The Swinging Sixties

Jim Morrison

admin — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:52:51 +0000

Elektra Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Edited)

American Singer & Songwriter

Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison (1943-1971) was an American singer and songwriter who found fame in his role as the lead vocalist and primary songsmith for the rock band The Doors.

Morrison was born on December 8th 1943 to his mother Clara Virginia (1919-2005) in the small settlement of Melbourne, Florida at a time when its population was only about 3,000 [it has since become a city with over 87,000 inhabitants], Jim was the eldest of three siblings in his family, which had English, Scottish and Irish ancestry.

His father George (1919-2008) was a career serviceman in the United States navy, who eventually rose to the rank of Rear Admiral. George’s naval career led to postings in different locations, which required frequent moves during Jim’s childhood, as a result of which his elementary education was split between schools in Virginia, Texas, New Mexico and San Diego, before he attended high school partly in Alameda, California and partly in Virginia.

During his time at George Washington High School in Virginia, Morrison took an IQ test and was found to have a very high IQ in the top 0.1% of the population. He was also noticed by his English teacher for citing books on Renaissance demonology, an unusual interest for a teenager.

Morrison read widely in philosophy and classic literature, including works by French poets and philosophers, but it was the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche that struck a particularly strong chord with him.

Joel Brodsky; Distributed by Elektra Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Following his graduation from High School, Morrison moved to stay with his father’s parents in Florida, where he successively attended St. Petersburg Junior College and Florida State University. But in 1964, he returned to California to take his studies further, joining a film course within the Theater Arts department of the College of Fine Arts at UCLA for his final year as an undergraduate. While studying on this course, he met fellow cinematography student Ray Manzarek, who would soon become his first bandmate. Jim’s degree was awarded in absentia in 1965.

Morrison then moved to the Venice neighbourhood of Los Angeles, which is famed for its beach known as Venice Beach. Here, he shared accommodation with another friend he had made at UCLA, Dennis Jakob, and began writing songs. At the time, he was actively using the fashionable psychedelic drug LSD; and he broke off all contact with his family, supposedly to protect his military father’s reputation from being tainted as his musical career developed.

That very summer, Jim randomly encountered Manzarek again on the beach at Venice, L.A., and told him about his songs. Impressed by the lyrics, Manzarek suggested that they were worthy of a rock band. Together, the two of them founded The Doors, in which they were soon joined by two other members, Robby Krieger on guitar and John Densmore on drums, both of whom were already known to Manzarek through a meditation class they all attended.

By the following summer, The Doors had been booked as the opening act for the band Them, featuring the young Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, during a residency held by Them at a fashionable Hollywood nightclub called Whisky a Go Go. Although Van Morrison was two years younger than Jim, and would reach his 21st birthday only in August 1966, he had been involved in music since his childhood; and by that time, Them were already an internationally successful band, with two Top 40 hits in the US and two Top 10 hits in the UK to their credit. Van Morrison was therefore by far the better-established performer of the two Morrisons who convened to play at that club that summer, and he is thought to have influenced Jim’s stage manner, with his air of sullen, brooding menace and devil-may-care wildness rubbing off on Jim.

I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.

Another formative influence on Jim’s stage manner, his habit of wearing black leather trousers, is dated to this time, but its source is disputed, with his bandmates Manzarek and Krieger citing Marlon Brando as Morrison’s influence for this look, although the artist Andy Warhol (q. v.) later expressed the differing belief that a dancer named Gerard Malanga who had performed in similar attire at a Velvet Underground gig held in Los Angeles in May 1966 was in fact responsible. Regardless of which account may be correct, the wearing of black leather trousers on stage subsequently became a staple look for generations of rock stars, more especially so in harder forms of rock such as heavy metal, and with Bono Vox from the Irish stadium rock band U2 having been among the later converts.

In 1967, the band was signed to Elektra Records, which led to a spate of single releases. The first, ‘Break on Through to the Other Side’, failed to reach the US Hot 100, although it became a Top 10 hit in France; but it was followed by Light My Fire, which topped the charts in both the USA (where it spent three weeks at No. 1) and France, and reached No. 2 in Canada, although it narrowly failed to reach the UK Top 40, stalling at No. 49 that summer. The Doors’ third single, ‘People are Strange’, reached No. 1 in Canada but only No. 12 in the USA, and did not chart in either France or the UK, although a later cover version by Echo and the Bunnymen became a UK Top 30 hit in 1988.

Prior to a performance in Connecticut in December 1967, Morrison was sprayed by a police officer with the chemical aerosol self-defence product Mace after being mistaken as a backstage intruder and ordered to leave, to which he had responded defiantly. The concert, though delayed, went ahead, but Jim reported what had happened to him beforehand to the crowd using expletives that were perceived by police as violating obscenity laws, resulting in his arrest while on stage, although the charges raised against him in the heat of the moment were not ultimately pursued further.

The Doors’ fifth and sixth singles, the double A-sided ‘Love Me Two Times’/’Moonlight Drive’ and ‘The Unknown Soldier’, enjoyed more moderate success, both reaching the Top 40 in the USA and Canada, but neither attaining a Top 20 position in any territory.

Elektra Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped / Edited)

KRLA Beat/Beat Publications, Inc., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped / Edited)

Henry Diltz / Elektra Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped / Edited)

Joel Brodsky; Distributed by Agency for the Performing Arts (APA), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Edited)

Unknown U.S. Navy personnel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Edited)

Polfoto/Jan Persson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Greater success returned later in 1968, with the double A-sided ‘Hello I Love You’/’Love Street’ giving them their second US chart-topper and also incidentally their second Canadian No. 1 hit, and their first Top 40 hit in the UK, where it reached No. 15. It was perhaps no coincidence that in September 1968, the band embarked on their first European tour, including four performances at the Roundhouse in London alongside Jefferson Airplane, one of which was recorded for a documentary by Granada Television. The following Doors single, another double A-sided production, ‘Touch Me’/’Wild Child’, was also a success in the USA and Canada, where it peaked at No. 3 and No. 1 respectively, although it failed to chart at all in the UK.

1969 and 1970 proved to be a lean period for the band commercially, with none of their four singles in these years reaching the Top 40 in the USA or charting at all in the UK, although three of them reached the Top 40 in Canada. During these years, Morrison also got into more serious trouble with the law. In March 1969, following a drunken, obscenity-laced performance in Miami, Morrison was served with multiple arrest warrants relating to the concert, including one for indecent exposure. This time, the charges were pursued, and when the case came to trial before a jury 18 months later, in September 1970, Morrison was convicted of both indecent exposure and profanity. He was sentenced to a prison term of six months, but bailed on a $50,000 surety – equivalent to over $400,000 in 2025 after inflation – pending an appeal.

In the summer of 1970, The Doors performed at the Isle of Wight Festival (q. v.) a performance that was recorded and released many years later in 2018 as Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970.

JustRadley, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A few months after becoming a convicted offender, Morrison went on hiatus from touring and working with the Doors in March 1971, taking time to stay in Paris with his long-term girlfriend Pamela Courson (1946-1974), who had been involved with him romantically in an open relationship since they first met in 1966, and for whom he had purchased a fashion shop in 1969.

Unfortunately, Courson had also been involved in a relationship with a heroin dealer named Jean de Breteuil, which led to her having a ready supply of heroin for her own use and facilitating access to the drug for Morrison. He was found dead in the early hours of July 3rd, 1971, with multiple eyewitnesses reporting that the cause of his death was a heroin overdose. No autopsy was carried out, leading to official uncertainty over the true cause of his sudden death at the age of just 27 – one of several rock stars now notorious for having died at that age, with the result that they are often collectively referred to as being in the ’27 Club’, although death at such a young age is hardly something to which any sane individual would aspire. Jim’s death was initially hushed up by those close to him, and he was privately buried in a sparsely attended ceremony before his passing was even announced to the wider world.

Paradoxically, however, there was a return to form in terms of commercial success for The Doors in 1971, the last year of Morrison’s life, when the double A-sided ‘Love Her Madly’/’You Need Meat (Don’t Go No Further’ peaked at No. 11 in the USA and No. 3 in Canada; and another double A-sided release, ‘Riders on the Storm’/’Changeling’, reached No. 14 in the USA, No. 7 in Canada and No. 22 in the UK, giving them their second and final UK Top 40 hit on original release, albeit three months after Morrison’s untimely death that July.

In the circumstances of Morrison’s departure from the land of the living, the outcome of his appeal against his judicial conviction was unresolved, as no decision had been taken on this at the time of his death. Morrison died a free convict who had avoided jail time despite his conviction. Over four decades after his criminal conviction, in December 2010, he was posthumously pardoned by the serving governor of Florida, with the support of its state clemency board.

Between 1971 and 1983, three further posthumous singles charted within the US Hot 100 for the Doors, but none of them reached the Top 50.

Elektra Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped/Edited)

In 1991, at least three Doors singles were reissued in the UK to mark the 20th anniversary of Morrison’s death. Of the three that charted in the UK Top 75, only ‘Light My Fire’ reached the Top 40, rising all the way to No. 7 to become the Doors’ third and final UK Top 40 hit, and also the biggest hit of their career in the UK, 24 years after it had initially stalled at No. 49.

Although their success as a singles act was inconsistent and decidedly limited outside the USA and Canada, The Doors were popular with buyers of vinyl albums, all six of their LPs released during Morrison’s lifetime reaching the Top 10 in the US albums chart, and two of the later ones also reaching the Top 20 (though not the Top 10) in the UK. In chronological order, their six studio albums to which Morrison contributed were ‘The Doors’ (January 1967), ‘Strange Days’ (September 1967), ‘Waiting for the Sun’ (July 1968), ‘The Soft Parade’ (July 1969), ‘Morrison Hotel’ (February 1970), and ‘L.A. Woman’ (April 1971).

Three further LPs were released by the surviving members of The Doors but were greeted with indifferent chart success, none of them reaching the Top 30 in the USA and none of them even charting in the UK. The commercial failure of these records underlined that for most fans, The Doors without Morrison front and centre were just an empty shell of their former glory.

Less than three years had passed after Jim’s death when Courson sadly followed him to an early grave at the age of 27, after overdosing on heroin herself while staying in Los Angeles.

Separately from his musical career, Morrison had written poetry from a young age, two volumes of which were published in 1969, under the respective titles of ‘The Lords / Notes on Vision’ and ‘The New Creatures’. He was also noted for sometimes reciting poetic stanzas he had written while on stage with The Doors. He made friends with Michael McClure (q. v.), with whom he had planned to work on some film projects before he died.

Two volumes of previously unpublished writings by Morrison were released posthumously under the titles of The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison, with Volume I appearing in 1988 and Volume II in 1990.

Many later rock musicians have cited Morrison as a major influence on their own performance style, including a particularly large contingent with gothic leanings.

Morrison’s life and work with the Doors was the subject of a film directed by Oliver Stone called The Doors, which was released in 1991 to a mixed reception, with many of Morrison’s friends complaining that the portrayal of their late associate was a paper-thin caricature that did not bring out his character at all accurately or in a rounded fashion.

Nonetheless, Morrison himself remains a rock legend on a par with fellow 27 Club members Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin (both of whom q. v.); and The Doors’ best-known singles in the UK, ‘Light My Fire’, ‘Hello, I Love You‘ and ‘Riders on the Storm’, have continued to enjoy radio play deep into the early 21st century.

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Gerry Marsden

admin — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 11:16:03 +0000

Photographer: Paul Schumach, Metropolitan Photo Service, New York City., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

English Singer & Musician

Gerry Marsden

Gerry Marsden (1942-2021) was a singer and songwriter from Liverpool who achieved the greatest heights of commercial success in the 1960s with his band Gerry and the Pacemakers.

Gerry was born on 24th September 1942 in the Toxteth area of central Liverpool, as the second son of Mary Marsden (née McAlindin) and Frederick Marsden, a railway clerk.

He began to enjoy singing in his infancy, and claimed to have recalled singing on top of an air raid shelter while World War II was still in progress. Subsequently, he honed his singing skills as a member of the choir in his local church. His father, Frederick, was a ukulele player who frequently performed in a local pub and taught Gerry how to play the same instrument.

As a teenager in the late 1950s, Gerry was influenced by the sound of best-selling skiffle artist Lonnie Donegan into forming his first band, the Gerry Marsden Skiffle Group. However, he subsequently changed his musical style after listening to Elvis Presley, who may perhaps have become a role model for his strong, clear and characterful singing style.

By the age of 17, in 1959, Gerry had formed the band with which his name has since become inseparably associated, alongside his elder brother Fred Marsden (1940-2006), the group’s drummer; pianist Arthur MacMahon (known as Arthur Mack) and bassist Les Chadwick (1943-2019). Their initial name, Gerry Marsden & the Mars Bars, had to be revised when the American confectionery giant, whom they had politely approached with a written request for permission to use their name, ordered them by return of post to stop using it.

Photographer: Paul Schumach, Metropolitan Photo Service, New York City., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

McMahon, hearing a sporting commentator use the common reference to the frontrunner in an athletic race as a pacemaker, decided he liked the image this conveyed, and suggested it to the others for the band’s new name, with the result that they became Gerry and the Pacemakers.

Alongside his participation in the band, young Gerry, after leaving school, held down a day job as a railway porter, taking after his father who had worked for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway prior to the nationalisation in 1948 of the four regional railway companies as British Rail.

The Pacemakers in their very early days frequently performed live across the Merseyside region, and would often perform cover versions of the chart hits of the day by other artists, as well as their own songs.

In May 1960, Gene Vincent, an American singer who had three UK hit singles in the first half of that year, was booked to perform in concert at Liverpool Stadium, and Gerry’s band was selected as one of their support acts.

In 1961, MacMahon was replaced by Les Maguire (1941-2023), who alongside his keyboard skills was also a capable saxophonist.

The Pacemakers began to be booked as regular performers at the famous Cavern Club, alongside the Beatles; and that same year, the Pacemakers and Beatles joined together for a one-off gig as supergroup The Beatmakers in the town of Litherland, north of Liverpool, playing improvised cover versions of rock’n’roll standards.

In 1961, the Pacemakers also went on tour to Hamburg, Germany, at a time when the Beatles were playing there, and Marsden socialised with John Lennon, later recalling an unsavoury incident while they were walking together through the city streets. What happened was that Lennon knocked on the door of one of the houses in Hamburg’s red light district, where scantily-clad sex workers were paraded behind windows, and entered into failed negotiations with a pimp over the cost of entry.^[1]

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart, and you'll never walk alone.

In May 1962, the Pacemakers became the second prominent signing, after the Beatles, of music promoter Brian Epstein. This paved the way to the release in 1963 of their debut single ‘How Do You Do It?’ in 1963, a song written by young English songwriter Mitch Murray (born 1960) that had been rejected by the Beatles for being too jaunty, but that Epstein thought would be a perfect fit for Gerry’s band. In the event, it topped the UK singles chart for three weeks that April, and spent a further two weeks at No. 2. As debut singles go, it was a runaway national success.

The band’s sudden propulsion into the limelight was no flash in the pan, as follow-up single ‘I Like It’, another Mitch Murray composition, also reached No. 1 in June, in this case for four weeks, with another two weeks at No. 2.

That December, the Pacemakers pulled off an unprecedented hat-trick when their cover version of the standard ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, which came from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel, became their third successive UK No. 1 hit, also spending four weeks at No. 1 and two weeks at No. 2. This success marked out Gerry and the Pacemakers as the first ever musical group whose first three singles had all topped the UK singles chart. This feat that would not be repeated until 1989, over 25 years later, when it was achieved by the rather less distinguished novelty act Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, who specialised in rock’n’roll cover version medleys.

In 1964, the hits continued in a slightly lower-key manner, with ‘I’m the One’, their first single to have been self-penned by Marsden personally, reaching No. 2 for two weeks in February, and soulful ballad ‘Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying’ peaking at No. 6 in May, although it performed better in the United States, where it rose to No. 4 after becoming their debut hit there. The Pacemakers’ sixth single, ‘It’s Gonna Be All Right’, proved less commercial, stalling at No. 24 in the UK chart that September.

Photographer: unknown Publisher: Beat Publications, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Edited)

Also in 1964, a documentary film about Gerry and the Pacemakers and their life in Liverpool, Ferry Cross the Mersey, was produced by Tony Warren, better known as the original creator of the long-running TV soap opera Coronation Street. The proposed title of the documentary provided Marsden with the inspiration for writing what would prove to be the Pacemakers’ last Top Ten hit (of six), ‘Ferry Cross the Mersey’, which charted in December and peaked at No. 8 the following January. This song, which has since become extremely well-known, is a langorous, wistful ballad redolent of nostalgia and local pride, as it describes an experience familiar to most residents in Merseyside, that of taking a ferry boat to travel between Liverpool and Seacombe, home to a substantial conurbation in the Wirral peninsula.

Later in 1965, the Pacemakers scored their final hits with a cover of Bobby Darin’s song ‘I’ll Be There’ (which reached No. 15), and ‘Walk Hand In Hand’ (which could only manage No. 29).

1965 was also the year when Gerry married his long-term girlfriend Pauline Behan. They had been dating since at least 1963, but Epstein had warned Gerry off marrying her during their early days of chart success on the grounds that it might alienate their hordes of female fans. Perhaps their declining levels of success in 1965 proved him right. Nonetheless, Gerry’s marriage to Pauline proved long-lived. Together, they had two children, both daughters, named Yvette and Victoria.

No further singles were released by the Pacemakers in 1966; and the following year, when Marsden was offered an opportunity to star in a London West End musical and decided to accept the role, the Pacemakers disbanded. Sources differ as to the exact circumstances of their end, with some suggesting that the other members at first wanted to continue with a new singer, before thinking better of the idea and moving into other lines of business. It was an unceremonious end to a band whose blistering rise to chart-topping success just a few years earlier had proven unsustainable.

The musical in question was a comedy called Charlie Girl that had been running since December 1965; and it was in 1968 that Marsden took over the role of Joe Studholme from original star Joe Brown.

In 1973, Gerry reformed the Pacemakers with new musicians, and went on tour in New York, but they did not enjoy any further chart hits in this new guise.

During the 1980s, however, Gerry became associated with big charity records. In 1985, following the Bradford City stadium fire, in which 56 spectators lost their lives, he formed a supergroup called The Crowd, alongside a host of other stars, to record a cover version of the Pacemakers’ own hit ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ in remembrance of the victims of the tragedy, with proceeds being distributed to their families. It spent two weeks at No. 1 that June.

A similar response by Marsden greeted the Hillsborough disaster, a crowd crush incident that killed 97 spectators at a football match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on the 15th April, 1989. This time, he got together with Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, pop group The Christians, and producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman, to record a cover version of the Pacemakers’ song Ferry Cross the Mersey. It entered the UK singles chart at No. 1 that May, and stayed there for three weeks.

Marsden’s autobiography, I’ll Never Walk Alone, was published in 1993 with the help of a co-writer. In 2003, he was awarded an MBE. In subsequent years, he assisted in a successful bid that saw Liverpool crowned European Capital of Culture in 2008, following which he was honoured with the Freedom of the City.

Gerry frequently gave impromptu live performances of his song Ferry Cross the Mersey while taking the ferry it described until very late in life, much to the delight of other passengers. He also continued to perform formal live concerts until well into his mid-60s.

In 2003 and 2016, he underwent heart surgery, the first operation being a triple heart bypass and the second to replace a valve. Then in 2017, he collapsed on stage while performing in Newport, South Wales, as part of a national tour of the UK., and he finally announced his retirement in November 2018. However, he only survived for just over another two years before succumbing to a blood infection in his heart, and dying on 3rd January 2021. This was a sad way to go out for such a big-hearted, larger-than-life character.

[1] Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/gerry-marsden-death-musician-liverpool-fc-obituary-b1781757.html

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David Frost

admin — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 10:21:11 +0000

Photographer not credited. Signature by Diahann Carrol, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Restored)

Television host, Journalist, Comedian & Writer

David Frost

David Paradine Frost (1939-2013) was a notable British political journalist and television presenter.

He was born in the small town of Tenterden, Kent, on April 7th, 1939, just under five months before the outbreak of World War II. His mother, Maude Frost, was commonly known as Mona, while his father, Wilfred Frost, was a Methodist church minister.

David was initially raised In Kent, where he attended a succession of schools in the large town of Gillingham, and was also instructed in Bible study at a Sunday school attached to his father’s church, which was the Methodist Church at Byron Road, Gillingham, a building that has since been converted into a Sikh temple called Siri Guru Nanak Gurudwara. This early religious education eventually led to him becoming a lay preacher in his late teens.

Although he started his secondary education at a grammar school in Gillingham, David was subsequently compelled to change schools when his family moved to the small town of Raunds, Northamptonshire. He therefore completed his secondary education at Wellingborough Grammar School in the substantial town of Wellingborough, which is situated about nine miles to the west-south-west of Raunds.

At school, Frost was a successful football player, leading to his being offered a contract to play for Nottingham Forest upon the completion of his A Levels. But he rejected the offer in favour of studying English at the University of Cambridge, which he began to attend in 1958.

David Frost Show, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

At Cambridge, David was an active member of the Cambridge Footlights, the university’s long-established amateur dramatics society, and at one point took on the role of its secretary. He also became involved in writing for two student-led publications. One of these was Varsity, a student newspaper that had been launched in 1947 and remains in publication to this day. The other was Granta, a much older literary magazine that had been launched by students at Cambridge University in 1889 and would remain under the control of students there until the 1970s. Granta is also still in print, but ceased to be affiliated to the University of Cambridge in the late 1970s, and is now an independent quarterly magazine that coexists with Granta Books, a publishing house that was launched as an offshoot of the magazine in 1989.

On the back of his student acting exploits, Frost played various comic roles on a fortnightly programme themed on life in Cambridge called Town and Gown. This was produced by Anglia Television, the independent television company with a licence to broadcast in Cambridgeshire and much of East Anglia.

This experience gave Frost a taste for working in television; and on leaving Cambridge with a third-class honours degree, he took up a traineeship with Associated-Rediffusion, at that time the ITV broadcasting licence holder for Greater London and its periphery.

Alongside working for a regional independent television company, Frost managed to find time to perform in cabaret in the evenings at a nightclub called the Blue Angel in Berkeley Square, West London.

A tip-off from one of his flat-mates of the time, actor John Bird (1936-2022), who had acted alongside him for the Footlights in Cambridge, led to Frost being talent-spotted in his cabaret role by TV producer Ned Sherrin (1931-2007) and recruited to host a new satirical current affairs programme called That Was the Week That Was.

Although it lasted only two seasons, from November 1962 to December 1963, this programme made Frost a household name and set in place a vogue for similar evening light entertainment shows based loosely on politics, which have continued to be broadcast into the 21st century.

Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally. Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.

Its successor, bearing the eccentrically long-winded title Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life, ran for just one series from November 1964 to April 1965, but also featured Frost as its main presenter.

In the meantime, Frost had also been recruited to present a shorter American spin-off of That Was the Week That Was, which he presented for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) from January 1964 to May 1965.

After this, Frost headed up a similarly satirical show in his own name, The Frost Report, which ran on BBC1 for two series, spanning March 1966 to December 1967. Simultaneously with this, he began to present a serious current affairs programme for Rediffusion London, the revised name of his early employer Associated-Rediffusion, which bore the confusingly similar name of The Frost Programme. This appears from limited available online records to have run initially from 1966-1968, and again from 1970 to 1973, with a final series appearing in 1977. As host of The Frost Programme, Frost left behind his accustomed work as a comic actor and satirical presenter, and began instead to conduct serious interviews with the world’s leading politicians and some other controversial characters, a role for which he would ultimately be better known than any of his early acting work.

Frost was involved as part of a consortium that bid successfully for the new independent television franchise that became known as London Weekend Television (LWT), which began broadcasting in 1968. He became a regular presenter for shows on LWT from its very launch, and current affairs was again the thematic mainstay of his output.

In 1966, Frost also branched out into independent entrepreneurship, setting up the television production company David Paradine Productions. Among many other productions, it notably created a TV comedy show called At Last the 1948 show, which ran for two series within 1947; a satirical film called The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970); a musical film based on the fairy tale Cinderella, called The Slipper and the Rose (1976); the long-running show looking at the insides of celebrities’ houses, Through the Keyhole (1987-2008); and an interview show presented by Frost himself for Al Jazeera English until shortly before his death, Frost Over the World (2006-2012).

Series: Nixon White House Photographs, 1/20/1969 - 8/9/1974Collection: White House Photo Office Collection (Nixon Administration), 1/20/1969 - 8/9/1974, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

Frost’s involvements in the USA gathered pace in the late 1960s when he was awarded a contract to present a new 90-minute show called The David Frost Show, produced by the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company and syndicated to different television stations affiliated to it. At its peak, it ran on five evenings every week; and it had clocked up more than 770 episodes by the time it ended in 1972.

Although this show was cancelled after a few years, Frost continued to be in high demand as an interviewer of politicians and other celebrities in the years to follow. Among his notable interview subjects in the later 1970s were heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (1942-2016) in 1974, and the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980), in 1979. But most famous of all was his series of interviews with ex-US President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) in 1977. After gathering 28 hours of footage over 12 interview sessions spread across four weeks, Frost had selections from it broadcast in five separate programmes during May and September that year.

In February 1983, Frost became one of the inaugural presenters of the new breakfast television programme TV-am, which was broadcast on the independent television network (ITV) throughout the UK. After just three months, allegedly considered too serious for the weekday morning audiences, he was moved by the station managers to a Sunday morning slot, where his show, initially just called Good Morning Britain, subsequently ran through a series of name changes, including The Sunday Programme (1985), David Frost on Sunday (1986) and ultimately Frost on Sunday (1988). He remained in place as its host until the end of 1992, when TV-am was stripped of its broadcasting licence.

Having lost his contract with TV-am when it lost its licence, Frost was immediately headhunted by the BBC, which installed him as the host of a similar political discussion show on Sundays called Breakfast with Frost with immediate effect from early January, 1993, just one week after his last broadcast for TV-am. During his time on this show, Frost notably interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2000. Breakfast With Frost itself ran for more than twelve years until May 2005. Frost then turned his attention to his new show on Al-Jazeera (as detailed above), which continued until shortly before his death.

In his extended career as a political interviewer, Frost is notable for having recorded interviews with every British Prime Minister to have served from 1964 until his death in 2013 and every United States President to have served from 1969 to 2008.

Frost had a colourful love life, including two marriages and at least five other high-profile relationships with women. His first marriage, to English actress Lynne Frederick (1954-1994), lasted just 17 months from January 1981 to June 1982. Within a year of their divorce, in March 1983, he married noblewoman Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard (born 1952), with whom he had three children, all sons, between 1983 and 1988.

Among Frost’s earlier celebrity lovers were English actress Janette Scott (born 1938), American actress Diahann Carroll (1935-2019), American model Karen Graham (born 1945), American actress Carol Lynley (1942-2019), and British-born American journalist, magazine editor and entrepreneur Caroline Cushing Graham.

In August 2013, while hired as a guest speaker on a cruise ship, Frost suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 74. It was revealed by his post-mortem that he had been suffering from a hereditary form of heart disease known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Tragically, his son Miles died of the same cause just two years later, aged only 31.

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Cilla Black

admin — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 08:53:37 +0000

AnonymousUnknown author / Yleisradio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

Singer & Television Presenter

Cilla Black

Priscilla Maria Veronica White, or Cilla Black as she was more widely known, was a singer and television presenter who became a much-loved household name. Cilla was born in 1943 in the Vauxhall area of Liverpool to a mother of the same first name, Priscilla Blythen (1911 – 1966). Her father was John Patrick White (1904 – 1971).

Black’s family had Irish heritage, and she was raised in a Roman Catholic household. She attended school at St Anthony’s in Scotland Road, which is in the same area as that in which she grew up. Although she was passionate about working in showbusiness, she later went on the attend Anfield Commercial College to learn office skills. The fire in her belly for performance didn’t ease, however, and she pursued a job at the famous Cavern Club (q. v.) in her home city of Liverpool. Here, she worked part-time as a cloakroom attendant; but her nature and spontaneous performances while working there gained her the attention of The Beatles and a local promoter called Sam Leach.

It was Leach who secured her first musical performance at the Zodiac Club, where she performed as ‘Swinging Cilla’ before adopting the stage name for which she would later become most known.

Ironically, her final stage name of Cilla Black was not, as one might otherwise have imagined, of her own humorous devising based on the comical concept of talking in opposites from the starting point of her real surname. Instead, it was actually a music journalist’s careless mistake. In the very first edition of the Mersey Beat, the local music newspaper that sold prolifically in Liverpool and the surrounding area during the 1960s, editor Bill Harry accidentally cited her surname as ‘Black’ rather than ‘White’ when she was featured. So many people read Mersey Beat that Cilla made the business decision that in order to feed on the recognition the feature had brought her, she had to perform under the misprinted name from then on, and so it stuck with her for the rest of her career.

I loved everything about show business, meeting the stars, the whole ambience. I was living every young kid's dream. I was told a pop singer's life was three years, but I was still making money seven years later.

Through her connections and friendship with The Beatles, Cilla managed to secure a contract with Beatles manager Brian Epstein (1934 – 1967), q. v.. After originally flunking her first audition for him thanks to suffering from terrible nerves, Black was subsequently seen by Epstein in a more natural setting, singing live at the Blue Angel Jazz Club. He was so impressed by her performance there that he quickly changed his mind about her potential and added her to his roster of all-male artists in September 1963.

Just three weeks after joining Epstein, Black would release her debut single, Love of the Loved, which was produced by George Martin (1926 – 2016), famed for his work with the Beatles. Although the song had been written by John Lennon (1940 – 1980) and Paul McCartney and had been aired on popular weekend television show Thank Your Lucky Stars, the single peaked at only No. 35 in the UK charts in November 1963.

However, just a few months later, Black would prove her salt and show herself as worthy of standing alongside Epstein’s more successful performers, such as the Beatles, and Gerry and the Pacemakers, as her second and third singles both reached No. 1 in the UK, for three and four weeks respectively.

The singles in question were Anyone Who Had a Heart, a song originally written for Dionne Warwick by the famed songwriting duo of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and You’re My World, a song that came from an Italian ballad, originally recorded as just My World or (in the original Italian) II mio mondo.

As if from nowhere, Black was now a major national star. For her fourth single, her friends Lennon and McCartney joined forces again to put something together for her that would be another success. And they did just that, with Black’s vocals and McCartney on the piano for the recording of It’s for You, which reached No.7 in the charts in August 1964.

During this period of time, there were a number of female singers who excelled in covering originals and making them big successes in their own right, notably Dusty Springfield (1939 – 1999), Helen Shapiro, Lulu and Cilla Black. Cilla recorded a number of successful cover versions, all of which were produced, like the rest of her music, at the Abbey Road Studios, made famous by The Beatles.

Although she had many fans and followers who enjoyed her cover versions of other songs, not all music critics were entirely persuaded. The Righteous Brothers released an original version of their song You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ in January 1965, just a week after Cilla had released her cover version. While Cilla’s version at first ascended rapidly to No. 2 in the charts, the original made it all the way to the top, while Cilla Black’s version moved quickly into reverse, falling to No. 5 the very week after climbing to No. 2. A notable critic who was outspoken in his criticism of Black’s version of the Righteous Brothers song in favour of the original was Andrew Loog Oldham (born 1944), then manager of The Rolling Stones.

Joost Evers / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

Liz Koravos, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Joost Evers / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped / Restored)

Capitol, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

Cilla Black made attempts at breaking into the United States market, with a number of television appearances backed by Epstein; but homesickness and missing the UK meant that she could not bring herself to spend the required time touring in the USA needed to build up her name and following there. She did reach No. 26 on the Billboard charts with her song You’re My World, but that proved to be her highest-charting song there.

She continued to record, enjoying ten further UK Top 20 hits by the end of 1971, including three further Top 5 hits, although she never again returned to the Top 2.

Black continued to make appearances on television, not only to promote her music, but also before long as a presenter, and also made some brief appearances in a number of films, although a viable career on the big screen never took off for her.

In the lead-up to August 1967, the relationship between Black and Epstein had become tense, as Black had felt his focus on her career development was lacking, and found this to be taking a toll on her career. Her single A Fool Am I, released in October 1966, was only the third in her career to date to fail to reach the UK Top 10, topping out at No. 13; and the follow-up, What Good Am I, performed even more poorly, peaking at No. 24 in June 1967. Perhaps Epstein’s worsening drug addiction problem was partly to blame. He died of an accidental overdose that same August.

Following Epstein’s sudden death, Bobby Willis (1942 – 1999), Cilla’s boyfriend and songwriter, stepped up to take on his managerial responsibilities. Although her next single, I Only Live to Love You, was another relative flop by Cilla’s standards, reaching No. 26 in December 1967, her career was set for a revival the following year.

With her boyfriend now at the helm, and continuing to benefit from the strong connections she had with The Beatles, Black returned to the UK Top 10 for the first time in 21 months in March 1968, when her single Step Inside Love, written by Paul McCartney, reached No. 8. McCartney had written this song specially as the theme tune for her new variety show screened by BBC television, a deal that Epstein had organised shortly before his death. The show, called simply Cilla, first aired in January 1968, and would ultimately run for just under ten years, cementing her reputation as a capable and popular TV presenter, which would become the mainstay of her career later in life.

Cilla enjoyed a few further song successes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, enjoying her last two UK Top 3 hits, Surround Yourself With Sorrow (1969) and Something Tells Me (Something is Gonna Happen Tonight) (1971) during these years, while also maintaining her variety show and star status. After 1971, she would never again return to the UK Top 30 as a musical artist, although she continued to occasionally record new music; but she had diversified her career enough to continue to be in demand as a star on British television for many years to come.

Also in 1971, Black attended that year’s Cannes Film Festival with George Harrison (1943 – 2001), Ringo Starr and Marc Bolan (1947 – 1977), q. v., to support the screening of Erection, an experimental film by John Lennon (1940 – 1980) and Yoko Ono.

Not one to shy away from the limelight, Black additionally tried her hand at comedy, which was also generally a success, adding another string to her bow. She performed in her own comedy show on ITV, Cilla’s Comedy Six, and was later named Britain’s Top Female Comedy Star by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.

Cilla Black statue, Liverpool by Rossographer, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

After both Cilla and Cilla’s Comedy Six had run their course, Black experienced a lull in both television and singing opportunities during the early 1980s, and was found filling her time with cabaret performances and concerts. It wasn’t until 1983, when she put in an appearance as a guest on the prime-time evening chat show Wogan, that she began to return to the limelight as an active star, recapturing the public’s hearts as well as the confidence of the British TV industry.

Indeed, soon after this guest appearance, she managed to secure a deal with London Weekend Television (LWT) to host a new entertainment show, Surprise Surprise, a show that did exactly what you would imagine based on its title, either surprising or tricking members of the general public, but in a good-natured spirit. Cilla sang her own theme tune in every episode, in a nod to her past career as a singing star. The show was launched in May 1984, and was soon being screened across the entire national Independent Television (ITV) network. It proved an enduring success, running through 14 series and 128 episodes until being dropped after 1997. After initially being screened on Sunday evenings, it was moved to Fridays from 1988 onwards. A further four one-off special shows were screened between 1998 and 2001, and another five between 2013 and 2015.

A year after the launch of Surprise Surprise, LWT signed Cilla Black for a second commission, as host of a new live dating show called Blind Date. This proved an even more enduring success, running through 18 successive seasons spanning November 1985 to May 2003, during which time no fewer than 374 episodes were aired, with the length of each season gradually building from 7 episodes at first to at least 24 from 1995 onwards, in strong testimony to its enduring popularity.

The format of Blind Date involved three potential suitors being hidden behind a screen so as not to be seen, and being required to give original answers to the same set of questions put to them by the star contestant who got to choose from among them. The answers given tended to be witty and sometimes corny, to the point that the intervention of professional scriptwriters in drafting them before they had been asked was widely suspected. Nonetheless, the show achieved high ratings over many years, keeping Cilla in the spotlight as a household name until the last episode was screened in the same month as her 60th birthday in 2003.

After Surprise Surprise was decommissioned following the 1997 series, Black was quickly called upon by her long-time employer LWT to take on another show alongside the continuing Blind Date, in a sign that she had cemented her position as television royalty. This came in the form of the game show The Moment of Truth, which ran for four seasons from 1998 to 2001.

Despite her hectic TV production schedule, Black still found time occasionally to record new music well into her late fifties. In 2003, she released the album Beginnings…Greatest Hits and New Songs. This was her fifteenth studio album, and featured both new and old music of hers. Fans were treated to eleven new tracks accompanied by nine hit singles that she had worked on with George Martin.

Other accomplishments of note include her performances in the pantomime Cinderalla during 2008-2009 and again in 2010. In 2008, Liverpool was awarded the status of European Capital of Culture, an award that is assigned by the European Union to the cities of different member states on a rolling annual basis. To mark the end of this momentous year for the city of Cilla’s birth, she performed as part of a special show alongside other local stars. In spite of her now being 65 years old, her singing and performance were met with great praise.

A compilation album entitled The Very Best of Cilla Black was released in 2013 by Parlophone, the same record label with which she Had begun her career back in the 60s. It included all of her Top 40 singles, as well as new mixes, and a bonus DVD of an earlier music performance from The Savoy.

Cilla was an icon whose talents spanned many creative and artistic pursuits, although chiefly in the areas of singing, performing and television. In 2013, ITV honoured her long career in the public eye with a show called The One and Only Cilla Black. Celebrating her 50 years in show business, host Paul O’Grady (1955-2023) took her back to her home city, guest-featured many of her famous friends, and reminisced on the TV show that so many had looked forward to watching every Saturday night, Blind Date.

Adored by the public as a much-loved national treasure, Black was further celebrated by a three-part television show that would depict her life. The actor Sheridan Smith played Cilla, and the show aired in September 2014.

Her boyfriend and second manager, Bobby Willis, had become her husband in 1969. They had four children together. Sadly, Bobby died of cancer in 1999.

Cilla lived as a widow for another 15 years, before dying at the age of just 72 in 2015 while at her holiday home in a small town in Spain. She had suffered a sudden, fatal stroke, possibly brought on by a fall. The tributes that poured in from her many friends in showbusiness following her death gave some insight into how well-loved she was. O’Grady, Sheridan Smith, Paul McCartney, Ringo Star and Cliff Richard were just a few of the famous names who shared their sadness at the news of her death.

O’Grady also read a eulogy at her funeral, at which Cliff Richard sang. To mark her death, a further compilation of her most popular songs was released the day after the funeral. It attained the No. 1 position in the UK albums chart, testifying to the wave of public sympathy and nostalgia that followed her unexpectedly early passing.

The post Cilla Black appeared first on The Swinging Sixties.

Janis Joplin

admin — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 10:58:32 +0000

Columbia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Singer

Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin (1943-1970) was an American blues and rock singer, who upon her untimely death in 1970, became the fourth prominent member of the notorious ‘Club of 27’ comprising popular musicians who died at the age of 27, after the deaths of Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Alan Wilson of Canned Heat and Jimi Hendrix, all within the previous 15 months.

Joplin grew up in a Protestant Christian family in her birthplace of Port Arthur, a small city in south-East Texas. The eldest of three siblings, she had a younger sister called Laura and a younger brother called Michael. They were the children of Seth Joplin, an employee of oil corporation The Texas Company, which rebranded as Texaco in 1959; and Dorothy East, a college registrar.

In her teen years, Janis discovered a variety of female blues singers through the record collection of a friend, and subsequently took up singing in a similar style, performing together with friends of hers at Thomas Jefferson High School. She later recalled that she was a victim of bullying at the same school, where she was studious and favoured artistic pursuits such as painting, and, unlike many of her white classmates, freely associated with black students. Her atypically positive attitude towards racial integration was sadly compounded by the severe acne from which she suffered, as well as her being somewhat overweight, in precipitating her victimisation by school bullies.

Upon graduating in 1960, Joplin moved to Lamar State College of Technology in the larger nearby city of Beaumont, before heading inland to the rapidly growing state capital of Austin to attend the University of Texas, where she continued to sing. She gained a reputation while there for carrying with her a type of stringed instrument called an autoharp everywhere she went. She also joined a folk band called the Walter Creek Boys, and in December 1962 she recorded one of her early songs, ‘What Good Can Drinkin’ Do’. She was also noted for associating with those involved in producing a comical campus magazine called The Texas Ranger, showing a diversity to her range of creative interests.

Brazilian National Archives, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

At the start of 1963, Joplin abandoned her studies and fled from Texas, joining her friend Chet Helms (1942-2005), who would later become a prominent music promoter, on a hitchhiking adventure to San Francisco, where they both settled. The same year, she was arrested for shoplifting.

In 1964, Janis collaborated musically on an informal recording of seven blues tracks with Jorma Kaukonen (born 1940), a blues guitarist who would later rise to prominence as part of the band Jefferson Airplane. This recording was posthumously released in album form as The Typewriter Tape.

While in San Francisco, Joplin began a romantic relationship with one Peter de Blanc. During her time in the city, she also became addicted to drugs, including methamphetamine (commonly known as ‘speed’) and heroin, as well as being a heavy drinker. Observing her emaciated state, friends of hers persuaded her in May 1965 to return home to Port Arthur, with the help of funds they raised at a party to pay for her bus fare.

By the time she reached home, Joplin’s weight had dropped to 40 kg, much to the consternation of her parents. But she did manage to put a stop to her reckless ways, coming off the drugs and alcohol and returning to Lamar State College to start a new degree course there, this time studying social work. At the same time, she began seeing a psychiatrist in Beaumont to help her overcome her previous addictions.

Meanwhile, Janis took up performing as a solo singer and guitarist in Austin, commuting there and back on a frequent basis for the purpose of her performances. During 1965, she also recorded seven more tracks with her singing and playing acoustic guitar. These were also posthumously released in album form as This is Janis Joplin 1965.

That autumn, De Blanc, who had relocated to New York, visited Joplin and proposed marriage to her, which she accepted. She began to plan for their wedding. However, De Blanc had soon reneged on his commitment, calling off their engagement.

The same year, a psychedelic rock band called Big Brother and the Holding Company was newly formed in San Francisco. Joplin’s friend Helms was managing it and, in the Spring of 1966, he recruited her to join it, sending a friend of his called Travis Rivers all the way to Austin to collect her by car. Upon arrival in San Francisco, Joplin temporarily moved into Rivers’s apartment.

All of a sudden, someone threw me in front of this rock and roll band. And I decided then and there that was it. I never wanted to do anything else.

Joplin first performed with the band Big Brother and the Holding Company that June. In July, the whole band moved into a house within the small community of Lagunitas, in Marin County, California. They frequently met local band The Grateful Dead socially; and Joplin had a brief love affair with Grateful Dead member Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan (1945-1973).

In August, Big Brother and the Holding Company embarked on a disastrous tour of Chicago, where they were not well-enough known to sell enough seats to pay for their upkeep. They nonetheless managed to sign a record deal with Mainstream Records and recorded various tracks for it while still in Chicago that September, before returning to California. Further recordings were made for their record label in Los Angeles towards the end of the same year. A debut single arising from two of the newly recorded tracks, which was issued that Autumn, sold poorly, although most of the recordings would later be released as the backbone of their eponymous first album in August 1967.

By the end of 1966, Helms had been sacked as the band’s manager, and replaced by a man called Julius Karpen.

In January 1967, Big Brother and the Holding Company performed at an event held in San Francisco called the Mantra-Rock Dance, alongside The Grateful Dead, beat poet Allen Ginsberg (q. v.), and Bhaktivedanta Swami (1896-1977), the founder of the Hare Krishna movement.

By then, or soon after, Joplin had taken up independent residence in an apartment at Lyon Street, San Francisco. She had soon begun a relationship with Joseph Allen McDonald (born 1942), the lead singer of another psychedelic rock band formed in 1965, Country Joe and the Fish, who were based in Berkeley, California. He moved in with her at Lyon Street soon after they met, but their relationship lasted only a few months.

In June 1967, Big Brother and the Holding Company performed two sets on consecutive days at the Monterey International Pop Festival, a major three-day music event. These performances helped to drive sales of their two subsequent singles and debut LP.

The event was marred by a dispute between the band and Karpen, who had, against their wishes, prohibited documentary film-maker Donn Alan Pennebaker (1925-2019) from filming them during their first performance. They overruled Karpen for their second performance, allowing themselves to be filmed, and subsequently fired Karpen as their manager, replacing him with prominent music manager Albert Grossman (1926-1986). Pennebaker’s documentary, Monterey Pop, in which the band was featured, would eventually be released 18 months later in December 1968.

Grossman Glotzer Management Corporation, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

Albert B. Grossman. His management information is shown on the identical, autographed copy of the image., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

ABC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

Ashley Famous Agency/Albert B. Grossman-management, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

ABC Television-while the release has apparently been cut down, the ABC Television New York Avenue of the Americas address can be seen on it., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Belkin Productions, Cleveland Public Hall, Janis Joplin, WMMS, et al., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Columbia Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

Albert B. Grossman Management (personal manager), New York., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

Grossman is said to have taken on his role as the new manager of Big Brother and the Holding Company on condition of all members of the band agreeing to avoid intravenous drug use.

In 1968, Big Brother and the Holding Company toured the East Coast of the United States. On the final day of their tour, April 7th, they performed alongside Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell and other stars at a concert in New York called the Wake for Martin Luther King Jr. (q. v.), which was hastily organised following King’s untimely assassination.

In July 1968, the band gave its first performance on national television, appearing on This Morning on the ABC network. Joplin began to be singled out for attention and praise by the national media, causing resentment from other members of her band. Her ascendant star profile was now such that promoters had begun to bill the band as ‘Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company’, as though she were the star attraction.

In the recording of Big Brother’s second album, Cheap Thrills, which would be released that August, Joplin played a more prominent role than on their debut LP, working on the musical arrangements and production. Her more active role in production seemed to pay off as the album proved a great commercial success, topping the Billboard album chart for eight weeks and ultimately selling over 2 million copies. The first single drawn from it, Piece of My Heart, was also quite successful, peaking at No. 12 in the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

After more touring with Big Brother that summer, Joplin, influenced by Grossman into pursuing a solo career, announced her impending departure from the band in September, although she continued to tour with them for another three months, their final performance together taking place in San Francisco on December 1st as a benefit concert for Chet Helms, their earlier manager.

By the end of the month, Joplin had formed a new band, which eventually became named the Kozmic Blues Band. It was strongly influenced by contemporary rhythm and blues and soul artists. Among her new band members was guitarist Sam Andrew, whose services she had successfully poached from Big Brother and the Holding Company. Other core members of Big Brother had joined Country Joe and the Fish; and Big Brother lay dormant until the following autumn.

Unfortunately, by early 1969, Joplin had relapsed into drug use, and had become addicted to heroin, at great personal expense. Grossman, who continued to manage her, abandoned his own previously stated policy of prohibiting her from using intravenous drugs, and instead absurdly and selfishly took out a life insurance policy on her life, guaranteeing him a large payment in the event of her accidental death.

Her addiction proved increasingly problematic. For example, faced with a frustrating ten-hour wait backstage before her performance at Woodstock that August 17th, as artists scheduled ahead of her band dragged out their sets, she took heroin and drank alcohol together with a friend and part-time lover of hers, a clothing designer she had known since November 1966 called Peggy Caserta (born circa 1941). The combined effect of the drink, drugs and fatigue was to somewhat spoil Joplin’s voice by the time she actually came on stage around 2 a.m. at night.

By the end of the summer, Andrew had quit the Kozmic Blues Band and returned alongside most of his erstwhile bandmates to touring with the newly reformed Big Brother and the Holding Company, in a strong sign that sadly all was not right with morale in Joplin’s breakaway band. The line-up of the reformed band was completed by Nick Gravenites (born 1938).

Columbia Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

In November, Joplin appeared even more wayward at a Thanksgiving Day concert by the Rolling Stones held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, at which she was invited to perform a duet with Tina Turner. By the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band had disbanded.

By 1970, Joplin had moved to the small town of Larkspur in Marin County, California. That February, she took a sojourn to Brazil in the company of a friend called Linda Gravenites, a costume designer who had worked for her for years and also happened to be married to Nick Gravenites, her replacement as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company.

The main aim of the trip to Brazil was to wean Joplin off her addictions. While on holiday there, however, she also encountered and began a romance with an American tourist called David Niehaus, who fortunately was not a habitual drug user. Soon after she returned to California, Joplin was dumped by Niehaus after he caught her relapsing into drug use, probably under the influence of Caserta, who continued to regularly inject drugs herself and was still on the scene as Joplin’s part-time lover.

Subsequently, in April, Caserta and Joplin mutually agreed to stay away from each other to avoid being a bad influence on each other’s drug habits, although Caserta herself had become a successful professional drug smuggler by September that year.

Meanwhile, Joplin had formed a new band, which was provisionally called Main Squeeze. That April, she also appeared for two reunion concerts with Big Brother at San Francisco. In May, both Big Brother (without Joplin) and Main Squeeze were separately invited by the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club to perform for a party of theirs at San Rafael, California.

Main Squeeze was subsequently renamed the Full Tilt Boogie Band, and Joplin continued to tour with it under this name over the summer, with their last concert together being held on August 12th in Boston, Massachusetts.

Around July, Joplin began a new relationship with a young student, Seth Morgan (1949-1990), who was also a drug dealer. By early September, they were engaged to be married.

When I sing, I feel like when you’re first in love. It’s more than sex. It’s that point two people can get to they call love when you really touch someone for the first time, but it’s gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience. I feel chills.

Starting in late August, the Full Tilt Boogie Band recorded its only LP, Pearl, which would be posthumously released in 1971. The sessions took place at Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, while Joplin stayed at the nearby Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood. Unfortunately, while she was staying there, she encountered a heroin dealer, who alerted her to the fact that Caserta, a customer of his, was (coincidentally) also staying there at the time. He had soon begun to supply Joplin too, leading to her relapsing into using heroin while in residence at the hotel in spite of her estrangement from Caserta.

The recording of Joplin’s vocals was still incomplete when she was found dead in her room on October 4th. One of the tracks on which she had been due to record her vocals was a cover version of a song written by Nick Gravenites. In the circumstances of her death, it was still included on the album, but only as an instrumental.

Shortly before her death, Joplin was tipped off that Morgan, her fiancé, who had stayed behind at her home in Larkspur during the recording of the album, had met a number of other women while eating out in her absence, and invited them back to her home to play pool without her knowledge.

This news angered Joplin and may have been a factor in her taking the heroin overdose that was ruled by the investigating county coroner to have led to her sudden death, although other customers of her new dealer also overdosed at around the same time, leading Joplin’s road manager John Byrne Cooke to suspect that the heroin she had just been supplied was of an unusually high strength and purity, which could have caused her to misjudge what she otherwise considered to be a safe dose.

Grossman, on learning of Joplin’s death, claimed $200,000 on the life insurance policy he had previously taken out in Joplin’s name. Although he was challenged in court by the San Francisco Associated Indemnity Corporation in an attempt to deny him his spoils, Grossman won the case.

Caserta, perhaps wanting to avoid being tainted with any indirect responsibility for the circumstances of her erstwhile friend’s death, has since repeatedly claimed that the real cause of Joplin’s passing was not heroin but a head injury she sustained from catching a heel of one of her sandals awkwardly on the carpet of her hotel room, causing her to lose her balance and fall over while intoxicated.

In 1973, a book ghost-written in Caserta’s name, Going Down with Janis, was published. It gives an account of some of the time Caserta spent with Joplin, but Caserta herself has since denounced it as unreliable on account of the fictional element introduced into the account by her ghost writer, Dan Knapp.

There is no doubt that Joplin made a huge impression on the general public with her music in her all-too-brief lifetime, as well as being a much-loved presence in the lives of people around her. Her musical legacy and the tragic story of her life continue to be widely inspirational today.

The post Janis Joplin appeared first on The Swinging Sixties.

Peter Fonda

admin — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 10:09:33 +0000

Universal Pictures, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

Actor

Peter Fonda

American actor Peter Fonda was born in February 1940 in New York City. He had acting in his blood: his father was the actor Henry Fonda (1905 – 1982) and his older sister is well-known screen star Jane Fonda (1937-). Acting appears to be a talent passed down from generation to generation within the family, since Peter’s daughter, Bridget 1964-) has also made a name for herself in the acting world.

Peter’s mother Frances Ford Seymour (1908 – 1950), although not herself an actress, was used to being in the spotlight. A socialite with a Canadian-American background, she was Henry Fonda’s second wife and, having been married before, she brought with her into the family a half-sister for Peter and Jane called, Frances de Villers Brokaw (1931 – 2008).

Tragically, when Peter was just ten years of age, his mother committed suicide while an inmate in a mental hospital. Details about her death were kept from Peter for another five years.

In the meantime, Peter had nearly died after accidentally shooting himself in the stomach on his 11th birthday.

His education at least was uneventful and, having graduated in 1958 from a boarding school in Connecticut, he attended the University of Nebraska-Omaha where he studied acting and was involved with the Omaha Community Playhouse.

In 1960, Peter returned to New York, where he joined the Cecilwood Theatre; and in 1961, he beat over 200 other actors for a part in the Broadway show Blood, Sweat and Stanley Pool, a comedy written by James and William Goldman. Fonda won a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for this debut performance, and this led to appearances in an array of television shows including the well-known Wagon Train.

In 1963, he was offered his first film role by producer Ross Hunter, starring alongside Sandra Dee (1942 – 2005) in Tammy and the Doctor, a romantic comedy set in a hospital, which was well-received by the critics.

I knew Henry Fonda was my father, but I didn't know who I was. They all thought of me as Henry Fonda's son. Unfortunately for them, they never got to know me.

His next big success was a supporting role in The Victors (1963), which followed the journey of U.S. soldiers as they travelled through Europe during World War II. This performance catapulted him into the spotlight, winning him the title of ‘most promising newcomer’ at the Golden Globe awards.

Even with these successes on the big screen under his belt, Fonda continued to appear in television shows, including Channing, an American series which told the story of life at a fictional college, and Arrest and Trial, an America crime drama that aired on Sunday evenings.

His next film role came in 1964 when he was cast by screenwriter and director Robert Rossen (1908 – 1966) in Lilith. This would sadly be Rossen’s last film before his death in 1966. Starring with Fonda in this film were Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg (1938 – 1979) and Gene Hackman. The film tells the story of a war veteran (Beatty) who embarks on a new profession as a therapist. It follows his journey as he becomes obsessed and eventually falls for one of his patients, Lilith (Seberg). Fonda plays the part of another patient who has also fallen for Lilith and whom the war veteran therefore encourages to commit suicide.

Fonda’s performance in this film was well received well; but although he was given a leading role in The Young Lovers, he was unable to resist some of the temptations the 60s had to offer. In particular, the fact that he was known to take the drug LSD regularly, began to impact on his reputation within the industry. Job offers became few and far between while he continued to emphasise his nonconformist attitude, partly by growing his hair long.

In the August of 1965, by way of a friendship with band members of The Byrds, he went to a house rented by The Beatles and together with John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison, took LSD. The story goes that while on his drug trip, Fonda referred back to the incident on his eleventh birthday when he had accidentally shot himself in the stomach. He told his fellow drug-influenced acquaintances ‘I know what it’s like to be dead’, referring to the aftermath of the shooting. These words made a huge impact on Lennon, who would later use them in the song ‘She Said She Said’, a song recorded for the Beatles album Revolver in 1966.

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Fonda was also known to dabble with other drugs, and in 1966 he was charged with possession of marijuana. Later that year, however, he was cleared of this charge.

He was arrested again in November that same year at the Sunset Strip riot. Fonda had joined many other young people to support the hippie and rock and roll counterculture movement of the time, feeling that the Sunset Strip, which had become the place to be for this group, was being brazenly stripped of its rights by curfew measures being enforced, with prominent nightclubs on the Strip facing name changes and forced closure by the city council at the request of local residents and business owners.

Along with what is said to have been over 1000 other protestors, including other celebrities, Fonda headed to the Strip to take part in a rally organised at nightclub and coffee house Pandora’s Box, which had been threatened with closure and demolition. The disorder continued to the end of that year, and only really quietened down early in the New Year of 1967.

In the meantime, this countercultural influence filtered through to the roles Fonda began to be offered, with his first such role taking shape in 1966 in The Wild Angels, in which he plays the character of head biker, Heavenly Blues, of the motorcycle club the Angels. The film was incredibly popular and was also shown at Venice Film Festival. It is said to have been the film that inspired the biker movie genre.

In 1967, he co-starred with Susan Strasberg (1938-1999), Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper (1936- 2010) in The Trip, a film written by Jack Nicholson about the effects of the drug LSD.

Following this, in 1969, along with Dennis Hopper, alongside whom he had previously starred, Fonda produced and co-wrote Easy Rider. Terry Southern (1924-1995) also wrote the film with them. Fonda and Hopper both played starring roles as bikers travelling across the US. The film was a huge success, and the three writers, Fonda, Hooper and Southern, were nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.

After this, Fonda had his pick of projects in both acting and directing, and both appeared in and produced a number of films during the early 70s. One of particular note was the film Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry in 1974. Fonda starred in this road-action movie along with Susan George and Adam Roarke. This film set the tone for most of the rest of the decade, as Fonda went on to make a number of action movies.

Throughout the 80s, 90s and 2000s, Fonda continued to appear both on television and in numerous movies, including Ulee’s Gold (1997), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor; and the 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma for which the entire cast including Russell Crowe and Christian Bale were nominated for a screen Actors Guild award. Fonda’s later life saw him, with his continued work ethic, making appearances in many movies from 2010-2018. His last role was in the 2019 war film The Last Full Measure, directed by Todd Robinson. This film was not released until after his death, but he was deeply affected by viewing a final cut.

Over the course of his lifetime, Fonda had three wives, Susan Brewer, Portia Rebecca Crockett and Margaret DeVogelaere. With the first of these, he had two children, Bridget and Justin Fonda, who both went on to successful acting careers.

Living up to his nonconformist attitude, he is known to have caused some controversy at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 by criticising Barack Obama while talking about a documentary he had created with Tim Robbins to cover the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

In 2018, Fonda also got into trouble for a number of tweets attacking Donald Trump and members of his administration over their handling of US immigration policy and actions taken with regard to it.

Peter Fonda died at the age of 79 in August 2019 due to complications from lung cancer.

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Karl Otto Lagerfeld

admin — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 08:41:16 +0000

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Fashion designer

Karl Otto Lagerfeld

Karl Otto Lagerfeld was a celebrated fashion designer and businessman. He was born in September 1933 in Hamburg, Germany. His mother, Elisabeth, and his father, Otto Lagerfeld, had married three years before this in 1930. Elisabeth was a lingerie saleswoman, and Otto a company owner. Karl had two older siblings: a sister, Martha Christiane, born in 1931, and a half-sister, Theodora Dorothea, from his father’s first marriage.

Lagerfeld showed an early interest in creative pursuits and was a regular visitor to the Kunsthalle, Hamburg, believing that he could learn much more by frequenting museums than he could from days spent in the school classroom.

From 1951 to 1989, he had a romantic relationship with Jacques de Bascher, a French aristocrat, model and socialite, although Lagerfeld stated that the relationship never became sexual. In 1989, De Bascher sadly died of AIDS. In the time leading up to his death, Lagerfeld was by his bedside at the hospital.

The other great love of Lagerfeld’s life was his cat, Choupette, a red point Birman who kept him company in his final years and was still alive at the time of writing, having turned 11 in 2022. Following Lagerfeld’s death, it was rumoured that he had left his fortune to the cat, a rumour that has not been confirmed.

In his personal life, Lagerfeld also had a voracious appetite for book collecting, and claimed to have collected 300,000 books at his home library in Paris, making it one of the largest personal libraries assembled by one collector on record, although he did not publish a catalogue, and the true number of books has not been independently verified. They were modern books rather than antiquarian ones, but covered a vast range of subject matter. In keeping with his credentials as a designer, the books were arranged in an eccentric layout, in space-saving vertical stacks. His library was yet another fashion statement for which he will long be remembered.

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Lagerfeld is now known both for his undeniable talents as a fashion designer and for his savvy as an executive in the fashion industry, as he served as a creative director for various iconic fashion houses and even for his own brand. His career began when, in 1955, he entered a fashion design competition sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat. The coat design he had entered won in its category. Following this win, he was hired by Pierre Balmain, for whom he worked for the next three years, serving firstly as his assistant before moving on to become his apprentice.

After this, Lagerfeld moved to Jean Patou to work on haute couture, presenting two collections per year for five years. He later moved to Rome to work for Tiziani, a Texas-born designer by the given name Evan (Buddy) Richards. With a whole wealth of experience now under his belt, it wasn’t long after this that Lagerfeld started freelancing for some of the biggest names in the fashion world, notably Chloé and Valentino.

In 1967, not one to shy away from hard work and long hours, Lagerfeld started working with Fendi. The idea was that he would bring their fur line into the modern age, a feat in which he succeeded, and one that led to a relationship that would last the rest of his lifetime.

He continued this fast-moving trajectory through fashions houses with his next appointment at Chloé in 1974 (although he had worked with them since 1964 through his freelance endeavours). From this time, he defined the brand as it is known today, focusing on making clothes designed to liberate the women wearing them, whilst still being fun through the use of flowing dresses with bold prints. The brand reached new heights of renown and success during his first stint there, cementing his name in the fashion world. He later returned to Chloé in 1992, although this time around, he didn’t enjoy as long a service, with the role being taken over by Stella McCartney in 1997.

In 1982, he was asked directly by Alain Wertheimer, the chairman of Chanel, to come and join the iconic French house. At this time, Chanel appeared to be a failing business, and many warned Lagerfeld not to take up the position that had been offered top him. However, he saw it as an exciting challenge. Working on both couture and ready-to-wear, he used his magic to revive the brand using inspiration from Coco Chanel herself (the founder of Chanel, who had died in 1971) combined with his own modern view of how the brand could be developed. He simultaneously respected the house history whilst allowing his creativity to take hold, changing what was needed in order for the brand to be modernised, and thus the house was reborn.

Never use the word “cheap”. Today everybody can look chic in inexpensive clothes (the rich buy them too). There is good clothing design on every level today. You can be the chicest thing in the world in a T-shirt and jeans — it’s up to you.

With extensive experience gained from various fashion houses in the course of his career, Lagerfeld founded his own brand in 1984. This gave him the opportunity to create and explore further fashion ideas under his own name, giving shape to a brand which he established with a vision that it should ooze ‘intellectual sexiness’.

Having established himself as a fashion powerhouse, in his later career Lagerfeld explored collaborations through which he could venture into other areas of fashion and art.

For example, he collaborated with Renzo Rosso, of Diesel, to create an extremely limited-edition denim collection that would be sold at the Lagerfeld Galleries and at the Diesel Denim Galleries. As expected, the demand for the five pieces that featured in the collection was high, as were the prices. This didn’t stop most of them from selling out, adding further fuel to the unstoppable force that Lagerfeld had become in the fashion world.

Some of his most memorable pieces created for Chanel during the 1980s included skin-tight skirts, shoulder-padded tailoring with militarily-inspired buttoning, and tweed two-pieces, all accessorised with statement pearls. These designs were elegant and sophisticated but maintained a sense of fun that fit perfectly with the mood of the time, revolutionising the house with the iconic styles for which it is still known and loved today.

He also collaborated with Orrefors, a Swedish crystal manufacturer, to create a collection of crystal art.

In 2004, he worked with H&M to create a capsule collection which included pieces that could instantly be recognised as his: high-collared shirts, chokers made from black ribbon, and the iconic Lagerfeld silhouette T-shirts. Lagerfeld hysteria was stirred up, and the collection sold rapidly across the globe. This was H&M’s first foray into a designer collaboration, and following their success with Lagerfeld they continued in a similar vein, their most recent collaboration being one with style queen Iris Apfel, which launched in Spring 2022.

Amid his long career highs, there were nonetheless moments of criticism levelled against Lagerfeld. Animal rights activists called him out for continuing to use fur in his collections over the years. In 2018, Chanel became the first luxury fashion house to completely stop using fur and exotic animal skins. He was also accused of being fatphobic due to comments he’d made in 2009 and 2012.

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In more recent years at Chanel, it was not only his designs that earned him adoration from the fashion pack but also the way in which the sets for his runway shows were created. They were more than just a runway: they were a production, an event designed to capture the imagination of the audience, to transport them to another place in which they could fully admire the clothes being shown. Lagerfeld is now renowned for his sets and the creativity that he brought to them.

The Spring/Summer show of 2012 saw Lagerfeld commission architect Zaha Hadid to transform the Grand Palais into an underwater world based around a nautical concept. The singer Florence Welch also performed during the show.

Later in 2017, for the Fall/Winter show, the Grand Palais was made into Chanel’s very own space station, including a rocket ship as the centrepiece.

The last show Lagerfeld worked on was the Fall/Winter show of 2019, which took place just two weeks after his death, again at the Grand Palais. He had planned for the location to be transformed into one resembling an Alpine village, and his plan came to fruition, with both models and the audience able to experience the wintry landscape. Models who walked this show included Cara Delevingne, who led the pack, actress Penélope Cruz, Binx Walton, and Luna Bijl, a Dutch model who closed the show, and who was known to be one of Lagerfeld’s muses. Many walked the show with tears in their eyes. Lagerfeld’s shows were a spectacle offering an immersive experience that others will unlikely to be able to recreate in the future.

He made a name for himself as one of the most prominent designers of the era, achieving a renown that will be hard to match.

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Jerry Garcia

admin — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 15:08:32 +0000

Herb Greene, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Guitarist, singer & songwriter

Jerry Garcia

Jerry Garcia (1942-1995) was an American rock musician who served as the main songwriter and lead guitarist for The Grateful Dead, a band closely associated with the counterculture of the 1960s.

Born on August 1st, 1942, Jerry was the younger of two brothers. Together with his elder brother Clifford, he was initially raised in a rough district of San Francisco. His full legal name was Jerome John Garcia, his first name having been chosen as a tribute to the American composer Jerome Kern (1885-1945).

Jerry’s father, José Ramón Garcia, better known as Joe, was a former professional musician who had become the joint owner of a bar in San Francisco after being thrown out of a musicians’ union. Joe’s family had immigrated to the United States from Galicia in north-western Spain in 1919. His relatives are known to have frequently sung together at family reunions, suggesting a strong connection to musical culture throughout their family.

Jerry’s mother, Ruth Maria Garcia, was of mixed Irish and Swedish ancestry, and was herself an amateur pianist. Music, it seemed, was in Jerry’s blood.

In 1947, Joe was killed in a tragic drowning accident after slipping into the Trinity River in Northern California while fishing there. This left Ruth in charge of Joe’s share of the bar he had half-owned. In the event, she opted to buy out Joe’s business partner and make running it her full-time occupation. Jerry and Clifford were sent away to stay with Ruth’s parents, Tillie and William Clifford, for the next five years, as Ruth believed this would give them a more stable home base from which to go to school while she had her bar to run.

With both his parents having been such keen musicians, it is easy to understand how Jerry became one too, in spite of his father’s untimely early death. He took piano lessons for much of his childhood, and while staying with his maternal grandparents, he was further influenced by his grandmother’s enjoyment of country music and bluegrass into taking up the banjo. While attending Monroe Elementary School, he was supported by one of his female teachers into feeling that he could further develop his artistic abilities and see his own creative potential.

In 1953, Ruth remarried. Feeling that her new situation gave her a stronger basis for taking care of her children, she invited them back to join her and her new husband, a man called Wally Matusiewicz. The four of them had soon left San Francisco for a small but growing Californian town called Menlo Park, whose population in 1953 is thought to have been under 20,000. Here, Jerry attended Menlo Oaks School, from which he would go on to graduate in June 1957.

As he approached his teen years in the mid-1950s, Jerry was introduced by Clifford to rhythm and blues, and rapidly became a fan of latter-day legends of this scene like John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Ray Charles and Hank Ballard. He was also immersed in the burgeoning rock and roll movement that increasingly permeated popular culture as the decade wore on, and he would go on to appreciate Chuck Berry (1926-2017), who has since become regarded as a legend of the genre. Together, the Garcia brothers learned to sing their favourite songs in harmony with each other.

Outside school, Jerry at one time attended drawing and painting classes at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). Here, he was taught by the influential modern artist Wally Bill Hedrick (1928-2003).

I would describe my own electric guitar playing as descended from barroom rock-and-roll, country guitar and jazz. Just because that's where all my stuff comes from. It's like that blues instrumental stuff that was happening in the late '50s, early '60s. Like 'Freddie King'.

In the summer of 1957, Garcia was introduced to marijuana and also began smoking regular tobacco cigarettes, a habit he would maintain for most of the rest of his life. That summer, Ruth and Wally moved back to San Francisco with the two boys, taking up residence in an apartment above their new bar, which they had had built using the compensation money they’d received after the original one had been demolished following a compulsory purchase order to clear space for an entrance to a new freeway.

Jerry briefly enrolled at Denman Junior High School in San Francisco before moving to Balbao High School the following year. Unfortunately, Jerry had a troubled time at High School, getting into fights with other boys and often playing truant. In response, Ruth decided to leave the big city for a second time in 1959, relocating the family to the rural village of Cazadero, an 87-mile drive to the north. Cazadero was so tiny and remote that the nearest high school, Analy High School, was thirty miles away in Sebastopol, so Jerry had to adapt to long daily commutes there and back by bus, which he resented.

While studying at Analy High School, Garcia joined a school band called The Chords, which at one point won a local competition and, with it, the opportunity to record a song professionally in a recording studio.

In 1960, Garcia, feeling limited by having to live in such a remote village during his High School years was tempted to take his mother’s car on a drive without her permission. Her attempt at relocating in order to tame Garcia had not worked. She reported the missing car to the police as a theft, suggesting that by this time their relationship had broken down, and he was subsequently arrested and criminally charged with theft. To avoid jail time, he accepted the alternative offer of a spell in the army, which the local police considered would serve just as well in instilling better discipline in him. However, their hope failed to bear fruit, as despite going through with basic military training, he was repeatedly found absent without leave (AWOL), and by the end of the year, his superiors had had enough of his indiscipline and discharged him permanently on December 14th. It seemed that nothing could instil order in the young Garcia.

By this time, Jerry had used his army income to buy his own second-hand car. Unreconciled with his mother, he took to sofa-hopping and sleeping in his car for the next few weeks before taking up residence in a lodging house near Stanford University known as the Chateau.

In February 1961, while he was a passenger in a car being driven by the manager of his boarding house, Lee Adams, Garcia suffered a broken collarbone after being thrown into a field when Adams crashed his car while recklessly driving at high speed around a corner. One of the other passengers, a 16-year-old aspiring artist called Paul Speegle with whom Garcia had become friendly, was killed in the crash.

The death of his younger friend and his own lucky escape with a relatively minor injury from this high-speed crash filled Garcia with a sense of urgent purpose to pursue a musical career. He promptly made a decision to learn to play the guitar and to sideline his artistic interests, which he had retained ever since studying at CSFA, in order to focus solely on music.

That April, Garcia first met poet and musician Robert C. Christie Hunter (1941-2019), and together they began a long-term musical collaboration that would later see him serve as a lyricist for The Grateful Dead, although Hunter was not one of the band’s founding members and would never perform as part of the band.

To begin with, Garcia and Hunter played as a duo, giving their first concert at Kepler’s Books, an independent bookstore in Garcia’s childhood home town of Menlo Park. They subsequently got involved with another musician who would go on to be famous although not as part of The Grateful Dead, David Nelson (born 1943) in bands called The Wildwood Boys and The Hart Valley Drifters.

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It was the following year (1962) that Garcia first met the second of his eventual collaborators in the Grateful Dead, bassist Phil Lesh (born 1940). Lesh persuaded Garcia to record some songs with him for broadcast on the Berkeley-based community radio station KPFA (established in 1949), and these became the basis of a 90-minute feature show that was only the beginning of Garcia’s longstanding association with the radio station.

During this year, at the same time as improving his own guitar skills, Garcia found he could earn income from teaching acoustic guitar and banjo to students. Among his students was a young high school student called Bob Matthews, who would eventually become the sound engineer for The Grateful Dead.

On 31st December 1962, a school friend of Matthews named Bob Weir (born 1947) walked in to Dana Morgan’s Music Store in Palo Alto, a small city in the San Francisco Bay Area, after hearing banjo music. Garcia had been playing his banjo while waiting for some of his students to arrive for classes. Weir ended up jamming with Garcia all through the night, and went on to become a rhythm guitarist and singer for The Grateful Dead. It was another seemingly fated chance meeting that would set in motion a train of events culminating in the founding of the band and its years of greatest success.

Early in 1963, Garcia met his future first wife, Sara Ruppenthal, while she was working in a coffee shop behind Kepler’s Books. They married that same April, and in December Sara gave birth to their daughter Heather, Jerry’s first child.

From 1962 until 1964, Garcia performed with several other bands, including a bluegrass group called the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers, for which he not only sang but also played guitar, banjo and harmonica, alongside two collaborators.

After meeting Weir, Garcia joined him and various other musicians in forming a type of musical ensemble using homemade wind instruments known as a jug band, for which they adopted the name Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions. One of the other members of this band was Ronald Charles McKernan (1945-1973), who was better known by his nickname ‘Pigpen’ and would go on to become the third of his eventual bandmates in The Grateful Dead (alongside Lesh and Weir).

In late 1964, Mother McCree’s was disbanded, but Garcia, Weir and McKernan were then joined by the fifth and final eventual founding member of the Grateful Dead, African drummer Bill Kreutzmann (born 1946), and by bassist Dana Morgan Jr., to form The Warlocks. Lesh had soon replaced Morgan on bass guitar, giving shape to the definitive founding line-up of The Grateful Dead. The Warlocks gave their first concert at Magoo’s Pizza Parlor in Melo Park on 5th May, 1965.

That summer, The Warlocks also played at an Acid Test event organised by the author Ken Kesey, where they were spotted by Rock Robert Scully (1941-2014), who became their tour manager.

After discovering that a New York-based band was also independently touring as The Warlocks, Garcia and bandmates decided to change their name that November to The Grateful Dead, after Garcia stumbled on the expression while browsing a large English dictionary and thought it sounded powerful. The suggested name initially met with disapproval within the Warlocks, but caught on, since despite their reservations, the band’s members found they couldn’t help remembering and talking about it.

The Grateful Dead toured almost continuously for the next thirty years until Garcia’s untimely death in 1995, notching up over 2,000 live gigs in that time, although there were occasional fallow periods while he was suffering from ill-health, sometimes precipitated by drug abuse. During the early 1970s, most members of the band began to regularly use cocaine. This led to a number of police raids at which Garcia was fortunate to escape arrest, unlike some of his bandmates. Jerry also tried out heroin for the first time in a brothel he visited while on tour in Europe during 1974, and in 1975 he became a regular user of heroin.

A lot of times, when we write a song for a record, it really doesn't turn into what it's gonna become until we've been performing it a few years. So normally our records are usually failures on that level.

There were various changes in the band’s line-up over the years. Drummer Mickey Hart joined it in 1967, the same year that Hunter got involved as a song lyricist. Keyboardist Tom Constanten (born 1944) joined in 1968, but left again in 1970. McKernan died of a gastrointestinal haemorrhage at the age of just 27 in March 1973, deeply saddening his band-mates. Various other keyboard players and backing vocalists have also been involved over the years, including Bruce Hornsby (best known as the band leader of Bruce Hornsby and the Range) from 1990 to 1992.

Alongside his work with The Grateful Dead, Garcia worked frequently as a session musician, and played in various other bands over the years. His most notable side project was one he founded in January 1976 as the Jerry Garcia Band, which toured on and off until his death in 1995, recording two albums launched during his lifetime: ‘Cats under the Stars’ (1978) and the eponymous ‘Jerry Garcia Band’ (1991). Three further live Jerry Garcia Band albums were released between 1997 and 2001, years after his death.

In December 1966, Garcia moved in with his eventual second wife Carolyn Adams (born 1946), who had previously been romantically involved with Ken Kesey and had been part of his entourage known as the Merry Pranksters, for which purpose she had adopted the pseudonym of Mountain Girl. Despite separating from her husband George Walker at the same time, Adams remained legally married to him for another 12 years until 1978. While living with Garcia, Carolyn gave birth to his second and third daughters, Annabelle Walker Garcia (born February 1970) and Theresa Adams Garcia (born September 1974).

In 1975, Garcia and Adams separated. For the next two years, he lived with a film director called Deborah Koons. When Jerry’s relationship with Deborah ended, he moved back in with Carolyn again for another year; but by this time, Jerry’s persistent drug use had become deeply problematic, as he was addicted to both cocaine and heroin, which precipitated their second separation in 1978. By the early 1980s, Jerry is thought to have been spending $700 per day on maintaining his drug habits, equivalent to over a quarter of a million dollars per year: an expenditure that seems unimaginably lavish to anyone of ordinary means.

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Paradoxically, Garcia and Adams decided to get married in 1981, three years after she had finally divorced George, but mainly for tax benefits. They remained affectionate friends but continued to live apart from each other, testifying to the fact that the marriage was largely for financial reasons. At the time, she was based in the state of Oregon while Jerry remained near the band’s offices at San Rafael, California, sharing a house with housemates including Scully and Nora Sage, a closely involved fan of the Grateful Dead. By that time, Scully had long since ceased to manage The Grateful Dead but was still closely associated with Garcia in his role as manager of The Jerry Garcia Band.

In 1985, Garcia’s heroin addiction led his Grateful Dead bandmates to issue him with an ultimatum to check into a rehabilitation centre on pain of being dismissed from the Grateful Dead if he refused. Although he agreed to attend one based at Oakland, he was arrested for possession at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco just days before he was due to check in, and was instead sent on a drug diversion programme at the instigation of the police. This was nonetheless successful, and with Nora’s help and to the band’s relief, by 1986 he had quit his cocaine and heroin habits completely.

By then, however, Garcia also suffered from severe diabetes, and that year he slipped into a diabetic coma for five days. At this point, Adams returned to the fray to nurse him during his period of recovery, and for a while they became closer again as a result.

While on tour with The Grateful Dead in the Spring of 1987, Jerry began an extra-marital affair with an artist he had known as a friend since 1978 called Manasha Matheson. This led to her giving birth to Jerry’s fourth daughter, Keeling Noel Garcia, that December. Jerry and Manasha were unofficially married in a spiritual ceremony without legal backing in August 1990.

This turn of events eventually prompted Adams to file for divorce, and their marriage finally ended early in 1994. By this time, Garcia was no longer together with Matheson. In early 1993, he briefly rekindled an old romance with ex-girlfriend Barbara Meier, whom he had previously dated in the early 1960s before his marriage to Sara. However, this did not last, and that same Spring, he moved back in with his ex-lover Deborah Koons, who became his third legal wife in February 1994.

In 1991, feeling worn out by years on the road, Jerry slipped back into his heroin habit. This time, his bandmates were quick to react, and obliged him to return to rehab. He agreed to attend a methadone clinic, and retained his place in the band as a result. But in the summer of 1992, his diabetes flared up again, prompting him to adopt more drastic measures to improve his health: in particular, he quit smoking and became a vegetarian.

Unfortunately, decades of drug abuse had damaged Jerry’s nervous system, and in the years to follow, he experienced pain that he found he could only numb by using variations on the very same class of drugs that had caused the damage in the first place: narcotics. In July 1995, immediately after The Grateful Dead’s summer tour had ended, he voluntarily entered the Betty Ford Center, a drug rehabilitation clinic based at Rancho Mirage, California, where he stayed for two weeks. Feeling positive about the impact of this stay on his health, he then moved on to a similar clinic in Forest Knolls called the Serenity Knolls Treatment Center. But sadly, this proved to be too late to save his life, as while staying there he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest that same August.

Two decades after her husband’s death, his surviving widow Deborah endured a bitter legal battle with The Jerry Garcia Family, a limited company that had been collectively established by the children he fathered with Carolyn, his brother Clifford, Carolyn’s daughter Sunshine, and various other individuals connected with him, over the rights to his musical master tapes. The case was still being heard in late 2016.

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Jimi Hendrix

admin — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 11:17:49 +0000

Original photographer unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Guitarist, singer & songwriter

Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) was one of the most celebrated rock guitarists of the 20th century. Impressively, he also sang and wrote his own songs.

Hendrix’s early death at the age of 27 followed those of Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones in July 1969 and Alan Wilson of Canned Heat earlier in September 1970, and was in turn followed by that of Janis Joplin in early October 1970, with Jim Morrison of the Doors following in July 1971. The deaths of five prominent rock and folk musicians in close succession at the same age gave rise to the notion in popular culture of a ‘Club of 27’ populated by musicians who died at the age of 27. Others who notably joined them in this fate during the mid-1970s included Ronald McKernan of the Grateful Dead (1945-1973) and Pete Ham of Badfinger (1947-1975). In more recent years, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana (1967-1994), Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers (1967-1995) and Amy Winehouse (1983-2011) are probably the most famous names in the English-speaking world to have been added to this tragic roll call.

Jimi was born as Johnny Allen Hendrix on November 27th, 1942 in Seattle, Washington, a major regional centre in the northwestern United States. His parents, James Allen Hendrix (known as ‘Al’) and Lucille Jeter, had got married just eight months prior to this, on March 31st; and only a few days later, Al had begun compulsory military training after being conscripted as part of the ongoing draft of servicemen by the United States Army in connection with World War II.

At the time of Johnny’s birth, Al was on service in the state of Alabama. He was extraordinarily denied the usual military furlough in circumstances of impending childbirth, that would otherwise have granted him leave to visit his wife when she was about to give birth and to stay for long enough to meet his newborn son after the event. Distressingly, he was detained in a military stockade for two months to physically restrain and prevent him from travelling to see them. Al was finally released from active duty on September 1st, 1945, one day before the official end of the war.

During his father’s absence, the infant Johnny had been looked after by a succession of relatives and friends of his mother, who had struggled to manage on her own. His carers included initially his mother’s sister Delores Hall and a friend of hers named Dorothy Harding. By the end of the war, he was staying in Berkeley, California with a Mrs. Champ, who is said to have tried to adopt him. Following his release from the army, his father travelled there to collect him, and soon they had returned to Seattle and moved back in together with his mother.

In 1946, when he was probably just three years old, Johnny’s name was changed to James Marshall Hendrix, a name change that honoured his father and his late uncle, Leon Marshall, paving the way for the eventual adoption of his nickname Jimi, a corruption of James, although this would not come about before 1966.

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In spite of his honourable discharge and impressive record of service, Al struggled to find regular work after the war, leaving his parents poverty-stricken. This led to tensions that spilled over into violence between them after they both turned to drinking heavily.

A succession of siblings to Jimi were nonetheless born to Lucille in the following years, comprising Leon (1948), Joseph (1949), Kathy (1950) and Pamela (1951). Unable to afford to care for any of them, Al and Lucille gave them all up to the foster care system or adoption, although Leon only temporarily so. In December 1951, Jimi’s parents divorced, and Al was granted sole custody of him and his brother Leon.

Jimi attended Horace Mann Elementary School in Seattle. He adopted a habit of pretending to play the guitar by carrying a broom in the manner of one. Noticing that he was carrying the broom everywhere, a social worker assigned to the school recommended that some school funding designated for underprivileged children should be used to purchase a real guitar for Jimi’s use, but the school failed to act on this recommendation.

It was not until 1957 that Jimi had his first opportunity to adopt a stringed instrument, when he was helping his father on a job involving the clearance of rubbish from a woman’s home. Among the rubbish was a ukelele with only one string. Although it was damaged, Jimi was keen to give it a try and was granted permission by the lady to keep it when he asked, so he took it home with him and began to teach himself to play simple tunes on it.

Sadly, Lucille lost her battle with alcoholism the following year, finally succumbing to a ruptured spleen in February 1958 after developing cirrhosis of the liver. Shockingly, Al responded to her death by denying his sons permission to attend her funeral and giving them whisky to drown their sorrows.

By this time, Jimi was in his final year at Washington Junior High School in Seattle, from which he graduated in the summer of 1958. That summer, he bought his first guitar, an acoustic he purchased for just $5, equivalent to about $52 in 2023. He began practising intently for hours every day, and had soon formed the Velvetones, the first of several bands he would found or co-found during his musical career. Finding that the sound from his acoustic guitar was drowned out by the rest of the music, he decided he needed an electric guitar instead. In the middle of 1959, Al, who had previously not heeded Jimi’s pleas to buy him a guitar, finally gave in, purchasing for his eldest son a Supro Ozark.

I felt maybe too many people were coming to see me and not enough to listen to me. My nature changed as well.

Jimi began to get gigs with various local bands. While he was playing with one called the Rocking Kings, his Supro was stolen, but Al, taking pity on him, bought him a second electric guitar to replace it: a Silvertone Danelectro.

In his late teens, having dropped out of James A. Garfield High School without graduating, Hendrix was twice apprehended by police for joyriding. The second time, he was offered a place in the army as an alternative to prison, and in May 1961 he decided to enlist. Following his basic training, he was stationed in Kentucky as part of the 101st Airborne Division, where he continued to train as a paratrooper; but he found the military environment unpleasant and pleaded with Al by post to send him his guitar, which he had left behind in the care of an early girlfriend, Betty Jean Morgan. Although Al obliged, having the guitar at the army base led to Jimi being bullied by fellow servicemen, who sometimes snatched it from him and hid it in order to wield power over him.

Nonetheless, Jimi managed to make the acquaintance of a bass guitarist called Billy Cox who heard him playing at an army club in November 1961 and began to play with him regularly thereafter. They had soon attracted a loose collective of other musicians around them in a band known as the Casuals.

By May 1962, Jimi’s lack of motivation for his military duties had come to the attention of his platoon sergeant, James C. Spears, who filed a report recommending his discharge from the army. He was honourably discharged the following month. Three months later, in September, Cox was also discharged, and reunited with Hendrix, joining him in Clarksville, Tennessee, where they were then able to revive a version of the Casuals under the changed name the King Kasuals.

The new version of the band included additional guitarist Alphonso Young, who had learnt to perform a stage trick of playing the guitar with his teeth. Taking inspiration from Young, Hendrix also learnt the same trick, which since became a part of his trademark repertoire.

The King Kasuals subsequently relocated to Nashville, where Hendrix found he was able to earn a full-time living as a professional musician. For a while, the King Kasuals enjoyed a residency at the Club del Morocco there. In addition to continuing to perform with his band in Nashville, he toured a circuit of venues affiliated to the Theater Owners’ Booking Association with them. This circuit extended far beyond Nashville and even Tennessee to encompass the entire southern United States, an area whose vast size far exceeded the scope of Jimi’s previous gigging experience. The more he toured, the more Hendrix’s reputation as a guitarist grew, and he was increasingly offered additional work as a backing guitarist by numerous other acts, including names famous to this day such as Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, Ike & Tina Turner, and Wilson Pickett.

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By early 1964, the appeal of playing backing guitar for other artists had begun to pall for Hendrix. Leaving the King Kasuals and the TOBA circuit behind, he relocated to Harlem, New York City, to progress his career on his own. While staying at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, he met Lithofayne ‘Faye’ Pridgon, a woman well-connected with the local music scene. As well as helping to get him involved in the Harlem club circuit, she became his girlfriend.

Within months of his arrival in Harlem, Hendrix had successfully auditioned for the Isley Brothers, who appointed him as the lead guitarist of their backing band, the I.B. Specials. The Isley Brothers had not yet achieved their commercial peak at this relatively early stage of their long career, but had scored two US Top 50 hits with ‘Shout’ (1959) and ‘Twist and Shout’ (1962), so joining them was an upward career move for the 21-year-old Hendrix. However, after touring with them extensively during 1964, he got bored, wanting to move on to other things, and quit in late October.

Hendrix subsequently joined The Upsetters, the live band of Little Richard, a very well-established singer, and recorded a single with him early in 1965. However, Hendrix’s on-stage antics, strange costume choices and frequent late arrivals led to Richard’s brother Robert sacking him from the band that July.

Nonetheless, that same month, Hendrix was able to sign his own two-year recording contract with Sue Records; and in October, he signed a second recording contract with Ed Chalpin, which was supposed to last for three years, but their business relationship had soon faltered and it did not bear fruit.

In the meantime, Hendrix continued to make his living primarily from touring. After briefly rejoining the Isley Brothers, with whom he recorded a total of two singles, he met New York-based singer Curtis Knight (1929-1999), and went on tour with his band Curtis Knight and the Squires for the next eight months, in addition to composing two instrumental tracks for them. He also played some gigs with the briefly bestselling act Joey Dee and the Starliters during this time.

Hendrix additionally worked with the prominent saxophonist and bandleader King Curtis (1934-1971) on various recordings during the mid-1960s. It seemed he was becoming highly sought after.

In 1966, he moved to Greenwich village, a district within New York City known for its music scene, where he was offered a residency at a music club called Café Wha? This led to his forming a new band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, which began to get booked for gigs at different clubs across the city. They continued to play together late into the year. However, he was finding it difficult to get by financially solely from the proceeds of his new band, which led to him returning to playing with Curtis Knight and the Squires on certain occasions between his performances with the Blue Flames in order to supplement his income.

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Marjut Valakivi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

A. Vente, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

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During one of his concerts, Hendrix was spotted by Linda Keith, the then girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, who recommended him for an audition to the band’s manager and producer, who however rejected him.

She also introduced him to Chas Chandler (1938-1996), the outgoing bass guitarist of The Animals, who on her recommendation attended one of his gigs at the Café Wha? Chandler was looking to move into music management at this stage of his career, and was so impressed by Hendrix’s performance of the Billy Roberts song Hey Joe that he invited him to relocate to the UK as an artist under his wing.

On September 24th, Hendrix moved to London, where he signed a management and production contract jointly with Chandler and a long-time associate of his, the Animals’ manager Michael Jeffery (1933-1973). Soon after his first arrival in the UK, Hendrix struck up a relationship with the writer Kathy Etchingham (born 1946), which continued for more than two years.

A new band was formed around Hendrix, with Chandler playing the main role as recruiter. The band was given the name the Jimi Hendrix Experience – a far cry from the playful Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. Jeffery is credited with having persuaded Hendrix, who had never previously been known as Jimi, to change to performing under his real surname, but it was Chandler’s idea for him to change the spelling of his nickname from the common Jimmy to the more unusual Jimi. The new recruits notably included guitarist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Michell.

That October, Chandler introduced Hendrix to Eric Clapton at the venue of a scheduled gig of Clapton’s band Cream before the concert began. Hendrix requested permission to play with Cream on a couple of songs in their set, which Clapton allowed. Some of his accustomed stage antics, such as playing with his teeth, were on display during his performance of the song Killing Floor.

The Experience was hired as the support act of popular French singer Johnny Hallyday (1943-2017) during a short tour of France that Autumn.

By the end of October, the band had been signed to the record label Track Records, which was run by the managers of The Who. This led to the release of a new recording of Hey Joe as their first single in December. It proved a commercial success, climbing to No. 6 in the UK singles chart early the following year. Two further hits followed: ‘Purple Haze’ (No. 3) and ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ (No. 6), helping their popularity grow and endure.

On March 31st, 1967, while preparing for a gig at the London Astoria, Hendrix and Chandler were discussing how to increase the band’s publicity, leading to Chandler asking journalist Keith Altham for advice on ways to garner more media coverage. Altham playfully suggested setting fire to a guitar. Chandler unexpectedly acted on the suggestion, ordering some lighter fluid to be brought on stage by the Experience’s road manager Gerry Stickells. At the end of the concert, Hendrix duly set fire to his guitar, which had exactly the desired effect, generating many sensational news headlines; and it would not be the last time he would perform this shocking act.

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The Experience’s debut LP, Are You Experienced, was released on May 12th, 1967, and reached a peak position of No. 2 in the UK albums chart. A US release followed in October, and got to No. 5. Within a year of being adopted as a project by Chandler and Jeffrey, Hendrix had become a major star on both sides of the Altantic.

Hendrix was further championed by Paul McCartney after he witnessed him performing an impromptu version of the Beatles song Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the title track to the album of the same name, which had singularly held Are You Experienced off the top spot in the albums chart. This performance, at a concert on June 4th, 1967, seemed to symbolically honour the commercial competition that had narrowly denied Hendrix a No. 1 album. Macartney duly returned the honour, insisting on Hendrix being booked for the Monterey Pop Festival, a major event held at Monterey, California, that July, which further increased his exposure to U.S. music audiences. At Monterey, Hendrix repeated his stunt of setting fire to his guitar, the moment this time being famously captured on camera.

Concerts followed thick and fast as The Experience continued to tour the US, playing alongside Jefferson Airplane among other bands.

In December, a second Jimi Hendrix Experience LP, Axis: Bold as Love, was released in the UK, where it peaked at No. 5. The US release this time outperformed it, reaching No. 3.

Early the following year, while Hendrix was recording the third and final Experience album, Electric Ladyland, Chandler parted company with him, leaving his continuing management solely in Jeffrey’s hands.

Hendrix was involved in a fight while drunk during his band’s tour of Sweden in January 1968. This culiminated in his smashing a plate glass window at his hotel in Göteborg, resulting in his sustaining an injury to his right hand and requiring medical treatment. He was arrested and issued with a fine.

The album, a double LP, was largely produced by Hendrix himself. Unlike his two previous albums, it was released first in the United States (on October 16th, 1968), where it reached No. 1 in the Billboard albums chart. A UK release followed soon after, but only managed No. 6. Although his career had taken off in the UK, Hendrix’s nexus of commercial success was now his native United States. It had taken a move abroad and the publicity that followed to fully capture the imagination of the US public and make Hendrix a superstar in the country of his birth, but he had achieved it.

In May 1969, Hendrix was arrested while attempting to pass through customs on arrival at Toronto International Airport in Canada. After heroin and hashish were found in his baggage, he was charged with possession of drugs and released on bail. This incident culminated in a trial in December, at which Hendrix testified that he had been given the drugs by a fan in the form of a vial, and had put them in his bag on the mistaken assumption that they were legal forms of medication. He was acquitted by the jury.

Also in 1969, Hendrix was renting a house in California when it was targeted by burglars. Suspicious of a visiting friend of his called Paul Caruso, he punched him, threw stones at him, and chased him from the house. Not long after, possessed by anger born of jealousy, he struck his girlfriend of the time, Puerto-Rican model Carmen Borrero, above the eye, leaving her with a serious cut that needed to be surgically stitched up.

On June 29th 1969, The Experience played their final concert with Redding, at the Denver Pop Festival, before Redding announced his departure from the band, after taking offence at a report put to him by a journalist shortly before the gig to the effect that Hendrix had recently announced Redding’s replacement by his original bandmate in the Casuals, Billy Cox. Redding is believed to have already become tired of working with Hendrix, complaining about his late appearances for recording sessions and resenting his high level of overall creative control of the band’s output.

Having reunited with Cox, Hendrix returned to living in New York, with the agreement of Jeffery, who remained in place as his manager. Being the vastly popular star that he now was, he began to be featured as a guest on high-profile national American television programmes, including The Dick Cavett Show and The Tonight Show.

That August, Hendrix was among the headliners of the Woodstock Festival (q. v.) . His set included a deliberately distorted rendition of the American national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, which was interpreted by some commentators as a political statement against the Vietnam War, although Hendrix declined to confirm this.

By the end of 1969, Hendrix and Cox had teamed up with Buddy Miles, the former drummer for Wilson Pickett, to form a new act called Band of Gypsys without his bandmates from the Experience. In April 1970, an album of live Jimi Hendrix recordings, also named Band of Gypsys, was released by Capitol Records, after Hendrix came under sustained legal pressure to fulfil an abortive contract with Ed Chaplin that predated his move to the UK. The recordings were taken at concerts he had performed with Cox and Miles on December 31st, 1969 and January 1st, 1970. The resultant LP reached the albums chart Top 1 in both the USA and the UK, giving Jimi that elusive number 1 spot across both charts that he’d so narrowly missed previously.

A further Band of Gypsys concert was held at Madison Square Garden in New York City in aid of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, but Hendrix acted erratically, swearing at a woman who had shouted out a song request from the audience, and walking off stage mid-way into performing a song. Miles subsequently claimed that Jeffery had deliberately sabotated the gig by giving Hendrix LSD before it in an effort to sabotage the Band of Gypsys and bring Hendrix back to the Experience. Jeffery sacked Miles immediately after the show and then attempted to reform the Experience, lending weight to Miles’s suspicion as to deliberate sabotage of the Band of Gypsys on Jeffery’s part.

Redding briefly appeared set to return to the fold as part of the Experience, appearing alongside Hendrix and Mitchell in an interview in February 1970. But before the reunion had borne fruit, he was again told that he had been replaced by Cox.

From April to August 1970, the new version of the Experience toured the United States, playing 32 shows on the American leg of what was called the Cry of Love tour.

In 1968, Jeffery and Hendrix together purchased a shuttered former venue in Greenwich Village, New York City called The Generation Club. Having originally planned to reopen it, they decided in the end to convert it into a state-of-the-art recording studio, at an estimated total cost of $1 million. It was called Electric Lady, taking its name from the Experience album Electric Ladyland, but the project took far longer to design and build than originally anticipated, and it did not officially open until August 1970.

You have to forget about what other people say when you’re supposed to die, or when you’re supposed to be loving. You have to forget about all these things. You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven.

The Cry of Love tour then continued in Europe. The new Experience played the Isle of Wight Festival (q. v.) that summer, before continuing to the continental dates, but Jimi’s behaviour again started to become erratic. Three songs into a gig in Aarhus, he remarked to the audience that he had been dead for a long time, and walked off stage. Another show had to be cancelled because of heavy rainfall and fears of a risk of electrocution. When Hendrix next appeared at the Isle of Fenham Festival held in Germany, fans jeered him over his non-fulfilment of the previous concert.

The situation went from bad to worse as Cox, who was now suffering from severe mental health issues as a side-effect of taking LSD, suddenly abandoned the tour and returned to America to stay with his parents.

Hendrix returned to England without Cox, and had begun to contemplate parting company with Jeffrey, perhaps feeling that the hectic tour schedule he had imposed had been taking an unreasonable toll on both himself and Cox.

After his arrival in London that September (1970), Hendrix was briefly involved in a relationship with a Danish model called Kirstin Nefer, but when she had to leave the city in connection with work, he reconnected on September 15th with an ex-girlfriend called Monika Dannermann (1945-1996), who was a notable German figure skater and painter. They had previously been romantically involved briefly in January 1969 and again in April the same year, but had only recently met each other again in London.

On September 16th, Hendrix walked into Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club and jammed with Eric Burdon (the former band-leader of The Animals) and his new band War, playing backing guitar. It was the last time Hendrix was ever seen in public.

The following day, Hendrix ingested an amphetamine pill at a party he attended on the evening of September 17th. After returning to Dannermann’s flat, he stayed up with her through most of the rest of the night, talking, but also took nine of her Vesparax sleeping pills, a very serious overdose, and finally crashed to sleep around 7 a.m. on the 18th.

Steve Banks, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Finding Hendrix unconscious although still breathing when she woke shortly after 11 a.m., Dannermann called for an ambulance, which had him admitted to St. Mary Abbots hospital, but he was found to have vomited in his sleep while unconscious, with the result that he had suffered asphyxiation from inhaling his own vomit. His life could not be saved, and sadly he was pronounced dead at 12:45 p.m..

During his life, Hendrix had been known occasionally to turn furious or violent when under the influence of alcohol and drugs, much as his parents had bickered in a heated fashion while drunk, and his sudden death following an overdose bore uncanny echoes of the early death of his alcoholic mother.

Some songs Hendrix had written and recorded towards his planned fourth studio album were collected for the posthumously released LP Cry of Love. Released on March 5th, 1971, it reached No. 2 in the UK albums chart and No. 3 in the US Billboard equivalent. Most of the songs on the album had been recorded at Electric Lady before Hendrix’s departure on the European leg of his tour.

A further posthumous album, Rainbow Bridge, was issued in October 1971. It featured another selection of mostly previously unreleased songs recorded by Hendrix in the last years of his life. Its commercial impact was lesser than that of Cry of Love or any of Hendrix’s previous studio albums, as it stalled at No. 15 in the UK and No. 16 in the US.

A posthumous live album entitled Hendrix in the West was released in January 1972, and proved a somewhat greater success than Rainbow Bridge, reaching No. 7 in the UK and No. 12 in the USA. This LP was compiled from Hendrix’s live performances at four different concerts, including the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival.

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Dennis Hopper

admin — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 10:26:48 +0000

Rochester Institute of Technology, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Actor, Filmmaker & Photographer

Dennis Hopper

American actor, filmmaker and photographer Dennis Hopper was born in May 1936 in Dodge City, Kansas. He was the son of Marjorie Mae (1917-2007) and James Millard Hopper (1916-1982), and had two brothers, Marvin and David.

The whole family moved to Kansas City, Missouri following World War II. It was here that Hopper first attended art classes, which took place on a Saturday at the Kansas City Art Institute. During Hopper’s first year as a teen, the family moved again, this time to San Diego. Here he attended Helix High School, where he took part in drama club and other creative pursuits.

Rochester Institute of Technology, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

It was his early explorations into acting that sparked his interest, and he went on to study at the Old Globe Theatre in the city. Following that, he spent five years studying with Lee Strasberg (1901 – 1982), an American theatre director, actor and teacher, in New York City at the Actors Studio. Whilst here, he became friends with Vincent Price (1911 – 1993), the American actor, art historian and collector. Price had a great impact on Hopper and inspired in him a love for art, which Hopper carried throughout his life.

Hopper started his acting career in television in the 1950s, making appearances in Medic (1954), Cheyenne (1955) and Sugarfoot (1957). Many claim that his first foray into film was in 1954 as an extra in a Western called Johnny Guitar; however, Hooper himself denied this. He appeared alongside James Dean in both Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956) and had become good friends with Dean before the car accident in September 1955 in which Dean died. The death of his new friend affected Hopper greatly; and although in 1959 he moved to New York where he studied Method Acting under Lee Strasberg, his bad behaviour on set almost ended his career.

He was saved by the intervention of a friend of his then mother-in-law Margaret Sullavan, John Wayne, who found roles for him in both The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and True Grit (1969). He also appeared alongside Paul Newman (1925-2008) in Cool Hand Luke (1967), and alongside Clint Eastwood in Hang ‘Em High (1968).

I'm just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City, Kansas. And I always thought that acting was art, writing was art, music was art, painting was art, and I've tried to keep that cultural vibe to my life.

Then came what is probably Dennis Hopper’s most important and influential film, Easy Rider (1969). This was the story of two bikers, played by Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, who travel through the American South with the proceeds of a drugs deal. Capturing the mood of the anti-establishment counterculture of its day, it gives a vivid picture of the ‘hippy’ movement, showing a commune in which ‘free love’ is practised, and including much use of both marijuana and cocaine. Not only did Hopper star in this movie, but he directed it; and although a good deal of the dialogue was improvised, he also co-wrote the script with both Fonda and Terry Southern.

The film was a huge commercial success. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and Hopper himself received a Cannes Film Festival Award for ‘Best First Work’.

Unfortunately, Hopper’s increasing use of a combination of drugs and alcohol would substantially undermine both his career and his personal life. A classic example was The Last Movie (1971), in which Hopper played the leading role and also directed. The film was a self-indulgent mess and a commercial flop. The humiliation of this failure led Hopper to keep his distance from Hollywood for much of the next decade, spending much of his time is Taos, New Mexico. As for his private life: he would be married five times, with one of his marriages only lasting eight days. He had four children.

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unknown (Filmgroup), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

photo by Alan Light, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Hartmut S. Bühler, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

photo by Alan Light, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Warner Bros. Studio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Cropped)

He remained a great actor; and his more successful films would include his appearance as an American photojournalist in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), Blue Velvet (1986), Hoosiers (1986), for which he earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; and Speed (1994) for which he deservedly won an MTV Move + TV Award as ‘Best Villain’.

When he wasn’t acting, producing or writing, you could find Hopper exploring his other artistic pursuits. He enjoyed painting and sculpting, but he stood out most for his photography. His photographic successes included the cover art he created for the album River Deep – Mountain High by Ike and Tina Turner, his pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. (q. v.), and more intimate images he’d taken of many famous names, which were widely shown at gallery and museum shows, along with being published in several books.

Dennis Hopper: Photographs 1961-1967, published by Taschen in February 2011, is a collection of his most explorative and revealing photos of his friends and people of note of the era. To capture these moments was to capture a cultural moment in time, and Hopper did it beautifully.

He also had a love and appreciation of art, which by the time of his death had led him to collect over 300 pieces. These varied in type and style, but included works by some of the biggest names in the contemporary art world, such as Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst.

In 2009, Hopper was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which advanced quickly and had spread to his bones by early 2010. On 18 March 2010, the now legendary actor and producer was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and eight days later, when it was added to the sidewalk, he was present with family and friends including Jack Nicholson and Michael Madsen.

Two months later, on 29 May, Hopper died at his home in Los Angeles.

The post Dennis Hopper appeared first on The Swinging Sixties.

The Swinging Sixties

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You have to forget about what other people say when you’re supposed to die, or when you’re supposed to be loving. You have to forget about all these things. You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven.

Dennis Hopper

Dennis Hopper

I'm just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City, Kansas. And I always thought that acting was art, writing was art, music was art, painting was art, and I've tried to keep that cultural vibe to my life.

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Hotel Chelsea

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