Alternative experimental guitarist Thurston Moore (b. 1958) was born in Coral Gables, Florida. Inspired by New York’s punk and new-wave scene, Moore moved to the city in 1977. While playing in a band called The Coachmen, he met Lee Ranaldo, an art student and member of Glenn Branca’s avant-garde guitar orchestra. Moore assembled a band with bassist ...
Blues and hard-rock guitarist Gary Moore was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1952. He began playing the acoustic guitar at the age of eight, acquiring his first electric model at 14. Moore learned to play right-handed, despite being naturally left-handed. In 1969, he joined Skid Row, an Irish blues-rock group that featured Phil Lynott on ...
The original rock’n’roll lead guitarist, Scotty Moore (b. 1931) was born near Gadsden, Tennessee. Moore began playing guitar at the age of eight, largely self-taught. Although he aspired to playing jazz like Barney Kessel and Tal Farlow, he was also influenced by country guitarists like Merle Travis and, in particular, Chet Atkins. After Navy service ...
(Vocals, songwriter, b. 1972) Moorer moved to Nashville after college and started songwriting after she met Oklahoma musician Doyle ‘Butch’ Primm, whom she later married. Moorer’s debut album, Alabama Song (1998) included ‘A Soft Place To Fall’, as featured in the soundtrack to the movie The Horse Whisperer. After four major-label albums, she was released from ...
Nels Cline (b. 1956) was born in Los Angeles. He first came to prominence in the 1980s playing jazz, often with his identical twin brother, drummer Alex Cline. Cline has worked with many notable musicians in alternative rock, including Mike Watt, Thurston Moore and Wilco, of which he became a full-time member in 2004. Cline appears ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1981–present) Starting life as avant-garde noise merchants, Thurston Moore (vocals, guitar), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals), Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) and a variety of drummers, including Steve Shelley, have been at the centre of New York’s alternative music scene ever since, influencing indie rock immeasurably. Highlights include the striking art rock of ...
A crucial figure in New York’s late 1970s new-wave scene, Tom Verlaine (b. 1949) was born Thomas Miller in New Jersey. At an early age, he learned piano before switching to saxophone, inspired by John Coltrane. He took up the guitar in his teens and began forging his own style, searching for new ways of expressing himself ...
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, ...
Contemporary music whose ancestry lies in the Western classical tradition finds itself in a curious position. Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that we are not entirely sure what to call it. The label ‘classical’ seems anachronistic, especially when applied to composers who have challenged some of the fundamental assumptions of the classical tradition. ‘Concert music’ is similarly problematic ...
Few would deny that the blues has played a more important role in the history of popular culture than any other musical genre. As well as being a complete art form in itself, it is a direct ancestor to the different types of current popular music we know and love today. Without the blues there would have been no Beatles ...
European culture lay in ruins after the end of World War II. There were many who, in company with the philosopher Theodor Adorno, felt that Nazi atrocities such as Auschwitz rendered art impossible, at least temporarily. Others, though, felt that humanity could only establish itself anew by rediscovering the potency of art, including opera. On ...
Blues-rock guitarist Alvin Lee was born Graham Barnes in Nottingham in 1944. Inspired by rock’n’roll guitarists Chuck Berry and Scotty Moore, Lee began to play at the age of 13, and formed his first band, Ivan Jay & The Jaymen, in 1960. Lee became lead vocalist in 1962 when the band changed their name to The Jaybirds ...
1867–1944 American composer Beach (née Cheney) made her debut as a pianist in 1883, the year in which her first composition was published. In 1885 she married, and retired from a professional performing career. She did, however, continue to compose, writing large-scale works such as the ‘Gaelic’ Symphony in E minor op. 32 (1896) and the ...
(Instrumental group, 1958–65) Bassist Black helped create the rockabilly sound on Elvis Presley’s Sun recordings and in the singer’s live performances from 1954–58 with guitarist Scotty Moore and drummer D.J. Fontana. Ironically, Black became better known commercially through a string of instrumental hits with The Bill Black Combo, a group he formed after leaving Presley in a ...
(Piano, vocals, 1922–99) Charles Mose Brown was born in Texas City, Texas and had extensive classical piano training as a youth. He moved to Los Angeles in 1943 and by September 1944 had become the vocalist-pianist in Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers. The Blazers had several hits before Brown went solo in 1948 and scored success with songs such ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
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