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His Infernal Majesty was one of the most influential bands of the early 21st century. They were known for their dark, gothic style and for their shocking live performances. The band rose to fame quickly, but they also faced backlash from religious groups and conservative organizations. Despite this, His Infernal Majesty continued to produce groundbreaking music and challenge social norms.
Inception of the band HIM – how it all started
One of the most popular Finnish bands of all time, HIM, has been entertaining audiences for over two decades. The band’s unique blend of gothic rock and metal has won them a devoted following all over the world. But how did HIM get its start?
HIM was formed in Helsinki, Finland in 1991 by vocalist Ville Valo and bassist Mikko “Mige” Paananen. The two had been friends since childhood and had played in various bands together throughout their teenage years. They were later joined by guitarist Linde Lindström, who had also been a childhood friend of Valo’s. The three musicians clicked immediately and began writing songs together.
In 1993, HIM released their debut album, Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666. The album was not an immediate success, but it did garner the band a small following in Finland. The following year, HIM released their second album, And Love Said No, which was a much more commercial sounding record than their debut. This album helped the band gain a wider audience both in Finland and abroad.
HIM finally broke through to the mainstream with their third album, Love Metal, which was released in 2003. The album’s first single, “Funeral of Hearts,” was a massive hit in Finland and helped propel the album to platinum status. Love Metal remains HIM’s most successful album to date and is considered one of the best Finnish albums of all time.
How HIM Made a Name for Themselves in the Music Industry
Let’s take a look at some of the biggest hits from HIM and where they played them.
“Heartkiller” is one of HIM’s most popular songs. It was released as the first single from their seventh studio album, “Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice.” The song peaked at number two on the Finnish Singles Chart and received heavy airplay on Finnish radio stations. “Heartkiller” was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance.
“Right Here in My Arms” was released as the second single from “Screamworks.” The song peaked at number one on the Finnish Singles Chart and became one of HIM’s most successful singles worldwide. “Right Here in My Arms” was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance.
HIM’s cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” was released as the third single from “Screamworks.” The song peaked at number two on the Finnish Singles Chart and received heavy airplay on Finnish radio stations. “Wicked Game” was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance.
Behind the scenes – what it’s like being in a rock band
When most people think of being in a rock band, they think of the glamorous lifestyle of private jets, fancy hotels, and sold-out stadiums. While it’s true that some bands do live this kind of lifestyle, it’s not the reality for most bands. Most bands are actually working hard to make a living playing their music.
Being in a rock band means long hours of practice, touring, and recording. It can be tough being away from home for months at a time, and you have to be able to deal with the stress of performing live. But it’s all worth it when you’re doing what you love.
Conclusion
So that’s the story of how one of the world’s most iconic rock bands came to be. HIM has had a long and successful career, due largely in part to their unique blend of gothic rock with metal elements. If you’re a fan of either genre, or just good music in general, do yourself a favor and check out some of their hits. You won’t be disappointed.
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Laura Pergolizzi is an American singer of Italian origin. She is like a collection of uniquenesses: from her unconventional appearance with unchanging curls, sunglasses and a cross-shaped earring, to her unusual songwriting with heartfelt lyrics, powerful vocals, artistic whistling and ukulele accompaniment.
Surely there will be those who won’t reproach me for saying that an article about Laura Pergolizzi is not a suitable topic for a rock music website. After all, she doesn’t fit the generally accepted definition of “rock personality” at all, because if you believe Wikipedia’s genre definition, LP (Laura Pergolizzi for short) is pop, pop rock and indie pop (a more melodic and not as abrasive subgenre as indie rock). And some people consider her music to be outright pop.
But here I would venture to argue. All these genre definitions aren’t that important when there’s an emotional and semantic component: LP is a singer, worthy to be considered a real rocker.
Why? Yes, because the kind of emotion that LP’s music is imbued with, the chippy pop can’t carry! And I think you will agree that the rock is not only the sound, but equally the emotion that is carried through the lyrics and the singer’s voice.
Besides, LP started as a real rock’n’roll band – 250 concerts a year, endless traveling with the band through small towns in a shabby van and spending nights in cheap hotels (often all together in one room).
Then the producers tried to squeeze her songs into the format in order to reach as many listeners as possible. Luckily, they weren’t very good at it and today we have what we have – an LP in her sincere image with heartfelt lyrics that many people are already quite fond of.
Laura Pergolizzi’s start of the LP journey
Laura Pergolizzi, or rather her extraordinary appearance, is often confusing at first sight – it is not always clear whether you are looking at a man or a woman. LP owes such a striking appearance to her parents: her mother is Neapolitan and her father is half Sicilian, half Irish.
But when you hear her powerful, deep songs, it immediately becomes clear: Laura Pergolizzi is a woman from shortened jeans-boyfriends to the last curl (about orientation we will talk separately), though with a certain admixture of a punk girl.
Laura Pergolizzi’s biography begins in Huntington, New York, where she was born in the spring of 1981.
The next 15 years of her life are rather poorly covered in the media – the LP hardly talks about this period in numerous interviews. Except that she once mentioned that as a child she was terribly ashamed of her voice and preferred to sing while the lawnmower or vacuum cleaner was on so that no one could hear her.
It was not until 1996 that events began to happen that radically changed the life of the singer-to-be.
After graduating from high school, Laura Pergolizzi moves to the capital of her native state. Here begins the LP biography as a singer-songwriter: she gathers her own band called Lionfish, with which she starts giving concerts, performing the repertoire of her own composition.
At the same time Laura Pergolizzi for the first time began to use a pseudonym – LP, although this nickname stuck to her in the school summer camp.
Her first successes, or still a long way to popularity.
In 98 she was noticed by David Lowery from the band Cracker. He was so impressed by Laura’s voice that he invited her to participate in the recording of his band’s album. Later he also became the producer of the debut LP “Heart-Shaped Scar” (2001).
Laura Pergolizzi’s further biography was marked by the release of another album – in 2004 “Suburban Sprawl & Alcogol” (I recommend listening to the supporters of the opinion that LP is pop), which was the result of collaboration with Linda Perry from the band 4 Non Blondes.
Around the same time, Laura Pergolizzi received as a gift from a friend a cross earring that Madonna had given him during the filming of one of her videos. Laura Pergolizzi has not parted with it for a single day since. At the same time she claims that this cross does not have any religious meaning – it is just her favorite earring.
Laura Pergolizzi’s first albums did not bring her fame, despite the fairly warm reception from music critics and a major tour to support Suburban Sprawl & Alcogol. There was still a long way to go.
A period of grounding in the music scene
2010 was the beginning of a new era in LP’s biography – she moved to Los Angeles. It is in this city that Laura Pergolizzi’s active musical activity begins.
In November she writes the song “Cheers (Drink to That)” together with Rihanna. Later she collaborates with Christina Aguilera, Backstreet Boys, The Veronicas and Cher.
But collaborations with pop stars LP has always seen as an additional option to her work. The best songs, with deep personal undertones, she always kept for herself.
In 2012, LP’s creative biography is marked by a breakthrough: music lovers finally appreciated the track “Into the Wild” released as a single, which would later be included in her 3rd album.
Laura Pergolizzi began to use artistic whistling in her songs after this song. In the studio, preparing to perform “Into the Wild,” the LP, out of habit, whistled the tune. The producer and director liked the sound so much that they decided to record it. Since then, almost no Laura Pergolizzi performance is without whistling.
In 2014, a full-length LP, Forever for Now, was released. Its release was preceded by two singles – “Night Like This” (March 2014) and “Someday” (June 2014).
The album “Forever for Now” was praised by music critics. Thus, the LP’s official Wikipedia page says that Stephen Thomas Irlevine in his review gave the record five stars. And American Songwriter’s magazine noted that LP songs can take the leading place in primetime of any radio station.
Finally a well-deserved worldwide fame
This period in LP’s biography began with the release of their fourth album, Lost On You, in 2016.
The first single “Muddy Waters” from the then unrecorded LP “Lost On You” was released in September 2015, and the following summer it was played in the finale of one of the episodes of the popular series “Orange Is the New Black” (“Orange Is the New Black” – in the original).
But the album’s key track is Laura Pergolizzi’s song “Lost On You,” which gave it its title. She first performed it at the Coca Cola Summer Festival 2016 in Rome. As a result, the song reached the top of the charts of most European radio stations in record time.
And no wonder, because “Lost On You” is a deeply frank track about Laura Pergolizzi’s personal life. In it she literally portrayed her own love tragedy.
Laura Pergolizzi’s song “Lost On You” is dedicated to the singer’s close friend Tamzin Brown, whose relationship ended in failure. This fact takes on a special meaning when you learn that Laura Pergolizzi is a lesbian. The LP doesn’t hide that fact, though.
She claims that her parents have always been lenient about their daughter’s every “eccentricity”. True, Laura was fully aware of her sexual orientation and told everyone about it only after the death of her mother. Her father only recently took this seriously, as he had always preferred to think of her daughter’s confession as just a teenage hobby.
The literal translation of “Lost On You” sounds something like “Wasted on You” or “Lost in You”. True, in this form, the phrase taken out of context doesn’t carry the semantic load that it’s meant to carry.
But if we turn to the text of the song, it becomes clearer what meaning Laura Pergolizzi put into this phrase. The key vector of the song is the question addressed to Laura’s former girlfriend (played by the model Laura Hanson Sims in the video): “…all those things I wasted on you [time? nerves? feelings?], tell me – was it all for nothing?”
It turns out that the point of “Lost On You” isn’t about trivial worries about lost love, but about trying to figure out if that relationship left any mark on the LP’s ex-girlfriend’s soul. In addition, from the last frames of the clip, in which Laura kisses her new girlfriend Lauren Ruth Ward, it is clear that life goes on for her, despite the still fresh image of her former lover in her memory.
By the way, in December 2016, Lauren (she is also a pretty good singer) released a music video for her song “Make Love To Myself”, which also plays on the emotional lesbian story, and the LP appears in the finale, which is quite symbolic.
But Laura Pergolizzi does not lag behind her new lover – at the beginning of 2017 she again pleased her fans with “tasty” novelties with the same touch of her intimate experiences. On January 26 two videos premiered at once – for the tracks LP “Other People” (the prequel to the “Lost On You” video) and “Tightrope”, with Lauren Ruth Ward in the leading role (appearing in each other’s videos for them, it seems, is becoming a good tradition).
And in the middle of the summer, the video “When we’re high” was released, in which the usual lesbian theme abounds. All the videos are thematically connected to each other – each of them, like chapters in a novel, reveals new details of the plot of LP’s personal life.
By the way, this summer (in July) Laura and Lauren got engaged in Paris, where they were part of the LP’s triumphant tour of Europe. According to them very soon they will officially become wife and wife.
To sum up, I dare to express the opinion that in the near future Laura Pergolizzi’s creativity, by the level of her contribution to the development of modern music, will start to be ranked on a par with Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison (one of the LP idols) and other great musicians/performers revered by fans from all over the world.
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New York, Radio City Music Hall, February 1998. The 40th anniversary of the Grammy Awards was one of the most eventful music shows of the year.
As Best Album of the Year author Bob Dylan was performing his song “Love Sick,” a man burst onto the stage with “soy bomb” written on his chest. The confusion he caused, however, could not obscure the greatness of the music that night.
That same night, The Smashing Pumpkins for “The End Is the Beginning Is the End”, Fiona Apple for “Criminal” and The Wallflowers for “One Headlight” received their well-deserved awards.
The same ceremony later featured a long undeservedly overshadowed musician, Taj Mahal, who finally managed to break the long-awaited ovation. He was 55 years old at the time, and this was his first Grammy.
His album “Senor Blues” won first place for Best Contemporary Blues Album. An unforgettable moment for a man who has dedicated his life to working with the blues sound and creating several new blues styles. Especially when you consider how much and how long he was criticized for his musical experiments.
Chances are you have a question like this, “What’s a bluesman article doing on a rock music website?” The answer is simple – at one time, Taj Mahal was a musician who played not only blues, but also rock and roll. In addition, he was friends and communicated a lot with famous rock musicians (you will see their names while reading the article). Not many people have heard of him in our area and I sincerely think, that it is unfair. Anyway, read on and you will understand!
Taj Mahal and the musicians of the rock scene
He was never your average bluesman. He grew up in Harlem, in a family with Caribbean roots. He got to the heart of the blues in the ’60s, and then started digging even deeper and pulling out the hidden connections that connected Afro-Caribbean folk, rhythm and blues, gospel, African and Latin American music.
One-third tradition keeper and two-thirds experimenter, Mahal may be the first American musician to play ethnic music before the term itself existed.
One of the first to become interested in the new sound was Eric Clapton. In his autobiography he writes that he accepted Mick Jagger’s invitation to participate in his show “The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus” in 1968 (as part of the supergroup The Dirty Mac) mainly because he wanted to meet Mahal.
Keith Richards, who had previously performed with Mahal and Graham Parsons in Los Angeles, admitted that Taj showed him some new tricks, adding that: “His arsenal was to be envied, it always was.”
At this concert, Taj Mahal was the musician solely representing the black American blues, music the Stones adored. This show was filmed, and the material was to be made into a musical film.
There was footage of Taj Mahal, the musician with a badass outfit: a wide-brimmed hat, a red scarf around his neck, a smart leather jacket. He looked just as good as the other stars invited to the show – Clapton, Lennon, and many others. That’s how he was – the hippest of the hippies.
His early years and his fascination with the blues
Henry St. Clair Fredericke (that was his real name) was born in 1942 in Harlem, New York, and soon after his family moved to Springfield, Massachusetts.
The life of his parents was closely connected with music: his mother sang in the church choir, and his father was quite a famous jazz pianist and arranger. Henry Jr. was raised on the songs of Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk. But his greatest inspiration was the traditional culture of his family.
My grandparents emigrated to the U.S. and my mother’s family moved from South Carolina to New York,” Mahal explains. – My parents talked about it a lot, and I understood a lot about Africa and the British Empire.
When I heard music, I could understand where it came from. I was interested in any music with a blues (or blues-like) sound. It didn’t matter if it was country or classical. When I got a whiff of the blues, my spirit made a stand. I wanted to play what I heard myself. It was kind of like the sound of an ancestral voice.
Beginning to play guitar as a teenager, Taj combined his passion for music with attending agricultural college, but in the end, the blues won out. One of the most powerful tragic experiences that influenced Taj and his relationship to music was the death of his father – it was an accident on the construction site where he worked.
First Steps: Taj Mahal as a rhythm and blues musician
The future musician changed his name to Taj Mahal while at university (it came to him in a dream). There he led his first rhythm and blues band, The Elektras. In 1964, Taj and his friend Jesse Lee Kincaid traveled to California to conquer the fertile Los Angeles music scene.
There they met young guitarist Ray Cooder, just like them, a true fan of folk and blues. Like Taj Mahal, Cooder was fascinated by the rich possibilities of “roots music.” Having bonded over this after playing a concert together on Sunset Boulevard, they decided it was time for the next logical step: forming a band.
The newly formed The Rising Sons consisted of Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder, Jessie Lee Kincaid, bassist Gary Marker and future Spirit drummer Ed Cassidy (later replaced by Kevin Kelly).
With Kincaid and Mahal on vocals, they managed to win the hearts of the West Coast with new readings of old blues compositions by Skip James, Charlie Patton and Slippery John Estes as well as their own creations.
They played opening for Otis Redding and The Temptations, and Taj Mahal gradually began to mingle on equal footing with such “superheroes” as Howlin’ Wolfe, Muddy Waters and Lightnin’ Hopkins.
Columbia suggested they record a studio album with producer Terry Melcher, who had just successfully completed an album with The Byrds.
But it never came to fruition.
The album was never released, and the band broke up in 1966. Despite the fact that The Rising Sons paved the way for such blues icons as The Grateful Dead and Moby Grape, all their recorded legacy was just one 45, containing two songs: the rock’n’roll “Candy Man” and the bluesy “The Devil’s Got My Woman”. The full-length album didn’t see the light of day until 26 years later.
Columbia knew they were dealing with up-and-coming musicians, though – Taj Mahal recorded a striking solo debut album in 1968, in which he shook off the dust of good old blues such as “Statesboro Blues,” “Leaving Trunk” and “Everybody’s Got To Change Sometime.”
Kuder also took part in the recording of this album, but most interesting was the musical dialogue between Mahal and the second guitarist, Jesse Ed Davis. Mahal was an outstanding slide guitarist.
Besides guitar, he played harmonica and sang – the warm crackle of his voice gave his songs a special, slightly bouncing sound. The craftsmanship of the recording, unfortunately, did not match the sales of the album, but Mahal’s colleagues appreciated it.
The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus show was conceived as a televised presentation of the just-released Beggar’s Banquet album.
Taj Mahal and his band played four songs that were supposed to be their British breakthrough. But it wasn’t meant to be. The Stones were unhappy with their own performance, not incendiary enough in their opinion, and decided not to give the tape to television.
Taj Mahal, as a musician in need of promotion, may have missed his chance then, but he nevertheless has the most wonderful memories of the trip.
Taj’s long struggle for recognition
Back in the States, Mahal quickly and easily recorded his next album, The Natch’l Blues, which expanded his musical palette by including two soul covers on the record. Pianist Al Cooper and former Little Richard drummer Earl Palmer contributed to the record.
In 1969, the semi-acoustic double-play Giant Step/De Ole Folks At Home was released – it was Mahal’s first album to reach Billboard magazine’s top 100. Yet Taj Mahal was a consistently obscure musician, unlike Frank Zappa and Led Zeppelin, who were in the top 100.
Mahal moved to San Francisco, which benefited his work:
The musicians there are very picky – they won’t play with the first person they meet,” he recalls. – And the promoters are like that. I was lucky and people really liked my music. Our name is on a lot of posters at the Fillmore concert hall. We once played on the same stage as Led Zeppelin [in the fall of 1969].
Mahal continued to ride the waves of music freely. In 1971 he recorded an album of West Indian calypso songs, Happy Just To Be Like I Am, and in 1974 Mo’Roots came out – the result of exploring the links between blues and Jamaican reggae. One of the guest musicians was The Wailers bassist Aston Barrett, and he played a cover of one of the songs by his own band Slave Driver.
But Mahal’s pluralism was not to everyone’s liking. Record sales were far from what they should have been, and he stopped working with Columbia and signed with Warner Bros. in 1976.
The three subsequent albums recorded with the new label did not change the situation.
By the end of the ’70s he was out of contract. “I would have loved to do just blues and R&B – writing my own songs and interpreting existing ones,” he explains. – But nobody wanted to work with me.”
Taj Mahal then moved to Hawaii and began recording albums for kids.
The next album (“Taj,” 1987) didn’t come out until a decade later. But he didn’t fully resume his relationship with the music industry until the early ’90s.
Success at last.
Mahal found a home on a new label, Private Music, co-founded by former Tangerine Dream member Peter Bauman. This allowed him to rediscover his unique blues groove – the Phantom Blues album (featuring Eric Clapton and Bonnie Raitt) was released in 1996.
His third release on that label, Senor Blues, won him a Grammy (“The main achievement was that now people had to listen to that album,” he says).
Another Grammy went to his live album, Shoutin’ in Key.
But that was far from the pinnacle of his fame. Taj Mahal received wider recognition as a versatile musician in 1999 when his CD “Kulanjan” was released – a collaboration with the Malian musician Toumani Diabate, who played a folk instrument – kora.
Here Taj was a true innovator in the field of music, crossing West African melodies with primitive blues.
“I really wanted people to hear this music,” says Mahal, “Kulanjan allowed me to go back in time and hear the voices of my ancestors. After recording the album, I felt I could no longer play guitar. I could keep just my bark and that would be more than enough for me.
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On January 8, 2016, the most famous British musician celebrated his 69th birthday. The date is not round, but, agree, for many of us, the numbers 6 and 9 standing together have a special meaning. The most tragic thing is that two days later, on January 10, David Bowie died.
To honor his memory, we decided to go over the major milestones of Bowie’s biography, focusing on his influence on rock and metal.
Yes, yes, you heard right. People who only know David Bowie from the occasional music channel clip may think that he never did anything but pop glam and electronica – but in fact, his work is far more multifaceted than that. And if you take a look at the work of his followers… oh, you’ll be very surprised to find out which people count themselves as such.
Bowie and his followers
The born David Robert Jones (yes, David Bowie’s real last name is “just” Jones) first attracted the attention of the general public in 1969, when his song “Space Oddity” reached the top 5 of the UK singles charts.
Since then, the attention has never left him. Well, not much has been heard of David in the last fifteen years – but that was his conscious decision, when, some time after the release of the single “Reality”, Bowie announced that he would reduce his creative activity to a minimum in the future.
No one was expecting any more new albums or videos from him. Therefore, the 2013 record The Next Day was an unexpected surprise for many. The same goes for David Bowie’s latest (25th!) full-length album called Blackstar, released in 2016.
Some music critic once said:
Virtually everything that has emerged in rock music in the last 25 years is leftovers from the table at which Bowie’s feast is taking place.
So what is the secret to the magical halo that has surrounded this English musician, actor and singer for virtually his entire career?
First of all, of course, the fact that David Bowie belongs to the group of “founding fathers” – that is, musicians who have made such a significant contribution to the arts that they are practically deified by society (the most striking example is The Beatles). I can’t claim that Bowie invented glam-rock as a genre, but the fact that he became the main popularizer of the style (and his name is the first one that comes to mind when you hear the word “glam”) is an indisputable fact.
Secondly, the incredible charisma of this man played a significant role in the formation of the Bowie cult. From the very first years of his career, David diligently maintained the image of an otherworldly being who had come to Earth either from another planet or from a parallel reality. And it worked so well that even today, when he has not been doing it for a long time, it is difficult to perceive him as an ordinary person.
However, there really is something extraordinary about David’s appearance – even without any makeup he would stand out in any company. And, last but not least, Bowie has always been a master of delivering hit songs to our ears. Without that, all his tricks of makeup, costumes, and theatrical gestures would not have brought the artist the grandiose success he enjoyed for more than half a century.
For example, did you know that the famous song “The Man Who Sold the World” that Kurt Cobain sang on MTV Unplugged in the nineties was actually a cover version of one of David Bowie’s songs recorded in the early seventies? I’m sure not everyone has heard of it…
Another of the most important features of Bowie’s creativity is the fact that he did not just perform music, but music that could really touch your heart. While many artists of all kinds are on stage just because it’s trendy, prestigious or profitable, David Bowie’s songs are something to think about and to learn from. He has consistently made the charts of the most influential musicians in the world (in 2000, for example, he was voted the most influential artist of the 20th century in a poll conducted by New Musical Express magazine).
With a list of followers like his, it’s really something to be proud of. You have Marc Bolan and T. Rex, Mott the Hoople, and the New York Dolls, as well as Morrissey, Bauhaus (an iconic proto-goth band), Gary Newman, Joy Division (an equally iconic goth band), The Psychedelic Furs, Madonna, Suede, Pulp, Placebo (who, in fact, owe their career success to David Bowie), Blur, and many, many others.
And if you consider all the people who have recorded covers of his songs, the list would make your eyes pop out.
A funny fact: many of the artists who once influenced Bowie himself (Lou Reed, The Rolling Stones, Marc Bolan, Brian Eno) later used elements taken from his work. Conversely, some of the artists who were originally inspired by David’s talent and charisma (The Pixies, Morrissey, Nine Inch Nails) can boast of having their ideas reflected in his work.
Always reinventing his creative style (from rhythm-blues/soul to avant-garde and even metal and industrial), David Bowie never claimed to be an artist belonging to any particular genre. Even Bowie renounced glam, of which his old stage persona Ziggy Stardust is still considered the messiah to this day, a long time ago. For this eclecticism he was nicknamed David the Chameleon.
Among the statements about the importance of his legacy to contemporary music, one can sometimes find some rather unexpected ones.
In 1998, the music magazine Kerrang wrote this about Marilyn Manson’s “Mechanical Animals” album:
He (Marilyn) is certainly not making this up when he says his new music was inspired by David Bowie’s classic concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which really set the template for seventies glam rock.
Similarly, Manson’s image of the alien androgynous is largely drawn from Bowie. Check the cover of the early 1973 album “Aladdin Sane,” and you’ll get irrefutable proof.
Bowie has indeed always been one of the ideals and reference points for Brian Warner aka Marilyn Manson.
When asked about glam rock, Marilyn Manson lists Bowie as number one in his personal Top 5. And, of course, Manson’s repertoire includes covers of David Bowie songs (Golden Years, Cat People).
The youth of the Messiah
The future king of glam was born on January 8, 1947 in Brixton, London. Six years later, his family moved to the suburb of Bromley. There David went to Burnt Ash School. It was there that he received his first lessons in music and choreography, during which he demonstrated outstanding creative abilities. His teachers found them amazing for a child his age.
At the same time, his interest in music received an additional stimulus – it happened when David’s father brought home a collection of American records, including works by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Platters, Elvis Presley, Fats Dominoes and Little Richard. According to Bowie, when he heard the song “Tutti Frutti” performed by the latter, he “heard God.” Elvis Presley’s influence was just as strong.
I saw my cousin dancing to (Presley’s) song “Hound Dog” – and I had never seen her like that before, nothing seemed to be able to move her. It really made an impression on me, I felt the power of the music. Right after that, I started collecting records.
By the end of the next year, he got a Hawaiian guitar and a tee-heavy bass to play “skiffle” music with his friends. David also began playing the piano. His stage numbers with songs by Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley made a mesmerizing impression on the audience. Even then witnesses described the spectacle as “something alien.”
Young David Bowie
David Bowie was seriously injured in 1962 as a high school student when he was punched in the eye by George Underwood during a fight over a girl. Doctors feared he might go blind in one eye. After a series of surgeries over four months of hospitalization, medics recognized that the vision in his left eye could not be fully restored, and Bowie’s color vision has been impaired ever since.
As a teenager, David decided that he would tie his fate to music. He put together his first rock band when he was fifteen years old. But the Bowie we know today didn’t appear right away.
Before he began his solo career, he played and sang in several rock and pop bands, each of which is known by today only for the fact that David Bowie was once a member. In the early ’60s, he performed under the name Davy Jones, which created confusion with another Davy Jones, from The Monkees. To end it, he took the nickname of an American knife, which, in turn, was named after the hero of the American Revolution, James Bowie.
The album released in 1967, which, on the one hand, had a simple, but, on the other hand, rather pretentious title for a debut album, “David Bowie”, did not make him a superstar. It was another two years before Bowie returned to studio work.
David’s fascination with all sorts of quirky stuff intensified when he met dancer Lindsay Kemp.
He lived on emotion he was an amazing man,” Kemp later recalled. – His daily life was the most theatrical thing I have ever encountered. It was as if I had become a member of the circus troupe when I started interacting with him. I basically taught him not even the art of pantomime, but how to be himself, how to go beyond the ordinary! I unleashed the angel and the demon that made up his essence.
It took Bowie several years to create a unique, eye-catching stage image. In 1969, everything worked out for him in the best possible way. The song “Space Oddity” rocketed to the top of the charts, and everyone and everything knew about David.
The song was followed by the album of the same name – originally titled “David Bowie”, though, which caused some confusion, since the singer’s debut record was already being sold in Great Britain under the same title. In the United States, to eliminate this confusion, the album was originally released as Man of Words, Man of Music. In 1972 it was re-released on the RCA Records label as Space Oddity – and so it remained in history.
The studio sessions continued, and soon resulted in Bowie’s third album, The Man Who Sold the World (1970). It was composed and rehearsed in Bowie’s home, an Edwardian mansion turned into an apartment building (one of the apartments is where Bowie lived). One of the guests once said that the atmosphere there was “like a Dracula’s living room.
Since Bowie himself was at the time almost completely consumed with his relationship with his new wife Angie, the musical arrangements for the album were mostly done by guitarist Mick Ronson and bassist Tony Visconti. Visconti later rated this album as one of his best collaborations with Bowie (he ranked the 1980 album Scary Monsters first).
Most of the album has a pronounced heavy metal undertone, which makes The Man different from most of Bowie’s other releases and gives us an opportunity to compare it with the works of such bands as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The album’s heavy sound has been expertly packaged with appropriate lyrics: the themes of the songs are insanity (“All the Madmen”), heavily armed killers and commentaries on the Vietnam War (“Running Guns Blues”), the omniscient computer (“Saviour Machine”) and the Ancient Gods from the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (“The Supermen”). The album is also imbued with the influence of such philosophers and writers as Aleister Crowley, Franz Kafka and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Perhaps it was then that the foundations of what we know today as “Gothic” were laid. Another element that probably allows Thilo Wolff and others to speak of Bowie as “the first Goth” is his androgyny, and on the cover of The Man Who Sold the World, David is shown wearing a dress (he would go on to do even more extravagant things).
The Man Who Sold the World
According to one version, the cover of “The Man Who Sold the World” is just a tribute to writer Howard Lovecraft, one of Bowie’s idols, who is also depicted in a dress in a photo from his early childhood.
Howard Lovecraft.
“The Man” was influential in the development of gothic rock and darkwave. Such performers as Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Gary Newman, John Fox and Nine Inch Nails later “emerged” from it. Kurt Cobain, in his diary, called Bowie’s work one of his favorite musical albums. In 1993, Nirvana recorded a cover version of his title song, which was included in their “Unplugged in New York” concert album.
It is considered that glam-rock appeared when Bowie released The Man Who Sold the World (though there is an alternative version, according to which the inventor of the style was Mark Bolan of T. Rex).
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Who was the very first “Queen of Noise”? Susie Quattro, of course. This diminutive Detroit-based generator was a success among the then reigning macho makeovers. Plus, no one else (or anyone else) looked as good in a tight leather jumpsuit as she did.
An unusual interview at Susie Quattro’s home.
The first thing Susie Quattro asks me to do is take off… alas, not my shirt or pants or… but my shoes.
We have beige carpets here, you see,” she explains.
I can’t help but notice that she herself is wearing shoes. More specifically, she’s wearing slim, pale blue snakeskin boots that go perfectly with her ripped jeans.
I just had a photo shoot,” Susie Quattro excused herself, lifting her right foot and touching the flawless soles with her finger. It looks like the clearest-eyed 64-year-old woman with the fluffiest hair on this or any other planet. – Look at it, it’s perfectly clean.
It’s a very strange feeling when you’re standing in your socks in the lobby of a large Elizabethan mansion discussing shoe issues with the first “Queen of Noise.” After all, it was Susie Quattro (to use a phrase from her autobiography) who didn’t say she opened the door for female rock musicians, but rather blew it down.
If you were a rock fan in the 1970s, chances are that Quattro’s rise is forever in your memory. The leather-clad, piercing tomboy who exuded a sea of charisma. If she was any kind of collective image, she was certainly not a product of the American commercial industry. Her singles were bold, energetic, noisy and permeated with typical 70’s cues, especially the B-sides.
“Roman Fingers” (“Fondle me, love me till you die” (“Roman Fingers” is a slang term for sexual caresses) and “Glycerine Queen” (“Taking pocket money, giving back dirty secrets”) come immediately to mind, and you wouldn’t want to sprinkle sugar from Shake My Sugar on your breakfast cereal.
Susie Quattro’s house, dating back to the late 16th century and located in Essex near Chelmsford, has been her home for 35 years. It has nine bedrooms and three reception rooms and is surrounded by almost a hectare and a half of land. It even boasts its own moat. (This brings to mind lines from another of her songs, “The Wild One,” “I’m a blue-eyed bitch, and I want to get rich.)
A long, tree-lined gravel road (isn’t there a “devil’s gate” around here?) goes past wooden garages and leads to a circle in front of the house. A huge black Mercedes and a Chrysler Crossfire with German license plates are parked there, indicating that Susie Quattro, her second husband Rainer Haas, who works as a promoter in Hamburg, has now arrived.
We enter the house. Susie walks confidently across the fluffy carpet, her gait reminiscent of a model who walks into a Wild West bar to order a sarsaparilla from the bartender. We walk past the upholstered wood walls adorned with gold discs and stop to peek into her office, which is also the showroom for her 750 pairs of Ray-Ban sunglasses.
I try to wear a different pair every day,” she says, “but I save the vintage ones for special occasions, they’re still pretty valuable.
Finally, we reach the lounge, which is dominated by a portrait of Susie Quattro by Pop Art Brazilian artist Romero Britto. You can see this portrait on the cover of her poetry collection, which came out in December 2014. On the wall beside the fireplace hangs a battered Fender Precision bass guitar, once given to her by her father long ago.
Susie Quatro in 1974 and now (photo)
Quattro sits down on the couch and speaks with her distinctive Michigan accent:
Well, what would you like to know?
Susie Quattro’s first steps in music
Susan Kay Quatro was born in 1950 in Detroit. She was the fourth of five children. From an early age they were all put in their heads:
“You can do it all on your own.”
Her father Art was from Italy and her mother Helen was from Hungary. From an early age, she demonstrated her musical talent and made her stage debut at the age of eight. At that time, she played the bongos in her father’s jazz ensemble.
In 1964, Susie and her sister Patty formed their own band, the Pleasure Seekers, playing garage rock. A third sister, Arlene, soon joined them. As a kind of female version of The Seeds, the sisters proved themselves in the frenetic Detroit scene, led by Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Bob Seeger, Mitch Ryder and The Stooges (Susie’s favorite Detroit musician was Bob Hodge of the heavy blues band Catfish).
As the Pleasure Seekers managed to land a contract with the local Hideout label, and then attracted the attention of the major Mercury Records, Susie Quattro left school for the nomadic life of a musician.
At 17, she even ended up in Vietnam, where she entertained American soldiers. In 1969, the Pleasure Seekers smoothly morphed into Cradle (left Arlene, who had to take over parenting, but was replaced by another sister, Nancy). A dramatic change came two years later when Susie met Mickey Most, the English producer and owner of Rak Records, backstage after a Cradle concert at the Grandee Ballroom in Detroit. To see the Cradle band Most was persuaded by Mickey Quattro, the girls’ brother and their promoter, but only a miniature dynamo with a bass guitar sparked Most’s genuine interest.
That night Mickey brought me into the Motown studio with Jeff Beck and Cosy Powell. I will remember that night for the rest of my life. I got the bass, then Jeff and Cosey came in, and we started jamming by winding up Cissy Strut. Dang-di-da-da-dang-dang-dang-dang… dang-di-da-da-dum… You know? I jammed to the tune of this song with Jeff Beck and Cosy Powell! How many people can boast something like that?
Bridge wanted to sign a solo contract with Quattro, but Jack Holtzman, head of Elektra Records, also had his eye on it. You’d think the choice wasn’t that difficult. On the one hand, Elektra was home to The Doors, The Eagles, The MC5 and Love. On the other, Rak had contracts with Mud, Kenny, Arrows and Racey.
Ha ha,” Quattro laughs guttural. – Yeah, I had two offers. It was crazy. Both Jack Holtzman and Mickey wanted to offer me a solo contract. Jack said: “The second Janis Joplin.” But Mickey said: “The first Susie Quattro.” I didn’t want to become the second Janis Joplin. It wasn’t for me at all.
The Susie Most sisters weren’t interested, but he didn’t want to break up the family. Luckily, eventually the Cradle broke up (for natural reasons, not because of Most) and Susie Quattro flew to London.
My father told me, “You see, if you go, your sisters won’t succeed without you.” Oh…the guilt. I felt it for a long period of time. However, it didn’t stop me. It was my path, and I was going to follow it. From a business standpoint, it was easy. But emotionally it was killing me. Still, I had to go.
Away from home: uncertainty and love
Quattro left rumbling Detroit to land noisily in London and find herself in the middle of a burgeoning glitterrock scene. A gentlemen’s club of stale rock historians will tell you that (with the exception of David Bowie and Mark Volan) the charmingly dorky ’70s glam-rock phenomenon was a tasteless pimple on the face of British music.
Not true. It was a golden era, even though on closer inspection that gold looked more like shiny plastic made in Taiwan. It was an era with which the leather-jacketed, stacked on a high platform, husky-voiced Noise Queen Susie Quattro will always be associated. And yet she tries to separate herself from the guys with eyeliner on her eyes.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been a part of the glam scene,” she says. – It’s very ambiguous for me. I may have been part of that era, but I didn’t look like that. I didn’t have any makeup on. The guys wore it. I think I was more of a rock and roll act than a glam act. If you look at me, it’s very noticeable that I’m from Detroit. Simple black skin and edgy demeanor.
It took Susie Quattro a while to get on her feet in England. Mickey Most noticed her budding talent, but when it came to studio work, he didn’t know what to do with her. It took two years for her career to really take off. She went into the studio with guitarist Beat Jim Sullivan, Yes drummer Alan White and keyboardist Free “Bunny” Bandrick.
We were looking,” she admits. – I couldn’t find my niche, finally things more or less fell into place when I said: “I need a band.”
But Bridge was right about one thing. Susie Quattro wasn’t just candy for ’70s teenagers with their curls, oversized collars, 99-pence striped flared pants, and plastic-heeled boots from the Timpsons store.
Mickey told me from the beginning, “You’re a rocker, you have androgynous looks, everyone will like you: straight guys, gay guys, boys, girls.” But here’s what to do with me in the studio, he didn’t know. He never got around to being my producer.
In late 1972, Susie Quattro went on tour to British theater venues with a team of three musicians, including Thin Lizzy and headliners Slade. She managed to win over Slade fans known for their uncompromising attitude and talked to Phil Lynott.
We stayed at Phil’s mother’s hotel when we were in those parts. He was a nice, gentle man, despite his drug problems.
By then, a giant-sized guitarist named Len Taki had joined her band. While touring with Slade, Quattro and Taki became lovers, and he later became her first husband. Did they try to hide their budding relationship from fans so as not to upset them?
I never did. No, no, no,” she answers immediately. – I guess Mickey didn’t want us to get married like that right away, but we started living together from the beginning. It was about two weeks after the tour started. We fell in love, that’s all. We lived together for 20 years.
A life-changing change. Susie Quattro’s songs are blowing everyone away.
The decisive turn in Susie Quattro’s career came in early 1973. It just so happened that as she was walking by, songwriter/producer Mike Chapman happened to be in the reception area of Rak Records.
Mike asked: “Who is this nice girl?” Mickey replied, “That’s my secret weapon, she’s going to be a real star,” she recalls. – “Mickey let Mike listen to the song ‘Rolling Stone,’ which was my first single for Rak. It was pretty quiet. Mike said: “It’s amazing, and I thought, looking at her appearance, that she was performing something really bold and daring.” For Mickey, it was a revelation.
Chapman and co-writer Nicky Chinn wrote the song Can The Can for Quattro. Wild, fierce and endlessly commercial, it reached number one in Britain in June 1973.
The musicians of The Quadro Band appeared on Top Of The Pops, and the whole country looked on in amazement. This was no token Dana, with All Kinds Of Everything, or Linea De Paul with her neat haircut and tons of lipstick.
No, this was a snarling demon from Daytona, head-to-toe clad in leather, tossing sand in your face and then happily rubbing it into your forehead.
Incidentally, it is widely known that in her Record Mirror interview, De Paul called Susie Quattro a “lesbian.” She later said she was misquoted and she used the word “masculine.” How it really was, no one knows for sure, since the tape turned out to have been mysteriously deleted.
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