(Guitar, vocals, b. 1938) Cale gigged around his native Tulsa, Oklahoma before moving to LA in 1964. He issued his first record in 1971, after Eric Clapton’s hit with Cale’s ‘After Midnight’. Cale is still known to many only through covers of his songs and has always preferred to stay in the background of the blues scene; ...
(Trombone, arranger, composer, 1924–2001) J.J. (James Louis) Johnson was the premier bebop trombonist. His speed of execution and fluent, highly inventive approach to both melody and rhythm essentially devised a new language for an instrument that was not obviously made to suit the wide intervals and rapid articulation of the style. He took up trombone in ...
The term ‘mode’ tends to be used in twentieth-century music to refer to a scale other than major or minor (though these can be called modes as well). The so-called ‘church modes’, given their prominence in the folk music of both Eastern and Western Europe, are frequently encountered in music that draws on those traditions (e.g. Bartók, Janáček ...
Derek Trucks was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1979. Trucks bought his first guitar at a yard sale for $5 at age nine and became a child prodigy, playing his first paid performance at age 11. Trucks began playing the guitar using a ‘slide’ bar because it allowed him to play the guitar with his small hands. By his ...
The most famous living guitarist in the world, Eric Clapton’s career has passed through an extraordinary series of highs and lows during his long reign as a guitar hero. He has also experimented with numerous stylistic changes, but has always returned to his first love, the blues. A love child born in 1945, Clapton was brought up ...
(Vocals, piano, b. 1946) Blind since birth, Ronnie Milsap was a multi-instrumentalist by the age of 12. Working with Elvis Presley’s producer Chips Moman, he played piano and sang backing vocals on a Presley recording session, and in 1965 scored a Top 20 US R&B hit with ‘Never Had It So Good’. Milsap also worked in ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1939–88) Roy Buchanan’s use of harmonics and his melodic sense were incomparable. Raised on gospel and R&B, he performed with Johnny Otis, Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson and Ronnie Hawkins’ Hawks as a young man. A 1971 PBS documentary, The Best Unknown Guitarist In The World, together with adulation from the likes of John Lennon ...
Of the entire century, the 1970s were the years of catching one’s breath. Superficially, the promise of the 1960s had faded or failed, the victim of wretched excess and just plain bad taste. America’s war in Vietnam sputtered to an end, international relations elsewhere seemed to stalemate in détente and economically the world suffered from stagflation: exhaustion ...
Unorthodox, uncompromising, Patti Smith was a seminal figure in the New York punk movement and has remained a touchstone for later generations of rock artists. Born on 30 December 1946, Smith was raised in southern New Jersey by her atheist father and Jehovah’s Witness mother. Leaving school at 16 she had brief, unsatisfying stints working in a ...
Offbeat, daring, challenging, provocative, sometimes outrageous, always different, during the wildly experimental and progressive second half of the 1960s The Velvet Underground was the avant-rock outfit par excellence. Although not commercially successful, they produced groundbreaking music that would subsequently cultivate a strong cult following while heavily influencing the punk/new-wave generation. Acclaim And Disdain Eschewing ...
Proto-punk bands, like all ‘proto’ genres, are by definition only identified retrospectively and generally share subversive and anti-establishment attitudes. Although punk rock was primarily a British phenomenon, there were several notable American punk bands and its musical roots lie more with these American bands than with British bands. The energy of pub rockers like Dr. Feelgood and Eddie ...
February MC5 Kick Out The Jams Often credited as the first intentionally punk band, MC5’s live debut album detonated in 1969. Forming at their Michigan High School, singer Rob Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, bassist Michael Davis and drummer Dennis Thompson were mentored by political activist John Sinclair of The White Panthers. They were ...
March The Dictators Go Girl Crazy The anarchic Dictators spiced up the New York scene with their Go Girl Crazy! album in 1975, a coarse blend of punk and heavy metal with sharp witty lyrics mocking the junk culture they saw all around them, which naturally included punk and heavy metal. Unfortunately the chaos that surrounded the band ...
Taking their name from the meagre rehearsal facilities of its early practitioners, garage rock began in the US during the mid-1960s. The loud, fuzz-toned guitars often failed to disguise links to UK pop mentors like The Beatles, Rolling Stones and The Who. later acid rock bands such as The Electric Prunes incorporated progressive and psychedelic influences. Mostly, ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.