Rock Rules

history of zeppelin

2004-12-20T13:48:00.000-08:00

Early days
The band was originally formed in 1968 by guitarist Jimmy Page under the name The New Yardbirds in order to fulfill some performance commitments booked in Scandinavia before the break up of the original Yardbirds. Vocalist Robert Plant (from Birmingham), known from his work with The Band of Joy, was himself on the verge of a record deal when Page saw him perform at West Midlands College of Education with a pickup band of art students and drafted him into the new band. Plant brought with him drummer John Bonham (from Redditch). Bassist John Paul Jones was informed by his wife that Page was forming a group; Jones and Page knew each other well from their days as session musicians and Jones contacted Page who asked him then to join the band.
After some concerts as the New Yardbirds, the band's name was changed to Led Zeppelin, after Keith Moon, drummer with The Who, said, "With that lineup you'll go down like a lead Zeppelin". The word "lead" is misspelled deliberately to avoid confusion, fearing it might be conceived of as the "lead Zeppelin" (as in "lead singer"), as opposed to a zeppelin constructed of lead.
Shortly after their first tour, the group's first eponymous album was released in 1969. Its combination of blues and rock influences with distorted amplification made it one of the pivotal records in the evolution of heavy metal music. The immediate success of the first album kick-started the band's career, especially in the United States, where they would frequently tour and where their album sales totals are second only to the Beatles. The second record, simply titled Led Zeppelin II, followed in the same style later that year and included the bludgeoning riff of "Whole Lotta Love", which, driven by the rhythm section of John Bonham on drums and John Paul Jones on bass, defined their sound at the time.
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were blues fanatics; two of Led Zeppelin's early hits, "Whole Lotta Love" and "You Shook Me", were very similar to earlier songs by Willie Dixon. (The band were subsequently accused of using his lyrics without crediting Dixon, and it was not until Chess Records brought suit 15 years later, that proper credit—and a monetary settlement—was given.) The band also loved American rock and roll, and would perform songs originally made famous by Elvis Presley and Eddie Cochran. Onstage, Led Zeppelin concerts could last over three hours; expanded, improvised live versions of their song repertoire often incorporated tight workouts of James Brown, Stax, and Motown-influenced soul music and funk (favourites of bassist Jones and drummer Bonham).
For the recording of their third record Led Zeppelin III, the band retired to "Bron-Yr-Aur", a remote house in Wales without electricity. This would result in a more acoustic sound (and a song "Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp"—misspelled as "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" on the album cover) which was strongly influenced by Celtic and folk music and which revealed a different side of guitarist Page's prodigious talent. In November of 1970, Led Zeppelin's record label, Atlantic Records, released "Immigrant Song" against the band's wishes. It included their only b-side, "Hey Hey What Can I Do". The band had nine other singles released all without their consent, as they saw their albums as indivisible. Curiously, "Stairway to Heaven" was never released as a single, in spite of its massive success on radio. (Part of their frustration about singles came from manager Peter Grant's aggressive pro-album stance, and the fact that Atlantic had earlier released an edited version of "Whole Lotta Love" that cut the 5:43 song to 3:10. Furthermore, the band resisted television appearances, preferring that their fans see them live in person).
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"The Biggest Band in the World"
The band's varying musical tendencies were fused on the untitled fourth album, which is usually called either "Zoso," "Runes," "Four Symbols," or just "Led Zeppelin IV." (Not only does the album have no name, but on the original packaging, there is no indication of the name of the band.). The record included hard rock such as "Black Dog", Tolkienesque folksy mysticism on "The Battle of Evermore", and a combination of both genres in the lengthy song "Stairway to Heaven", a massive FM radio hit that has been acknowledged by some as the all-time greatest classic rock song. The album winds up with one of their best blues songs, a Memphis Minnie cover titled "When the Levee Breaks".
Their next studio record, 1973's Houses of the Holy, featured further experimentation: longer songs, expanded use of synthesisers and string sections arranged by Jones. With songs like "The Song Remains the Same", "No Quarter" and "D'yer Mak'er" (pronounced "Jer-maker," derived from Jamaica, which was fitting, given the song's reggae feel. This is also a play on words, based on the joke where a man mistakes his friend saying the word Jamaica, for "Did You Make Her?"). Led Zeppelin was again pushing the limits defining rock music. Their 1973 tour of the U.S. again broke records for attendance: at Tampa Stadium, Florida they played to 56,800 fans (more than the Beatles' 1965 concert at Shea Stadium). Three sold out New York shows at Madison Square Garden were filmed for a concert motion picture, but this project would be delayed for several years.
In 1974, Led Zeppelin launched their own record label called Swan Song, named after one of only five songs that the band never recorded for commercial release (the track was re-tooled as "Midnight Moonlight" by Page's post-Zeppelin band The Firm on their first album). Besides using it as a vehicle to promote their own albums, the band expanded the label's roster, signing artists such as Bad Company, Pretty Things, Maggie Bell, Detective, Dave Edmunds, Midnight Flyer, Sad Café and Wildlife.
1975 saw the release of Physical Graffiti, their first double album set, on the Swan Song label. The album included songs recorded in studio sessions from the last three albums plus new songs. Again the band showed impressive range with songs like the melodic "Ten Years Gone", the acoustic "Black Country Woman", the driving "Trampled Underfoot" and the thundering, Middle Eastern tinged "Kashmir".
Shortly after the release of Physical Graffiti, the entire Led Zeppelin catalogue of six albums was simultaneously on the top 200 album chart, a feat never before accomplished. The band embarked on another U.S. tour, again playing to record-breaking crowds. To top off the year, they played five sold out nights at the UK's Earl's Court (these shows were recorded and would be released on DVD some 28 years later). At this, the peak of their career, Led Zeppelin was the biggest rock band in the world.
If the band's popularity on stage and record was impressive, so to was their reputation for excess and off-stage wildness. Zeppelin travelled in a private jet, rented out entire sections of hotels, and became the subjects of many of rock's most famous stories of debauchery: trashed hotel rooms, sexual escapades, and heavy use of drugs including alcohol. Several people associated with the band would write books about the wild escapades of the group, who disavowed many of the tales.
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Latter days
In 1976 the band took a break from the road and began filming "fantasy" segments for the as-yet-unreleased concert film. During this break, Robert Plant and his wife were in a car crash while vacationing in Greece which broke Plant's ankle. Unable to tour, the band returned to the studio and, with Plant sitting on a stool during the sessions, they recorded their seventh studio album Presence. The album was a platinum seller, but marked a change in the Zeppelin sound as straightforward, guitar-based jams such as "Nobody's Fault But Mine" had replaced the intricate arrangements of previous albums. A highlight of the album was the epic-length "Achilles Last Stand" featuring a driving bassline and thundering drums, melodic Page riffs and a magnificent guitar solo. Overall the album received mixed responses from critics and fans, with some appreciating the looser style and others dismissing it as sloppy and lazy; some critics speculated that the band's legendary excesses may have caught up with them at last.
Late 1976 finally saw the release of the concert film The Song Remains the Same and its soundtrack. Though the concert footage was from 1973, this would be the only filmed document of the group available for the next 20 years. The soundtrack of the film had some songs missing and some added compared to the film, and also some songs are different cuts from the 3 nights the band performed at Madison Square Garden. The album is generally not considered a great live album, but would remain the only official live document of the band until the eventual release of the BBC Sessions in 1997.
In 1977, Led Zeppelin embarked on another massive U.S. tour, again selling out up to 5 nights in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. (Seattle and Cleveland shows from this tour were the basis for highly regarded bootleg albums.) Following a show at the "Day on the Green" festival in Oakland, the news came that Robert Plant's son Karac had died from a stomach infection. The rest of the tour was cancelled, and superstitious critics whispered of a "curse" said to be related to Page's interest in the occult.
The band did little recording or live work during 1978; the sombre mood was extended with the death of their friend, Who drummer Keith Moon.
The summer of 1978 saw the group recording again, this time at Swedish Polar Studio; this album would be titled In Through the Out Door and would highlight the talent of drummer John Bonham on the epic "Carouselambra". The album also featured rockers like "In The Evening", the tropical "Fool in the Rain" and the balladic tribute to Plant's son, "All My Love". John Paul Jones had a lot of influence over the album and it consequently features many synthesisers. After a decade of recording and touring, the band was now considered a dinosaur in some quarters, as mainstream musical tastes had moved in favour of disco and critical focus had turned to punk rock. Nevertheless, the band still commanded legions of loyal fans, and the album reached #1 in the US and UK.
In the summer of 1979, after two warm-up shows in Copenhagen, Led Zeppelin was booked as headliner at England's Knebworth Festival in August. Close to 400,000 fans witnessed the return of Led Zeppelin and, with the release of In Through the Out Door in November, they were ready to tour again, planning a short European tour followed by another American tour.
The 1980 American tour was not to be, however. On 25 September 1980, shortly before embarking on the U.S. leg of the tour, drummer John Bonham died of an accidental asphyxiation after an alcohol binge.
Because of Bonham's death, the remaining band members determined they could not continue as Led Zeppelin. For many years after, there had been ongoing rumours of a reunion and plans for various collaborative projects.

this was from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin

Starcaft

2004-12-20T13:22:00.000-08:00

In the distant future a small group of human exiles have been doomed to fight for survival on the edge of the galaxy. Through military strength, espionage and deceit, a unified Terran government has maintained an uneasy peace. As resources run short, however, these Confederate nations find themselves looking towards the rich worlds of their alien neighbors, the enigmatic Protoss. To further complicate matters, it seems that a previously unknown and deadly species known only as the Zerg has entered Protoss space and is destroying everything in its path. The time for war has come...

Nirvana

2004-12-20T13:19:00.000-08:00

Cobain and Krist Novoselic met in 1985. Both were fans of The Melvins, and both were interested in forming a band. They worked with a series of drummers (Aaron Burckhard, Dan Peters and Dale Crover of The Melvins, who played on their first demos), before settling on Chad Channing. Channing played on their first album, Bleach, released by Sub Pop records. Sub Pop had previously released albums or singles by Seattle, Washington-area groups like Mudhoney, Soundgarden and Green River. [1] (http://www.subpop.com/scripts/main/discography.php?cat=true&display_type=discog_list&delimiter=product_id&set=00&label=Sub+Pop)
Bleach was highly influenced by Cobain's then-favorite band, The Melvins, as well as the heavy dirge-rock of Mudhoney.
Though he did not actually play on the album, Jason Everman was credited as playing guitar on Bleach because he put up the money for the recording sessions. After the album's completion, Everman had a brief and contentious tenure with the band as a second guitar player, but was ousted following their first US tour. Not long after, he briefly played bass with Soundgarden, and later formed the band Mind Funk.
In early 1990, the band began working with producer Butch Vig on recordings for the follow-up to Bleach. During the sessions, Kurt and Krist realized that Chad wasn't quite the drummer the band needed, and he was let go after the sessions were complete. After a few weeks with Dale Crover of The Melvins filling in, they drafted Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters, with whom they recorded the song "Sliver". Dave Osbourne of The Melvins later hooked them up with Dave Grohl, who drummed with D.C. Hardcore punks Scream. Grohl joined Nirvana in 1990. [2] (http://www.subpop.com/scripts/main/bands_page.php?id=163)
Nirvana continued touring, including a stint with Sonic Youth chronicled in the documentary 1991: The Year Punk Broke.
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Nevermind

Nevermind album cover
Following repeated recommendation by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, David Geffen signed Nirvana in 1990 and the band began recording their first major label album. The result, Nevermind, is now regarded a classic. The album was produced by Butch Vig, who had previously worked with Sonic Youth and Smashing Pumpkins.
After recording, Vig initially started off to mix the album as well but both Vig and Nirvana were not satisfied with their results so they decided to call in someone else to mix the album. DGC sent them a list with possible options. Cobain did not want to use mixers that had worked with other bands he liked because he did not want to sound like them, so he decided to call in the guy at the bottom of the list after whose name it read 'Slayer': Andy Wallace. Later Cobain would complain in the press that Wallace had made Nevermind sound too slick, although Wallace had been his own choice and the bandmembers themselves had been involved in the mixing process.1 Wallace, however, had tempered the band's indie rock leanings, and had created a mainstream-ready rock sound that others would attempt to duplicate for the next decade.
Nevermind was a massive, unexpected success, selling millions of copies. (DGC Records had reportedly hoped Nevermind would sell as well as Sonic Youth's Dirty, which had seen profitable and respectable sales of some 250,000 copies.)
The highly infectious single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" received heavy airplay on MTV, inspiring a slew of imitators, bringing the grunge sound, as well as so-called alternative rock and alternative culture, into the mainstream. The popularity of "alternative" rock — as well as the sidelining of hair metal — is often credited to Nevermind.
In February of 1992, following an Australian tour, Cobain married Courtney Love in Hawaii. Courtney gave birth to a daughter, Frances Bean, in August.
Citing exhaustion, the band decided not to undertake another US tour in support of Nevermind, instead opting to make a handful of performances later that year.
Just days after Frances Bean's birth, Nirvana put on a memorable performance at the MTV Video Music Awards. MTV had wanted the band to play "Teen Spirit", but the band wanted to play a new song called "Rape Me". MTV was appalled at the idea of a song called "Rape Me", and eventually agreed that the band could play "Lithium" instead. When the band began their performance, Kurt strummed the first few bars of "Rape Me", giving the MTV execs a solid shock before jumping into "Lithium".
Just weeks later, Nirvana performed arguably its greatest concert, headlining at the Reading Festival. Cobain entered the stage in a wheelchair as a practical joke, then proceeded to get up and join the rest of the band in tearing through an assortment of old and new material.
Incesticide, a collection of B-sides and rarities, was released in December of 1992, ostensibly to beat bootleggers to the punch.
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In Utero

In Utero album cover
1993's In Utero, was recorded in two weeks and was produced by Steve Albini. It proved less accessible to the mass market due to its rawer, unpolished sound. This was reportedly due in part to a deliberate move on Nirvana's part: They wanted to alienate or distance some of their new "mainstream" audience who'd paid little or no attention to the alternative, obscure or experimental bands Nirvana saw as their forbearers. A song on In Utero featuring long periods of shrill feedback noise was titled, ironically, "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter," a term used by some record company executives to describe an "ideal" album: An album capable of heavy radio play, and ultimately selling many copies, or "units."
While popular perception after the fact was that the band wanted this distorted masterpiece, they were actually unhappy with certain aspects of Albini's mixes. Specifically, they thought the bass levels were too low, and Cobain felt that "Heart-Shaped Box" and "All Apologies" didn't sound "perfect". Scott Litt, longtime R.E.M. producer, was called in to help remix the songs, with Cobain adding additional instrumentation. (Litt also remixed "Pennyroyal Tea", but Albini's version was used on the album. The Litt mix was to appear on the "Pennyroyal Tea" single, aborted after Kurt's death, and didn't see wide release until the Nirvana greatest hits compilation in 2002.)
While "Heart-Shaped Box" was received warmly by alternative radio, and In Utero debuted at number one on the Billboard Album chart, the album didn't enjoy the same success as Nevermind. When the band embarked on a US tour, its first major tour of the States since the success of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", it regularly played to half-filled arenas, stymied by the lack of tour support for Nevermind and the challenging new release.
(For the In Utero tours, the band added Pat Smear of the punk rock band The Germs as second guitarist.)
In November of 1993, the band decided to change direction, and sat down for an appearance on MTV Unplugged. The sessions revealed the depth of Cobain's songwriting, which had often been buried under the sonic fury of the band's sound, and demonstrated his broad musical interests in his choice of cover songs. It became a hallmark moment of Nirvana's history, if not amplified by the tragedy soon to follow.
In early 1994, the band embarked on a European tour. While the tour started off well, the performances gradually declined, with Kurt looking bored and distracted during the shows. Following a tour stop at Terminal Einz in Munich, Germany, on March 1st, Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and severe laryngitis. The next night's show at the same venue was canceled.
On the morning of March 4th, Cobain was found unconscious by Courtney Love and rushed to the hospital. The doctor told a press conference that the singer had reacted to a combination of prescription Rohypnol and alcohol. The rest of the tour was canceled, including a planned leg in the UK.
In the ensuing weeks, Cobain's heroin addiction resurfaced. An intervention was organised, and Cobain was convinced to check into rehab. After less than a week in rehab, Cobain climbed over the wall of the facility and flew back to Seattle.
A week later, on Friday, April 8, 1994, Cobain's body was discovered at his Seattle home, dead of an apparent suicide, effectively dissolving Nirvana. (Some have disputed the suicide verdict; see below.)
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from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_%28band%29

The Ramones

2004-12-20T13:13:00.000-08:00

The Ramones started with Joey Ramone on drums, Johnny Ramone on guitar and Dee Dee Ramone on bass and vocals. Tommy Ramone was then an employee of the studio, and after several times helping Joey to get some beats straight, he ended up joining the band, while Joey took over the lead vocals.
Their early songs were very fast and very short, most clocked in at about two minutes.
In the early 70's, many New York bands started to play in rock clubs such as the famous Max's Kansas City and CBGB (which stands for "country, bluegrass and blues" and was not originally intended to be a rock club) in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Other bands from this period include the New York Dolls, Tom Verlaine's Television, Blondie, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Patti Smith Band, Suicide, and the Talking Heads. These bands formed a very interesting musical scene of creative people who played very different styles of music that later were called punk rock, perhaps due in part to a fanzine called Punk Magazine.
Ramones concerts at CBGB's became legendary, due in part to their brevity: Most concerts were twenty to thirty minutes long, much shorter than their contemporaries', and are often described by their witnesses as extremely fast, crude, energetic and desperate. There are some super-8 movies of these shows, present in a couple of the band's videos.
According to a bio by Australian Musicologist/Guru Glenn A. Baker, they did play longer shows, by simply playing their entire set and then repeating it. Apparently they used to be booed off stage when they played outside New York City. One reviewer (unknown) described them as taking "three chord rock back to its one and a half chord basics". A non-fan friend-of-a-friend who went to a concert commented later that she "couldn't understand why they kept calling out 1-2-3-4 in the middle of the songs"!
After playing for several nights at CBGB, they were signed by Sire Records in autumn 1975 and recorded their debut album Ramones for about $6000.
They appeared at The Roundhouse in London, England, on July 4, 1976, second billed to the Beatlesque Flamin' Groovies. Their appearance galvanized the UK punk rock scene, inspiring future punk stars including members of The Clash and The Sex Pistols. Another Ramones gig in England became their first live album, It's Alive, considered by most critics one of the best live albums ever.
After two years on the road and the Top 50 hit album Rocket to Russia, an exhausted Tommy Ramone was replaced on drums by Marc Bell, who became Marky Ramone. Tommy left the band to go back to his studio work, which he preferred to the hard life of touring. Tommy worked with Marky to ensure that his drumming was appropriate for the Ramones style; he also produced the Ramones fourth studio album Road to Ruin and their eighth Too Tough To Die. It was the lineup with Marky which played a central role in the 1979 film Rock 'n' Roll High School, a film that Roger Corman originally called Disco High until writer/director Allan Arkush heard the Ramones.
After Rock 'n' Roll High School, legendary producer Phil Spector became interested in the band and produced End of the Century. During the recording sessions for End of the Century, Spector reportedly pulled a gun on Dee Dee Ramone.
Marky Ramone was fired because of his alcoholism and eventually replaced by Richard Beau (under the name Richie Ramone). They recorded several albums with Richie Ramone who was then replaced by Clem Burke (a.k.a. Elvis Ramone) from Blondie. Burke lasted two weeks in the band before Marky came back in 1990.
Dee Dee Ramone left after 1989's Brain Drain, and was replaced by Christopher John Ward (C.J. Ramone), a Ramones fan that gave a younger rock feeling to the Ramones' work.
After a spot in the 1996 Lollapalooza festival, The Ramones disbanded, reportedly due to ongoing personality clashes and frustration at not achieving success commensurate with their influence. Joey and Johnny didn't speak to each other for years. Joey was also reported to have drug problems.
Their last show is recorded on video and CD and featured several special guests such as Lemmy Kilmister from Motörhead and Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam.
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Influence
The Ramones have proven hugely influential, mostly on later musicians, but in other fields as well: In 1997 four species of trilobites were named after members of the band: Mackenziurus johnnyi, Mackenziurus joeyi, Mackenziurus deedeei, and Mackenziurus ceejayi.
While the origins of punk rock are the subject of debate, The Ramones are widely credited with popularizing the form. Several people often state that, when they first heard the Ramones, they felt that they could do the same, deciding to play instruments and form their own groups. The Ramones' first British tour is widely credited with inspiring the first wave of English punk groups: The Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash and others.
Some bands are so taken by The Ramones as a whole that a subgenre dubbed "Ramones-punk" has appeared. These bands often dress up like the Ramones, and play instruments like theirs. The music is generally a little faster and heavier on the guitars with (often) tongue in cheek lyrics about girls and similar fare. Notable bands include Screeching Weasel and The Queers, both of whom recorded entire Ramones cover albums.
Longtime Ramones fan Henry Rollins appeared at a Ramones Thirtieth Anniversary Tribute concert September 12, 2004. The event was at Los Angeles' Avalon and hosted by Rob Zombie. The performers demonstrate the breadth of the Ramones' influence: "The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Dickies and X played great sets and then CJ Ramone, Marky Ramone and long time producer Daniel Ray took the stage and played while different guitar and vocal teams came out and did Ramones songs. Tim Armstrong, Danny Bosstone, Brett Bad Religion, Eddie Vedder--everybody sang and played great. I went onstage with Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols and we did Judy is a Punk, Commando and Blitzkrieg Bop."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ramones

The Beatles

2004-12-20T13:08:00.000-08:00

McCartney met Lennon at a garden fete in the late 1950s, and joined his band, The Quarrymen, into which McCartney also recruited Harrison. The band briefly split before regrouping. After going through several changes in name and band members, it finally became the Beatles under the EMI's Parlophone label. The Beatles' first full-length album, Please Please Me, was recorded within 12 consecutive hours. In 1964 they held the top five places on Billboard's Top Pop Singles Chart, a feat which has never been repeated.
In 1965 they were instated as Members of the Order of the British Empire, but also began experimenting with LSD. Lennon caused a great backlash against the Beatles the following year when in an interview he claimed that Christianity was dying and he lamented that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus." Eventually he apologised, after being slammed by many religious groups, including the Holy See, having Beatles' records banned or burned across the American South, and receiving threats from groups such as the KKK.
The Beatles performed their last concert in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, on August 29, 1966. They then concentrated on recording and their compositions and musical experiments raised their artistic reputations remarkably while still being tremendously popular. However, their financial fortunes took a turn for the worse when their manager, Brian Epstein, passed away on August 27, 1967, and the band's affairs began to unravel. The various members began to pursue their individual interests and got together less often. In 1969 they recorded their last album, Abbey Road (although in 1970 various songs recorded earlier were compiled into Let It Be). In the same year, the Paul Is Dead hoax sprang up. The band officially broke up in 1970, and any hopes of a reunion were crushed when Lennon was murdered in 1980. However, a virtual reunion was done in 1995 with the release of two original Lennon recordings which had the additional contributions of the remaining Beatles mixed in to create two hit singles, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love". Three albums of unreleased material and studio outtakes were also released, as well as a documentary and television miniseries, in a project known as the Beatles Anthology
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Studio style evolution

Bassist Paul McCartney was primarily known for ballads such as "Yesterday", although he also composed rockers such as "Helter Skelter".
The role of producer George Martin was one of the crucial elements in the success of the Beatles. He used his experience to bring out the potential in the group, where a lesser producer would have imposed his views and inhibited the creativity he recognised and nurtured. His earlier experience of producing recordings by acts ranging from Jimmy Shand to the Goons prepared him for the open-minded, experimental approach to the studio which the group began to develop as they became more experienced. Martin's connection with the Goons had been impressive to the group, who were fans.
At the height of their fame in the mid-sixties, bolstered by the two films Help! and A Hard Day's Night, the band discontinued touring. The difficulty of performing to thousands of screaming fans who typically made so much noise that the music could not be heard had led to the disillusion with touring, and the group retired from live performance in 1966, to concentrate on making records. Their demands to create new sounds with every recording, the influence of psychedelic drugs and the studio techniques of recording engineer Geoff Emerick resulted in the albums Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), still widely regarded as classics. Particularly notable, along with the use of studio tricks such as sound processing, unconventional microphone placements, and vari-speed recording, was the Beatles' use of unconventional instruments for pop music, including string and brass elements, Indian instruments like the sitar, tape loops and early electronic instruments.
The group were increasingly taking charge of their own production, and Paul McCartney's increasing dominance in this role played its part in the tensions that eventually split the group.
The stress of their fame was beginning to tell and the band was on the verge of splitting at the time of the release of The Beatles ("The White Album"), with some tracks recorded by the band members individually, and Starr taking a two-week holiday — sometimes reported as a temporary break-up — in the middle of the recording session. By 1970, the band had split, with each of the members going on to solo careers with varying degrees of success.
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In the movies

Lead Guitarist George Harrison truly emerged as a composer in his own right on Abbey Road, the Beatles' last album to be produced.
The Beatles also had a limited film career, beginning with A Hard Day's Night (1964). It was a comic farce (often compared to the Marx Brothers) directed in a black-and-white documentary style by the up-and-coming Richard Lester, then known for directing the television version of the Goon Show. In 1965 came Help!, a Technicolor extravaganza shot in exotic locations in the style of a James Bond spoof. The Magical Mystery Tour (the concept of which was adapted from Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters LSD-oriented bus tour of the USA), was critically slammed when it aired on British television in 1967, but is now considered a cult classic.
The animated Yellow Submarine followed shortly after, but had little input from the Beatles themselves, save for a live-action epilogue at the film's conclusion, and the contribution of four new songs for the film, including a holdover from the Sgt. Pepper sessions, "Only A Northern Song". Nonetheless, it was acclaimed for its boldly innovative graphic style and clever humour as well as the soundtrack.
Finally, the documentary of a band in terminal decline, Let It Be was shot over an extended period in 1969; the music from this formed the album of the same name, which although recorded before Abbey Road (album), was (after much contractual to-ing and fro-ing and significant tinkering by producer Phil Spector) their final release.
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Achievements

Drummer Ringo Starr did not compose many songs on his own. However, he customarily sang one song on each Beatles album.
Throughout their relatively short time recording and performing together, the Beatles set a number of world records — most of which have yet to be broken. The following is a partial list.
The Beatles are the best-selling musical group of all time, estimated by EMI to be over one billion discs and tapes sold worldwide.
The Beatles have notched up the most multi-platinum selling albums for any artist or musical group (13 in the U.S. alone).
The Beatles have had more number one singles than any other musical group (23 in Australia, 23 in The Netherlands, 22 in Canada, 21 in Norway, 20 in the U.S., and 18 in Sweden). Ironically, the Beatles could easily have had even more number ones, because they were often competing with their own singles. For example, the Beatles' "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" were released as a "double A"-sided single, which caused sales and airplay to be divided between the two songs instead of being counted collectively. Even so, they reached number two with the singles.
The Beatles have had more number one albums than any other group (19 in the U.S. and 15 in the U.K.).
The Beatles spent the highest number of weeks at number one in the albums chart (174 in the U.K. and 132 in the U.S.).
The most successful first week of sales for a double album (The Beatles Anthology Volume 1, which sold 855,473 copies in the U.S. from November 21 to November 28, 1995).
In terms of charting positions, Lennon and McCartney are the most successful songwriters in history, with 32 number one singles in the U.S. for McCartney, and 26 for Lennon (23 of which were written together). Lennon was responsible for 29 Number One singles in the U.K., and McCartney was responsible for 28 (25 of which were written together).
During the week of April 4, 1964, The Beatles held the top five positions on the Billboard singles chart. No one had ever done anything like this before, and it is doubtful that the conditions will ever exist for anyone to do it again. The songs were "Can't Buy Me Love", "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and "Please Please Me".
The next week, April 11, 1964, the Beatles held 14 positions on the Billboard Hot 100. Before the Beatles, the highest number of concurrent singles by one artist on the Hot 100 was nine (by Elvis Presley, December 19, 1956).
The Beatles are the only artist to have back-to-back-to-back number one singles on Billboard's Hot 100. Boyz II Men and Elvis Presley have succeeded themselves on the chart, but the Beatles are the only artist to three-peat.
The Beatles' "Yesterday" is the most covered song in history, appearing in the Guinness Book of Records with over 3000 recorded versions.

The Beatles even had their own stamp commissioned, featuring a tribute to Yellow Submarine.
The Beatles had the fastest selling single of all time with "I Want To Hold Your Hand". The song sold 250,000 units within three days in the U.S., one million in 2 weeks. (Additionally, it sold 10,000 copies per hour in New York City alone for the first 20 days.)
The Beatles have the fastest selling CD of all time with 1. It sold over 13 million copies in four weeks.
The largest number of advance orders for a single, at 2.1 million copies in the U.S. for "Can't Buy Me Love" (it sold 940,225 copies on its first day of release in the U.S. alone).
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the best selling album of all time in the U.K. (over 4.5 million copies sold).
With their performance at Shea Stadium in 1965, The Beatles set new world records for concert attendance (55,600+) and revenue.
The Beatles broke television ratings records in the U.S. with their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
On June 12, 1965, the Beatles were awarded the order of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by the Queen.
On June 30, 1966, the Beatles became the first musical group to perform at the Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo. They performed five times in three days gathering audiences of about 10,000 per performance.
The Beatles appear five times in the top 100 best-selling singles in the UK. No other group appears more than twice.
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The music
Unlike their contemporaries the Rolling Stones, the Beatles were seldom directly influenced by blues. Though they drew inspiration from an eclectic variety of sources, their home idiom was closer to pop music. Their distinctive vocal harmonies were influenced by early Motown artists in the US. Chuck Berry was perhaps the most fundamental progenitor of the Beatles' sound; the Beatles covered "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Rock And Roll Music" early in their careers on record (with most other Berry classics heard in their live repertoire). Chuck Berry's influence is also heard, in an altered form, in later songs such as "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me And My Monkey" (1968) and "Come Together" (1969). (After "Come Together" was released, Chuck Berry successfully sued John Lennon for copyright infringement of his song "You Can't Catch Me".)
The Beatles were fond of Little Richard, and some of their songs — especially their early work — featured falsetto calls very similar to those Little Richard offered as punctuation in his own songs.
A significant and acknowledged musical influence was the Beach Boys, who were in turn spurred on by the work of the Beatles. Brian Wilson acknowledges that Rubber Soul challenged him to make Pet Sounds, the album which in turn inspired McCartney's vision of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Another example is the song "Back in the USSR", which contains an overt allusion to the Beach Boys' "California Girls".
The Everly Brothers were another major influence on the Beatles, with Lennon and McCartney consciously trying to copy Don and Phil Everly's distinctive two-part harmonies.
The song-writing of Gerry Goffin and Carole King was yet another influence upon the Beatles, and it could be said that one of the Beatles' many achievements was to marry the relative sophistication of Goffin and King's songs (which used major-seventh chords, for example) with the simplicity of Buddy Holly, Berry and the early rock-and-roll performers. Lennon and McCartney's songwriting partnership had initially been inspired by Goffin and King; Lennon and McCartney's goal when they started was to become the next Goffin and King.
Individually, the four Beatles drew further inspiration from different sources. John Lennon's early style owed a huge debt to Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison ("Misery" from 1963 and "Please Please Me" from 1963). After becoming acquainted with the work of Bob Dylan, Lennon became influenced heavily by folk music ("You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" and "Norwegian Wood" from 1965). Lennon played the major role in steering the group toward psychedelia ("Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am the Walrus" from 1967), and renewed his interest in earlier rock forms at the close of the Beatles' career ("Don't Let Me Down" from 1969).
Paul McCartney is perhaps best known as the group's romantic balladeer: beginning with "Yesterday" (1965), he pioneered a modern form of art song, exemplified by "Eleanor Rigby" (1966) and "She's Leaving Home" (1967). Meanwhile, McCartney maintained an affection for the driving R&B of Little Richard in a series of songs which John Lennon dubbed "potboilers", from "I Saw Her Standing There" (1963) to "Lady Madonna" (1968). "Helter Skelter" (1968) — arguably an early heavy metal song — is a McCartney composition.

Originally, The Beatles' work focused around themes of optimistic, giddy, love akin to that of a boy who had just fallen in love, as typified by their performances of songs on The Ed Sullivan Show, such as "All My Loving", "She Loves You" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand".
George Harrison derived his early guitar style from 1950s rockabilly greats such as Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore (who worked with Elvis Presley), and Duane Eddy. "All My Loving" (1963) and "She's A Woman" (1964) are prime examples of Harrison's early rockabilly guitar work.
In 1965, George Harrison broke new ground in the West by recording with an Indian sitar on "Norwegian Wood". A result of his long and continued collaboration with Sri Ravi Shankar, a famous Hindustani musician, many of his following compositions were based on Hindustani forms, most notably "Love You To" (1966), "Within You, Without You" (1967), and "The Inner Light" (1968). Indian music and culture also influenced the band as a whole, with the use of swirling tape loops, droning bass lines, and mantra-like vocals on "Tomorrow Never Knows" (1966) and "Dear Prudence" (1968). Harrison retained Western musical forms in his later compositions, where he emerged as a significant pop composer in his own right, occasionally reprising major themes that indicated his new relationship with Hindustani music and the Hindu god Krishna. His later guitar style, while not displaying the virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, became distinctive with its use of clear melodic lines and subtle fills ("Something" [1969], "Let It Be" [1970]) in contrast to the increasingly distorted riffs and rapid-fire guitar solo work of his contemporaries.
Ringo Starr's contributions to The Beatles' sound are less known compared to the other Beatles, as Starr himself rarely actually wrote songs. While he is mostly appreciated for his gentle comic baritone ("Yellow Submarine" 1966, "Octopus's Garden" 1969), steady drumming, and everyman image, he was likely responsible for the group's occasional interest in surprisingly authentic country sounds ("What Goes On" 1965; "Don't Pass Me By" 1968) and his own performance on Buck Owens' "Act Naturally".
In the Beatles' later music, the pace of the songs tends to be moderate, with more of the interest usually (but not always) coming from the melody and the orchestration than the rhythm. "Penny Lane" (1967) is a good example of this style. Their earlier songs were often a bit faster paced. Throughout their career, their songs were rarely riff-driven. "Day Tripper" (1965) and "Hey Bulldog" (1969) are among the exceptions.
There was an abrupt change in direction due to The Beatles' decision to stop touring in 1966. Reportedly stung by criticism of "Paperback Writer", The Beatles poured their creative energies into the recording studio in a determined attempt to produce material they could be proud of. There had already been a clear trend towards progressively greater complexity both in technique and style, but this now accelerated noticeably, as was evident on "Revolver". The subject matter of the post-touring songs was no longer you, I, love, boy meets girl, etc., and this took them very far from the days in 1963 when their material had shown some similarity with, say, the work of The Hollies. Now all manner of subjects were introduced, from home repair and circuses to nonsense songs and others that defied description.
The extreme complication evident on Sgt. Pepper's reached its height on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album. Parts of this, specifically "It's All Too Much" and "Only A Northern Song", were left over from 1967 and ended up being used only on Yellow Submarine in January 1969 apparently because The Beatles themselves weren't much interested in this as a project and didn't feel inclined to greatly exert themselves producing a lot of new material for it.
After the Revolver/Sgt. Pepper's phase, the creative surge seemed to exhaust itself, and their self-titled album, largely written in India, reverted to a much simpler style and sometimes to simpler subjects (for example "Birthday"). Some of it (for example "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" and "Wild Honey Pie") were far less complex than much of their material from just a year or two before, and in 1969, the band began to disintegrate during sessions for the abortive Get Back project (which eventually emerged in 1970, much altered, as Let It Be) which had been intended to be a return to more basic songs, avoiding massive editing or otherwise artificial influences on the final output (ironically Let It Be was heavily overdubbed and edited by producer Phil Spector's wall of sound technique). Not wanting to leave things like that, the last album The Beatles recorded, Abbey Road, represented a mature attempt to integrate what they knew, and use recording studio techniques only to improve the songs, rather than to experiment to see what happened. It represented one final effort, as McCartney once put it, to "leave 'em laughing".
Beatle music is still performed in public by tribute bands such as the Bootleg Beatles, and shows like Beatlemania!. They are also the basis for Eric Idle's parody band, The Rutles (1978).

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_beatles

AC/DC is #1

2004-12-20T13:06:00.000-08:00

Born in Scotland, the brothers Angus and Malcolm Young moved with their family to Australia as children. Malcolm began playing guitar first, soon followed by Angus. Malcolm first played with a Newcastle, NSW band called "The Velvet Underground" (not the Lou Reed group).
Their older brother George had been a member of Australia's most successful Sixties band The Easybeats, who were the first local pop act to score an overseas hit ("Friday On My Mind") in 1967. After Young and his Easybeats partner Harry Vanda returned to Australia in late 1973, they became the house producers for the newly-formed Albert Productions record label, whose owner, Ted Albert (a scion of the venerable Albert & Sons music publishing family) had been the Easybeats' producer between 1965 and 1967.
Young asked the boys to do some session work for a project he was doing. Angus then formed a band called Tantrum. After The Velvet Underground, Malcolm decided to form a more pure rock and roll band, and enlisted Angus and they were soon signed to the new Albert label, and Vanda & Young produced their first seven LPs.
The early lineups changed often, but the 1974 enlistment of charismatic singer Ronald "Bon" Scott as their driving frontman signified the beginning of real success. Another vital innovation was Angus Young's adoption of his now-famous school uniform as a regular stage outfit; the original was reputedly Angus' real uniform from his secondary school, Ashfield Boys' High, in Sydney.
Between 1974 and 1978, aided by regular appearances on the nationally-broadcast TV pop show Countdown, AC/DC became one of the most popular and successful acts in Australia, scoring a string of hits albums and singles including their perennial 1975 rock anthem "It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock and Roll)."
Relocating to London in the late 1970s, they worked all over the UK and Europe to establish themselves, touring almost constantly and gaining invaluable experience on the stadium circuit supporting the top hard-rock acts of the day including Alice Cooper, Rush, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Boston, Black Sabbath, Cheap Trick, Heart, The Scorpions, Molly Hatchet, Ronnie Montrose, Nazareth, UFO, Journey, Foreigner, Van Halen, Styx, Blue Öyster Cult, Alvin Lee, Rainbow, Savoy Brown, REO Speedwagon, The Doobie Brothers, Thin Lizzy and The Who.
Rhtythm Guitarist Malcolm Young once recalled in AC/DC's VH1 Behind the Music Series an incident from an England tour with Black Sabbath. Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath's Bassist), in a drunken rage, pulled a knife on Malcolm. The incident was quickly resolved without conflict, and the conjoined tour promptly ended. Ozzy and Bon stayed in contact however.
They survived the punk rock upheavals of 1976-78, partly because they were (erroneously) tagged as a "punk" band by the British music press. They gained a solid cult following in the UK with their powerful performances and outrageous stage antics; Angus Young quickly became notorious for "mooning" (i.e. showing his buttocks) to the audience and the group was banned from several British venues because of this. Their meaty hard-rock sound and Bon Scott's provocative, leering stage persona are also reputed to have been significant influences on Johnny Rotten and The Sex Pistols. The band were also a pivitol influence to the then emerging "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" scene, with artists such as Def Leppard and Saxon clearly displaying simililarities to the trademark sound of AC/DC.
In 1980, Angus and Malcolm began working on the music and guitar riffs for their forthcoming new album when after a night of hard drinking, Bon Scott was found in the back seat of his friend's car. He died from both choking on his own vomit and hypothermia (Ozzy Osbourne would later write and record a song about Scott's death, the widely misinterpreted "Suicide Solution"). Shortly after, the band brought in a new lead singer, Brian Johnson, formerly of the band Geordie, completed the song writing and began recording "Back In Black". This became their biggest-selling album to date, a hard-rock landmark that would ultimately be named in tribute to Bon.
Over the next eight years, the Young brothers and Johnson wrote nearly all of their songs, but in 1990, with Brian Johnson committed eleswhere, it was left to the Young brothers to carry on the creation of the group's music, while Johnson assumed all the vocals, lead and background, a feat unable to be duplicated in the band's live concerts (in the same manner Freddie Mercury's overdubbed vocal style could never have been duplicated when he and his band Queen toured live).
In 2002, Q magazine named AC/DC as one of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die".
In 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America upgraded the group's U.S. sales figures, increasing their cumulative sales from 46.5 million to 63 million, making AC/DC the fifth-best-selling band in U.S. music history, behind The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and The Eagles.
In March 2003 the walls at New York’s historic Waldorf Astoria hotel shook as AC/DC performed Highway To Hell during part of their induction to the American Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame. Along side Malcolm, Angus, Phil, Cliff and Brian were two of Bon Scott’s nephews and in a brief acceptance the band again thanked the fans for their support.
On July 30, 2003, the band performed an amazing performance at Sarsfest – Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with The Rolling Stones before an audience of 500,000 to help the city overcome the effects of the 2003 SARS epidemic.
2003 also saw the Recording Industry Association of America certify the classic "Back In Black" album as Double Diamond (20,000,000) sales in the US

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC/DC