tape, Schiller also said that withdrawing federal funding would cause local stations to go under and that NPR is doing "everything we can" to keep it. In a statement released before analysis of the longer raw video, NPR said, "Schiller's comments are in direct conflict with NPR's official position ... The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept." After reviewing the unedited video, Scott Baker, editor-in-chief of TheBlaze, said the NPR executives "seem to be fairly balanced people." Journalists Ben Smith, James Poniewozik, and Dave Weigel have expressed regret for giving O'Keefe's NPR videos wider circulation without scrutinizing them for themselves. Reception Comparison of the raw video with the released one revealed editing that was characterized as "selective" and "deceptive" by Michael Gerson, opinion writer for The Washington Post, who wrote, "O'Keefe did not merely leave a false impression; he manufactured an elaborate, alluring lie." Time magazine wrote that the video "transposed remarks from a different part of the meeting", was "manipulative" and "a partisan hit-job." The raw video shows Schiller told the two men "that donors cannot expect to influence news coverage." On the longer tape, he says, "There is such a big firewall between funding and reporting: Reporters will not be swayed in any way, shape or form." Broadcast journalist Al Tompkins, who now teaches at the Poynter Institute, noted that Ron Schiller was a fundraiser, not an official affecting the newsroom. He commented on the raw tape: "The message that he said most often—I counted six times: He told these two people that he had never met before that you cannot buy coverage", Tompkins said. "He says it over and over and over again." On March 17, Martha T. Moore of USA Today reported: "According to The Blaze analysis, Ron Schiller's most inflammatory remarks, that Tea Party members are 'seriously racist', were made as he was recounting the views of Republicans he has spoken with—although he does not appear to disagree. It also shows Schiller appearing to laugh about the potential spread of Islamic sharia law, when the longer version shows he laughed in reaction to something completely different." Two days later, O'Keefe released a video in which Betsy Liley, senior director of institutional giving at NPR, appeared to have checked with senior management and said MEAC was cleared to make donations anonymously and NPR could help shield donations from government audits, but added that, in order to proceed, additional background information would be required, including an IRS Form 990. Liley advised the caller that NPR executives would investigate them before accepting any large donation, examining tax records and checking out other organizations that have received donations from them. Liley raises the possibility of NPR's turning down substantial gifts and stresses the "firewall" between the revenue-generating part of NPR and its news operation. NPR put Liley on administrative leave. In emails released following the publication of the Liley video, NPR confirmed that the official had consulted appropriately with top management and notified the purported donors of problems with their desired method of donation. The video, which was released directly before a congressional vote on funding, caused immediate reaction from NPR critics in Congress. Ronald Schiller, who had already submitted his resignation in January so that he could join the Aspen Institute, moved up his resignation after the video release when NPR put him on administrative leave. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ronald Schiller), who had not been implicated in the Project Veritas video, quickly resigned. Vivian Schiller's resignation, mutually decided with the NPR board, was in part an attempt to show Congressional funders that NPR could hold itself accountable. U.S. presidential elections (2016) A month before the launch of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the Trump Foundation donated $10,000 to O'Keefe's Project Veritas. O'Keefe attended, as a guest of the Trump campaign, the final presidential debate, and was later available in the spin room following the Las Vegas event. On November 8, 2016 (Election Day), O'Keefe spent some time following vans that were allegedly "bussing people around to polls in Philadelphia". On January 9, 2017, Project Veritas operative Allison Maass was filmed attempting to bribe members of Americans Take Action into inciting a riot at Trump's inauguration. On January 16, 2017, Project Veritas uploaded a video showing DC Antifascist Coalition members of Disrupt J20 plotting to use "stink bombs" at the DeploraBall. After the video's release, Disrupt J20 denied the statements, saying that the members deliberately gave false information to Veritas. The video led to the arrest of one man allegedly involved in the plan, as well as two associates. All three individuals pleaded guilty. Americans United for Change videos On October 18, 2016, O'Keefe released a series of videos on Project Veritas' YouTube channel titled "Rigging the Election" that apparently showed former national field director Scott Foval of Americans United for Change discussing ensuring that they have people at the front of the rope lines at rallies in order to ask questions, a common practice known as "bird dogging". The accuracy of the videos has been questioned for possibly omitting context, and the unedited raw footage has not been made available. The GOP-appointed Attorney General of Wisconsin, Brad Schimel, investigated the claims made in the video twice, both times finding no evidence that Foval broke any voting laws. Scott Foval was fired by Americans United for Change after the first video was released. Foval later said he had been set up. Robert Creamer, a DNC consultant and husband of U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky, D-IL, said, "We regret the unprofessional and careless hypothetical conversations that were captured on hidden cameras of a regional contractor for our firm, and he is no longer working with us," he said. "While none of the schemes described in the conversations ever took place, these conversations do not at all reflect the values of Democracy Partners." Shortly afterwards, Creamer, who was also featured in the video, said he would end his consulting arrangement with the DNC to avoid becoming a "distraction". Following the publication of his videos, O'Keefe filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and the DNC, alleging "a criminal conspiracy" involving the Clinton campaign, the DNC and three left-leaning super PACs. On June 1, 2017, Creamer's firm, Democracy Partners, filed a $1 million lawsuit against Project Veritas, claiming Project Veritas had lied to gain access to the firm and violating anti-wiretapping laws. In response to a third video, in which O'Keefe stated that Clinton was behind an illegal public relations gimmick to punish Trump for not releasing his tax returns, the Clinton campaign denied any wrongdoing. Independent campaign finance experts posited the video doesn't support O'Keefe's claims. Clinton said she was aware of the activists dressed as Donald Duck, who were following Trump while asking about his tax returns, and said she was amused. On October 26, 2016, O'Keefe posted a fourth video on his Project Veritas Action YouTube channel. The video alleged that liberal groups supporting Hillary Clinton were illegally taking foreign money. The targeted group, Americans United for Change foundation, is a 501(c)4 organization and is allowed to legally accept foreign contributions. However, AUC returned the money shortly after the video was released. The group's chief stated, "We returned the money because the last thing we want to be associated with is a character like O'Keefe who has been convicted and successfully sued for his illegal tactics and fraudulent activities." In 2019, a federal judge dismissed a slander lawsuit involving the Foval videos, ruling that the videos taken of Scott Foval over several months showed that there was not a preconceived story line and that the videos were protected by the First Amendment. Other activities Abbie Boudreau (2010) In August 2010, O'Keefe planned a staged encounter with CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau, who was working on a documentary on the young conservative movement. He set up an appointment at his office in Maryland to discuss a video shoot. Izzy Santa, executive director of Project Veritas, warned Boudreau that O'Keefe was planning to "punk" her on the boat by trying to seduce her—which he would film on hidden cameras. Boudreau did not board the boat and soon left the area. CNN later published a 13-page plan written by O'Keefe mentor Ben Wetmore. It listed props for the boat scheme, including pornography, sexual aids, condoms, a blindfold and "fuzzy" handcuffs. When questioned by CNN, O'Keefe denied he was going to follow the Wetmore plan, as he found parts of it inappropriate. Boudreau commented "that does not appear to be true, according to a series of emails we obtained from Izzy Santa, who says the e-mails reveal James' true intentions." Following the Boudreau incident, Project Veritas paid Izzy Santa a five-figure settlement after she threatened to sue, which included a non-disclosure agreement. Funding decreased from conservative political organizations following this CNN incident. New Jersey Teachers' Union video (2010) Starting October 25, 2010, O'Keefe posted a series of videos on the Internet entitled Teachers Unions Gone Wild. At the time, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) was in negotiations with Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, over teacher pay benefits and tenure. O'Keefe obtained one video from recordings made by "citizen journalists", whom he recruited to attend the NJEA's leadership conference. They secretly recorded meetings and conversations with teacher participants. It featured teachers discussing the difficulty of firing a tenured teacher. A second video featured a staged phone conversation by O'Keefe with Lawrence E. Everett, assistant superintendent of the Passaic, New Jersey city schools, in which Everett refused to commit to firing a teacher based upon the purported claim by a parent that the teacher had used the "n-word" with his child. The third video (October 26, 2010) featured audio of a voice, identified as NJEA Associate Director Wayne Dibofsky, who alleged voter fraud during the 1997 Jersey City mayoral election. The voice of Robert Byrne, Jersey City municipal clerk, was recorded on the same video; he noted that the election was monitored by lawyers for both candidates. New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie stated at the time that nothing on the videos surprised him. NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer said the union and its attorneys were discussing their options regarding possible legal action, although no action was ever taken. Wollmer called the videos "a calculated attack on this organization and its members", and described O'Keefe as "flat-out sleazy". Medicaid videos (2011) In the summer of 2011, O'Keefe released videos of his colleagues' staged encounters purportedly showing Medicaid fraud in offices in six states, including Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia. Following his previous strategy, he sent the releases to conservative outlets over a period of weeks. In July 2011, two conservative groups released a secretly recorded video of an encounter in Maine's Department of Health and Human Services. In the video, an actor attempted to apply for benefits while hinting that he was a drug smuggler. Americans for Prosperity and O'Keefe said he had similar recorded videos from offices in Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina, and believed that there was a systemic problem. In Maine, Governor Paul LePage concluded upon further examination of the videos that there was no fraud or intent to commit fraud. A similar O'Keefe video posted on the Project Veritas web site purported to show workers at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services assisting actors posing as drug dealers in applying for benefits. His fourth Medicaid video, apparently filmed in Richmond, Virginia, was released in July 2011. The New York Times reported: "[As 'Sean Murphy'], dressed in the same regalia he wore on the New Jersey shoot, [O'Keefe] presented himself to a Medicaid worker in Charleston, South Carolina, as an Irish drug importer and Irish Republican Army member who wanted coverage for 25 wounded comrades who entered the U.S. illegally. The kindly worker spent time photocopying applications and dealing with this improbable applicant." She explained to him that only U.S. citizens are eligible for Medicaid and informed him she was not making any promises that the 25 purported IRA members would qualify. She said he had to abide by the law and told him that she didn't want to know details, because federal law protects patient privacy: "Like I said, someone would have to come here and subpoena our information in order for us to divulge any information, because like I said there's something called the Health Insurance Accountability and Affordability Act—or portability—and anyway it went into effect several years ago, and that's what we follow. It is federal law, and they do threaten high fines—which they don't pay me as much per year as they threaten to fine me—so it is definitely not in my own best interest to divulge anything to anyone because I cannot afford it, I do not want to go to jail." Reception The videos received less media attention than earlier O'Keefe efforts. Generally, the state officials and representatives acknowledged potential problems but also took a measured tone in response, to allow time to fully investigate and evaluate the incidents. After viewing the video, Governor LePage thanked the individual who took the video and noted: "The video in its entirety does not show a person willfully helping someone de-fraud the welfare system. It does show a need for further job knowledge and continuous and improved staff training." He also stated that "we would be six months further along in fixing the problem" if he had received the video when it was filmed. LePage directed his agency director to work on correcting the problem. Ohio media initially reported that "a Franklin County Jobs and Family Service worker was placed on administrative leave and at least one other person was out of work" as a result of the video's release. Ben Johnson of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services noted that benefits were never granted in the case, and that the made-up story would have been caught if the application process had proceeded. He said his office would use the video to strengthen staff training. Mike DeWine, Attorney General of Ohio, described the Ohio video as "outrageous" and intended to instruct his state's Medicaid fraud unit to look into the incident. The director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Michael Colbert, notified county leaders of a mandatory retraining, "to ensure they can identify people trying to defraud the government". Upon investigation by state officials, the Medicaid worker who coached O'Keefe's operative seeking Medicaid for his father and claimed to own a yacht as well as a helipad, on how to hide their (also claimed) ownership of an $800,000 automobile had been placed on paid administrative leave. A spokesman for Virginia governor Bob McDonnell said that he had asked state police to review the video and take whatever actions are appropriate. In Charleston, South Carolina, the director of that state's Department of Health and Human Services, Anthony Kreck, said the video filmed in his state "raises concerns about how well trained and supported our staff are to handle outrageous situations." He also expressed concern for the safety of the state employee with the figure ["Sean Murphy"] in the video "who could be interpreted as intimidating" and questioned why security wasn't called. New Hampshire primary video (2012) In January 2012, O'Keefe released a video of associates obtaining a number of ballots for the New Hampshire Primary by using the names of recently deceased voters. He stated that the video showed "the integrity of the elections process is severely comprised ." His team culled names from published obituaries, which were checked against public voter roll information. O'Keefe said his team broke no laws, as they did not pretend to be the deceased persons when they asked for the ballots, and they did not cast votes after receiving ballots. One of his associates' attempts was caught by a voting supervisor at the polling station who recognized that the name he gave was of a deceased individual; the associate in question left before police arrived. Reception Sarah Parnass of ABC News reported that the video "either exposes why voting laws are too lax or comes close to itself being voter fraud (or both)". One media account referred to it as a stunt. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch said, "I think it is outrageous that we have out-of-staters coming into New Hampshire, coming into our polling places and misrepresenting themselves to the election officials, and I hope that they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if in fact they're found guilty of some criminal act." The New Hampshire Attorney General and the US Attorney's Office announced investigations into the video. New Hampshire Associate Attorney General Richard Head said he would investigate the possible weaknesses in the voting system, but noted the state did not have a history of known fraud related to person[s] seeking ballot[s] in the name of a dead person or persons. Head announced he would investigate the possibility that the filmmakers committed crimes while producing the videos. Hamline University law professor David Schultz said, "If they [O'Keefe's group] were intentionally going in and trying to fraudulently obtain a ballot, they violated the law", referring to Title 42, which prohibits procuring ballots fraudulently. The New Hampshire Attorney General's office later dropped its investigation of O'Keefe for potential voter fraud in 2013. Patrick Moran (2012) On October 24, 2012, a video was released showing Patrick Moran, son of then-U.S. Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), and a field director with his father's campaign, discussing a plan to cast fraudulent ballots, which was proposed to him by someone who posed as a fervent supporter of the campaign. The person he was speaking with was a conservative activist with O'Keefe's Project Veritas, and was secretly recording the conversation. Patrick Moran resigned from the campaign, saying he did not want to be a distraction during the election, stating: [A]t no point have I, or will I ever endorse any sort of illegal or unethical behavior. At no point did I take this person seriously. He struck me as being unstable and joking, and for only that reason did I humor him. In hindsight, I should have immediately walked away, making it clear that there is no place in the electoral process for even the suggestion of illegal behavior, joking or not. The Arlington County, Virginia Police Department was made aware of the video and opened a criminal investigation into "every component" of the matter. On January 31, 2013, Arlington County announced that the investigation, by its police department in collaboration with the Offices of the Virginia Attorney General and the Arlington County Commonwealth's Attorney, had concluded and that no charges would be brought. The County stated: "Patrick Moran and the Jim Moran for Congress campaign provided full cooperation throughout the investigation. Despite repeated attempts to involve the party responsible for producing the video, they failed to provide any assistance." US–Mexico border-crossing (2014) In August 2014, O'Keefe dressed up as Osama bin Laden (who had died 3 years previously) and crossed the US–Mexico border in Texas in both directions to "show that our elected officials were lying to the American people" about border security. The incident was cited by U.S. Senator John McCain in Congressional hearings. Colorado mail-in ballots (2014) In October 2014 in Colorado, O'Keefe and collaborators from Project Veritas in disguise, approached numerous Democratic campaigns and political organizations in Colorado to mishandle or fraudulently cast mail-in ballots. A 2013 state law had mandated that all voters receive mail-in ballots. A number of targeted individuals resisted the bait, some of them having identified the imposters. Staffers from progressive organization New Era Colorado began photographing O'Keefe's group and later claimed to have contacted police. PV video shows a few individuals agreeing with the illegal activities and offering suggestions. No evidence of illegal activity was shown. Attempted sting of Open Society Foundations (2016) On March 16, 2016, O'Keefe attempted to call Open Society Foundations under the assumed name of "Victor Kesh", describing himself as attached to "a, uh, foundation" seeking to "get involved with you and aid what you do in fighting for, um, European values." O'Keefe forgot to hang up after recording the voicemail, and several more minutes of audio were recorded, revealing that he was attached to Discover the Networks and planning a series of attempts to create embarrassing videos or other recordings of targeted groups. CNN undercover videos (2017) On June 26, 2017, O'Keefe released a video on the YouTube channel of Project Veritas that showed John Bonifield, a producer of health and medical stories for CNN, saying CNN's coverage of the Russia investigation was "Because it's ratings" and that the coverage was "mostly bullshit". The video identified Bonifield as a supervising producer for CNN but not specifically for CNN Health. CNN said it was standing by "our medical producer John Bonifield. Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong". During a White House press briefing, deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of the video "whether it's accurate or not, I don't know, but I would encourage everybody... across the country to take a look at it". On June 28, 2017, O'Keefe released the second part of the series of undercover videos, by then dubbed "American Pravda". In the video, CNN anchor Van Jones said, "The Russia thing is just a big nothingburger." When asked about the video in an email, CNN responded "lol". During that same day, the videos were posted on Donald Trump's Instagram account. Jones said that O'Keefe had deceptively edited the video to take his remarks out of context and was attempting to "pull off a hoax." Jones added that he believed that there probably was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. On June 30, 2017, O'Keefe released the third part of the undercover videos. Part 3 of the series showed CNN associate producer Jimmy Carr saying that Trump is "fucking crazy" and that "on the inside, we all recognize he is a clown, that he is hilariously unqualified for this, he's really bad at this, and that he does not have America's best interests". Carr also said "This is a man who's not actually a Republican, he just adopted that because that was the party he thought he could win in. He doesn't believe anything that these people believe." Additionally, he said American voters are "stupid as shit." He also made comments about Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, calling her an "awful woman" and stating that she "looks like she got hit with a shovel". In a fourth video published by Project Veritas on July 5, Carr criticized CNN co-anchor Chris Cuomo. Failed attempt to sting The Washington Post (2017) Starting in July 2017, Project Veritas operative Jaime Phillips attempted to infiltrate The Washington Post and other media outlets by joining networking groups related to journalism and left-leaning politics. She and a male companion attended events related to the Post, and their conversations with journalists were sometimes covertly recorded. In November 2017, The Washington Post reported that several women accused Republican Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of pursuing them while they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. Later that same month, Jaime Phillips approached The Washington Post and falsely claimed that Moore had impregnated her as a teenager and that she had an abortion. In conducting its usual fact-checking, the Post discovered multiple red flags in her story. They found a GoFundMe page in her name that said, "I've accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM." After a Post reporter confronted her with the inconsistencies during a video-recorded interview, Phillips denied that she was working with an organization that targets journalists, and said that she no longer wanted to do the story. She was seen outside Project Veritas' office in Mamaroneck, New York, with her car remaining at the office's parking lot for more than an hour. O'Keefe declined to comment about the woman's apparent connection to Project Veritas. Instead of running a story about Phillips' supposed pregnancy, the Post published an article about the attempted sting operation. The Post decided to disclose Phillips' original discussions made off the record, saying they were not obligated to keep them confidential because she had deceived them. Hours after the Post published this story, O'Keefe released a video which he claimed exposed the newspaper's liberal bias. The video includes undercover footage of conversations with two Post employees, national security reporter Dan Lamothe and product director Joey Marburger. These employees explained to undercover Project Veritas operatives the difference between the news reporting of The Washington Post (which calls out the Trump administration's missteps while giving "him credit where there's credit" due) and the Post's opinion editorials; O'Keefe said that this exposed the Washington Post's "hidden agenda." O'Keefe was criticized for his failed sting, and The Washington Post was praised. Rod Dreher of The American Conservative praised the Post and called on conservative donors to stop giving money to O'Keefe's outfit. Dan McLaughlin of the conservative National Review said that O'Keefe's sting was an "own goal" and that O'Keefe was doing a disservice to the conservative movement; Jim Geraghty of the National Review made a similar assessment. Byron York of The Washington Examiner said that O'Keefe's "idiocy" was "beyond boneheaded," and that "O'Keefe really ought to hang it up." Ben Shapiro, the conservative editor in chief of The Daily Wire, said that the botched sting was "horrible, both morally and effectively." Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic wrote, "If James O'Keefe respected the right-wing populists who make up the audience of Project Veritas ... he would tell them the truth about all of the organizations that he targets. Instead, Project Veritas operates in bad faith, an attribute it demonstrated again this week in the aftermath of its bungled attempt to trick The Washington Post." Noah Rothman of the conservative magazine Commentary chastised O'Keefe for being exploitative of his audience: "No longer are institutions like Veritas dedicated to combating ignorance in their audience. They're actively courting it." Jonathan Chait of New York magazine said that O'Keefe, having set out prove that the Post was fake news, ended up disproving it. O'Keefe's plot collapsed because it was premised on a ludicrously false worldview, wrote Chait. "The Washington Post does not, in fact, publish unverified accusations just because they're against Republicans." O'Keefe's attempts to prove rampant voter fraud have failed "because voter fraud is not rampant." New Jersey Education Association videos (2018) On May 2, 2018, Project Veritas posted on YouTube a video allegedly showing a union administrator from the New Jersey Education Association, a teachers union, discussing a teacher alleged to have struck a student. The following day, O'Keefe released a second video allegedly showing another union administrator speaking to students about a different alleged incident of a teacher pushing and injuring a student. In the video, the administrator allegedly boasted of her effort to retain a pension for a teacher who allegedly had sex with a student. Both teachers were suspended pending an investigation, and resigned from their union roles after the release of the videos. During a New Jersey Senate meeting on May 31, the New Jersey Education Association announced that a law firm would investigate the incidents. Twitter suspension (2021) On April 15, 2021, O'Keefe was suspended from Twitter for "operating fake accounts". On April 19, he filed a lawsuit against Twitter in state court in Westchester County, New York, claiming that Twitter’s reason for suspending him is "false and defamatory". FBI search warrants and allegedly stolen Biden diary (2021) On November 6, 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed an early morning court-ordered search of O'Keefe's apartment in Mamaroneck, New York two days after searching the homes of two of O'Keefe's associates in connection with the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Biden's daughter, Ashley Biden, in 2020. Excerpts allegedly from the diary were posted two weeks before the 2020 US presidential election. In a statement, the Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern that lacking "a clear link between members of Project Veritas and allegations of criminal activities" the FBI raids and seizure of evidence were a "dangerous precedent that could allow law enforcement to search and confiscate reporters’ unpublished source material in vague attempts to identify whistleblowers." Reception Project Veritas uses methods not employed by reputable journalists, including misrepresenting its operatives' identities. O'Keefe refers to himself as a "guerrilla journalist". Such methods have stirred debate about what it means to be a journalist and what constitutes good journalistic practice, especially with respect to undercover work. Tim Kenneally and Daniel Frankel reporting for TheWrap in 2011 noted that some of O'Keefe's supporters referred to him as the right wing's answer to a long line of left-leaning "hybrid troublemakers who get put on the cover of Rolling Stone, like Paul Krassner and Abbie Hoffman". In that same 2011 report, Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, was quoted as saying: In reporting on allegations that O'Keefe had attempted in 2010 to tamper with United States Senator Mary Landrieu's office phone system, Jim Rutenberg and Campbell Robertson of the New York Times posited that O'Keefe practiced a kind of "gonzo journalism" and his tactic is to "caricature the political and social values of his enemies by carrying them to outlandish extremes." In a March 2011 interview with O'Keefe, NPR journalist Bob Garfield asked, referring to the ACORN videos, "If your journalistic technique is the lie, why should we believe anything you have to say?" O'Keefe responded that his techniques should be characterized as a form of guerrilla theater rather than "lying" – "you're posing as something you're not, in order to capture candid conversations from your subject. But I wouldn't characterize it as, as lying." In July 2011, Dean Mills, the dean of the Missouri School of Journalism, compared O'Keefe to Michael Moore and said, "Some ethicists say it is never right for a journalist to deceive for any reason, but there are wrongs in the world that will never be exposed without some kind of subterfuge." The Atlantic journalist Conor Friedersdorf responded that O'Keefe's "mortal sin" wasn't that he misled his subjects, but that he misled his audience by presenting his videos to the public in "less than honest ways that go far beyond normal 'selectivity.'" On February 11, 2021, the Twitter account for Project Veritas was “permanently suspended for repeated violations of Twitter’s private information policy.” At the same time, O'Keefe's account was “temporarily locked” for violating the policy pending the deletion of a tweet. On April 15, Twitter permanently suspended O'Keefe's personal account for violating the Twitter's policy against "platform manipulation and spam", which disallows the use of fake accounts to "artificially amplify or disrupt conversations". O'Keefe denied that he used fake Twitter accounts and said that he would sue Twitter in response. Works References External links Interview of O'Keefe by NPR's On the Media (audio with transcript) Category:1984 births Category:Living people Category:American activist journalists Category:American alternative journalists Category:American conspiracy theorists Category:American filmmakers Category:American people of Irish descent Category:People from Westwood, New Jersey Category:Rutgers University alumni Category:Westwood Regional High School alumni Category:American anti-abortion activists

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James O'Keefe

James Edward O'Keefe III (born June 28, 1984) is an American conservative political activist. He produces secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters with figures and workers in academic, governmental and social service organizations, purporting to show abusive or allegedly illegal behavior by employees and/or representatives of those organizations. He has been criticized for selectively editing videos to misrepresent the context of conversations and the subjects' responses, creating the false impression that people said or did things they did not. He gained national attention for his video recordings of workers at Association of Community Organizations for Reform

ACORN videos (2009)

In September 2009, O'Keefe and his associate, Hannah Giles, published edited hidden camera recordings in which Giles posed as a prostitute and O'Keefe as her boyfriend, a law student, in an attempt to elicit damaging responses from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an advocacy organization for 40 years for persons of low and moderate income. A Washington Post correspondent reported that O'Keefe "said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives", and "Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization." ACORN mostly registered people from the Latino and African American communities. The videos were recorded during the summer of 2009 and appeared to show low-level ACORN employees in six cities providing advice to Giles and O'Keefe on how to avoid detection by authorities of tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. He framed the undercover recordings with a preface of him dressed in a "pimp" outfit, which he also wore in TV media interviews. This gave viewers, including the media, the impression that he had dressed that way when speaking to ACORN workers. However, he actually entered the ACORN offices in conservative street clothes (the sleeve of his dress shirt is visible on camera). Furthermore, the ACORN employees involved reported his activities to the police after he left. O'Keefe selectively edited and manipulated his recordings of ACORN employees, as well as distorted the chronologies. Several journalists and media outlets have expressed regret for not properly scrutinizing and vetting his work. On April 10, 2012, the political gossip site Wonkette reported that Andrew Breitbart had signed a $120,000 contract for "life rights" by O'Keefe and Giles based on the ACORN videos. The contract was paid in monthly increments of $5,000. Giles ultimately received $32,000 before parting ways with Breitbart over what she described in legal depositions as "a conflict of visions". O'Keefe ultimately received $65,000. CANNOTANSWER

James Edward O'Keefe III (born June 28, 1984) is an American political activist and provocateur who founded Project Veritas, a far-right activist group that uses deceptive editing and information gathering techniques to attack mainstream media organizations and progressive groups. Both O'Keefe and Project Veritas have produced secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters in academic, governmental, and social service organizations, purporting to show abusive or illegal behavior by representatives of those organizations; the recordings are often selectively edited to misrepresent the context of the conversations and the subjects' responses. O'Keefe served as chairman until he separated from the organization in February 2023 amid controversy over his handling of finances and his management style. O’Keefe first gained national attention for his selectively edited video recordings of workers at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) offices in 2009, his arrest and misdemeanor guilty plea in 2010 for entering the federal office of then-U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) under false pretenses, and the release of misleading videos of conversations with two high-ranking, now former, NPR executives in 2011. When his videos – heavily edited to portray ACORN workers seemingly aiding a couple in criminal planning – were publicized, the U.S. Congress voted to freeze funds for the non-profit. The national controversy resulted in the non-profit also losing most of its private funding before investigations of the videos concluded no illegal activity occurred. In March 2010, ACORN was close to bankruptcy and had to close or rename most of its offices. Shortly thereafter, the California State Attorney General's Office and the US Government Accountability Office released their related investigative reports. The Attorney General's Office found that O'Keefe had misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers in California and that the workers had not broken any laws. A preliminary probe by the GAO found that ACORN had managed its federal funds appropriately. One of the fired ACORN workers sued O'Keefe for invasion of privacy; O'Keefe issued an apology and agreed to pay $100,000 in a settlement. O'Keefe has gained support from right-wing and conservative media and interest groups, as well as from the far right. In 2009, Andrew Breitbart commissioned him for the option to publish new videos exclusively on BigGovernment. The Project Veritas board fired O'Keefe in February 2023 for what it said was financial malfeasance with donor money. On March 15, 2023, O'Keefe launched a new organization called O'Keefe Media Group. Early life and education James Edward O'Keefe III was born in Bergen County, New Jersey, the elder of two children of James, a materials engineer, and Deborah O'Keefe, a physical therapist. He has a younger sister. O'Keefe grew up in Westwood, New Jersey. His home was politically "conservative but not rigidly so", according to his father. He graduated from Westwood High School, where he showed an early interest in the arts, theater and journalism. He attained Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America. O'Keefe started at Rutgers University in 2002 and majored in philosophy. Beginning in his sophomore year, he wrote a bi-weekly opinion column for The Daily Targum, the university's student paper. He left the Targum and founded the Rutgers Centurion, a conservative student paper supported by a $500 "Balance in the Media" grant from The Leadership Institute. For his first video, he and other Centurion writers met with Rutgers dining staff to demand the banning of the cereal Lucky Charms from dining halls because of its offense to Irish Americans. O'Keefe said the leprechaun mascot presented a stereotype. He intended to have officials lose either way: to appear insensitive to an ethnic group, or to look silly by agreeing to ban Lucky Charms. They expected to be thrown out of school, but the Rutgers official was courteous, took notes, and said their concerns would be considered. Rutgers staff say the cereal was never taken off the menu. Career After graduating from Rutgers, O'Keefe worked for a year at the Leadership Institute (LI) in Arlington, Virginia, under media specialist Ben Wetmore, whom O'Keefe calls his mentor. The institute sent him to colleges to train students to start conservative independent newspapers, but, after a year LI officials asked him to leave. According to LI president and founder Morton Blackwell, O'Keefe was "very effective and very enthusiastic" but after a year he was asked to leave because officials felt his activist work threatened the group's nonprofit status by trying to influence legislation. O'Keefe has produced and distributed secretly recorded and misleadingly edited videos and audio files made during staged encounters with targeted entities or individuals. His work takes the form of undercover stings targeted at liberal groups and politicians. He sought to "embarrass" and "damage" his targets, such as Landrieu and ACORN. He has sought to maximize publicity by releasing secretly recorded videos over several days or months, often in relation to funding authorizations or significant political actions related to the subject organization. Many videos received widespread media coverage sparking significant reactions, most notably videos of ACORN that resulted in the Congress quickly freezing funds, two executive agencies canceling contracts, and several ACORN workers being fired, and videos of National Public Radio (NPR) executives that led to the resignation of CEO Vivian Schiller, shortly before Congressional funding hearings involving NPR. In January 2010, O'Keefe began a column on Breitbarts website, BigGovernment. Andrew Breitbart stated in an interview that he paid O'Keefe a salary for his "life rights" to gain release of O'Keefe's videos first on his website. In 2010, O'Keefe formed a new organization, Project Veritas, whose stated mission is "to investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society." Much of the funding for Project Veritas comes from anonymous donations through Donors Trust, a conservative, American nonprofit donor-advised fund, which according to its promotional materials, says that it will "keep your charitable giving private, especially gifts funding sensitive or controversial issues." Prominent donors include the Trump Foundation, which, in May 2015, donated $10,000. O'Keefe is a conservative activist with mainstream conservative pro-market and anti-government views, although he has described himself as a "progressive radical", because he wants to change things, "not conserve them". He considers himself a muckraker. O'Keefe has expressed admiration for the philosophy of G. K. Chesterton and for a free press. Major activities Planned Parenthood recordings (2008) In 2006, O'Keefe met Lila Rose, the founder of an anti-abortion group on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus. They secretly recorded encounters in Planned Parenthood clinics in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, in which Rose posed as a 15-year-old girl impregnated by a 23-year-old male. Rose and O'Keefe made two videos incorporating heavily edited versions of the recordings and released them on YouTube. the video omitted the portions of the full conversation in which a Planned Parenthood employee asked Rose to consult her mother about the pregnancy and another employee told Rose, "We have to follow the laws". Rose took down the videos after Planned Parenthood sent her a cease and desist letter in May 2007 asserting that the videos violated California's voice recording laws, which required consent from all recorded parties. In 2007, O'Keefe phoned several Planned Parenthood clinics and secretly recorded the conversations. He posed as a donor, asking if his donations would be applied to needs of minority women, accompanied by race-related remarks such as "there's way too many black people in Ohio". The recordings portrayed Planned Parenthood clinic workers in six states agreeing to accept his donation under his conditions. After the release of the recordings, African-American leaders called for withdrawal of public financing of the organization. The Idaho clinic responded with an apology for "the manner in which this offensive call was handled". Planned Parenthood issued an official statement emphasizing that "97 percent of its services are focused on providing contraceptives, breast and cervical cancer screenings and sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment — not abortions". ACORN videos (2009) In September 2009, O'Keefe and his associate, Hannah Giles, published edited hidden camera recordings in which Giles posed as a prostitute and O'Keefe as her boyfriend, a law student, in an attempt to elicit damaging responses from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an advocacy organization for people of low and moderate income. Washington Post correspondents Darryl Fears and Carol D. Leonnig reported that O'Keefe "said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives" and that "[p]oliticians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization." According to The Washington Post, ACORN registered people mostly from the Latino and African American groups. The videos were recorded during the summer of 2009 and appeared to show low-level ACORN employees in six cities providing advice to Giles and O'Keefe on how to avoid detection by authorities of tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. He framed the undercover recordings with a preface of him dressed in a "pimp" outfit, which he also wore in TV media interviews. This gave viewers, including the media, the impression that he had dressed that way when speaking to ACORN workers. However, he actually entered the ACORN offices in conservative street clothes (the sleeve of his dress shirt is visible on camera). ACORN employees at two of the six offices visited by O'Keefe and Giles reported his activities to the police after he left. O'Keefe selectively edited and manipulated his recordings of ACORN employees, and distorted the chronology of events. Several journalists and media outlets have expressed regret for not properly scrutinizing and vetting his work. Reception and lawsuit After the videos were released through the fall of 2009, the U.S. Congress quickly voted to freeze federal funding to ACORN. The Census Bureau and the IRS terminated their contract relationships with ACORN. By December 2009, an external investigation of ACORN was published which cleared the organization of any illegality, while noting that its poor management practices contributed to unprofessional actions by some low-level employees. In March 2010, ACORN announced it would dissolve due to loss of funding from government and especially private sources. On March 1, 2010, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes found there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff in New York. The California Attorney General's Office granted O'Keefe and Giles limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for providing the full, unedited videotapes related to ACORN offices in California. On the basis of the edited videotape which O'Keefe released, Vera appeared to be a willing participant in helping with O'Keefe's plan to smuggle young women into the United States illegally. However, authorities confirmed that Vera immediately contacted them about O'Keefe and that he had also encouraged O'Keefe to share as much information as possible about his scheme and gather further evidence of O'Keefe's purported illegal activities, which could then be used by prosecutors to bring charges against O'Keefe for attempted human trafficking. Due to O'Keefe's release of the dubiously edited video, intentionally designed to "prove" that ACORN employees were ready and willing to engage in illicit activities, Vera lost his job and was falsely accused of being engaged in human trafficking. O'Keefe said that he "regrets any pain" caused by his actions, though O'Keefe's lawyer dismissed any claimed injury incurred by Vera and stated that the payment was a "nuisance settlement". O'Keefe moved for summary judgment in his favor, arguing that the plaintiff had no reasonable expectation that the conversation would be private. In August 2012, the federal judge hearing the case denied O'Keefe's motion for summary judgment. The judge ruled that O'Keefe had "misled plaintiff to believe that the conversation would remain confidential by posing as a client seeking services from ACORN and asking whether their conversation was confidential." On March 5, 2013, O'Keefe agreed to pay $100,000 to former California ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera for breaking state law prohibiting surreptitious recording, and acknowledged in the settlement that at the time he published his video he was unaware that Vera had notified the police about the incident. The settlement contained the following apology: "O'Keefe regrets any pain suffered by Mr. Vera or his family." On June 14, 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published its report finding no evidence that ACORN, or any of its related organizations, had mishandled any of the $40 million in federal money which they had received in recent years. Senator Mary Landrieu (2010) O'Keefe and colleagues were arrested in the Hale Boggs Federal Complex in New Orleans in January 2010 and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony, at the office of United States Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat. His three fellow activists, who were dressed as telephone repairmen when apprehended, included Robert Flanagan, the son of William Flanagan, acting U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Louisiana. The four men were charged with malicious intent to damage the phone system. O'Keefe stated that he had entered Landrieu's office to investigate complaints that she was ignoring phone calls from constituents during the debate over President Barack Obama's health care bill. The charges in the case were reduced from a felony to a single misdemeanor count of entering a federal building under false pretenses. O'Keefe and the others pleaded guilty on May 26. O'Keefe was sentenced to three years' probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine. The three other men received lesser sentences. Another consequence is that O'Keefe is barred from soliciting donations from Florida residents, because of state law applicable to people found guilty of fraud. In August 2013, O'Keefe revisited the incident by releasing a video entitled: "a confrontation with former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten on the campus of Tulane University". Letten is a former Republican U.S. Attorney who recused himself from the Landrieu incident because he knew the father of one of the men involved. The video shows Letten accusing O'Keefe of "terrorizing" Letten's wife at their home, of harassing him, and trespassing on the Tulane campus. He called O'Keefe a "coward" and a "spud", and referred to O'Keefe and his companions as "hobbits" and "scum". NPR video (2011) On March 8, 2011, shortly before the US Congress was to vote on funding for National Public Radio (NPR), O'Keefe released a heavily edited video of a discussion with Ronald Schiller, NPR's senior vice president for fundraising, and associate Betsy Liley. Raw content was secretly recorded by O'Keefe's partners Ken Larrey and Shaughn Adeleye. NPR responded by stating that Schiller's remarks were presented out of sequence and that he said that he would speak personally, and not for NPR. Schiller said some highly placed Republicans believed the Republican Party had been hijacked by a radical group (the Tea Party) that they characterized as "Islamophobic" and "seriously racist, racist people", and while Schiller did not disagree, according to NPR, O'Keefe's editing made it appear those were Schiller's opinions. Schiller then says that unlike establishment Republicans, the growing Tea Party movement in the party "is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian — I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move." Later in the edited video, Schiller seems to say he believes NPR "would be better off in the long run without federal funding", explaining that removal of federal funding would allow NPR more independence and remove the widely held misconception that NPR is significantly funded by the public. But on the raw tape, Schiller also said that withdrawing federal funding would cause local stations to go under and that NPR is doing "everything we can" to keep it. In a statement released before analysis of the longer raw video, NPR said, "Schiller's comments are in direct conflict with NPR's official position ... The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept." After reviewing the unedited video, Scott Baker, editor-in-chief of TheBlaze, said the NPR executives "seem to be fairly balanced people." Journalists Ben Smith, James Poniewozik, and Dave Weigel have expressed regret for giving O'Keefe's NPR videos wider circulation without scrutinizing them for themselves. Reception Comparison of the raw video with the released one revealed editing that was characterized as "selective" and "deceptive" by Michael Gerson, opinion writer for The Washington Post, who wrote, "O'Keefe did not merely leave a false impression; he manufactured an elaborate, alluring lie." Time magazine wrote that the video "transposed remarks from a different part of the meeting", was "manipulative" and "a partisan hit-job." The raw video shows Schiller told the two men "that donors cannot expect to influence news coverage." On the longer tape, he says, "There is such a big firewall between funding and reporting: Reporters will not be swayed in any way, shape or form." Broadcast journalist Al Tompkins, who now teaches at the Poynter Institute, noted that Ron Schiller was a fundraiser, not an official affecting the newsroom. He commented on the raw tape: "The message that he said most often—I counted six times: He told these two people that he had never met before that you cannot buy coverage", Tompkins said. "He says it over and over and over again." On March 17, Martha T. Moore of USA Today reported: "According to The Blaze analysis, Ron Schiller's most inflammatory remarks, that Tea Party members are 'seriously racist', were made as he was recounting the views of Republicans he has spoken with—although he does not appear to disagree. It also shows Schiller appearing to laugh about the potential spread of Islamic sharia law, when the longer version shows he laughed in reaction to something completely different." Two days later, O'Keefe released a video in which Betsy Liley, senior director of institutional giving at NPR, appeared to have checked with senior management and said MEAC was cleared to make donations anonymously and NPR could help shield donations from government audits, but added that, in order to proceed, additional background information would be required, including an IRS Form 990. Liley advised the caller that NPR executives would investigate them before accepting any large donation, examining tax records and checking out other organizations that have received donations from them. Liley raises the possibility of NPR's turning down substantial gifts and stresses the "firewall" between the revenue-generating part of NPR and its news operation. NPR put Liley on administrative leave. In emails released following the publication of the Liley video, NPR confirmed that the official had consulted appropriately with top management and notified the purported donors of problems with their desired method of donation. The video, which was released directly before a congressional vote on funding, caused immediate reaction from NPR critics in Congress. Ronald Schiller, who had already submitted his resignation in January so that he could join the Aspen Institute, moved up his resignation after the video release when NPR put him on administrative leave. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ronald Schiller), who had not been implicated in the Project Veritas video, quickly resigned. Vivian Schiller's resignation, mutually decided with the NPR board, was in part an attempt to show Congressional funders that NPR could hold itself accountable. U.S. presidential elections (2016) A month before the launch of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the Trump Foundation donated $10,000 to O'Keefe's Project Veritas. O'Keefe attended, as a guest of the Trump campaign, the final presidential debate, and was later available in the spin room following the Las Vegas event. On November 8, 2016 (Election Day), O'Keefe spent some time following vans that were allegedly "bussing people around to polls in Philadelphia". On January 9, 2017, Project Veritas operative Allison Maass was filmed attempting to bribe members of Americans Take Action into inciting a riot at Trump's inauguration. On January 16, 2017, Project Veritas uploaded a video showing DC Antifascist Coalition members of Disrupt J20 plotting to use "stink bombs" at the DeploraBall. After the video's release, Disrupt J20 denied the statements, saying that the members deliberately gave false information to Veritas. The video led to the arrest of one man allegedly involved in the plan, as well as two associates. All three individuals pleaded guilty. Americans United for Change videos On October 18, 2016, O'Keefe released a series of videos on Project Veritas' YouTube channel titled "Rigging the Election" that apparently showed former national field director Scott Foval of Americans United for Change discussing ensuring that they have people at the front of the rope lines at rallies in order to ask questions, a common practice known as "bird dogging". The accuracy of the videos has been questioned for possibly omitting context, and the unedited raw footage has not been made available. The GOP-appointed Attorney General of Wisconsin, Brad Schimel, investigated the claims made in the video twice, both times finding no evidence that Foval broke any voting laws. Scott Foval was fired by Americans United for Change after the first video was released. Foval later said he had been set up. Robert Creamer, a DNC consultant and husband of U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky, D-IL, said, "We regret the unprofessional and careless hypothetical conversations that were captured on hidden cameras of a regional contractor for our firm, and he is no longer working with us," he said. "While none of the schemes described in the conversations ever took place, these conversations do not at all reflect the values of Democracy Partners." Shortly afterwards, Creamer, who was also featured in the video, said he would end his consulting arrangement with the DNC to avoid becoming a "distraction". Following the publication of his videos, O'Keefe filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and the DNC, alleging "a criminal conspiracy" involving the Clinton campaign, the DNC and three left-leaning super PACs. On June 1, 2017, Creamer's firm, Democracy Partners, filed a $1 million lawsuit against Project Veritas, claiming Project Veritas had lied to gain access to the firm and violating anti-wiretapping laws. In response to a third video, in which O'Keefe stated that Clinton was behind an illegal public relations gimmick to punish Trump for not releasing his tax returns, the Clinton campaign denied any wrongdoing. Independent campaign finance experts posited the video doesn't support O'Keefe's claims. Clinton said she was aware of the activists dressed as Donald Duck, who were following Trump while asking about his tax returns, and said she was amused. On October 26, 2016, O'Keefe posted a fourth video on his Project Veritas Action YouTube channel. The video alleged that liberal groups supporting Hillary Clinton were illegally taking foreign money. The targeted group, Americans United for Change foundation, is a 501(c)4 organization and is allowed to legally accept foreign contributions. However, AUC returned the money shortly after the video was released. The group's chief stated, "We returned the money because the last thing we want to be associated with is a character like O'Keefe who has been convicted and successfully sued for his illegal tactics and fraudulent activities." In 2019, a federal judge dismissed a slander lawsuit involving the Foval videos, ruling that the videos taken of Scott Foval over several months showed that there was not a preconceived story line and that the videos were protected by the First Amendment. Other activities Abbie Boudreau (2010) In August 2010, O'Keefe planned a staged encounter with CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau, who was working on a documentary on the young conservative movement. He set up an appointment at his office in Maryland to discuss a video shoot. Izzy Santa, executive director of Project Veritas, warned Boudreau that O'Keefe was planning to "punk" her on the boat by trying to seduce her—which he would film on hidden cameras. Boudreau did not board the boat and soon left the area. CNN later published a 13-page plan written by O'Keefe mentor Ben Wetmore. It listed props for the boat scheme, including pornography, sexual aids, condoms, a blindfold and "fuzzy" handcuffs. When questioned by CNN, O'Keefe denied he was going to follow the Wetmore plan, as he found parts of it inappropriate. Boudreau commented "that does not appear to be true, according to a series of emails we obtained from Izzy Santa, who says the e-mails reveal James' true intentions." Following the Boudreau incident, Project Veritas paid Izzy Santa a five-figure settlement after she threatened to sue, which included a non-disclosure agreement. Funding decreased from conservative political organizations following this CNN incident. New Jersey Teachers' Union video (2010) Starting October 25, 2010, O'Keefe posted a series of videos on the Internet entitled Teachers Unions Gone Wild. At the time, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) was in negotiations with Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, over teacher pay benefits and tenure. O'Keefe obtained one video from recordings made by "citizen journalists", whom he recruited to attend the NJEA's leadership conference. They secretly recorded meetings and conversations with teacher participants. It featured teachers discussing the difficulty of firing a tenured teacher. A second video featured a staged phone conversation by O'Keefe with Lawrence E. Everett, assistant superintendent of the Passaic, New Jersey city schools, in which Everett refused to commit to firing a teacher based upon the purported claim by a parent that the teacher had used the "n-word" with his child. The third video (October 26, 2010) featured audio of a voice, identified as NJEA Associate Director Wayne Dibofsky, who alleged voter fraud during the 1997 Jersey City mayoral election. The voice of Robert Byrne, Jersey City municipal clerk, was recorded on the same video; he noted that the election was monitored by lawyers for both candidates. New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie stated at the time that nothing on the videos surprised him. NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer said the union and its attorneys were discussing their options regarding possible legal action, although no action was ever taken. Wollmer called the videos "a calculated attack on this organization and its members", and described O'Keefe as "flat-out sleazy". Medicaid videos (2011) In the summer of 2011, O'Keefe released videos of his colleagues' staged encounters purportedly showing Medicaid fraud in offices in six states, including Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia. Following his previous strategy, he sent the releases to conservative outlets over a period of weeks. In July 2011, two conservative groups released a secretly recorded video of an encounter in Maine's Department of Health and Human Services. In the video, an actor attempted to apply for benefits while hinting that he was a drug smuggler. Americans for Prosperity and O'Keefe said he had similar recorded videos from offices in Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina, and believed that there was a systemic problem. In Maine, Governor Paul LePage concluded upon further examination of the videos that there was no fraud or intent to commit fraud. A similar O'Keefe video posted on the Project Veritas web site purported to show workers at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services assisting actors posing as drug dealers in applying for benefits. His fourth Medicaid video, apparently filmed in Richmond, Virginia, was released in July 2011. The New York Times reported: "[As 'Sean Murphy'], dressed in the same regalia he wore on the New Jersey shoot, [O'Keefe] presented himself to a Medicaid worker in Charleston, South Carolina, as an Irish drug importer and Irish Republican Army member who wanted coverage for 25 wounded comrades who entered the U.S. illegally. The kindly worker spent time photocopying applications and dealing with this improbable applicant." She explained to him that only U.S. citizens are eligible for Medicaid and informed him she was not making any promises that the 25 purported IRA members would qualify. She said he had to abide by the law and told him that she didn't want to know details, because federal law protects patient privacy: "Like I said, someone would have to come here and subpoena our information in order for us to divulge any information, because like I said there's something called the Health Insurance Accountability and Affordability Act—or portability—and anyway it went into effect several years ago, and that's what we follow. It is federal law, and they do threaten high fines—which they don't pay me as much per year as they threaten to fine me—so it is definitely not in my own best interest to divulge anything to anyone because I cannot afford it, I do not want to go to jail." Reception The videos received less media attention than earlier O'Keefe efforts. Generally, the state officials and representatives acknowledged potential problems but also took a measured tone in response, to allow time to fully investigate and evaluate the incidents. After viewing the video, Governor LePage thanked the individual who took the video and noted: "The video in its entirety does not show a person willfully helping someone de-fraud the welfare system. It does show a need for further job knowledge and continuous and improved staff training." He also stated that "we would be six months further along in fixing the problem" if he had received the video when it was filmed. LePage directed his agency director to work on correcting the problem. Ohio media initially reported that "a Franklin County Jobs and Family Service worker was placed on administrative leave and at least one other person was out of work" as a result of the video's release. Ben Johnson of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services noted that benefits were never granted in the case, and that the made-up story would have been caught if the application process had proceeded. He said his office would use the video to strengthen staff training. Mike DeWine, Attorney General of Ohio, described the Ohio video as "outrageous" and intended to instruct his state's Medicaid fraud unit to look into the incident. The director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Michael Colbert, notified county leaders of a mandatory retraining, "to ensure they can identify people trying to defraud the government". Upon investigation by state officials, the Medicaid worker who coached O'Keefe's operative seeking Medicaid for his father and claimed to own a yacht as well as a helipad, on how to hide their (also claimed) ownership of an $800,000 automobile had been placed on paid administrative leave. A spokesman for Virginia governor Bob McDonnell said that he had asked state police to review the video and take whatever actions are appropriate. In Charleston, South Carolina, the director of that state's Department of Health and Human Services, Anthony Kreck, said the video filmed in his state "raises concerns about how well trained and supported our staff are to handle outrageous situations." He also expressed concern for the safety of the state employee with the figure ["Sean Murphy"] in the video "who could be interpreted as intimidating" and questioned why security wasn't called. New Hampshire primary video (2012) In January 2012, O'Keefe released a video of associates obtaining a number of ballots for the New Hampshire Primary by using the names of recently deceased voters. He stated that the video showed "the integrity of the elections process is severely comprised ." His team culled names from published obituaries, which were checked against public voter roll information. O'Keefe said his team broke no laws, as they did not pretend to be the deceased persons when they asked for the ballots, and they did not cast votes after receiving ballots. One of his associates' attempts was caught by a voting supervisor at the polling station who recognized that the name he gave was of a deceased individual; the associate in question left before police arrived. Reception Sarah Parnass of ABC News reported that the video "either exposes why voting laws are too lax or comes close to itself being voter fraud (or both)". One media account referred to it as a stunt. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch said, "I think it is outrageous that we have out-of-staters coming into New Hampshire, coming into our polling places and misrepresenting themselves to the election officials, and I hope that they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if in fact they're found guilty of some criminal act." The New Hampshire Attorney General and the US Attorney's Office announced investigations into the video. New Hampshire Associate Attorney General Richard Head said he would investigate the possible weaknesses in the voting system, but noted the state did not have a history of known fraud related to person[s] seeking ballot[s] in the name of a dead person or persons. Head announced he would investigate the possibility that the filmmakers committed crimes while producing the videos. Hamline University law professor David Schultz said, "If they [O'Keefe's group] were intentionally going in and trying to fraudulently obtain a ballot, they violated the law", referring to Title 42, which prohibits procuring ballots fraudulently. The New Hampshire Attorney General's office later dropped its investigation of O'Keefe for potential voter fraud in 2013. Patrick Moran (2012) On October 24, 2012, a video was released showing Patrick Moran, son of then-U.S. Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), and a field director with his father's campaign, discussing a plan to cast fraudulent ballots, which was proposed to him by someone who posed as a fervent supporter of the campaign. The person he was speaking with was a conservative activist with O'Keefe's Project Veritas, and was secretly recording the conversation. Patrick Moran resigned from the campaign, saying he did not want to be a distraction during the election, stating: [A]t no point have I, or will I ever endorse any sort of illegal or unethical behavior. At no point did I take this person seriously. He struck me as being unstable and joking, and for only that reason did I humor him. In hindsight, I should have immediately walked away, making it clear that there is no place in the electoral process for even the suggestion of illegal behavior, joking or not. The Arlington County, Virginia Police Department was made aware of the video and opened a criminal investigation into "every component" of the matter. On January 31, 2013, Arlington County announced that the investigation, by its police department in collaboration with the Offices of the Virginia Attorney General and the Arlington County Commonwealth's Attorney, had concluded and that no charges would be brought. The County stated: "Patrick Moran and the Jim Moran for Congress campaign provided full cooperation throughout the investigation. Despite repeated attempts to involve the party responsible for producing the video, they failed to provide any assistance." US–Mexico border-crossing (2014) In August 2014, O'Keefe dressed up as Osama bin Laden (who had died 3 years previously) and crossed the US–Mexico border in Texas in both directions to "show that our elected officials were lying to the American people" about border security. The incident was cited by U.S. Senator John McCain in Congressional hearings. Colorado mail-in ballots (2014) In October 2014 in Colorado, O'Keefe and collaborators from Project Veritas in disguise, approached numerous Democratic campaigns and political organizations in Colorado to mishandle or fraudulently cast mail-in ballots. A 2013 state law had mandated that all voters receive mail-in ballots. A number of targeted individuals resisted the bait, some of them having identified the imposters. Staffers from progressive organization New Era Colorado began photographing O'Keefe's group and later claimed to have contacted police. PV video shows a few individuals agreeing with the illegal activities and offering suggestions. No evidence of illegal activity was shown. Attempted sting of Open Society Foundations (2016) On March 16, 2016, O'Keefe attempted to call Open Society Foundations under the assumed name of "Victor Kesh", describing himself as attached to "a, uh, foundation" seeking to "get involved with you and aid what you do in fighting for, um, European values." O'Keefe forgot to hang up after recording the voicemail, and several more minutes of audio were recorded, revealing that he was attached to Discover the Networks and planning a series of attempts to create embarrassing videos or other recordings of targeted groups. CNN undercover videos (2017) On June 26, 2017, O'Keefe released a video on the YouTube channel of Project Veritas that showed John Bonifield, a producer of health and medical stories for CNN, saying CNN's coverage of the Russia investigation was "Because it's ratings" and that the coverage was "mostly bullshit". The video identified Bonifield as a supervising producer for CNN but not specifically for CNN Health. CNN said it was standing by "our medical producer John Bonifield. Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong". During a White House press briefing, deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of the video "whether it's accurate or not, I don't know, but I would encourage everybody... across the country to take a look at it". On June 28, 2017, O'Keefe released the second part of the series of undercover videos, by then dubbed "American Pravda". In the video, CNN anchor Van Jones said, "The Russia thing is just a big nothingburger." When asked about the video in an email, CNN responded "lol". During that same day, the videos were posted on Donald Trump's Instagram account. Jones said that O'Keefe had deceptively edited the video to take his remarks out of context and was attempting to "pull off a hoax." Jones added that he believed that there probably was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. On June 30, 2017, O'Keefe released the third part of the undercover videos. Part 3 of the series showed CNN associate producer Jimmy Carr saying that Trump is "fucking crazy" and that "on the inside, we all recognize he is a clown, that he is hilariously unqualified for this, he's really bad at this, and that he does not have America's best interests". Carr also said "This is a man who's not actually a Republican, he just adopted that because that was the party he thought he could win in. He doesn't believe anything that these people believe." Additionally, he said American voters are "stupid as shit." He also made comments about Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, calling her an "awful woman" and stating that she "looks like she got hit with a shovel". In a fourth video published by Project Veritas on July 5, Carr criticized CNN co-anchor Chris Cuomo. Failed attempt to sting The Washington Post (2017) Starting in July 2017, Project Veritas operative Jaime Phillips attempted to infiltrate The Washington Post and other media outlets by joining networking groups related to journalism and left-leaning politics. She and a male companion attended events related to the Post, and their conversations with journalists were sometimes covertly recorded. In November 2017, The Washington Post reported that several women accused Republican Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of pursuing them while they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. Later that same month, Jaime Phillips approached The Washington Post and falsely claimed that Moore had impregnated her as a teenager and that she had an abortion. In conducting its usual fact-checking, the Post discovered multiple red flags in her story. They found a GoFundMe page in her name that said, "I've accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM." After a Post reporter confronted her with the inconsistencies during a video-recorded interview, Phillips denied that she was working with an organization that targets journalists, and said that she no longer wanted to do the story. She was seen outside Project Veritas' office in Mamaroneck, New York, with her car remaining at the office's parking lot for more than an hour. O'Keefe declined to comment about the woman's apparent connection to Project Veritas. Instead of running a story about Phillips' supposed pregnancy, the Post published an article about the attempted sting operation. The Post decided to disclose Phillips' original discussions made off the record, saying they were not obligated to keep them confidential because she had deceived them. Hours after the Post published this story, O'Keefe released a video which he claimed exposed the newspaper's liberal bias. The video includes undercover footage of conversations with two Post employees, national security reporter Dan Lamothe and product director Joey Marburger. These employees explained to undercover Project Veritas operatives the difference between the news reporting of The Washington Post (which calls out the Trump administration's missteps while giving "him credit where there's credit" due) and the Post's opinion editorials; O'Keefe said that this exposed the Washington Post's "hidden agenda." O'Keefe was criticized for his failed sting, and The Washington Post was praised. Rod Dreher of The American Conservative praised the Post and called on conservative donors to stop giving money to O'Keefe's outfit. Dan McLaughlin of the conservative National Review said that O'Keefe's sting was an "own goal" and that O'Keefe was doing a disservice to the conservative movement; Jim Geraghty of the National Review made a similar assessment. Byron York of The Washington Examiner said that O'Keefe's "idiocy" was "beyond boneheaded," and that "O'Keefe really ought to hang it up." Ben Shapiro, the conservative editor in chief of The Daily Wire, said that the botched sting was "horrible, both morally and effectively." Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic wrote, "If James O'Keefe respected the right-wing populists who make up the audience of Project Veritas ... he would tell them the truth about all of the organizations that he targets. Instead, Project Veritas operates in bad faith, an attribute it demonstrated again this week in the aftermath of its bungled attempt to trick The Washington Post." Noah Rothman of the conservative magazine Commentary chastised O'Keefe for being exploitative of his audience: "No longer are institutions like Veritas dedicated to combating ignorance in their audience. They're actively courting it." Jonathan Chait of New York magazine said that O'Keefe, having set out prove that the Post was fake news, ended up disproving it. O'Keefe's plot collapsed because it was premised on a ludicrously false worldview, wrote Chait. "The Washington Post does not, in fact, publish unverified accusations just because they're against Republicans." O'Keefe's attempts to prove rampant voter fraud have failed "because voter fraud is not rampant." New Jersey Education Association videos (2018) On May 2, 2018, Project Veritas posted on YouTube a video allegedly showing a union administrator from the New Jersey Education Association, a teachers union, discussing a teacher alleged to have struck a student. The following day, O'Keefe released a second video allegedly showing another union administrator speaking to students about a different alleged incident of a teacher pushing and injuring a student. In the video, the administrator allegedly boasted of her effort to retain a pension for a teacher who allegedly had sex with a student. Both teachers were suspended pending an investigation, and resigned from their union roles after the release of the videos. During a New Jersey Senate meeting on May 31, the New Jersey Education Association announced that a law firm would investigate the incidents. Twitter suspension (2021) On April 15, 2021, O'Keefe was suspended from Twitter for "operating fake accounts". On April 19, he filed a lawsuit against Twitter in state court in Westchester County, New York, claiming that Twitter’s reason for suspending him is "false and defamatory". FBI search warrants and allegedly stolen Biden diary (2021) On November 6, 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed an early morning court-ordered search of O'Keefe's apartment in Mamaroneck, New York two days after searching the homes of two of O'Keefe's associates in connection with the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Biden's daughter, Ashley Biden, in 2020. Excerpts allegedly from the diary were posted two weeks before the 2020 US presidential election. In a statement, the Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern that lacking "a clear link between members of Project Veritas and allegations of criminal activities" the FBI raids and seizure of evidence were a "dangerous precedent that could allow law enforcement to search and confiscate reporters’ unpublished source material in vague attempts to identify whistleblowers." Reception Project Veritas uses methods not employed by reputable journalists, including misrepresenting its operatives' identities. O'Keefe refers to himself as a "guerrilla journalist". Such methods have stirred debate about what it means to be a journalist and what constitutes good journalistic practice, especially with respect to undercover work. Tim Kenneally and Daniel Frankel reporting for TheWrap in 2011 noted that some of O'Keefe's supporters referred to him as the right wing's answer to a long line of left-leaning "hybrid troublemakers who get put on the cover of Rolling Stone, like Paul Krassner and Abbie Hoffman". In that same 2011 report, Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, was quoted as saying: In reporting on allegations that O'Keefe had attempted in 2010 to tamper with United States Senator Mary Landrieu's office phone system, Jim Rutenberg and Campbell Robertson of the New York Times posited that O'Keefe practiced a kind of "gonzo journalism" and his tactic is to "caricature the political and social values of his enemies by carrying them to outlandish extremes." In a March 2011 interview with O'Keefe, NPR journalist Bob Garfield asked, referring to the ACORN videos, "If your journalistic technique is the lie, why should we believe anything you have to say?" O'Keefe responded that his techniques should be characterized as a form of guerrilla theater rather than "lying" – "you're posing as something you're not, in order to capture candid conversations from your subject. But I wouldn't characterize it as, as lying." In July 2011, Dean Mills, the dean of the Missouri School of Journalism, compared O'Keefe to Michael Moore and said, "Some ethicists say it is never right for a journalist to deceive for any reason, but there are wrongs in the world that will never be exposed without some kind of subterfuge." The Atlantic journalist Conor Friedersdorf responded that O'Keefe's "mortal sin" wasn't that he misled his subjects, but that he misled his audience by presenting his videos to the public in "less than honest ways that go far beyond normal 'selectivity.'" On February 11, 2021, the Twitter account for Project Veritas was “permanently suspended for repeated violations of Twitter’s private information policy.” At the same time, O'Keefe's account was “temporarily locked” for violating the policy pending the deletion of a tweet. On April 15, Twitter permanently suspended O'Keefe's personal account for violating the Twitter's policy against "platform manipulation and spam", which disallows the use of fake accounts to "artificially amplify or disrupt conversations". O'Keefe denied that he used fake Twitter accounts and said that he would sue Twitter in response. Works References External links Interview of O'Keefe by NPR's On the Media (audio with transcript) Category:1984 births Category:Living people Category:American activist journalists Category:American alternative journalists Category:American conspiracy theorists Category:American filmmakers Category:American people of Irish descent Category:People from Westwood, New Jersey Category:Rutgers University alumni Category:Westwood Regional High School alumni Category:American anti-abortion activists

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Tammy Duckworth

Ladda Tammy Duckworth (born March 12, 1968) is an American politician and retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, serving as the junior United States Senator for Illinois since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she earlier represented Illinois' 8th district for two terms (2013-2017) in the United States House of Representatives. Before election to office, she served as Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (2009-2011), and she was the Director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs (2006-2009). In the 2016 election, Duckworth defeated incumbent Republican Senator Mark Kirk for the seat in the United States Senate.

Military service

Following in the footsteps of her father, who served in World War II, and ancestors who served in the Revolutionary War, Duckworth joined the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps as a graduate student at George Washington University in 1990. She became a commissioned officer in the United States Army Reserve in 1992 and chose to fly helicopters because it was one of the few combat jobs open to women. As a member of the Army Reserve, she went to flight school, later transferring to the Army National Guard and entering the Illinois Army National Guard in 1996. Duckworth also worked as a staff supervisor at Rotary International headquarters in Evanston, Illinois. Duckworth was working towards a Ph.D. in political science at Northern Illinois University, with research interests in the political economy and public health in southeast Asia, when she was deployed to Iraq in 2004. She lost her right leg near the hip and her left leg below the knee from injuries sustained on November 12, 2004, when the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents. She was the first American female double amputee from the Iraq war. The explosion "almost completely destroyed her right arm, breaking it in three places and tearing tissue from the back side of it". The doctors "reset the bones in her arm and stitched the cuts" to save her arm. Duckworth received a Purple Heart on December 3 and was promoted to Major on December 21 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where she was presented with an Air Medal and Army Commendation Medal. She retired from the Illinois Army National Guard in October 2014 as a lieutenant colonel. She returned to school and completed a PhD in Human Services at Capella University in March 2015. The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a statue with Duckworth's likeness, and that of the Revolution's Molly Pitcher in Mount Vernon, Illinois, in 2011. The statue was erected in honor of female veterans. CANNOTANSWER

Ladda Tammy Duckworth (born March 12, 1968) is an American politician and retired Army National Guard lieutenant colonel serving as the junior United States senator from Illinois since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she represented Illinois's 8th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2013 to 2017. Born in Bangkok, Thailand, and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Duckworth was educated at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. A combat veteran of the Iraq War, she served as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot. In 2004, when her Black Hawk helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents, she lost both legs and some mobility in her right arm. She was the first female double amputee from the war. Despite her injuries, she was awarded a medical waiver to continue serving in the Illinois Army National Guard for another ten years until she retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2014. Duckworth ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2006, then served as director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs from 2006 to 2009 and as assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs from 2009 to 2011. In 2012, Duckworth was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where she served two terms. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016, defeating Republican incumbent Mark Kirk. Duckworth is the first Thai American woman elected to Congress, the first person born in Thailand elected to Congress, the first woman with a disability elected to Congress, the first female double amputee in the Senate, and the first senator to give birth while in office. Duckworth is the second of three Asian American women to serve in the U.S. Senate, after Mazie Hirono, and before Kamala Harris. Early life and education Duckworth was born in Bangkok, Thailand, the daughter of Franklin Duckworth and Lamai Sompornpairin. Although born outside the United States, Duckworth is a natural-born citizen through her father's status as an American citizen. Her father, who died in 2005, was a veteran of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps who traced his family's American roots to the American Revolutionary War. Her mother is Thai Chinese and originally from Chiang Mai. Her father was a Baptist who worked with the United Nations and international companies in refugee, housing, and development programs, and the family moved around Southeast Asia. Duckworth became fluent in Thai and Indonesian, in addition to English. Duckworth attended Singapore American School, the International School Bangkok, and the Jakarta International School. The family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, when Duckworth was 16, and she attended Honolulu's McKinley High School, where she participated in track and field and graduated in 1985. Because of a difference in the grade levels between the school systems she attended, Duckworth skipped half of her ninth grade year and half of her tenth. She was a Girl Scout, and earned her First Class, now called the Gold Award. Her father was unemployed for a time, and the family relied on public assistance. She graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. In 1992, she received a Master of Arts in international affairs from George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Later, Duckworth began a PhD program at Northern Illinois University, which was interrupted by her war service. She completed a PhD in human services at Capella University School of Public Service Leadership in March 2015. Her dissertion was titled Exploring Illinois physicians' experience using electronic medical records (EMR) via the UTAUT model. Julia Moore was her faculty mentor. Military service Following in the footsteps of her father, who served in World War II and the Vietnam War, and ancestors who served in every major conflict since the Revolutionary War, Duckworth joined the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps in 1990 as a graduate student at George Washington University. She became a commissioned officer in the United States Army Reserve in 1992 and chose to fly helicopters because it was one of the few combat jobs open to women at that time. As a member of the Army Reserve, she went to flight school, later transferring to the Army National Guard and in 1996 entering the Illinois Army National Guard. Duckworth also worked as a staff supervisor at Rotary International headquarters in Evanston, Illinois, and was the coordinator of the Center for Nursing Research at Northern Illinois University. Duckworth was working toward a Ph.D. in political science at Northern Illinois University, with research interests in the political economy and public health of southeast Asia, when she was deployed to Iraq in 2004. She lost her right leg near the hip and her left leg below the knee from injuries sustained on November 12, 2004, when the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents. She was the first American female double amputee from the Iraq War. The explosion severely broke her right arm and tore tissue from it, necessitating major surgery to repair it. Duckworth received a Purple Heart on December 3 and was promoted to the rank of major on December 21 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where she was presented with an Air Medal and Army Commendation Medal. She retired from the Illinois Army National Guard in October 2014 as a lieutenant colonel. In 2011 the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a statue with Duckworth's likeness and that of Molly Pitcher in Mount Vernon, Illinois. The statue was dedicated to female veterans. In 2019, Duckworth participated in the National Air and Space Museum's "The Military Women Aviators Oral History Initiative (MWAOHI)" project alongside fourteen other veteran women aviators, including Olga Custodio, Sarah Deal, Stayce Harris, Jeannie Leavitt, Nicole Malachowski, Sally Murply, Tammie Shults, Jacqueline Van Ovost, Lucy Young, and Kim "K. C." Campbell. Government service On November 21, 2006, several weeks after losing her first congressional campaign, Duckworth was appointed director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs by Governor Rod Blagojevich. She served in that position until February 8, 2009. While director, she was credited with starting a program to help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and veterans with brain injuries. On September 17, 2008, Duckworth attended a campaign event for Dan Seals, the Democratic candidate for Illinois's 10th congressional district. She used vacation time, but violated Illinois law by going to the event in a state-owned van that was equipped for a person with physical disabilities. She acknowledged the mistake and repaid the state for the use of the van. In 2009, two Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs employees at the Anna Veterans' Home in Union County filed a lawsuit against Duckworth. The lawsuit alleged that she wrongfully terminated one employee and threatened and intimidated another for bringing reports of abuse and misconduct of veterans when she was head of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. Duckworth was represented in the suit by the Illinois Attorney General's office. The case was dismissed twice but refilings were allowed. The case settled in June 2016 for $26,000 with no admission of wrongdoing. The plaintiffs later indicated they no longer wanted to settle, but the judge gave them 21 days to sign the settlement and canceled the trial. On February 3, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Duckworth to be the Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). and the United States Senate confirmed her for the position on April 22. As Assistant Secretary, she coordinated a joint initiative with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help end Veteran homelessness, worked to address the unique challenges faced by female as well as Native American Veterans, and created the Office of Online Communications to improve the VA's accessibility, especially among young Veterans. Duckworth resigned her position in June 2011 in order to launch her campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in Illinois's 8th congressional district. U.S. House of Representatives Elections 2006 After longtime incumbent Republican Henry Hyde announced his retirement from Congress, several candidates began campaigning for the open seat. Duckworth won the Democratic primary with a plurality of 44%, defeating 2004 nominee Christine Cegelis with 40%, and Wheaton College professor Lindy Scott with 16%. State Senator Peter Roskam was unopposed in the Republican primary. For the general election, Duckworth was endorsed by EMILY's List, a political action committee that supports female Democratic candidates who back abortion rights. Duckworth was also endorsed by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Fraternal Order of Police. While she raised $4.5 million to Roskam's $3.44 million, Duckworth lost by 4,810 votes, receiving 49% to Roskam's 51%. 2012 In July 2011, Duckworth launched her campaign to run in 2012 for Illinois's 8th congressional district. She defeated former Deputy Treasurer of Illinois Raja Krishnamoorthi for the Democratic nomination on March 20, 2012, then faced incumbent Republican Joe Walsh in the general election. Duckworth received the endorsement of both the Chicago Tribune and the Daily Herald. Walsh generated controversy when in July 2012, at a campaign event, he accused Duckworth of politicizing her military service and injuries, saying "my God, that's all she talks about. Our true heroes, the men and women who served us, it's the last thing in the world they talk about." Walsh called the controversy over his comments "a political ploy to distort my words and distract voters" and said that "Of course Tammy Duckworth is a hero ... I have called her a hero hundreds of times." On November 6, 2012, Duckworth defeated Walsh 55%–45%, making her the first Asian-American from Illinois in Congress, the first woman with a disability elected to Congress, and the first member of Congress born in Thailand. 2014 In the 2014 general election, Duckworth faced Republican Larry Kaifesh, a United States Marine Corps officer who had recently left active duty as a colonel. Duckworth defeated Kaifesh with 56% of the vote. Tenure Duckworth was sworn into office on January 3, 2013. On April 3, 2013, Duckworth publicly returned 8.4% ($1,218) of her congressional salary for that month to the United States Department of Treasury in solidarity with furloughed government workers. On June 26, 2013, during a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Duckworth received national media attention after questioning Strong Castle CEO Braulio Castillo on a $500 million government contract the company had been awarded based on Castillo's disabled veteran status. Castillo had injured his ankle at the US Military Academy's prep school, USMAPS, in 1984. Committee assignments Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces (2013–2017) Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (2013–2015) Subcommittee on Readiness (2015–2017) Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Health Care and Entitlements (2013–2015) Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation and Regulatory Affairs (2013–2015) Subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets, Ranking Member (2015–2017) Subcommittee on Information Technology (2015–2017) United States House Select Committee on Benghazi (May 2014–July 2016) U.S. Senate Elections 2016 On March 30, 2015, Duckworth announced that she would challenge incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Mark Kirk for his seat in the 2016 Senate election in Illinois. Duckworth defeated fellow Democrats Andrea Zopp and Napoleon Harris in the primary election on March 15, 2016. During a televised debate on October 27, 2016, Duckworth talked about her ancestors' past service in the United States military. Kirk responded, "I'd forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington." The comment led to the Human Rights Campaign withdrawing their endorsement of Kirk and switching it to Duckworth, stating his comments were "deeply offensive and racist." Duckworth was endorsed by Barack Obama, who actively campaigned for her. On November 8, Duckworth defeated Kirk 55 percent to 40 percent to win the Senate seat. Duckworth and Kamala Harris, who was also elected in 2016, are the second and third female Asian American senators, after Mazie Hirono who was elected in 2012. 2022 In March 2021, Duckworth announced her candidacy for reelection in the 2022 election. On November 8, 2022, Duckworth won her reelection to the U.S. Senate, defeating Republican challenger Kathy Salvi. Duckworth's win makes her the first woman reelected to a senate seat in Illinois. Tenure First term (2017–2023) According to The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL), a joint partnership between the University of Virginia's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and Vanderbilt University, Duckworth's "Legislative Effectiveness Score" (LES) is "Exceeds Expectations" as a freshman senator in the 115th Congress (2017–2018), the 11th highest out of 48 Democratic senators. GovTrack's Report Card on Duckworth for the 115th Congress found that among Senate freshmen, she ranked first in favorably reporting bills out of committee and "Got influential cosponsors the most often compared to Senate freshmen." GovTrack also found that in the first session of the 116th Congress, Duckworth ranked first in favorably reporting bills out of committee and "Got influential cosponsors the most often compared to Senate sophomores." During the 115th Congress, Duckworth was credited with saving the Americans with Disabilities Act. Specifically, she led public opposition to a controversial bill, H.R. 620, and led 42 senators in pledging to oppose any effort to pass H.R. 620 through the Senate. The Veterans Service Organization and Paralyzed Veterans of America recognized Duckworth's leadership in defending the Americans with Disabilities Act. In January 2018, when the federal government shut down after the Senate could not agree on a funding bill, Duckworth responded to President Trump's accusations that the Democrats were putting "unlawful immigrants" ahead of the military: In 2018, Duckworth became the first U.S. senator to give birth while in office. Shortly afterward, the Senate passed Senate Resolution 463, which Duckworth introduced on April 12, 2018, by unanimous consent. The resolution changed Senate rules so that a senator may bring a child under one year old to the Senate floor during votes. The day after the rules were changed, Duckworth's daughter became the first baby on the Senate floor. On April 15, 2020, the Trump administration invited Duckworth to join a bipartisan task force on the reopening of the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Duckworth was publicly critical of Trump's decision to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in September 2020. Barrett, a devout Catholic, is a member of a group that considers in vitro fertilization morally illicit. Duckworth said that Barrett's membership in such an organization was "disqualifying and, frankly, insulting to every parent". Both of Duckworth's children were conceived by IVF. The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a joint initiative of the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, ranked Duckworth the fifth most effective Democratic senator in the 116th Congress and the most effective Democratic senator on transportation policy. Professors Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman, co-directors of the Center for Effective Lawmaking, stated, "While still in her first term, Senator Tammy Duckworth has risen to the top five among effective Democratic lawmakers in the Senate. She sponsored 77 bills in the 116th Congress, with four of them passing the Republican-controlled Senate and two becoming law." On January 3, 2021, Duckworth received one vote for Speaker of the House of Representatives from Jared Golden () despite not being a member of that legislative body and therefore not a serious candidate. Duckworth was participating in the certification of the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. In the wake of the attack, Duckworth called Trump "a threat to our nation" and called for his immediate removal from office through the invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution or impeachment. Two days later, on January 8, she also called for the resignation of Representative Mary Miller, who had quoted Adolf Hitler during a speech on January 5. In June 2022, President Biden sent Duckworth to Taiwan, where she held a press conference with Tsai Ing-wen to announce the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade in the wake of fears of angering China by the other partners to the May 2022 Indo-Pacific trade agreement. Duckworth's mission was planned in conjunction with the U.S. Trade Representative's office, which leads the Initiative for Washington. Duckworth is the sponsor of S. 3635, the Public Safety Officer Support Act of 2022, which would provide line of duty death designation to law enforcement and other public safety officers who die as a result of traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and other "silent" injuries. The bill is based on the death of Washington, D.C. police officer Jeffrey Smith in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Smith died of post-concussive syndrome after suffering repeated attacks at the Capitol. Second term (2023–present) In February 2023, Duckworth was named chair of the Subcommittee on Aviation Safety, Operations and Innovation of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Along with Deb Fischer, Duckworth sponsored a bill to improve reporting on complaints from disabled airline passengers. Committee assignments Current Committee on Armed Services (2019–present) Subcommittee on Airland Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support Subcommittee on Strategic Forces Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security (chair) Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance and Data Security Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety, and Security Committee on Foreign Relations (2023–present) Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral Institutions, and International Economic, Energy and Environmental Policy (chair) Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation Subcommittee on East Asia, The Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Previous Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (2017–2019) Committee on Environment and Public Works (2017-2023) Caucus memberships Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Expand Social Security Caucus Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus National politics Duckworth has spoken at the 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. She was the permanent co-chair of the 2020 Democratic National Convention. At the 2020 convention she called Trump "coward-in-chief" for not supporting the American military. Duckworth was vetted as a possible running mate during Joe Biden's vice presidential candidate selection. Fellow U.S. Senator Kamala Harris was instead selected. Biden nominated Duckworth to serve as Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, along with Gretchen Whitmer, Keisha Lance Bottoms and Filemon Vela Jr. Political positions Environment In April 2019, Duckworth was one of 12 senators to sign a bipartisan letter to top senators on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development advocating that the Energy Department be granted maximum funding for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), arguing that American job growth could be stimulated by investment in viable options to capture carbon emissions and expressing disagreement with Trump's 2020 budget request to combine the two federal programs that include carbon capture research. Foreign policy During her unsuccessful congressional campaign in 2006, Duckworth called on Congress to audit the estimated $437 billion spent on overseas military and foreign aid since September 11, 2001. On September 30, 2006, Duckworth gave the Democratic Party's response to President George W. Bush's weekly radio address. In it, she was critical of Bush's strategy for the Iraq War. In October 2006, The Sunday Times reported that Duckworth agreed with General Sir Richard Dannatt, the British Army chief, that the presence of coalition troops was exacerbating the conflict in Iraq. Duckworth supports continued U.S. military aid to Israel and opposes the movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. She voiced her opposition to Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. In May 2019, Duckworth was a cosponsor of the South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act, a bipartisan bill reintroduced by Marco Rubio and Ben Cardin that was intended to disrupt China's consolidation or expansion of its claims of jurisdiction over both the sea and air space in disputed zones in the South China Sea. On June 6, 2021, Duckworth and Senators Dan Sullivan and Christopher Coons visited Taipei in an U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport to meet President Tsai Ing-wen and Minister Joseph Wu during the pandemic outbreak of Taiwan to announce President Joe Biden's donation plan of 750,000 COVID-19 vaccines included in the global COVAX program. Gun control Duckworth was rated by the National Rifle Association as having a pro-gun control congressional voting record. Duckworth, a gun owner herself, cites violence in Chicago as a major influence for her support of gun control. She supports universal background checks, the halting of state-to-state gun trafficking, and a national assault weapons ban. Duckworth participated in the 2016 Chris Murphy gun control filibuster. During the 2016 United States House of Representatives sit-in, Duckworth hid her mobile phone in her prosthetic leg to avoid it being taken away from her since taking pictures and recording on the House floor is against policy. In a 2016 interview with GQ magazine, Duckworth stated that gaining control of the Senate and "closing the gap" in the House would be necessary in order to pass firearm restrictions. She also stated that she believed moderate Republicans, who support gun control, would have more power to influence gun control if they were not "pushed aside by those folks who are absolutely beholden to the NRA. And so we never get the vote." Health policy Duckworth supports abortion rights. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Duckworth said she was "outraged and horrified." She called the decision a "nightmare", robbing women of their right to make health care decisions. Duckworth supported the Affordable Care Act. Immigration Duckworth supports comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for those in the country illegally. She would admit 100,000 Syrian refugees into the United States. In August 2018, Duckworth was one of seventeen senators to sign a letter spearheaded by Kamala Harris to United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen demanding that the Trump administration take immediate action in attempting to reunite 539 migrant children with their families, citing each passing day of inaction as intensifying "trauma that this administration has needlessly caused for children and their families seeking humanitarian protection." Awards and accolades In May 2010, Duckworth was awarded the Honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL) by Northern Illinois University. In 2011, Chicago's Access Living honored Duckworth for her work on behalf of veterans with disabilities, bestowing her with the Gordon H. Mansfield Congressional Leadership Award. Duckworth is heavily decorated for her service in Iraq, with over 10 distinct military honors, most notably the Purple Heart, an award her Marine father had also received. Former Republican presidential candidate and Senator from Kansas Bob Dole dedicated his autobiography One Soldier's Story in part to Duckworth. Duckworth credits Dole for inspiring her to pursue public service, while she recuperated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center; although, in 2006, Dole endorsed Duckworth's Republican opponent, Peter Roskam. Personal life Duckworth has been married to Bryan Bowlsbey since 1993. They met during Duckworth's participation in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and later served together in the Illinois Army National Guard. Bowlsbey, a Signal Corps officer, is also a veteran of the Iraq War. Both have since retired from the armed forces. Duckworth and Bowlsbey have two daughters: Abigail, who was born in 2014, and Maile, born in 2018. Maile's birth made Duckworth the first U.S. senator to give birth while in office. Former senator Daniel Akaka helped the couple with the naming of both daughters; Akaka died April 6, 2018, three days before Maile was born. Shortly after Maile's birth, a Senate rule change permitted senators to bring children under one year old on the Senate floor to breastfeed. This was a symbolic moment for Duckworth, as she had previously introduced the bipartisan Friendly Airports for Mothers (FAM) Act to ensure new mothers access to safe, clean and accessible lactation rooms in airports. The day after the rule change, Duckworth brought Maile with her during the casting of a Senate vote, making Duckworth the first senator to cast a vote while holding a baby. Duckworth helped establish the Intrepid Foundation to help injured veterans. Electoral history Bibliography Every Day is a Gift: A Memoir, Little, Brown & Company, 2021. See also List of Asian Americans and Pacific Islands Americans in the United States Congress List of United States senators born outside the United States Women in the United States House of Representatives Women in the United States Senate References External links Senator Tammy Duckworth official U.S. Senate website Tammy Duckworth for Senate campaign website |- |- |- |- |- |- Category:1968 births Category:21st-century American politicians Category:21st-century American women politicians Category:American amputees Category:United States Army personnel of the Iraq War Category:Members of the United States Congress of Chinese descent Category:American people of Thai descent Category:American politicians with disabilities Category:Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois Category:Democratic Party United States senators from Illinois Category:Asian-American members of the United States House of Representatives Category:Asian-American United States senators Category:Women military aviators Category:Female members of the United States House of Representatives Category:Female United States senators Category:Elliott School of International Affairs alumni Category:American Senior Army Aviators Category:Illinois National Guard personnel Category:Living people Category:National Guard (United States) officers Category:Obama administration personnel Tammy Duckworth Category:Politicians from Honolulu Category:People from Hoffman Estates, Illinois Category:Recipients of the Air Medal Category:Shot-down aviators Category:State cabinet secretaries of Illinois Category:Thai emigrants to the United States Category:United States Department of Veterans Affairs officials Category:University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni Category:Women in Illinois politics Category:Women in the Iraq War Category:Female United States Army officers Category:Recipients of the Meritorious Service Medal (United States) Category:Daughters of the American Revolution people Category:American women of Chinese descent in politics Category:Asian-American people in Illinois politics Category:Capella University alumni

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Tammy Duckworth

Ladda Tammy Duckworth (born March 12, 1968) is an American politician and retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, serving as the junior United States Senator for Illinois since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she earlier represented Illinois' 8th district for two terms (2013-2017) in the United States House of Representatives. Before election to office, she served as Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (2009-2011), and she was the Director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs (2006-2009). In the 2016 election, Duckworth defeated incumbent Republican Senator Mark Kirk for the seat in the United States Senate.

Government service

On November 21, 2006, several weeks after losing her first congressional campaign, Duckworth was appointed Director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs by Governor Rod Blagojevich. Duckworth served in that position until February 8, 2009. While she was Director, she was credited with starting a program to help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and veterans with brain injury. On September 17, 2008, Duckworth attended a campaign event for Dan Seals, the Democratic candidate for Illinois's 10th congressional district. Duckworth used vacation time, but violated Illinois law by going to the event in a state-owned van which was equipped for a person with physical disabilities. She acknowledged the mistake and repaid the state for the use of the van. In 2009, two Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs employees at the Anna Veteran's Home in Union County filed a lawsuit against Duckworth. The lawsuit alleged that Duckworth wrongfully terminated one employee and threatened and intimidated another for bringing reports of abuse and misconduct of veterans when she was head of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. Duckworth is represented in the suit by the Illinois Attorney General's office. The case was dismissed twice but refilings were allowed. The court set a tentative trial date of August 2016 and rejected the final motion to dismiss. The state announced that it had settled the case in June 2016 for $26,000 with no admission of wrongdoing. Although the plaintiffs later indicated they did not want the settlement, the judge vacated the trial. Also in 2009, the Illinois Auditor General released an audit of the Veteran's Affairs department. Some issues noted by the audit predated Duckworth's tenure, while the majority of the audit covered Duckworth's tenure. Findings of the audit included a fiscal year 2007 report that was not completed on time, failure to conduct annual reviews of benefits received by Illinois veterans, and failure to establish a task force to study the possible health effects of exposure to hazardous materials. The routine audit covered a two-year period, June 2006 to June 2008, and the findings were described by the auditor's department as "typical" in its audits. On February 3, 2009, Duckworth was nominated to be the Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. The United States Senate confirmed her for the position on April 22. Duckworth resigned from her position in June 2011 in order to launch her campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in Illinois' 8th Congressional District. CANNOTANSWER

Ladda Tammy Duckworth (born March 12, 1968) is an American politician and retired Army National Guard lieutenant colonel serving as the junior United States senator from Illinois since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she represented Illinois's 8th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2013 to 2017. Born in Bangkok, Thailand, and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Duckworth was educated at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. A combat veteran of the Iraq War, she served as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot. In 2004, when her Black Hawk helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents, she lost both legs and some mobility in her right arm. She was the first female double amputee from the war. Despite her injuries, she was awarded a medical waiver to continue serving in the Illinois Army National Guard for another ten years until she retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2014. Duckworth ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2006, then served as director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs from 2006 to 2009 and as assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs from 2009 to 2011. In 2012, Duckworth was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where she served two terms. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016, defeating Republican incumbent Mark Kirk. Duckworth is the first Thai American woman elected to Congress, the first person born in Thailand elected to Congress, the first woman with a disability elected to Congress, the first female double amputee in the Senate, and the first senator to give birth while in office. Duckworth is the second of three Asian American women to serve in the U.S. Senate, after Mazie Hirono, and before Kamala Harris. Early life and education Duckworth was born in Bangkok, Thailand, the daughter of Franklin Duckworth and Lamai Sompornpairin. Although born outside the United States, Duckworth is a natural-born citizen through her father's status as an American citizen. Her father, who died in 2005, was a veteran of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps who traced his family's American roots to the American Revolutionary War. Her mother is Thai Chinese and originally from Chiang Mai. Her father was a Baptist who worked with the United Nations and international companies in refugee, housing, and development programs, and the family moved around Southeast Asia. Duckworth became fluent in Thai and Indonesian, in addition to English. Duckworth attended Singapore American School, the International School Bangkok, and the Jakarta International School. The family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, when Duckworth was 16, and she attended Honolulu's McKinley High School, where she participated in track and field and graduated in 1985. Because of a difference in the grade levels between the school systems she attended, Duckworth skipped half of her ninth grade year and half of her tenth. She was a Girl Scout, and earned her First Class, now called the Gold Award. Her father was unemployed for a time, and the family relied on public assistance. She graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. In 1992, she received a Master of Arts in international affairs from George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Later, Duckworth began a PhD program at Northern Illinois University, which was interrupted by her war service. She completed a PhD in human services at Capella University School of Public Service Leadership in March 2015. Her dissertion was titled Exploring Illinois physicians' experience using electronic medical records (EMR) via the UTAUT model. Julia Moore was her faculty mentor. Military service Following in the footsteps of her father, who served in World War II and the Vietnam War, and ancestors who served in every major conflict since the Revolutionary War, Duckworth joined the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps in 1990 as a graduate student at George Washington University. She became a commissioned officer in the United States Army Reserve in 1992 and chose to fly helicopters because it was one of the few combat jobs open to women at that time. As a member of the Army Reserve, she went to flight school, later transferring to the Army National Guard and in 1996 entering the Illinois Army National Guard. Duckworth also worked as a staff supervisor at Rotary International headquarters in Evanston, Illinois, and was the coordinator of the Center for Nursing Research at Northern Illinois University. Duckworth was working toward a Ph.D. in political science at Northern Illinois University, with research interests in the political economy and public health of southeast Asia, when she was deployed to Iraq in 2004. She lost her right leg near the hip and her left leg below the knee from injuries sustained on November 12, 2004, when the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents. She was the first American female double amputee from the Iraq War. The explosion severely broke her right arm and tore tissue from it, necessitating major surgery to repair it. Duckworth received a Purple Heart on December 3 and was promoted to the rank of major on December 21 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where she was presented with an Air Medal and Army Commendation Medal. She retired from the Illinois Army National Guard in October 2014 as a lieutenant colonel. In 2011 the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a statue with Duckworth's likeness and that of Molly Pitcher in Mount Vernon, Illinois. The statue was dedicated to female veterans. In 2019, Duckworth participated in the National Air and Space Museum's "The Military Women Aviators Oral History Initiative (MWAOHI)" project alongside fourteen other veteran women aviators, including Olga Custodio, Sarah Deal, Stayce Harris, Jeannie Leavitt, Nicole Malachowski, Sally Murply, Tammie Shults, Jacqueline Van Ovost, Lucy Young, and Kim "K. C." Campbell. Government service On November 21, 2006, several weeks after losing her first congressional campaign, Duckworth was appointed director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs by Governor Rod Blagojevich. She served in that position until February 8, 2009. While director, she was credited with starting a program to help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and veterans with brain injuries. On September 17, 2008, Duckworth attended a campaign event for Dan Seals, the Democratic candidate for Illinois's 10th congressional district. She used vacation time, but violated Illinois law by going to the event in a state-owned van that was equipped for a person with physical disabilities. She acknowledged the mistake and repaid the state for the use of the van. In 2009, two Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs employees at the Anna Veterans' Home in Union County filed a lawsuit against Duckworth. The lawsuit alleged that she wrongfully terminated one employee and threatened and intimidated another for bringing reports of abuse and misconduct of veterans when she was head of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. Duckworth was represented in the suit by the Illinois Attorney General's office. The case was dismissed twice but refilings were allowed. The case settled in June 2016 for $26,000 with no admission of wrongdoing. The plaintiffs later indicated they no longer wanted to settle, but the judge gave them 21 days to sign the settlement and canceled the trial. On February 3, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Duckworth to be the Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). and the United States Senate confirmed her for the position on April 22. As Assistant Secretary, she coordinated a joint initiative with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help end Veteran homelessness, worked to address the unique challenges faced by female as well as Native American Veterans, and created the Office of Online Communications to improve the VA's accessibility, especially among young Veterans. Duckworth resigned her position in June 2011 in order to launch her campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in Illinois's 8th congressional district. U.S. House of Representatives Elections 2006 After longtime incumbent Republican Henry Hyde announced his retirement from Congress, several candidates began campaigning for the open seat. Duckworth won the Democratic primary with a plurality of 44%, defeating 2004 nominee Christine Cegelis with 40%, and Wheaton College professor Lindy Scott with 16%. State Senator Peter Roskam was unopposed in the Republican primary. For the general election, Duckworth was endorsed by EMILY's List, a political action committee that supports female Democratic candidates who back abortion rights. Duckworth was also endorsed by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Fraternal Order of Police. While she raised $4.5 million to Roskam's $3.44 million, Duckworth lost by 4,810 votes, receiving 49% to Roskam's 51%. 2012 In July 2011, Duckworth launched her campaign to run in 2012 for Illinois's 8th congressional district. She defeated former Deputy Treasurer of Illinois Raja Krishnamoorthi for the Democratic nomination on March 20, 2012, then faced incumbent Republican Joe Walsh in the general election. Duckworth received the endorsement of both the Chicago Tribune and the Daily Herald. Walsh generated controversy when in July 2012, at a campaign event, he accused Duckworth of politicizing her military service and injuries, saying "my God, that's all she talks about. Our true heroes, the men and women who served us, it's the last thing in the world they talk about." Walsh called the controversy over his comments "a political ploy to distort my words and distract voters" and said that "Of course Tammy Duckworth is a hero ... I have called her a hero hundreds of times." On November 6, 2012, Duckworth defeated Walsh 55%–45%, making her the first Asian-American from Illinois in Congress, the first woman with a disability elected to Congress, and the first member of Congress born in Thailand. 2014 In the 2014 general election, Duckworth faced Republican Larry Kaifesh, a United States Marine Corps officer who had recently left active duty as a colonel. Duckworth defeated Kaifesh with 56% of the vote. Tenure Duckworth was sworn into office on January 3, 2013. On April 3, 2013, Duckworth publicly returned 8.4% ($1,218) of her congressional salary for that month to the United States Department of Treasury in solidarity with furloughed government workers. On June 26, 2013, during a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Duckworth received national media attention after questioning Strong Castle CEO Braulio Castillo on a $500 million government contract the company had been awarded based on Castillo's disabled veteran status. Castillo had injured his ankle at the US Military Academy's prep school, USMAPS, in 1984. Committee assignments Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces (2013–2017) Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (2013–2015) Subcommittee on Readiness (2015–2017) Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Health Care and Entitlements (2013–2015) Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation and Regulatory Affairs (2013–2015) Subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets, Ranking Member (2015–2017) Subcommittee on Information Technology (2015–2017) United States House Select Committee on Benghazi (May 2014–July 2016) U.S. Senate Elections 2016 On March 30, 2015, Duckworth announced that she would challenge incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Mark Kirk for his seat in the 2016 Senate election in Illinois. Duckworth defeated fellow Democrats Andrea Zopp and Napoleon Harris in the primary election on March 15, 2016. During a televised debate on October 27, 2016, Duckworth talked about her ancestors' past service in the United States military. Kirk responded, "I'd forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington." The comment led to the Human Rights Campaign withdrawing their endorsement of Kirk and switching it to Duckworth, stating his comments were "deeply offensive and racist." Duckworth was endorsed by Barack Obama, who actively campaigned for her. On November 8, Duckworth defeated Kirk 55 percent to 40 percent to win the Senate seat. Duckworth and Kamala Harris, who was also elected in 2016, are the second and third female Asian American senators, after Mazie Hirono who was elected in 2012. 2022 In March 2021, Duckworth announced her candidacy for reelection in the 2022 election. On November 8, 2022, Duckworth won her reelection to the U.S. Senate, defeating Republican challenger Kathy Salvi. Duckworth's win makes her the first woman reelected to a senate seat in Illinois. Tenure First term (2017–2023) According to The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL), a joint partnership between the University of Virginia's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and Vanderbilt University, Duckworth's "Legislative Effectiveness Score" (LES) is "Exceeds Expectations" as a freshman senator in the 115th Congress (2017–2018), the 11th highest out of 48 Democratic senators. GovTrack's Report Card on Duckworth for the 115th Congress found that among Senate freshmen, she ranked first in favorably reporting bills out of committee and "Got influential cosponsors the most often compared to Senate freshmen." GovTrack also found that in the first session of the 116th Congress, Duckworth ranked first in favorably reporting bills out of committee and "Got influential cosponsors the most often compared to Senate sophomores." During the 115th Congress, Duckworth was credited with saving the Americans with Disabilities Act. Specifically, she led public opposition to a controversial bill, H.R. 620, and led 42 senators in pledging to oppose any effort to pass H.R. 620 through the Senate. The Veterans Service Organization and Paralyzed Veterans of America recognized Duckworth's leadership in defending the Americans with Disabilities Act. In January 2018, when the federal government shut down after the Senate could not agree on a funding bill, Duckworth responded to President Trump's accusations that the Democrats were putting "unlawful immigrants" ahead of the military: In 2018, Duckworth became the first U.S. senator to give birth while in office. Shortly afterward, the Senate passed Senate Resolution 463, which Duckworth introduced on April 12, 2018, by unanimous consent. The resolution changed Senate rules so that a senator may bring a child under one year old to the Senate floor during votes. The day after the rules were changed, Duckworth's daughter became the first baby on the Senate floor. On April 15, 2020, the Trump administration invited Duckworth to join a bipartisan task force on the reopening of the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Duckworth was publicly critical of Trump's decision to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in September 2020. Barrett, a devout Catholic, is a member of a group that considers in vitro fertilization morally illicit. Duckworth said that Barrett's membership in such an organization was "disqualifying and, frankly, insulting to every parent". Both of Duckworth's children were conceived by IVF. The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a joint initiative of the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, ranked Duckworth the fifth most effective Democratic senator in the 116th Congress and the most effective Democratic senator on transportation policy. Professors Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman, co-directors of the Center for Effective Lawmaking, stated, "While still in her first term, Senator Tammy Duckworth has risen to the top five among effective Democratic lawmakers in the Senate. She sponsored 77 bills in the 116th Congress, with four of them passing the Republican-controlled Senate and two becoming law." On January 3, 2021, Duckworth received one vote for Speaker of the House of Representatives from Jared Golden () despite not being a member of that legislative body and therefore not a serious candidate. Duckworth was participating in the certification of the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. In the wake of the attack, Duckworth called Trump "a threat to our nation" and called for his immediate removal from office through the invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution or impeachment. Two days later, on January 8, she also called for the resignation of Representative Mary Miller, who had quoted Adolf Hitler during a speech on January 5. In June 2022, President Biden sent Duckworth to Taiwan, where she held a press conference with Tsai Ing-wen to announce the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade in the wake of fears of angering China by the other partners to the May 2022 Indo-Pacific trade agreement. Duckworth's mission was planned in conjunction with the U.S. Trade Representative's office, which leads the Initiative for Washington. Duckworth is the sponsor of S. 3635, the Public Safety Officer Support Act of 2022, which would provide line of duty death designation to law enforcement and other public safety officers who die as a result of traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and other "silent" injuries. The bill is based on the death of Washington, D.C. police officer Jeffrey Smith in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Smith died of post-concussive syndrome after suffering repeated attacks at the Capitol. Second term (2023–present) In February 2023, Duckworth was named chair of the Subcommittee on Aviation Safety, Operations and Innovation of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Along with Deb Fischer, Duckworth sponsored a bill to improve reporting on complaints from disabled airline passengers. Committee assignments Current Committee on Armed Services (2019–present) Subcommittee on Airland Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support Subcommittee on Strategic Forces Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security (chair) Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance and Data Security Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety, and Security Committee on Foreign Relations (2023–present) Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral Institutions, and International Economic, Energy and Environmental Policy (chair) Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation Subcommittee on East Asia, The Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Previous Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (2017–2019) Committee on Environment and Public Works (2017-2023) Caucus memberships Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Expand Social Security Caucus Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus National politics Duckworth has spoken at the 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. She was the permanent co-chair of the 2020 Democratic National Convention. At the 2020 convention she called Trump "coward-in-chief" for not supporting the American military. Duckworth was vetted as a possible running mate during Joe Biden's vice presidential candidate selection. Fellow U.S. Senator Kamala Harris was instead selected. Biden nominated Duckworth to serve as Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, along with Gretchen Whitmer, Keisha Lance Bottoms and Filemon Vela Jr. Political positions Environment In April 2019, Duckworth was one of 12 senators to sign a bipartisan letter to top senators on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development advocating that the Energy Department be granted maximum funding for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), arguing that American job growth could be stimulated by investment in viable options to capture carbon emissions and expressing disagreement with Trump's 2020 budget request to combine the two federal programs that include carbon capture research. Foreign policy During her unsuccessful congressional campaign in 2006, Duckworth called on Congress to audit the estimated $437 billion spent on overseas military and foreign aid since September 11, 2001. On September 30, 2006, Duckworth gave the Democratic Party's response to President George W. Bush's weekly radio address. In it, she was critical of Bush's strategy for the Iraq War. In October 2006, The Sunday Times reported that Duckworth agreed with General Sir Richard Dannatt, the British Army chief, that the presence of coalition troops was exacerbating the conflict in Iraq. Duckworth supports continued U.S. military aid to Israel and opposes the movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. She voiced her opposition to Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. In May 2019, Duckworth was a cosponsor of the South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act, a bipartisan bill reintroduced by Marco Rubio and Ben Cardin that was intended to disrupt China's consolidation or expansion of its claims of jurisdiction over both the sea and air space in disputed zones in the South China Sea. On June 6, 2021, Duckworth and Senators Dan Sullivan and Christopher Coons visited Taipei in an U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport to meet President Tsai Ing-wen and Minister Joseph Wu during the pandemic outbreak of Taiwan to announce President Joe Biden's donation plan of 750,000 COVID-19 vaccines included in the global COVAX program. Gun control Duckworth was rated by the National Rifle Association as having a pro-gun control congressional voting record. Duckworth, a gun owner herself, cites violence in Chicago as a major influence for her support of gun control. She supports universal background checks, the halting of state-to-state gun trafficking, and a national assault weapons ban. Duckworth participated in the 2016 Chris Murphy gun control filibuster. During the 2016 United States House of Representatives sit-in, Duckworth hid her mobile phone in her prosthetic leg to avoid it being taken away from her since taking pictures and recording on the House floor is against policy. In a 2016 interview with GQ magazine, Duckworth stated that gaining control of the Senate and "closing the gap" in the House would be necessary in order to pass firearm restrictions. She also stated that she believed moderate Republicans, who support gun control, would have more power to influence gun control if they were not "pushed aside by those folks who are absolutely beholden to the NRA. And so we never get the vote." Health policy Duckworth supports abortion rights. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Duckworth said she was "outraged and horrified." She called the decision a "nightmare", robbing women of their right to make health care decisions. Duckworth supported the Affordable Care Act. Immigration Duckworth supports comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for those in the country illegally. She would admit 100,000 Syrian refugees into the United States. In August 2018, Duckworth was one of seventeen senators to sign a letter spearheaded by Kamala Harris to United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen demanding that the Trump administration take immediate action in attempting to reunite 539 migrant children with their families, citing each passing day of inaction as intensifying "trauma that this administration has needlessly caused for children and their families seeking humanitarian protection." Awards and accolades In May 2010, Duckworth was awarded the Honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL) by Northern Illinois University. In 2011, Chicago's Access Living honored Duckworth for her work on behalf of veterans with disabilities, bestowing her with the Gordon H. Mansfield Congressional Leadership Award. Duckworth is heavily decorated for her service in Iraq, with over 10 distinct military honors, most notably the Purple Heart, an award her Marine father had also received. Former Republican presidential candidate and Senator from Kansas Bob Dole dedicated his autobiography One Soldier's Story in part to Duckworth. Duckworth credits Dole for inspiring her to pursue public service, while she recuperated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center; although, in 2006, Dole endorsed Duckworth's Republican opponent, Peter Roskam. Personal life Duckworth has been married to Bryan Bowlsbey since 1993. They met during Duckworth's participation in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and later served together in the Illinois Army National Guard. Bowlsbey, a Signal Corps officer, is also a veteran of the Iraq War. Both have since retired from the armed forces. Duckworth and Bowlsbey have two daughters: Abigail, who was born in 2014, and Maile, born in 2018. Maile's birth made Duckworth the first U.S. senator to give birth while in office. Former senator Daniel Akaka helped the couple with the naming of both daughters; Akaka died April 6, 2018, three days before Maile was born. Shortly after Maile's birth, a Senate rule change permitted senators to bring children under one year old on the Senate floor to breastfeed. This was a symbolic moment for Duckworth, as she had previously introduced the bipartisan Friendly Airports for Mothers (FAM) Act to ensure new mothers access to safe, clean and accessible lactation rooms in airports. The day after the rule change, Duckworth brought Maile with her during the casting of a Senate vote, making Duckworth the first senator to cast a vote while holding a baby. Duckworth helped establish the Intrepid Foundation to help injured veterans. Electoral history Bibliography Every Day is a Gift: A Memoir, Little, Brown & Company, 2021. See also List of Asian Americans and Pacific Islands Americans in the United States Congress List of United States senators born outside the United States Women in the United States House of Representatives Women in the United States Senate References External links Senator Tammy Duckworth official U.S. Senate website Tammy Duckworth for Senate campaign website |- |- |- |- |- |- Category:1968 births Category:21st-century American politicians Category:21st-century American women politicians Category:American amputees Category:United States Army personnel of the Iraq War Category:Members of the United States Congress of Chinese descent Category:American people of Thai descent Category:American politicians with disabilities Category:Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois Category:Democratic Party United States senators from Illinois Category:Asian-American members of the United States House of Representatives Category:Asian-American United States senators Category:Women military aviators Category:Female members of the United States House of Representatives Category:Female United States senators Category:Elliott School of International Affairs alumni Category:American Senior Army Aviators Category:Illinois National Guard personnel Category:Living people Category:National Guard (United States) officers Category:Obama administration personnel Tammy Duckworth Category:Politicians from Honolulu Category:People from Hoffman Estates, Illinois Category:Recipients of the Air Medal Category:Shot-down aviators Category:State cabinet secretaries of Illinois Category:Thai emigrants to the United States Category:United States Department of Veterans Affairs officials Category:University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni Category:Women in Illinois politics Category:Women in the Iraq War Category:Female United States Army officers Category:Recipients of the Meritorious Service Medal (United States) Category:Daughters of the American Revolution people Category:American women of Chinese descent in politics Category:Asian-American people in Illinois politics Category:Capella University alumni

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Sean Hannity

Sean Patrick Hannity was born in New York City, New York, the son of Lillian (Flynn) and Hugh Hannity. Lillian worked as a stenographer and a corrections officer at a county jail, while Hugh was a family-court officer. He is the youngest of four siblings. All of his grandparents immigrated to the United States from Ireland.

Career

Hannity hosted his first talk radio show in 1989 at the volunteer college station at UC Santa Barbara, KCSB-FM, while working as a general contractor. The show aired for 40 hours of air time. Regarding his first show, he said, "I wasn't good at it. I was terrible." Hannity's weekly show on KCSB was canceled after less than a year. This was after two shows featuring the book The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts about AIDS by Gene Antonio; among other remarks made during the broadcast, Hannity told a lesbian caller, "I feel sorry for your child." The university board that governed the station later reversed its decision due to a campaign conducted on Hannity's behalf by the Santa Barbara chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued that the station had discriminated against Hannity's First Amendment rights. When the station refused to give him a public apology and more airtime, Hannity decided against returning to KCSB. After leaving KCSB, Hannity placed an ad in radio publications presenting himself as "the most talked about college radio host in America." Radio station WVNN in Athens, Alabama (part of the Huntsville market), then hired him to be the afternoon talk show host. From Huntsville, he moved to WGST in Atlanta in 1992, filling the slot vacated by Neal Boortz, who had moved to competing station WSB. In September 1996, Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes hired the then relatively unknown Hannity to host a television program under the working title Hannity and LTBD ("liberal to be determined"). Alan Colmes was then hired to co-host and the show debuted as Hannity & Colmes. Later that year, Hannity left WGST for New York, where WABC had him substitute for their afternoon drive time host during Christmas week. In January 1997, WABC put Hannity on the air full-time, giving him the late night time slot. WABC then moved Hannity to the same drive time slot he had filled temporarily a little more than a year earlier. Hannity was on WABC's afternoon time slot from January 1998 until the end of 2013. Since January 2014, Hannity has hosted the 3-6 p.m. time slot on WOR in New York City. In their 2007 book Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That Is Destroying America, conservative Cal Thomas and liberal Bob Beckel describe Hannity as a leader of the pack among broadcasting political polarizers, which following James Q. Wilson they define as those who have "an intense commitment to a candidate, a culture, or an ideology that sets people in one group definitively apart from people in another, rival group." CANNOTANSWER

Sean Patrick Hannity (born December 30, 1961) is an American talk show host, conservative political commentator, and author. He is the host of The Sean Hannity Show, a nationally syndicated talk radio show, and has also hosted a commentary program, Hannity, on Fox News, since 2009. Hannity worked as a general contractor and volunteered as a talk show host at UC Santa Barbara in 1989. He later joined WVNN in Athens, Alabama and shortly afterward, WGST in Atlanta. After leaving WGST, he worked at WABC in New York until 2013. Since 2014, Hannity has worked at WOR. In 1996, Hannity and Alan Colmes co-hosted Hannity & Colmes on Fox. After Colmes announced his departure in January 2008, Hannity merged the Hannity & Colmes show into Hannity. Hannity has received several awards and honors, including an honorary degree from Liberty University. He has written three New York Times best-selling books: Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism; Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism; and Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda, and released a fourth, Live Free or Die, in 2020. Hannity has promoted numerous conspiracy theories, such as "birtherism" (claims that then-President Barack Obama was not a legitimate U.S. citizen), claims regarding the murder of Seth Rich, and falsehoods about Hillary Clinton's health. Hannity was an early supporter of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Hannity often acted as an unofficial spokesman for the president, criticizing the media and attacking Robert Mueller's inquiry into Russian interference in Trump's election. He reportedly spoke to Trump on the phone most weeknights. He spoke at the president's lectern during a Trump rally, and White House advisors characterized him as the "shadow" chief of staff. According to Forbes, by 2018 Hannity had become one of the most-watched hosts in cable news and most-listened-to hosts in talk radio, due in part to his closeness and access to Trump. Early life and education Hannity was born in New York City, New York, the son of Lillian (née Flynn) and Hugh Hannity. Lillian worked as a stenographer and a corrections officer at a county jail, while Hugh was a World War II veteran and family-court officer. He was the youngest of four siblings and the only boy. All his grandparents immigrated to the United States from Ireland. He grew up in Franklin Square, New York on Long Island. In his youth, Hannity worked as a paperboy delivering issues of the New York Daily News and the Long Island Daily Press. His parents were initially supporters of President John F. Kennedy, eventually growing more Republican in their views as time went on, though they resisted being overtly political at home. Hannity attended Sacred Heart Seminary in Hempstead, New York and St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary in Uniondale, New York. He attended New York University and Adelphi University, but did not graduate from either. Career In 1982, Hannity started a house-painting business and a few years later, worked as a building contractor in Santa Barbara, California. He hosted his first talk radio show in 1989 at the volunteer college station at UC Santa Barbara, KCSB-FM, while working as a general contractor. The show aired for 40 hours of air time. Regarding his first show, he said, "I wasn't good at it. I was terrible." Radio Hannity's weekly show on KCSB was canceled after less than a year after a controversy. During two shows, gay and lesbian rights were discussed in what was considered to be a contentious manner. (See LGBT issues below.) The university board that governed the station later reversed its decision after a campaign conducted on Hannity's behalf by the Santa Barbara chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the station had discriminated against Hannity's First Amendment rights. When the station refused to issue Hannity a public apology and more airtime, he did not return to KCSB. After leaving KCSB, Hannity placed an advertisement in radio publications, presenting himself as "the most talked about college radio host in America". Radio station WVNN in Athens, Alabama (part of the Huntsville media market), then hired him to be the afternoon talk show host. From Huntsville, he moved to WGST in Atlanta in 1992, filling the slot vacated by Neal Boortz, who had moved to competing station WSB. In September 1996, Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes hired the then relatively unknown Hannity to host a television program under the working title Hannity and LTBD ("liberal to be determined"). Alan Colmes was then hired to co-host and the show debuted as Hannity & Colmes. Later that year, Hannity left WGST for New York, where WABC had him substitute for their afternoon drive time host during Christmas week. In January 1997, WABC put Hannity on the air full-time, giving him the late-night time slot. WABC then moved Hannity to the same drive-time slot he had filled temporarily a little more than a year earlier. Hannity was on WABC's afternoon time slot from January 1998. In their 2007 book Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That Is Destroying America, conservative Cal Thomas and liberal Bob Beckel describe Hannity as a leader of the pack among broadcasting political polarizers, which following James Q. Wilson they define as those who have "an intense commitment to a candidate, a culture, or an ideology that sets people in one group definitively apart from people in another, rival group". The WABC slot continued until the end of 2013. Since January 2014, Hannity has hosted the 3:00–6:00p.m. time slot on WOR in New York City. Hannity's radio program is a conservative political talk show that features Hannity's opinions and ideology related to current issues and politicians. The Sean Hannity Show began national syndication on September 10, 2001, on more than five hundred stations nationwide. In 2004, Hannity signed a $25million five-year contract extension with ABC Radio (now Citadel Media) to continue the show until 2009. The program was made available via Armed Forces Radio Network in 2006. In June 2007, ABC Radio was sold to Citadel Communications and in the summer of 2008, Hannity was signed for a $100million five-year contract. As of March 2018, the program is heard by more than 13.5 million listeners a week. Hannity was ranked No.2 in Talkers Magazine's 2017 Heavy Hundred and was listed as No.72 on Forbes' "Celebrity 100" list in 2013. In January 2007, Clear Channel Communications signed a groupwide three-year extension with Hannity on more than eighty stations. The largest stations in the group deal included KTRH Houston, KFYI Phoenix, WPGB Pittsburgh, WKRC Cincinnati, WOOD Grand Rapids, WFLA Tampa, WOAI San Antonio, WLAC Nashville, and WREC Memphis. Hannity signed a long-term contract to remain with Premiere Networks in September 2013. At the beginning of 2014, Hannity signed contracts to air on several Salem Communications stations including WDTK Detroit, WIND Chicago, WWRC (now WQOF) Washington, D.C., and KSKY Dallas. Television Hannity was a co-host of Hannity & Colmes, an American political "point-counterpoint"-style television program on the Fox News Channel featuring Hannity and Alan Colmes as co-hosts. Hannity presented the conservative point of view with Colmes providing the liberal viewpoint. While Hannity's views are typically politically and socially conservative, he has spoken supportively about birth control, which has led to on-air clashes with pro-life guests such as Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International. Hannity said if the Catholic Church were to excommunicate him over his support for contraception, he would join Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church. In January 2007, Hannity began a new Sunday night television show on Fox News, Hannity's America. In November 2008, Colmes announced his departure from Hannity & Colmes. After the show's final broadcast on January 9, 2009, Hannity took over the time slot with his own new show, Hannity, which has a format similar to Hannity's America. Books Hannity is the author of four books. Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism was published in 2002, and Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism was published in 2004 through ReganBooks. Both these books reached the nonfiction New York Times bestseller list, the second of which stayed there for five weeks. Hannity has said he is too busy to write many books, and dictated a lot of his own two books into a tape recorder while driving in to do his radio show. Hannity wrote his third book, Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda, which was released by HarperCollins in March 2010. The book became Hannity's third New York Times Bestseller. In 2020, Hannity released his fourth book, Live Free or Die. Let Freedom Ring:Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism, William Morrow, August 1, 2002, . Deliver Us From Evil:Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, William Morrow, February 17, 2004, . Conservative Victory:Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda, HarperCollins, March 30, 2010, . Live Free or Die:America (and the World) on the Brink, Threshold Editions, August 4, 2020, . Freedom Concerts From 2003 until 2010, Hannity hosted country music-themed "Freedom Concerts" to raise money for charity. In 2010, conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote that only a small percentage of the money raised by the concerts goes to the target charity, Freedom Alliance. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), also in 2010. The FTC complaint alleges that Hannity was "falsely promoting that all concert proceeds would be donated to a scholarship fund for the children of those killed or wounded in war". The complaint filed with the IRS claims that Freedom Alliance has violated its 501(c)3 charity status. The concerts stopped around the same year. Awards and honors Hannity received a Marconi Award in 2003 and 2007 as the Network Syndicated Personality of the Year from the National Association of Broadcasters. In 2009, Talkers Magazine listed Hannity as No.2 on their list of the 100 most important radio talk show hosts in America (with Rush Limbaugh listed as No.1). The same magazine gave Hannity its Freedom of Speech Award in 2003. In 2005, Jerry Falwell, chancellor of the evangelical Liberty University, awarded Hannity an honorary degree. Hannity was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in November 2017. Other activities Hannity has had cameo appearances in film and television, having a brief voiceover in The Siege as an unseen reporter, and appearing in Atlas Shrugged: Part II and the second season of House of Cards as himself. He executive produced and appeared in the 2017 film Let There Be Light, which also stars Kevin Sorbo. As of April 2018, Hannity owned at least 877 residential properties, which were bought for nearly $89million. He purchased some of the homes with the help of loans from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and most are in working-class neighborhoods. His property managers have taken an aggressive management approach with a much higher than average eviction rate. The Washington Post reported that his property management team has used eviction proceedings both to remove tenants and to generate revenue. His property managers have claimed that Hannity has no active role in the management of the more than 1,000 properties he has a stake in. Controversies and criticism According to The Washington Post, Hannity "repeatedly embraces storylines that prove to be inaccurate" and takes positions that change over time. In the opinion of The New York Times, Hannity is "barreling headfirst into the murky territory between opinion and out-and-out conspiracy theorism". Hannity often promotes conspiracy theories without explicitly endorsing them, unlike Alex Jones. The New York Times wrote that this "has the effect of nourishing the more wild-eyed beliefs of his fans while providing Hannity a degree of plausible deniability". The New Yorker wrote in 2019 that Hannity had "[spewed] baseless conspiracy theories with impunity". During the Bush years, Hannity "loyally supported the president's policies". During the Obama administration, Hannity "leaned more heavily on stories he believed were being given short shrift by the 'liberal media'stories about where Obama was born, and who deserved blame for the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya". In 2017, The Washington Post wrote that "what Hannity has stood forat least for the past couple of yearsis Trump." Candidacy of Donald Trump Hannity is known for his pro-Trump coverage. According to The Washington Post, "Hannity's comeback coincided with his early, eager embrace of his fellow New Yorker... Trump attacked the Gold Star father, and Hannity stood by him. Trump went after a federal judge of Mexican descent, and Hannity backed him. After the Access Hollywood tape emerged of Trump making lewd comments about inappropriate sexual behaviour towards women, Hannity continued to defend him: 'King David had 500 concubines, for crying out loud.'" After the inauguration, the first interview the new president gave to a cable news channel was conducted by Hannity. Hannity additionally defended the Trump administration's false claim that Trump's inauguration crowd was the biggest ever. Hannity has been criticized as being overly favorable to the candidacy of Donald Trump, and granting Trump more airtime than other presidential candidates during the 2016 primaries. Hannity, for instance, let Trump promote the false claim that Rafael Cruz, father of Trump's rival presidential candidate Ted Cruz, was involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination. He admitted to favoring Republican candidates, though without indicating a preference for Donald Trump over Ted Cruz. According to Dylan Byers of CNN, Hannity during interviews "frequently cites areas where he agrees with Trump, or where he thinks Trump was right about something, then asks him to expand on it", and "often ignores or defends Trump from criticism". Tensions between Cruz and Hannity appeared to reach a boiling point during a contentious April 2016 radio interview, during which Cruz implied Hannity was a "hardcore Donald Trump supporter" and Hannity responded by accusing Cruz of "throw[ing] this in my face" every time he asked a "legitimate question". Jim Rutenberg commented in August 2016 that Hannity is "not only Mr. Trump's biggest media booster; he also veers into the role of adviser," citing sources who said Hannity spent months offering suggestions to Trump and his campaign on strategy and messaging. Hannity responded to the report by saying, "I'm not hiding the fact that I want Donald Trump to be the next President of the United States.... I never claimed to be a journalist." (In an article published in December 2017, Hannity said "I'm a journalist. But I'm an advocacy journalist, or an opinion journalist.") Hannity also appeared in a 2016 Trump campaign ad. Hannity has feuded with several conservatives who oppose Trump, including National Reviews Jonah Goldberg, Wall Street Journal foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens, and National Review editor Rich Lowry. Conspiracy theories During the 2016 presidential election, Hannity periodically promoted conspiracy theories regarding Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Hannity repeatedly claimed that Clinton had very serious medical problems and that the media was covering them up. He misrepresented photos of Clinton to give the impression that she had secret medical problems. He shared a photo from the fake news site Gateway Pundit and falsely claimed that it showed her Secret Service agent holding a diazepam pen intended to treat seizures, when he in fact was holding a small flashlight. He booked doctors on his show to discuss Clinton's health; although these people had never personally examined Clinton, they made alarmist statements about her state of health which turned out to be false. At one point, Hannity promoted an unsubstantiated report that Clinton had been drunk at a rally; at another point, he suggested that Clinton was drunk and that her campaign needed to "sober her up". Although Hannity said he believed President Obama was born in the U.S., to answer queries on Obama's citizenship, he repeatedly called on Obama to release his birth certificate. Hannity described the circumstances regarding Obama's birth certificate as "odd". Hannity also defended and promoted those who questioned Obama's citizenship of the U.S., such as Donald Trump. Hannity invited Trump to his show while Trump was a leader in the birther movement; during an interview with Hannity, Trump said Obama "could have easily have come from Kenya, or someplace". Hannity said in response, "The issue could go away in a minute. Just show the certificate." Even after Obama produced his birth certificate in 2008, certified by the state of Hawaii, Hannity kept calling on Obama to release his birth certificate, asking why did he not "just produce it and we move on?" In October 2016, Hannity offered to purchase a one-way ticket to Kenya for Obama. In May 2017, Hannity became a prominent promoter of the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party had a DNC staffer killed. Shortly afterward, he faced backlash from news sources across the political spectrum and lost several advertisers, including Crowne Plaza Hotels, Cars.com, Leesa Mattress, USAA, Peloton and Casper Sleep deciding to pull their marketing from his program on Fox News. However, USAA decided to return to the show shortly after following a negative outcry against its decision to pull out. Conservative magazine National Review compared the story to a flat earth video, called it a "disgrace" that Hannity and other conspiracy theorists were hyping the story, and called for them to stop. In March 2018, Seth Rich's parents filed a lawsuit against Fox News for pushing conspiracy theories about their son's death. The suit alleges that the network "intentionally exploited" the tragedy for political purposes. On October 12, 2020, Fox News agreed to pay millions of dollars to the Rich family. Hannity came under criticism during the 2016 presidential election for false claims about election rigging during interviews. Hannity responded to this by citing Mitt Romney's failure in the 2012 United States presidential election to obtain any votes in 59 of 1,687 Philadelphia voting districts as proof of election rigging. However, FactCheck.org and PolitiFact found that it was not unusual at all for this to occur, as those electoral districts are heavily African-American. Philadelphia elections inspector Ryan Godfrey also refuted Hannity's claim. After the 2020 election, Hannity amplified false claims of election fraud, including by hosting former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell on his Fox News show, where Powell made unsubstantiated allegations on the topic. In 2022, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack is investigating what Hannity may have known in advance. The committee discovered that, on December 31, 2020, Hannity texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, saying, "I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he [Trump] is being told." In December 2020, Hannity called for Trump's claims of voter fraud to be investigated by a special prosecutor, despite no credible evidence of such. The Washington Post reported in May 2022 that Hannity participated in a conference call days after the 2020 presidential election that focused on strategies for challenging the legitimacy of the vote. Other participants on the call included senator Lindsey Graham, Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow, Oracle Corporation founder Larry Ellison and James Bopp, an attorney for True the Vote. Fox News was sued for defamation in 2021 by Dominion Voting Systems, after Hannity and other network hosts and their guests promoted claims the company's voting machines had been rigged against Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Shortly after the election, Hannity hosted Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who made such assertions, but Hannity said in a sworn deposition for the Dominion case, "I did not believe it for one second." Hannity has advocated the QAnon and "deep state" conspiracy theories. The latter proposes a government officials network is working to hinder the Trump administration. He has described the deep state as a "Shadow Government" and "Deep state swamp of Obama holdovers and DC lifers". In March 2017, he called for a "purge" of Obama-era bureaucrats and appointees in government. In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, conservative columnist Bret Stephens disputed Hannity's deep state allegations, saying they were an example of the "paranoid style in politics". Later that month, Hannity said NBC News was part of the deep state. In May 2017, he reiterated that deep state/intelligence operatives were trying to destroy the Trump presidency. WikiLeaks In 2010, Hannity said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was waging a "war" on the United States, and that Wikileaks put American lives in "jeopardy" and "danger" around the world. He also criticized the Obama administration for failing to apprehend Assange. In 2016, after Wikileaks published leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee, Hannity praised Assange for showing "how corrupt, dishonest and phony our government is". He told Assange in a September 2016 interview, "I do hope you get free one day. I wish you the best." The following month, Hannity claimed that WikiLeaks has revealed "everything that conspiracy theorists have said over the years" about Hillary Clinton is true. In February 2017, Hannity retweeted a WikiLeaks tweet linking to an article by the conspiracy website Gateway Pundit, claiming that John McCain was a "globalist war criminal". McCain's spokeswoman called Hannity out on it, asking him to "correct the record". Hannity later deleted the tweet. In May 2017, Hannity made an offer to Assange to guest host his Fox News TV show. Relationships with Donald Trump, Michael Cohen and other officials Hannity developed a close relationship with Trump during the election and has become even closer during his presidency. The two men speak on the phone multiple times a week, discussing Hannity's weekday show, the special counsel investigation, even evaluating White House staff. Hannity shares, The Economist asserts, "Mr. Trump's love of conspiracy theories and hatred of snooty elites". They speak so often that one Trump adviser has said Hannity "basically has a desk in the place". On the air, Hannity echoes Trump's attacks on the media and Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Trump sometimes quotes Hannity to others or promotes the show to his Twitter followers. Hannity has encouraged Trump to shut down the government to get funding for a border wall, as well as his declaration of a national emergency over the US–Mexico border. According to reports by the Los Angeles Times and New York magazine, Hannity frequently talks to Trump by telephone after Hannity's weekday broadcasts, and Hannity is one of several dozen cleared callers whose calls to the White House public switchboard can be connected directly to the president. Hannity stirred controversy in April 2018 when it was revealed that he shared a lawyer, Michael Cohen, with Trump. In a breach of journalistic ethics, Hannity had failed to disclose that Cohen was his lawyer while at the same time taking to the Fox airwaves to defend Cohen and criticize those who investigated him. On April 9, 2018, federal agents from the U.S. Attorney's office served a search warrant on the office and residence of Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney. On the air, Hannity defended Cohen and criticized the federal action, calling it "highly questionable" and "an unprecedented abuse of power". On April 16, 2018, in a court hearing, Cohen's lawyers told the judge that Cohen had ten clients in 2017–2018 but did "traditional legal tasks" for only three: Trump, Elliott Broidy, and a "prominent person" who did not wish to be named for fear of being "embarrassed". The federal judge ordered the revelation of the third client, whom Cohen's lawyers named as Hannity. Although Hannity has covered Cohen on his show, he did not disclose that he had consulted with Cohen. Fox News released a statement on April 16, 2018, attributed to Hannity: "Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective. I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third party." Also, NBC News quoted Hannity as saying: "We definitely had attorney–client privilege because I asked him for that," while Hannity said on his radio show that he "might have handed him ten bucks" for the attorney-client privilege. Lastly, Hannity tweeted that his discussions with Cohen were "almost exclusively" about real estate. The following day, news reports revealed that Hannity had shared another lawyer with Trump, Jay Sekulow. Sekulow had written a cease-and-desist letter to KFAQ on Hannity's behalf in May 2017, and later represented Trump in connection with the Mueller investigation. In August 2018, Hannity allowed Sekulow and Rudy Giuliani, another personal lawyer for Trump, to host Hannity's radio show; the duo proceeded to defend Trump and promote arguments made by the Trump administration. In June 2019, Hannity expressed outrage at Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's comment that she would like to see Trump "in prison". Hannity declared: "Based on no actual crimes, she wants a political opponent locked up in prison? That happens in banana republicsbeyond despicable behavior." Aaron Rupar of Vox criticized Hannity for "obvious hypocrisy", noting that Hannity himself had said in January 2018 regarding Hillary Clinton: "I think Hillary should be in jail. Lock her up." Aaron Blake of The Washington Post described Hannity's comment as "a pretty obvious bit of gaslighting", noting Hannity's loyalty to Trump, whose campaign rallies have featured chants of "Lock her up", and also Hannity's comments that Trump was free to investigate Clinton. Hannity played the most important role in persuading Trump to pardon the convicted murderer and war criminal Clint Lorance. After Trump lost the 2020 election, Hannity sent a number of text messages offering advice to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, including a message apparently suggesting a joint "NC Real estate" venture with him. Criticism of FBI, DOJ, and special counsel During President Trump's administration, Hannity has repeatedly been highly critical of the FBI, DOJ, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and others investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. According to a review by Media Matters of all transcripts from the 254 episodes of Hannity's show from Mueller's appointment (May 17, 2017) to May 16, 2018, Hannity had 487 segments substantially devoted to Mueller (approximately two per episode), opened his program with Mueller 152 times (approximately three times per week), and the content of his show was highly critical of the probe and the media's coverage of the probe. He has called the Russia inquiry a "witch hunt", an "utter disgrace", and "a direct threat to you, the American people, and our American republic". Hannity has expressed skepticism of the U.S. intelligence community's view that Russia hacked the Democratic National Convention's emails during the 2016 election and has promoted various conspiracy theories. In March 2017 he publicized a theory, first proposed at the Wikileaks Twitter account, that the CIA could have done the hacking while making it look like Russia did it. In August he suggested that Seth Rich may have been the leaker. Hannity has described the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, as well as James Comey's tenure as FBI Director, as "one giant incestuous circle of corruption". In April 2018, Hannity ran a segment where he claimed there were "criminal" connections between Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mueller, and Comey. Hannity asserted that there were three connected "Deep State crime families" actively "trying to take down the president". A guest on the segment, attorney Joseph diGenova, called Mueller's team "legal terrorists" and referred to Comey as a "dirty cop". In March 2018, Hannity attacked Special Counsel Robert Mueller, saying his career was "anything but impeccable". Hannity said Mueller was friends with former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and that he "cannot be expected to honestly investigate scandals that his friends are directly involved in". He said these individuals were involved in "one massive, huge, deep-state conflict of interest after another. Now they're protecting themselves. They're trying to preserve their own power." Mueller and Comey are professional acquaintances but not known to be friends, while Trump attorney general Bill Barr said in 2019 that he and Mueller had been friends for thirty years. On November 4, 2018, Trump's website, DonaldJTrump.com, announced in a press release that Hannity would make a "special guest appearance" with Trump at a midterm campaign rally the following night in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The following morning, Hannity tweeted "To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the President." Hannity nevertheless spoke at Trump's lectern on stage at the rally, immediately mocking the "fake news" at the back of the auditorium, Fox News reporters among them. Several Fox News employees expressed outrage at Hannity's actions, with one stating, "a new line was crossed". Hannity later asserted that his action was not pre-planned, and Fox News stated it "does not condone any talent participating in campaign events". Fox News host Jeanine Pirro also appeared on stage with Trump at the rally. The Trump press release was later removed from Trump's website. Hannity also claimed that Mueller had been involved in the corrupt dealings of several FBI agents in connection with Boston, Massachusetts crime boss Whitey Bulger. The federal judge who presided over a lawsuit concerning the corrupt dealings said Hannity's claims were unsubstantiated and that Mueller was never accused of any wrongdoing nor even mentioned during the proceedings. In June 2018, after reports that Mueller's probe had asked witnesses to turn their personal phones over to investigators for examination, Hannity sarcastically suggested on air to the witnesses that they "follow Hillary Clinton's lead" and destroy their personal phones so they cannot be examined. In May 2019, after Mueller gave a statement saying the Special Counsel investigation did not exonerate Trump of crimes, Hannity said Mueller was "basically full of crap" and did not know the law. Comments on sexual harassment In 2016, Hannity vociferously defended Roger Ailes when he was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment. In May 2017, Hannity paid a tribute to Ailes after he died. Hannity called him "a second father" and said to Ailes' "enemies" that he was "preparing to kick your in the next life". In April 2017, Hannity came to the defense of Fox News co-president Bill Shine after it was reported that Shine's job was at risk. At least four lawsuits alleged that Shine had ignored, enabled or concealed Ailes' alleged sexual harassment. In another lawsuit, he was accused of belittling a female guest on his TV show, allegedly offering cash to anyone on set who would take her on a date. In September 2017, several months after Bill O'Reilly was fired from Fox News in the wake of a number of women's alleging that he had sexually harassed them, Hannity hosted O'Reilly on his show. Some Fox News employees criticized the decision. In the interview, O'Reilly attacked liberal media watchdog groups and said he should have fought harder when those groups targeted his advertisers. According to CNN, during the interview, Hannity found kinship with O'Reilly as he appeared "to feel that he and O'Reilly have both become victims of liberals looking to silence them". Hannity came under criticism in October 2017 when he attacked Democrats after it became known that a large number of women had accused Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood producer and donor to Democratic causes, of sexual harassment. Critics noted that Hannity had weeks earlier defended and hosted his coworker Bill O'Reilly who was fired following a number of sexual harassment allegations. LGBT rights In the radio show for KCSB, which was the subject of controversy in 1989, Hannity made anti-gay comments. He called AIDS a "gay disease" and said the media was hiding salient information from the public. Two editions featured anti-gay activist Gene Antonio, a Lutheran minister, discussing his book The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts about AIDS. In the book, Antonio claims that AIDS can be spread by people sneezing in close proximity to each other. Hannity encouraged Antonio when he said that AIDS spread when gay men consumed each other's feces, said that homosexuality was a "lower form of behavior", compared homosexual sex to "playing in a sewer" and gay people of being "filled with hatred and bigotry". When a lesbian, another broadcaster at the station, called into the show, Hannity said "I feel sorry for your child." Hannity was quoted at the time as having said "anyone listening to this show that believes homosexuality is a normal lifestyle has been brainwashed." The ACLU opposed his firing and petitioned the station to reverse their decision. Hannity demanded a formal apology and double the airtime. While the station did offer to allow Hannity to return, they would not meet Hannity's additional demands and he declined to return. In 2017, Hannity said he regretted the comments and that they were "ignorant and embarrassing". Immigration Hannity opposed amnesty for undocumented immigrants; however, in 2012 he said he had evolved on the issue and favored a "pathway to citizenship". Later, he opposed that idea. By 2018, he was described as an immigration hardliner by CNN, The Washington Post, and New York magazine. In August 2018, Trump suggested that he might shut down the government to force Congress to fund his border wall, boasting that Hannity agreed with the action. Religion Hannity left the Catholic Church in 2019, citing "too much institutionalized corruption". However, he has said that as he has aged, his Christian faith has "gotten stronger" and that he needs and wants God in his life. Hannity has warned of sharia law coming to the United States. Hannity opposed the building of Park51, a mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center site. Hannity promoted the idea of "Islamic training camps right here in America", which were based on an unsubstantiated "documentary" by the Christian Action Network. In 2006, Hannity was critical of Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to U.S. Congress, being sworn into office with an oath on a Quran. Hannity equated the Quran with Mein Kampf, asking a guest on his show whether he would have allowed Ellison "to choose, you know, Hitler's Mein Kampf, which is the Nazi bible?" Torture In 2009, Hannity said he supported enhanced interrogation, a euphemism for torture. He also volunteered to be waterboarded for charity. In response, Keith Olbermann pledged to donate $1,000 for every second of waterboarding Hannity underwent. In 2017, Hannity continued to advocate for waterboarding, raising the example of using it against a kidnapper. According to Media Matters, Hannity has not been waterboarded as of March 2018. Climate change Hannity rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In 2001, he described it as "phony science from the left". In 2004, he falsely claimed that scientists couldn't agree on whether global warming was "scientific fact or fiction". In 2010, Hannity falsely stated that so-called "Climategate"the leaking of e-mails written by climate scientists that, according to climate change deniers, demonstrated scientific misconduct, but which all subsequent inquiries found to show no evidence of misconduct or wrongdoingwas a scandal that "exposed global warming as a myth cooked up by alarmists". Hannity frequently invites critics of climate science onto his shows. Death panels Hannity promoted the falsehood that the Affordable Care Act would create so-called "death panels". According to a study by Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan, Hannity's show, along with the Laura Ingraham Show, were the first major conservative media personalities to latch onto the false claim of Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, that the Affordable Care Act contained death panels. When Sarah Palin stirred controversy by promoting the death panels myth, and argued her case in a Facebook post, Hannity defended her and said, "I agree with everything that she wrote." Hannity also claimed that he found the specific pages in the Affordable Care Act containing provisions on death panels. A 2016 study found that Hannity promoted a number of falsehoods about the Affordable Care Act. For instance, Hannity falsely alleged several times that Democratic Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus had said Social Security could be "insolvent in two years" due to the Affordable Care Act. According to the study, Hannity, unlike other Fox News hosts such as Bill O'Reilly and Greta Van Susteren, "took a more direct approach, aggressively supporting Republicans and conservatives and attacking Democrats and liberals, endorsing the more spurious claims long after they were proven incorrect, and putting advocacy above accurate reporting, to further the network's themes opposing reform". Jake Tapper In November 2017, Fox News distorted a statement by Jake Tapper to make it appear as if he had said "Allahu Akbar" can be used under the most "beautiful circumstances" in the immediate aftermath of the 2017 New York City truck attack wherein a terrorist shouted "Allahu Akbar". Fox News omitted that Tapper had said the use of "Allahu Akbar" in the terrorist attack was not one of these circumstances. A headline on FoxNews.com was preceded by a tag reading "OUTRAGEOUS". The Fox News Twitter account distorted the statement even more, saying "Jake Tapper Says 'Allahu Akbar' Is 'Beautiful' Right After NYC Terror Attack" in a tweet that was later deleted. Even after the Fox News Twitter account had deleted the tweet on Tapper's out-of-context comments, Hannity repeated the out-of-context comments to his viewers, calling Tapper "liberal fake news CNN's fake Jake Tapper" and mocking his ratings. Foreign policy In 2009, Hannity said of the Iraq War, "we were victorious in spite of the Democrats' efforts and attempts at preventing victory." During the 2016 election, Hannity vouched for Trump's claimed opposition to the Iraq War, "Mr. Trump and I disagreed about the Iraq war; I was for it and he was against it." In June 2019, Hannity called on Trump to "bomb the hell of out Iran" after Iran shot down a U.S. drone. After the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Hannity opened his show by saying, "tonight the world is safer as one of the most ruthless, evil war criminals on Earth has been brought to justice." From 2015 into 2018, Fox News broadcast extensive coverage of an alleged scandal surrounding the sale of Uranium One to Russian interests, which Hannity characterized as "one of the biggest scandals in American history". The Fox News coverage extended throughout the programming day, with particular emphasis by Hannity. The network promoted a narrative asserting that, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton personally approved the Uranium One sale in exchange for $145million in bribes paid to the Clinton Foundation. Donald Trump repeated these allegations as a candidate and as president. No evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton had been found after three years of allegations, an FBI investigation, and the 2017 appointment of a Federal attorney to evaluate the investigation. In November 2017, Fox News host Shepard Smith concisely debunked the alleged scandal, including saying that Clinton did not personally approve the sale, infuriating viewers who suggested he should work for CNN or MSNBC. Hannity later called Smith "clueless", while Smith stated, "I get it, that some of our opinion programming is there strictly to be entertaining. I get that. I don't work there. I wouldn't work there." A two-year Justice Department investigation initiated after Trump became president found no evidence to justify pursuing a criminal investigation. COVID-19 pandemic In February 2020, amid the spread of COVID-19 to the United States, Hannity said "many on the left are now all rooting for corona to wreak havoc in the United States. Why? To score cheap, repulsive political points." In March 2020, he characterized the virus as a "hoax", and said it "may be true" that the outbreak was a "fraud" perpetrated by the "deep state". Later in March, as the disease spread into a global pandemic and Trump declared it a national emergency, Hannity started to take the virus more seriously, denying that he had referred to it as a hoax less than a month earlier. In July 2021, on live television, Hannity encouraged the audience to consider vaccination. Personal life Family and lifestyle Hannity met Jill Rhodes in 1991 when he worked at WVNN in Huntsville, Alabama and she was a political columnist for the Huntsville Times. The two married in 1993. In June 2020, the couple announced that they had divorced the previous year but had separated years prior. Hannity has since dated Fox News colleague Ainsley Earhardt. In August 2019, Hannity and Earhardt arrived together as guests for a wedding at Trump National Golf Course in Colts Neck, New Jersey. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she hosted her Fox & Friends program from a remote studio in the basement of Hannity's Long Island mansion. Hannity has two children from his marriage to Rhodes: a son, Patrick, born in 1998, and daughter, Merri, born in 2001. Both children graduated from Cold Spring Harbor High School. Patrick attended Wake Forest University where he played tennis. Merri attends The University of Michigan where she also plays tennis. In high school, Merri was the fourth highest ranked tennis player in New York State. In 2018, Forbes estimated that Hannity's annual income was $36million. In April 2021, he purchased a $5.3 million house several miles from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. In 2014 he said he has carried a weapon "more than half my adult life". According to Hannity, he has a brown belt in martial arts and trains four days a week in the sport. Bibliography Hannity, Sean (2002). Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism, New York: ReganBooks, . Hannity, Sean (2004). Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, New York: ReganBooks, . Hannity, Sean (2010). Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda, New York: Harper Paperbacks, . Hannity, Sean (2020). Live Free or Die: America (and the World) On the Brink, New York: Simon & Schuster, . See also Fox News controversies New Yorkers in journalism References External links Category:1961 births Category:Living people Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers Category:Adelphi University alumni Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American conservative talk radio hosts Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American political commentators Category:American political writers Category:Christians from New York (state) Category:Conservative Party of New York State politicians Category:Former Roman Catholics Category:Fox News people Category:Male critics of feminism Category:New York (state) Independents Category:New York (state) Republicans Category:New York University alumni Category:People from Centre Island, New York Category:People from Franklin Square, New York Category:Radio personalities from New York City Category:Right-wing populism in the United States Category:Writers from New York City

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Sean Hannity

Sean Patrick Hannity was born in New York City, New York, the son of Lillian (Flynn) and Hugh Hannity. Lillian worked as a stenographer and a corrections officer at a county jail, while Hugh was a family-court officer. He is the youngest of four siblings. All of his grandparents immigrated to the United States from Ireland.

Candidacy of Donald Trump

Hannity is notable for his pro-Trump coverage. According to the Washington Post, "Hannity's comeback coincided with his early, eager embrace of his fellow New Yorker... Trump attacked the Gold Star father, and Hannity stood by him. Trump went after a federal judge of Mexican descent, and Hannity backed him. Even after the "Access Hollywood" tape emerged of Trump boasting about grabbing women, Hannity defended his guy: "King David had 500 concubines, for crying out loud." After the inauguration, the first interview the new president gave to a cable news channel went to Hannity." Hannity also defended the Trump administration's false claim that Trump's inauguration crowd was the biggest ever. Hannity was criticized by some, especially supporters of Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign, as being overly favorable to the candidacy of Donald Trump and granting Trump more airtime than other presidential candidates during the 2016 primaries. Hannity, for instance, let Donald Trump promote the false conspiracy theory that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the John F Kennedy assassination. During interviews, Hannity "frequently cites areas where he agrees with Trump, or where he thinks Trump was right about something, then asks him to expand on it", and "often ignores or defends Trump from criticism," according to a CNN report. Tensions between Cruz and Hannity appeared to reach a boiling point during a contentious April 2016 radio interview, during which Cruz implied Hannity was a "hard-core Donald Trump supporter" and Hannity responded by accusing Cruz of "throw[ing] this in my face" every time he asked a "legitimate question". Jim Rutenberg reported in August 2016 that Hannity is "not only Mr. Trump's biggest media booster; he also veers into the role of adviser," citing sources who said Hannity spent months offering suggestions to Trump and his campaign on strategy and messaging. Hannity responded to the report by saying, "I'm not hiding the fact that I want Donald Trump to be the next President of the United States. ...I never claimed to be a journalist." (In an article published in December 2017, Hannity said "I'm a journalist. But I'm an advocacy journalist, or an opinion journalist.") Hannity has feuded with several conservatives who oppose Trump, including National Review's Jonah Goldberg, Wall Street Journal foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens, and National Review editor Rich Lowry. In 2017, Trump was reported to often call Hannity after his nightly Fox program. CANNOTANSWER

Sean Patrick Hannity (born December 30, 1961) is an American talk show host, conservative political commentator, and author. He is the host of The Sean Hannity Show, a nationally syndicated talk radio show, and has also hosted a commentary program, Hannity, on Fox News, since 2009. Hannity worked as a general contractor and volunteered as a talk show host at UC Santa Barbara in 1989. He later joined WVNN in Athens, Alabama and shortly afterward, WGST in Atlanta. After leaving WGST, he worked at WABC in New York until 2013. Since 2014, Hannity has worked at WOR. In 1996, Hannity and Alan Colmes co-hosted Hannity & Colmes on Fox. After Colmes announced his departure in January 2008, Hannity merged the Hannity & Colmes show into Hannity. Hannity has received several awards and honors, including an honorary degree from Liberty University. He has written three New York Times best-selling books: Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism; Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism; and Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda, and released a fourth, Live Free or Die, in 2020. Hannity has promoted numerous conspiracy theories, such as "birtherism" (claims that then-President Barack Obama was not a legitimate U.S. citizen), claims regarding the murder of Seth Rich, and falsehoods about Hillary Clinton's health. Hannity was an early supporter of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Hannity often acted as an unofficial spokesman for the president, criticizing the media and attacking Robert Mueller's inquiry into Russian interference in Trump's election. He reportedly spoke to Trump on the phone most weeknights. He spoke at the president's lectern during a Trump rally, and White House advisors characterized him as the "shadow" chief of staff. According to Forbes, by 2018 Hannity had become one of the most-watched hosts in cable news and most-listened-to hosts in talk radio, due in part to his closeness and access to Trump. Early life and education Hannity was born in New York City, New York, the son of Lillian (née Flynn) and Hugh Hannity. Lillian worked as a stenographer and a corrections officer at a county jail, while Hugh was a World War II veteran and family-court officer. He was the youngest of four siblings and the only boy. All his grandparents immigrated to the United States from Ireland. He grew up in Franklin Square, New York on Long Island. In his youth, Hannity worked as a paperboy delivering issues of the New York Daily News and the Long Island Daily Press. His parents were initially supporters of President John F. Kennedy, eventually growing more Republican in their views as time went on, though they resisted being overtly political at home. Hannity attended Sacred Heart Seminary in Hempstead, New York and St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary in Uniondale, New York. He attended New York University and Adelphi University, but did not graduate from either. Career In 1982, Hannity started a house-painting business and a few years later, worked as a building contractor in Santa Barbara, California. He hosted his first talk radio show in 1989 at the volunteer college station at UC Santa Barbara, KCSB-FM, while working as a general contractor. The show aired for 40 hours of air time. Regarding his first show, he said, "I wasn't good at it. I was terrible." Radio Hannity's weekly show on KCSB was canceled after less than a year after a controversy. During two shows, gay and lesbian rights were discussed in what was considered to be a contentious manner. (See LGBT issues below.) The university board that governed the station later reversed its decision after a campaign conducted on Hannity's behalf by the Santa Barbara chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the station had discriminated against Hannity's First Amendment rights. When the station refused to issue Hannity a public apology and more airtime, he did not return to KCSB. After leaving KCSB, Hannity placed an advertisement in radio publications, presenting himself as "the most talked about college radio host in America". Radio station WVNN in Athens, Alabama (part of the Huntsville media market), then hired him to be the afternoon talk show host. From Huntsville, he moved to WGST in Atlanta in 1992, filling the slot vacated by Neal Boortz, who had moved to competing station WSB. In September 1996, Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes hired the then relatively unknown Hannity to host a television program under the working title Hannity and LTBD ("liberal to be determined"). Alan Colmes was then hired to co-host and the show debuted as Hannity & Colmes. Later that year, Hannity left WGST for New York, where WABC had him substitute for their afternoon drive time host during Christmas week. In January 1997, WABC put Hannity on the air full-time, giving him the late-night time slot. WABC then moved Hannity to the same drive-time slot he had filled temporarily a little more than a year earlier. Hannity was on WABC's afternoon time slot from January 1998. In their 2007 book Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That Is Destroying America, conservative Cal Thomas and liberal Bob Beckel describe Hannity as a leader of the pack among broadcasting political polarizers, which following James Q. Wilson they define as those who have "an intense commitment to a candidate, a culture, or an ideology that sets people in one group definitively apart from people in another, rival group". The WABC slot continued until the end of 2013. Since January 2014, Hannity has hosted the 3:00–6:00p.m. time slot on WOR in New York City. Hannity's radio program is a conservative political talk show that features Hannity's opinions and ideology related to current issues and politicians. The Sean Hannity Show began national syndication on September 10, 2001, on more than five hundred stations nationwide. In 2004, Hannity signed a $25million five-year contract extension with ABC Radio (now Citadel Media) to continue the show until 2009. The program was made available via Armed Forces Radio Network in 2006. In June 2007, ABC Radio was sold to Citadel Communications and in the summer of 2008, Hannity was signed for a $100million five-year contract. As of March 2018, the program is heard by more than 13.5 million listeners a week. Hannity was ranked No.2 in Talkers Magazine's 2017 Heavy Hundred and was listed as No.72 on Forbes' "Celebrity 100" list in 2013. In January 2007, Clear Channel Communications signed a groupwide three-year extension with Hannity on more than eighty stations. The largest stations in the group deal included KTRH Houston, KFYI Phoenix, WPGB Pittsburgh, WKRC Cincinnati, WOOD Grand Rapids, WFLA Tampa, WOAI San Antonio, WLAC Nashville, and WREC Memphis. Hannity signed a long-term contract to remain with Premiere Networks in September 2013. At the beginning of 2014, Hannity signed contracts to air on several Salem Communications stations including WDTK Detroit, WIND Chicago, WWRC (now WQOF) Washington, D.C., and KSKY Dallas. Television Hannity was a co-host of Hannity & Colmes, an American political "point-counterpoint"-style television program on the Fox News Channel featuring Hannity and Alan Colmes as co-hosts. Hannity presented the conservative point of view with Colmes providing the liberal viewpoint. While Hannity's views are typically politically and socially conservative, he has spoken supportively about birth control, which has led to on-air clashes with pro-life guests such as Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International. Hannity said if the Catholic Church were to excommunicate him over his support for contraception, he would join Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church. In January 2007, Hannity began a new Sunday night television show on Fox News, Hannity's America. In November 2008, Colmes announced his departure from Hannity & Colmes. After the show's final broadcast on January 9, 2009, Hannity took over the time slot with his own new show, Hannity, which has a format similar to Hannity's America. Books Hannity is the author of four books. Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism was published in 2002, and Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism was published in 2004 through ReganBooks. Both these books reached the nonfiction New York Times bestseller list, the second of which stayed there for five weeks. Hannity has said he is too busy to write many books, and dictated a lot of his own two books into a tape recorder while driving in to do his radio show. Hannity wrote his third book, Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda, which was released by HarperCollins in March 2010. The book became Hannity's third New York Times Bestseller. In 2020, Hannity released his fourth book, Live Free or Die. Let Freedom Ring:Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism, William Morrow, August 1, 2002, . Deliver Us From Evil:Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, William Morrow, February 17, 2004, . Conservative Victory:Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda, HarperCollins, March 30, 2010, . Live Free or Die:America (and the World) on the Brink, Threshold Editions, August 4, 2020, . Freedom Concerts From 2003 until 2010, Hannity hosted country music-themed "Freedom Concerts" to raise money for charity. In 2010, conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote that only a small percentage of the money raised by the concerts goes to the target charity, Freedom Alliance. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), also in 2010. The FTC complaint alleges that Hannity was "falsely promoting that all concert proceeds would be donated to a scholarship fund for the children of those killed or wounded in war". The complaint filed with the IRS claims that Freedom Alliance has violated its 501(c)3 charity status. The concerts stopped around the same year. Awards and honors Hannity received a Marconi Award in 2003 and 2007 as the Network Syndicated Personality of the Year from the National Association of Broadcasters. In 2009, Talkers Magazine listed Hannity as No.2 on their list of the 100 most important radio talk show hosts in America (with Rush Limbaugh listed as No.1). The same magazine gave Hannity its Freedom of Speech Award in 2003. In 2005, Jerry Falwell, chancellor of the evangelical Liberty University, awarded Hannity an honorary degree. Hannity was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in November 2017. Other activities Hannity has had cameo appearances in film and television, having a brief voiceover in The Siege as an unseen reporter, and appearing in Atlas Shrugged: Part II and the second season of House of Cards as himself. He executive produced and appeared in the 2017 film Let There Be Light, which also stars Kevin Sorbo. As of April 2018, Hannity owned at least 877 residential properties, which were bought for nearly $89million. He purchased some of the homes with the help of loans from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and most are in working-class neighborhoods. His property managers have taken an aggressive management approach with a much higher than average eviction rate. The Washington Post reported that his property management team has used eviction proceedings both to remove tenants and to generate revenue. His property managers have claimed that Hannity has no active role in the management of the more than 1,000 properties he has a stake in. Controversies and criticism According to The Washington Post, Hannity "repeatedly embraces storylines that prove to be inaccurate" and takes positions that change over time. In the opinion of The New York Times, Hannity is "barreling headfirst into the murky territory between opinion and out-and-out conspiracy theorism". Hannity often promotes conspiracy theories without explicitly endorsing them, unlike Alex Jones. The New York Times wrote that this "has the effect of nourishing the more wild-eyed beliefs of his fans while providing Hannity a degree of plausible deniability". The New Yorker wrote in 2019 that Hannity had "[spewed] baseless conspiracy theories with impunity". During the Bush years, Hannity "loyally supported the president's policies". During the Obama administration, Hannity "leaned more heavily on stories he believed were being given short shrift by the 'liberal media'stories about where Obama was born, and who deserved blame for the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya". In 2017, The Washington Post wrote that "what Hannity has stood forat least for the past couple of yearsis Trump." Candidacy of Donald Trump Hannity is known for his pro-Trump coverage. According to The Washington Post, "Hannity's comeback coincided with his early, eager embrace of his fellow New Yorker... Trump attacked the Gold Star father, and Hannity stood by him. Trump went after a federal judge of Mexican descent, and Hannity backed him. After the Access Hollywood tape emerged of Trump making lewd comments about inappropriate sexual behaviour towards women, Hannity continued to defend him: 'King David had 500 concubines, for crying out loud.'" After the inauguration, the first interview the new president gave to a cable news channel was conducted by Hannity. Hannity additionally defended the Trump administration's false claim that Trump's inauguration crowd was the biggest ever. Hannity has been criticized as being overly favorable to the candidacy of Donald Trump, and granting Trump more airtime than other presidential candidates during the 2016 primaries. Hannity, for instance, let Trump promote the false claim that Rafael Cruz, father of Trump's rival presidential candidate Ted Cruz, was involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination. He admitted to favoring Republican candidates, though without indicating a preference for Donald Trump over Ted Cruz. According to Dylan Byers of CNN, Hannity during interviews "frequently cites areas where he agrees with Trump, or where he thinks Trump was right about something, then asks him to expand on it", and "often ignores or defends Trump from criticism". Tensions between Cruz and Hannity appeared to reach a boiling point during a contentious April 2016 radio interview, during which Cruz implied Hannity was a "hardcore Donald Trump supporter" and Hannity responded by accusing Cruz of "throw[ing] this in my face" every time he asked a "legitimate question". Jim Rutenberg commented in August 2016 that Hannity is "not only Mr. Trump's biggest media booster; he also veers into the role of adviser," citing sources who said Hannity spent months offering suggestions to Trump and his campaign on strategy and messaging. Hannity responded to the report by saying, "I'm not hiding the fact that I want Donald Trump to be the next President of the United States.... I never claimed to be a journalist." (In an article published in December 2017, Hannity said "I'm a journalist. But I'm an advocacy journalist, or an opinion journalist.") Hannity also appeared in a 2016 Trump campaign ad. Hannity has feuded with several conservatives who oppose Trump, including National Reviews Jonah Goldberg, Wall Street Journal foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens, and National Review editor Rich Lowry. Conspiracy theories During the 2016 presidential election, Hannity periodically promoted conspiracy theories regarding Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Hannity repeatedly claimed that Clinton had very serious medical problems and that the media was covering them up. He misrepresented photos of Clinton to give the impression that she had secret medical problems. He shared a photo from the fake news site Gateway Pundit and falsely claimed that it showed her Secret Service agent holding a diazepam pen intended to treat seizures, when he in fact was holding a small flashlight. He booked doctors on his show to discuss Clinton's health; although these people had never personally examined Clinton, they made alarmist statements about her state of health which turned out to be false. At one point, Hannity promoted an unsubstantiated report that Clinton had been drunk at a rally; at another point, he suggested that Clinton was drunk and that her campaign needed to "sober her up". Although Hannity said he believed President Obama was born in the U.S., to answer queries on Obama's citizenship, he repeatedly called on Obama to release his birth certificate. Hannity described the circumstances regarding Obama's birth certificate as "odd". Hannity also defended and promoted those who questioned Obama's citizenship of the U.S., such as Donald Trump. Hannity invited Trump to his show while Trump was a leader in the birther movement; during an interview with Hannity, Trump said Obama "could have easily have come from Kenya, or someplace". Hannity said in response, "The issue could go away in a minute. Just show the certificate." Even after Obama produced his birth certificate in 2008, certified by the state of Hawaii, Hannity kept calling on Obama to release his birth certificate, asking why did he not "just produce it and we move on?" In October 2016, Hannity offered to purchase a one-way ticket to Kenya for Obama. In May 2017, Hannity became a prominent promoter of the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party had a DNC staffer killed. Shortly afterward, he faced backlash from news sources across the political spectrum and lost several advertisers, including Crowne Plaza Hotels, Cars.com, Leesa Mattress, USAA, Peloton and Casper Sleep deciding to pull their marketing from his program on Fox News. However, USAA decided to return to the show shortly after following a negative outcry against its decision to pull out. Conservative magazine National Review compared the story to a flat earth video, called it a "disgrace" that Hannity and other conspiracy theorists were hyping the story, and called for them to stop. In March 2018, Seth Rich's parents filed a lawsuit against Fox News for pushing conspiracy theories about their son's death. The suit alleges that the network "intentionally exploited" the tragedy for political purposes. On October 12, 2020, Fox News agreed to pay millions of dollars to the Rich family. Hannity came under criticism during the 2016 presidential election for false claims about election rigging during interviews. Hannity responded to this by citing Mitt Romney's failure in the 2012 United States presidential election to obtain any votes in 59 of 1,687 Philadelphia voting districts as proof of election rigging. However, FactCheck.org and PolitiFact found that it was not unusual at all for this to occur, as those electoral districts are heavily African-American. Philadelphia elections inspector Ryan Godfrey also refuted Hannity's claim. After the 2020 election, Hannity amplified false claims of election fraud, including by hosting former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell on his Fox News show, where Powell made unsubstantiated allegations on the topic. In 2022, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack is investigating what Hannity may have known in advance. The committee discovered that, on December 31, 2020, Hannity texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, saying, "I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he [Trump] is being told." In December 2020, Hannity called for Trump's claims of voter fraud to be investigated by a special prosecutor, despite no credible evidence of such. The Washington Post reported in May 2022 that Hannity participated in a conference call days after the 2020 presidential election that focused on strategies for challenging the legitimacy of the vote. Other participants on the call included senator Lindsey Graham, Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow, Oracle Corporation founder Larry Ellison and James Bopp, an attorney for True the Vote. Fox News was sued for defamation in 2021 by Dominion Voting Systems, after Hannity and other network hosts and their guests promoted claims the company's voting machines had been rigged against Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Shortly after the election, Hannity hosted Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who made such assertions, but Hannity said in a sworn deposition for the Dominion case, "I did not believe it for one second." Hannity has advocated the QAnon and "deep state" conspiracy theories. The latter proposes a government officials network is working to hinder the Trump administration. He has described the deep state as a "Shadow Government" and "Deep state swamp of Obama holdovers and DC lifers". In March 2017, he called for a "purge" of Obama-era bureaucrats and appointees in government. In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, conservative columnist Bret Stephens disputed Hannity's deep state allegations, saying they were an example of the "paranoid style in politics". Later that month, Hannity said NBC News was part of the deep state. In May 2017, he reiterated that deep state/intelligence operatives were trying to destroy the Trump presidency. WikiLeaks In 2010, Hannity said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was waging a "war" on the United States, and that Wikileaks put American lives in "jeopardy" and "danger" around the world. He also criticized the Obama administration for failing to apprehend Assange. In 2016, after Wikileaks published leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee, Hannity praised Assange for showing "how corrupt, dishonest and phony our government is". He told Assange in a September 2016 interview, "I do hope you get free one day. I wish you the best." The following month, Hannity claimed that WikiLeaks has revealed "everything that conspiracy theorists have said over the years" about Hillary Clinton is true. In February 2017, Hannity retweeted a WikiLeaks tweet linking to an article by the conspiracy website Gateway Pundit, claiming that John McCain was a "globalist war criminal". McCain's spokeswoman called Hannity out on it, asking him to "correct the record". Hannity later deleted the tweet. In May 2017, Hannity made an offer to Assange to guest host his Fox News TV show. Relationships with Donald Trump, Michael Cohen and other officials Hannity developed a close relationship with Trump during the election and has become even closer during his presidency. The two men speak on the phone multiple times a week, discussing Hannity's weekday show, the special counsel investigation, even evaluating White House staff. Hannity shares, The Economist asserts, "Mr. Trump's love of conspiracy theories and hatred of snooty elites". They speak so often that one Trump adviser has said Hannity "basically has a desk in the place". On the air, Hannity echoes Trump's attacks on the media and Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Trump sometimes quotes Hannity to others or promotes the show to his Twitter followers. Hannity has encouraged Trump to shut down the government to get funding for a border wall, as well as his declaration of a national emergency over the US–Mexico border. According to reports by the Los Angeles Times and New York magazine, Hannity frequently talks to Trump by telephone after Hannity's weekday broadcasts, and Hannity is one of several dozen cleared callers whose calls to the White House public switchboard can be connected directly to the president. Hannity stirred controversy in April 2018 when it was revealed that he shared a lawyer, Michael Cohen, with Trump. In a breach of journalistic ethics, Hannity had failed to disclose that Cohen was his lawyer while at the same time taking to the Fox airwaves to defend Cohen and criticize those who investigated him. On April 9, 2018, federal agents from the U.S. Attorney's office served a search warrant on the office and residence of Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney. On the air, Hannity defended Cohen and criticized the federal action, calling it "highly questionable" and "an unprecedented abuse of power". On April 16, 2018, in a court hearing, Cohen's lawyers told the judge that Cohen had ten clients in 2017–2018 but did "traditional legal tasks" for only three: Trump, Elliott Broidy, and a "prominent person" who did not wish to be named for fear of being "embarrassed". The federal judge ordered the revelation of the third client, whom Cohen's lawyers named as Hannity. Although Hannity has covered Cohen on his show, he did not disclose that he had consulted with Cohen. Fox News released a statement on April 16, 2018, attributed to Hannity: "Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective. I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third party." Also, NBC News quoted Hannity as saying: "We definitely had attorney–client privilege because I asked him for that," while Hannity said on his radio show that he "might have handed him ten bucks" for the attorney-client privilege. Lastly, Hannity tweeted that his discussions with Cohen were "almost exclusively" about real estate. The following day, news reports revealed that Hannity had shared another lawyer with Trump, Jay Sekulow. Sekulow had written a cease-and-desist letter to KFAQ on Hannity's behalf in May 2017, and later represented Trump in connection with the Mueller investigation. In August 2018, Hannity allowed Sekulow and Rudy Giuliani, another personal lawyer for Trump, to host Hannity's radio show; the duo proceeded to defend Trump and promote arguments made by the Trump administration. In June 2019, Hannity expressed outrage at Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's comment that she would like to see Trump "in prison". Hannity declared: "Based on no actual crimes, she wants a political opponent locked up in prison? That happens in banana republicsbeyond despicable behavior." Aaron Rupar of Vox criticized Hannity for "obvious hypocrisy", noting that Hannity himself had said in January 2018 regarding Hillary Clinton: "I think Hillary should be in jail. Lock her up." Aaron Blake of The Washington Post described Hannity's comment as "a pretty obvious bit of gaslighting", noting Hannity's loyalty to Trump, whose campaign rallies have featured chants of "Lock her up", and also Hannity's comments that Trump was free to investigate Clinton. Hannity played the most important role in persuading Trump to pardon the convicted murderer and war criminal Clint Lorance. After Trump lost the 2020 election, Hannity sent a number of text messages offering advice to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, including a message apparently suggesting a joint "NC Real estate" venture with him. Criticism of FBI, DOJ, and special counsel During President Trump's administration, Hannity has repeatedly been highly critical of the FBI, DOJ, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and others investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. According to a review by Media Matters of all transcripts from the 254 episodes of Hannity's show from Mueller's appointment (May 17, 2017) to May 16, 2018, Hannity had 487 segments substantially devoted to Mueller (approximately two per episode), opened his program with Mueller 152 times (approximately three times per week), and the content of his show was highly critical of the probe and the media's coverage of the probe. He has called the Russia inquiry a "witch hunt", an "utter disgrace", and "a direct threat to you, the American people, and our American republic". Hannity has expressed skepticism of the U.S. intelligence community's view that Russia hacked the Democratic National Convention's emails during the 2016 election and has promoted various conspiracy theories. In March 2017 he publicized a theory, first proposed at the Wikileaks Twitter account, that the CIA could have done the hacking while making it look like Russia did it. In August he suggested that Seth Rich may have been the leaker. Hannity has described the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, as well as James Comey's tenure as FBI Director, as "one giant incestuous circle of corruption". In April 2018, Hannity ran a segment where he claimed there were "criminal" connections between Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mueller, and Comey. Hannity asserted that there were three connected "Deep State crime families" actively "trying to take down the president". A guest on the segment, attorney Joseph diGenova, called Mueller's team "legal terrorists" and referred to Comey as a "dirty cop". In March 2018, Hannity attacked Special Counsel Robert Mueller, saying his career was "anything but impeccable". Hannity said Mueller was friends with former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and that he "cannot be expected to honestly investigate scandals that his friends are directly involved in". He said these individuals were involved in "one massive, huge, deep-state conflict of interest after another. Now they're protecting themselves. They're trying to preserve their own power." Mueller and Comey are professional acquaintances but not known to be friends, while Trump attorney general Bill Barr said in 2019 that he and Mueller had been friends for thirty years. On November 4, 2018, Trump's website, DonaldJTrump.com, announced in a press release that Hannity would make a "special guest appearance" with Trump at a midterm campaign rally the following night in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The following morning, Hannity tweeted "To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the President." Hannity nevertheless spoke at Trump's lectern on stage at the rally, immediately mocking the "fake news" at the back of the auditorium, Fox News reporters among them. Several Fox News employees expressed outrage at Hannity's actions, with one stating, "a new line was crossed". Hannity later asserted that his action was not pre-planned, and Fox News stated it "does not condone any talent participating in campaign events". Fox News host Jeanine Pirro also appeared on stage with Trump at the rally. The Trump press release was later removed from Trump's website. Hannity also claimed that Mueller had been involved in the corrupt dealings of several FBI agents in connection with Boston, Massachusetts crime boss Whitey Bulger. The federal judge who presided over a lawsuit concerning the corrupt dealings said Hannity's claims were unsubstantiated and that Mueller was never accused of any wrongdoing nor even mentioned during the proceedings. In June 2018, after reports that Mueller's probe had asked witnesses to turn their personal phones over to investigators for examination, Hannity sarcastically suggested on air to the witnesses that they "follow Hillary Clinton's lead" and destroy their personal phones so they cannot be examined. In May 2019, after Mueller gave a statement saying the Special Counsel investigation did not exonerate Trump of crimes, Hannity said Mueller was "basically full of crap" and did not know the law. Comments on sexual harassment In 2016, Hannity vociferously defended Roger Ailes when he was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment. In May 2017, Hannity paid a tribute to Ailes after he died. Hannity called him "a second father" and said to Ailes' "enemies" that he was "preparing to kick your in the next life". In April 2017, Hannity came to the defense of Fox News co-president Bill Shine after it was reported that Shine's job was at risk. At least four lawsuits alleged that Shine had ignored, enabled or concealed Ailes' alleged sexual harassment. In another lawsuit, he was accused of belittling a female guest on his TV show, allegedly offering cash to anyone on set who would take her on a date. In September 2017, several months after Bill O'Reilly was fired from Fox News in the wake of a number of women's alleging that he had sexually harassed them, Hannity hosted O'Reilly on his show. Some Fox News employees criticized the decision. In the interview, O'Reilly attacked liberal media watchdog groups and said he should have fought harder when those groups targeted his advertisers. According to CNN, during the interview, Hannity found kinship with O'Reilly as he appeared "to feel that he and O'Reilly have both become victims of liberals looking to silence them". Hannity came under criticism in October 2017 when he attacked Democrats after it became known that a large number of women had accused Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood producer and donor to Democratic causes, of sexual harassment. Critics noted that Hannity had weeks earlier defended and hosted his coworker Bill O'Reilly who was fired following a number of sexual harassment allegations. LGBT rights In the radio show for KCSB, which was the subject of controversy in 1989, Hannity made anti-gay comments. He called AIDS a "gay disease" and said the media was hiding salient information from the public. Two editions featured anti-gay activist Gene Antonio, a Lutheran minister, discussing his book The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts about AIDS. In the book, Antonio claims that AIDS can be spread by people sneezing in close proximity to each other. Hannity encouraged Antonio when he said that AIDS spread when gay men consumed each other's feces, said that homosexuality was a "lower form of behavior", compared homosexual sex to "playing in a sewer" and gay people of being "filled with hatred and bigotry". When a lesbian, another broadcaster at the station, called into the show, Hannity said "I feel sorry for your child." Hannity was quoted at the time as having said "anyone listening to this show that believes homosexuality is a normal lifestyle has been brainwashed." The ACLU opposed his firing and petitioned the station to reverse their decision. Hannity demanded a formal apology and double the airtime. While the station did offer to allow Hannity to return, they would not meet Hannity's additional demands and he declined to return. In 2017, Hannity said he regretted the comments and that they were "ignorant and embarrassing". Immigration Hannity opposed amnesty for undocumented immigrants; however, in 2012 he said he had evolved on the issue and favored a "pathway to citizenship". Later, he opposed that idea. By 2018, he was described as an immigration hardliner by CNN, The Washington Post, and New York magazine. In August 2018, Trump suggested that he might shut down the government to force Congress to fund his border wall, boasting that Hannity agreed with the action. Religion Hannity left the Catholic Church in 2019, citing "too much institutionalized corruption". However, he has said that as he has aged, his Christian faith has "gotten stronger" and that he needs and wants God in his life. Hannity has warned of sharia law coming to the United States. Hannity opposed the building of Park51, a mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center site. Hannity promoted the idea of "Islamic training camps right here in America", which were based on an unsubstantiated "documentary" by the Christian Action Network. In 2006, Hannity was critical of Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to U.S. Congress, being sworn into office with an oath on a Quran. Hannity equated the Quran with Mein Kampf, asking a guest on his show whether he would have allowed Ellison "to choose, you know, Hitler's Mein Kampf, which is the Nazi bible?" Torture In 2009, Hannity said he supported enhanced interrogation, a euphemism for torture. He also volunteered to be waterboarded for charity. In response, Keith Olbermann pledged to donate $1,000 for every second of waterboarding Hannity underwent. In 2017, Hannity continued to advocate for waterboarding, raising the example of using it against a kidnapper. According to Media Matters, Hannity has not been waterboarded as of March 2018. Climate change Hannity rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In 2001, he described it as "phony science from the left". In 2004, he falsely claimed that scientists couldn't agree on whether global warming was "scientific fact or fiction". In 2010, Hannity falsely stated that so-called "Climategate"the leaking of e-mails written by climate scientists that, according to climate change deniers, demonstrated scientific misconduct, but which all subsequent inquiries found to show no evidence of misconduct or wrongdoingwas a scandal that "exposed global warming as a myth cooked up by alarmists". Hannity frequently invites critics of climate science onto his shows. Death panels Hannity promoted the falsehood that the Affordable Care Act would create so-called "death panels". According to a study by Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan, Hannity's show, along with the Laura Ingraham Show, were the first major conservative media personalities to latch onto the false claim of Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, that the Affordable Care Act contained death panels. When Sarah Palin stirred controversy by promoting the death panels myth, and argued her case in a Facebook post, Hannity defended her and said, "I agree with everything that she wrote." Hannity also claimed that he found the specific pages in the Affordable Care Act containing provisions on death panels. A 2016 study found that Hannity promoted a number of falsehoods about the Affordable Care Act. For instance, Hannity falsely alleged several times that Democratic Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus had said Social Security could be "insolvent in two years" due to the Affordable Care Act. According to the study, Hannity, unlike other Fox News hosts such as Bill O'Reilly and Greta Van Susteren, "took a more direct approach, aggressively supporting Republicans and conservatives and attacking Democrats and liberals, endorsing the more spurious claims long after they were proven incorrect, and putting advocacy above accurate reporting, to further the network's themes opposing reform". Jake Tapper In November 2017, Fox News distorted a statement by Jake Tapper to make it appear as if he had said "Allahu Akbar" can be used under the most "beautiful circumstances" in the immediate aftermath of the 2017 New York City truck attack wherein a terrorist shouted "Allahu Akbar". Fox News omitted that Tapper had said the use of "Allahu Akbar" in the terrorist attack was not one of these circumstances. A headline on FoxNews.com was preceded by a tag reading "OUTRAGEOUS". The Fox News Twitter account distorted the statement even more, saying "Jake Tapper Says 'Allahu Akbar' Is 'Beautiful' Right After NYC Terror Attack" in a tweet that was later deleted. Even after the Fox News Twitter account had deleted the tweet on Tapper's out-of-context comments, Hannity repeated the out-of-context comments to his viewers, calling Tapper "liberal fake news CNN's fake Jake Tapper" and mocking his ratings. Foreign policy In 2009, Hannity said of the Iraq War, "we were victorious in spite of the Democrats' efforts and attempts at preventing victory." During the 2016 election, Hannity vouched for Trump's claimed opposition to the Iraq War, "Mr. Trump and I disagreed about the Iraq war; I was for it and he was against it." In June 2019, Hannity called on Trump to "bomb the hell of out Iran" after Iran shot down a U.S. drone. After the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Hannity opened his show by saying, "tonight the world is safer as one of the most ruthless, evil war criminals on Earth has been brought to justice." From 2015 into 2018, Fox News broadcast extensive coverage of an alleged scandal surrounding the sale of Uranium One to Russian interests, which Hannity characterized as "one of the biggest scandals in American history". The Fox News coverage extended throughout the programming day, with particular emphasis by Hannity. The network promoted a narrative asserting that, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton personally approved the Uranium One sale in exchange for $145million in bribes paid to the Clinton Foundation. Donald Trump repeated these allegations as a candidate and as president. No evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton had been found after three years of allegations, an FBI investigation, and the 2017 appointment of a Federal attorney to evaluate the investigation. In November 2017, Fox News host Shepard Smith concisely debunked the alleged scandal, including saying that Clinton did not personally approve the sale, infuriating viewers who suggested he should work for CNN or MSNBC. Hannity later called Smith "clueless", while Smith stated, "I get it, that some of our opinion programming is there strictly to be entertaining. I get that. I don't work there. I wouldn't work there." A two-year Justice Department investigation initiated after Trump became president found no evidence to justify pursuing a criminal investigation. COVID-19 pandemic In February 2020, amid the spread of COVID-19 to the United States, Hannity said "many on the left are now all rooting for corona to wreak havoc in the United States. Why? To score cheap, repulsive political points." In March 2020, he characterized the virus as a "hoax", and said it "may be true" that the outbreak was a "fraud" perpetrated by the "deep state". Later in March, as the disease spread into a global pandemic and Trump declared it a national emergency, Hannity started to take the virus more seriously, denying that he had referred to it as a hoax less than a month earlier. In July 2021, on live television, Hannity encouraged the audience to consider vaccination. Personal life Family and lifestyle Hannity met Jill Rhodes in 1991 when he worked at WVNN in Huntsville, Alabama and she was a political columnist for the Huntsville Times. The two married in 1993. In June 2020, the couple announced that they had divorced the previous year but had separated years prior. Hannity has since dated Fox News colleague Ainsley Earhardt. In August 2019, Hannity and Earhardt arrived together as guests for a wedding at Trump National Golf Course in Colts Neck, New Jersey. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she hosted her Fox & Friends program from a remote studio in the basement of Hannity's Long Island mansion. Hannity has two children from his marriage to Rhodes: a son, Patrick, born in 1998, and daughter, Merri, born in 2001. Both children graduated from Cold Spring Harbor High School. Patrick attended Wake Forest University where he played tennis. Merri attends The University of Michigan where she also plays tennis. In high school, Merri was the fourth highest ranked tennis player in New York State. In 2018, Forbes estimated that Hannity's annual income was $36million. In April 2021, he purchased a $5.3 million house several miles from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. In 2014 he said he has carried a weapon "more than half my adult life". According to Hannity, he has a brown belt in martial arts and trains four days a week in the sport. Bibliography Hannity, Sean (2002). Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism, New York: ReganBooks, . Hannity, Sean (2004). Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, New York: ReganBooks, . Hannity, Sean (2010). Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda, New York: Harper Paperbacks, . Hannity, Sean (2020). Live Free or Die: America (and the World) On the Brink, New York: Simon & Schuster, . See also Fox News controversies New Yorkers in journalism References External links Category:1961 births Category:Living people Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers Category:Adelphi University alumni Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American conservative talk radio hosts Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American political commentators Category:American political writers Category:Christians from New York (state) Category:Conservative Party of New York State politicians Category:Former Roman Catholics Category:Fox News people Category:Male critics of feminism Category:New York (state) Independents Category:New York (state) Republicans Category:New York University alumni Category:People from Centre Island, New York Category:People from Franklin Square, New York Category:Radio personalities from New York City Category:Right-wing populism in the United States Category:Writers from New York City

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Michael Bennett (theater)

Michael Bennett (April 8, 1943 - July 2, 1987) was an American musical theatre director, writer, choreographer, and dancer. He won seven Tony Awards for his choreography and direction of Broadway shows and was nominated for an additional eleven. Bennett choreographed Promises, Promises, Follies and Company. In 1976, he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and the Tony Award for Best Choreography for the musical A Chorus Line.

Early life and career

Bennett was born Michael Bennett DiFiglia in Buffalo, New York, the son of Helen (nee Ternoff), a secretary, and Salvatore Joseph DiFiglia, a factory worker. His father was Roman Catholic and Italian American and his mother was Jewish. He studied dance and choreography in his teens and staged a number of shows in his local high school before dropping out to accept the role of Baby John in the US and European tours of West Side Story. Bennett's career as a Broadway dancer began in the 1961 Betty Comden-Adolph Green-Jule Styne musical Subways Are for Sleeping, after which he appeared in Meredith Willson's Here's Love and the short-lived Bajour. In the mid-1960s he was a featured dancer on the NBC pop music series Hullabaloo, where he met fellow dancer Donna McKechnie. Bennett made his choreographic debut with A Joyful Noise (1966), which lasted only twelve performances, and in 1967 followed it with another failure, Henry, Sweet Henry (based on the Peter Sellers film The World of Henry Orient). Success finally arrived in 1968, when he choreographed the hit musical Promises, Promises on Broadway. With a contemporary pop score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, a wisecracking book by Neil Simon and Bennett's well-received production numbers, including "Turkey Lurkey Time", the show ran for 1,281 performances. Over the next few years, he earned praise for his work on the straight play Twigs with Sada Thompson and the musical Coco with Katharine Hepburn. These were followed by two Stephen Sondheim productions, Company and Follies co-directed with Hal Prince. In 1973, Bennett was asked by producers Joseph Kipness and Larry Kasha to take over the ailing Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields musical Seesaw. In replacing the director Ed Sherin and choreographer Grover Dale, he asked for absolute control over the production as director and choreographer and received credit as "having written, directed, and choreographed" the show. CANNOTANSWER

Michael Bennett (April 8, 1943 – July 2, 1987) was an American musical theatre director, writer, choreographer, and dancer. He won seven Tony Awards for his choreography and direction of Broadway shows and was nominated for an additional eleven. Bennett choreographed Promises, Promises, Follies and Company. In 1976, he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and the Tony Award for Best Choreography for the musical A Chorus Line. Bennett, under the aegis of producer Joseph Papp, created A Chorus Line based on a workshop process which he pioneered. He also directed and co-choreographed Dreamgirls with Michael Peters. Early life and career Bennett was born Michael DiFiglia in Buffalo, New York, the son of Helen (née Ternoff), a secretary, and Salvatore Joseph DiFiglia, a factory worker. His father was Italian American and his mother was Jewish. He studied dance and choreography in his teens and staged a number of shows in his local high school - Bennett High School in Buffalo, NY - before dropping out to accept the role of Baby John in the US and European tours of West Side Story. He gave himself a new last name when he pursued this life in the arts, taking inspiration from his high school. Bennett's career as a Broadway dancer began in the 1961 Betty Comden–Adolph Green–Jule Styne musical Subways Are for Sleeping, after which he appeared in Meredith Willson's Here's Love and the short-lived Bajour. In the mid-1960s he was a featured dancer on the NBC pop music series Hullabaloo, where he met fellow dancer Donna McKechnie. Bennett made his choreographic debut with A Joyful Noise (1966), which lasted only twelve performances, and in 1967 followed it with another failure, Henry, Sweet Henry (based on the Peter Sellers film The World of Henry Orient). Success finally arrived in 1968, when he choreographed the hit musical Promises, Promises on Broadway. With a contemporary pop score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, a wisecracking book by Neil Simon and Bennett's well-received production numbers, including "Turkey Lurkey Time", the show ran for 1,281 performances. Over the next few years, he earned praise for his work on the straight play Twigs with Sada Thompson and the musical Coco with Katharine Hepburn. These were followed by two Stephen Sondheim productions, Company and Follies, co-directed with Hal Prince. In 1973, Bennett was asked by producers Joseph Kipness and Larry Kasha to take over the ailing Cy Coleman–Dorothy Fields musical Seesaw. In replacing the director Ed Sherin and choreographer Grover Dale, he asked for absolute control over the production as director and choreographer and received credit as "having written, directed, and choreographed" the show. A Chorus Line and the 1980s Bennett's next project was A Chorus Line. The musical was formed out of twenty hours of taped sessions with Broadway dancers. Bennett was invited to the sessions originally as an observer but soon took charge. He co-choreographed and directed the production, which debuted in July 1975 off-Broadway. It won nine Tony Awards and the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He later claimed that the worldwide success of A Chorus Line became a hindrance, as the many international companies of the musical demanded his full-time attention. Bennett would later become a creative consultant for the 1985 film version of the musical but left due to creative differences. He always sought creative control over his projects, but Hollywood producers were unwilling to give him the influence he demanded. There are some filmed records which testify to the show's initial power. Television talk-show host Phil Donahue devoted an entire program to the original cast, during which they reminisce and recreate some of the musical numbers. The 2008 feature-length documentary Every Little Step chronicles the casting process of the musical's 2006 revival, with re-created choreography by Bennett's long-time associate Baayork Lee, and, in the course of the film, the saga of the original production is re-told as well, through the use of old film clips and revealing interviews from the original collaborators, including Lee, Bob Avian (who was the show's original co-choreographer with Bennett and the director of the revival), composer Marvin Hamlisch and the original's leading lady, Donna McKechnie. Bennett's next musical was a project about late-life romance called Ballroom. Although financially unsuccessful, it garnered seven Tony Award nominations, and Bennett won one for Best Choreography. He admitted that any project that followed A Chorus Line was bound to be an anti-climax. Bennett had another hit in 1981 with Dreamgirls, a backstage epic about a girl group like The Supremes and the expropriation of black music by a white recording industry. In the early 1980s, Bennett worked on various projects, one of which was titled The Children's Crusade, based on a legendary story "Children's Crusade", but none of them reached the stage. In 1978, he purchased 890 Broadway and converted it for use as a rehearsal studios complex for dance and theatre. In 1986, he was forced to sell it for $15 million due to stress-induced angina and the financial losses of the property. Two tenants purchased the building, and it remains a rehearsal facility for American Ballet Theatre, Eliot Feld's Ballet Tech, Gibney Dance Company, and others. He always collaborated with his assistant Bob Avian, who was a lifelong friend. In 1985, Bennett abandoned the nearly-completed musical Scandal, by writer Treva Silverman and songwriter Jimmy Webb, which had been developing for nearly five years through a series of workshop productions. The show was sexually daring, but the conservative climate and the growing AIDS panic made it unlikely commercial material. He was then signed to direct the West End production of Chess but had to withdraw in January 1986 due to his failing health, leaving Trevor Nunn to complete the production using Bennett's already commissioned sets. Analysis Unlike his more famous contemporary Bob Fosse, Bennett was not known for a particular choreographic style. Instead, Bennett's choreography was motivated by the form of the musical involved, or the distinct characters interpreted. In act 2 of Company, Bennett defied the usual choreographic expectations by deliberately taking the polish off the standard Broadway production number. The company stumbled through the steps of a hat and cane routine ("Side By Side") and thus revealed to the audience the physical limitations of the characters' singing and dancing. Bennett made the audience aware that this group had been flung together to perform, and that they were in over their heads. He intended the number to be not about the routine, but rather the characters behind it. The song "One" from A Chorus Line functions in a different way. The various phases of construction/rehearsal of the number are shown, and because the show is about professional dancers, the last performance of the song-and-dance routine has all the gloss and polish expected of Broadway production values. Bennett's choreography also reveals the cost of the number to the people behind it. Bennett was influenced by the work of Jerome Robbins. "What Michael Bennett perceived early in Robbins' work was totality, all the sums of a given piece adding to a unified whole". In Dreamgirls, Bennett's musical staging was described as a "mesmerizing sense of movement": The most thrilling breakthrough of the extraordinary show is that whereas in A Chorus Line Michael Bennett choreographed the cast, in Dreamgirls he has choreographed the set. Bennett's use of [the plexiglass towers that dominated the set] was revolutionary. The towers moved to create constantly changing perspectives and space, like an automated ballet. They energized the action, driving it forcefully along. It's why there were no set-piece dance routines in the show: dance and movement were organic to the entire action. But Bennett had made the mechanical set his dancers." Personal life Bennett was bisexual.<ref>Baldwin, Dick & Graves, Neil. "New Biography Presents the Soap-Opera Life Story of Michael Bennett", The Buffalo News. February 9, 1990.</ref>In his younger days, Bennett had a relationship with Larry Fuller, a dancer, choreographer and director. He had a long professional and personal relationship with the virtuoso dancer Donna McKechnie, who danced his work in both Promises, Promises and Company and won the 1976 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in the role he had created for her in A Chorus Line. They married on December 4, 1976, but after only a few months they separated and eventually divorced in 1979. In the late 1970s, Sabine Cassel, the then-wife of French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel. left her family in Paris to live with Bennett in Manhattan, but the relationship soured. During his adult life, Bennett "took elaborate pains to ensure that the public never suspected he was gay. When he was diagnosed with AIDS in December 1985, (he) carefully disguised that fact as well". Bennett's addictions to alcohol and drugs, notably cocaine and quaaludes, severely affected his ability to work and affected many of his professional and personal relationships. His paranoia grew as his dependency did. Worried by his celebrity and his father's Italian background, he began to suspect he might fall victim to a Mafia hit. Bennett's last lover was Gene Pruit. In 1986 both Pruit and friend Bob Herr lived with Bennett for the last eight months of his life in Tucson, Arizona, where he received care at the University of Arizona Medical Center. Bennett died from AIDS-related lymphoma at the age of 44. He left a portion of his estate to fund research to fight the pandemic. Bennett's memorial service took place at the Shubert Theatre in New York City (the home at that time of A Chorus Line) on September 29, 1987. Awards and nominations Other mediaA Class Act—A Musical About Musicals (2001). Bennett and lyricist Ed Kleban are portrayed in this partly fictionalized life story of Kleban, using some of Kleban's unpublished songs. A Chorus Line's number "One" is included in this musical. Notes References Long, Robert Emmet (2001). Broadway, the Golden Years: Jerome Robbins and the Great Choreographer-directors: 1940 to the Present. Continuum International Publishing Group. . McKechnie, Donna (2006). Time Steps: My Musical Comedy Life. Simon and Schuster. . Shea, Tom (2004). Broadway's Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Dynamic Divas, Surefire Showstoppers, and Box Office Busts. Brassey's. . Webb, Jimmy (1999). Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting. Hyperion. . Zadan, Craig (1987). Sondheim & Co.. Pavilion Books. . Further reading Chapin, Ted (2005). Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies. Applause Books. . Flinn, Denny Martin (1989). What They Did for Love: The Untold Story Behind the Making of "A Chorus Line". Bantam, . Hamlisch, Marvin (1992). The Way I Was (1st edition). Scribner's. . Stevens, Gary (2000). The Longest Line: Broadway's Most Singular Sensation: A Chorus Line. Applause Books. . Viagas, Robert (1990). On the Line: The Creation of A Chorus Line'' (2nd edition). Limelight Editions. . External links Michael Bennett Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Category:1943 births Category:1987 deaths Category:AIDS-related deaths in Arizona Category:American choreographers Category:American jazz dancers Category:American male dancers Category:20th-century American Jews Category:American musical theatre directors Category:American people of Italian descent Category:Broadway theatre directors Category:Bisexual dancers Category:Drama Desk Award winners Category:LGBT theatre directors Category:Bisexual Jews Category:American LGBT entertainers Category:LGBT people from New York (state) Category:Artists from Buffalo, New York Category:Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners Category:Tony Award winners Category:Deaths from lymphoma Category:Bisexual men Category:Writers from Buffalo, New York Category:20th-century American dancers Category:Deaths from cancer in Arizona Category:20th-century American LGBT people

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Michael Bennett (theater)

Michael Bennett (April 8, 1943 - July 2, 1987) was an American musical theatre director, writer, choreographer, and dancer. He won seven Tony Awards for his choreography and direction of Broadway shows and was nominated for an additional eleven. Bennett choreographed Promises, Promises, Follies and Company. In 1976, he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and the Tony Award for Best Choreography for the musical A Chorus Line.

Analysis

Unlike his more famous contemporary Bob Fosse, Bennett was not known for a particular choreographic style. Instead, Bennett's choreography was motivated by the form of the musical involved, or the distinct characters interpreted. In Act 2 of Company, Bennett defied the usual choreographic expectations by deliberately taking the polish off the standard Broadway production number. The company stumbled through the steps of a hat and cane routine ("Side By Side") and thus revealed to the audience the physical limitations of the characters' singing and dancing. Bennett made the audience aware that this group had been flung together to perform, and that they were in over their heads. He intended the number to be not about the routine, but rather the characters behind it. The song "One" from A Chorus Line functions in a different way. The various phases of construction/rehearsal of the number are shown, and because the show is about professional dancers, the last performance of the song-and-dance routine has all the gloss and polish expected of Broadway production values. Bennett's choreography also reveals the cost of the number to the people behind it. Bennett was influenced by the work of Jerome Robbins. "What Michael Bennett perceived early in Robbins' work was totality, all the sums of a given piece adding to a unified whole". In Dreamgirls, Bennett's musical staging was described as a "mesmerizing sense of movement": The most thrilling breakthrough of the extraordinary show is that whereas in A Chorus Line Michael Bennett choreographed the cast, in Dreamgirls he has choreographed the set.... Bennett's use of [the plexiglass towers that dominated the set] was revolutionary. The towers moved to create constantly changing perspectives and space, like an automated ballet.... They energized the action, driving it forcefully along. It's why there were no set-piece dance routines in the show: Dance and movement were organic to the entire action. But Bennett had made the mechanical set his dancers." CANNOTANSWER

Michael Bennett (April 8, 1943 – July 2, 1987) was an American musical theatre director, writer, choreographer, and dancer. He won seven Tony Awards for his choreography and direction of Broadway shows and was nominated for an additional eleven. Bennett choreographed Promises, Promises, Follies and Company. In 1976, he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and the Tony Award for Best Choreography for the musical A Chorus Line. Bennett, under the aegis of producer Joseph Papp, created A Chorus Line based on a workshop process which he pioneered. He also directed and co-choreographed Dreamgirls with Michael Peters. Early life and career Bennett was born Michael DiFiglia in Buffalo, New York, the son of Helen (née Ternoff), a secretary, and Salvatore Joseph DiFiglia, a factory worker. His father was Italian American and his mother was Jewish. He studied dance and choreography in his teens and staged a number of shows in his local high school - Bennett High School in Buffalo, NY - before dropping out to accept the role of Baby John in the US and European tours of West Side Story. He gave himself a new last name when he pursued this life in the arts, taking inspiration from his high school. Bennett's career as a Broadway dancer began in the 1961 Betty Comden–Adolph Green–Jule Styne musical Subways Are for Sleeping, after which he appeared in Meredith Willson's Here's Love and the short-lived Bajour. In the mid-1960s he was a featured dancer on the NBC pop music series Hullabaloo, where he met fellow dancer Donna McKechnie. Bennett made his choreographic debut with A Joyful Noise (1966), which lasted only twelve performances, and in 1967 followed it with another failure, Henry, Sweet Henry (based on the Peter Sellers film The World of Henry Orient). Success finally arrived in 1968, when he choreographed the hit musical Promises, Promises on Broadway. With a contemporary pop score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, a wisecracking book by Neil Simon and Bennett's well-received production numbers, including "Turkey Lurkey Time", the show ran for 1,281 performances. Over the next few years, he earned praise for his work on the straight play Twigs with Sada Thompson and the musical Coco with Katharine Hepburn. These were followed by two Stephen Sondheim productions, Company and Follies, co-directed with Hal Prince. In 1973, Bennett was asked by producers Joseph Kipness and Larry Kasha to take over the ailing Cy Coleman–Dorothy Fields musical Seesaw. In replacing the director Ed Sherin and choreographer Grover Dale, he asked for absolute control over the production as director and choreographer and received credit as "having written, directed, and choreographed" the show. A Chorus Line and the 1980s Bennett's next project was A Chorus Line. The musical was formed out of twenty hours of taped sessions with Broadway dancers. Bennett was invited to the sessions originally as an observer but soon took charge. He co-choreographed and directed the production, which debuted in July 1975 off-Broadway. It won nine Tony Awards and the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He later claimed that the worldwide success of A Chorus Line became a hindrance, as the many international companies of the musical demanded his full-time attention. Bennett would later become a creative consultant for the 1985 film version of the musical but left due to creative differences. He always sought creative control over his projects, but Hollywood producers were unwilling to give him the influence he demanded. There are some filmed records which testify to the show's initial power. Television talk-show host Phil Donahue devoted an entire program to the original cast, during which they reminisce and recreate some of the musical numbers. The 2008 feature-length documentary Every Little Step chronicles the casting process of the musical's 2006 revival, with re-created choreography by Bennett's long-time associate Baayork Lee, and, in the course of the film, the saga of the original production is re-told as well, through the use of old film clips and revealing interviews from the original collaborators, including Lee, Bob Avian (who was the show's original co-choreographer with Bennett and the director of the revival), composer Marvin Hamlisch and the original's leading lady, Donna McKechnie. Bennett's next musical was a project about late-life romance called Ballroom. Although financially unsuccessful, it garnered seven Tony Award nominations, and Bennett won one for Best Choreography. He admitted that any project that followed A Chorus Line was bound to be an anti-climax. Bennett had another hit in 1981 with Dreamgirls, a backstage epic about a girl group like The Supremes and the expropriation of black music by a white recording industry. In the early 1980s, Bennett worked on various projects, one of which was titled The Children's Crusade, based on a legendary story "Children's Crusade", but none of them reached the stage. In 1978, he purchased 890 Broadway and converted it for use as a rehearsal studios complex for dance and theatre. In 1986, he was forced to sell it for $15 million due to stress-induced angina and the financial losses of the property. Two tenants purchased the building, and it remains a rehearsal facility for American Ballet Theatre, Eliot Feld's Ballet Tech, Gibney Dance Company, and others. He always collaborated with his assistant Bob Avian, who was a lifelong friend. In 1985, Bennett abandoned the nearly-completed musical Scandal, by writer Treva Silverman and songwriter Jimmy Webb, which had been developing for nearly five years through a series of workshop productions. The show was sexually daring, but the conservative climate and the growing AIDS panic made it unlikely commercial material. He was then signed to direct the West End production of Chess but had to withdraw in January 1986 due to his failing health, leaving Trevor Nunn to complete the production using Bennett's already commissioned sets. Analysis Unlike his more famous contemporary Bob Fosse, Bennett was not known for a particular choreographic style. Instead, Bennett's choreography was motivated by the form of the musical involved, or the distinct characters interpreted. In act 2 of Company, Bennett defied the usual choreographic expectations by deliberately taking the polish off the standard Broadway production number. The company stumbled through the steps of a hat and cane routine ("Side By Side") and thus revealed to the audience the physical limitations of the characters' singing and dancing. Bennett made the audience aware that this group had been flung together to perform, and that they were in over their heads. He intended the number to be not about the routine, but rather the characters behind it. The song "One" from A Chorus Line functions in a different way. The various phases of construction/rehearsal of the number are shown, and because the show is about professional dancers, the last performance of the song-and-dance routine has all the gloss and polish expected of Broadway production values. Bennett's choreography also reveals the cost of the number to the people behind it. Bennett was influenced by the work of Jerome Robbins. "What Michael Bennett perceived early in Robbins' work was totality, all the sums of a given piece adding to a unified whole". In Dreamgirls, Bennett's musical staging was described as a "mesmerizing sense of movement": The most thrilling breakthrough of the extraordinary show is that whereas in A Chorus Line Michael Bennett choreographed the cast, in Dreamgirls he has choreographed the set. Bennett's use of [the plexiglass towers that dominated the set] was revolutionary. The towers moved to create constantly changing perspectives and space, like an automated ballet. They energized the action, driving it forcefully along. It's why there were no set-piece dance routines in the show: dance and movement were organic to the entire action. But Bennett had made the mechanical set his dancers." Personal life Bennett was bisexual.<ref>Baldwin, Dick & Graves, Neil. "New Biography Presents the Soap-Opera Life Story of Michael Bennett", The Buffalo News. February 9, 1990.</ref>In his younger days, Bennett had a relationship with Larry Fuller, a dancer, choreographer and director. He had a long professional and personal relationship with the virtuoso dancer Donna McKechnie, who danced his work in both Promises, Promises and Company and won the 1976 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in the role he had created for her in A Chorus Line. They married on December 4, 1976, but after only a few months they separated and eventually divorced in 1979. In the late 1970s, Sabine Cassel, the then-wife of French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel. left her family in Paris to live with Bennett in Manhattan, but the relationship soured. During his adult life, Bennett "took elaborate pains to ensure that the public never suspected he was gay. When he was diagnosed with AIDS in December 1985, (he) carefully disguised that fact as well". Bennett's addictions to alcohol and drugs, notably cocaine and quaaludes, severely affected his ability to work and affected many of his professional and personal relationships. His paranoia grew as his dependency did. Worried by his celebrity and his father's Italian background, he began to suspect he might fall victim to a Mafia hit. Bennett's last lover was Gene Pruit. In 1986 both Pruit and friend Bob Herr lived with Bennett for the last eight months of his life in Tucson, Arizona, where he received care at the University of Arizona Medical Center. Bennett died from AIDS-related lymphoma at the age of 44. He left a portion of his estate to fund research to fight the pandemic. Bennett's memorial service took place at the Shubert Theatre in New York City (the home at that time of A Chorus Line) on September 29, 1987. Awards and nominations Other mediaA Class Act—A Musical About Musicals (2001). Bennett and lyricist Ed Kleban are portrayed in this partly fictionalized life story of Kleban, using some of Kleban's unpublished songs. A Chorus Line's number "One" is included in this musical. Notes References Long, Robert Emmet (2001). Broadway, the Golden Years: Jerome Robbins and the Great Choreographer-directors: 1940 to the Present. Continuum International Publishing Group. . McKechnie, Donna (2006). Time Steps: My Musical Comedy Life. Simon and Schuster. . Shea, Tom (2004). Broadway's Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Dynamic Divas, Surefire Showstoppers, and Box Office Busts. Brassey's. . Webb, Jimmy (1999). Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting. Hyperion. . Zadan, Craig (1987). Sondheim & Co.. Pavilion Books. . Further reading Chapin, Ted (2005). Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies. Applause Books. . Flinn, Denny Martin (1989). What They Did for Love: The Untold Story Behind the Making of "A Chorus Line". Bantam, . Hamlisch, Marvin (1992). The Way I Was (1st edition). Scribner's. . Stevens, Gary (2000). The Longest Line: Broadway's Most Singular Sensation: A Chorus Line. Applause Books. . Viagas, Robert (1990). On the Line: The Creation of A Chorus Line'' (2nd edition). Limelight Editions. . External links Michael Bennett Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Category:1943 births Category:1987 deaths Category:AIDS-related deaths in Arizona Category:American choreographers Category:American jazz dancers Category:American male dancers Category:20th-century American Jews Category:American musical theatre directors Category:American people of Italian descent Category:Broadway theatre directors Category:Bisexual dancers Category:Drama Desk Award winners Category:LGBT theatre directors Category:Bisexual Jews Category:American LGBT entertainers Category:LGBT people from New York (state) Category:Artists from Buffalo, New York Category:Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners Category:Tony Award winners Category:Deaths from lymphoma Category:Bisexual men Category:Writers from Buffalo, New York Category:20th-century American dancers Category:Deaths from cancer in Arizona Category:20th-century American LGBT people

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Mackinac Island

Mackinac Island ( MAK-in-aw) is an island and resort area, covering 3.8 square miles (9.8 km2) in land area, in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is located in Lake Huron, at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac, between the state's Upper and Lower Peninsulas. The island was home to an Odawa settlement before European exploration began in the 17th century. It served a strategic position as a center on the commerce of the Great Lakes fur trade.

19th century to present

During the War of 1812, the British captured the fort in the Siege of Fort Mackinac, the first battle of the conflict, because the Americans had not yet heard that war had been declared. The victorious British attempted to protect their prize by building Fort George on the high ground behind Fort Mackinac. In 1814, the Americans and British fought a second battle on the north side of the island. The American second-in-command, Major Andrew Holmes, was killed and the Americans failed to recapture the island. Despite this outcome, the Treaty of Ghent of 1815 forced the British to return the island and surrounding mainland to the U.S. The United States reoccupied Fort Mackinac, and renamed Fort George as Fort Holmes, after Major Holmes. Fort Mackinac remained under the control of the United States government until 1895 and provided volunteers to defend the Union during the American Civil War. The fort was used as a prison for three Confederate States of America sympathizers. John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company was centered on Mackinac Island after the War of 1812 and exported beaver pelts for thirty years. By the middle of the 19th century, commercial fishing for common whitefish and lake trout began to replace the fur trade as the island's primary industry. As sport fishing became more popular in the 1880s, hotels and restaurants accommodated tourists coming by train or lake boat from Detroit. Following the Civil War, the island became a popular tourist destination for residents of cities on the Great Lakes. Much of the federal land on Mackinac Island was designated as the second national park, Mackinac National Park, in 1875, just three years after Yellowstone National Park was named as the first national park. To accommodate an influx of tourists in the 1880s, the boat and railroad companies built hotels, including the Grand Hotel. Souvenir shops began to spring up as a way for island residents to profit from the tourists. Many wealthy business magnates built summer "cottages" along the island's bluffs for extended stays. When the federal government left the island in 1895, all of the federal land, including Fort Mackinac, was given to the state of Michigan and became Michigan's first state park. The Mackinac Island State Park Commission appointed to oversee the island has limited private development in the park and requires leaseholders to maintain the island's distinctive Victorian architecture. Motor vehicles were restricted at the end of the 19th century because of concerns for the health and safety of the island's residents and horses after local carriage drivers complained that automobiles startled their horses. This ban continues to the present with exceptions only for emergency and construction vehicles. CANNOTANSWER

Mackinac Island ( , ; ; ; ) is an island and resort area, covering in land area, in the U.S. state of Michigan. The name of the island in Odawa is Michilimackinac and "Mitchimakinak" in Ojibwemowin meaning "Great Turtle". It is located in Lake Huron, at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac, between the state's Upper and Lower Peninsulas. The island was long home to an Odawa settlement and previous indigenous cultures before European colonization began in the 17th century. It was a strategic center of the fur trade around the Great Lakes. Based on a former trading post, Fort Mackinac was constructed on the island by the British during the American Revolutionary War. It was the site of two battles during the War of 1812 before the northern border was settled and the US gained this island in its territory. In the late 19th century, Mackinac Island became a popular tourist attraction and summer colony. Many of the structures on the island have undergone extensive historical preservation and restoration. Because of its historic significance, the entire island is listed as a National Historic Landmark. It is well known for numerous cultural events; a wide variety of architectural styles, including the Victorian Grand Hotel; and its ban on almost all motor vehicles, with exceptions only for city emergency vehicles (ambulance, police cars and fire trucks), city service vehicles and snowmobiles in winter. More than 80 percent of the island is preserved as Mackinac Island State Park. Etymology Like many historic places in the Great Lakes region, Mackinac Island's name derives from a Native American language, in this case Ojibwe language. The Anishinaabe peoples in the Straits of Mackinac region likened the shape of the island to that of a turtle so they named it "Mitchimakinak" () "Big Turtle". Andrew Blackbird, an official interpreter for the U.S. government and son of an Odawa chief, said the island was known locally after a tribe that had lived there. The French transliterated the work and spelled it as Michilimackinac. The British shortened it to the present name: "Mackinac." Michillimackinac is also spelled as Mishinimakinago, Mǐshǐma‛kǐnung, Mi-shi-ne-macki naw-go, Missilimakinak, Teiodondoraghie, and in Ojibwe syllabics: ᒥᔑᒥᑭᓈᒃ. The Menominee traditionally lived in a large territory of extending from Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Historic references include one by Father Frederic Baraga, a Slovenian missionary priest in Michigan, who in his 1878 dictionary wrote: Maehkaenah is the Menominee word for turtle. In his 1952 book The Indian Tribes of North America, John Reed Swanton recorded under the "Wisconsin" section: "Menominee," a band named "Misi'nimäk Kimiko Wini'niwuk, 'Michilimackinac People,' near the old fort at Mackinac, Mich." In an early written history of Mackinac Island (1887) by Andrew Blackbird, the Odawa historian, he describes that a small independent tribe called "Mi-shi-ne-macki naw-go" once occupied Mackinac Island. They became confederated with the Ottawa from Ottawa Island (now Manitoulin Island), situated north of Lake Huron. One winter the Mi-shi-ne-macki naw-go on Mackinac Island were almost entirely annihilated by the Seneca people from western New York, who were one of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Only two of the local natives escaped by hiding in one of the natural caves at the island. To commemorate the losses of this allied tribe, the Ottawa named what is now Mackinac Island, as "Mi-shi-ne-macki-nong." In 1895 John R. Bailey, the doctor at Fort Mackinac, published a history, entitled Mackinac formerly Michilimackinac, describing some of the earliest French traders on Mackinac. They reportedly arrived in 1654 with a large party of Huron and Ottawa heading to Three Rivers; another visitor was an adventurer making a canoe voyage in 1665. History Prehistoric Archaeologists have excavated prehistoric fishing camps on Mackinac Island and in the surrounding areas. Fishhooks, pottery, and other artifacts establish a Native American presence at least 700 years before European exploration, around AD 900. The island is a sacred place in the tradition of some of its earliest known inhabitants, the Anishinaabe peoples. They consider it to be home of the Gitche Manitou, or the "Great Spirit". According to legend, Mackinac Island was created by the Great Hare, Michabou, and was the first land to appear after the Great Flood receded. The island was a gathering place for the local tribes, who made offerings to Gitche Manitou. It became the burial place of tribal chiefs. 17th through 18th centuries The first European likely to have seen Mackinac Island is Jean Nicolet, a French-Canadian coureur des bois, during his 1634 explorations. The Jesuit priest Claude Dablon founded a mission for the Native Americans on Mackinac Island in 1670, and stayed over the winter of 1670–71. The missionary and explorer Jacques Marquette succeeded him, moving the mission to St. Ignace soon after his arrival in the region in the fall of 1671. With the mission as a focus, the Straits of Mackinac quickly became an important French fur trading location. The British took control of the Straits of Mackinac after the French and Indian War and Major Patrick Sinclair chose the bluffs of the island for Fort Mackinac in 1780. The Jesuit Relations (1671) contains a long description of Mackinac Island: The Relations also indicate the tremendous strategic importance of Michilimackinac/Mackinac Island as "the central point for all travel on the upper Great Lakes, and for a vast extent of wilderness and half-settled country beyond" to First Nations and Europeans (prior to the arrival of railroads). The tribes who had inhabited Mackinac Island had been driven away by the Iroquois, leaving the island practically deserted until 1670. The Huron people from Lake Superior, in fear of the Sioux, retreated to the shore north of Mackinac Island. Here Marquette continued his missionary labors with them, at the site of the present St. Ignace. The 1688 memoir of Jacques-René de Brisay de Denonville, Marquis de Denonville, claimed that the French had inhabited the area since 1648. A small French garrison was sent there some time between 1679 and 1683. The name of Michilimackinac (later abbreviated to Mackinac) was applied generally to the entire vicinity, as well as specifically to the post at St. Ignace. Later it was applied to the fort and mission established on the south side of the Strait of Mackinac. Although the British built Fort Mackinac to protect their settlement from attack by French-Canadians and native tribes, the fort was never attacked during the American Revolutionary War. The entire Straits area was officially acquired by the United States through the Treaty of Paris (1783). However, Britain kept forces in the Great Lakes area until after 1794, when the Jay Treaty between the nations established U.S. sovereignty over the Northwest Territory. Freemasonry came to the Great Lakes region in the 1700s beginning with Lodge #1 at Detroit [or Union #1, now Zion #1] (Provincial Grand Lodge of New York, 1764) with the British 2nd Battalion, 60th Regiment of Foot, and Harmony Lodge (Provincial Grand Lodge of New York, ca. 1764–1766) with the British 1st Battalion, 60th Regiment of Foot. Mackinac Island was home to St. John's Lodge No. 15 (1782–1813), the third Masonic Military Lodge originally warranted on 15 Nov 1782 by John Collins, the Provincial Grand Master of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Quebec, for work in the Upper Canada territory that would later become Michigan. As a Military Lodge associated with the British 84th Regiment of Foot (Royal Highland Emigrants) St. John’s #15 meetings were held at the newly constructed Fort Mackinac in one of the rooms in the Officers Stone Quarters and also in the upper part of the West Blockhouse. Few records exist of this lodge, it’s membership, and activities, but the purported membership included prominent military and community members, such as Capt. Daniel Robertson, Major Robert Rogers, and Lt. George Clowes, Dr. David Mitchell, George Meldrum, Josiah Bleakley, Benjamin Lyon, and George McBeath. The British Military Lodge St. John’s #15 was erased from the British rolls in 1813, following the War of 1812 and the later return of the fort to American control and the departure of the British military presence from the region after the Treaty of Ghent in December 1814. Nineteenth century to present During the War of 1812, the British captured the fort in the siege of Fort Mackinac, the first battle of the conflict. The Americans were caught by surprise, not knowing that war had been declared. The victorious British attempted to protect their prize by building Fort George on the high ground behind Fort Mackinac. In 1814, the Americans and British fought a second battle on the north side of the island. The American second-in-command, Major Andrew Holmes, was killed and the Americans failed to recapture the island. United States government had established a a federal fur trade station at Mackinac in 1808. After the capture, the British took over the station. By the Treaty of Ghent of 1815, the British returned the island and surrounding mainland to the U.S. The United States reoccupied Fort Mackinac, and renamed Fort George as Fort Holmes, after Major Holmes. Fort Mackinac remained under the control of the United States government until 1895. It provided volunteers to defend the Union during the American Civil War. The fort was used as a prison for three Confederate States of America sympathizers. John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company was centered on Mackinac Island after the War of 1812 and exported beaver pelts for thirty years. By the middle of the nineteenth century, commercial fishing for common whitefish and lake trout began to replace the fur trade as the island's primary industry. As sport fishing became more popular in the 1880s, hotels and restaurants accommodated tourists coming by train or lake boat from Detroit. Between 1795 and 1815, a network of Métis settlements and trading posts was established throughout what is now the U.S. states of Michigan and Wisconsin and to a lesser extent in Illinois and Indiana. As late as 1829, the Métis were dominant in the economy of present-day Wisconsin and Northern Michigan. Many Métis families are recorded in the U.S. Census for the historic Métis settlement areas along the Detroit and St. Clair rivers, Mackinac Island and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, as well as Green Bay in Wisconsin. Many prominent mixed-race families, such as the Mitchell family of Mackinac, were formed in the late 18th- and early 19th-century fur trading era. The Métis have generally not organized as an ethnic or political group in the United States as they have in Canada, where they had armed confrontations in an effort to secure a homeland. Mackinac Island’s second Masonic Lodge was Mackinac Lodge No. 71 F&AM (1853–1862). Mackinac #71 was granted dispensation by Grand Master Henry T. Backus on 20 June 1853, and was later granted a Charter by the Grand Lodge of Michigan’s Grand Master George W. Peck on 11 January 1855. Mackinac #71 meetings were held in a rented Lodge Room on Monday evenings, on or next proceeding the full moon, with a membership of prominent community members, such as Dr. Joseph H. Bailey, Dr. John R. Bailey, Jonathan P. King, Bela J. Chapman, Reuben Chapman, John Biddle, and Ambrose R. Davenport. Some of the Lodge members were formerly associated with the local Sons of Temperance chapter, Mackinac Division No. 23 (1847–1851), whose weekly meetings were held Wednesday nights in a rented room in the Courthouse (and later the Indian Dormitory served as the SoT meeting hall. The Lodge would become inactive in 1860 as a result of rising pre-American Civil War tensions, military enlistment, multiple member relocations, and the unfortunate combination of illness and/or death of a few key founding members. After two years of not submitting Lodge Returns, and no representatives sent to the Annual Communications, Mackinac #71‘s charter was forfeited by the Grand Lodge of Michigan in 1862. There was an attempt by seven Master Masons to revive Mackinac #71 a few years after the Civil War in February 1871, an effort lead by two original Lodge members, Dr. John R. Bailey and John Biddle, four Master Masons, and one Royal Arch Mason, however this action was unsuccessful. Following the Civil War, the island became a popular tourist destination for residents of major cities on the Great Lakes. Much of the federal land on Mackinac Island was designated as the second national park spearheaded by the efforts of Dr. John R. Bailey, Mackinac National Park, in 1875, three years after Yellowstone National Park was named as the first national park. This was thanks to U.S. senator Thomas W. Ferry who was born on the Island, and lobbied for the park. To accommodate an influx of tourists in the 1880s, the boat and railroad companies built hotels, including the Grand Hotel. Island residents established souvenir shops to profit from the tourist trade. Many wealthy business magnates built summer "cottages" along the island's bluffs for extended stays. When the federal government left the island in 1895, it transferred all of the federal land, including Fort Mackinac, to the state of Michigan; this area was designated as Michigan's first state park. The Mackinac Island State Park Commission, appointed to oversee the island, has restricted private development in the park. In addition it requires leaseholders to maintain the island's distinctive Victorian architecture. Motor vehicles were restricted at the end of the nineteenth century because of concerns for the health and safety of the island's residents and horses after local carriage drivers complained that automobiles startled their horses. This ban continues to the present, with exceptions only for city emergency vehicles (ambulance, police cars and fire trucks), city service vehicles and snowmobiles in winter. Some controversy ensued in 2019 when Vice President Mike Pence was permitted to bring a motorcade to the island. Demographics According to the 2020 United States Census, the island has a year-round population of 583. The population grows considerably during the summer from tourists and seasonal workers. Hotels, restaurants, bars and retail shops hire hundreds of seasonal workers to accommodate the tens of thousands of visitors that visit the island between May 1st and October 31. Geography Mackinac Island is located in Lake Huron, at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac, between the state's Upper and Lower Peninsulas. It is about in circumference and in total area. The highest point of the island is the historic Fort Holmes (originally called Fort George by the British before 1815), which is above lake level and above sea level. Geology Mackinac Island was formed as the glaciers of the last ice age began to melt around 13,000 BC. The bedrock strata that underlie the island are much older, dating to Late Silurian and Early Devonian time, about 400 to years ago. Subsurface deposits of halite (rock salt) dissolved, allowing the collapse of overlying limestones; these once-broken but now solidified rocks comprise the Mackinac Breccia. The melting glaciers formed the Great Lakes, and the receding lakewaters eroded the limestone bedrock, forming the island's steep cliffs and rock formations. At least three previous lake levels are known, two of them higher than the present shore: Algonquin-level lakeshores date to about 13,000 years ago, and the Nipissing-level shorelines formed 4,000 to 6,000 years ago. During an intermediate period of low water between these two high-water stages, the Straits of Mackinac shrank to a narrow gorge which discharged its water over Mackinac Falls, located just east of the island (beyond Arch Rock), into Lake Huron. As the Great Lakes assumed their present levels, the waterfall was inundated and Mackinac Island took on its current size. The steep cliffs were one of the primary reasons for the British army's choice of the island for a fortification; their decision differed from that of the French army, which had built Fort Michilimackinac about 1715 near present-day Mackinaw City. The limestone formations are still part of the island's appeal. One of the most popular geologic formations is Arch Rock, a natural limestone arch, 146 feet (45 m) above the ground. Other popular geologic formations include Devil's Kitchen, Skull Cave, and Sugar Loaf. Nature Mackinac Island contains a wide variety of terrain, including fields, marshes, bogs, coastline, boreal forest, and limestone formations. The environment is legally preserved on the island by the State Historic Park designation. About half of the shoreline and adjacent waters off Mackinac Island, including the harbor (Haldimand Bay) and the southern and western shore from Mission Point to Pointe aux Pins, is protected as part of the Straits of Mackinac Shipwreck Preserve, a state marine park. As it is separated from the mainland by 3 miles (4.8 km) of water, few large mammals inhabit the island, except those that traverse the ice during the winter months. Rabbits, fox, raccoons, otters, mink, gray and red squirrels, and chipmunks are all common, as are the occasional beaver and coyote. Bats are abundant on the island, as it has numerous caves that serve as dwellings for them and a large insect population for the bats to prey on. The island is frequented by migratory birds on their trips between their summer and winter habitats, as it lies on a major migration route. Eagles and hawks are abundant in April and May, while smaller birds such as yellow warblers, American redstart, and indigo bunting are more common in early summer. Near the shoreline, gulls, herons, geese, and loons are common. Owls, including snowy owls and great grey owls, come to the island from the Arctic to hunt in the warmer climate. Other birds, such as chickadees, cardinals, blue jays, and woodpeckers, live on the island year-round. Toads have also been found. Mackinac Island contains over 600 species of vascular plants. Flowering plants and wildflowers are abundant, including trillium, lady slippers, forget-me-nots, violets, trout lily, spring beauty, hepatica, buttercups, and hawkweeds in the forests and orchids, fringed gentian, butter-and-eggs, and jack-in-the-pulpit along the shoreline. The island's forests are home to many varieties of trees, such as maple, birch, elm, cedar, pine, and spruce. Media The island's newspaper is the Mackinac Island Town Crier. It has been owned and operated by Wesley H. Maurer Sr. and his family since 1957 as training for journalism. It is published weekly from May through September and monthly during the rest of the year. Transportation The island can be reached by private boat, by ferry, by small aircraft and, in the winter, by snowmobile over an ice bridge. The airport has a paved runway, and daily charter air service from the mainland is available. In the summer tourist season, ferry service is available from Shepler's Ferry and Mackinac Island Ferry Company (formerly Star Line) to shuttle visitors to the island from St. Ignace and Mackinaw City. Motorized vehicles have been prohibited on the island since 1898, with the exception of city emergency vehicles (ambulance, police cars and fire trucks), city service vehicles and snowmobiles during winter. Travel on the island is either by foot, bicycle, horse or horse-drawn carriage. Roller skates and roller blades are also allowed, except in the downtown area. Bicycles, roller skates/roller blades, carriages, and saddle horses are available for rent. An road follows the island's perimeter, and numerous roads, trails and paths cover the interior. M-185, the United States' only state highway without motorized vehicles, makes a circular loop around the island, closely hugging the shoreline. Mackinac Island State Park covers approximately 80 percent of the area of the island and includes Fort Mackinac, as well as portions of the island's historic downtown and harbor. No camping is allowed on the island, but numerous hotels and bed and breakfasts are available. The downtown streets are lined with many retail stores and restaurants. Architecture Most of the buildings on Mackinac Island are built of wood, a few are of stone, and most have clapboard siding. The architectural styles on the island span 300 years, from the earliest Native American structures to the European-American styles of the 19th century. The earliest structures were built by the Anishinaabe and Ojibwe (also called Chippewa in the United States) tribes before European exploration. At least two buildings still exist from the original French settlement of the late 18th century. Mackinac Island has the only example of northern French rustic architecture in the United States, and one of few survivors in North America. Mackinac Island also contains examples of Federalist, Colonial, and Greek Revival styles. Given its rise as a tourist destination in the late nineteenth century, many of the island's structures were built in the later style of the Victorian era, which includes Gothic Revival, Stick style, Italianate, Second Empire, Richardson Romanesque and Queen Anne styles. The most recent architectural styles date from the late 19th century to the 1930s and include the Colonial and Tudor revival. Points of interest All of Mackinac Island was listed as a National Historic Landmark in October 1960. In addition, because of the island's long history and preservation efforts starting in the 1890s, eight separate locations on the island, and a ninth site on adjacent Round Island, are listed in the United States National Register of Historic Places. In 2022 Travel + Leisure named Mackinac Island the best island in the continental U.S. to visit. The entire island, Haldimand Bay, and a small shipwreck form a historic district. Built by the British in 1780, Fort Mackinac was closed as a fort by the United States in 1895 as it no longer had any strategic purpose. It has been restored to its late 19th-century state through efforts beginning in the 1930s. The Biddle House, one of the oldest structures on Mackinac Island, was built about 1780 and is interpreted in its role as a prosperous home for the Métis Biddle family during the height of the fur trade in the 1820s. The McGulpin House, a working-class home possibly constructed prior to 1780, is interpreted as a frontier working-class home. The Agency House of the American Fur Company was built in 1820 as the residence for the company's Mackinac Island agent, Robert Stuart. It has been adapted as a fur trade museum and is open to the public. The Mission House was built on Mission Point in 1825 by Presbyterian missionary William Montague Ferry as a boarding school for Native American and Métis children. It became a hotel in 1849 and a rooming house in 1939. It is restored and now houses State Park employees. The 108-foot tall glassed-in Mission Point historical museum has five floors of historical exhibits and views of the Mackinac Straits. Exhibits include the maritime history of Mackinac Island, Great Lakes lighthouses, shipping, and shipwrecks, Mackinac Bridge construction, and the film Somewhere in Time, which was primarily filmed on Mission Point property. The Mission Church was built in 1829 and is the oldest surviving church building in Michigan. It has been restored to its 1830s appearance. The Indian Dormitory was constructed under direction of U.S. Indian agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft after the US and area tribes signed the 1836 Treaty of Washington. It operated as a school and a place for Native Americans to stay while coming to the island to receive yearly annuities. The building was restored in 1966 and converted to a museum; it closed in 2003. On July 2, 2010, the building was reopened for use as The Richard and Jane Manoogian Mackinac Art Museum. It showcases Mackinac art from prehistory to the present, and includes a children's art studio. The Matthew Geary House, built in 1846 as a private residence, was added to the NRHP in 1971. Privately owned, it is available for lease for vacation rentals. The current Catholic Sainte Anne Church was built from 1874. It replaced earlier parish churches in use on Mackinac Island and the adjacent mainland; the parish register records participants in sacraments such as baptisms, marriages, and funerals from 1695. The Grand Hotel is a Victorian-style structure that opened in 1887. The 1980 film Somewhere in Time was shot on location at the hotel. The Round Island Lighthouse is located just south of Mackinac Island on the small, uninhabited Round Island, which is held and operated by the US Forest Service. The light was built in 1894 and automated in 1924. Extensive restoration began in the 1970s, and the exterior and structure have since been repaired. Wawashkamo Golf Club was laid out in 1898 as a Scottish links-type course. It is the oldest continuously played golf course in Michigan. The Michigan Governor's Summer Residence was built overlooking the harbor in 1902. It was purchased by the state in 1943 for use as a seasonal governor's residence. Anne's Tablet is an Art Nouveau sculptural installation added to a blufftop overlook in 1916. Several children's parks have been established on the island. The most popular ones include the playground on the schoolyard; Marquette Park; and Great Turtle Park, which includes a baseball field, skate park, barbecue area, and a play set. Culture Events Mackinac Island is home to many cultural events, including an annual show of American art from the Masco collection of 19th-century works at the Grand Hotel. Five art galleries operate on the island. Since 1949, the island's residents have been celebrating the island's native lilacs with an annual spring 10-day festival. It culminates in a parade of horse-drawn vehicles, which has been recognized as a local legacy event by the Library of Congress. The July 20, 2019, running of the Port Huron to Mackinac Boat Race was the 95th such annual event, with 202 sailboats registered in the 204-nautical mile-race from Port Huron to the island. The race was reported to have continued over the years in spite of wars and economic depressions. A similar sailboat race from Chicago to the island, most recently held on July 20 to 23, 2019, was the 111th event in the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac, with 266 sailboats competing. The island is a destination for many regionally and nationally proclaimed conferences, including the Mackinac Policy Conference. Another special event that Mackinac island is known for is the Mackinac Island Fudge Festival which takes place in August. Phil Porter wrote a book called "Fudge: Mackinac's Sweet Souvenir" which explains how fudge became such a popular treat in Mackinac. After the fur trade, this island became a summer vacationing spot. The visitors began to associate sweets with the island. It originally started when Native Americans began collecting maple sugar but in the 1800s the Murdick family created the first real candy store. The world faced sugar rations in the first half of the 20th century due to the Great Depression and wars that were taking place. The fudge shops in the island had very little business, but the Murdick family did not give up hope! They would use fans to send the scent of their fudge out into the community to draw in customers. In later years, major interstates were created and made Mackinac Island well known to many. Mackinac Island’s visitors became known as "fudgies" because their main reason to travel to the island was for their famous fudge. Although fudge was not invented on the island, it is a very popular treat that people would travel from all over to devour. Epona, the Gallo-Roman Horse Goddess, is celebrated each June on Mackinac Island with stable tours, a blessing of the animals and the Epona and Barkus Parade. Mackinac Island does not permit personal automobiles; the primary source of transportation remains the horse, so celebrating Epona has special significance on this island. The "Feast of Epona" involves the blessing of horses and other animals by a local churchman. Scout Service Camp Every summer, Mackinac Island accommodates several Michigan Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and their leaders over alternate weeks. These scouts serve the state park as the Mackinac Island Governor's Honor Guard. The program began in 1929, when the State Park Commission invited eight Eagle Scouts, including Gerald Ford, later President of the United States, to the island. In 1974, the program was expanded by Governor William Milliken to include Girl Scouts. The program is popular, selective, and a long-standing tradition. Scouts raise and lower twenty-seven flags on the island, serve as guides, and complete volunteer service projects during their stay. These Scouts live in the Scout Barracks behind Fort Mackinac. Sailing Mackinac Island is the destination for two sailing races. The island has a sailing club, the Mackinac Island Yacht Club. It serves as the finish line for both the Port Huron to Mackinac Race and the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac. The races are run a week apart, in July. They are both among the longest freshwater sailing races in the world and attract over 500 boats and 3,500 sailors combined. Both races are historical events, having been run every year since the 1920s. Film The swimming pool at the Grand Hotel is named for Esther Williams, who starred in the 1947 film This Time for Keeps. This featured many scenes filmed on Mackinac Island. The majority of the 1980 film Somewhere in Time was filmed at Mission Point on Mackinac Island. Several landmarks are visible in the film, including the Grand Hotel and the lighthouse on nearby Round Island. The film's director said he needed to "find a place that looked like it hadn't changed in eighty years." Mackinac Island was featured on two episodes of the mid-2000s TV series Dirty Jobs. Host Mike Rowe interviewed a Mackinac Bridge maintenance worker, and a horse manure and garbage removal/composting collector. Notable people John Penn Arndt, merchant, member of the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature. William Beaumont, a surgeon in the U.S. Army who became known as the "Father of Gastric Physiology" following his research on human digestion. Agatha Biddle, Métis fur trader (specifically Odawa & French), and community leader. Sophie Biddle, Métis fur trader, and community leader. Daughter of Agatha Biddle. Gerald F. Bogan, Senior admiral during WWII and Navy Cross recipient. Michael Cudahy, meatpacking CEO and land developer. Peter Warren Dease, fur trader and Arctic explorer. Married into the Métis fur trade via his wife, Elizabeth Chouinard. Hercules L. Dousman, fur trader and real estate financier, son of Michael Dousman. Michael Dousman, fur trader and sawmill owner. Acquired the plot of farmland that was eventually developed into what is now the Wawashkamo Golf Club Frank Dufina, Native American golf professional. Thomas W. Ferry, member of the United States House of Representatives from Michigan in 1865–1871, and of the United States Senate from Michigan in 1871–1883, was born on the island. William Montague Ferry, Presbyterian minister and missionary established a mission on the island. William Montague Ferry Jr., Michigan and Utah politician, was born on the island. Porter Hanks, Artillery lieutenant in command of Fort Mackinac who surrendered the island to the British in July 1812. Jane Briggs Hart, aviator and wife of Senator Philip Hart. Philip Hart, member of the U.S. Senate from Michigan in 1959–1976. Buried at St. Anne's Catholic Cemetery. Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, fur trader and pioneer Chicago CEO. Madeline La Framboise, Métis fur trader and businesswoman, inducted in 1984 into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. Jacques Marquette, Jesuit priest and missionary. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, noted ethnographer and U.S. Indian agent, named many counties and places in Michigan in his official capacity; husband of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft. Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, ethnographer, translator, folklorist, and poet of mixed Ojibwa & Scots-Irish parentage; inducted in 2008 into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. Elizabeth Mitchell, Métis businesswoman. Alexis St. Martin, French fur trapper, and patient for William Beaumont's research. Elizabeth Whitney Williams, lighthouse keeper on the Great Lakes from 1872 to 1913 G. Mennen Williams, governor of Michigan in 1949–1961. In fact, the state owns a residence on the island for the current governor's use; some governors use it extensively, while others have used it only for special occasions. Pearl Louella Kendrick, was an American bacteriologist known for co-developing the first vaccine for whooping cough. See also Populated islands of the Great Lakes References External links M-185 Route Listing at Michigan Highways Michigan History, Arts, and libraries, Mackinac Island Mackinac Island guide and photographs Category:Astor family Category:Islands of Mackinac County, Michigan Category:National Historic Landmarks in Michigan Category:Religious places of the indigenous peoples of North America Category:Ojibwe in the United States Category:Métis Category:Populated places established in 1781 Category:Tourism in Michigan Category:Car-free islands of the United States Category:Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan Category:Islands of Lake Huron in Michigan Category:Coastal resorts in Michigan Category:National Register of Historic Places in Mackinac County, Michigan Category:Populated places on Lake Huron in the United States