‘King of the Surf Guitar’ Dick Dale was born Richard Monsour in Boston, Massachusetts in 1937. Dale learned to play drums, ukulele and trumpet before taking up the guitar, inspired by country music. His first break in music was winning an Elvis Presley soundalike contest. Dale began playing guitar in clubs, solo at first, but later backed by The Del-Tones. He was an early enthusiast of the surfing scene that ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1969–78, 1979–present) Purveyors of space rock since the late 1960s, Hawkwind were formed in the hippy community of London’s Ladbroke Grove. The band’s line-up has rarely remained stable for long but at the time of the surprise UK No. 3 ‘Silver Machine’ in 1972, the core members were ever-present founder Dave Brock (guitar, vocals), Nik Turner (saxophone, vocals), Del Dettmar (synthesizer), Dik Mik (audio generator), Lemmy (bass, vocals), Simon ...
(Vocals, b. 1947) One of the most significant figures of the 1970s, Iggy Pop (real name James Osterberg) was hailed as the godfather of punk. But when The Stooges called it a day in 1971, he was viewed as a spent force and it was only the persistence of David Bowie that led to The Stooges reconvening for Raw Power (1973) and a legendary gig at London’s King’s Cross Cinema. The ...
(Vocal group, 1968–72) Michigan’s loud and politically resolute MC5 – Rob Tyler (vocals), Wayne Kramer (guitar), Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith (guitar), Mike Davis (bass) and Dennis Thompson (drums) – were connected with The White Panthers. Riddled with slogan-ridden social comment, rude words and raw musical attack, their three albums may be seen to have pre-empted the more dogmatic punk groups like The Clash and Crass, as well as later acts such as ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1971–77, 2004–present) A trailblazing quintet whose energetic, shambolic style has been an enduring influence, the New York Dolls were formed in 1971 by David Johansen (vocals) and Johnny Thunders (guitar, died 1991), adding Sylvain Sylvain (guitar), Arthur Kane (bass, died 2004) and Billy Murcia (drums, died 1972 and replaced by Jerry Nolan, died 1992). The 1973 debut New York Dolls was promoted by a legendary appearance on British television’s ...
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 factory and studying at a teaching college before she fled to New York ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1973–78, 1992–93, 2001–present) An art punk group formed in New York in 1973, Television originally included Richard Hell (bass), who later formed The Heartbreakers and The Voidoids, along with guitarists Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, and Billy Ficca (drums). Hell soon left due to friction with Verlaine. Fred Smith, briefly a member of Blondie, took over on bass. Television became part of the nascent punk scene in New York, ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1965–68) They surfaced at the tail-end of the ‘British Invasion’ from a mid-Texas scene as self-contained in its way as Merseybeat had been. ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ – from 1966’s The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators – was a regional hit, but later releases obeyed a law of diminishing returns both artistically and commercially. Today, The Elevators are remembered principally as the group in which Roky Erickson ...
(Vocal group, 1956–69) Linked culturally to the 1950s beatniks, this burlesque poetry rock outfit was formed in New York by vocalists Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg. While their long hair, anti-everything stance and slapdash musicianship was shared with chartbusting Anglophile garage bands of the mid-1960s, The Fugs’ uncompromising coverage of taboo subjects and Kupferberg’s middle age precluded conventional stardom. Since the mid-1980s, there have been reunion concerts and new albums. Styles & ...
One of the more popular bands of the ‘British Invasion’ and a considerable influence on both 1970s heavy metal outfits and 1990s groups such as Blur and Oasis, The Kinks went through numerous line-up changes but were always led by singer-songwriter Ray Davies (born 21 June 1944), while his brother Dave (born 3 February 1947) supplied the band’s signature rock guitar sound. Raw Unbridled Energy Born and raised in Muswell Hill, North ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1975–79) A proto-punk all-girl outfit put together by LA producer/svengali Kim Fowley, The Runaways were influenced by heavy metal and the glam rock of The Sweet and Suzi Quatro. Initially comprising Cherie Curie (vocals), Joan Jett (guitar), Lita Ford (guitar), Jackie Fox (bass) and Sandy West (drums), the band made five albums and went through several line-up changes before splitting up in 1979. Jett and Ford went on to ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1965–72) This Los Angeles ‘garage band’ comprised Sky Saxon (vocals), Jan Savage (guitar), Daryll Hooper (organ) and Rick Andridge (drums). Slipping into the national Top 40 in 1965, their second single, ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’, triggered further grippingly slipshod exercises prior to ‘going psychedelic’ in 1967. A desperate in-concert album, Raw And Alive signalled the end, but Saxon’s solo releases – such as 2005’s Transparency – have punctuated the decades ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1967–74) This Detroit quartet’s focal point was Iggy Pop (James Osterberg, vocals), fronting Ron Asheton (guitar), Scott Asheton (drums) and Dave Alexander (bass). Tiring of psychedelia, they had dug down to a raw three-chord bedrock for an eponymous maiden album in 1969, promoted with increasingly more manic stage performances at odds with the prevailing ‘laid-back’ mood. Two more albums, Fun House and 1973’s Raw Power, were appreciated mostly in ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1964–present) After ‘Wild Thing’ charged into the UK chart in 1966 its follow-up, ‘With A Girl Like You’, penned by mainstay Reg Presley (vocals), actually seized the top spot. These were smashes in North America, too. Intermittent successes later and the recurrence of Troggs numbers in the repertoires of countless US garage bands were a solid foundation for a lucrative post-Top 40 career that has embraced a link-up with ...
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 conventional melodies and pop-style lyrics in favour of dour, rigidly constructed songs about sadomasochism, sexual deviance, drugs, despair ...
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David Bowie
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