The Flying Burrito Brothers
The Flying Burrito Brothers are an American country rock band, best known for their influential 1969 debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin. Although the group is best known for its connection to band founders Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, the group underwent many personnel changes and has existed in various incarnations. A lineup with no original members performs as The Burrito Brothers. Ian Dunlop and Mickey Gauvin of Gram Parsons' International Submarine Band, founded the original Flying Burrito Brothers and named it after Parsons informed them of his new country focus; this incarnation of the band never recorded as such, after heading East allowed Gram Parsons to take the name. With the original incarnation of the band out of the picture, the "West Coast" Flying Burrito Brothers were founded in 1968 in Los Angeles, California by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman. Bassist/keyboardist Chris Ethridge, pedal steel guitarist Sneaky Pete Kleinow and session drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh rounded out the lineup.
Though Hillman and Roger McGuinn had fired Parsons from the Byrds in July 1968, the bassist and Parsons reconciled that year after Hillman left the group. Parsons had refused to join his Byrds bandmates for a tour of South Africa, citing his disapproval of the apartheid policy of that nation's government. Hillman doubted the sincerity of Parsons' gesture, believing instead that the singer wanted to remain in England with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, whom he had befriended; the Flying Burrito Brothers recorded their debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin, without a regular drummer. Hoh proved to be unable to perform adequately due to an incipient substance abuse problem and was dismissed after recording two songs, leading the group to employ a variety of session players, including former International Submarine Band drummer Jon Corneal and Popeye Phillips of Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show. Before commencing their first tour, the group settled upon original Byrd Michael Clarke as a permanent replacement.
Michael Clarke remained the band's permanent drummer until 1971. Critically acclaimed upon its release in February 1969 for its pioneering amalgamation of country, soul music and psychedelic rock, The Gilded Palace of Sin only managed to peak at #164 in Billboard. Although the band declined an invitation to perform at Woodstock, a comprehensive train tour of the United States ended in disaster due to drug and alcohol use. Dissatisfied by the band's lack of success and unable to reconcile his predilection for R&B and groove-based music with the more conservative tastes of Parsons and Hillman, Ethridge departed the group in the autumn of 1969. Hillman reverted to bass after the band hired lead guitarist Bernie Leadon, a Dillard and Clark veteran who had played with Hillman in the early 1960s bluegrass scene; this iteration of the band performed at the ill-fated Altamont Free Concert in December 1969, as documented in the film Gimme Shelter. The audience remained peaceful throughout their performance.
With mounting debt incurred from the first album and tour and a failed single, A&M Records hoped to recoup some of their losses by marketing the Burritos as a straight country group. To this end, manager Jim Dickson instigated a loose session where the band recorded several traditional country staples from their live act, contemporary pop covers in a countrified vein, Williams's rock and roll classic "Bony Moronie." This was soon scrapped in favor of a second album of originals on an reduced budget. Several of the tracks from the abandoned sessions would see the light of day in 1976 on Sleepless Nights, which featured outtakes from Parsons's post-Burritos solo career. Released in April 1970, Burrito Deluxe juxtaposed the band's inability to develop compelling new material with prominent covers of the Rolling Stones's hitherto unreleased "Wild Horses," Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" and the Southern gospel standard "Farther Along." Unlike Gilded Palace, the album failed to chart entirely.
A month Parsons showed up for a band performance only minutes before they were to take the stage. Visibly intoxicated, he began singing songs which differed from what the rest of the band were performing. A furious Hillman fired him after the show, to which Parsons responded, "You can't fire me, I'm Gram!" According to Hillman, this incident was the final straw. Now fronted by Hillman and Leadon, the band appeared in June–July 1970 on the Festival Expr
Derek and the Dominos
Derek and the Dominos were an English–American blues-rock band formed in the spring of 1970 by guitarist and singer Eric Clapton and singer Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon. All four members had played together in Delaney & Bonnie and Friends and after Clapton's brief tenure with Blind Faith. Dave Mason supplied additional lead guitar on early studio sessions and played at their first live gig. Another participant at their first session as a band was George Harrison, the recording for whose album All Things Must Pass marked the formation of Derek and the Dominos; the band released only one studio album and Other Assorted Love Songs, produced by Tom Dowd, which featured extensive contributions on slide guitar from Duane Allman. A double album, Layla did not enjoy strong sales or receive widespread radio airplay, but went on to earn critical acclaim. Although released in 1970 it was not until March 1972 that the album's single "Layla" made the top ten in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
The album is considered to be the defining achievement of Clapton's career. Derek and the Dominos came about through its four members' involvement in the American soul revue Delaney & Bonnie and Friends; the group were anchored by the musical duo Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett with a rotating ensemble of supporting members. Delaney & Bonnie and Friends supported Blind Faith, Eric Clapton's short-lived supergroup with Stevie Winwood, on a US tour in the summer of 1969. While on that tour, Clapton was drawn to Delaney & Bonnie's relative anonymity, which he found more appealing than the excessive fan worship lavished on his own band. Together with his fellow future Dominos – Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon – Clapton toured Europe and the United States again between November 1969 and March 1970, this time as a member of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. In addition, the entire band backed him on his debut solo album, Eric Clapton, recorded over the same period. Disagreements over money led several members to leave Friends.
Whitlock, recalling other difficulties with Delaney and Bonnie, noted the couple's frequent fights and described Delaney as a demanding band leader in the manner of James Brown. Gordon and other Friends personnel, including drummer Jim Keltner joined Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour with Leon Russell, but Whitlock remained with the Delaney and Bonnie for a short time. In April 1970, at the suggestion of his friend and mentor Steve Cropper, Whitlock travelled to England to visit Clapton. Whitlock subsequently lived in Hurtwood Edge, Clapton's house in Surrey, where the two musicians jammed and began to write the bulk of the Dominos' catalogue on acoustic guitars. Many of the new songs reflected Clapton's growing infatuation with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his best friend George Harrison, who had joined Clapton as a guitarist on Delaney & Bonnie's European tour in December 1969. Soon after Whitlock's arrival, he and Clapton were eager to form a new band and contacted Radle and Gordon in the United States.
Although their first choice for a drummer was Keltner – like Radle and Russell, a native of Tulsa – he was busy recording with jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó. Gordon, had been invited to London to work on Harrison's post-Beatles solo album All Things Must Pass. In May that year, Whitlock and Gordon reunited in London at a session for P. P. Arnold, before going on to serve as the backing band on much of Harrison's album. In a 1990 interview, Clapton said, "We made our bones on that album with George", since the four musicians had "no game plan" other than living at Hurtwood Edge, "getting stoned, playing and semi-writing songs". Clapton biographer Harry Shapiro comments on the unprecedented aspect of Clapton's bond with his new bandmates, in that from the Blind Faith tour onwards, the guitarist "had been able to build a working relationship in a slow and natural fashion" for the first time. Among the friendships formed before the group came into existence, Shapiro continues, "the empathy... outcropped most noticeably in Bobby Whitlock, in whom Eric found an accomplished and sympathetic songwriting partner and back-up vocalist."
Clapton and Whitlock considered adding the Delaney & Bonnie horn section to their new band, but this plan was abandoned. Whitlock explained the ethos of Derek and the Dominos: "we didn't want any horns, we didn't want no chicks, we wanted a rock'n' roll band, but my vocal concept was that we approach singing like Sam and Dave did: sings a line, I sing a line, we sing together." Towards the end of the sessions for the basic tracks on All Things Must Pass, Dave Mason – another former guitarist with Delaney & Bonnie – joined the Dominos at Clapton's home. With the lineup expanded to a five-piece band and the Dominos gave their debut live performance on 14 June 1970; the event was a charity concert in aid of the Dr Spock Civil Liberties Legal Defence Fund, held at London's Lyceum Theatre. The group had been billed as "Eric Clapton and Friends", but a discussion ensued backstage just before their appearance, with Harrison and pianist Tony Ashton among those involved, in an effort to find a proper band name.
Clapton recalls that Ashton suggested "Del and the Dominos", having taken to calling the guitarist "Derek" or "Del" since the Delaney & Bonnie tour the previous year. Whitlock maintains that "the Dynamics" was the name chosen and that Ashton, following his opening set with Ashton and Dyke, mispronounced it when introducing the band. Writing in 2013, Clapton and Whitlock biographer Marc Roberty quoted Jeff Dexte
Jimmy Page
James Patrick Page is an English musician and record producer who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin. Page began his career as a studio session musician in London and, by the mid-1960s, alongside Big Jim Sullivan, was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Britain, he was a member of the Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968. In late 1968, he founded Led Zeppelin. Page is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Rolling Stone magazine has described Page as "the pontiff of power riffing" and ranked him number three in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", behind Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. In 2010, he was ranked number two in Gibson's list of "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time" and, in 2007, number four on Classic Rock's "100 Wildest Guitar Heroes", he was inducted into the Roll Hall of Fame twice. Page was born to James Patrick Page and Patricia Elizabeth Gaffikin in the west London suburb of Heston on 9 January 1944.
His father was an personnel manager at a plastic-coatings plant and his mother, of Irish descent, was a doctor's secretary. In 1952, they moved to Feltham and to Miles Road, Epsom in Surrey. Page was educated from the age of eight at Epsom County Pound Lane Primary School, when he was eleven he went to Ewell County Secondary School in West Ewell, he came across his first guitar, a Spanish guitar, in the Miles Road house: "I don't know whether was left behind by the people before, or whether it was a friend of the family's—nobody seemed to know why it was there." First playing the instrument when aged 12, he took a few lessons in nearby Kingston, but was self-taught: When I grew up there weren't many other guitarists... There was one other guitarist in my school who showed me the first chords that I learned and I went on from there. I was bored. So it was a personal thing; this "other guitarist" was a boy called Rod Wyatt, a few years his senior, together with another boy, Pete Calvert, they would practise at Page's house.
Among Page's early influences were rockabilly guitarists Scotty Moore and James Burton, who both played on recordings made by Elvis Presley. Presley's song "Baby Let's Play House" is cited by Page as being his inspiration to take up the guitar, he would reprise Moore's playing on the song in the live version of "Whole Lotta Love" on The Song Remains the Same, he appeared on BBC1 in 1957 with a Höfner President, Page states that his first guitar was a second-hand 1959 Futurama Grazioso replaced by a Fender Telecaster. Page's musical tastes included skiffle and acoustic folk playing, the blues sounds of Elmore James, B. B. King, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Freddie King and Hubert Sumlin. "Basically, the start: a mixture between rock and blues."At the age of 13, Page appeared on Huw Wheldon's All Your Own talent quest programme in a skiffle quartet, one performance of which aired on BBC1 in 1957. The group played "Mama Don't Want to Skiffle Anymore" and another American-flavoured song, "In Them Ol' Cottonfields Back Home".
When asked by Wheldon what he wanted to do after schooling, Page said, "I want to do biological research cancer, if it isn't discovered by then."In an interview with Guitar Player magazine, Page stated that "there was a lot of busking in the early days, but as they say, I had to come to grips with it and it was a good schooling." Page took a guitar to school each day only to have it returned to him after class. Although interviewed for a job as a laboratory assistant, he chose to leave Danetree Secondary School, West Ewell, to pursue music. Page had difficulty finding other musicians with. "It wasn't as. I used to play in many groups... anyone who could get a gig together, really." Following stints backing recitals by Beat poet Royston Ellis at the Mermaid Theatre between 1960–61, singer Red E. Lewis, he was asked by singer Neil Christian to join his band, the Crusaders, after Christian had seen a fifteen-year-old Page playing in a local hall. Page toured with Christian for two years and played on several of his records, including the 1962 single, "The Road to Love."During his stint with Christian, Page fell ill with infectious mononucleosis and could not continue touring.
While recovering, he decided to put his musical career on hold and concentrate on his other love and enrolled at Sutton Art College in Surrey. As he explained in 1975: travelling around all the time in a bus. I did that for two years after I left school, to the point where I was starting to get good bread, but I was getting ill. So I went back to art college. And, a total change in direction. That's; as dedicated as I was to playing the guitar, I knew doing it. Every two months I had glandular fever. So for the next 18 months I was getting my strength up, but I was still playing. While still a student, Page performed on stage at the Marquee Club with bands such as Cyril Davies' All Stars, Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, fellow guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, he was spotted one night by John Gibb of Brian Howard & the Silhouettes, who asked him to help record some singles for Columb
Chris Hillman
Christopher "Chris" Hillman is an American musician. He was one of the original members of The Byrds, which in 1965 included Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby and Michael Clarke. With frequent collaborator Gram Parsons, Hillman was a key figure in the development of country rock, defining the genre through his work with The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers and the country-rock group Desert Rose Band. Hillman, the third of four children, spent his early years at his family's ranch home in rural northern San Diego County 110 miles from Los Angeles, he has credited his older sister with exciting his interest in country and folk music when she returned from college during the late 1950s with folk music records by The New Lost City Ramblers and others. Hillman soon began watching many of the country-music shows on local television in southern California at the time such as Town Hall Party, The Spade Cooley Show and Cal's Corral. Hillman's mother bought him his first guitar. At age 15 Hillman went to Los Angeles to see the Kentucky Colonels bluegrass band at the Ash Grove, convinced his family to allow him to travel by train to Berkeley for lessons from mandolinist Scott Hambly.
When he was 16, Hillman's father committed suicide. He became known in San Diego's folk music community as a solid player; the band lasted two years, recording only one album. When the band broke up in late 1963 Hillman received an invitation to join the Golden State Boys, regarded as the top bluegrass band in southern California and featuring future country star Vern Gosdin, his brother Rex and banjoist Don Parmley. Shortly thereafter the band changed its name to The Hillmen; when the Hillmen folded, he joined a spinoff of Randy Sparks' New Christy Minstrels known as the Green Grass Revival. At this point a frustrated Hillman considered quitting music and enrolling at UCLA when he received an offer from The Hillmen's former manager and producer, Jim Dickson, to join Jim McGuinn, David Crosby, Gene Clark and Michael Clarke in a new band, The Byrds. Hillman was recruited to play bass guitar. Thanks to his bluegrass background, he developed his own melodic style on the instrument; the Byrds' first single, a jangly cover of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", was an international hit and marked the birth of folk rock.
During the mid-1960s the Byrds ranked as one of the most successful and influential American pop groups. Turn! Turn!", "Eight Miles High" and "So You Want to Be a Rock'n' Roll Star". Hillman kept a low profile on the band's first two albums, on which McGuinn and Clark shared lead vocals with Crosby adding high harmony and singing the bridge on "All I Really Want to Do". However, Clark's departure in 1966 and Crosby's growing restlessness allowed Hillman the opportunity to develop as a singer and songwriter in the group, he came into his own on the Byrds' 1967 album Younger Than Yesterday, co-writing and sharing lead vocals with McGuinn on the hit "So You Want to Be a Rock'n' Roll Star". Hillman wrote the minor hit "Have You Seen Her Face", "Thoughts and Words", "Time Between" and "The Girl with No Name", the latter two demonstrating his bluegrass and country roots. Hillman's prominence continued with the Byrds' next album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, on which he shared songwriting credit on seven of the album's eleven songs.
Internal strife dogged the Byrds, by the beginning of 1968 the band was down to two original members, with Hillman's cousin Kevin Kelley on drums. They hired Gram Parsons to replace Crosby. Hillman and Parsons changed the Byrds' musical direction, helping to usher in a new genre known as country rock when they recorded the album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Once again Hillman seemed to recede into the background, leaving most of the vocals to Parsons and McGuinn and concentrating on bass and mandolin. Parsons left the band shortly thereafter. Hillman convinced Whisky A Go Go to give Buffalo Springfield an audition recording. Hillman teamed with Gram Parsons again to form the Flying Burrito Brothers. Further honing their pioneering country-rock hybrid sound by combining the energy and attitude of rock and roll with the issues and themes of country music, the Burritos recorded the landmark The Gilded Palace of Sin followed by 1970's Burrito Deluxe. Parsons was out of the lineup by June 1970 when the band toured Canada as part of the Festival Express tour, with Hillman reverting to bass guitar.
Hillman stayed with the band for two more records, The Flying Burrito Brothers and Last of the Red Hot Burritos. Before the Flying Burrito Brothers disbanded, Hillman joined Stephen Stills' band Manassas
Cream (band)
Cream were a British rock power trio formed in 1966 consisting of drummer Ginger Baker, guitarist/singer Eric Clapton and lead singer/bassist Jack Bruce. The group's third album, Wheels of Fire, is the world's first platinum-selling double album; the band is regarded as the world's first successful supergroup. In their career, they sold more than 15 million records worldwide, their music included songs based on traditional blues such as "Crossroads" and "Spoonful", modern blues such as "Born Under a Bad Sign", as well as more current material such as "Strange Brew", "Tales of Brave Ulysses" and "Toad". The band's biggest hits were "I Feel Free", "Sunshine of Your Love", "White Room", "Crossroads", "Badge"; the band made a significant impact on the popular music of the time, along with Jimi Hendrix and other notable guitarists and bands, popularised the use of the wah-wah pedal. They provided a heavy yet technically proficient musical theme that foreshadowed and influenced the emergence of British bands such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath in the late 1960s and the early 1970s.
They influenced American southern rock groups the Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The band's live performances influenced progressive rock acts such as Rush. Cream were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, they were included in both Rolling Stone and VH1's lists of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time," at number 67 and 61 respectively. They were ranked number 16 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. By July 1966, Eric Clapton's career with the Yardbirds and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers had earned him a reputation as the premier blues guitarist in Britain. Clapton, found the environment of Mayall's band confining, sought to expand his playing in a new band. In 1966, Clapton met Ginger Baker the leader of the Graham Bond Organisation, which at one point featured Jack Bruce on bass guitar and piano. Baker felt stifled in the Graham Bond Organisation and had grown tired of Graham Bond's drug addictions and bouts of mental instability. "I had always liked Ginger", explained Clapton.
"Ginger had come to see me play with the Bluesbreakers. After the gig he drove me back to London in his Rover. I was impressed with his car and driving, he was telling me that he wanted to start a band, I had been thinking about it too."Each was impressed with the other's playing abilities, prompting Baker to ask Clapton to join his new, then-unnamed group. Clapton agreed, on the condition that Baker hire Bruce as the group's bassist. Clapton had met Bruce when the bassist/vocalist played with the Bluesbreakers in November 1965. Impressed with Bruce's vocals and technical prowess, Clapton wanted to work with him on an ongoing basis. In contrast, while Bruce was in Bond's band, he and Baker had been notorious for their quarrelling, their volatile relationship included the sabotage of one another's instruments. After Baker fired Bruce from the band, Bruce continued to arrive for gigs. Baker and Bruce put aside their differences for the good of Baker's new trio, which he envisioned as collaborative, with each of the members contributing to music and lyrics.
The band was named "Cream", as Clapton and Baker were considered the "cream of the crop" amongst blues and jazz musicians in the exploding British music scene. The group were referred to and billed as "The Cream", but starting with its first record releases, the trio came to be known as "Cream". Before deciding upon "Cream", the band considered calling themselves "Sweet'n' Sour Rock'n' Roll". Of the trio, Clapton had the biggest reputation in England; the band made its unofficial debut at the Twisted Wheel on 29 July 1966. Its official debut came two nights at the Sixth Annual Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival. Being new and with few original songs to its credit, they performed blues reworkings that thrilled the large crowd and earned it a warm reception. In October the band got a chance to jam with Jimi Hendrix, who had arrived in London. Hendrix was a fan of Clapton's music, wanted a chance to play with him onstage, it was during the early organisation that they decided Bruce would serve as the group's lead vocalist.
While Clapton was shy about singing, he harmonised with Bruce and, in time, took lead vocals on several Cream tracks including "Four Until Late", "Strange Brew", "World of Pain", "Outside Woman Blues", "Crossroads", "Badge". The band's debut album, Fresh Cream, was recorded and released in 1966; the album reached number 39 in the United States. It was evenly split between self-penned originals and blues covers, including "Four Until Late", "Rollin' and Tumblin'", "Spoonful", "I'm So Glad" and "Cat's Squirrel." The rest of the songs were written by either Jack Ginger Baker. The track "Toad" contained one of the earliest examples of a drum solo in rock music as Ginger Baker expanded upon his early composition "Camels and Elephants", written in 1965 with the Graham Bond Organisation. Early Cream bootlegs display a much tighter band showcasing more songs. All of the songs are reasonably short five-minute version
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is an American monthly magazine that focuses on popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California in 1967 by Jann Wenner, still the magazine's publisher, the music critic Ralph J. Gleason, it was first known for political reporting by Hunter S. Thompson. In the 1990s, the magazine shifted focus to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors, popular music. In recent years, it has resumed its traditional mix of content. Rolling Stone Press is the magazine's associated book publishing imprint. Straight Arrow Press was the magazine's associated book publishing imprint, Straight Arrow Publishing Co. Inc. was the publishing company that published Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone magazine was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Ralph Gleason. To get it off the ground, Wenner borrowed $7,500 from his own family and from the parents of his soon-to-be wife, Jane Schindelheim; the first issue carried a cover date of November 9, 1967, was in newspaper format with a lead article on the Monterey Pop Festival.
The cover price was 25¢. In the first issue, Wenner explained that the title of the magazine referred to the 1950 blues song "Rollin' Stone", recorded by Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan's hit single "Like a Rolling Stone": You're wondering what we're trying to do. It's hard to say: sort of a sort of a newspaper; the name of it is Rolling Stone which comes from an old saying, "A rolling stone gathers no moss." Muddy Waters used the name for a song. The Rolling Stones took their name from Muddy's song. "Like a Rolling Stone" was the title of Bob Dylan's first rock and roll record. We have begun a new publication reflecting what we see are the changes in rock and roll and the changes related to rock and roll."—Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone, November 9, 1967, p. 2 Some authors have attributed the name to Dylan's hit single: "At Gleason's suggestion, Wenner named his magazine after a Bob Dylan song." Rolling Stone identified with and reported the hippie counterculture of the era. However, it distanced itself from the underground newspapers of the time, such as Berkeley Barb, embracing more traditional journalistic standards and avoiding the radical politics of the underground press.
In the first edition, Wenner wrote that Rolling Stone "is not just about the music, but about the things and attitudes that music embraces". In the 1970s, Rolling Stone began to make a mark with its political coverage, with the likes of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson writing for the magazine's political section. Thompson first published his most famous work Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas within the pages of Rolling Stone, where he remained a contributing editor until his death in 2005. In the 1970s, the magazine helped launch the careers of many prominent authors, including Cameron Crowe, Lester Bangs, Joe Klein, Joe Eszterhas, Ben Fong-Torres, Patti Smith and P. J. O'Rourke, it was at this point that the magazine ran some of its most famous stories, including that of the Patty Hearst abduction odyssey. One interviewer, speaking for a large number of his peers, said that he bought his first copy of the magazine upon initial arrival on his college campus, describing it as a "rite of passage".
In 1977, the magazine moved its headquarters from San Francisco to New York City. Editor Jann Wenner said San Francisco had become "a cultural backwater". During the 1980s, the magazine began to shift towards being a general "entertainment" magazine. Music was still a dominant topic, but there was increasing coverage of celebrities in television and the pop culture of the day; the magazine initiated its annual "Hot Issue" during this time. Rolling Stone was known for its musical coverage and for Thompson's political reporting. In the 1990s, the magazine changed its format to appeal to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors and popular music; this led to criticism. In recent years, the magazine has resumed its traditional mix of content, including in-depth political stories, it has expanded content to include coverage of financial and banking issues. As a result, the magazine has seen its circulation increase and its reporters invited as experts to network television programs of note.
The printed format has gone through several changes. The first publications, in 1967–72, were in folded tabloid newspaper format, with no staples, black ink text, a single color highlight that changed each edition. From 1973 onwards, editions were produced on a four-color press with a different newsprint paper size. In 1979, the bar code appeared. In 1980, it became a large format magazine; as of edition of October 30, 2008, Rolling Stone has had a smaller, standard-format magazine size. After years of declining readership, the magazine experienced a major resurgence of interest and relevance with the work of two young journalists in the late 2000s, Michael Hastings and Matt Taibbi. In 2005, Dana Leslie Fields, former publisher of Rolling Stone, who had worked at the magazine for 17 years, was an inaugural inductee into the Magazine Hall of Fame. In 2009, Taibbi unleashed an acclaimed series of scathing reports on the financial meltdown of the time, he famously described Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid".
Bigger headlines came at the end of June 2010. Rolling Stone caused a controversy in the White House by publishing in the July issue an article by journalist Michael Hastings entitled, "The Runaway General", quoting criticism by General Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of the International Security Assistance Force and U. S. Forces-Afghanistan commander, about Vice President Joe Biden and oth
David Bowie
David Robert Jones, known professionally as David Bowie, was an English singer and actor. He was a leading figure in the music industry and is considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, acclaimed by critics and musicians for his innovative work during the 1970s, his career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, with his music and stagecraft having a significant impact on popular music. During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at 140 million albums worldwide, made him one of the world's best-selling music artists. In the UK, he was awarded ten platinum album certifications, eleven gold and eight silver, released eleven number-one albums. In the US, he received nine gold certifications, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Born in Brixton, South London, Bowie developed an interest in music as a child studying art and design before embarking on a professional career as a musician in 1963. "Space Oddity" became his first top-five entry on the UK Singles Chart after its release in July 1969.
After a period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with his flamboyant and androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by the success of his single "Starman" and album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which won him widespread popularity. In 1975, Bowie's style shifted radically towards a sound he characterised as "plastic soul" alienating many of his UK devotees but garnering him his first major US crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the album Young Americans. In 1976, Bowie starred in the cult film The Man Who Fell to Earth, directed by Nicolas Roeg, released Station to Station; the following year, he further confounded musical expectations with the electronic-inflected album Low, the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno that came to be known as the "Berlin Trilogy". "Heroes" and Lodger followed. After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes", its parent album Scary Monsters, "Under Pressure", a 1981 collaboration with Queen.
He reached his commercial peak in 1983 with Let's Dance. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including industrial and jungle, he continued acting. He stopped touring after 2004 and his last live performance was at a charity event in 2006. In 2013, Bowie returned from a decade-long recording hiatus with The Next Day, he remained musically active until he died of liver cancer two days after the release of his final album, Blackstar. Bowie was born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947 in London, his mother, Margaret Mary "Peggy", was born at Shorncliffe Army Camp near Kent. Her paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants, she worked as a waitress at a cinema in Royal Tunbridge Wells. His father, Haywood Stenton "John" Jones, was from Doncaster, worked as a promotions officer for the children's charity Barnardo's; the family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, on the boundary between Brixton and Stockwell in the south London borough of Lambeth. Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six years old, acquiring a reputation as a gifted and single-minded child—and a defiant brawler.
In 1953, Bowie moved with his family to Bromley. Two years he started attending Burnt Ash Junior School, his voice was considered "adequate" by the school choir, he demonstrated above-average abilities in playing the recorder. At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly-introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: teachers called his interpretations "vividly artistic" and his poise "astonishing" for a child; the same year, his interest in music was further stimulated when his father brought home a collection of American 45s by artists including the Teenagers, the Platters, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, Little Richard. Upon listening to Little Richard's song "Tutti Frutti", Bowie would say that he had "heard God". Bowie was first impressed with Presley when he saw his cousin dance to "Hound Dog". By the end of the following year, he had taken up the ukulele and tea-chest bass, begun to participate in skiffle sessions with friends, had started to play the piano. Like someone from another planet".
After taking his eleven-plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education, Bowie went to Bromley Technical High School. It was an unusual technical school, as biographer Christopher Sandford wrote: Despite its status it was, by the time David arrived in 1958, as rich in arcane ritual as any public school. There were houses named after eighteenth-century statesmen like Wilberforce. There was a uniform, an elaborate system of rewards and punishments. There was an accent on languages and design, where a collegiate atmosphere flourished under the tutorship of Owen Frampton. In David's account, Frampton led through force of persona
