(Vocal/instrumental group, 1976–81) A London punk band consisting of Billy Idol (William Broad, vocals), Tony James (bass), Bob Andrews (guitar) and Mark Laff (drums), Generation X were viewed with suspicion by the punk cognoscenti for their pop leanings and failure to toe the party line. They scored a Top 20 hit with ‘King Rocker’ in 1979 but otherwise their ...
Jimi Hendrix remains the most innovative and influential rock guitarist in the world. He changed the way the guitar was played, transforming its possibilities and its image. Other guitarists had toyed with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned these and other effects into a controlled, personalized sound that generations of guitarists since have emulated and embellished. He was ...
Alternative-rock guitarist Joey Santiago (b. 1965) was born in Manila, Philippines, to a wealthy family, who emigrated to the United States when President Marcos declared martial law. The family eventually settled in Massachusetts. Joey first played guitar at the age of nine, becoming a fan of Seventies punk and David Bowie. At the University of Massachusetts, ...
Master of guitar-generated sound effects, Adrian Belew (b. 1949) makes his Parker Deluxe guitar not only sing but also scream, squawk, roar, tweet and talk in elephant tongue. Best known for his time in King Crimson during the early Eighties as comic foil to Robert Fripp’s relatively nerdy straight man, Belew is one of the most ...
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 ...
Veteran Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards (b. 1943) was born in Dartford, Kent. After being expelled from technical school in 1958, Richards attended Sidcup Art College. The art-school environment was crucial to Richards’ development, as it was for many of his generation. Here he was able to nurture his passion for rhythm and blues, finding many fellow ...
As a guitarist and songwriter, Nuno Bettencourt draws from many styles and influences. Born in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores in 1966, Bettencourt grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. As a teenager, he began playing drums, bass and keyboards, but ultimately chose guitar as his primary instrument, drawing heavy influence from Eddie Van Halen ...
Too often, the music created by so-called ‘shred’ guitarists comes across as too cerebral and serious to elicit enjoyment from any but the most die-hard shred fan. Fortunately for all other fans of instrumental guitar, Paul Gilbert (b. 1966) prefers to dish out his hungry-man portions of notes with humour and irreverence matched only by his technical ferocity. Gilbert ...
For over 30 years, guitarist Alex Lifeson has quietly served as the cohesive key to success for progressive rockers Rush – arguably the most enduring and successful hard-rock band of all time. A guitarist always more interested in finding the right chord voicing or textural effect to make a chorus work than in shredding the frets off his axe du ...
One half of the infamous ‘Toxic Twins’, along with vocalist Steven Tyler, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry projects a swagger and ultra-cool stage presence that few guitarists can match. Fewer still possess his capacity for muscular, gritty soloing and hook-laden riffing. For over 30 years now, Perry and his stinging guitar tone, generated most often via his signature Gibson ...
Alex Skolnick (b. 1968) is best known as a metal guitarist with thrash pioneers Testament, but metal is just one facet of the talented guitarist’s abilities. Skolnick was born in Berkeley, California. At the age of nine, he discovered Kiss and subsequently decided to learn guitar. He was later inspired by the highly technical work of Eddie Van ...
Arguably the most important alternative guitarist of the 1990s, Kurt Cobain (1967–94) was born in Aberdeen, Washington. His parents divorced when he was seven, which had a traumatic effect on Cobain, tainting the remainder of his life. From an early age, he showed a keen interest in music, singing along to Beatles’ songs on the ...
Indie guitarist Graham Coxon (b. 1969) was born in West Berlin, the son of an army bandsman. His early years were characterized by the itinerant army life until the family settled in Colchester in the late 1970s. The young Coxon was a Beatles fan and possessed a talent for art. He began to learn saxophone and then at 12, ...
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 ...
(Det’-rikh Books-te-hoo’-de) c. 1637–1707 German composer Buxtehude was born in Scandinavia, but from 1668 until his death held the post of organist at St Mary’s, Lübeck. The position did not require him to provide much in the way of vocal music; he also wrote cantatas and arias for the Abendmusiken (public concerts), in which he was deeply involved. His cantatas ...
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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.