Name	John Lennon
Img alt	A bearded, bespectacled man in his late twenties, with long black hair and wearing a loose-fitting pajama shirt, sings and plays an acoustic guitar. White flowers are visible behind and to the right of him.
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	John Winston Lennon
Born	October 09, 1940Liverpool, England, UK
Died	December 08, 1980New York, New York, US
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, Mellotron, six-string bass, percussion
Genre	Rock, pop
Occupation	Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, artist, writer
Years active	1957–1975, 1980
Label	Parlophone, Capitol, Apple, EMI, Geffen, Polydor
Associated acts	The Quarrymen, The Beatles, Plastic Ono Band, The Dirty Mac, John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band
Notable instruments	Rickenbacker 325Epiphone CasinoGibson J-160EGibson Les Paul Junior

John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Along with fellow Beatle Paul McCartney, he formed one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.

Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved as a teenager in the skiffle craze; his first band, The Quarrymen, evolved into The Beatles in 1960. As the group disintegrated towards the end of the decade, Lennon embarked on a solo career that produced the critically acclaimed albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and iconic songs such as "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine". Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to devote time to his family, but re-emerged in 1980 with a new album, Double Fantasy. He was murdered three weeks after its release.

Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, his writing, his drawings, on film, and in interviews, and he became controversial through his political activism. He moved to New York City in 1971, where his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by Richard Nixon's administration to deport him, while his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement.

As of 2010, Lennon's solo album sales in the United States exceed 14 million units, and as writer, co-writer or performer, he is responsible for 27 number-one singles on the US Hot 100 chart. In 2002, a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted him eighth, and in 2008, Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer of all-time. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

History

1940–57: Early years

Lennon was born in war-time England, on 9 October 1940 at Liverpool Maternity Hospital, to Julia and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman who was away at the time of his son's birth. He was named John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John "Jack" Lennon, and then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill. His father was often away from home but sent regular pay cheques to 9 Newcastle Road, Liverpool, where Lennon lived with his mother, but the cheques stopped when he went absent without leave in February 1944. When he eventually came home six months later, he offered to look after the family, but Julia—by then pregnant with another man's child—rejected the idea. After her sister, Mimi Smith, twice complained to Liverpool's Social Services, Julia handed the care of Lennon over to her. In July 1946, Lennon's father visited Smith and took his son to Blackpool, secretly intending to emigrate to New Zealand with him. Julia followed them—with her partner at the time, 'Bobby' Dykins—and after a heated argument his father forced the five-year-old to choose between them. Lennon twice chose his father, but as his mother walked away, he began to cry and followed her. It would be 20 years before he had contact with his father again.

Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, he lived with his aunt and uncle, Mimi and George Smith, who had no children of their own, at Mendips, 251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton. His aunt bought him volumes of short stories, and his uncle, a dairyman at his family's farm, bought him a mouth organ and engaged him in solving crossword puzzles. Julia visited Mendips on a regular basis, and when he was 11 years old he often visited her at 1 Blomfield Road, Liverpool, where she played him Elvis Presley records, and taught him the banjo, playing "Ain't That a Shame" by Fats Domino.

In September 1980 he talked about his family and his rebellious nature: }}

He regularly visited his cousin, Stanley Parkes, who lived in Fleetwood. Seven years Lennon's senior, Parkes took him on trips, and to local cinemas. During the school holidays, Parkes often visited Lennon with Leila Harvey, another cousin, often travelling to Blackpool two or three times a week to watch shows. They would visit the Blackpool Tower Circus and see artists such as Dickie Valentine, Arthur Askey, Max Bygraves and Joe Loss, with Parkes recalling that Lennon particularly liked George Formby. After Parkes's family moved to Scotland, the three cousins often spent their school holidays together there. Parkes recalled, "John, cousin Leila and I were very close. From Edinburgh we would drive up to the family croft at Durness, which was from about the time John was nine years old until he was about 16." He was 14 years old when his uncle George died of a liver haemorrhage on 5 June 1955 (aged 52).

Lennon was raised as an Anglican and attended Dovedale Primary School. From September 1952 to 1957, after passing his Eleven-Plus exam, he attended Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool, and was described by Harvey at the time as, "A happy-go-lucky, good-humoured, easy going, lively lad." He often drew comical cartoons which appeared in his own self-made school magazine called The Daily Howl, but despite his artistic talent, his school reports were damning: "Certainly on the road to failure ... hopeless ... rather a clown in class ... wasting other pupils' time."

His mother bought him his first guitar in 1957, an inexpensive Gallotone Champion acoustic for which she "lent" her son five pounds and ten shillings on the condition that the guitar be delivered to her own house, and not Mimi's, knowing well that her sister was not supportive of her son's musical aspirations. As Mimi was sceptical of his claim that he would be famous one day, she hoped he would grow bored with music, often telling him, "The guitar's all very well, John, but you'll never make a living out of it". On 15 July 1958, when Lennon was 17 years old, his mother, walking home after visiting the Smiths' house, was struck by a car and killed.

Lennon failed all his GCE O-level examinations, and was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art only after his aunt and headmaster intervened. Once at the college, he started wearing Teddy Boy clothes and acquired a reputation for disrupting classes and ridiculing teachers. As a result, he was excluded from the painting class, then the graphic arts course, and was threatened with expulsion for his behaviour, which included sitting on a nude model's lap during a life drawing class. He failed an annual exam, despite help from fellow student and future wife Cynthia Powell, and was "thrown out of the college before his final year."

1957–70: From the Quarrymen to the Beatles

1957–65: Formation, commercial breakout, and touring years

in 1964 at the height of Beatlemania|alt=Monochrome image of John Lennon playing guitar and speaking into a microphone while wearing a grey suit.]] The Beatles evolved from Lennon's first band, the Quarrymen. Named after Quarry Bank High School, the group was established by him in September 1956 when he was 15, and began as a skiffle group. By the summer of 1957 the Quarrymen played a "spirited set of songs" made up of half skiffle, and half rock and roll. Lennon first met Paul McCartney at the Quarrymen's second performance, held in Woolton on 6 July at the St. Peter's Church garden fête, after which McCartney was asked to join the band.

McCartney says that Aunt Mimi: "was very aware that John's friends were lower class", and would often patronise him when he arrived to visit Lennon. According to Paul's brother Mike, McCartney's father was also disapproving, declaring Lennon would get his son "into trouble"; although he later allowed the fledgling band to rehearse in the McCartneys' front room at 20 Forthlin Road. During this time, the 18-year-old Lennon wrote his first song, "Hello Little Girl", a UK top 10 hit for The Fourmost nearly five years later.

George Harrison joined the band as lead guitarist, even though Lennon thought Harrison (at 14 years old) was too young to join the band, so McCartney engineered a second audition on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus, where Harrison played Raunchy for Lennon. Stuart Sutcliffe, Lennon's friend from art school, later joined as bassist. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Sutcliffe became "The Beatles" in early 1960. In August that year The Beatles, engaged for a 48-night residency in Hamburg, Germany, and desperately in need of a drummer, asked Pete Best to join them. Lennon was now 19, and his aunt, horrified when he told her about the trip, pleaded with him to continue his art studies instead. After the first Hamburg residency, the band accepted another in April 1961, and a third in April 1962. Like the other band members, Lennon was introduced to Preludin while in Hamburg, and regularly took the drug, as well as amphetamines, as a stimulant during their long, overnight performances.

Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager from 1962, had no prior experience of artist management, but nevertheless had a strong influence on their early dress code and attitude on stage. Lennon initially resisted his attempts to encourage the band to present a professional appearance, but eventually complied, saying, "I'll wear a bloody balloon if somebody's going to pay me". McCartney took over on bass after Sutcliffe decided to stay in Hamburg, and drummer Ringo Starr replaced Best, completing the four-piece line-up that would endure until the group's break-up in 1970. The band's first single, "Love Me Do", was released in October 1962 and reached #17 on the British charts. They recorded their debut album, Please Please Me, in under 10 hours on 11 February 1963, a day when Lennon was suffering the effects of a cold, which is evident in the vocal on the last song to be recorded that day, Twist and Shout. The Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership yielded eight of its fourteen tracks. With few exceptions—one being the album title itself—Lennon had yet to bring his love of wordplay to bear on his song lyrics, saying: "We were just writing songs ... pop songs with no more thought of them than that–to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant". In a 1987 interview, McCartney said that the other Beatles idolised John: "He was like our own little Elvis ... We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest".

The Beatles achieved mainstream success in the UK around the start of 1963. Lennon was on tour when his first son, Julian, was born in April. During their Royal Variety Show performance, attended by the Queen Mother and other British royalty, Lennon poked fun at his audience: "For our next song, I'd like to ask for your help. For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands ... and the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewellery." After a year of Beatlemania in the UK, the group's historic February 1964 US debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show marked their breakthrough to international stardom. A two-year period of constant touring, moviemaking, and songwriting followed, during which Lennon wrote two books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works. The Beatles received recognition from the British Establishment when they were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1965.

1966–70: Studio years, break-up and solo beginnings

Lennon grew concerned that fans attending Beatles concerts were unable to hear the music above the screaming of fans, and that the band's musicianship was beginning to suffer as a result. Lennon's "Help!" expressed his own feelings in 1965: "I meant it ... It was me singing 'help'". He had put on weight (he would later refer to this as his "Fat Elvis" period), and felt he was subconsciously seeking change. The following January he was unknowingly introduced to LSD when a dentist, hosting a dinner party attended by Lennon, Harrison and their wives, spiked the guests' coffee with the drug. When they wanted to leave, their host revealed what they had taken, and strongly advised them not to leave the house because of the likely effects. Later, in an elevator at a nightclub, they all believed it was on fire: "We were all screaming ... hot and hysterical." A few months later in March, during an interview with Evening Standard reporter Maureen Cleave, Lennon remarked, "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink ... We're more popular than Jesus now—I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity." The comment went virtually unnoticed in England but caused great offence in the US when quoted by a magazine there five months later. The furore that followed—burning of Beatles records, Ku Klux Klan activity, and threats against Lennon—contributed to the band's decision to stop touring.

" with The Beatles in 1967 to 400 million viewers of "Our World".]] Deprived of the routine of live performances after their final commercial concert in 1966, Lennon felt lost and considered leaving the band. Since his involuntary introduction to LSD in January, he had made increasing use of the drug, and was almost constantly under its influence for much of the year." According to biographer Ian MacDonald, Lennon's continuous experience with LSD during the year brought him "close to erasing his identity". 1967 saw the release of "Strawberry Fields Forever", hailed by Time magazine for its "astonishing inventiveness", and the group's landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which revealed Lennon's lyrics contrasting strongly with the simple love songs of the Lennon/McCartney's early years.

In August, after having been introduced to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group attended a weekend of personal instruction at his Transcendental Meditation seminar in Bangor, Wales, and were informed of Epstein's death during the seminar. "I knew we were in trouble then", Lennon said later. "I didn't have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music, and I was scared". They later travelled to Maharishi's ashram in India for further guidance, where they composed most of the songs for The Beatles and Abbey Road.

The anti-war, black comedy How I Won the War, featuring Lennon's only appearance in a non–Beatles full-length film, was shown in cinemas in October 1967. McCartney organised the group's first post-Epstein project, the self-written, -produced and -directed television film Magical Mystery Tour, released in December that year. While the film itself proved to be their first critical flop, its soundtrack release, featuring Lennon's acclaimed, Carroll-inspired "I am the Walrus", was a success. With Epstein gone, the band members became increasingly involved in business activities, and in February 1968 they formed Apple Corps, a multimedia corporation comprising Apple Records and several other subsidiary companies. Lennon described the venture as an attempt to achieve, "artistic freedom within a business structure", but his increased drug experimentation and growing preoccupation with Yoko Ono, and McCartney's own marriage plans, left Apple in need of professional management. Lennon asked Lord Beeching to take on the role, but he declined, advising Lennon to go back to making records. Lennon approached Allen Klein, who had managed The Rolling Stones and other bands during the British Invasion. Klein was appointed as Apple’s chief executive by Lennon, Harrison and Starr, but McCartney never signed the management contract.

At the end of 1968, Lennon featured in the film The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (not released until 1996) in the role of a Dirty Mac band member. The supergroup, comprising Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell, also backed a vocal performance by Ono in the film. Lennon and Ono were married on 20 March 1969, and soon released a series of 14 lithographs called "Bag One" depicting scenes from their honeymoon, eight of which were deemed indecent and most of which were banned and confiscated. Lennon's creative focus continued to move beyond the Beatles and between 1968 and 1969 he and Ono recorded three albums of experimental music together: (known more for its cover than for its music), and Wedding Album. In 1969 they formed The Plastic Ono Band, releasing Live Peace in Toronto 1969. In protest at Britain's involvement in the Nigerian Civil War, Lennon returned his MBE medal to the Queen, though this had no effect on his MBE status, which could not be renounced. Between 1969 and 1970 Lennon released the singles "Give Peace a Chance" (widely adopted as an anti-Vietnam-War anthem in 1969), "Cold Turkey" (documenting his withdrawal symptoms after he became addicted to heroin) and "Instant Karma!".

Lennon left the Beatles in September 1969. He agreed not to inform the media while the band renegotiated their recording contract, and was outraged that McCartney publicised his own departure on releasing his debut solo album in April 1970. Lennon's reaction was, "Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it!" He later wrote, "I started the band. I disbanded it. It's as simple as that." In later interviews with Rolling Stone, he revealed his bitterness towards McCartney, saying, "I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record." He spoke too of the hostility he perceived the other members had towards Ono, and of how he, Harrison, and Starr "got fed up with being sidemen for Paul ... After Brian Epstein died we collapsed. Paul took over and supposedly led us. But what is leading us when we went round in circles?"

1970–80: Solo career

1970–72: Initial solo success and activism

Following the Beatles' break-up in 1970, Lennon and Ono went through primal therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov in Los Angeles, California. Designed to release emotional pain from early childhood, the therapy entailed two half-days a week with Janov for four months; he had wanted to treat the couple for longer, but they felt no need to continue and returned to London. Lennon's emotional debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), was received with high praise. Critic Greil Marcus remarked, "John's singing in the last verse of 'God' may be the finest in all of rock." The album featured the songs "Mother", in which Lennon confronted his feelings of childhood rejection, and the Dylanesque "Working Class Hero", a bitter attack against the bourgeois social system which, due to the lyric "you're still fucking peasants", fell foul of broadcasters. The same year, Tariq Ali's revolutionary political views, expressed when he interviewed Lennon, inspired the singer to write "Power to the People". Lennon also became involved with Ali during a protest against Oz magazine's prosecution for alleged obscenity. Lennon denounced the proceedings as "disgusting fascism", and he and Ono (as Elastic Oz Band) released the single "God Save Us/Do the Oz" and joined marches in support of the magazine.

With Lennon's next album, Imagine (1971), critical response was more guarded. Rolling Stone reported that "it contains a substantial portion of good music" but warned of the possibility that "his posturings will soon seem not merely dull but irrelevant". The album's title track would become an anthem for anti-war movements, while another, "How Do You Sleep?", was a musical attack on McCartney in response to lyrics from Ram that Lennon felt, and McCartney later confirmed, were directed at him and Ono. However, Lennon softened his stance in the mid-70s and said he had written "How Do You Sleep?" about himself. He said in 1980: "I used my resentment against Paul ... to create a song ... not a terrible vicious horrible vendetta ... I used my resentment and withdrawing from Paul and the Beatles, and the relationship with Paul, to write 'How Do You Sleep'. I don't really go 'round with those thoughts in my head all the time".

Lennon and Ono moved to New York in August 1971, and in December released "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". To advertise the single, they paid for billboards in 12 cities around the world which declared, in the national language, "WAR IS OVER—IF YOU WANT IT". The new year saw the Nixon Administration take what it called a "strategic counter-measure" against Lennon's anti-war propaganda, embarking on what would be a four-year attempt to deport him: embroiled in a continuing legal battle, he was denied permanent residency in the US until 1976.

Recorded as a collaboration with Ono and with backing from the New York band Elephant's Memory, Some Time in New York City was released in 1972. Containing songs about women's rights, race relations, Britain's role in Northern Ireland, and Lennon's problems obtaining a green card, the album was poorly received—unlistenable, according to one critic. "Woman Is the Nigger of the World", released as a US single from the album the same year, was televised on 11 May, on The Dick Cavett Show. Many radio stations refused to broadcast the song because of the word "nigger". Lennon and Ono gave two benefit concerts with Elephant's Memory and guests in New York in aid of patients at the Willowbrook State School mental facility. Staged at Madison Square Garden on 30 August 1972, they were his last full-length concert appearances.

1973–75: Lost and found

While Lennon was recording Mind Games (1973), he and Ono decided to separate. The ensuing eighteen-month period apart, which he later called his "lost weekend", was spent in Los Angeles and New York in the company of May Pang. Mind Games, credited to "the Plastic U.F.Ono Band", was released in November 1973. More positively received than its predecessor, the album was critically assessed as "listenable" but "his worst writing yet" and found Lennon to be "helplessly trying to impose his own gargantuan ego upon an audience ... waiting hopefully for him to chart a new course". Its title track, "Mind Games", was a top 20 hit in the US and reached number 26 in the UK. Lennon contributed a revamped version of "I'm the Greatest", a song he wrote two years earlier, to Starr's album Ringo (1973), released the same month. (Lennon's 1971 demo appears on John Lennon Anthology.)

In 1974, Lennon was drinking heavily and his alcohol-fuelled antics with Harry Nilsson soon made the headlines. Two widely publicised incidents occurred at The Troubadour club in March, the first when Lennon placed a menstruation ‘towel’ on his forehead and scuffled with a waitress, and the second, two weeks later, when Lennon and Nilsson were ejected from the same club after heckling the Smothers Brothers. Lennon decided to produce Nilsson's album Pussy Cats and Pang rented an L.A. beach house for all the musicians but after a month of further debauchery, with the recording sessions in chaos, Lennon moved to New York with Pang to finish work on the album. In April, Lennon had produced the Mick Jagger song "Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)" which was, for contractual reasons, to remain unreleased for more than thirty years. Pang supplied the recording for its eventual inclusion on The Very Best of Mick Jagger (2007).

Settled back in New York, Lennon recorded the album Walls and Bridges. Released in October 1974, it yielded his only number-one single in his lifetime, "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", featuring Elton John on backing vocals and piano. A second single from the album, "#9 Dream", followed before the end of the year. Starr's Goodnight Vienna (1974) again saw assistance from Lennon, who wrote the title track and played piano. On 28 November, Lennon made a surprise guest appearance at Elton John's Thanksgiving concert at Madison Square Garden, in fulfilment of his promise to join the singer in a live show if "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night"—a song whose commercial potential Lennon had doubted—reached number one. Lennon performed the song along with "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Saw Her Standing There".

Lennon co-wrote "Fame", David Bowie's first US number one, and provided guitar and backing vocals for the January 1975 recording. He and Ono were reunited shortly afterwards. The same month, Elton John topped the charts with his own cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", featuring Lennon on guitar and back-up vocals. Lennon released Rock 'n' Roll (1975), an album of cover songs, in February. Soon afterwards, "Stand By Me", taken from the album and a US and UK hit, became his last single for five years. He made what would be his final stage appearance in the ATV special A Salute to Lew Grade, recorded on 18 April and televised in June. Playing acoustic guitar, and backed by his eight-piece band BOMF (introduced as "Etcetera"), Lennon performed two songs from Rock 'n' Roll ("Stand By Me", which was not broadcast, and "Slippin' and Slidin'") followed by "Imagine". The band wore masks on the backs of their heads, making them appear two-faced, a dig at Grade, with whom Lennon and McCartney had been in conflict because of his control of the Beatles' publishing company. (Dick James had sold his majority share to Grade in 1969.) During "Imagine", Lennon interjected the line "and no immigration too", a reference to his battle to remain in the United States.

1975–80: Retirement and return

With the birth of his second son Sean on 9 October 1975, Lennon took on the role of househusband, beginning what would be a five-year hiatus from the music industry during which he gave all his attention to his family. Within the month, he fulfilled his contractual obligation to EMI/Capitol for one more album by releasing Shaved Fish, a compilation album of previously recorded tracks. He devoted himself to Sean, rising at 6 am daily to plan and prepare his meals and to spend time with him. He wrote "Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love)" for Starr's Ringo's Rotogravure (1976), performing on the track in June in what would be his last recording session until 1980. He formally announced his break from music in Tokyo in 1977, saying, "we have basically decided, without any great decision, to be with our baby as much as we can until we feel we can take time off to indulge ourselves in creating things outside of the family." During his career break he created several series of drawings, and drafted a book containing a mix of autobiographical material and what he termed "mad stuff", all of which would be published posthumously.

He emerged from retirement in October 1980 with the single "(Just Like) Starting Over", followed the next month by the album Double Fantasy, which contained songs written during a journey to Bermuda on a 43-foot sailing boat the previous June, that reflected Lennon's fulfillment in his new-found stable family life. Sufficient additional material was recorded for a planned follow-up album Milk and Honey (released posthumously in 1984). Released jointly with Ono, Double Fantasy was not well received, drawing comments such as Melody Maker's "indulgent sterility ... a godawful yawn".

December 1980: Murder

to John Lennon in Central Park, New York]] At around 10:50 pm on 8 December 1980, as Lennon and Ono returned to their New York apartment in The Dakota, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times at the entrance to the building. Lennon was taken to the emergency room of nearby Roosevelt Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:07 pm. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman.

Ono issued a statement the next day, saying "There is no funeral for John," ending it with the words, "John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him." His body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in New York's Central Park, where the Strawberry Fields memorial was later created. Chapman pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life; as of 2010, he remains in prison, having been repeatedly denied parole.

Personal relationships

Cynthia Lennon

Lennon and Cynthia Powell met in 1957 as fellow students at the Liverpool College of Art. Although being scared of Lennon's attitude and appearance, she heard that he was obsessed with French actress Brigitte Bardot, so dyed her hair blonde. Lennon asked her out, but when she said that she was engaged, he replied, "I didn't ask you to fucking marry me, did I?" She often accompanied him to Quarrymen gigs and travelled to Hamburg with McCartney's girlfriend at the time to visit him. Lennon, jealous by nature, eventually grew possessive and often terrified Powell with his anger and physical violence. Lennon later said that until he met Ono, he had never questioned his chauvinistic attitude to women. The Beatles' song "Getting Better", he said, told his own story, "I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically—any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace".

Recalling his reaction in July 1962 on learning that Cynthia was pregnant, Lennon said, "There's only one thing for it Cyn. We'll have to get married." The couple were married on 23 August at the Mount Pleasant Register Office in Liverpool. His marriage began just as Beatlemania took hold across the UK. He performed on the evening of his wedding day, and would continue to do so almost daily from then on. Epstein, fearing that fans would be alienated by the idea of a married Beatle, asked the Lennons to keep their marriage secret. Julian was born on 8 April 1963; Lennon was on tour at the time and did not see his son until three days later.

Cynthia attributes the start of the marriage breakdown to LSD, and as a result, she felt that he slowly lost interest in her. When the group travelled by train to Bangor, Wales, in 1967, for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation seminar, a policeman did not recognise her and stopped her from boarding. She later recalled how the incident seemed to symbolize the ending of their marriage. After arriving home at Kenwood, and finding Lennon with Ono, Cynthia left the house to stay with friends. Alexis Mardas later claimed to have slept with her that night, and a few weeks later he informed her that Lennon was seeking a divorce and custody of Julian on grounds of her adultery with him. After negotiations, Lennon capitulated and agreed to her divorcing him on the same grounds. The case was settled out of court, with Lennon giving her £100,000, and custody of Julian.

Brian Epstein

Lennon met Brian Epstein when the Beatles were performing at Liverpool's Cavern Club in 1962. A record store manager, Epstein was homosexual, at a time of strong and widespread social prejudice against homosexuality. According to biographer Philip Norman, one of his reasons for wanting to manage the group was that he was physically attracted to Lennon. Almost as soon as Julian was born, Lennon went on holiday to Spain with Epstein, leading to speculation about their relationship. Questioned about it later, Lennon said, "Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But it was a pretty intense relationship. It was my first experience with a homosexual that I was conscious was homosexual. We used to sit in a café in Torremolinos looking at all the boys and I'd say, 'Do you like that one? Do you like this one?' I was rather enjoying the experience, thinking like a writer all the time: I am experiencing this." Soon after their return from Spain, at McCartney's twenty-first birthday party in June 1963, Lennon physically attacked Cavern Club MC Bob Wooler for saying "How was your honeymoon, John?" The MC, known for his wordplay and affectionate but cutting remarks, was making a joke, but ten months had passed since Lennon's marriage, and the honeymoon, deferred, was still two months in the future. To Lennon, who was intoxicated with alcohol at the time, the matter was simple: "He called me a queer so I battered his bloody ribs in".

Lennon delighted in mocking Epstein for his homosexuality and for the fact that he was Jewish. When Epstein invited suggestions for the title of his autobiography, Lennon offered Queer Jew; on learning of the eventual title, A Cellarful of Noise, he parodied, "More like A Cellarful of Boys". He demanded of a visitor to Epstein's flat, "Have you come to blackmail him? If not, you're the only bugger in London who hasn't." During the recording of "Baby, You're a Rich Man", he sang altered choruses of "Baby, you're a rich fag Jew".

Julian Lennon

Lennon's first son, Julian, was born as his commitments with the Beatles intensified at the height of Beatlemania during his marriage to Cynthia. Lennon was touring with the Beatles when Julian was born on 8 April 1963. Julian's birth, like his mother Cynthia's marriage to Lennon, was kept secret because Epstein was convinced public knowledge of such things would threaten the Beatles' commercial success. Julian recalls how some four years later, as a small child in Weybridge, "I was trundled home from school and came walking up with one of my watercolour paintings. It was just a bunch of stars and this blonde girl I knew at school. And Dad said, 'What's this?' I said, 'It's Lucy in the sky with diamonds.'" Lennon used it as the title of a Beatles' song, and though it was later reported to have been derived from the initials LSD, Lennon insisted, "It's not an acid song." McCartney corroborated Lennon's explanation that Julian innocently came up with the name. Lennon was distant from Julian, who felt closer to McCartney than to his father. During a car journey to visit Cynthia and Julian during Lennon's divorce, McCartney composed a song, "Hey Jules", to comfort him. It would evolve into the Beatles song "Hey Jude". Lennon later said, "That's his best song. It started off as a song about my son Julian ... he turned it into 'Hey Jude'. I always thought it was about me and Yoko but he said it wasn't."

Lennon's relationship with Julian was already strained, and after Lennon and Ono's 1971 move to New York, Julian would not see his father again until 1973. With Pang's encouragement, it was arranged for him (and his mother) to visit Lennon in Los Angeles, where they went to Disneyland. Julian started to see his father regularly, and Lennon gave him a drumming part on a Walls and Bridges track. He bought Julian a Gibson Les Paul guitar and other instruments, and encouraged his interest in music by demonstrating guitar chord techniques. Julian recalls that he and his father "got on a great deal better" during the time he spent in New York: "We had a lot of fun, laughed a lot and had a great time in general."

In a Playboy interview with David Sheff shortly before his death, Lennon said, "Sean was a planned child, and therein lies the difference. I don't love Julian any less as a child. He's still my son, whether he came from a bottle of whiskey or because they didn't have pills in those days. He's here, he belongs to me, and he always will." He said he was trying to re-establish a connection with the then 17-year-old, and confidently predicted, "Julian and I will have a relationship in the future." After his death it was revealed that he had left Julian very little in his will.

Yoko Ono

Two versions exist of how Lennon met Ono. According to the first, on 9 November 1966 Lennon went to the Indica gallery in London, where Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibit, and they were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar. Lennon was intrigued by Ono's "Hammer A Nail": patrons hammered a nail into a wooden board, creating the art piece. Although the exhibition had not yet begun, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a millionaire! He might buy it." Ono had supposedly not heard of the Beatles, but relented on condition that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which Lennon replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in." The second version, told by McCartney, is that in late 1965, Ono was in London compiling original musical scores for a book John Cage was working on, Notations, but McCartney declined to give her any of his own manuscripts for the book, suggesting that Lennon might oblige. When asked, Lennon gave Ono the original handwritten lyrics to "The Word".

Ono began telephoning and calling at Lennon's home, and when his wife asked for an explanation, he explained that Ono was only trying to obtain money for her "avant-garde bullshit". In May 1968, while his wife was on holiday in Greece, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording what would become the Two Virgins album, after which, he said, they "made love at dawn." When Lennon's wife returned home she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, "Oh, hi." Ono became pregnant in 1968 and miscarried a male child they named John Ono Lennon II on 21 November 1968, a few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was granted.

During Lennon's last two years in the Beatles, he and Ono began public protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969, and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for peace. They planned another Bed-In in the United States, but were denied entry, so held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance". They often combined advocacy with performance art, as in their "Bagism", first introduced during a Vienna press conference. Lennon detailed this period in the Beatles' song "The Ballad of John and Yoko". Lennon changed his name by deed poll on 22 April 1969, adding "Ono" as a middle name. The brief ceremony took place on the roof of the Apple Corps building, made famous three months earlier by the Beatles' Let It Be rooftop concert. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon thereafter, official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon, since he was not permitted to revoke a name given at birth. After Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-sized bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on the Beatles' last album, Abbey Road. To escape the acrimony of the band's break-up, Ono suggested they move permanently to New York, which they did on 31 August 1971. They first lived in the St. Regis Hotel on 5th Avenue, East 55th Street, then moved to a street-level flat at 105 Bank Street, Greenwich Village, on 16 October 1971. After a robbery, they relocated to the more secure Dakota at 1 West 72nd Street, in May 1973.

According to author Albert Goldman, Ono was regarded by Lennon as an "almost magical being" who could solve all his problems for him, but this was a "grand illusion", and she openly cheated on him with gigolos. Eventually, writes Goldman, "both he and Yoko were burnt out from years of hard drugs, overwork, emotional breakdowns, quack cures, and bizarre diets, to say nothing of the effects of living constantly in the glare of the mass media." After their separation, "no longer collaborating as a team, they remained in constant communication. ... No longer able to live together, they found that they couldn’t live apart either."

May Pang and the "lost weekend"

ABKCO Industries, formed in 1968 by Allen Klein as an umbrella company to ABKCO Records, recruited May Pang as a receptionist in 1969. Through involvement in a project with ABKCO, Lennon and Ono met her the following year. She became their personal assistant. After she had been working with the couple for three years, Ono confided that she and Lennon were becoming estranged from one another. She went on to suggest that Pang should begin a physical relationship with Lennon, telling her, "He likes you a lot." Pang, 22, astounded by Ono's proposition, eventually agreed to become Lennon's companion. The pair soon moved to California, beginning an eighteen-month period he later called his "lost weekend". In Los Angeles, Pang encouraged Lennon to develop regular contact with Julian, whom he had not seen for two years. He also rekindled friendships with Starr, McCartney, Beatles roadie Mal Evans, and Harry Nilsson. Whilst drinking with Nilsson, after misunderstanding something Pang said, Lennon attempted to strangle her, relenting only when physically restrained by Nilsson.

On moving to New York, they "prepared a spare room" in their newly rented apartment for Julian to visit. Lennon, hitherto inhibited by Ono in this regard, began to reestablish contact with other relatives and friends. By December he and Pang were considering a house purchase, and he was refusing to accept Ono's telephone calls. In January 1975, he agreed to meet Ono—who said she had found a cure for smoking—but after the meeting failed to return home or call Pang. When Pang telephoned the next day, Ono told her Lennon was unavailable, being exhausted after a hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared at a joint dental appointment, stupefied and confused to such an extent that Pang believed he had been brainwashed. He told her his separation from Ono was now over, though Ono would allow him to continue seeing her as his mistress.

Sean Lennon

When Lennon and Ono were reunited, she became pregnant, but having previously suffered three miscarriages in her attempt to have a child with Lennon, she said she wanted an abortion. She agreed to allow the pregnancy to continue on condition that Lennon adopt the role of househusband; this he agreed to do. Sean was born on 9 October 1975, Lennon's 35th birthday, delivered by Caesarean section. Lennon's subsequent career break would span five years. He had a photographer take pictures of Sean every day of his first year, and created numerous drawings for him, posthumously published as Real Love: The Drawings for Sean. Lennon later proudly declared, "He didn't come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish."

Former Beatles

Although his friendship with Starr remained consistently warm during the years following the Beatles' break-up in 1970, Lennon's relationship with McCartney and Harrison varied. He was close to Harrison initially, but the two drifted apart after Lennon moved to America. When Harrison was in New York for his December 1974 Dark Horse tour, Lennon agreed to join him on stage, but failed to appear after an argument over Lennon's refusal to sign an agreement that would finally dissolve the Beatles' legal partnership. (Lennon eventually signed the papers while holidaying in Florida with Pang and Julian.) Harrison incensed Lennon in 1980 when he published an autobiography that made little mention of him. Lennon told Playboy, "I was hurt by it. By glaring omission ... my influence on his life is absolutely zilch ... he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I'm not in the book."

Lennon's most intense feelings were reserved for McCartney. In addition to attacking him through the lyrics of "How Do You Sleep?", Lennon argued with him through the press for three years after the group split. The two later began to reestablish something of the close friendship they had once known, and in 1974 even played music together again, before growing apart once more. Lennon said that during McCartney's final visit, in April 1976, they watched the episode of Saturday Night Live in which Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 cash offer to get the Beatles to reunite on the show. The pair considered going to the studio to make a joke appearance, attempting to claim their share of the money, but were too tired. Lennon summarised his feelings towards McCartney in an interview three days before his death: "Throughout my career, I've selected to work with...only two people: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono....That ain't bad picking."

Along with his estrangement from McCartney, Lennon always felt a musical competitiveness with him and kept an ear on his music. During his five-year career break he was content to sit back so long as McCartney was producing what Lennon saw as mediocre "product". When McCartney released "Coming Up" in 1980, the year Lennon returned to the studio and the last year of his life, he took notice. "It's driving me crackers!" he jokingly complained, because he couldn't get the tune out of his head. Asked the same year whether the group were dreaded enemies or the best of friends, he replied that they were neither, and that he had not seen any of them in a long time. But he also said, "I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo go on."

Political activism

Anti-war and civil rights activities

at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal]] Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon as what they termed a "Bed-In for Peace" at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel; the March 1969 event attracted worldwide media ridicule and other reaction. At a second Bed-In three months later at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal Lennon wrote and recorded "Give Peace a Chance". Released as a single, it was quickly taken up as an anti-war anthem and sung by a quarter of a million demonstrators against the Vietnam War in Washington, DC, on 15 October, the second Vietnam Moratorium Day.

Later that year, Lennon and Ono supported efforts by the family of James Hanratty, hanged for murder in 1962, to prove his innocence. Those who had condemned Hanratty were, according to Lennon, "the same people who are running guns to South Africa and killing blacks in the streets. ... The same bastards are in control, the same people are running everything, it's the whole bullshit bourgeois scene." In London, Lennon and Ono staged a "Britain Murdered Hanratty" banner march and a "Silent Protest For James Hanratty", and produced a 40-minute documentary on the case. At an appeal hearing years later, Hanratty's conviction was upheld.

Lennon and Ono showed their solidarity with the Clydeside UCS workers' work-in of 1971 by sending a bouquet of red roses and a cheque for £5,000. On moving to New York City in August that year, they befriended two of the Chicago Seven, Yippie peace activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Another peace activist, John Sinclair, poet and co-founder of the White Panther Party, was serving ten years in prison for selling two joints of marijuana after previous convictions for possession of the drug. In December 1971 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 20,000 people attended the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally", a protest and benefit concert with contributions from Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, and others. Lennon and Ono, backed by David Peel and Rubin, performed an acoustic set of four songs from their forthcoming Some Time in New York City album including "John Sinclair", whose lyrics called for his release. The day before the rally, Michigan State had drastically reduced the penalties for Sinclair’s crimes and three days after the rally, he was released on bail. The performance was recorded and two of the tracks later appeared on John Lennon Anthology (1998).

Following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972, in which 27 civil rights protesters were shot by the British Army during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march, Lennon said that given the choice between the army and the IRA he would side with the latter. Lennon and Ono wrote two songs protesting England's actions in the Northern Irish political situation on their Some Time in New York City album: "Luck of the Irish" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday". In 2000, a former member of Britain's domestic security service MI5 suggested that Lennon had given money to the IRA. Biographer Bill Harry records that following Bloody Sunday, Lennon and Ono financially supported the production of the film The Irish Tapes, a political documentary with a pro-IRA slant.

According to FBI surveillance reports (and confirmed by Tariq Ali in 2006) Lennon was sympathetic to the International Marxist Group, a Trotskyist group formed in Britain in 1968. However, the FBI considered Lennon to have limited effectiveness as a revolutionary since he was "constantly under the influence of narcotics".

Deportation attempt

Following the impact of "Give Peace a Chance" and "Happy Xmas (War is Over)", both strongly associated with the anti-Vietnam-War movement, the Nixon administration, hearing rumours of Lennon's involvement in a concert to be held in San Diego at the same time as the Republican National Convention, tried to have him deported. Nixon believed that Lennon's anti-war activities could cost him his re-election; Republican Senator Strom Thurmond suggested in a February 1972 memo that "deportation would be a strategic counter-measure" against Lennon. The next month the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began deportation proceedings, arguing that his 1968 misdemeanor conviction for cannabis possession in London had made him ineligible for admission to the United States. Lennon spent the next three and a half years in and out of deportation hearings until on 8 October 1975, when a court of appeals barred the deportation attempt, stating " ... the courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds." While the legal battle continued, Lennon attended rallies and made television appearances. Lennon and Ono co-hosted the Mike Douglas Show for a week in February 1972, introducing guests such as Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale to mid-America. In 1972, Bob Dylan wrote a letter to the INS defending Lennon, stating:

John and Yoko add a great voice and drive to the country’s so-called art institution. They inspire and transcend and stimulate and by doing so, only help others to see pure light and in doing that, put an end to this dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as Artist Art by the overpowering mass media. Hurray for John and Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country’s got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!

On 23 March 1973, Lennon was ordered to leave the US within 60 days. Ono, meanwhile, was granted permanent residence. In response, Lennon and Ono held a press conference on 1 April 1973 at the New York chapter of the American Bar Association, where they announced the formation of the state of Nutopia; a place with "no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people". Waving the white flag of Nutopia (two handkerchiefs), they asked for political asylum in the US. The press conference was filmed, and would later appear in the 2006 documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon. Lennon's Mind Games (1973) included the track "Nutopian International Anthem", which comprised three seconds of silence. Soon after the press conference, Nixon's involvement in a political scandal came to light, and in June the Watergate hearings began in Washington, DC. They led to the president's resignation 14 months later. Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, showed little interest in continuing the battle against Lennon, and the deportation order was overturned in 1975. The following year, his US immigration status finally resolved, Lennon received his "green card" certifying his permanent residency, and when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president in January 1977, Lennon and Ono attended the Inaugural Ball.

FBI surveillance and declassified documents

After Lennon's death, historian Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information Act request for FBI files documenting the Bureau's role in the deportation attempt. The FBI admitted it had 281 pages of files on Lennon, but refused to release most of them on the grounds that they contained national security information. In 1983, Wiener sued the FBI with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. It took 14 years of litigation to force the FBI to release the withheld pages. The ACLU, representing Wiener, won a favourable decision in their suit against the FBI in the Ninth Circuit in 1991. The Justice Department appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in April 1992, but the court declined to review the case. In 1997, respecting President Bill Clinton's newly instigated rule that documents should be withheld only if releasing them would involve "foreseeable harm", the Justice Department settled most of the outstanding issues outside court by releasing all but 10 of the contested documents. Wiener published the results of his 14-year campaign in January 2000. Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files contained facsimiles of the documents, including "lengthy reports by confidential informants detailing the daily lives of anti-war activists, memos to the White House, transcripts of TV shows on which Lennon appeared, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police on drug charges". The story is told in the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon. The final 10 documents in Lennon's FBI file, which reported on his ties with London anti-war activists in 1971 and had been withheld as containing "national security information provided by a foreign government under an explicit promise of confidentiality", were released in December 2006. They contained no indication that the British government had regarded Lennon as a serious threat; one example of the released material was a report that two prominent British leftists had hoped Lennon would finance a left-wing bookshop and reading room.

Writing and art

Lennon's biographer Bill Harry writes that Lennon began drawing and writing creatively at an early age with the encouragement of his uncle. He collected his stories, poetry, cartoons, and caricatures in a Quarry Bank High School exercise book that he called the Daily Howl. The drawings were often of crippled people, and the writings satirical, and throughout the book was an abundance of wordplay. According to classmate Bill Turner, Lennon created the Daily Howl to amuse his best friend and later Quarrymen band mate, Pete Shotton, to whom he would show his work before he let anyone else see it. Turner said that Lennon "had an obsession for Wigan Pier. It kept cropping up", and in Lennon's story A Carrot In A Potato Mine, "the mine was at the end of Wigan Pier." Turner described how one of Lennon's cartoons depicted a bus stop sign annotated with the question, "Why?". Above was a flying pancake, and below, "a blind man wearing glasses leading along a blind dog—also wearing glasses".

Lennon's love of wordplay and nonsense with a twist found a wider audience when he was 24. Harry writes that In His Own Write (1964) was published after "Some journalist who was hanging around the Beatles came to me and I ended up showing him the stuff. They said, 'Write a book' and that's how the first one came about". Like the Daily Howl it contained a mix of formats including short stories, poetry, plays and drawings. One story, "Good Dog Nigel", tells the tale of "a happy dog, urinating on a lamp post, barking, wagging his tail—until he suddenly hears a message that he will be killed at three o'clock". The Times Literary Supplement considered the poems and stories "remarkable ... also very funny ... the nonsense runs on, words and images prompting one another in a chain of pure fantasy". Book Week reported, "This is nonsense writing, but one has only to review the literature of nonsense to see how well Lennon has brought it off. While some of his homonyms are gratuitous word play, many others have not only double meaning but a double edge." Lennon was not only surprised by the positive reception, but that the book was reviewed at all, and suggested that readers "took the book more seriously than I did myself. It just began as a laugh for me".

In combination with A Spaniard in the Works (1965), In His Own Write formed the basis of the stage play The John Lennon Play: In His Own Write, co-adapted by Victor Spinetti and Adrienne Kennedy. After negotiations between Lennon, Spinetti and the artistic director of the National Theatre, Sir Laurence Olivier, the play opened at the Old Vic in 1968. Lennon and Ono attended the opening night performance, their second public appearance together to date. After Lennon's death, further works were published, including Skywriting by Word of Mouth (1986); Ai: Japan Through John Lennon's Eyes: A Personal Sketchbook (1992), with Lennon's illustrations of the definitions of Japanese words; and Real Love: The Drawings for Sean (1999). The Beatles Anthology (2000) also presented examples of his writings and drawings.

Musicianship

Instruments played

His playing of a mouth organ during a bus journey to visit his cousin in Scotland caught the driver's ear. Impressed, the driver told Lennon of a harmonica he could have if he came to Edinburgh the following day, where one had been stored in the bus depot since a passenger left it on a bus. The professional instrument quickly replaced Lennon's toy. He would continue to play harmonica, often using the instrument during the Beatles' Hamburg years, and it became a signature sound in the group's early recordings. His mother taught him how to play the banjo, later buying him an acoustic guitar. At 16, he played rhythm guitar with the Quarrymen. As his career progressed, he played a variety of electric guitars, predominantly the Rickenbacker 325, Epiphone Casino and Gibson J-160E, and, from the start of his solo career, the Gibson Les Paul Junior. Occasionally he played a six-string bass guitar, the Fender Bass VI, providing bass on some Beatles numbers that occupied McCartney with another instrument. His other instrument of choice was the piano, on which he composed many songs, including "Imagine", described as his best-known solo work. His jamming on a piano with McCartney in 1963 led to the creation of the Beatles' first US number one, "I Want to Hold Your Hand". In 1964, he became one of the first British musicians to acquire a Mellotron keyboard, though it was not heard on a Beatles recording until "Strawberry Fields Forever" in late 1966.

Vocal style

When Lennon recorded "Twist and Shout", the final track during the mammoth one-day session that captured the band's 1963 debut album Please Please Me, his voice, already compromised by a cold, came close to giving out. Lennon said, "I couldn't sing the damn thing, I was just screaming." In the words of biographer Barry Miles, "Lennon simply shredded his vocal cords in the interests of rock 'n' roll." The Beatles' producer, George Martin, tells how Lennon "had an inborn dislike of his own voice which I could never understand. He was always saying to me: 'DO something with my voice! ... put something on it ... Make it different.'" Martin obliged, often using double-tracking and other techniques. Music critic Robert Christgau says that Lennon's "greatest vocal performance ... from scream to whine, is modulated electronically ... echoed, filtered, and double tracked."

As his Beatles era segued into his solo career, his singing voice found a widening range of expression. Biographer Chris Gregory writes that Lennon was, "tentatively beginning to expose his insecurities in a number of acoustic-led 'confessional' ballads, so beginning the process of 'public therapy' that will eventually culminate in the primal screams of 'Cold Turkey' and the cathartic John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band." David Stuart Ryan notes Lennon's vocal delivery to range from, "extreme vulnerability, sensitivity and even naivety" to a hard "rasping" style. Wiener too describes contrasts, saying the singer's voice can be "at first subdued; soon it almost cracks with despair" Music historian Ben Urish recalls hearing the Beatles' Ed Sullivan Show performance of "This Boy" played on the radio a few days after Lennon's murder: "As Lennon's vocals reached their peak ... it hurt too much to hear him scream with such anguish and emotion. But it was my emotions I heard in his voice. Just like I always had."

Legacy

Music historians Schinder and Schwartz, writing of the transformation in popular music styles that took place between the 1950s and the 1960s, say that the Beatles' influence cannot be overstated: having "revolutionized the sound, style, and attitude of popular music and opened rock and roll's doors to a tidal wave of British rock acts", the group then "spent the rest of the 1960s expanding rock's stylistic frontiers". Liam Gallagher, his group Oasis among the many who acknowledge the band's influence, identifies Lennon as a hero; in 1999 he named his first child Lennon Gallagher in tribute. On National Poetry Day in 1999, after conducting a poll to identify the UK's favourite song lyric, the BBC announced "Imagine" the winner.

In a 2006 Guardian article, Jon Wiener wrote: "For young people in 1972, it was thrilling to see Lennon's courage in standing up to [US President] Nixon. That willingness to take risks with his career, and his life, is one reason why people still admire him today." Whilst for music historians Urish and Bielen, Lennon's most significant effort was "the self-portraits ... in his songs [which] spoke to, for, and about, the human condition."

Lennon continues to be mourned throughout the world and has been the subject of numerous memorials and tributes. In 2010, on what would have been Lennon’s 70th birthday, the John Lennon Peace Monument was unveiled in Chavasse Park, Liverpool, by Cynthia and Julian Lennon. The sculpture entitled ‘Peace & Harmony’ exhibits peace symbols and carries the inscription “Peace on Earth for the Conservation of Life · In Honour of John Lennon 1940–1980”.

Awards and sales

, Havana, Cuba]]

The Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership is regarded as one of the most influential and successful of the 20th century. As performer, writer or co-writer Lennon has had 27 number one singles on the US Hot 100 chart. His album sales in the US stand at 14 million units. Double Fantasy, released shortly before his death, and his best-selling, post-Beatles studio album at three million shipments in the US, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The following year, the BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music went to Lennon. Participants in a 2002 BBC poll voted him eighth of "100 Greatest Britons". Between 2003 and 2008, Rolling Stone recognised Lennon in several reviews of artists and music, ranking him fifth of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time" and 38th of "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time", and his albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, 22nd and 76th respectively of "The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) with the other Beatles in 1965. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Discography

, Liverpool]]

(with Yoko Ono) (1968)

(with Yoko Ono) (1969)

Wedding Album (with Yoko Ono) (1969)

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970)

Imagine (1971)

Some Time in New York City (with Yoko Ono) (1972)

Mind Games (1973)

Walls and Bridges (1974)

Rock 'n' Roll (1975)

Double Fantasy (with Yoko Ono) (1980)

Milk and Honey (with Yoko Ono) (1984)

Menlove Ave. (1986)

Notes

Lennon was responsible for 27 Billboard Hot 100 number one singles as performer, writer or co-writer. Solo (3): "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", "(Just Like) Starting Over", "Imagine". With David Bowie (1): "Fame". With The Beatles (21): "Can't Buy Me Love", "I Feel Fine", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "Love Me Do", "She Loves You", "A Hard Day's Night", "Eight Days a Week", "Help!", "Ticket to Ride", "Yesterday", "Paperback Writer", "We Can Work It Out", "All You Need Is Love", "Hello Goodbye", "Penny Lane", "Hey Jude", "Come Together", "Get Back", "For You Blue", "Let It Be", "The Long and Winding Road". As co-writer of releases by other artists (2): "A World Without Love" (Peter and Gordon), "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (Elton John).

Citations

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References

Further reading

Kane, Larry (2005). Lennon Revealed. Running Press. ISBN 0762423641

Pang, May; Edwards, Henry (1983). Loving John: The Untold Story. Warner Books. ISBN 0446379166.

Wiener, Jon. The John Lennon FBI Files

Yorke, Richard (1969). "John Lennon: Ringo’s Right, We Can’t Tour Again", New Musical Express, 7 June 1969, reproduced by Crawdaddy!, 2007.

External links

The Liverpool Lennons

BBC Archive on John Lennon

NPR Archive on John Lennon

John Lennon and Yoko Ono – slideshow by Life magazine

John Lennon hosted by EMI Group Limited

Unveiling of ‘Peace & Harmony’, European Peace Monument – Dedicated to John Lennon

Category:1940 births Category:1980 deaths Category:1960s singers Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:Apple Records artists Category:Alumni of Quarry Bank High School Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners Category:BRIT Award winners Category:British anti-war activists Category:British people murdered abroad Category:Capitol Records artists Category:COINTELPRO targets Category:Critics of religions or philosophies Category:Deaths by firearm in New York Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English experimental musicians Category:English film actors Category:English-language singers Category:English male singers Category:English murder victims Category:English pacifists Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English rock guitarists Category:English rock pianists Category:English rock singers Category:English singer-songwriters Category:Feminist artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Members of the Order of the British Empire Category:Murdered musicians Category:Musicians from Liverpool Category:Nonviolence advocates Category:People convicted of drug offenses Category:People murdered in New York Category:Plastic Ono Band members Category:Religious skeptics Category:Rhythm guitarists Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:The Beatles members Category:The Dirty Mac Category:The Quarrymen members Category:Yoko Ono

Name	Styl-Plus
Background	group_or_band
Origin	Abuja Nigeria
Genre	R&B;
Years active	1997 - present
Label	Styl-Plus Music
Url	Official Website
Current members	Shifi Emoefe Tunde Akinsanmi Zeal Onyecheme
Past members	Lanre Faneyi RIP Yemi Akinwonmi

The group Styl-Plus (originally STYL) is a Nigerian gospel and pop musical group / quartet. The founding members were Shifi Emoefe, Tunde Akinsanmi, Yemi Akinwonmi, and Lanre Faneyi and the name STYL was adopted by combining the first letters of the first names of the founding members.

In 1999 Lanre Faneyi died and Zeal Onyecheme joined the group. The name of the quartet turned to Styl-Plus, the Plus being used to indicate the new addition to the group. In 2002 Yemi Akinwonmi left the group and the musical band became a trio without adding a new member. Starting 2003, the group had its own record label Styl-Plus Music

History

STYL was formed in 1997 in Abuja, Nigeria and made up of four members. In the year 2001, the group sang mainly pop and love songs. In 1999, upon the death of Lanre Faneyi, and the addition of Zeal Onyecheme, the name of the group was changed to Styl-Plus.

In 2002 Yemi Akinwonmi left the group to pursue another career.

In 2003 the group teamed up with Anthony 'T-Jazz' Ukpong and Joseph 'Joey' Ukpong to form their own record label; Styl-Plus Music.

Based in Abuja, Nigeria, the group used its strong vocals and addictive soundtracks to successfully blend together English and indigenous languages, on their Pop and R&B; tracks.

The motto of the group is "Positive-Cultural-International" and this is evident in the positive messages and the noticeable absence of raunchy and profane lyrics, which characterize some R & B music.

The members of the group are all graduates of Federal University of Technology, Akure, except Zeal, who dropped out in 2005 due to the sudden success of the group. All were bachelors in their mid-twenties at the time.

Releases

In late October 2003, under the management of T-Jazz and Joey, they released two singles to radio stations. The response was tremendous, and the unprecedented airplay the tracks received fuelled the subsequent massive sales of the Singles on CD and audiotape.

In February 2006, they released their highly anticipated 11 track debut album "Expressions". The spectacular, star-studded album launch in Abuja and Lagos was rumoured to have cost over N10 million (about $75,000) making it the most expensive album launch in Nigerian history.

Their singles Olufunmi and Runaway were amongst the most requested love songs on all the major Nigerian R&B; radio stations between 2004 and 2005.

"Imagine That" is the lead single from their official debut Album, "Expressions". It has also been a massive chart topper, and has been used in numerous shows, including the pioneer edition of Big Brother Nigeria.

Styl-Plus have performed with a number of artists including Shaka Demus and Pliers, Femi Kuti, 2 Face, Jazzman Olofin, Ruggedman, P-Square and opened concerts for Wyclef Jean, Boyz II Men and Yvonne Chaka Chaka.

Awards

The group has received numerous Nigerian National awards as well as International awards by Channel O, Amen Awards and Kora Award nominees. In 2005, Call My Name won best R&B; video award by Channel O South African music station.

Discography

Singles

Olufunmi

Olufunmi remix ft. Da Kapo

Runaway

Call My Name

Imagine That

Hadiza

Iya Basira

Ima

Always on my mind

Stay alive

Coming Home

She drives me crazy

Drives me crazy

Drives me crazy remix ft. 2 Shotz

Four years

When you smile

Albums

External links

The Official Website

Styl-Plus on Myspace

Styl-Plus lyrics, audio, video

Listen to Styl-Plus on Rhapsody

Listen to Styl-Plus New Album; Expressions

Styl-Plus Xclusive interview

Category:Nigerian musicians Category:Nigerian songwriters

Name	Paul Rodgers
Background	solo_singer
Born	December 17, 1949, Middlesbrough, England
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician, producer
Genre	Blues-rock, hard rock, blues
Years active	1968–present
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano, drums, bass, harmonica, synthesizer, flute
Label	Atlantic RecordsVictor EntertainmentSPV GmbHVelvel Records
Associated acts	Free, Bad Company, The Firm, The Law, Queen + Paul Rodgers
Url	Official website

Paul Bernard Rodgers (born 17 December 1949, Middlesbrough) He is ranked number 55 on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". Rodgers was also ranked by Hit Parader as the ninth greatest heavy metal singer of all time, despite Rodgers not typically being associated with the genre.

1960s: Free

He played bass (he later moved onto vocals) in local band The Roadrunners, which just before leaving Middlesbrough for the London music scene changed its name to The Wildflowers. Other members of this band were Micky Moody (later of Whitesnake) and Bruce Thomas (later of Elvis Costello and The Attractions). Rodgers appeared on the British music scene in 1968 as singer/songwriter for bluesy rockers Free. In 1970, they shot up the international radio charts with "All Right Now", which Rodgers wrote with the group's bassist Andy Fraser. It was a number one hit in more than 20 territories and recognised by ASCAP in 1990 for receiving more than a million radio plays in the US alone. The song played a pivotal role in introducing Rodgers's stylistic metier, while helping to establish the sound of the British blues/rock invasion. At the time, Free and Led Zeppelin were the biggest grossing British acts. Free released four top five albums with a combination of blues, ballads and rock. The Multi Million Award was given to Paul Rodgers in 2000 by the British Music Industry when "All Right Now" passed two million radio plays in the UK. After the break of Free, Rodgers briefly formed a three-piece band called Peace in which he played guitar and sang lead vocal. Although Peace rehearsed and recorded demo tracks, it is not known whether any recordings were ever published before Rodgers formed Bad Company.

1970s: Bad Company

Rodgers formed his next band, Bad Company, with Mick Ralphs, former guitarist of Mott the Hoople. Rodgers said: "Mick and I were trying to come up with names for the band. When I called him and said 'Bad Company', he dropped the phone."

Bad Company toured successfully from 1973 to 1982, and had several hits such as "Feel Like Making Love", "Can't Get Enough", "Shooting Star", "Bad Company", and "Run With The Pack". Rodgers also showcased his instrumental talents on several tracks: "Bad Company" and "Run With The Pack" featured him on piano; "Rock And Roll Fantasy" on guitar; and on the ballad "Seagull" Rodgers played all of the instruments. Bad Company earned six platinum albums until Rodgers left in 1982 at the height of their fame to spend time with his young family.

1980s: Solo career and The Firm

In the early 1980s, it was rumoured that Rodgers would sing with The Rossington-Collins Band (made up of the survivors of Lynyrd Skynyrd), In October 1983, Rodgers released his first solo LP Cut Loose. He composed all of the music and played all of the instruments. The album peaked at a disappointing number 135 on the Billboard's Pop Albums chart.

When his friend Jimmy Page started to come around to his house, guitar in hand and Led Zeppelin at an end, the duo's first live pairing was on the US ARMS (Action Research into Multiple Sclerosis) Tour (rock music's first big charity fundraiser) which had first been mooted by Eric Clapton and, besides Rodgers and Page, would include Jeff Beck, Joe Cocker, Steve Winwood and others. The inspiration behind ARMS had been former Small Faces/Faces member Ronnie Lane's own struggle with M.S. This led to Rodgers and Page's further teaming in the group The Firm , which resulted in two albums and two tours. Both Firm world tours managed only average attendance. Despite being panned by critics The Firm's two albums, The Firm and Mean Business, achieved moderate sales success and produced the radio hits "Radioactive" on which Rodgers played the guitar solo, "Satisfaction Guaranteed", and, in the UK, "All The King's Horses". (Correction - Rogers did not play the solo on Radioactive -Stuart Epps)

1990s: The Law and solo career

The Law, Rodgers's 1991 musical venture with former The Who and Faces drummer Kenney Jones, produced Billboard's number one AOR chart hit "Laying Down The Law" written by Rodgers, but the album peaked at number 126 on the Billboard 200 chart. A never-released second album can be found on the bootleg market. The album is often referred to as The Law II.

Rodgers acknowledged the influence of Jimi Hendrix by collaborating with Steve Vai, Hendrix's Band Of Gypsys (Buddy Miles and Billy Cox) and the London Metropolitan Orchestra and recorded the track "Bold As Love", on the Hendrix tribute album In From The Storm. Then Rodgers teamed with Journey guitarist Neal Schon and released The Hendrix Set, a live 5-track CD, recorded in 1993 with Rodgers' interpretations of Hendrix songs. A Canadian and US tour followed.

His Grammy-nominated solo CD, was released in 1993. Rodgers wrote the title track and was backed by guitarists Brian May, Gary Moore, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Steve Miller, Buddy Guy, Richie Sambora, Brian Setzer, Slash and Trevor Rabin.

For Woodstock's 25th anniversary in 1994, Rodgers pulled together drummer Jason Bonham, bassist Andy Fraser (from Free), guitarists Slash and Schon at the last moment to perform as the Paul Rodgers Rock and Blues Revue.

In 1995 he formed a new band consisting of Jaz Lochrie on bass, Jimmy Copley on drums and Geoff Whitehorn on guitar. The band (The Paul Rodgers Band) toured extensively in Europe, US and in the UK until 1998 and spawned three albums - Now, Now and Live and Electric. Now charted internationally in the Top 40. The single "Soul Of Love" remained in rotation on more than 86 US radio stations for six months. His 1997 world tour included Russia, Japan, Canada, US, UK, Germany, France, Romania, Bulgaria, Israel, Brazil, Greece and Argentina.

Rodgers and Bad Company hit Billboard's US BDS charts with the number one single "Hey, Hey" in 1999, one of four new tracks off Bad Company's The Original Bad Company Anthology. The second single release, Rodgers's "Hammer Of Love", reached number two. For the first time in 20 years, all the original members of Bad Company toured the US.

2000s: Solo career and Queen + Paul Rodgers

Rodgers focused on his solo career in 2000 and released Electric, his 6th solo CD. In its debut week, the single "Drifters" was US rock radio's number one on the Most Added FMQB Hot Trax list, number two on Most Added R&R; Rock and number three on Most Added Album Net Power Cuts. "Drifters" remained in the top 10 for eight weeks on Billboard's Rock charts. That year, he played sold-out concerts in England, Scotland, Australia, United States and Canada. After his appearance on TV's Late Show with David Letterman in New York, he met and jammed with B.B. King. Rodgers said: "The thrill was definitely not gone... for me. B.B. is a blues giant." That same year, Paul Rodgers, Jimmie Vaughan, Levon Helm, bluesmen Hubert Sumlin, Johnnie Johnson, James Cotton and others performed a sold out concert in Cleveland as a .

The spring of 2001, Rodgers returned to Australia, England and Scotland for the second run of sold-out shows. That summer he toured the US with Bad Company.

Paul Rodgers and Bad Company released their first live CD and DVD in 2002. It included all the hits and a new single "Joe Fabulous" penned by Rodgers which hit number one at Classic Rock Radio and Top 20 on mainstream rock radio in the US. In its debut week, the DVD sales sound scanned at number three Canada, and number four in the US. The Joe Fabulous Tour kicked off in the US and sold out in the UK. While in London, Rodgers performed with Jeff Beck at the Royal Festival Hall. Rodgers was invited by long-time fan Tony Blair to perform at the Labour Party Conference. "I had the entire Labour Party singing the chorus of "Wishing Well", a song I wrote and shared with Free, ...'love in a peaceful world'. 'Love in a peaceful world'... over and over and over hoping the words would sink in but we went to war" recalled Rodgers. Twice in 2002, Rodgers performed on Britain's TV show Top of the Pops 2.

In 2003, Rodgers toured as a solo artist for the first time in two years playing 25 exclusive US dates. In his solo band are guitarist Howard Leese (formerly of Heart), bassist Lynn Sorensen and drummer Jeff Kathan. Jools Holland invited Rodgers to record "I Told The Truth" for Holland's album Small World Big Band. The CD also featured Eric Clapton, Ronnie Wood, Peter Gabriel, Michael McDonald, Ringo Starr and others. This led to Rodgers performing two sold-out nights at London's Royal Albert Hall with Holland and his 18-piece rhythm and blues orchestra, and several UK TV appearances.He also appeared with Jeff Beck, performing some songs from Beck's back catalogue (along with several other notable musicians, including John Mclaughlin, Roger Waters and the White Stripes) for part of a week-long series of charity concerts put on by Jeff Beck at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

In autumn 2004, Rodgers took part in an all-star line-up of some of the world's greatest guitarists and thousands of fans gathered at London's Wembley Arena to celebrate the 50th birthday of the Fender Stratocaster guitar. In 2005, he took part in the 50th anniversary celebration of the Four Tops.

Early in 2004, Rodgers joined Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox (Hendrix's Cry of Love), Buddy Guy, Joe Satriani, Kid Rock's Kenny Olson, Alice in Chain's Jerry Cantrell, Double Trouble, Indigenous, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and blues legend Hubert Sumlin (Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters) and performed three sold-out shows in Seattle, Portland and San Francisco as "Experience Hendrix". Once again, Rodgers only played 25 concerts in the US and Canada. He performed at Wembley for the fiftieth anniversary celebration for the Fender Stratocaster, along with David Gilmour who played Strat #001, Ronnie Wood, Brian May, Joe Walsh, Gary Moore, Rodgers sang and played a custom designed Jaguar Fender Strat. Rodgers was invited by The Four Tops to be part of their fiftieth anniversary TV/DVD concert celebration at Motown's Opera House and performed alongside Aretha Franklin, Dennis Edwards & The Temptations Revue, Sam Moore, Mary Wilson, Ashford and Simpson and The Four Tops. "The call from The Tops' Duke Fakir just about knocked me out. I've been a fan since I was a boy and had no idea that they even knew I existed!" exclaimed Rodgers. For years the media and fellow musicians have referred to Rodgers as "The Voice"'. But The Four Tops' Duke Fakir said, "Paul Rodgers is the soul of rock!" , Birmingham, 6 May 2005.]]

In late 2004, after a successful live television performance, two of the four members of the British rock group Queen proposed a collaboration with Rodgers, in which he would sing lead vocals on a European tour. Rodgers thus joined Brian May and Roger Taylor (former bassist John Deacon retired in the late 1990s), with the group billed as Queen + Paul Rodgers and they subsequently toured worldwide in 2005 and 2006. The participants clearly stated, including on Brian May's own website, "that Rodgers would be "featured with" Queen as: "Queen + Paul Rodgers", not replacing the late Freddie Mercury". The group subsequently released a live album with songs from Queen, Bad Company and Free, called Return of the Champions, and a DVD of the same name. Both featured live recordings from their Sheffield Hallam FM Arena concert on 9 May 2005. The DVD features "Imagine" from Hyde Park. "For one glorious summer" opined music critic Sean Michaels "we were all Paul Rodgers". Another DVD was released in 2006 from a live performance in Japan, called Super Live in Japan.

Queen + Paul Rodgers also released a single featuring "Reaching Out", "Tie Your Mother Down" and "Fat Bottomed Girls".

The summer of 2006 saw Rodgers again focused on his solo career with a world tour, which commenced in Austin, Texas, US in June, then on to Japan, finishing in Glasgow, Scotland, in October 2006.

On 15 August 2006, Brian May confirmed through his website that "Queen + Paul Rodgers" will begin producing a new studio album beginning in October, to be recorded at Roger Taylor's home.

In April 2007 Rodgers released a live album of his 2006 tour, recorded in Glasgow, Scotland 13 October 2006, with a DVD of the same show released the following month.

On 27–28 December 2007, Rodgers surprised many by joining the Trans-Siberian Orchestra during their Winter 2007 Tour in Houston, Texas and Dallas, Texas. Unannounced, he joined the band at the end of their show to sing "Bad Company" and "All Right Now".

Rogers was a judge for the sixth and seventh annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists.

On 27 June 2008, Rodgers and Queen performed at the Concert for Nelson Mandela to celebrate Mandela's 90th birthday.

On 8 August 2008, Rodgers and original members Mick Ralphs and Simon Kirke reunited as Bad Company to perform a one-night only, sold-out performance at the Seminole Hard Rock Live in Hollywood, Florida. The live performance was released on Blu-Ray, DVD, and CD on 9 February 2010 and the tracks included seventeen Bad Company hits. Rodgers dedicated "Gone, Gone, Gone" to original bassist Boz Burrell, who died in 2006.

On 14 May 2009, Rodgers announced he was ending his five year long collaboration with Queen, although did not rule out the possibility of working with them again. On 17 November 2009, it was announced he would join the other surviving members of Bad Company for an eight date UK tour in April 2010.

2010s: Solo career and Bad Company reunion

On 5 June 2010 he began a mini-California tour by performing at the Temecula Valley Balloon & Wine Festival. One week later, on 12 June, Rodgers and his band appeared as headliners on the Grandstand Stage at the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar, California, followed by casino shows in Lemoore on 17 June and in Santa Ynez on 18 June.

It was recently announced that Rodgers would be taking part in a Paul McCartney tribute album that would also feature contributions by Billy Joel, Garth Brooks, BB King, and KISS. Planned for a late 2010 release, no other information has been leaked.

On November 15, 2010, Paul Rodgers announced a 2011 UK tour in April with special guest Joe Elliots Down 'n' Outz.

Personal life

Paul Rodgers married Machiko Shimizu in 1971, and has two children by that marriage, Steve and Jasmine. The two children are also musicians and singers who formed a band, Bôa, in the 1990s. Paul and Machiko divorced in 1996.

On 26 September 2007, Rodgers married former Miss Canada, exercise physiologist and artist Cynthia Kereluk in a surprise outdoor wedding ceremony on their 10th anniversary in Canada's Okanagan Valley.

Discography

Solo

Cut Loose (1983)

(1993)

The Hendrix Set (live EP, 1993)

(live album, 1996)

Now (1997)

Now and Live (2CD compilation, 1997)

Electric (2000)

Live in Glasgow (2007)

with Free

Tons of Sobs (1968)

Free (1969)

Fire and Water (1970)

Highway (1970)

Free Live! (live album, 1971)

Free at Last (1972)

Heartbreaker (1973)

The Free Story (1973)

The Best of Free (1991)

with Bad Company

Bad Company (1974)

Straight Shooter (1975)

Run With the Pack (1976)

Burnin' Sky (1977)

Desolation Angels (1979)

Rough Diamonds (1982)

The Original Bad Company Anthology (compilation CD, 1999, produced by Paul Rodgers for Bad Company)

(2002)

Hard Rock Live (2010)

with The Firm

The Firm (1985)

Mean Business (1986)

The Firm Live at Hammersmith 1984 (DVD, 1984, limited release video)

Five From the Firm (DVD, 1986)

with The Law

The Law (1991)

with Queen + Paul Rodgers

Live albums

Return of the Champions (CD/LP/DVD, 2005)

Super Live in Japan (DVD, 2006; Japan only)

Live in Ukraine (CD/DVD, 2009)

Studio albums

''The Cosmos Rocks (CD 2008)

Singles

"Reachin' Out" / "Tie Your Mother Down" (CD single, 2005, Europe only)

"Say It's Not True" (Download/CD single, 2007)

"C-lebrity" (Download/CD single, 2008)

Other albums

The A-Z of Queen, Volume 1 (Two DVD tracks only)

References

External links

Official Paul Rodgers site including tour dates

MSS Magazine interview

QUEEN + Paul Rodgers - Live In Moscow 15.09.2008 DVD - сайт, где можно приобрети неофициальные двд групы.

Fan website

Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:1960s singers Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:English male singers Category:English rock singers Category:English blues singers Category:English tenors Category:English singer-songwriters Category:English songwriters Category:English multi-instrumentalists Category:Bad Company members Category:Free (band) members Category:People from Middlesbrough

Name	Jesus of Nazareth
Alt	Half-length portrait of younger man with shoulder-length hair and beard, with right hand raised over what appears to be a red flame. The upper background is gold. Around his head is a golden halo containing an equal-armed cross with three arms visible; the arms are decorated with ovals and squares.
Caption	20th-century stained glass work of Jesus at St. John the Baptist's Church in Ashfield, Australia.
Language	Aramaic (perhaps some Hebrew, Koine Greek)
Birth date	c. 5 BC/BCE
Birth place	Bethlehem, Judea, Roman Empire (traditional); Nazareth, Galilee (modern critical scholarship)
Death place	Calvary, Judea, Roman Empire (according to the New Testament, he rose on the third day after his death.)
Death date	c. 30 AD/CE (aged 33-35)
Death cause	Crucifixion
Resting place	Traditionally and temporarily, a garden tomb in Jerusalem
Ethnicity	Jewish
Nationality	Israelite
Home town	Nazareth, Galilee, Roman Empire
Parents	Father: (Christian view) God through virginal conception;(Islamic view) virginal conception;

Jesus of Nazareth (c. 5 BC/BCE – c. 30 AD/CE), also referred to as Jesus Christ or simply Jesus, is the central figure of Christianity. Most Christian denominations venerate him as God the Son incarnated and believe that he rose from the dead after being crucified.

The principal sources of information regarding Jesus' life and teachings are the four canonical gospels. Most critical scholars believe that other parts of the New Testament are also useful for reconstructing Jesus' life; some scholars believe apocryphal texts such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel according to the Hebrews are also relevant.

Most critical historians agree that Jesus was a Jew who was regarded as a teacher and healer, that he was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman Prefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, on the charge of sedition against the Roman Empire. Critical Biblical scholars and historians have offered competing descriptions of Jesus as a self-described Messiah, as the leader of an apocalyptic movement, as an itinerant sage, as a charismatic healer, and as the founder of an independent religious movement. Most contemporary scholars of the Historical Jesus consider him to have been an independent, charismatic founder of a Jewish restoration movement, anticipating an imminent apocalypse.

Christians traditionally believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, arguing that he fulfilled many Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The majority of Christians worship Jesus as the incarnation of God the Son, one of three divine persons of a Trinity. A few Christian groups, however, reject Trinitarianism, wholly or partly, believing it to be non-scriptural.

Judaism rejects assertions that Jesus was the awaited Messiah, arguing that he did not fulfill the Messianic prophecies in the Tanakh. In Islam, Jesus (, commonly transliterated as ) is considered one of God's important prophets, a bringer of scripture, and the product of a virgin birth; but did not experience a crucifixion. Islam and the Baha'i Faith use the title "Messiah" for Jesus, but do not teach that he was God incarnate.

Etymology

"Jesus" () is a transliteration, occurring in a number of languages and based on the Latin Iesus, of the Greek (), itself a Hellenisation of the Hebrew (Yĕhōšuă‘, Joshua) or Hebrew-Aramaic (Yēšûă‘), meaning "Yahweh delivers (or rescues)". "Christ" () is a title derived from the Greek (), meaning the "Anointed One", a translation of the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (Messiah).

A "Messiah," in this context, is a king anointed at God's direction or with God's approval, and Christians identify Jesus as the one foretold by Hebrew prophets.

Chronology

, 1640]]

Possible year of birth

There is no contemporary historical evidence demonstrating the date of Jesus' birth. The common Gregorian calendar method for numbering years, in which the current year is , is based on an early medieval attempt to count the years from a point of reference — namely, Jesus' birth — which Dionysius Exiguus placed, either mistakenly or intentionally, sometime between 2 BC/BCE and 1 AD/CE. The Gospel of Matthew states Jesus' birth occurred during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC/BCE, but also with the intimation that Jesus may have been as much as two years old when Herod ordered the Massacre of the Innocents, and therefore that he may have been even older at the time of Herod's death. The Gospel of Luke similarly points to Jesus' birth as having occurred during the reign of Herod the Great (i.e., sometime between 37 and 4 BC/BCE), but the author of Luke also describes the birth as taking place during the first census of the Roman provinces of Syria and Iudaea, which is generally believed to have occurred in 6 AD/CE. Most scholars generally assume a date of birth between 6 and 4 BC/BCE. Other scholars assume that Jesus was born sometime between 7—2 BC/BCE and died sometime between 26—36 AD/CE. Additional evidence uncovered in 1923 by archeologists digging in the ruins of a Roman Temple near Ankara, Turkey points to 8 BC based on descriptions of three empire-wide censuses, one of which occurred in 8 BC.

Christmas or Christmas Day is a holiday observed mostly on December 25 to commemorate the birth of Jesus. The earliest evidence of celebration of Jesus' birth comes from Clement of Alexandria, who describes Egyptian Christians as celebrating it on May 20, although other early sources have Christians celebrating the event in March, April, or January. According to Epiphaneus, Christians in the East had largely settled on January 6 by the 4th century. The wide-spread affiliation of Christmas with the Roman festival of Sol Invictus is disputable: there is no evidence that the feast of Sol Invictus was affixed by Aurelian to December 25. The celebration of Sol Invictus feast on December 25 is not mentioned until the calendar of 354 and, subsequently, in 362 by Julian the Apostate in his Oration to King Helios. However, there is no month of the year to which respectable authorities have not assigned Jesus' birth.

Ministry

Jesus' ministry, which according to the Gospel of Luke began when Jesus was "about 30 years of age", followed that of John the Baptist, whose ministry is said to have begun "in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar", which would be about 28 or 29 AD/CE. According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus' ministry lasted approximately one year, whereas the Gospel of John implies that his ministry may have lasted approximately three years. Thus, the earliest generally accepted date for the crucifixion is 29 AD/CE (i.e., the 15th year of Tiberius' reign plus one year for Jesus' ministry), and the latest is 36 AD/CE (i.e., the final year of Pontius Pilate's prefecture).

Possible year of death

All four canonical Gospels report that Jesus was crucified during the prefecture of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect who governed Judaea from 26 to 36 AD/CE. The late 1st century Jewish historian Josephus, writing in The Antiquities of the Jews (c. 93 AD/CE), and the early 2nd century Roman historian Tacitus, writing in The Annals (c. 116 AD/CE), also state that Pilate ordered the execution of Jesus, though each writer incorrectly gives him the title of "procurator" instead of prefect.

Most Christians commemorate the crucifixion on Good Friday and celebrate the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Life and teachings as told in the Gospels

The four canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are the main sources for the biography of Jesus' life; nevertheless, these Gospels were written with the intention of glorifying Jesus and are not strictly biographical in nature. For example, the Gospels primarily characterize Jesus as the Messiah: he performs miracles and is often described as having a very close relationship to the Jewish God — the phrase "Son of God" is attributed to Jesus at least once in each Gospel. The Gospels (especially Matthew) present Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection as fulfillment of prophecies found in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., the virgin birth, the flight into Egypt, Immanuel from , and the suffering servant). However, critical scholars find historical information about Jesus' life and ministry in the synoptic gospels, while interpreting the miraculous and theological content in light of what is known of Jewish beliefs at the time.

Similarities and differences among the Gospels

Three of the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are known as the synoptic Gospels because they display a high degree of similarity in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence and paragraph structures. These Gospels are also considered to share the same point of view. The fourth canonical Gospel, John, differs greatly from these three, as do the Apocryphal gospels.

According to the two-source hypothesis, Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke, both of whom also independently used a now lost sayings source called the Q Gospel. Mark defined the sequence of events from Jesus' baptism to the empty tomb and included parables of the Kingdom of God.

Character of Jesus

Each gospel portrays Jesus' life and its meaning with different emphasis. The gospel of John is not a biography of Jesus but a theological presentation of him as the divine Logos. One modern scholar writes that to combine these four stories into one story is tantamount to creating a fifth story, one different from each original. The author describes the Logos in relation to God and the created order, declares that he "became flesh", and identifies him as Jesus Christ. According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus Christ is God active in creation, in revelation (Light), and in redemption (Life). Jesus' earthly life was the Logos incarnate. The accounts in the two gospels are substantially different. Several explanations have been suggested (see Genealogy of Jesus). The earliest recorded explanation is in the 3rd century by Africanus, who argued that the discrepancy arose from a levirate marriage in Jesus' ancentry. Such a marriage could have resulted in one ancestor having two "fathers", one legal and the other physical, and so making two branches in the genealogy. However, it has been traditional to assume that Luke's genealogy traces through Mary and Matthew's through Joseph since at least 1490.

Some contemporary scholars generally view the genealogies as theological constructs. More specifically, some have suggested that the author of Matthew wants to underscore the birth of a Messianic child of royal lineage. (Solomon is included in the list); whereas, in this interpretation, Luke's genealogy is priestly (e.g., it mentions Levi). Mary is mentioned in passing in the genealogy given by Matthew, but not in Luke's, while Matthew gives Jacob as Joseph's father and Luke says Joseph was the son of Heli. Both accounts, when read at face value, trace Jesus' line though his human father Joseph back to King David and from there to Abraham. These lists are identical between Abraham and David (except for one), but they differ almost completely between David and Joseph (having only Zerubbabel and Shealtiel in common).

Joseph, husband of Mary, appears in descriptions of Jesus' childhood. No mention, however, is made of Joseph during the ministry of Jesus. The New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, and Galatians tell of Jesus' relatives, including words sometimes translated as "brothers" and "sisters". Luke also mentions that Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, was a "cousin" or "relative" of Mary, which would make John a distant cousin of Jesus.

Nativity and early life

, 17th century]] While there are documents outside of the New Testament which are more or less contemporary with the Historical Jesus, many shed no light on the more biographical aspects of his life. The main sources of Jesus himself that are available to modern scholars are the gospels.

Of the four Gospels, the Nativity (birth) is mentioned only in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. According to these accounts, Jesus was born to Joseph and Mary, his betrothed, in Bethlehem. Both support the doctrine of the Virgin Birth in which Jesus was miraculously conceived in his mother's womb by the Holy Spirit, when his mother was still a virgin.

In Luke, the angel Gabriel visits Mary to tell her that she was chosen to bear the Son of God. An order of Caesar Augustus had forced Mary and Joseph to leave their homes in Nazareth and travel to Bethlehem, the home of Joseph's ancestors, the house of David, for the Census of Quirinius. After Jesus' birth, the couple was forced to use a manger in place of a crib because of a shortage of accommodation. An angel announced Jesus' birth to shepherds who left their flocks to see the newborn child and who subsequently publicized what they had witnessed throughout the area (see The First Noël).

In Matthew, the "Wise Men" or "Magi" bring gifts to the young Jesus after following a star which they believe was a sign that the King of the Jews had been born. King Herod hears of Jesus' birth from the Wise Men and tries to kill him by massacring all the male children in Bethlehem under the age of two (the "massacre of the innocents"). The family flees to Egypt and remains there until Herod's death, whereupon they settle in Nazareth to avoid living under the authority of Herod's son and successor Archelaus.

Jesus' childhood home is identified as the town of Nazareth in Galilee. Except for Matthew's "flight into Egypt", and a short trip to Tyre and Sidon (in what is now Lebanon), the Gospels place all other events in Jesus' life in ancient Israel. However, infancy gospels began to appear around the beginning of the 2nd century.

In Mark, Jesus is called a tekton, usually understood to mean carpenter. Matthew says he was the son of a tekton.

Baptism and temptation

by Francesco Trevisani]] , 1854]] All the gospels report that he had become known as a religious teacher by the time he had reached his 30's. Luke says Jesus was "about thirty years of age" when he was baptized. All three synoptic Gospels describe the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, an event which Biblical scholars describe as the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. According to these accounts, Jesus came to the Jordan River where John the Baptist had been preaching and baptizing people in the crowd. After Jesus was baptized and rose from the water, Mark states Jesus "saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.'"

Mark starts his narration with Jesus' baptism, specifying that it is a token of repentance and for forgiveness of sins. Matthew describes John as initially hesitant to comply with Jesus' request for John to baptize him, stating that it was Jesus who should baptize him. Jesus persisted, "It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness". In Matthew, God's public dedication informs the reader that Jesus has become God's anointed ("Christ").

The Gospel of John does not describe Jesus' baptism, or the subsequent Temptation, but it does attest that Jesus is the very one about whom John the Baptist had been preaching—the Son of God. The Baptist twice declares Jesus to be the "Lamb of God", a term found nowhere else in the Gospels. John also emphasizes Jesus' superiority over John the Baptist. In the synoptics, Jesus speaks in parables and aphorisms, exorcises demons, champions the poor and oppressed, and teaches mainly about the Kingdom of God. In John, Jesus speaks in long discourses, with himself as the theme of his teaching. The Synoptic Gospels suggest a span of only one year. In the synoptics, Jesus' ministry takes place mainly in Galilee, until he travels to Jerusalem, where he cleanses the Temple and is executed. In John, his ministry in and around Jerusalem is more prominently described, cleansing the temple at his ministry's beginning.

In Mark, the disciples are strangely obtuse, failing to understand Jesus' deeds and parables. In Matthew, Jesus directs the apostles' mission only to those of the house of Israel, Luke places a special emphasis on the women who followed Jesus, such as Mary Magdalene.

Teachings and preachings

,illustration by Carl Heinrich Bloch, 19th c.]] In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus speaks primarily about the Kingdom of God.

Some of Jesus' most famous teachings come from the Sermon on the Mount, which contains the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer. It is one of five collections of teachings in Matthew. During his sermons, he preached about service and humility, the forgiveness of sin, faith, turning the other cheek, love for one's enemies as well as friends, and the need to follow the spirit of the law in addition to the letter.

In the Synoptics, Jesus relays an apocalyptic vision of the end of days. He preaches that the end of the current world will come unexpectedly, and that he will return to judge the world, especially according to how they treated the vulnerable. He calls on his followers to be ever alert and faithful. In Mark, the Kingdom of God is a divine government that will appear by force within the lifetimes of his followers. The Transfiguration is a turning point in Jesus ministry.

In Mark, Jesus' identity as the Messiah is obscured (see Messianic secret). Mark states that "this generation" will be given no sign, while Matthew and Luke say they will be given no sign but the sign of Jonah. In John, and not in the synoptics, Jesus is outspoken about his divine identity and mission. Here Jesus uses the phrase "I am" in talking of himself in ways that designate God in the Hebrew Bible, a statement taken by some writers as claiming identity with God.

Arrest, trial, and death

, 1626.]]

In Jerusalem

According to the Synoptics, Jesus came with his followers to Jerusalem during the Passover festival where a large crowd came to meet him, shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel!" Following his triumphal entry, Jesus created a disturbance at Herod's Temple by overturning the tables of the moneychangers who set up shop there, and claiming that they had made the Temple a "den of robbers". Later that week, Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples — an event subsequently known as the Last Supper — in which he prophesied that he would be betrayed by one of his disciples, and would then be executed. In this ritual he took bread and wine in hand, saying: "this is my body which is given for you" and "this cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood", and instructed them to "do this in remembrance of me." Following the supper, Jesus and his disciples went to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane.

In Mark and Matthew, Jesus is anguished in the face of his fate. He prays and accepts God's will, but his chosen disciples repeatedly fall asleep on the watch.

In John, Jesus has already cleansed the temple a few years before and has been preaching in Jerusalem. He raises Lazarus on the Sabbath, the act that finally gets Jewish leaders to plan his death.

(Behold the Man!) Pontius Pilate presents a scourged Jesus of Nazareth to onlookers. Illustration by Antonio Ciseri, 19th c.]]

Betrayal and arrest

While in the Garden, Jesus is arrested by temple guards on the orders of the Sanhedrin and the high priest, Caiaphas. The arrest takes place clandestinely at night to avoid a riot, as Jesus is popular with the people at large. Judas Iscariot, one of his apostles, betrays Jesus by identifying him to the guards with a kiss. Simon Peter, another one of Jesus' apostles, uses a sword to attack one of Jesus' captors, cutting off his ear, which, according to Luke, Jesus immediately heals miraculously. Jesus rebukes the apostle, stating "all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword". After his arrest, Jesus' apostles go into hiding; Judas, distraught by his betrayal of Jesus, commits suicide shortly after.

Trials before the Sanhedrin and Pilate

, painting by D. Velázquez, 17th c.]] Jesus affirms that he is the Messiah before the Sanhedrin,. The Jewish leaders turn him over to Pilate for execution, but Pilate is reluctant to execute Jesus. He asks God to forgive those who are crucifying him, possibly the Romans and possibly the Jews.

Resurrection and ascension

, illustration by Matthias Grünewald, 16th c.]] The Gospels state that Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday. All the Gospels portray Jesus' empty tomb. In Matthew, an angel appears near the tomb of Jesus and announces his resurrection to Mary Magdalene and "another Mary" who had arrived to anoint the body. Jewish elders bribe the soldiers who had guarded the tomb to spread the rumor that Jesus' disciples took his body. In Luke, there are two angels and in Mark the angel appears as a youth dressed in white. The "longer ending" to Mark, which is known as the Markan Appendix and which did not form part of the original manuscripts, states that on the morning of his resurrection, Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene. John states that when Mary looked into the tomb, two angels asked her why she was crying; and as she turned round she initially failed to recognize Jesus until he spoke her name.

The Gospels all record appearances by Jesus, including an appearance to the eleven apostles. In Mark, Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, to two disciples in the country, and to the eleven, at which point Jesus commissions them to announce the gospel, baptize, and work miracles.

In Mark and Luke, Jesus ascends to the heavens; after these appearances. In Luke, Jesus ascends on Easter Sunday evening when he is with his disciples. The name "Jesus" comes from an alternate spelling of the Latin (Iēsus) which in turn comes from the Greek name Iesous (). In the Septuagint, is used as the Greek version of the Hebrew name Yehoshua (, "God delivers" from Yeho — Yahweh [is] shua` — deliverance/rescue) in the Biblical book of the same name, usually Romanized as Joshua. Some scholars believe that one of these was likely the name that Jesus was known by during his lifetime by his peers. Thus, the name has been translated into English as "Joshua".

Christ (which started as a title, and has often been used as a name for Jesus) is an Anglicization of the Greek term χριστός, christos. In the Septuagint, this term is used as the translation of the , "Anointed One" in reference to priests, and kings and King Cyrus. In Isaiah and Jeremiah the word began to be applied to a future ideal king. The New Testament has some 500 uses of the word χριστός applied to Jesus, used either generically or in an absolute sense, namely as the Anointed One (the Messiah, the Christ). The Gospel of Mark has as its central point of its narrative Peter's confession of Jesus as the Messiah.

indicates that the strong belief that Jesus was the Messiah predates the letters of Paul the Apostle. These letters also show that the Messiah title was already beginning to be used as a name.

Some have suggested that other titles applied to Jesus in the New Testament had meanings in the 1st century quite different from those meanings ascribed today. Géza Vermes has argued that "Son of man" was not a title but rather the polite way in which people referred to themselves, i.e. a pronominal phrase. However, a number of New Testament scholars argue that Jesus himself made no claims to being God. Most Christians identified Jesus as divine from a very early period, although holding a variety of views as to what exactly this implied.

Other names and titles

"Son of David" is found elsewhere in Jewish tradition to refer to the heir to the throne. Over the past two hundred years, these scholars have constructed a Jesus different in ways from the image found in the gospels. Scholars of the "historical Jesus" distinguish their concept from the "Jesus Christ" of Christianity. Other scholars, however, hold that the figure presented in the gospels is the real Jesus and that his life and influence only make sense if the gospel stories are accurate.

The principal sources of information regarding Jesus' life and teachings are the four gospels. Scholars conclude the authors of the gospels wrote a few decades after Jesus' crucifixion (between 60-100AD), in some cases using sources (the author of Luke-Acts references this explicitly). A great majority of biblical scholars accept the historical existence of Jesus.

The English title of Albert Schweitzer's 1906 book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, is a label for the post-Enlightenment effort to describe Jesus using critical historical methods. Since the end of the 18th century, scholars have examined the gospels and tried to formulate historical biographies of Jesus. The historical outlook on Jesus relies on critical analysis of the Bible, especially the gospels. Many Biblical scholars have sought to reconstruct Jesus' life in terms of the political, cultural, and religious crises and movements in late 2nd Temple Judaism and in Roman-occupied Palestine, including differences between Galilee and Judea, and between different sects such as the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots, and in terms of conflicts among Jews in the context of Roman occupation.

Descriptions

Historians of Christianity generally describe Jesus as a healer who preached the restoration of God's kingdom and agree he was baptized by John the Baptist and crucified by the Romans.

Baptism by John the Baptist

John the Baptist led a large apocalyptic movement. He demanded repentance and baptism. Jesus was baptized and later began his ministry. After John was executed, some of his followers apparently took Jesus as their new leader. Historians are nearly unanimous in accepting Jesus' baptism as a historical event.

Arrival of the Kingdom – Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God. He said that the age of the Kingdom had in some sense arrived, starting with the activity of John the Baptist. Scholars commonly surmise that Jesus' eschatology was apocalyptic, like John's.

Parables – Jesus taught in pithy parables and with striking images. His teaching was marked by hyperbole and unusual twists of phrase. that have great effects. Significantly, he never described the Kingdom in military terms. Associated with this main theme, Jesus taught that one should rely on prayer and expect prayer to be effective.

The Gospels report that Jesus foretold his own Passion, but the actions of the disciples suggest that it came as a surprise to them.

Jewish religious movements in Jesus' day

Scholars refer to the religious background of the early 1st century to better reconstruct Jesus' life. Some scholars identify him with one or another group.

Pharisees were a powerful force in 1st-century Judea. Early Christians shared several beliefs of the Pharisees, such as resurrection, retribution in the next world, angels, human freedom, and Divine Providence. After the fall of the Temple, the Pharisee outlook was established in Rabbinic Judaism. Some scholars speculate that Jesus was himself a Pharisee. In Jesus' day, the two main schools of thought among the Pharisees were the House of Hillel, which had been founded by the eminent Tanna, Hillel the Elder, and the House of Shammai. Jesus' assertion of hypocrisy may have been directed against the stricter members of the House of Shammai, although he also agreed with their teachings on divorce. Jesus also commented on the House of Hillel's teachings (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a) concerning the greatest commandment and the Golden Rule. Historians do not know whether there were Pharisees in Galilee during Jesus' life, or what they would have been like.

Essenes were apocalyptic ascetics, one of the three (or four) major Jewish schools of the time, though they were not mentioned in the New Testament. Some scholars theorize that Jesus was an Essene, or close to them. Among these scholars is Pope Benedict XVI, who supposes in his book on Jesus that "it appears that not only John the Baptist, but possibly Jesus and his family as well, were close to the Qumran community."

Zealots were a revolutionary party opposed to Roman rule, one of those parties that, according to Josephus inspired the fanatical stand in Jerusalem that led to its destruction in the year 70 AD/CE. Luke identifies Simon, a disciple, as a "zealot", which might mean a member of the Zealot party (which would therefore have been already in existence in the lifetime of Jesus) or a zealous person.

Higher criticism and Christian scripture

Contemporary historians of Christianity use the historical-critical method (or higher criticism) to examine scripture for clues about the historical Jesus. They sort out sayings and events that are more likely to be genuine and use those to construct their portraits of Jesus. They use standard historical methods to discern who wrote each book, where and when they were written, what sources the authors used, what the authors' agendas were.

Biblical scholars hold that the works describing Jesus were initially communicated by oral tradition, and were not committed to writing until several decades after Jesus' crucifixion. After the original oral stories were written down in Greek, they were transcribed, and later translated into other languages. The books of the New Testament had mostly been written by 100 AD/CE, making them, at least the synoptic gospels, historically relevant. The Gospel tradition certainly preserves several fragments of Jesus' teaching. The Gospel of Mark is believed to have been written c. 70 AD/CE. Matthew is placed at being sometime after this date and Luke is thought to have been written between 70 and 100 AD/CE. According to the majority viewpoint, the gospels were written not by the evangelists identified by tradition but by non-eyewitnesses who worked with second-hand sources and who modified their accounts to suit their religious agendas. Sayings attributed to Jesus are deemed more likely to reflect his character when they are distinctive, vivid, paradoxical, surprising, and contrary to social and religious expectations, such as "Blessed are the poor". Short, memorable parables and aphorisms capable of being transmitted orally are also thought more likely to be authentic.

A minority of prominent scholars, such as J. A. T. Robinson, have maintained that the writers of the gospels of Matthew, Mark and John were either apostles and eyewitness to Jesus' ministry and death, or were close to those who had been. a few scholars have questioned the existence of Jesus as an actual historical figure. Among the proponents of non-historicity was Bruno Bauer in the 19th century. Non-historicity was somewhat influential in biblical studies during the early 20th century. The views of scholars who entirely rejected Jesus' historicity then were based on a suggested lack of eyewitnesses, a lack of direct archaeological evidence, the failure of certain ancient works to mention Jesus, and similarities early Christianity shared with then-contemporary religion and mythology.

More recently, arguments for non-historicity have been discussed by authors such as George Albert Wells and Robert M. Price, Earl Doherty, Timothy Freke, and Peter Gandy.

Classicist Michael Grant stated that standard historical criteria prevent one from rejecting the existence of a historical Jesus. Professor of Divinity James Dunn describes the mythical Jesus theory as a 'thoroughly dead thesis'.

Religious perspectives

By and large, the Jews of Jesus' day rejected his claim to be the Messiah, as do Jews today. For their part, Christian Church Fathers, Ecumenical Councils, Reformers, and others have written extensively about Jesus over the centuries. Christian sects and schisms have often been defined or characterized by competing descriptions of Jesus. Meanwhile, Gnostics, Mandaeans, Manichaeans, Muslims, Baha'is, and others have found prominent places for Jesus in their own religious accounts.

Christian views

Though Christian views of Jesus vary, it is possible to describe a general majority Christian view by examining the similarities between specific Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and many Protestant doctrines found in their catechetical or confessional texts. Almost all Christian groups regard Jesus as the "Savior and Redeemer", as the Messiah (Greek: Christos; English: Christ) prophesied in the Old Testament, who, through his life, death, and resurrection, restored humanity's communion with God in the blood of the New Covenant. His death on a cross is understood as the redemptive sacrifice: the source of humanity's salvation and the atonement for sin, which had entered human history through the sin of Adam. Christians profess that Jesus suffered death by crucifixion, and rose bodily from the dead in the definitive miracle that foreshadows the resurrection of humanity at the end of time, when Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead, resulting in either entrance into heaven or damnation.

Christians profess Jesus to be the only Son of God, the Lord, and the eternal Word (which is a translation of the Greek Logos), who became man in the incarnation, so that those who believe in him might have eternal life. They further hold that he was born of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit in an event described as the miraculous virgin birth or incarnation.

A nearly universal belief within Christianity is that the Godhead is triune ("Trinity"). As the ancient Athanasian Creed is worded, the Trinity is "one God" and "three persons... and yet they are not three Gods, but one God." The doctrine of the Trinity has been rejected by many non-Christians throughout its history. They teach that Jesus is a separate and distinct being from God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and that Biblical references to the Father and the Son being one do not indicate a unity of being. While most of these groups refer to themselves as Christian, they are not generally accepted by Mainline Protestants and more conservative denominations because of the extra-biblical and unorthodox teachings of these groups. Some religious groups that do not accept the doctrine of the Trinity include The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Unitarianism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Oneness Pentecostals, Sabbatarian Churches of God and the Christadelphians. (See also Nontrinitarianism)

Benedict XVI, in his book, Jesus of Nazareth, readily and gratefully acknowledges that, thanks to historical-critical scholarship, we know much more, today, about the different literary genres of the Bible; about the ways in which a Gospel writer's intent affected his portrait of Jesus; about the theological struggles within early Christianity that shaped a particular Christian community's memory of its Lord. The difficulty, according to Benedict XVI, is that, "amidst all the knowledge gained in the biblical dissecting room, the Jesus of the Gospels has tended to disappear, to be replaced by a given scholar's reconstruction from the bits and pieces left on the dissecting room floor." And that makes what Benedict calls "intimate friendship with Jesus" much more difficult, not just for scholars, but for everyone.

Jewish views

Judaism, including Orthodox Judaism, Hareidi Judaism, Reform Judaism, and Conservative Judaism, holds the view Jesus is not the Messiah, arguing that he had not fulfilled the Messianic prophecies in the Tanakh nor embodied the personal qualifications of the Messiah. According to Jewish tradition, there were no more prophets after Malachi, who lived centuries before Jesus and delivered his prophesies about 420 BC/BCE. Judaism states that Jesus did not fulfill the requirements set by the Torah to prove that he was a prophet. Even if Jesus had produced such a sign that Judaism recognized, Judaism states that no prophet or dreamer can contradict the laws already stated in the Torah, which Jesus did.

The Babylonian Talmud and Toledot Yeshu include stories of Yeshu . This name is etymologically unconnected to the Hebrew or Aramaic words for Joshua, and many religious Jews read it as the acronym for Yimakh sh'mo u'shem zikhro (meaning "be his name and memory erased"), an expression used to describe deceased enemies. Historians agree that these narratives do not refer to a historical Jesus. Historians disagree as to whether these stories represent a Jewish comment on and reaction against the Christian Jesus, or refer to someone unconnected to Jesus.

The Mishneh Torah (an authoritative work of Jewish law) states in Hilkhot Melakhim 11:10–12 that Jesus is a "stumbling block" who makes "the majority of the world err to serve a divinity besides God". Because, is there a greater stumbling-block than this one? So that all of the prophets spoke that the Messiah redeems Israel, and saves them, and gathers their banished ones, and strengthens their commandments. And this one caused (nations) to destroy Israel by sword, and to scatter their remnant, and to humiliate them, and to exchange the Torah, and to make the majority of the world err to serve a divinity besides God. However, the thoughts of the Creator of the world — there is no force in a human to attain them because our ways are not God's ways, and our thoughts not God's thoughts. And all these things of Jesus the Nazarene, and of (Muhammad) the Ishmaelite who stood after him — there is no (purpose) but to straighten out the way for the King Messiah, and to restore all the world to serve God together. So that it is said, "Because then I will turn toward the nations (giving them) a clear lip, to call all of them in the name of God and to serve God (shoulder to shoulder as) one shoulder." Look how all the world already becomes full of the things of the Messiah, and the things of the Torah, and the things of the commandments! And these things spread among the far islands and among the many nations uncircumcised of heart.}}

According to Conservative Judaism, Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah have "crossed the line out of the Jewish community". Reform Judaism, the modern progressive movement, states "For us in the Jewish community anyone who claims that Jesus is their savior is no longer a Jew and is an apostate".

According to Geza Vermes, the historical Jesus was a Jew in good standing. Modern Jews, he says, would find the historical Jesus an appealing figure, one quite different from the Christ of the Gospels.

Islamic views

Mainstream Islam considers Jesus an ordinary man who, like other prophets, had been divinely chosen to spread God's message. Jesus is seen in Islam as a precursor to Muhammad, and is believed by Muslims to have foretold the latter's coming. According to the Qur'an, believed by Muslims to be God's final revelation, Jesus was born to Mary (Arabic: Maryam) as the result of virginal conception, and was given the ability to perform miracles. However, Islam rejects historians assertions that Jesus was crucified by the Romans, instead claiming that he had been raised alive up to heaven. Islamic traditions narrate that he will return to earth near the day of judgement to restore justice and defeat al-Masīḥ ad-Dajjāl (lit. "the false Messiah", also known as the Antichrist) and the enemies of Islam. As a just ruler, Jesus will then die.

Ahmadiyya views

The Ahmadiyya Movement considers Jesus a mortal man who died a natural death. According to the early 20th century writings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement) , Jesus survived his ordeal on the cross, and after his apparent death and resurrection, he fled Palestine and migrated eastwards to further teach the gospels. Jesus eventually died a natural death of old age in India – Kashmir - and is believed to be buried at Roza Bal.

Although the view of Jesus having migrated to India has also been researched in the publications of independent historians with no affiliation to the movement, the Ahmadiyya Movement are the only religious organization to adopt these views as a characteristic of their faith. The general notion of Jesus in India is older than the foundation of the movement, and is discussed at length by Grönbold and Klatt.

The movement also interprets the second coming of Christ prophesied in various religious texts would be that of a person "similar to Jesus" (mathīl-i ʿIsā). Thus, Ahmadi's consider that the founder of the movement and his prophetical character and teachings were representative of Jesus and subsequently a fulfillment of this prophecy.

Bahá'í views

The Bahá'í Faith, founded in 19th-century Persia, considers Jesus, along with Muhammad, the Buddha, Krishna, and Zoroaster, and other messengers of the great religions of the world to be Manifestations of God (or prophets), with both human and divine stations.

God is one and has manifested himself to humanity through several historic Messengers. Bahá'ís refer to this concept as Progressive Revelation, which means that God's will is revealed to mankind progressively as mankind matures and is better able to comprehend the purpose of God in creating humanity. In this view, God's word is revealed through a series of messengers: Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Bahá'u'lláh (the founder of the Bahá'í Faith) among them. In the Book of Certitude, Bahá'u'lláh claims that these messengers have a two natures: divine and human. Examining their divine nature, they are more or less the same being. However, when examining their human nature, they are individual, with distinct personality. For example, when Jesus says "I and my Father are one", Bahá'ís take this quite literally, but specifically with respect to his nature as a Manifestation. When Jesus conversely stated "...And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me", Bahá'ís see this as a simple reference to the individuality of Jesus. This divine nature, according to Bahá'u'lláh, means that any Manifestation of God can be said to be the return of a previous Manifestation, though Bahá'ís also believe that some Manifestations with specific missions return with a "new name". and a different, or expanded purpose. Bahá'ís believe that Bahá'u'lláh is, in both respects, the return of Jesus.

Buddhist views

Buddhists' views of Jesus differ. Some Buddhists, including Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama regard Jesus as a bodhisattva who dedicated his life to the welfare of human beings. The 14th century Zen master Gasan Jōseki indicated that the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels were written by an enlightened man.

Other views

Mandaeanism, a very small Mideastern, Gnostic sect that reveres John the Baptist as God's greatest prophet, regards Jesus as a false prophet of the false Jewish god of the Old Testament, Adonai, and likewise rejects Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad.

Manichaeism accepted Jesus as a prophet, along with Gautama Buddha and Zoroaster.

The New Age movement entertains a wide variety of views on Jesus. The creators of A Course In Miracles claim to trance-channel his spirit. However, the New Age movement generally teaches that Christhood is something that all may attain. Theosophists, from whom many New Age teachings originated (a Theosophist named Alice A. Bailey invented the term New Age), refer to Jesus of Nazareth as the Master Jesus and believe he had previous incarnations.

Many writers emphasize Jesus' moral teachings. Garry Wills argues that Jesus' ethics are distinct from those usually taught by Christianity. The Jesus Seminar portrays Jesus as an itinerant preacher who taught peace and love, rights for women and respect for children, and who spoke out against the hypocrisy of religious leaders and the rich. Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a deist, created the Jefferson Bible entitled "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth" that included only Jesus' ethical teachings because he did not believe in Jesus' divinity or any of the other supernatural aspects of the Bible.

See also

New Testament Jesus

* Biblical Jesus

* Christian views about women

* Christian views of Jesus

* Crucifixion of Jesus and Resurrection of Jesus

* Miracles of Jesus

* Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament

* King of kings

* Race of Jesus

* Sermon on the Mount

Jesus and history

* Apostolic Succession of Jesus

* Christian apologetics

* Genealogy of Jesus

* Gospel Harmony

* Historicity of Jesus

* Historicity of the Gospels

* Jesus and comparative mythology

* New Testament view on Jesus' life

General topics

* Christian mythology

* INRI (stands for "Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews")

* Nazarene

Views on Jesus

* Apocrypha

* Christology

* Pauline Christianity

* Religious perspectives on Jesus

* Sexuality of Jesus

Related lists

* List of books about Jesus

* List of founders of major religions

* List of Messiah claimants

* List of people who have been considered deities

* List of people who have claimed to be Jesus

Notes

References

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Sanders, E.P. The Historical Figure of Jesus. London: Allen Lane Penguin Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-7139-9059-1

Sanders, E.P. Jesus and Judaism. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1987. ISBN 0-8006-2061-5

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Vermes, Géza. Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1981. ISBN 0-8006-1443-7

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Wilson, A.N. Jesus. London: Pimlico, 2003. ISBN 0-7126-0697-1

Wright, N.T. Jesus and the Victory of God. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1997. ISBN 0-8006-2682-6

Wright, N.T. The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003. ISBN 0-8006-2679-6

External links

Complete Sayings of Jesus Christ In Parallel Latin & English

"Jesus Christ." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 12 Nov. 2009

From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians — Frontline documentary about Jesus' life and the early Church.

The Jewish Roman World of Jesus

Category:0s BC births Category:1st-century deaths Category:1st-century executions Category:Apocalypticists Category:Carpenters Category:Christian mythology Category:Christian religious leaders Category:Creator gods Category:Deified people Category:Founders of religions Category:God in Christianity Category:Islamic mythology Category:Jewish Messiah claimants Category:Life-death-rebirth gods Category:Messianism Category:New Testament people Category:People executed by crucifixion Category:People executed by the Roman Empire Category:People from Bethlehem Category:People from Nazareth Category:Prophets in Christianity Category:Prophets of Islam Category:Rabbis of the Land of Israel Category:Roman era Jews Category:Savior gods Category:Self-declared messiahs

Name	India.Arie
Background	solo_singer
Landscape	Yes
Birth name	India Arie Simpson
Born	October 03, 1975Denver, Colorado, United States
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, flute, keyboard
Voice type	Contralto
Genre	Soul, R&B;, neo soul, blues, folk, pop
Occupation	Musician, songwriter, record producer
Years active	2001–present
Label	Motown (1999–2007)SoulBird / Universal Republic (2007–present)
Url	www.indiaarie.com

India.Arie (born India Arie Simpson; October 3, 1975) is an American soul, R&B;, and neo soul singer-songwriter, record producer, guitarist, and flautist.

Background

Simpson was born in Denver, Colorado. She absorbed musical skills early in life as she was encouraged by both parents. Her mother Joyce is a former singer (she was signed to Motown as a teenager and opened for Stevie Wonder and Al Green) and is now her stylist. She has an older brother named J'On. After her parents divorced, Simpson's mother moved the family to Atlanta, Georgia when she was thirteen. Simpson had taken up a succession of musical instruments throughout her schooling in Denver, but her interest in the guitar while attending the Savannah College of Art and Design, in Savannah, led to a personal revelation about songwriting and performing. "When I started tapping into my own sensitivity, I started to understand people better. It was a direct result of writing songs", she said at the press release of her debut album, Acoustic Soul.

Co-founding the Atlanta-based independent music collective Groovement EarthShare (Groovement was the collective artists' name and EarthShare was their independent label name), her one-song turn on a locally-released compilation led to a second-stage gig at the 1998 Lilith Fair. In 1999, a Universal/Motown music scout spotted her and made an introduction to former Motown CEO Kedar Massenberg. Arie currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

Musical career

Acoustic Soul (2001)

Acoustic Soul was released on March 27, 2001 and debuted at number ten on the U.S. Billboard 200 and number three on the Top R&B;/Hip-Hop Albums. Within months, without the concentrated radio airplay that typically powers pop and rap albums, Acoustic Soul was certified double platinum, selling 2,180,000 copies in the U.S. and 3,000,000 copies worldwide. While Arie and the album were nominated for seven Grammy awards in 2002, they won no awards, losing in five of seven categories to Alicia Keys. She closed the ceremony with a performance of her song "Video".

Voyage to India (2002)

Arie followed the success of her debut on 24 September 2002 with the release of Voyage to India. It debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 and number one on the R&B; chart. In 2003 it won her two Grammy Awards in 2003—"Best R&B; Album" and Best Urban/Alternative Performance" for the song "Little Things". Soon after its release, Voyage to India was certified platinum selling 1,400,000 copies in the U.S. and 2,300,000 worldwide .

Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship (2006)

Arie's third studio album, , was released on June 27, 2006. It gave Arie her first number-one spot on the Billboard 200 and was her second chart-topper on the R&B; chart. This album was also the first number-one album for Motown in twelve years . Its first-week sales of 161,000 copies are Arie's best sales week to date and was certified gold in August 2006, selling 730,000 in US and 1,300,000 worldwide. "I Am Not My Hair" was the most successful release from Testimony: Vol. 1., reaching the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 at #97 and the UK Singles Chart at #65.

Her cover of Don Henley's "The Heart of the Matter" from Testimony: Vol. 1 was used in 2008 as a feature in the trailers to the film .

''Testimony: Vol. 2, Love & Politics (2009)

Her highly anticipated next album, was released on Tuesday, February 10, 2009. It debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, and No. 2 on the R&B; chart. Within this CD, Arie collaborated with such artists as Sezen Aksu, Keb Mo, Gramps Morgan and Musiq Soulchild to fulfill her self-proclaimed desire to "do projects with people who are making music that is meaningful, with a lot of integrity and a lot of sonic diversity". Arie, in the cited interview, also identified this CD as the first of her collection to come directly from her own point of view, without feeling any necessity to fulfill fan or media needs. Arie was able to achieve this newfound ability to write and sing songs without worrying about public opinion after a much-needed vacation to Hawaii. This CD was Arie's first CD produced after her change from Motown to Universal Records.

Open Door

India.Arie's new album, a work produced in collaboration with Israeli singer Idan Raichel is due to be released in the spring of 2011.

Collaborations

Arie performed a duet with rock singer-guitarist John Mellencamp on the song "Peaceful World" for his 2001 album Cuttin' Heads.

Arie performed a duet with jazz singer Cassandra Wilson on the song "Just Another Parade" for her 2002 album Belly of the Sun.

On the September 12, 2005 premiere of The Tyra Banks Show, Arie performed "Just 4 2day", a song she wrote especially for Tyra's show. She also performed "What About the Child", a song that did not air but was made available as a one-dollar Internet download to support child victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Arie is also featured on Stevie Wonder's album A Time to Love, released on October 18, 2005. Arie and Wonder duet on the title track "A Time to Love", written by Arie, which was nominated for "Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals" at the 2006 Grammy Awards. Three years earlier, their rendition of Mel Tormé's 1944 classic "The Christmas Song", recorded for the holiday TV commercial for retailer Target, had been nominated for the same category, making it the first song created and financed exclusively for a commercial to be nominated for a Grammy Award.

Arie performed a duet with Brazilian musician Sérgio Mendes on the title song "Timeless" for his 2006 album Timeless.

Arie performed the vocals for "It Might Be You" on Dave Koz's 2007 album At the Movies.

Arie collaborated with Akon for her song "I Am Not My Hair". On the April 16, 2007 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show entitled "After Imus: Now What?", Arie guest-starred as a panelist. She stated that she wasn't completely crazy about the duet partner, but the label suggested that it would make the album more commercial. Versions without Akon on the song were made available.

Arie performed the song "She Is" for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, inspired by the PBS Independent Lens documentary Iron Ladies of Liberia.

Arie performed a duet with singer Anthony David for his song "Words" for his 2008 album Acey Duecy.

Arie performed "Self-Fulfilling" in duet with Beate S. Lech of Beady Belle on the band's 2008 album Belvedere.

Arie sang the Alphabet song with Elmo on Sesame Street.

Arie performed "Video" with British singer Adele at the 2009 VH1 Divas

Arie is one of over 70 artists singing on "", a charity single in aid of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Arie performed a duet with Marc Cohn on the song "Make It With You" for his 2010 album Listening Booth: 1970.

Arie collaborated in 2010 with Santana for the Beatles' cover, While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

Arie contributed vocals to "Imagine" for the 2010 Herbie Hancock album, The Imagine Project along with Seal, P!nk, Jeff Beck, Konono N°1, Oumou Sangare and others.

Discography

Studio albums

2001: Acoustic Soul

2002: Voyage to India

2006:

2009:

2011: Open Door

Grammy Awards history

References

External links

Official website

India.Aire interview by Pete Lewis, 'Blues & Soul' April 2009

India.Arie on Motown Records website

Profile on VIBE.com

India.Arie at NPR Music

Category:1975 births Category:African American female singer-songwriters Category:American contraltos Category:American female guitarists Category:American flautists Category:American record producers Category:American rhythm and blues guitarists Category:American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters Category:American soul singers Category:Musicians from Colorado Category:English-language singers Category:Feminist artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Living people Category:Motown artists Category:Neo soul singers Category:People from Atlanta, Georgia Category:People from Denver, Colorado Category:People from Savannah, Georgia

Name	Herbie Hancock
Landscape	no
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	Herbert Jeffrey Hancock
Born	April 12, 1940Chicago, IllinoisUnited States
Spouse	Gigi Hancock
Instrument	piano, synthesizer, organ, clavinet, keytar, vocoder
Genre	jazz, bebop, post bop, jazz fusion, hard bop, jazz-funk, funk, R&B;, electro funk, classical
Occupation	musician, composer, bandleader
Years active	1961–present
Label	Columbia, Blue Note, Verve/Polygram, Warner Bros. Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment
Associated acts	Miles Davis Quintet, Jaco Pastorius, Stevie Wonder

Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet", Hancock helped redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section, and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and funk. Hancock's music is often melodic and accessible; he has had many songs "cross over" and achieved success among pop audiences. His music embraces elements of funk and soul while adopting freer stylistic elements from jazz. In his jazz improvisation, he possesses a unique creative blend of jazz, blues, and modern classical music, with harmonic stylings much like the styles of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

Hancock's best-known solo works include "Cantaloupe Island", "Watermelon Man" (later performed by dozens of musicians, including bandleader Mongo Santamaría), "Maiden Voyage", "Chameleon", and the singles "I Thought It Was You" and "Rockit". His 2007 tribute album "" won the 2008 Grammy Award for Album of the Year, only the second jazz album ever to win the award after Getz/Gilberto in 1965.

As a member of Soka Gakkai, Hancock is an adherent of the Nichiren school of Mahayana Buddhism.

Early life and career

Hancock was born in Chicago, Illinois. Like many jazz pianists, Hancock started with a classical music education; Hancock studied from age seven. His talent was recognized early. Considered a child prodigy, he played the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 5 at a young people's concert with the Chicago Symphony at age eleven.

Through his teens, Hancock never had a jazz teacher. Instead, around high school age, Hancock grew to like jazz after hearing some Oscar Peterson and George Shearing recordings, which he transcribed in his own time, and which developed his ear and sense of harmony. He was also influenced by records of the vocal group the Hi-Lo's:

..by the time I actually heard the Hi-Lo's, I started picking that stuff out; my ear was happening. I could hear stuff and that's when I really learned some much farther-out voicings -like the harmonies I used on 'Speak Like a Child' -just being able to do that. I really got that from Clare Fischer's arrangements for the Hi-Lo's. Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept... He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that's where it music after two years.

In 1960, he heard Chris Anderson play just once, and begged him to accept him as a student. Hancock often mentions Anderson as his harmonic guru. Hancock left Grinnell, moved to Chicago and began working with Donald Byrd and Coleman Hawkins, during which period he also took courses at Roosevelt University. (He later graduated from Grinnell, who also awarded him an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1972). Donald Byrd was attending the Manhattan School of Music in New York at the time and suggested that Hancock study composition with Vittorio Giannini, which he did for a short time in 1960. The pianist quickly earned a reputation, and played subsequent sessions with Oliver Nelson and Phil Woods. He recorded his first solo album Takin' Off for Blue Note Records in 1962. "Watermelon Man" (from Takin' Off) was to provide Mongo Santamaría with a hit single, but more importantly for Hancock, Takin' Off caught the attention of Miles Davis, who was at that time assembling a new band. Hancock was introduced to Davis by the young drummer Tony Williams, a member of the new band.

Miles Davis quintet and Blue Note

Hancock received considerable attention when, in May 1963,

Mason was replaced by Mike Clark, and the band released a second album, Thrust, the following year. (A live album from a Japan performance, consisting of compositions from those first two Head Hunters releases was released in 1975 as Flood. The record has since been released on CD in Japan.) This was almost as well-received as its predecessor, if not attaining the same level of commercial success. The Headhunters made another successful album (called Survival of the Fittest) without Hancock, while Hancock himself started to make even more commercial albums, often featuring members of the band, but no longer billed as The Headhunters. The Headhunters reunited with Hancock in 1998 for Return of the Headhunters, and a version of the band (featuring Jackson and Clark) continues to play live and record.

In 1973, Hancock composed his second masterful soundtrack to the controversial film The Spook Who Sat By The Door. Then in 1974, Hancock also composed the soundtrack to the first Death Wish film. One of his memorable songs, "Joanna's Theme", would later be re-recorded in 1997 on his duet album with Wayne Shorter 1 + 1.

Hancock's next jazz-funk albums of the 1970s were Man-Child (1975), and Secrets (1976), which point toward the more commercial direction Hancock would take over the next decade. These albums feature the members of the 'Headhunters' band, but also a variety of other musicians in important roles.

Back to the Basics: VSOP and the Future Shock

During late 1970s and early 1980s, Hancock toured with his "V.S.O.P." quintet, which featured all the members of the 1960s Miles Davis quintet except Davis, who was replaced by trumpet giant Freddie Hubbard. There was constant speculation that one day Davis would reunite with his classic band, but he never did so. VSOP recorded several live albums in the late 1970s, including VSOP (1976), and (1977).

In 1978, Hancock recorded a duet with Chick Corea, who had replaced him in the Miles Davis band a decade earlier. He also released a solo acoustic piano album titled The Piano (1978), which, like so many Hancock albums at the time, was initially released only in Japan. (It was finally released in the US in 2004.) Several other Japan-only releases have yet to surface in the US, such as Dedication (1974), (1977), and Direct Step (1978). was a VSOP album remastered for the US in 2004, and included an entire second concert from the July 1979 tour.

From 1978-1982, Hancock recorded many albums consisting of jazz-inflected disco and pop music, beginning with Sunlight (featuring guest musicians like Tony Williams and Jaco Pastorius on the last track) (1978). Singing through a vocoder, he earned a British hit, "I Thought It Was You", although critics were unimpressed. This led to more vocoder on the 1979 follow-up, Feets, Don't Fail Me Now, which gave him another UK hit in "You Bet Your Love". Albums such as Monster (1980), Magic Windows (1981), and Lite Me Up (1982) were some of Hancock's most criticized and unwelcomed albums, the market at the time being somewhat saturated with similar pop-jazz hybrids from the likes of former bandmate Freddie Hubbard. Hancock himself had quite a limited role in some of those albums, leaving singing, composing and even producing to others. Mr. Hands (1980) is perhaps the one album during this period that was critically acclaimed. To the delight of many fans, there were no vocals on the album, and one track featured Jaco Pastorius on bass. The album contains a wide variety of different styles, including a disco instrumental song, a Latin-jazz number and an electronic piece in which Hancock plays alone with the help of computers.

Hancock also found time to record more traditional jazz whilst creating more commercially oriented music. He toured with Tony Williams and Ron Carter in 1981, recording Herbie Hancock Trio, a five-track live album released only in Japan. A month later, he recorded Quartet with Wynton Marsalis, released in the US the following year. Hancock, Williams and Carter toured internationally with Wynton and his brother Branford Marsalis in what was affectinately known as "VSOP II". This quintet can be heard on Marsalis' debut album on Columbia (1981). In 1982 he contributed to the Simple Minds album New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84), playing a synthesizer solo on the track 'Hunter and The Hunted'.

In 1983, Hancock had a mainstream hit with the Grammy-award winning instrumental single "Rockit" from the album Future Shock. It was perhaps the first mainstream single to feature scratching, and also featured an innovative animated music video which was directed by Godley and Creme and showed several robot-like artworks by Jim Whiting. The video was a hit on MTV. The video won 5 different categories at the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards. This single ushered in a collaboration with noted bassist and producer Bill Laswell. Hancock experimented with electronic music on a string of three LPs produced by Laswell: Future Shock (1983), Sound-System (1984) and Perfect Machine (1988). Despite the success of "Rockit", Hancock's trio of Laswell-produced albums (particularly the latter two) are among the most critically derided of his entire career, perhaps even more so than his erstwhile pop-jazz experiments. Hancock's level of actual contribution to these albums was also questioned, with some critics contending that the Laswell albums should have been labelled "Bill Laswell featuring Herbie Hancock".

During this period, he appeared onstage at the Grammy awards with Stevie Wonder, Howard Jones, and Thomas Dolby, in a famous synthesizer jam (The video on Youtube can be found here.). Lesser known works from the 80s are the live album Jazz Africa and the studio album Village Life (1984) which were recorded with Gambian kora player Foday Musa Suso. Also, in 1985 he performed as a guest on the album So Red The Rose by the Duran Duran shoot off group Arcadia. He also provided introductory and closing comments for the PBS rebroadcast in the United States of the BBC educational series from the mid-1980s, Rock School (not to be confused with the most recent Gene Simmons' Rock School series).

In 1986, Hancock performed and acted in the film 'Round Midnight. He also wrote the score/soundtrack, for which he won an Academy Award for Original Music Score. Often he would write music for TV commercials. "Maiden Voyage", in fact, started out as a cologne advertisement. At the end of the Perfect Machine tour, Hancock decided to leave Columbia Records after a 15-plus-year relationship.

As of June 2005, almost half of his Columbia recordings have been remastered. The first three US releases, Sextant, Head Hunters and Thrust as well as the last four releases Future Shock, Sound-System, the soundtrack to Round Midnight and Perfect Machine. Everything released in America from Man-Child to Quartet has yet to be remastered. Some albums, made and initially released in the US, were remastered between 1999 and 2001 in other countries such as Magic Windows and Monster. Hancock also re-released some of his Japan-only releases in the West, such as The Piano.

1990s and later

After leaving Columbia, Hancock took a break. Then, with friends Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, and Davis admirer Wallace Roney, they recorded A Tribute to Miles which was released in 1994. The album contained two live recordings and studio recording classics with Roney playing Davis's part as trumpet player. The album won a Grammy for best group album. He also toured with Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland and Pat Metheny in 1990 on their Parallel Realities tour, which included a memorable performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in July 1990.

Hancock's next album, Dis Is Da Drum released in 1994 saw him return to Acid Jazz. Also in 1994, Hancock appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation album, . The album, meant to raise awareness and funds in support of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the African American community, was heralded as "Album of the Year" by Time Magazine.

1995's The New Standard found him and an all-star band including John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette and Michael Brecker interpreting pop songs by Nirvana, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, Prince, Peter Gabriel and others. A 1997 duet album with Wayne Shorter titled 1 + 1 was successful, the song "Aung San Suu Kyi" winning the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition, and Hancock also achieved great success in 1998 with his album Gershwin's World which featured inventive readings of George & Ira Gershwin standards by Hancock and a plethora of guest stars including Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell and Shorter. Hancock toured the world in the support of Gershwin's World with a sextet that featured Cyro Baptista, Terri Lynne Carrington, Ira Coleman, Eli Degibri and Eddie Henderson.

In 2001, Hancock recorded Future2Future, which reunited Hancock with Bill Laswell and featured doses of electronica as well as turntablist Rob Swift of The X-Ecutioners. Hancock later toured with the band, and released a live concert DVD with a different lineup which also included the "Rockit" music video. Also in 2001, Hancock partnered with Michael Brecker and Roy Hargrove to record a live concert album saluting Davis and John Coltrane called recorded live in Toronto. The threesome toured t support the album, and have toured on and off through 2005.

2005 saw the release of a duet album called Possibilities. It features duets with Carlos Santana, Paul Simon, Annie Lennox, John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Sting and others. In 2006, Possibilities was nominated for Grammy awards in two categories: "A Song For You", featuring Christina Aguilera was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance, and "Gelo No Montanha", featuring Trey Anastasio on guitar was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Performance. Neither nomination resulted in an award.

Also in 2005, Hancock toured Europe with a new quartet that included Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke, and explored textures ranging from ambient to straight jazz to African music. Plus, during the Summer of 2005, Hancock re-staffed the famous Head Hunters and went on tour with them, including a performance at The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.

However, this lineup did not consist of any of the original Headhunters musicians. The group included Marcus Miller, Terri Lyne Carrington, Lionel Loueke and John Mayer. Hancock also served as the first artist in residence for Bonnaroo that summer.

Also in 2006, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (which bought out Hancock's old label, Columbia Records) released the two-disc retrospective The Essential Herbie Hancock. This two-disc set is the first compilation of Herbie's work at Warner Bros. Records, Blue Note Records, Columbia and at Verve/Polygram. This became Hancock's second major compilation of work since the 2002 Columbia-only "The Herbie Hancock Box" which was released at first in a plastic 4x4 cube then re-released in 2004 in a long box set. Hancock also in 2006, recorded a new song with Josh Groban and Eric Mouquet (co-founder of Deep Forest) titled "Machine". It is featured on Josh Groban's CD "Awake". Hancock also recorded and improvised with guitarist Lionel Loueke on Loueke's debut album Virgin Forest on the ObliqSound label in 2006, resulting in two improvisational tracks "Le Réveil des Agneaux (The Awakening of the Lambs)" and "La Poursuite du lion (The Lion's Pursuit)".

Hancock, a longtime associate and friend of Joni Mitchell released a 2007 album, , that paid tribute to her work. Norah Jones and Tina Turner recorded vocals, as did Corinne Bailey Rae, and Leonard Cohen contributed a spoken piece set to Hancock's piano. Mitchell herself also made an appearance. The album was released on September 25, simultaneously with the release of Mitchell's album Shine. "River" was nominated for and won the 2008 Album of the Year Grammy Award, only the second jazz album ever to receive either honor. The album also won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album, and the song "Both Sides Now" was nominated for Best Instrumental Jazz Solo.

Recently Hancock performed at the Shriner's Children's Hospital Charity Fundraiser with Sheila E, Jim Brickman, Kirk Whalum and Wendy Alane Wright.

His latest work includes assisting the production of the Kanye West track "RoboCop", found on 808s & Heartbreak.

On June 14, 2008, Hancock performed at Rhythm on the Vine at the South Coast Winery in Temecula, California for Shriners Hospital for Children. Other performers at the event, that raised $515,000 for Shriners Hospital, were contemporary music artist Jim Brickman, and Sheila E. & the E. Family Band.

On January 18, 2009, Hancock performed at the , marking the start of inaugural celebrations for American President Barack Obama. Hancock also performed the Rhapsody in Blue at the 2009 Classical BRIT Awards with classical pianist Lang Lang. Hancock was named as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's creative chair for jazz for 2010-12. In June 2010, Hancock released his newest album, The Imagine Project.

On June 5, 2010, Hancock received an Alumni Award from his alma mater, Grinnell College.

Discography

{| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" border="0" |- style="background:#ffdead;" ! align="left" style="border-bottom:1px solid grey; border-top:1px solid grey;" | Title ! width="10" style="border-bottom:1px solid grey; border-top:1px solid grey;" | ! align="left" style="border-bottom:1px solid grey; border-top:1px solid grey;" | Year ! width="10" style="border-bottom:1px solid grey; border-top:1px solid grey;" | ! align="left" style="border-bottom:1px solid grey; border-top:1px solid grey;" | Label |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Takin' Off | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1962 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | My Point of View | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1963 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Inventions and Dimensions | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1963 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Empyrean Isles | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1964 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Maiden Voyage | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1965 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blow-Up (Soundtrack) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1966 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | MGM |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Speak Like a Child | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1968 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | The Prisoner | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1969 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Fat Albert Rotunda | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1969 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Warner Bros. |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Mwandishi | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1970 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Warner Bros. |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | He Who Lives In Many Places (with bassist Terry Plumeri) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1971 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Airborne. |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Crossings | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1972 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Warner Bros. |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Sextant | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1973 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Head Hunters | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1973 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Thrust | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1974 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Death Wish (Soundtrack) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1974 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Dedication | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1974 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Man-Child | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1975 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Flood (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1975 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Secrets | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1976 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | VSOP (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1976 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Herbie Hancock Trio | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1977 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1977 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1977 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Sunlight | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1977 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Directstep | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1978 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | (Live album with Chick Corea) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1978 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | The Piano | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1979 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Feets, Don't Fail Me Now | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1979 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1979 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | CoreaHancock (Live album with Chick Corea) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1979 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Polydor |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Monster | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1980 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Mr. Hands | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1980 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Herbie Hancock Trio | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1981 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Magic Windows | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1981 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Lite Me Up | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1982 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Quartet (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1982 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Future Shock | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1983 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Sound-System | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1984 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Village Life (with Foday Musa Suso) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1985 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Round Midnight (Soundtrack) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1986 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Jazz Africa (Live album with Foday Musa Suso) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1987 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Polygram |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Perfect Machine | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1988 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | A Tribute to Miles | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1994 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Qwest/Warner Bros. |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Dis Is Da Drum | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1994 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve/Mercury |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | The New Standard | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1995 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1 + 1 (with Wayne Shorter) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1997 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Gershwin's World | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1998 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Future2Future | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2001 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Transparent |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2002 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Possibilities | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2005 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Concord/Hear Music |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2007 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2008 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | The Imagine Project | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2010 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Hancock |}

Filmography

As a Leader

2000: Dejohnette, Hancock, Holland and Metheny - Live in Concert

2002: Herbie Hancock Trio: Hurricane! with Ron Carter and Billy Cobham

2002: The Jazz Channel Presents Herbie Hancock (BET on Jazz) with Cyro Baptista, Terri Lynne Carrington, Ira Coleman, Eli Degibri and Eddie Henderson

2004: Herbie Hancock - Future2Future Live

2006: Herbie Hancock - Possibilities with John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Joss Stone, and more

Awards

Academy Awards

1986, Original Soundtrack, for Round Midnight

Grammy Awards

# 1984, Best R&B; Instrumental Performance, for Rockit # 1985, Best R&B; Instrumental Performance, for Sound-System # 1988, Best Instrumental Composition, for Call Sheet Blues # 1995, Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual Or Group, for A Tribute to Miles # 1997, Best Instrumental Composition, for Manhattan (Island Of Lights And Love) # 1999, Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s), for St. Louis Blues # 1999, Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual Or Group, for Gershwin's World # 2003, Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group, for # 2003, Best Jazz Instrumental Solo, for My Ship # 2005, Best Jazz Instrumental Solo, for Speak Like a Child # 2008, Album of the Year, for # 2008, Best Contemporary Jazz Album, for

Playboy Music Poll

Best Jazz Group, 1985

Best Jazz Keyboards, 1985

Best Jazz Album - Rockit, 1985

Best Jazz Keyboards, 1986

Best R&B; Instrumentalist, 1987

Best Jazz Instrumentalist, 1988

Keyboard Magazine's Readers Poll

Best Jazz & Pop Keyboardist, 1983

Best Jazz Pianist, 1987

Best Jazz Keyboardist, 1987

Best Jazz Pianist, 1988

Other notable awards

MTV Awards (5 awards in total) - Best Concept Video - Rockit, 1983–84

Gold Note Jazz Awards - NY Chapter of the National Black MBA Association, 1985

French Award Officer of the Order of Arts & Letters-Paris, 1985

BMI Film Music Award "Round Midnight", 1986

U.S. Radio Award "Best Original Music Scoring - Thom McAnn Shoes", 1986

Los Angeles Film Critics Association "Best Score - Round Midnight", 1986

BMI Film Music Award "Colors", 1989

Soul Train Music Award "Best Jazz Album - The New Standard", 1997

Festival International Jazz de Montreal Prix Miles Davis, 1997

VH1's 100 Greatest Videos "Rockit" is "10th Greatest Video", 2001

NEA Jazz Masters Award, 2004

Downbeat Magazine Readers Poll Hall of Fame, 2005

Album of the Year, 2007

Harvard Foundation Artist of the Year, 2008

References

External links

Official website of Herbie Hancock

Official Herbie Hancock MySpace page

Herbie Hancock at Verve Records

River:The Joni Letters at Verve Records

Possibilities Herbie Hancock

Discography Herbie Hancock Discography

Interview with Herbie Hancock on music and technology from AppleMatters

Interview with Herbie Hancock on the "Possibilities" album release from LiveDaily

Herbie Hancock: Outside The Comfort Zone Herbie Hancock interview from JamBase

"Herbie Hancock: Essential Recordings" by Ted Gioia (www.jazz.com)

Herbie Hancock's Grinnell College Alumni Award citation from Grinnell College Alumni Assembly on June 5, 2010.

Category:1940 births Category:20th-century classical composers Category:African American songwriters Category:American Buddhists Category:American funk keyboardists Category:American jazz bandleaders Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz pianists Category:Musicians from Chicago, Illinois Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grinnell College alumni Category:Hard bop pianists Category:Jazz fusion pianists Category:Jazz-funk pianists Category:Living people Category:Miles Davis Category:Blue Note Records artists Category:Modal jazz pianists Category:Post-bop pianists Category:Converts to Buddhism Category:Members of Soka Gakkai Category:Keytarists

Name	Connie Talbot
Background	solo_singer
Born	November 20, 2000
Origin	Streetly, Walsall, West Midlands, England, UK
Instrument	Vocals
Years active	2007–present
Genre	Pop
Occupation	Singer
Label	Rainbow Recording Company
Url	http://www.connietalbot.com

Connie Talbot (born 20 November 2000) is an English child singer from Streetly, Metropolitan Borough of Walsall, West Midlands. She rose to fame in 2007 when she reached the final of the television talent show Britain's Got Talent, where she lost to Paul Potts. Talbot was supposed to sign with Sony BMG but the label pulled out of the deal due to her age.

Talbot signed with Rainbow Recording Company and released her debut album Over the Rainbow in the UK on 26 November 2007. The album was re-released 18 June 2008 with a new track listing, and the first single from the album, a cover of Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds", was released on 10 June. Songs from Over the Rainbow are to be featured in an upcoming video game about Talbot.

Despite its negative critical reception, Over the Rainbow has sold over 250,000 copies worldwide and reached number one in three countries. Since the initial album release, Talbot has performed publicly and on television in Europe, the U.S. and across Asia, where her music had gained recognition through YouTube. Her second album, Connie Talbot's Christmas Album, was released on 24 November 2008; her third, Holiday Magic, was released in late 2009. On top of her musical career, Talbot continues to attend primary school and lives in Streetly with her family.

History

Britain's Got Talent and Sony BMG

Talbot initially auditioned for the first series of television reality show Britain's Got Talent for fun, but her confidence increased when Simon Cowell, whom she is said to have idolised, The judges expected a "joke" performance and she had never taken singing lessons, but Talbot's initial performance received international press coverage. She reached the final round after winning her semi-final with a live performance of "Ben" by Michael Jackson. On the night of the final, she sang The Wizard of Oz's "Over the Rainbow", but lost to Paul Potts as a result of the call-in vote. Talbot and Potts had been joint favourites to win the series. According to journalist and Britain's Got Talent judge Piers Morgan, Talbot's performances resulted in many children, including Faryl Smith, auditioning for the second series of the show. After his victory, Series 2 winner George Sampson spoke of his participation in the first series, where he was knocked out before the live shows, saying "I don't think I had any shot of winning last year ... When you look at the standard of Paul Potts and Connie Talbot. Paul Potts is out of this league, and Connie is out of this league - I wasn't good enough." Talbot voted for Sampson, saying "I liked his dancing - he was good on the lamppost". Talbot's mother, Sharon, said she was told that her daughter "...was too young to be their sort of artist", adding "We have been told to look for a company which looks after children." In a statement, the label said "there was some deliberation over the possibility of recording with Connie ... However, the decision not to proceed was made with the best intentions for Connie, taking into consideration her age and that it would not be right to do so at this time." Before the album was released, there was much speculation about Talbot and the album, with music experts describing her as potentially being "the next Charlotte Church". on 12 October 2007]] The team behind the album consisted of John Arnison, who also managed Gabrielle and Billy Ocean, and Marc Marot, former managing director of Island Records. Arnison revealed that he and his team "are not going to give [Talbot] singing lessons – we don't need to", and said that when he met Talbot, he was "blown away". A schedule was worked out allowing Talbot to continue with her normal school activities while recording the album in her aunt Vicky's spare bedroom, which her mother described as "a better solution [than Sony BMG offered] which has not robbed her of her childhood". The album was certified gold in early December, with Talbot being presented a gold disc by Phillip Schofield on This Morning.

In late 2007, public appearances by Talbot included headlining the Great Bridge Christmas and Winter Festival, which local police threatened to cancel unless crowds clamouring to reach the tent in which Talbot was performing could be brought under control. TV appearances included GMTV and Channel 5 news, both on 26 November 2007. Nick Levine, of Digital Spy, said in a review of the album that Talbot had a "sweet, pure voice", but that there is "no nuance or depth to her performance". However, he said that "There's something inherently wrong about awarding a star rating to a seven-year-old", and that "the decidedly adult concept of musical merit should have nothing to do with [her music]", awarding the album 2/5. The first single from the album, "Three Little Birds", was released in June 2008, and a video for the song was shot in Jamaica. Asian press attributed her success to her videos on YouTube, with the Sun.Star mentioning that her most viewed video had been watched over 14 million times, Following the tour, it was reported that the album had reached number one on the charts in Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong, Talbot has rerecorded the album for the game, but there are other elements that need to be completed. The game was scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2009, The U.S. version was eventually released on 14 October, with Talbot appearing on American television shows including The Ellen DeGeneres Show to publicise the release.

Christmas Album and Holiday Magic

In November 2008, it was announced that Talbot had produced a series of new songs for an album. It is a Christmas themed album, News was also released of a one-off Christmas special to be shown on ITV1 in the days leading up to Christmas, featuring footage of Talbot's journey to America and a "secret concert" at her primary school. The documentary, Christmas with Connie, was shown on ITV Central on 18 December. Talbot appeared at Walsall's HMV branch shortly after the release of her Christmas Album to sign copies and meet fans. She then embarked on a promotional tour making stops around the world, which included a performance at Ewha Womans University in Korea, and a performance on the A Heart for Children television charity gala in Berlin, Germany. She returned home in mid December, to have "a quiet family Christmas". There are plans for a promotional trip to the U.S. in 2009. Reviewing the album for FemaleFirst magazine, Ruth Harrison gave it 4/5, saying that Talbot has "a great voice when it comes to swing, but lets us down in parts".

In April 2009, Talbot again travelled to the U.S. in order to publicise her new single, a cover of "I Will Always Love You". The single was released in the U.S. on 7 April, along with a newly recorded "You Raise Me Up". Talbot then travelled to the U.S. on 30 April, and returned on the 2 May. Appearances included a performance on Good Day New York on Fox Broadcasting Company's WNYW. The single peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Sales. She lives with her mother, Sharon, her father Gavin, a self-employed property maintenance engineer, her brother Josh, and her sister, Mollie. Talbot drew confidence in Britain's Got Talent from the belief that her grandmother was watching, and vowed to win the show in her memory. | 1 | 3 | 8 Worldwide: 250,000+ | align=left|

UK: Gold

Taiwan: Platinum Hong Kong: Platinum | 1 | rowspan=2| Over The Rainbow |- | 2009 |align=left| "I Will Always Love You" | - | 4 |}

References

External links

Official website

Official channel on YouTube (Former)

[ Connie Talbot] at Allmusic

Connie Talbot on MySpace

Category:2000 births Category:Living people Category:English child singers Category:English female singers Category:Britain's Got Talent contestants Category:People from Walsall (district) Category:English pop singers