(Vocals, guitar, b. 1942) Young grew up listening to country music in his native Georgia, played folk music in Greenwich Village and recorded early country-rock with Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman in California. He wove these disparate experiences into vivid story songs that were recorded by the Eagles, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams Jr. and Dolly Parton. ...
The guitarist in Genesis from 1970–77, Steve Hackett developed a technical skill and tone control that was a vital factor in shaping the band’s music. He also helped to steer the post-Peter Gabriel Genesis towards a new style before leaving to pursue a solo career. An undemonstrative performer, Hackett has been a major influence on guitarists looking beyond the ...
As the guitarist in Yes throughout their heyday in the 1970s, Steve Howe’s tasteful, eclectic playing helped to define a new style of rock music. Despite occasional absences during Yes’s convoluted history during the 1980s and 1990s, Howe remained a pivotal member of the group and has been a permanent member since 1996. He was also a founding ...
A consummate guitarist in an extraordinary variety of styles, including jazz, classical, country, rock and heavy metal, Steve Morse also has the compositional skills and the improvising genius to match. He has played with, among others, Dixie Dregs, Kansas and Deep Purple, while also maintaining his own band. Morse was born in ...
Schooled by Joe Satriani, trained by Frank Zappa and turned into a guitar hero by David Lee Roth, Steve Vai (b. 1960) has combined an energetic technique with a distinctive and often unusual sense of tone. Born and raised in North Hempstead, New York, Vai began taking guitar lessons from his schoolmate Satriani when he was 14. ...
Steve ‘The Colonel’ Cropper is an American guitarist, songwriter, producer and soul musician, best known for his work creating the trailblazing soul records produced by Memphis’s Stax label as a member of its studio band, which became Booker T. & The M.G.s, in the mid-1960s. Stephen Lee Cropper was born on a farm outside ...
AC/DC guitarist Angus Young – all five feet two inches of him – is a larger-than-life figure. Rising up from working-class Scottish roots to become the heart and soul of one of the greatest rock’n’roll bands of all time, Young, with his schoolboy outfit and Gibson SG in hand, has become the definitive rock-guitar icon. Born in Glasgow ...
Hailed as one of hard rock’s greatest rhythm guitarists, Malcolm Young (b. 1953) was born in Glasgow, Scotland. When he was 10, the family emmigrated to Sydney, Australia, where Malcolm and younger brother Angus were taught to play guitar by elder sibling George, a member of The Easybeats. Malcolm founded AC/DC with Angus in 1973. ...
Although his band of high-school buddies achieved international fame under the name Toto, Steve Lukather (b. 1957), session guitarist extraordinaire, has had to struggle under the same suspicion under which his bandmates have toiled: that the whole may add up to less than the sum of its parts. For Toto, despite achieving worldwide fame with singles like ‘Rosanna’ ...
Brooklyn’s Steve Stevens (b. 1959) grew up as a fan of progressive rock and honed his chops by studying guitar at Manhattan’s LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts. He worked the Long Island and Manhattan club scenes with bands and eventually was hired for session work, including tracks for ex-Kiss drummer Peter Criss. But Stevens’ star really began to shine ...
Canadian rock legend Neil Young (b. 1945) has become respected as much for his playing as for his composing and vocal work with his occasional partners Crosby, Stills & Nash. Born in Toronto, Canada, Young got a ukulele from his father for Christmas in 1958. In 1960, Young moved to Winnipeg with his mother. A poor student ...
The young country movement was an industry-driven trend aimed at the mass market of teens and twenty-something music fans. Like the urban cowboys, young country artists often contemporized or diluted prevailing styles like honky-tonk and pop country for mass consumption. The early 1990s saw a continuation of the mid- and late-1980s neo-traditionalist movement and produced a glut of gifted young ...
Of all the great solo architects of the 1930s, none personified the smooth, penetrating sweep through space and time more ideally or organically than tenor saxophonist Lester Young. His fluid, unforced phrasing and undulating attack were matched to a cool, satin skin of sound that seemed to dispel all friction by decompressing the emotional density of the ...
(Soprano saxophone, 1934–2004) Steve Lacy began his career in Dixieland jazz, sitting in with Henry ‘Red’ Allen, Rex Stewart and Herbie Nichols, among others, at New York’s Café Metronome. However, he quickly shifted tack and became one of the leading figures in the jazz avant-garde. Soprano saxophone is now widely played, but Lacy concentrated ...
(Soprano saxophone, 1934–2004) Born Steven Lackritz in New York City, Lacy began his career playing Dixieland music with veterans Henry ‘Red’ Allen and Rex Stewart, but became best known as a highly lyrical and adventurous champion of the soprano saxophone. His adoption of the straight horn, neglected since the heyday of Sidney Bechet, inspired John Coltrane ...
AUTHORITATIVE
An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
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Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.