(Guitar, vocals, 1940–80) Lennon’s post-Beatles solo career began with John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), a harrowingly honest record inspired by the Primal therapy that Lennon was undergoing. Imagine (1971) featured his best-loved song (not released as a UK single until 1975) and was a more sugar-coated affair. The double album Sometime In New York City (1972) featured politically charged ...
spectacles; Lennon-style granny glasses, perhaps, but ones whose lenses focussed on hard-hitting and sometimes controversial topics rather than the innocent themes of boy-loves-girl, boy-loses-girl. Indeed, John Lennon and his fellow Beatles led the way among the handful of artists who made a successful transition from pop to rock. These included The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds and ...
as the legacy of her Columbia years, she tackled material by an eclectic range of writers from both within the circle of soul and beyond: Goffin and King, Lennon and McCartney, Bacharach and David, Curtis Mayfield and Elton John all received early attention and chart success in her hands. With her gospel roots Aretha was a gifted ...
, The Byrds, during the next few years. In the meantime, while Dylan’s influence was spreading on both sides of the Atlantic, with rock contemporaries like John Lennon transitioning from boy-loses-girl themes to ones of far more personal expression, Dylan’s own songwriting was advancing at a rapid rate. The January 1964 release of The Times They Are ...
Holly’s willingness to experiment. The Star Shines On In March 1958, Buddy and The Crickets toured Britain, and two avid spectators at their Liverpool gig were teenagers John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Several years on their compositions rang with Holly’s influence. McCartney would later buy the publishing rights to Holly’s song catalogue. On their return things began to change. ...
, but their star faded somewhat thereafter as the wackiness faded. Recorded theme for TV’s That ‘70s Show, ‘In The Street’, while band members featured in sessions for John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy (1980). Styles & Forms | Seventies | Rock Personalities | Chic | Seventies | Rock ...
so they had rights to the titles, though Chuck Berry In Memphis (1967) was a half-decent set. Berry began to play rock’n’roll revival shows, including Toronto, where Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band headlined. In 1972, Lennon invited Berry to be a guest on American TV’s The Mike Douglas Show which he was co-hosting. He introduced him ...
One of the great chameleon figures in rock, David Bowie has also been among the most influential. Born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947, his earliest records with The King Bees, The Mannish Boys and The Lower Third were unsuccessful. In 1966 he changed his name to David Bowie and combined his songwriting with an interest in ...
a permanent limp. ‘Three Steps to Heaven’ became a posthumous No. 1 in Britain. Cochran was a fundamental influence on the first generation of British rock’n’rollers. Paul McCartney showed John Lennon how to play ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ at their first meeting. Cochran’s distinctive rhythmic approach both puzzled and fascinated listeners. One of his innovations was aligning the bass and guitar to ...
1974, after he had recorded a cover of The Beatles’ ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ with ‘Dr. Winston O’Boogie’ on guitar, he persuaded Winston’s alter ego John Lennon to join him on stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden. It was to prove Lennon’s last live appearance. Elton premiered Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975) at ...
Pigeonholed as the ‘quiet one’, misunderstood as an adopter of Eastern religion and music, and overshadowed (sometimes maligned) by his prolific, trail-blazing bandmates Lennon and McCartney, George Harrison (1943–2001) might have become a footnote in musical history. But as a member of The Beatles, Harrison made the words ‘lead guitar’ a household term and steadily developed as ...
Beatles. The innovations began with the group’s first singles, all self-written in a time when that was rare. Follow-up albums confirmed the presence of an awesome team in John Lennon and Paul McCartney. With The Beatles, in particular, took the spirit of American R&B and fused it with something fresh, young and distinctively British. The screaming soon ...
work. The two sides of The Who were evident from their very beginnings on the London scene of the early 1960s. Like so many of his contemporaries, including John Lennon, Keith Richards and Ray Davies, Pete Townshend was an art student. As such he was encouraged to look at popular culture with a more thoughtful eye than the ...
Rolling Stone broadened this boss-eyed and albino Texan’s work spectrum and placed an eponymous debut album in the national Top 30. Among famous admirers were The Rolling Stones and John Lennon who each proffered songs for his consideration after he began touring beyond North America, backed by ex-members of The McCoys and his brother Edgar (keyboards, saxophone), who went ...
Lotta Love’ 1971 Led Zeppelin IV, ‘Black Dog’, ‘Stairway To Heaven’ 1973 ‘No Quarter’ 1975 Physical Graffiti, ‘Kashmir’ Styles & Forms | Seventies | Rock Personalities | John Lennon | Seventies | Rock ...
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...
CURATED
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.