Randy Rhoads (1956–82) had a career that lasted only six years. He played with Quiet Riot and Ozzy Osbourne before dying in a plane crash in 1982. But his guitar style, which included classical influences, opened up new directions in heavy metal, and he was an acknowledged influence on a subsequent generation of guitarists, including Zakk Wylde. ...
Born Randy Bruce Traywick on 4 May 1959 in North Carolina, Randy Travis won a talent show at the age of 16, but found his music career progressed painfully slow. Hankering after a more exciting lifestyle, he dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. Music eventually came to his aid, but not without a great ...
‘Just When I Needed You Most’, 1979 Written when VanWarmer was only 18, ‘Just When I Needed You The Most’ was a surprising UK No. 8 and US No. 4 hit, and a pop ballad that also appealed to the disco market. Unable to recreate his pop success in 1980, VanWarmer embarked upon a country music career that ...
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 ...
More than any other hard-rock or heavy-metal duo, Iron Maiden guitarists Adrian Smith and Dave Murray (b. 1956) set the standard for twin-guitar harmony lines and riffs. Indeed, their killer riffs and epic songs have helped to make Iron Maiden one of the most influential metal bands of all time. Murray was born in Edmonton, England. Inspired by ...
Django Reinhardt (1910–53) overcame physical disabilities to create a unique playing style and one of the most highly influential sounds in jazz. He was born in Belgium to gypsy parents. At the age of eight his mother’s tribe settled near Paris. The French Gypsies, or Manouches, were medieval in their beliefs, and distrustful of modern science. But Django ...
With his wide range of standard and unorthodox techniques, George Lynch (b. 1954) became a guitarist’s guitarist as he cruised through the various incarnations of his bands Dokken and Lynch Mob. Born in Spokane, Washington, and raised in California, Lynch became lead guitarist of Dokken in 1980 after auditioning for Ozzy Osbourne in 1979 and losing out ...
Jakey Lou Williams (b. 1957) was born in Norfolk, Virginia. His father was a member of the US Navy, which meant frequent relocation. Finally, however, the Williams family settled down in San Diego, California, where Jake began taking classical piano lessons. But, upon hearing his older sister’s Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Black ...
The guitarist in Dream Theater, John Petrucci (b. 1967) brought his virtuoso style – lengthy syncopated lines, complex rhythmic variations and grinding tones – into the progressive-metal scene. In the past decade, he has been involved in several extracurricular projects, often with other members of Dream Theater. Raised in Long Island, New York, Petrucci started ...
Though he maintains a gruff, beer-drinking, hell-raising public persona, guitarist Zakk Wylde (b. 1967) is one of the most talented, dedicated and hard-working guitarists of the past 20 years and, as some in the guitar community have speculated, the last true guitar hero. Wylde was born Jeffrey Phillip Wiedlandt in Bayonne, New Jersey. He ...
The term ‘heavy metal’ came from the controversial US Beat Movement novel, Naked Lunch, in which the author, William Burroughs, talked about ‘heavy metal thunder’. This phrase was used in Steppenwolf’s 1968 single ‘Born To Be Wild’, and helped christen an emerging sub-genre of hard rock. The origins of heavy metal are heard in the hard rock ...
The singing cowboys did not have the monopoly on country music on the silver screen, although it was their breed that first caught Hollywood’s attention. By the time the 1940s rolled around, several of Nashville’s top stars found that they could expand their careers by bringing their talents to the vast new audiences. Singing Stars In the earlier decade ...
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band started out in 1966 as a student jug band in Los Angeles, and in an early incarnation it included a teenage Jackson Browne. Among the group’s founder members was singer and guitarist Jeff Hanna. Both Hanna and multi-instrumentalist Jimmie Fadden are still Dirt Band members 40 years on. The extremely ambitious Will The Circle Be ...
After the 1960s heyday of the cultured Nashville sound, country music was all but swept aside. It had survived the lasting effect of 1950s rock – rock’n’roll and traditional old-timey music and bluegrass, especially – but it was now the turn of a musical hybrid, country rock, to lead the way for almost a decade. Country rock ...
Alabama, who appropriately came from Fort Payne, in Alabama, emerged into the spotlight in 1980, when ‘Tennessee River’ topped the Billboard country charts. Three group members – Randy Owen (guitar, lead vocals, b. 1949), Teddy Gentry (bass, vocals, b. 1952) and Jeff Cook (keyboards, fiddle, vocals, b. 1949) – were ...
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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.