James Douglas "Jim" Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) was an American singer, lyricist, poet, and amateur filmmaker. He was best known as the lead singer and lyricist of The Doors and is widely considered to be one of the most charismatic frontmen in rock music history.
He was also the author of several books of poetry and the director of a documentary and short film. Although Morrison was known for his baritone vocals, many fans, scholars, and journalists have discussed his theatrical stage persona, his self-destructiveness, and his work as a poet.
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The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California. Throughout its existence, the group consisted of vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger. The band took its name from Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception, the title of which was a reference to a William Blake quote: "When the doors of perception are cleansed, things will appear to man as they truly are...infinite." They were among the most controversial rock acts of the 1960s, due mostly to Morrison's wild, poetic lyrics and charismatic but unpredictable stage persona. After Morrison's death in 1971, the remaining members continued as a trio until finally disbanding in 1973.
Although The Doors' active career ended in 1973, their popularity has persisted. According to the RIAA, they have sold over 32.5 million albums in the US alone.
The band has sold 80 to 100 million albums worldwide. Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger still tour sometimes, with additional musicians, as Manzarek-Krieger, performing Doors songs exclusively.
[Pink Floyd - Nick Mason, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Rick Wright]
[George] Roger Waters (September 6, 1943, Great Bookham, Surrey near Leatherhead, UK) is an English rock musician; singer, bassist, guitarist, songwriter, and composer. He is best known for his 1965–1985 career with the band Pink Floyd; he was credited as their main songwriter (after the departure of Syd Barrett), bass player and one of their lead vocalists (along with David Gilmour and, to a lesser extent, Richard "Rick" Wright). He was also the lyrical mastermind behind many of the band's concept albums, especially The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall, and The Final Cut, as well as being the originator of much of the band's well-known symbolism, such as the Pink Floyd pigs.
Waters grew up in Cambridge. Although his father Eric Fletcher Waters had been a Communist and ardent pacifist, he fought in World War II and died in action at Anzio in 1944, when Waters was only five months old. Waters would refer or allude to the loss of his father throughout his work,
Distrust of authority, particularly government, educational, religious and military institutions, is a recurring theme in Waters' writing
Syd Barrett and Waters attended the Morley Memorial Junior School on Hills Road, Cambridge, and later the Cambridge County School for Boys (now Hills Road Sixth Form College), while fellow band member David Gilmour attended The Perse School on the same road.
He met Nick Mason and Rick Wright while attending the Regent Street Polytechnic school of architecture.
In 1965, Roger Waters co-founded Pink Floyd (after many different incarnations) along with Syd Barrett, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason. Although Barrett initially did most of the songwriting for the band, Waters wrote the song Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk on their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967) a critical success.
Barrett's deteriorating mental health led to increasingly erratic behaviour, rendering him unable to continue in his capacity as Pink Floyd's lead singer and guitarist. Waters attempted to coerce his friend into psychiatric treatment; this proved unhelpful, and the band approached David Gilmour to replace Barrett at the end of 1967. Even the band's former managers felt that Pink Floyd would not be able to sustain its initial success without the talented Barrett. Filling the void left by Barrett's departure, Waters began to chart Pink Floyd's new artistic direction.
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A Saucerful of Secrets (1968) Let There Be More Light Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun Corporal Clegg
Ummagumma (1969) Grantchester Meadows Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict
Atom Heart Mother (1970) If
Meddle (1971) San Tropez
Obscured by Clouds (1972) Free Four
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Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
Breath
On the Run
Time (David Gilmour, lyrics by Waters)
Great Gig in the Sky
Money
Us and Them (Rick Wright, David Gilmour, lyrics by Waters)
Any Color You Like
Brain Damage
[Harmonically, D: I IV7 I V II2 (V of V) V7 I VI bVII]
Eclipse
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Wish You Were Here (1975)
Shine on You Crazy Diamond I-V (David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Rick Wright)
I
II
III
IV
V
Have a Cigar
Welcome to the Machine
Wish You Were Here (David Gilmour, lyrics by Waters)
Shine on You Crazy Diamond VI-IX
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Shine On You Crazy Diamond is a nine-part Pink Floyd composition with lyrics written by Roger Waters, in tribute to former band member Syd Barrett, and music written by Waters, Richard Wright, and David Gilmour. It was first performed on their 1974 French tour. It was recorded for the 1975 concept album Wish You Were Here. The piece was intended to be a side-long composition like Atom Heart Mother and Echoes but the music grew longer than a single side of vinyl would allow. It was split into two parts and used to bookend the album.
According to David Gilmour and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, on the Wish You Were Here episode of In the Studio with Redbeard, the band recorded a satisfactory take of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, but because of a new mixing console which was installed at Abbey Road, excessive echo from the other instruments all over the drums caused the band to re-record it.
"We originally did the backing track over the course of several days, but we came to the conclusion that it just wasn't good enough. So we did it again in one day flat and got it a lot better. Unfortunately nobody understood the desk properly and when we played it back we found that someone had switched the echo returns from monitors to tracks one and two. That affected the tom-toms and guitars and keyboards which were playing along at the time. There was no way of saving it, so we just had to do it yet again."
—David Gilmour, An Interview with David Gilmour by Gary Cooper
"With the invention of 16-track and 2-inch tape there was the belief for quite a while that there would be something wrong with editing tape that big. Consequently whenever we played these pieces, they had to be played from beginning to end. Particularly for Roger (Waters) and myself being the rhythm section, which would be laid down first, this was [chuckling] a fairly tough business because the whole thing had to be sort of right."
—Nick Mason, In the Studio with Redbeard
In another incident, a heavyset man with a completely shaved head and eyebrows wandered into the studio while the band was recording Shine On You Crazy Diamond, although Nick Mason has since stated that he's not entirely certain whether this was the particular song being recorded when the man was in the studio. The band could not recognize him for some time, when suddenly one of them realised it was Syd Barrett. At that time, Barrett had gained a lot of weight and had shaved off all of his hair, including his eyebrows, and the five-year gap meant that it took some time for his ex-band mates to identify him.
When they eventually recognized Barrett, Waters was so distressed he was reduced to tears.
Someone asked to play the song again and Barrett said a second playback wasn't needed when they'd just heard it. Apparently, when Wish You Were Here was played, "[Barrett] stood up and said, 'Right, when do I put my guitar on?'" keyboardist Rick Wright recalled. "And of course, he didn't have a guitar with him. And we said, 'Sorry, Syd, the guitar's all done.'"
When asked what he thought of Wish You Were Here, Barrett said it sounded a "bit old." He subsequently slipped away during the party for Gilmour's wedding (which was, coincidentally, also on that day.)
It was the last time any of the other band members saw him.
Gilmour confirmed this story, although he could not recall which song they were working on when Syd showed up.[
Part I (Wright, Waters, Gilmour; from :00 – 2:09) begins with the fading-in of a dense G-minor synthesizer pad created with EMS VCS 3, an ARP Solina, a Hammond organ and the sound of wet fingers running around the rims of wine glasses filled with various amounts of water (recycled from an earlier project known as Household Objects). This is followed by plaintive Minimoog passages.
Part II (Gilmour, Waters, Wright; from 2:10 – 3:54) begins a lengthy guitar solo played by David Gilmour on a Fender Stratocaster (neck pickup) using a heavily compressed sound and reverb. The harmony changes from G minor to D minor at 2:29, then to C minor, and back to G minor. This is repeated again, and the part ends with the synth pad fading into the background.
Part III (Waters, Gilmour, Wright; from 3:55 – 6:27) begins with a four-note motive (B-flat, F, G (a minor third below the B-flat), E) repeated throughout much of the entire section. This theme leads the harmony to C major (in comparison to the use of C minor in Parts I and II), and this is because the last note is E (and not E-flat). This part includes a second solo by Gilmour. Nick Mason starts his drumming after the fourth run-through of the four-note motive (sometimes referred to as Syd's Theme), which is the point where strong rhythms are established.
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The Syd motive can be solfeged as
G: Me Te Do La, a poignant, striking motive ending on the sensitive Dorian 6th degree, after minutes of an ambiguous hexatonic dorian/minor opening (the pitch collection being do re me fa sol te do)
Harmonically, the opening 11 12/8 bars (n.b. the published sheet music gives each measure as four bars of 3/4) are --
G: Gm7 Edim/G C F Gm Gm7 Edim/G Gm7 Eb D
i vio6 IV bVII i i7 vio6 i7 bVI V
-- with evocations of G dorian, and G natural- and harmonic- minor.
The Gm7 to C could be re-perceived as C: v7 I, and the return to Gm is via a dorian major plagal cadence IV I, interrupted by the dominant substitution of bVII I.
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Part IV (Gilmour, Wright, Waters; from 6:28 – 8:42) begins with a Minimoog synthesizer solo by Richard Wright. This part includes a third Gilmour guitar solo which is bluesy in tone.
Part V (Waters, from 8:43 – 13:30) Roger Waters is on lead vocals, with David Gilmour, Richard Wright and female backing vocalists on harmonies. This is followed by two guitars repeating a riff for about a minute. A baritone saxophone overlays the sounds, played by Dick Parry. It ends as the saxophone changes from a baritone saxophone to a tenor saxophone. After, a time signature switch from 12/8 to 4/4 (with a swing feel) gives the appearance that the tempo speeds up and eventually drops the guitar and opens to a tenor saxophone solo accompanied by an ARP string synthesizer keyboard sound and an arpeggio guitar riff that fades into the background. A machine-like hum fades in and segues into Welcome to the Machine.
Part VI (Wright, Waters, Gilmour; from :00 – 4:55) begins with a howling wind from the preceding song Wish You Were Here. As the wind fades away, David Gilmour comes in on the bass guitar. Roger Waters adds another bass guitar with a continuing riff pattern. Then Rick Wright comes in playing an ARP String Ensemble Synthesizer and after a few measures, several rhythm guitar parts. At the two-minute mark, Wright's Mini-Moog and Gilmour's lap steel guitar play notes in unison before Gilmour does a lap steel guitar solo (the lap steel had open E minor tuning) with some counterpointing from Wright's synthesizers. It lasts for about 3 minutes and Gilmour in each section played an octave higher than the previous. The highest note he hit on the lap steel/slide solo was a B flat almost three octaves above middle C followed by a reprise of the guitar solo from part IV (which was played by Snowy White in live performances on Pink Floyd's 1977 tour so David Gilmour could switch from lap steel guitar back to his Fender Stratocaster). The song then switches from 12/8 back to the 6/4 time signature found in parts II-V, giving the appearance of a slowed tempo and the vocals return.
Part VII (Waters, Gilmour, Wright; from 4:56 - 5:59) contains the vocal sections, almost identical to part IV (though half the length) before beginning the segue into part VIII.
Part VIII (Gilmour, Wright, Waters; from 6:00 – 8:59) brings in Roger Waters to play a second electric guitar for a high noted sound riff while Gilmour plays the arpeggio riff that bridges parts 7 to 8. A solid progression of beats in 4/4 plays for about 2 minutes before very slowly fading into the background as a continuous single keyboard note fades in around the 9 minute mark.
Part IX (Wright, from 9:00 – 12:22) is played in 4/4 time. David Gilmour in an interview described Part IX as "a slow 4/4 funeral march... the parting musical eulogy to Syd." The drums play for half of this part, and the keyboard plays for the final minute of the song before fading out. On the fade out, a short part of the melody of See Emily Play (at 12:07), one of Syd Barrett's signature Pink Floyd songs, can be heard. Part IX ends on a Picardy third.
Music — David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Rick Wright Lyrics — Roger Waters Roger Waters — bass, lead vocals, additional electric guitar on Part 8 David Gilmour — Fender Stratocaster, backing vocals, lap steel guitar on Part 6, EMS Synthi AKS Richard Wright — Hammond organ, ARP String Ensemble, Mini-Moog Synthesizers, clavinet on Part 8, Fender Rhodes on Part 8, Steinway piano on Part 3 and 9, backing vocals Nick Mason — drums, percussion Dick Parry — baritone and tenor saxophones Carlena Williams — backing vocals Venetta Fields — backing vocals Recorded January to July 1975 at Abbey Road Studios, London.
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Animals (1977) All tracks except track 2 (1977).
The Wall (1979) All tracks except tracks 9, 19, 22 and 25 (1979)
The Final Cut (1983)(dedicated to his father's memory)
***
The lineup with Gilmour and Waters eventually brought Pink Floyd to prominence, producing a series of albums in the 1970's that remain critically acclaimed and among best-selling records of all time.
Within Pink Floyd, Waters became the main lyrical contributor, exerting progressively more creative control over the band: he produced thematic ideas that became the impetus for concept albums such as The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, for which he wrote all of the lyrics and some of the music. After this, Waters became the primary songwriter, composing Animals and The Wall largely by himself (though continuing to collaborate with Gilmour on a few tracks).
Waters' band-mates were happy to allow him to write the band's lyrics and guide its conceptual direction while they shared the opportunity to contribute musical ideas (Gilmour described Waters as "a very good motivator and obviously a great lyricist," even at the height of the acrimony between them in 1995). Some of the band's most popular and beloved songs feature the strong synergy of Waters' sharp lyrical instincts combined with the melodic talent of Gilmour, the soft, precise drumming of Nick Mason, and atmospheric patterns of keyboardist Richard Wright (Us and Them, for instance, began as a sweetly melodic Wright keyboard instrumental and gained poignancy when Waters added plaintive antiwar lyrics).
The give-and-take relationship began to dissolve: a consequence of the band's collective ennui, according to Waters. Song-writing credits were a source of contention in these difficult years; Gilmour has noted that his contributions to tracks like Another Brick in the Wall, Part II, with its blistering guitar solo, were not always noted in the album credits. Nick Mason addresses the band in-fighting in his memoir, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd, characterizing Waters as being egomaniacal at times. It was while recording The Wall that Waters decided to fire Wright, after Wright's personal problems began to affect the album production. Wright stayed with the band as a paid session musician while Waters led the band through a complete performance of his opus on every night of the brief tour that followed (for which Gilmour acted as musical director).
In 1983, the last Waters-Gilmour-Mason collaboration, The Final Cut, was released. The sleeve notes describe it as being a piece "by Roger Waters" that was "performed by Pink Floyd" (rather than an actual Pink Floyd record). So, to many the album came across more like a Roger Waters solo album than Pink Floyd (similar to A Momentary Lapse of Reason and, to a smaller extent, The Division Bell being tagged as Gilmour solo albums). It was the lowest selling Pink Floyd album in a decade without a hit single.
Gilmour unsuccessfully tried to delay production on the album until he could author more material; Waters refused, and in 1985, he proclaimed that the band had dissolved due to irreconcilable differences. The ensuing battle between Waters and Gilmour over the latter's intention to continue to use the name Pink Floyd descended into threatened lawsuits and public bickering in the press. Waters claimed that, as the original band consisted of himself, Syd Barrett, Nick Mason and Richard Wright, Gilmour could not reasonably use the name Pink Floyd now that it was without three of its founding members.
Another of Waters' arguments was that he had written almost all of the band's lyrics and a great part of the music after Barrett's departure. However, through agreement, Gilmour and Mason won the right to use the name and a majority of the band's songs, though Waters did retain the rights to the albums The Wall (save for three of the songs that Gilmour co-wrote), Animals, and The Final Cut, as well as claiming ownership of the Pink Floyd pigs (although Gilmour neatly circumvented the latter by equipping the 1987 version of the band's pig with genitalia).
For many fans and casual listeners, the collaborative years of 1971–1979 remain the "classic" Pink Floyd years due to the albums released.
After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Waters staged a gigantic charity concert of The Wall in Berlin on July 21, 1990 to commemorate the end of the division between East and West Germany. The concert took place on Potsdamer Platz (a location which was part of the former "no-man's land" of the Berlin Wall), and featured many guests: The Band, Bryan Adams, Cyndi Lauper, Van Morrison,Sinéad O'Connor, The Hooters, The Scorpions, Marianne Faithfull, and Joni Mitchell. It was one of the biggest concerts ever staged with an attendance of over 300,000 and was watched live by over five million people worldwide. However, the initial funds raised from the concert barely covered expenses, although syndication and home-video sales allowed Waters to present his chosen charity to benefit from the event, The Leonard Cheshire Foundation, with a sizeable donation.
1992's Amused to Death, about the corrupting, desensitizing nature of television, is perhaps Waters' most critically acclaimed solo recording, with music critics comparing it to later Pink Floyd work, such as The Wall (Waters describes the record as the third in a thematically-linked trilogy, after Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall).
With Gilmour's Pink Floyd retiring after 1994, and many Floyd albums selling at the pace of Beatles records, Waters was in great demand. The tour eventually stretched across the world. Tickets were at such high demand, that the tour had to be spanned over three years. Almost every show was sold out with some venues garnering more sales than Pink Floyd shows of early touring years.
In February of 2005 , it was announced on Roger Waters' website that his opera, Ça Ira, had been completed after 16 years of work. It was released as a CD/DVD set by Sony Classical on September 27, 2005 with Baritone Bryn Terfel, soprano Ying Huang and tenor Paul Groves. The original libretto was written in French by the late Étienne Roda-Gil, who set the opera during the optimistic days of the early French Revolution. From 1997 Waters rewrote the libretto in English.
Also in 2005, Waters agreed to rejoin Pink Floyd on stage for Live 8, and on July 2, 2005, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright performed together on-stage for the first time since the June 1981 Wall concerts at Earl's Court in London. They played a six-song, 23-minute set, including Speak to Me/Breathe/Breathe (Reprise), Money, Wish You Were Here, and Comfortably Numb. Before going into Wish You Were Here, Waters said: “ It's actually quite emotional standing up here with these three guys after all these years. Standing to be counted with the rest of you. Anyway, we're doing this for everyone who's not here, but particularly, of course, for Syd. ”
Waters remarked shortly after Live 8 to the Associated Press that, while the experience of playing as Pink Floyd again was positive, the chances of a bona fide reunion would be "slight," considering his and Gilmour's continuing musical and ideological differences.
He has since stated on a radio interview that he would be interested in the possibility of recording a new album with the rest of Pink Floyd as long as he had creative control. However, David Gilmour has said on several occasions that he is retired from extensive touring, shedding more doubt on the possibility of a bona fide Pink Floyd reunion tour.
On May 20, 2006 he performed with a set band consisting of Roger Taylor and Eric Clapton and former band-member Nick Mason performing two songs, Wish You Were Here, and Comfortably Numb.
Roger Waters continued his The Dark Side of the Moon Live tour in 2008.
[Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here: Shine On You Crazy Diamond III - Excerpt with analysis and figured bass symbols]
Michael Phillip "Mick" Jagger (born July 26, 1943) is an English rock musician, actor, songwriter, record and film producer and businessman. He is best known as the lead vocalist and frontman of the rock-and-roll band The Rolling Stones.
The Rolling Stones started in the early 1960-s as a rhythm-and-blues cover band with Jagger as frontman. Beginning in 1964, Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards developed a songwriting partnership, and by the mid-1960's the group had evolved into a major rock band. Frequent conflict with the authorities (including alleged drug use and his romantic involvements) ensured that during this time Jagger was never far from the headlines, and he was often portrayed as a counterculture figure. In the late 1960's Jagger began acting in films (starting with Performance and Ned Kelly), to mixed reception.
In the 1970's, Jagger, with the rest of the Stones, became tax exiles, consolidated their global position and gained more control over their business affairs with the formation of the Rolling Stones Records label. During this time, Jagger was also known for his high-profile marriages to Bianca Jagger and later to Jerry Hall. In the 1980's Jagger released his first solo album. He was knighted in 2003. In 2006, Jagger was ranked by Hit Parader as the fifteenth greatest heavy metal singer of all time, despite not being associated with the genre.
Jagger was born into a middle class family at the Livingstone Hospital, in Dartford, Kent, England.
His father, Basil Fanshawe ("Joe") Jagger, and his paternal grandfather, David Ernest Jagger, were both teachers. His mother, Eva Ensley Mary, an Australian immigrant to England, was a hairdresser and an active member of the Conservative Party. Jagger is the elder of two sons (his brother Chris Jagger was born on 19 December 1947) and was raised to follow in his father's career path.
In the book According to the Rolling Stones, Jagger states "I was always a singer. I always sang as a child. I was one of those kids who just liked to sing. Some kids sing in choirs; others like to show off in front of the mirror. I was in the church choir and I also loved listening to singers on the radio - the BBC or Radio Luxembourg - or watching them on TV and in the movies."
From September 1950, Keith Richards and Jagger (known as "Mike" to his friends) were classmates at Wentworth Primary School in Dartford, Kent. In 1954, Jagger passed the eleven-plus, and went to Dartford Grammar School, where there is now a Mick Jagger Centre, as part of the school. Having lost contact with each other when they went to different schools, Richards and Jagger resumed their friendship in July 1960 after a chance encounter and discovered that they had both developed a love for rhythm and blues music, which began for Jagger with Little Richard.
Jagger left school in 1961. He obtained seven O-levels and three A-levels. Jagger and Richards moved into a flat in Edith Grove in Chelsea with a guitarist they had encountered named Brian Jones. While Richards and Jones were making plans to start their own rhythm and blues group, Jagger continued his business courses at the London School of Economics, and had seriously considered becoming either a journalist or a politician. Jagger had compared the latter to a pop star.
In their earliest days, the members played for no money in the interval of Alexis Korner's gigs at a basement club opposite Ealing Broadway tube station (subsequently called "Ferry's" club). At the time, the group had very little equipment and needed to borrow Alexis' gear to play. This was before Andrew Loog Oldham became their manager.
The group’s first appearance under the name The Rollin' Stones (after one of their favourite Muddy Waters tunes) was at the Marquee Club, a jazz club, on 12 July 1962. They would later change their name to “The Rolling Stones” as it seemed more formal. Victor Bockris concedes that the band members included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart on piano, Dick Taylor on bass and Tony Chapman on drums. Some time later, the band went on their first tour in the United Kingdom; this was known as the “training ground” tour because it was a new experience for all of them.
The lineup did not at that time include drummer Charlie Watts and bassist Bill Wyman. By 1963, they were finding their stride as well as popularity. By 1964, two unscientific opinion polls rated them as England's most popular group, outranking even the Beatles.
By the autumn of 1963, Jagger had left the London School of Economics in favour of his promising musical career with the Rolling Stones. The group continued to mine the works of American rhythm and blues artists such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, but with the strong encouragement of Andrew Loog Oldham, Jagger and Richards soon began to write their own songs. This core songwriting partnership would flourish in time; one of their early compositions, As Tears Go By, was a song written for Marianne Faithfull, a young singer being promoted by Loog Oldham at the time.
For the Rolling Stones, the duo would write The Last Time, the group's third number-one single in the UK (their first two UK number-one hits had been cover versions). Another of the fruits of this collaboration was their first international hit, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. It also established The Rolling Stones’ image as defiant troublemakers in contrast to The Beatles' "lovable moptop" image.
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(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction is a song by English rock band The Rolling Stones released in 1965.
It was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and produced by Andrew Loog Oldham. The number is noted for Richards's three-note guitar riff which opens and drives the song, and for the lyrics, which include references to sexual intercourse and a theme of anti-commercialism. The latter in particular caused the song to be "perceived as an attack on the status quo."
The song was first released as a single in the United States in June 1965 and also featured on the American version of Out of Our Heads, released that July. Satisfaction was a hit, giving the Stones their first number one in the United States. In Europe, the song initially played only on pirate radio stations because its lyrics were considered too sexually suggestive.
In Britain the single was released in August 1965; it became the Rolling Stones' fourth UK number one. The song is considered to be one of the all-time great rock songs.
Keith Richards states that he came up with the guitar riff for the song in his sleep, waking up in the middle of the night, recording the riff and the words "I can't get no satisfaction" on a cassette recorder and promptly falling back to sleep.
He would later describe the tape as: "two minutes of Satisfaction and 40 minutes of me snoring."
He and Jagger finished writing the song at the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, in May 1965.
Jagger wrote most of the lyrics - a statement about the rampant commercialism that the Rolling Stones had seen in America.
Richards was concerned that the riff sounded too much like Martha and the Vandellas' Dancing in the Street.
Jagger later said: "It sounded like a folk song when we first started working on it and Keith didn't like it much, he didn't want it to be a single, he didn't think it would do very well... I think Keith thought it was a bit basic. I don't think he really listened to it properly. He was too close to it and just felt it was a silly kind of riff."
Jagger has also pointed out that the title lyrics closely resemble a line from Chuck Berry's 30 Days.
The Rolling Stones first recorded the track on 10 May 1965 at Chess Studios in Chicago -- a version featuring Brian Jones on harmonica. The group re-recorded it two days later at RCA Studios in Hollywood, with a different beat and the Gibson Maestro fuzzbox adding sustain to the sound of the guitar riff.
Richards envisioned redoing the track later with a horn section playing the riff: "this was just a little sketch, because, to my mind, the fuzz tone was really there to denote what the horns would be doing."
The other Rolling Stones, as well as manager Andrew Loog Oldham and sound engineer Dave Hassinger eventually outvoted Richards and the track was selected for release as a single.
The song's success boosted sales of the Gibson fuzzbox so that the entire available stock sold out by the end of 1965.
Like most of the Stones' pre-1966 recordings, Satisfaction was originally released in mono only.
In the mid-1980's, a true stereo version of the song was released on German and Japanese editions of the CD reissue of Hot Rocks 1964-1971. The stereo mix features a piano (played by session player Jack Nitzsche) and acoustic guitar that are barely audible in the original mono release (both instruments are also audible on a bootleg recording of the instrumental track).
This stereo mix of Satisfaction also appeared on a radio-promo CD of rare stereo tracks provided to US radio stations in the mid-1980s, but has not yet been featured on a worldwide commercial CD; even later pressings of the German and Japanese Hot Rocks CDs feature the mono mix, making the earlier releases with the stereo mix collectors' items. For the worldwide 2002 reissue of Hot Rocks, an alternate quasi-stereo mix was used featuring the lead guitar, bass, drums, and vocals in the center channel and the acoustic guitar and piano "split" left and right via a delay effect.
Satisfaction was released as a single in the US by London Records on 6 June 1965, with The Under-Assistant West Coast Promotion Man as its B-side.
The single made its way through the American charts, reaching the top on July 10, displacing The Four Tops' I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch). Satisfaction held on for a full four weeks, being knocked off on 7 August by I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am from Herman's Hermits.
The song entered the Billboard Hot 100 charts in America in the week ending June 12 1965, remaining there for 14 weeks; it was #1 for four straight weeks. While in its eighth week on the American charts, the single was certified a gold record award by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for selling more than half a million copies in the United States, giving the band their first of many gold disc awards in America. Later the song was also released by London Records on Out of Our Heads in America.
According to "Joel Whitburn Presents, Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942–2004", the song also reached #19 on the Top Selling Rhythm and Blues Singles.
Satisfaction was not immediately released by Decca Records in Great Britain. Decca was already in the process of preparing a live Rolling Stones EP for release, so the new single didn't come out in Britain until 20 August, with "The Spider and the Fly" on the B-Side. The song peaked at number one for two weeks, replacing Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe", between 11 September and 25 September, before being toppled by The Walker Brothers' Make It Easy on Yourself.
Jagger has said of Satisfaction: "It was the song that really made The Rolling Stones, changed us from just another band into a huge, monster band... It has a very catchy title. It has a very catchy guitar riff. It has a great guitar sound, which was original at that time. And it captures a spirit of the times, which is very important in those kinds of songs... Which was alienation."
Richards claimed that the song's riff could be heard in half of the songs that The Rolling Stones had produced, saying that "there is only one song -- it's just the variations you come up with."
The song has become a staple at Rolling Stones shows. They have performed it on nearly every tour since its release, and concert renditions have been included on the albums Got Live if You Want It!, Still Life (American Concert 1981), Flashpoint, Live Licks, and Shine a Light.
[Sol Sol Sol La Te...]
The song opens with the guitar riff, which is joined by the bass halfway through. It is repeated three times with the drums and acoustic guitar before the vocal enters with the line: "I can't get no satisfaction". The title line is an example of a double negative resolving to a negative, a common usage in colloquial English. Jagger sings the verses in a tone hovering between cynical commentary and frustrated protest, and then leaps half singing and half yelling into the chorus, where the guitar riff reappears. The lyrics outline the singer's irritation with the increasing commercialism of the modern world, where the radio broadcasts "useless information" and a man on television tells him "how white my shirts can be - but he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me." Jagger also describes the stress of being a celebrity, and the tensions of touring. The reference in the verse to not getting any "girl reaction" was fairly controversial in its day, interpreted by some listeners (and radio programmers) as meaning a girl willing to have sex. Particularly shocking to some people was a reference to a girl having her period (being "on a losing streak").
The song closes with a fairly subdued repetition of the song's title, followed suddenly by a full shout of the line, with the final words repeated into the fade-out.
In its day the song was perceived as disturbing because of both its sexual connotations and the negative view of commercialism and other aspects of modern culture; critic Paul Gambaccini stated: "The lyrics to this were truly threatening to an older audience. This song was perceived as an attack on the status quo."
When the Rolling Stones performed the song on Shindig! in 1965, the line "trying to make some girl" was censored.
Forty years later, when the band performed three songs during the February 2006 Super Bowl XL halftime show, Satisfaction was the only one of the three songs not censored as it was broadcast.
Mick Jagger – lead vocals, backing vocals Keith Richards – electric guitars, backing vocals Brian Jones - acoustic guitar Charlie Watts – drums Bill Wyman - bass guitar Jack Nitzsche - piano, tambourine
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Jagger told Stephen Schiff in a 1992 Vanity Fair profile: "I wasn't trying to be rebellious in those days; I was just being me. I wasn't trying to push the edge of anything. I'm being me and ordinary, the guy from suburbia who sings in this band, but someone older might have thought it was just the most awful racket, the most terrible thing, and where are we going if this is music?... But all those songs we sang were pretty tame, really. People didn't think they were, but I thought they were tame."
The group released several successful albums including December's Children (And Everybody's), Aftermath, and Between the Buttons, but their reputations were catching up to them. In 1967, Jagger and Richards were arrested on drug charges and were given unusually harsh sentences: Jagger was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for possession of four over-the-counter pep pills he had purchased in Italy. On appeal, Richards' sentence was overturned and Jagger's was amended to a conditional discharge (he ended up spending one night inside Brixton Prison)after an article appeared in The Times, written by its traditionally conservative editor William (now Lord) Rees-Mogg, but the Rolling Stones continued to face legal battles for the next decade. Around the same time internal, struggles about the direction of the group had begun to surface.
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Paint It, Black is a song by The Rolling Stones, released on Friday 13 May 1966 as the first single from their fourth album Aftermath.
It was originally titled Paint It Black without a comma. Keith Richards has stated that the comma was added by the record label, Decca.
The song was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, though Brian Jones contributed to the song's signature riff. Bill Wyman claims in his books that the song was a collective effort of the group, a 'Nanker-Phelge' one, but mistakenly credited to Jagger/Richards at the end.
The single reached number one in both the United States and the United Kingdom charts in 1966.
The song began with Wyman playing organ at a recording session, in parody of the group's former co-manager Eric Easton, who had been an organist. Charlie Watts accompanied the organ by playing a vaguely Middle Eastern drum part; Watts' drum pattern became the basis for the final song. Brian Jones contributed the song's signature sitar riff (having taught himself to play after a visit with George Harrison), and Jagger contributed the lyrics, seemingly about a man mourning his dead girlfriend. Both electric and acoustic guitars and the background vocals are provided by Richards. The piano is played by Jack Nitzsche.
The bass was also overdubbed by Bill Wyman playing on the bass pedals of a Hammond B3 organ.
Mick Jagger – lead vocals Brian Jones – sitar Keith Richards – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, backing vocals Bill Wyman – bass, Hammond B3 Charlie Watts – drums Jack Nitzsche – piano
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After Brian's death and their move in 1971 to the south of France as tax exiles, Jagger and the rest of the band changed their look and style as the 1970s progressed. For the Rolling Stones' highly-publicised 1972 American tour Jagger wore glam-rock clothing and glittery makeup on stage. Later in the decade, they ventured into genres like disco and punk with the album Some Girls (1978). Their interest in the blues, however, had been made manifest in the 1972 album Exile on Main St. His emotional singing on the gospel-influenced Let It Loose, one of the album's tracks, has been described by music critic Russell Hall as having been Jagger's finest ever vocal achievement.
After the band's acrimonious split with their second manager, Allen Klein, in 1971, Jagger took control of their business affairs and has managed them ever since in collaboration with his friend and colleague, Rupert Löwenstein. Mick Taylor, Brian Jones's replacement, left the band in December 1974 and was replaced by Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood in 1975, who also operated as a mediator within the group, and between Jagger and Richards in particular.
While continuing to tour and release albums with the Rolling Stones, Jagger also began a solo career. In 1985, he released his first solo album She's the Boss produced by Nile Rodgers and Bill Laswell, featuring Herbie Hancock, Jeff Beck, Jan Hammer, Pete Townshend, and the Compass Point All Stars.
In 1987, Jagger released his second solo album, Primitive Cool. While it failed to match the commercial success of his debut, it was critically well received.
Wandering Spirit was the third solo album by Mick Jagger and was released in 1993. It would be his only solo album release of the 1990s. Jagger aimed to re-introduce himself as a solo artist in a musical climate vastly changed from what had witnessed the release of his first two projects.
Following the successful comeback of the Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels (1989), which saw the end of Jagger and Keith Richards' well-publicised feud, Jagger began routining new material for what would become Wandering Spirit. In January 1992, after acquiring Rick Rubin as co-producer, Jagger recorded the album in Los Angeles over seven months until September 1992, recording simultaneously as Richards was making Main Offender.
Released in February 1993, Wandering Spirit was commercially successful, reaching #12 in the UK and #11 in the US, going gold there.
Contemporary reviewers tend to consider Wandering Spirit a high point of Jagger's latter-day career achievements.
On 26 September 2007, Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones made $437 million on their A Bigger Bang tour, which got them into the current edition of Guinness World Records for the most lucrative music tour.
Jagger has refused to say when the band will finally retire, stating in 2007: "I'm sure the Rolling Stones will do more things and more records and more tours. We've got no plans to stop any of that really."
Jagger's relationship with band mate Keith Richards is frequently described as "love/hate" by the media.
Richards himself said in a 1998 interview: "I think of our differences as a family squabble. If I shout and scream at him, it's because no one else has the guts to do it or else they're paid not to do it. At the same time I'd hope Mick realises that I'm a friend who is just trying to bring him into line and do what needs to be done."
[Let It Be (1970) - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison]
George Harrison (1943-2001)
Within You Without You (1967)
George Harrison, MBE (February 25, 1943 - November 29, 2001) was an English rock guitarist, singer-songwriter, author, film producer, and sitarist best known as the lead guitarist for The Beatles. Following the band's breakup, Harrison had a successful career as a solo artist and later as part of the Traveling Wilburys super group. He was the first Beatle to have a number one solo album (All Things Must Pass). He also co-founded the production company Handmade Films, and in his work as a film producer, collaborated with people as diverse as Madonna and the members of Monty Python. After Harrison embraced Hinduism in the 1960's, his spiritual convictions were often evident in his music and public activities.
Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote the majority of the Beatles songs, Harrison generally wrote and sang lead on a few songs per album. His later compositions included hits such as Here Comes the Sun, Something, and While My Guitar Gently Weeps. After the band's breakup, Harrison became the first ex-Beatle to achieve a #1 single (My Sweet Lord).
Besides his talents as a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and sitarist, he was also a record producer and music innovator, and as Harrison forged his own identity and drifted away from the Beatles he became a fine songwriter, musical pioneer, and catalyst for a generation's interest in Indian culture.
Harrison was born in Liverpool, England, on 25 February 1943 to Louise and Harold Harrison, parents of a Roman Catholic family with deep roots in Ireland.
His maternal grandparents hailed from County Wexford in Ireland.
As a child, Harrison lived at 12 Arnold Grove, Wavertree, Liverpool, until 1950, when the family moved to 25 Upton Green, Speke. He first attended school at Dovedale Road Infants & Juniors School, very close to Penny Lane. There he passed his Eleven-plus examination and achieved a place at the Liverpool Institute for Boys (in the building now housing the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts), where he attended from 1954 to 1959 and where he met Paul McCartney.
He formed a skiffle group called 'The Rebels' with his brother Peter and a friend, Arthur Kelly.
In the early days of the Beatles (when the band was still called the Quarrymen), McCartney asked Harrison to join. Harrison was the youngest member of the group, initially looked upon as a kid by the others.
In actuality, he was never officially asked to join the group, but rather he hung out with the others and filled in as needed; he was soon looked upon as one of the group.
During the early years of the group's rise to local fame, Harrison's mother often cheered him on from the audience, much to the consternation of Lennon's Aunt Mimi; she complained that they could all live "lovely peaceful lives" but for Mrs. Harrison's encouragement of the group. While McCartney was termed the "cute Beatle" and Lennon considered the leader, Harrison consistently ranked a favourite of the female fans. At some concerts, the group was occasionally showered with Jelly Babies, which Harrison had said to be his favourite sweet. Unfortunately, American fans could not get hold of this soft British confection, replacing them instead with the harder jelly beans, much to the group's discomfort.
Harrison was not regarded as a virtuoso guitarist in the early days of The Beatles' recording career. Other Harrison solos were directed or modified by producer George Martin. Martin admitted years later, "I was always rather beastly to George."
In the 1970's and thereafter, his slide work became his signature sound.
Harrison turned out to be the first of the Beatles to arrive on American soil, when he visited his sister, Louise, in Benton, Illinois, in September 1963, some five months before the group appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Despite his "quiet Beatle" image, Harrison also had a slightly wild side. Once, at a bar, a photographer got on Harrison's bad side. He got too close, and Harrison proceeded to throw his drink at the offending press member.
During The Beatles' first trip to the U.S., in February 1964, Harrison received a new "360/12" model guitar from the Rickenbacker company; this was a 12-string electric but its unusual headstock design meant it looked at first glance like a 6-string. He began using the 360 extensively in the studio soon after. Roger McGuinn liked the effect Harrison achieved so much that it became his signature guitar sound with the Byrds.
Harrison wrote his first song, Don't Bother Me, during a sick day in 1963, as an exercise "to see if I could write a song," as he remembered. Don't Bother Me appeared on the second Beatles album (With the Beatles) later that year, on Meet the Beatles! in the U.S. in early 1964, and also briefly in the film A Hard Day's Night. Although he wrote a song for the Beatles for Sale album, it was not used and the group did not record another Harrison composition until 1965, when he contributed "I Need You" and "You Like Me Too Much" to the album Help!.
Harrison was the lead vocal on all The Beatles songs that he wrote by himself. He also sang lead vocal on other songs. During an American tour in 1965, his friend David Crosby of the Byrds introduced him to Indian classical music and the work of sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar.
Harrison became fascinated with the instrument, immersed himself in Indian music and played a pivotal role in popularising the sitar in particular and Indian music in general in the West.
Buying a sitar himself as The Beatles came back from a Far East tour, he became the first Western popular musician to play one on a pop record, on the Rubber Soul track Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown). He championed Shankar with Western audiences and was largely responsible for having him included on the bill at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967. After a few initial lessons with Pandit Ravi Shankar, Harrison was placed under the tutelage of Shambhu Das.
During the filming of the movie Help!, on location in the Bahamas, a Hindu devotee presented each Beatle with a book about reincarnation. Harrison's interest in Indian culture expanded to his embracing Hinduism. During a pilgrimage to Bombay, India with his wife, Harrison studied sitar, met several gurus and visited various holy places, filling the months between the end of the final Beatles tour in 1966 and the commencement of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band recording sessions.
In the summer of 1969, he produced the single Hare Krishna Mantra, performed by the devotees of the London Radha Krsna Temple. That same year, he and fellow Beatle John Lennon met A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder-acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Soon after, Harrison embraced the Hare Krishna tradition (particularly japa-yoga chanting with beads; a meditation technique similar to the Roman Catholic rosary), and he remained associated with it until his death.
When, during his lifetime, Harrison bequeathed to ISKCON his Letchmore Heath mansion (renamed Bhaktivedanta Manor) north of London some sources indicate he left nothing to the organisation, others report he did leave a sum of 20 million pounds.
Harrison formed a close friendship with Eric Clapton in the late 1960's, and they co-wrote the song Badge, which was released on Cream's Goodbye album in 1969. Someone-- variously reported as Harrison, Starr, or Clapton -- misread Harrison's handwritten "bridge" as "badge,"and this became the title. Harrison also played rhythm guitar on the song. For contractual reasons, Harrison was required to use the pseudonym "L'Angelo Misterioso," meaning "The Mysterious Angel" in Italian. Harrison's wrote one of his compositions for The Beatles' Abbey Road album, Here Comes the Sun, in Clapton's back garden. Clapton also guested on the Harrison-penned Beatles track While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Through Clapton, Harrison met Delaney Bramlett, who introduced Harrison to the slide guitar.
Harrison's songwriting improved greatly through the years, but his material did not earn respect from his fellow Beatles until near the group's breakup (McCartney told Lennon in 1969: "George's songs this year are at least as good as ours"). Harrison later said that he always had difficulty getting the band to record his songs.
Notable 1963-70 Harrison compositions include Don't Bother Me; I Need You; You Like Me Too Much; Think for Yourself; If I Needed Someone; Taxman; Love You To; I Want to Tell You; Within You Without You; Blue Jay Way; The Inner Light;
While My Guitar Gently Weeps (featuring lead guitar by Eric Clapton); Piggies (later featured inadvertently in the notorious Charles Manson murder case); Long, Long, Long; Savoy Truffle; Only a Northern Song; It's All Too Much; Old Brown Shoe; Something; Here Comes the Sun; I Me Mine; and For You Blue (about his then-wife Patti Boyd, featuring lap steel guitar by John Lennon).
He also had co-writing credit on Flying and Dig It, and had arrangement credits on Maggie Mae. Harrison gained even more Beatles credit when the Beatles Anthology albums were released. All the Beatles, including Harrison, were credited with co-writing Free as a Bird, Los Paranoias, 12-Bar Original, and Real Love. Harrison co-wrote In Spite of All the Danger with Paul McCartney, and co-wrote Cry for a Shadow with John Lennon. Also off the Anthologies solely credited to him is All Things Must Pass, Not Guilty, and You Know What to Do.
Friction among Harrison, Lennon, and McCartney increased markedly during the recording of The Beatles, as Harrison threatened to leave the group on several occasions. Between 1967 and 1969, McCartney on several occasions expressed dissatisfaction with Harrison's guitar playing.
Tensions came to a head during the filming of rehearsal sessions at Twickenham Studios for what eventually became the Let It Be documentary film. Conflicts between Harrison and McCartney appear in several scenes in the film, including one in which Harrison retorts to McCartney, "OK, well, I don't mind. I'll play whatever you want me to play or I won't play at all if you don't want me to play. Whatever it is that'll please you, I'll do it." Frustrated by ongoing slights, the poor working conditions in the cold and sterile film studio, and Lennon's creative disengagement from the group, Harrison quit the band on January 10. He returned on January 22 after negotiations with the other Beatles at two business meetings.
The group's internal relations had been more cordial (though still strained) during recordings for the album Abbey Road. The album included Something and Here Comes the Sun, probably Harrison's most popular Beatles songs. Something is considered to be one of his best works and was recorded by both Frank Sinatra (who deemed it "the greatest love song of the last 50 years") and Elvis Presley. Harrison's increasing productivity, coupled with his difficulties in getting The Beatles to record his music, meant that by the end of the group's career he had amassed a considerable stockpile of unreleased material.
When Harrison was asked years later what kind of music The Beatles might have made if they had stayed together, he answered to the point: "The solo stuff that we've done would have been on Beatle albums." Harrison's assessment is confirmed by the fact that many of the songs on their early solo albums premiered at various times during The Beatles' recording sessions but were not actually recorded by the group.
Harrison was only 26 years old at the time of The Beatles' last recording session on January 4, 1970 (Lennon, who had left the group the previous September, did not attend the session).
In 1969, Harrison commented: "I believe that if I'm going to sing songs on record, they might as well be on my own."
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Sly Stone (born Sylvester Stewart, March 15, 1943, Denton, Texas) is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, most famous for his role as frontman for Sly & the Family Stone, a band which played a critical role in the development of soul, funk and psychedelia in the 1960s and 1970s. Sly & the Family Stone was started in San Francisco, California.
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[The Yardbirds - Heart Full of Soul (1965)]
Jim McCarty (born James Stanley McCarty, 25 July 1943 in Liverpool, England) is an English musician, best known as the drummer for The Yardbirds and Renaissance.
The Yardbirds are an English rock band that had a string of hits in the mid 1960's, including For Your Love, Over Under Sideways Down, and Heart Full of Soul. The group is notable for having started the careers of three of rock's most famous guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page
A blues-based band that broadened its range into pop and rock, The Yardbirds were pioneers in the guitar innovation of the '60s: fuzz tone, feedback, distortion, backwards echo, improved amplification, etc. Pat Pemberton, writing for Spinner, holds that the Yardbirds were "the most impressive guitar band in rock music."
After the Yardbirds broke up in 1968, their current lead guitarist Jimmy Page founded what became Led Zeppelin.
The bulk of the band's most successful self-written songs came from bassist/producer Paul Samwell-Smith who, with singer/harmonica player Keith Relf, drummer Jim McCarty and rhythm guitarist/bassist Chris Dreja, constituted the core of the group. The band reformed in the 1990s, featuring McCarty, Dreja and new members. The Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.
[8943 Jagger / 8943 George Harrison / 8942 Summers]
