(Vocal/instrumental group, 1966–71, 1986–89, 1993–97, 2001–02, 2010–present) Four amenable youths – Mike Nesmith (guitar), Peter Tork (vocals), Mickey Dolenz (drums) and Davy Jones (vocals) – were hired by a Hollywood business conglomerate to play an Anglo-American pop combo in a 1966 TV series that was to be networked worldwide. Success was instant, and an international ...
No instrument has had a more dramatic impact on contemporary music than the synthesizer. Its development opened up a whole new world of seemingly endless sonic possibilities and ushered in completely new forms of music. History The birth of the synthesizer dates back to the mid-1940s when Canadian physicist, composer and instrument builder, Hugh le Caine (1914–77) built the ...
The greatness of The Who is that they were two contradictory things at the same time. On the one hand was the sheer physical noise they made, an eruption of volcanic force that left bystanders stupefied. But on the other was a purely intellectual force. In their chief songwriter Pete Townshend, The Who had a true rock theorist, ...
like ‘Hello Mary Lou’, ‘Lonesome Town’ and ‘Teenage Idol’. Burton’s ‘chicken pickin’’ mastery on Dobro and guitar landed him studio gigs with artists as diverse as Joni Mitchell, The Monkees and Merle Haggard, as part of the legendary LA studio band known as The Wrecking Crew. Burton soon began an eight-year stint with Elvis’s TCB band, which lasted ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1942) Former member of The Monkees, Nesmith wrote key hits for Linda Ronstadt (‘Different Drum’) and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (‘Some Of Shelly’s Blues’) and formed the First National Band, whose albums demonstrated how country-rock might marry the Americana mythology of the former and the conceptual ambition of the latter. The TV-savvy Nesmith ...
, though Spence, once drummer with Jefferson Airplane, achieved cult celebrity via a 1969 solo album, Oar. Styles & Forms | Sixties | Rock Personalities | The Monkees | Sixties | Rock ...
(Drums, singer-songwriter, b. 1945) Wyatt became drummer and vocalist with jazz-rockers Soft Machine. Forming Matching Mole in 1971, he overcame being wheelchair-bound after an accident to record solo classics such as Rock Bottom (1975), and had an unlikely hit single with The Monkees’ ‘I’m A Believer’. In 1983, he charted again with Elvis Costello’s ‘Shipbuilding’. 2003’s Cuckooland ...
The early 1970s music scene saw rock and pop continue to separate, with the latter usually aiming for not only an ever-younger audience, but also an increasingly middle-aged one. Three major strands of new pop defined both this process and pop’s increased preoccupation with different forms of escapism. Glam rock was a peculiarly English phenomenon, signalling a return to ...
, Gerry Goffin, composed a host of pop anthems (‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ for The Shirelles, ‘The Locomotion’ for Little Eva and ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’ for The Monkees, among many others) throughout the decade. Although King had a fitful career as an artist during the period – her only major success was ‘It Might As Well Rain ...
Ralph J. Gleason Leading Exponents The Beach Boys The Beatles Chubby Checker Sam Cooke Bobby Darin The Dave Clark Five The Four Seasons Gerry & The Pacemakers Herman’s Hermits The Monkees Roy Orbison The Shadows The Ventures Phil Spector Sixties Pop Style A syncopated bass rhythm was a staple ingredient of many 1960s hits, and there was also a move ...
As is the case with pretty much all stars, before the beautiful butterfly came the unremarkable caterpillar. Bowie was born not on Mars but in Brixton, South London. He started life as David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947. His father was a promotions officer for the children’s charity Barnardo’s and his mother a cinema usherette. He had one ...
part, writing their own material. Groups like The Tremeloes in the UK and The Ohio Express in the US still filled the Top 20, as did the ‘made-for-TV’ Monkees, but many musicians who had started their careers as chart bands were now taking music in a direction never before dreamt of. The 45-rpm single was no longer perceived ...
and Oasis deliver a much-needed kiss of life to a British music business already in a torpor. After that excitement came The Spice Girls, whose The Shangri-Las meets The Monkees act appealed to both sexes and proved you could still manufacture a pop phenomenon. They were, perhaps, the ultimate extension of the karaoke craze. 1990s acts were not ...
Michael Jackson’s in 1983. As Seen On TV Another return to the 1960s came in the form of manufactured artists, a recurring theme of the 2000s. Yet while The Monkees had been the brainchild of music-biz mogul Al Kirshner, the public were (theoretically at least) to blame for the likes of Hear’say, a five-piece group that emerged from ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.