Todd Rundgren
Todd Harry Rundgren is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Utopia. He is known for his sophisticated and often-unorthodox music, flamboyant stage outfits, his experiments with interactive entertainment, he produced innovative music videos, pioneered forms of multimedia, was an early adopter and promoter of various computer technologies, such as using the Internet as a means of music distribution in the late 1990s. A native of Philadelphia, Rundgren began his professional career in the mid 1960s, forming the psychedelic band Nazz in 1967. Two years he left Nazz to pursue a solo career and scored his first US top 40 hit with "We Gotta Get You a Woman", his best-known songs include "Hello It's Me" and "I Saw the Light" from Something/Anything?, which get frequent air time on classic rock radio stations, the 1983 single "Bang the Drum All Day", featured in many sports arenas and movie trailers.
Although lesser known, "Couldn't I Just Tell You" was influential to many artists in the power pop genre. His 1973 album A Wizard, a True Star remains an influence on generations of "bedroom" musicians. Rundgren organized the first interactive television concert in 1978, designed the first color graphics tablet in 1980, created the first interactive album, No World Order, in 1994, he was one of the first artists to become a prominent producer as well. His notable production credits include Badfinger's Straight Up, Grand Funk Railroad's We're an American Band, the New York Dolls' New York Dolls, Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell and XTC's Skylarking. Todd Harry Rundgren was born in Philadelphia on June 22, 1948, the son of Ruth and Harry W. Rundgren, he grew up in the bordering town of Upper Darby and taught himself how to play guitar. As a child, Rundgren was fascinated by his parents small record collection, which consisted of show tunes and symphonic pieces, by the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan.
He grew infatuated with the music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Ventures, the Yardbirds, as well as the Philadelphia soul of Gamble & Huff, the Delfonics, the O'Jays. At the age of 17, he formed his first band, called "Money", with then-best friend and roommate Randy Reed and Reed's younger brother. After graduating from Upper Darby High School in 1966, Rundgren moved to Philadelphia and began his career in Woody's Truck Stop, a blues rock group in the style of Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Rundgren stayed with the band for eight months, in the process, they became the most popular group in Philadelphia, he and bassist Carson Van Osten left before they released the eponymous first album to form the rock band Nazz in 1967. By Rundgren had lost interest in the blues and wanted to pursue a recording career with original songs in the style of newer records by the Beatles and the Who; as a member of Nazz, he learned his craft as a songwriter and vocal arranger and was determined to equal the artistry of the Beatles.
In 1968, after recording four demo discs, Nazz was signed by Atlantic Records subsidiary Screen Gems Columbia to produce its first album at ID Sound studio. Rundgren had no prior production experience and remembered that the producer, Bill Traut, "just whipped through the mixes in a day or two.... So I got it into my head,'Well, he's gone now, so why don't we just mix it again, more like the way we want it?' Our engineer didn't mind if we went and just started diddling around on the board... It was pretty much trial and error." He took an experimental approach to the recordings, employing techniques such as varispeed and flanging, despite having no formal training, scored music charts for string and horn arrangements. Engineer James Lowe, who Rundgren recruited for his involvement with arranger Van Dyke Parks, believed that Rundgren had become the de facto leader of Nazz and that Rundgren was wrongfully withheld a producer's credit. Nazz gained minor recognition with their debut record, July 1968's "Open My Eyes" backed with "Hello It's Me", both songs penned by Rundgren.
The group subsequently released three albums: Nazz, Nazz Nazz, Nazz III. In March 1968, New York singer-songwriter Laura Nyro released her second album and the Thirteenth Confession; when Rundgren heard the record, he was struck by "all the major seventh chords and variations on augmented and suspended chords", it had an immediate impact on his songwriting as he began to compose more on piano. He has elaborated: I know for a fact that her influences were the more sophisticated side of R&B, like Jerry Ragovoy and Mann & Weil and Carole King.... and she had her own original and jazz-influenced way of seeing things. It was that extra layer. A lot of those chords she got from other people, but beyond the elements of her composition, I always thought it was the way she played her own material that sold it.... I met her right after the Thirteenth Confession. I had arranged a meeting, just because I was so infatuated with her and I wanted to meet the person who had produced all this music.... After I met her the first time, she asked me.
But the Nazz had just signed a record contract and I couldn't skip out on the band though it was tempting. The rest of the band struggled to accommodate his changing tastes. Nazz's second LP, intended to be a double album called Fungo Bat, was reduced to a single disc by Atlantic with approval from Rundgren's bandmates, he left the band in
Roger McGuinn
Roger McGuinn, is an American musician. He is best known for being the frontman of the Byrds, he was inducted into the Roll Hall of Fame for his work with the Byrds. McGuinn was raised in Chicago, Illinois, his parents and Dorothy, were involved in journalism and public relations, during his childhood, they had written a bestseller titled Parents Can't Win. He attended the Latin School of Chicago, he became interested in music after hearing Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel", asked his parents to buy him a guitar.. Around the same time, he was influenced by country artists and/or groups such as Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, the Everly Brothers. In 1957, he enrolled as a student at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music, where he learned the five-string banjo and continued to improve his guitar skills. After graduation, McGuinn performed solo at various coffeehouses on the folk music circuit where he was hired as a sideman by the Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, Judy Collins and other folk music artists in the same vein.
He played guitar and sang backup harmonies for Bobby Darin. Soon after, he relocated to the West Coast Los Angeles, where he met the future members of the Byrds. In 1962, after he ended his association with the Chad Mitchell Trio, McGuinn was hired by Darin to be a backup guitarist and harmony singer. About a year and a half after McGuinn began to play guitar and sing with Darin, Darin became ill and retired from singing. Subsequently, Darin opened T. M. Music in New York City's Brill Building, hiring McGuinn as a songwriter for $35 a week. During 1963, just one year before he co-founded the Byrds, McGuinn worked as a studio musician in New York, recording with Judy Collins and Simon & Garfunkel. At the same time, he was hearing about The Beatles, wondering how Beatlemania might affect folk music. By the time Doug Weston gave McGuinn a job at the Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles, McGuinn had included Beatles' songs in his act, he gave rock style treatments to traditional folk tunes and thereby caught the attention of another folkie Beatle fan, Gene Clark, who joined forces with McGuinn in July 1964.
Together they formed the beginning of. During his time with the Byrds, McGuinn developed two innovative and influential styles of electric guitar playing; the first was "jingle-jangle" – generating ringing arpeggios based on banjo finger picking styles he learned while at the Old Town School of Folk –, influential in the folk rock genre. The second style was a merging of saxophonist John Coltrane's free-jazz atonalities, which hinted at the droning of the sitar – a style of playing, first heard on the Byrds' 1966 single "Eight Miles High", influential in psychedelic rock. While "tracking" the Byrds' first single, "Mr. Tambourine Man", at Columbia studios, McGuinn discovered an important component of his style. "The'Ric' by itself is kind of thuddy," he notes. "It doesn't ring. But if you add a compressor, you get. To be honest, I found this by accident; the engineer, Ray Gerhardt, would run compressors on everything to protect his precious equipment from loud rock and roll. He compressed the heck out of my 12-string, it sounded so great we decided to use two tube compressors in series, go directly into the board.
That's. It's squashed down, but it jumps out from the radio. With compression, I found I could hold a note for three or four seconds, sound more like a wind instrument; this led me to emulate John Coltrane's saxophone on "Eight Miles High". Without compression, I couldn't have sustained the riff's first note.""I practiced eight hours a day on that'Ric,'" he continues, "I worked it. In those days, acoustic 12s had wide necks and thick strings that were spaced pretty far apart, so they were hard to play, but the Rick's slim neck and low action let me explore jazz and blues scales up and down the fretboard, incorporate more hammer-ons and pull-offs into my solos. I translated some of my banjo picking techniques to the 12-string. By combining a flat pick with metal finger picks on my middle and ring fingers, I discovered I could switch from fast single-note runs to banjo rolls and get the best of both worlds."Another sound that McGuinn developed is made by playing a seven string guitar, featuring a doubled G-string.
The C. F. Martin guitar company has released a special edition called the HD7 Roger McGuinn Signature Edition, that claims to capture McGuinn's "jingle-jangle" tone which he created with 12 string guitars, while maintaining the ease of playing a 6-string guitar; the Byrds recorded several albums after Mr. Tambourine Man in 1965; the single, "Turn! Turn! Turn!", written by Pete Seeger with the lyrics drawn from Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, was the Byrds' second Number One success in late 1965. In 1969, McGuinn's solo version of the "Ballad of Easy Rider" appeared in the film Easy Rider, while a full band version was the title track for the album released that year. McGuinn performed a cover of Bob Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma" for the Easy Rider soundtrack. 1970's Untitled album featured a 16-minute version of the Byrds' 1966 hit "Eight Miles High", with all four members takin
Keith Richards
Keith Richards is an English musician and songwriter, best known as the co-founder, secondary vocalist, co-principal songwriter of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine called Richards the creator of "rock's greatest single body of riffs" on guitar and ranked him fourth on its list of 100 best guitarists in 2011, the magazine lists fourteen songs that Richards wrote with the Rolling Stones' lead vocalist Mick Jagger on its "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list. Richards plays both lead and rhythm guitar parts in the same song, as the Stones are known for their guitar interplay of rhythm and lead between Richards and the other guitarist in the band – Brian Jones, Mick Taylor, Ronnie Wood. In the recording studio Richards sometimes plays all of the guitar parts, notably on the songs "Paint It Black", "Ruby Tuesday", "Sympathy for the Devil", " Satisfaction", "Gimme Shelter", he is a vocalist, singing backing vocals on many Rolling Stones songs as well as occasional lead vocals, such as on the Rolling Stones' 1972 single "Happy", as well as with his side project, the X-Pensive Winos.
Richards was born on 18 December 1943 at Livingston Hospital, in Dartford, England. He is the only child of Herbert William Richards, his father was a factory worker, wounded in the Second World War during the Normandy invasion. Richards' paternal grandparents and Eliza Richards, were socialists and civic leaders, whom he credited as "more or less creat the Walthamstow Labour Party", whilst Eliza became mayor of the Municipal Borough of Walthamstow in London in 1941, his great-grandfather's family originated from Wales. His maternal grandfather, Augustus Theodore "Gus" Dupree, who toured Britain with a jazz big band, Gus Dupree and his Boys, fostered Richards' interest in the guitar. Richards has said, his grandfather'teased' the young Richards with a guitar, on a shelf that Richards couldn't reach at the time. Dupree told Richards that if Richards could reach the guitar, he could have it. Richards devised all manner of ways of reaching the guitar, including putting books and cushions on a chair, until getting hold of the instrument, after which his grandfather taught him the rudiments of Richards' first tune, "Malagueña".
He worked on the number'like mad', his grandfather let him keep the guitar, which he called'the prize of the century'. Richards played at home, listening to recordings by Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, others, his father, on the other hand, disparaged his son's musical enthusiasm. One of Richards' first guitar heroes was Elvis's guitarist Scotty Moore, he attended Wentworth Primary School with Mick Jagger and was his neighbour until 1954 when the Richards family moved. From 1955 to 1959, Richards attended Dartford Technical High School for Boys. Recruited by Dartford Tech's choirmaster, R. W. "Jake" Clare, he sang in a trio of boy sopranos at, among other occasions, Westminster Abbey for Queen Elizabeth II. In 1959, Richards was expelled from Dartford Tech for truancy and transferred to Sidcup Art College, where he met Dick Taylor. At Sidcup, he was diverted from his studies proper and devoted more time to playing guitar with other students in the boys' room. At this point, Richards had learned most of Chuck Berry's solos.
Richards met Jagger on a train. The mail-order rhythm & blues albums from Chess Records by Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters that Jagger was carrying revealed a mutual interest and led to a renewal of their friendship. Along with mutual friend Dick Taylor, Jagger was singing in an amateur band, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, which Richards soon joined; the Blues Boys folded when Brian Jones, after sharing thoughts on their joint interest in the blues music, invited Mick and Keith to the Bricklayers Arms pub, where they met Ian Stewart. By mid-1962 Richards had left Sidcup Art College to devote himself to music and moved into a London flat with Jagger and Jones, his parents divorced about the same time, resulting in his staying close to his mother and remaining estranged from his father until 1982. After the Rolling Stones signed to Decca Records in 1963, their band manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, dropped the s from Richards' surname, believing that "Keith Richard", in his words, "looked more pop".
During the late 1970s, Richards re-established the s in his surname. Ian Stewart once stated. Bill Wyman and Ronnie Wood have been quoted as stating that the Stones do not follow the band's long-time drummer, Charlie Watts, but rather follow Richards, as there was "no way of'not' following" him. Chris Spedding calls Richards' guitar playing "direct and unpretentious". Richards says he focuses on chords and rhythms, avoiding flamboyant and competitive virtuosity and trying not to be the "fastest gun in the west". Richards prefers teaming with at least one other guitarist and has never toured without one. Chuck Berry has been an inspiration for Richards, with Jagger, he introduced Berry's songs to the Rolling Stones' early repertoire. In the late 1960s Jones' declining contributions led Richards to record all guitar parts on many tracks, including slide guitar. Jones' replacement, Mick Taylor, played guitar with the Rolling Stones from 1969 to 1974. Taylor's virtuosity on lead guitar led to a pronounced separation between lead and rhythm guitar roles, most notably onstage.
In 1975 Taylor was replaced by Wood, whose arrival
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle; the Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, New Jersey to the east. Pennsylvania is the 33rd-largest state by area, the 6th-most populous state according to the most recent official U. S. Census count in 2010, it is the 9th-most densely populated of the 50 states. Pennsylvania's two most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh; the state capital and its 10th largest city is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of waterfront along the Delaware Estuary; the state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden.
It was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12, 1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the state's largest city of Philadelphia. During the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washington's headquarters during the bitter winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west. Of a total 46,055 square miles, 44,817 square miles are land, 490 square miles are inland waters, 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie, it is the 33rd-largest state in the United States. Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Of the original Thirteen Colonies, Pennsylvania is the only state that does not border the Atlantic Ocean; the boundaries of the state are the Mason–Dixon line to the south, the Twelve-Mile Circle on the Pennsylvania-Delaware border, the Delaware River to the east, 80° 31' W to the west and the 42° N to the north, with the exception of a short segment on the western end, where a triangle extends north to Lake Erie.
Cities include Philadelphia, Reading and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown and Easton in the central east. The northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest. State College serves the central region while Williamsport serves the commonwealth's north-central region as does Chambersburg the south-central region, with York and the state capital Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River in the east-central region of the Commonwealth and Altoona and Johnstown in the west-central region; the state has five geographical regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Erie Plain. New York Ontario Maryland Delaware West Virginia New Jersey Ohio Pennsylvania's diverse topography produces a variety of climates, though the entire state experiences cold winters and humid summers. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the southeastern corner, has a humid continental climate.
The southern portion of the state has a humid subtropical climate. The largest city, has some characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware and Maryland to the south. Summers are hot and humid. Moving toward the mountainous interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increases, snowfall amounts are greater. Western areas of the state locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the entire state receives plentiful precipitation throughout the year; the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, such as 30 recorded tornadoes in 2011; as of 1600, the tribes living in Pennsylvania were the Algonquian Lenape, the Iroquoian Susquehannock & Petun and the Siouan Monongahela Culture, who may have been the same as a little known tribe called the Calicua, or Cali. Other tribes who entered the region during the colonial era were the Trockwae, Saponi, Nanticoke, Conoy Piscataway, Iroquois Confederacy—possibly among others.
Other tribes, like the Erie, may have once held some land in Pennsylvania, but no longer did so by the year 1600. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their colonial lands in America; the Dutch were the first to take possession. By June 3, 1631, the Dutch had begun settling the Delmarva Peninsula by establishing the Zwaanendael Colony on the site of present-day Lewes, Delaware. In 1638, Sweden established the New Sweden Colony, in the region of Fort Christina, on the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware. New Sweden claimed and, for the most part, controlled the lower Delaware River region (parts of present-day Delaware, New Jersey, Pe
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac are a British-American rock band, formed in London in 1967. They have sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling bands. In 1998, select members of Fleetwood Mac were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. Fleetwood Mac was founded by guitarist Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Jeremy Spencer. Bassist John McVie completed the lineup for their self-titled debut album. Danny Kirwan joined as a third guitarist in 1968. Keyboardist Christine Perfect, who contributed as a session musician from the second album, married McVie and joined in 1970. At this time it was a British blues band, scoring a UK number one with "Albatross", had lesser hits with the singles "Oh Well" and "Black Magic Woman". All three guitarists left in succession during the early 1970s, to be replaced by guitarists Bob Welch and Bob Weston and vocalist Dave Walker. By 1974, all three had either departed or been dismissed, leaving the band without a male lead vocalist or guitarist.
In late 1974, while Fleetwood was scouting studios in Los Angeles, he was introduced to folk-rock duo Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Fleetwood Mac soon asked Buckingham to be their new lead guitarist, Buckingham agreed on condition that Nicks would join the band; the addition of Buckingham and Nicks gave the band a more pop rock sound, their 1975 self-titled album, Fleetwood Mac, reached No. 1 in the U. S. Rumours, Fleetwood Mac's second album after the arrival of Buckingham and Nicks, produced four U. S. Top 10 remained at number one on the American albums chart for 31 weeks, it reached the top spot in various countries around the world and won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978. Rumours has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it the eighth-highest-selling album in history; the band went through personal turmoil while recording the album, as both the romantic partnerships in the band separated while continuing to make music together. The band's personnel remained stable through three more studio albums, but by the late 1980s began to disintegrate.
After Buckingham and Nicks each left the band, a 1993 one-off performance for the first inauguration of Bill Clinton featured the lineup of Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie and Buckingham back together for the first time in six years. A full reunion occurred four years and the group released their fourth U. S. No. 1 album, The Dance, a live compilation of their work. Christine McVie continued to work with the band in a session capacity. Meanwhile, the group remained together as a four-piece, releasing their most recent studio album, Say You Will, in 2003. Christine McVie rejoined the band full-time in 2014. In 2018, Buckingham was fired from the band and was replaced by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Neil Finn of Split Enz and Crowded House. Fleetwood Mac were formed in July 1967 in London, when Peter Green left the British blues band John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. Peter Green had replaced guitarist Eric Clapton in the Bluesbreakers and had received critical acclaim for his work on their album A Hard Road.
Green had been in two bands with Mick Fleetwood, Peter B's Looners and the subsequent Shotgun Express, suggested Fleetwood as a replacement for drummer Aynsley Dunbar when Dunbar left the Bluesbreakers to join the new Jeff Beck/Rod Stewart band. John Mayall agreed and Fleetwood joined the Bluesbreakers; the Bluesbreakers now consisted of Green, John McVie and Mayall. Mayall gave Green free recording time as a gift, in which Fleetwood, McVie and Green recorded five songs; the fifth song was an instrumental that Green named after the rhythm section, "Fleetwood Mac". Soon after this, Green suggested to Fleetwood; the pair wanted McVie on bass guitar and named the band'Fleetwood Mac' to entice him, but McVie opted to keep his steady income with Mayall rather than take a risk with a new band. In the meantime Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood had teamed up with slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer and bassist Bob Brunning. Brunning was in the band on the understanding; the Green, Spencer, Brunning version of the band made its debut on 13 August 1967 at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival as'Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac' featuring Jeremy Spencer.
Brunning played only a few gigs with Fleetwood Mac. Within weeks of this show, John McVie agreed to join the band as permanent bassist. Fleetwood Mac's self-titled debut album was a no-frills blues album and was released by the Blue Horizon label in February 1968. There were no other players on the album; the album reached no. 4, although it did not have any singles on it. The band soon released two singles: "Black Magic Woman" and "Need Your Love So Bad"; the band's second studio album, Mr. Wonderful, was released in August 1968. Like their first album, it was all blues; the album was recorded live in the studio with miked amplifiers and a PA system, rather than being plugged into the board. They added horns and featured a friend of the band on keyboards, Christine Perfect of Chicken Shack. Shortly after the release of their second album Fleetwood Mac added 18-year-old guitarist Danny Kirwan to their line-up, he was recruited from the South London blues trio Boilerhouse, which consisted of Kirwan on guitar, Trevor Stevens on bass and Dave Terrey on drums.
Green and Fleetwood had wat
John McVie
John Graham McVie is a British bass guitarist, best known as a member of the rock bands John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers from 1964 to 1967 and Fleetwood Mac since 1967. His surname, combined with that of Mick Fleetwood, was the inspiration for the band's name, he joined Fleetwood Mac shortly after its formation by guitarist Peter Green in 1967, replacing temporary bass guitarist Bob Brunning. McVie and Fleetwood are the only two members of the group to appear on every Fleetwood Mac release, for over forty years have been the group's only remaining original members. In 1968, McVie married blues pianist and singer Christine Perfect, who became a member of Fleetwood Mac two years later. John and Christine McVie divorced in 1977. Around this time the band recorded the album Rumours, a major artistic and commercial success that borrowed its title from the turmoils in McVie's and other band members' marriages and relationships, he was inducted into the Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 as a member of Fleetwood Mac.
John Graham McVie was born in Ealing in Middlesex, to Reg and Dorothy McVie and attended Walpole Grammar School. He says that he did have a sister, but she died when she was young. John McVie started playing the trumpet at an early age at age 14, McVie began playing the guitar in local bands, covering songs by The Shadows, he soon realised that his friends were learning lead guitar so he decided to play the bass guitar instead. He just removed the bottom two strings from his guitar to play the bass parts until his father bought him a pink Fender bass guitar, the same as that used by McVie's major early musical influence Jet Harris, The Shadows' bass player. McVie was in 3J class with Roger Warwick, a baritone sax player who had studied under Don Rendell and was to emerge in the London rock-jazz scene, their teacher, Mr Howell, although not appreciating this "funny" music, was intelligent and open-minded enough to give pupils space and time to use school facilities to practise and listen to the new wave.
Soon after leaving school at 17, McVie trained for 9 months to be a tax inspector. This coincided with the start of his musical career. McVie's first experience making music with a group of like minds was in the back room of a house in Lammas Park Road, Ealing with his long term friends John and Peter Barnes who went on to form a group called The Strangers with friends Tony Wells and Ken Pollendine performing Shadows covers. McVie's first job as a bass player was in a band called the Krewsaders, formed by boys living in the same street as McVie in Ealing, West London; the Krewsaders played at weddings and parties, covering songs from The Shadows. Around the time of McVie's tenure as a tax inspector, John Mayall began forming a Chicago-style blues band, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Mayall wanted to recruit bass player Cliff Barton of the Cyril Davies All Stars for the rhythm section of his new band. Barton declined, but gave him McVie's phone number, urging Mayall to give the talented young bass player a chance in the Bluesbreakers.
Mayall contacted McVie, asked him to audition for his band. Soon thereafter, McVie got an offer to play bass in the Bluesbreakers. McVie accepted while still holding down his daytime job for a further nine months before becoming a musician full-time. Under Mayall's tutelage, McVie, not having had any formal training in music, learned to play the blues by listening to B. B. King and Willie Dixon records given to him by Mayall. John McVie was the bands bassist for four and a half years. During that time John McVie was fired and re- hired several times. One of his temporary replacements was Jack Bruce. In 1966, a young Peter Green was asked to join Mayall's Bluesbreakers as the band's new lead guitar player, after Eric Clapton, the third guitarist with the band, had left; some time after the recording of A Hard Road, drummer Aynsley Dunbar was replaced by Mick Fleetwood. Green, McVie, Fleetwood forged a strong personal relationship, when John Mayall gave Green some free studio time for his birthday, Green asked McVie and Fleetwood to join him for a recording session.
Produced by Mike Vernon, they recorded three tracks together, "Curly", "Rubber Duck", an instrumental called "Fleetwood Mac". The same year, after having been replaced by Mick Taylor in the Bluesbreakers, Green opted to form his own band, which he called "Fleetwood Mac" after his preferred rhythm section. Mick Fleetwood joined Green's new band, having been dismissed earlier from the Bluesbreakers for drunkenness. However, McVie was reluctant to join Fleetwood Mac, not wanting to leave the security and well-paid job in the Bluesbreakers, forcing Green to temporarily hire a bassist named Bob Brunning. A few weeks McVie changed his mind, however, as he felt that The Bluesbreakers musical direction were shifting too much towards jazz, he joined Fleetwood Mac in September 1967. With McVie now in Fleetwood Mac, the band recorded its first album, the eponymous Fleetwood Mac in the following months; the album was released in February 1968, became an immediate national hit, establishing Fleetwood Mac as a major part in the English Blues movement.
Fleetwood Mac started playing live gigs in blues clubs and pubs throughout England, became a household name in the national blues circuit. In the next three years, the band scored a string of hits in the UK and enjoyed success in continental Europe. While on tour, Fleetwood Mac would share venues with fellow blues band Chicken Shack, it was on one such occasion that McVie met his future wife, the lead singer and piano player of Chicken Shack, Christine Perfect. Foll
Jackson Browne
Clyde Jackson Browne is an American singer-songwriter and musician who has sold over 18 million albums in the United States. Coming to prominence in the 1970s, Browne has written and recorded songs such as "These Days", "The Pretender", "Running on Empty", "Lawyers in Love", "Doctor My Eyes", "Take It Easy", "For a Rocker", "Somebody's Baby". In 2004, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and given an honorary doctorate of music by Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked him as 37th in its list of the "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time". Browne was born October 9, 1948, in Heidelberg, where his father Clyde Jack Browne, an American serviceman, was stationed for his job assignment with the Stars and Stripes newspaper. Browne's mother, Beatrice Amanda, was a Minnesota native of Norwegian ancestry. Browne has three siblings. Roberta "Berbie" Browne was born in 1946 in Germany, his younger sister, Gracie Browne, was born a number of years later.
At the age of three and his family moved to his grandfather's house, Abbey San Encino, in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles. In his teens, he began singing folk songs in local venues such as the Ash Grove and The Troubador Club, he attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, graduating in 1966. After graduating in 1966, Browne joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, performing at the Golden Bear where they opened for The Lovin' Spoonful; the band recorded a number of Browne's songs, including "These Days", "Holding", "Shadow Dream Song". He spent a short time in his friend Pamela Polland's band, Gentle Soul. Browne left the Dirt Band after a few months and moved to Greenwich Village, New York, where he became a staff writer for Elektra Records' publishing company, Nina Music before his eighteenth birthday, he reported on musical events in New York City with his friends Adam Saylor. He spent the remainder of 1967 and 1968 in Greenwich Village, where he backed Tim Buckley and singer Nico of the Velvet Underground.
In 1967, Browne and Nico were romantically linked and he became a significant contributor to her debut album, Chelsea Girl and playing guitar on several of the songs. In 1968, following his breakup with Nico, Browne returned to Los Angeles, where he formed a folk band with Ned Doheny and Jack Wilce, first met Glenn Frey. Browne's first songs, such as "Shadow Dream Song" and "These Days", were recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Tom Rush, Steve Noonan, Gregg Allman, Joan Baez, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, the Byrds, others. Browne did not release his own versions of these early songs until years later. Soon after this, Rolling Stone mentioned Browne as a "new face to look for" and praised his "mind-boggling melodies". In 1971, Browne signed with his manager David Geffen's Asylum Records and released Jackson Browne produced and engineered by Richard Orshoff, which included the piano-driven "Doctor My Eyes", which entered the Top Ten in the US singles chart. "Rock Me on the Water", from the same album gained considerable radio airplay, while "Jamaica Say You Will" and "Song for Adam" helped establish Browne's reputation.
Touring to promote the album, he shared the bill with Joni Mitchell. His next album, For Everyman – while considered of high quality – was less successful than his debut album, although it still sold a million copies; the upbeat "Take It Easy", cowritten with Eagles' Glenn Frey, had been a major success for that group, while his own recording of "These Days" reflected a sound representing Browne's angst. Late for the Sky consolidated Browne's fan base, the album peaked at #14 on the Billboard album chart, the 84th-best-selling album of 1974. Browne's work began to demonstrate a reputation for memorable melody, insightful very personal lyrics, a talent for his arrangements in composition, it featured a Magritte-inspired cover. Highlights included the title song, the elegiac "For a Dancer", "Before the Deluge", "Fountain of Sorrow"; the arrangements featured the violin and guitar of David Lindley, Jai Winding's piano, the harmonies of Doug Haywood. The title track was featured in Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver.
During this period, Browne began his fractious but lifelong professional relationship with singer-songwriter Warren Zevon, mentoring Zevon's first two Asylum albums through the studio as a producer. When touring in 1975, Browne was accompanied by his wife Phyllis and one-year-old son Ethan. Browne added keyboardist Wayne Cook to the tour, they toured in a re-converted Greyhound. In the autumn of 1975, Browne performed shows with the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Toots and the Maytals. Browne's character was more apparent in his next album, The Pretender, it was released after the suicide of his first wife, Phyllis Major. The album features production by Jon Landau and a mixture of styles, ranging from the mariachi-inspired "Linda Paloma" to the country-driven "Your Bright Baby Blues" and the downbeat "Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate". "Here Come Those Tears Again", cowritten with Nancy Farnsworth, the mother of Phyllis Major, after the untimely death of Major, peaked at #23 on the Hot 100 one year to the week after that death.
Running on Empty, recorded on tour, became his biggest commercial success. Breaking the usual conventions for a live album, Browne used only new material and combined live concert performances with recordings made on buses, in hotel room
