Name	Andy Warhol
Caption	Warhol in 1963
Birthname	Andrew Warhola
Birthdate	August 06, 1928
Birth place	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Deathdate	February 22, 1987
Deathplace	New York City, U.S.
Nationality	American
Field	Painting, Cinema
Training	Carnegie Mellon University
Movement	Pop art
Works	Chelsea Girls (1966 film)Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966 event)Campbell's Soup Cans (1962 painting)

Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork.

The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is $100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.

Childhood (1928–48)

neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]] Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 6, 1928. He was the fourth child of Andrij Warhola (died 1942) and Julia (née Zavacka, 1892–1972), whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their move to the U.S. His parents were working-class Rusyns (or Lemkos) emigrants from Mikó (now called Miková), located in today’s northeastern Slovakia, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Warhol's father immigrated to the US in 1914, and his mother joined him in 1921, after the death of Warhol's grandparents. Warhol's father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The family was Byzantine Catholic and attended St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy Warhol had two older brothers - Pavol (Paul), the oldest, was born in Slovakia; Ján was born in Pittsburgh. Pavol's son, James Warhola, became a successful children's book illustrator.

In third grade, Warhol had chorea, the nervous system disease that causes involuntary movements of the extremities, which is believed to be a complication of scarlet fever and causes skin pigmentation blotchiness. He became a hypochondriac, developing a fear of hospitals and doctors. Often bed-ridden as a child, he became an outcast at school and bonded with his mother. At times when he was confined to bed, he drew, listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed. Warhol later described this period as very important in the development of his personality, skill-set and preferences. When Warhol was 13, his father died in an accident.

Commercial art (1949–61)

Warhol showed early artistic talent and studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (now Carnegie Mellon University). In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a career in magazine illustration and advertising. During the 1950s, he gained fame for his whimsical ink drawings of shoe advertisements. These were done in a loose, blotted-ink style, and figured in some of his earliest showings at the Bodley Gallery in New York. With the concurrent rapid expansion of the record industry and the introduction of the vinyl record, Hi-Fi, and stereophonic recordings, RCA Records hired Warhol, along with another freelance artist, Sid Maurer, to design album covers and promotional materials.

Fine art (1962–67)

His first one-man art-gallery exhibition as a fine artist was on July 9, 1962, in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles. The exhibition marked the West Coast debut of pop art. Andy Warhol's first New York solo pop exhibit was hosted at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery November 6–24, 1962. The exhibit included the works Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles and 100 Dollar Bills. At the Stable Gallery exhibit, the artist met for the first time John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, Sleep, in 1963. (right) talking on the S.S. France, 1967; in the background: Paul Morrissey.]] It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American products such as Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola bottles, as well as paintings of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Troy Donahue, Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor. He founded "The Factory," his studio during these years, and gathered around himself a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. He began producing prints using the silkscreen method His work became popular and controversial.

Among the imagery tackled by Warhol were dollar bills, celebrities and brand name products. He also used as imagery for his paintings newspaper headlines or photographs of mushroom clouds, electric chairs, and police dogs attacking civil rights protesters. Warhol also used Coca Cola bottles as subject matter for paintings. He had this to say about Coca Cola:

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New York's Museum of Modern Art hosted a Symposium on pop art in December 1962 during which artists like Warhol were attacked for "capitulating" to consumerism. Critics were scandalized by Warhol's open embrace of market culture. This symposium set the tone for Warhol's reception. Throughout the decade it became more and more clear that there had been a profound change in the culture of the art world, and that Warhol was at the center of that shift.

A pivotal event was the 1964 exhibit The American Supermarket, a show held in Paul Bianchini's Upper East Side gallery. The show was presented as a typical U.S. small supermarket environment, except that everything in it – from the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc. – was created by six prominent pop artists of the time, among them the controversial (and like-minded) Billy Apple, Mary Inman, and Robert Watts. Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's soup cost $1,500 while each autographed can sold for $6. The exhibit was one of the first mass events that directly confronted the general public with both pop art and the perennial question of what art is (or of what is art and what is not).

As an advertisement illustrator in the 1950s, Warhol used assistants to increase his productivity. Collaboration would remain a defining (and controversial) aspect of his working methods throughout his career; in the 1960s, however, this was particularly true. One of the most important collaborators during this period was Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the artist with producing silkscreens, films, sculpture, and other works at "The Factory," Warhol's aluminum foil-and-silver-paint-lined studio on 47th Street (later moved to Broadway). Other members of Warhol's Factory crowd included Freddie Herko, Ondine, Ronald Tavel, Mary Woronov, Billy Name, and Brigid Berlin (from whom he apparently got the idea to tape-record his phone conversations).

During the '60s, Warhol also groomed a retinue of bohemian eccentrics upon whom he bestowed the designation "Superstars", including Nico, Joe Dallesandro, Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Ultra Violet, Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling. These people all participated in the Factory films, and some – like Berlin – remained friends with Warhol until his death. Important figures in the New York underground art/cinema world, such as writer John Giorno and film-maker Jack Smith, also appear in Warhol films of the 1960s, revealing Warhol's connections to a diverse range of artistic scenes during this time.

Attempted murder (1968)

On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and art critic and curator Mario Amaya at Warhol's studio. Before the shooting, Solanas had been a marginal figure in the Factory scene. She authored the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a separatist feminist attack on patriarchy. Solanas appears in the 1968 Warhol film I, a Man. Earlier on the day of the attack, Solanas had been turned away from the Factory after asking for the return of a script she had given to Warhol. The script, apparently, had been misplaced.

Amaya received only minor injuries and was released from the hospital later the same day. Warhol however, was seriously wounded by the attack and barely survived (surgeons opened his chest and massaged his heart to help stimulate its movement again). He suffered physical effects for the rest of his life. The shooting had a profound effect on Warhol's life and art.

Solanas was arrested the day after the assault. By way of explanation, she said that Warhol "had too much control over my life." She was eventually sentenced to three years under the control of the Department of Corrections. After the shooting, the Factory scene became much more tightly controlled, and for many the "Factory 60s" ended.

1970s

in 1977]]

Compared to the success and scandal of Warhol's work in the 1960s, the 1970s were a much quieter decade, as Warhol became more entrepreneurial. According to Bob Colacello, Warhol devoted much of his time to rounding up new, rich patrons for portrait commissions– including Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, his wife Empress Farah Pahlavi, his sister Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, and Brigitte Bardot. Warhol's famous portrait of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong was created in 1973. He also founded, with Gerard Malanga, Interview magazine, and published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975). An idea expressed in the book: "Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art."

Warhol used to socialize at various nightspots in New York City, including Max's Kansas City; and, later in the '70s, Studio 54. He was generally regarded as quiet, shy, and a meticulous observer. Art critic Robert Hughes called him "the white mole of Union Square."

1980s

Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the 1980s, partially due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of prolific younger artists, who were dominating the "bull market" of '80s New York art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, David Salle and other so-called Neo-Expressionists, as well as members of the Transavantgarde movement in Europe, including Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi.

During this time Warhol created the Michael Jackson painting signifying his success attributed to his best-selling album Thriller.

By this period, Warhol was being criticized for becoming merely a "business artist". In 1979, reviewers disliked his exhibits of portraits of 1970s personalities and celebrities, calling them superficial, facile and commercial, with no depth or indication of the significance of the subjects. They also criticized his 1980 exhibit of 10 portraits at the Jewish Museum in New York, entitled Jewish Geniuses, which Warhol – who was uninterested in Judaism and Jews – had described in his diary as "They're going to sell."

Death

Warhol died in New York City at 6:32 a.m. on February 22, 1987. According to news reports, he had been making good recovery from a routine gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital before dying in his sleep from a sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia. Prior to his diagnosis and operation, Warhol delayed having his recurring gallbladder problems checked, as he was afraid to enter hospitals and see doctors. His family sued the hospital for inadequate care, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water intoxication.

Warhol's body was taken back to Pittsburgh by his brothers for burial. The wake was at Thomas P. Kunsak Funeral Home and was an open-coffin ceremony. The coffin was a solid bronze casket with gold plated rails and white upholstery. Warhol was dressed in a black cashmere suit, a paisley tie, a platinum wig, and sunglasses. He was posed holding a small prayer book and a red rose. The funeral liturgy was held at the Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church on Pittsburgh's North Side. The eulogy was given by Monsignor Peter Tay. Yoko Ono also made an appearance. The coffin was covered with white roses and asparagus ferns. After the liturgy, the coffin was driven to St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, a south suburb of Pittsburgh. , Slovakia.|left]] At the grave, the priest said a brief prayer and sprinkled holy water on the casket. Before the coffin was lowered, Paige Powell dropped a copy of Interview magazine, an Interview t-shirt, and a bottle of the Estee Lauder perfume "Beautiful" into the grave. Warhol was buried next to his mother and father. A memorial service was held in Manhattan for Warhol on April 1, 1987, at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.

Warhol's will dictated that his entire estate – with the exception of a few modest legacies to family members – would go to create a foundation dedicated to the "advancement of the visual arts". Warhol had so many possessions that it took Sotheby's nine days to auction his estate after his death; the auction grossed more than US$20 million.

In 1987, in accordance with Warhol's will, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts began. The Foundation serves as the official Estate of Andy Warhol, but also has a mission "to foster innovative artistic expression and the creative process" and is "focused primarily on supporting work of a challenging and often experimental nature."

The Artists Rights Society is the U.S. copyright representative for the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for all Warhol works with the exception of Warhol film stills. The U.S. copyright representative for Warhol film stills is the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Additionally, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has agreements in place for its image archive. All digital images of Warhol are exclusively managed by Corbis, while all transparency images of Warhol are managed by Art Resource.

The Andy Warhol Foundation released its 20th Anniversary Annual Report as a three-volume set in 2007: Vol. I, 1987–2007; Vol. II, Grants & Exhibitions; and Vol. III, Legacy Program. The Foundation remains one of the largest grant-giving organizations for the visual arts in the U.S.

Works

Paintings

By the beginning of the 1960s, Warhol had become a very successful commercial illustrator. His detailed and elegant drawings for I. Miller shoes were particularly popular. They consisted mainly of "blotted ink" drawings (or monoprints), a technique which he applied in much of his early art. Although many artists of this period worked in commercial art, most did so discreetly. Warhol was so successful, however, that his profile as an illustrator seemed to undermine his efforts to be taken seriously as an artist.

Pop art was an experimental form that several artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the "Pope of Pop", turned to this new style, where popular subjects could be part of the artist's palette. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with paint drips. Those drips emulated the style of successful abstract expressionists (such as Willem de Kooning). Warhol's first pop art paintings were displayed in April 1961, serving as the backdrop for New York Department Store Bronwit Teller's window display. This was the same stage his Pop Art contemporaries Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg had also once graced. Eventually, Warhol pared his image vocabulary down to the icon itself – to brand names, celebrities, dollar signs – and removed all traces of the artist's "hand" in the production of his paintings.

To him, part of defining a niche was defining his subject matter. Cartoons were already being used by Lichtenstein, typography by Jasper Johns, and so on; Warhol wanted a distinguishing subject. His friends suggested he should paint the things he loved the most. It was the gallerist Muriel Latow who came up with the ideas for both the soup cans and Warhol's dollar paintings. On 23 November 1961 Warhol wrote Latow a check for $50 which, according to the 2009 Warhol biography, Pop, The Genius of Warhol, was payment for coming up with the idea of the soup cans as subject matter. For his first major exhibition Warhol painted his famous cans of Campbell's Soup, which he claimed to have had for lunch for most of his life. The work sold for $10,000 at an auction on November 17, 1971, at Sotheby's New York – a minimal amount for the artist whose paintings sell for over $6 million more recently.

He loved celebrities, so he painted them as well. From these beginnings he developed his later style and subjects. Instead of working on a signature subject matter, as he started out to do, he worked more and more on a signature style, slowly eliminating the hand-made from the artistic process. Warhol frequently used silk-screening; his later drawings were traced from slide projections. At the height of his fame as a painter, Warhol had several assistants who produced his silk-screen multiples, following his directions to make different versions and variations.

In 1979, Warhol was commissioned by BMW to paint a Group 4 race version of the then elite supercar BMW M1 for the fourth installment in the BMW Art Car Project. Unlike the three artists before him, Warhol declined the use of a small scale practice model, instead opting to immediately paint directly onto the full scale automobile. It was indicated that Warhol spent only a total of 23 minutes to paint the entire car.

Warhol produced both comic and serious works; his subject could be a soup can or an electric chair. Warhol used the same techniques– silkscreens, reproduced serially, and often painted with bright colors – whether he painted celebrities, everyday objects, or images of suicide, car crashes, and disasters, as in the 1962–63 Death and Disaster series. The Death and Disaster paintings included Red Car Crash, Purple Jumping Man, and Orange Disaster.

The unifying element in Warhol's work is his deadpan Keatonesque style – artistically and personally affectless. This was mirrored by Warhol's own demeanor, as he often played "dumb" to the media, and refused to explain his work. The artist was famous for having said that all you need to know about him and his works is already there, "Just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it." His Rorschach inkblots are intended as pop comments on art and what art could be. His cow wallpaper (literally, wallpaper with a cow motif) and his oxidation paintings (canvases prepared with copper paint that was then oxidized with urine) are also noteworthy in this context. Equally noteworthy is the way these works – and their means of production – mirrored the atmosphere at Andy's New York "Factory". Biographer Bob Colacello provides some details on Andy's "piss paintings":

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Warhol's first portrait of Basquiat (1982) is a black photosilkscreen over an oxidized copper "piss painting".

After many years of silkscreen, oxidation, photography, etc., Warhol returned to painting with a brush in hand in a series of over 50 large collaborative works done with Jean-Michel Basquiat between 1984 and 1986. Despite negative criticism when these were first shown, Warhol called some of them "masterpieces," and they were influential for his later work.

The influence of the large collaborations with Basquiat can be seen in Warhol's The Last Supper cycle, his last and possibly his largest series, seen by some as "arguably his greatest," but by others as “wishy-washy, religiose” and “spiritless." It is also the largest series of religious-themed works by any U.S. artist.

Films

Warhol worked across a wide range of media – painting, photography, drawing, and sculpture. In addition, he was a highly prolific filmmaker. Between 1963 and 1968, he made more than 60 films, plus some 500 short black-and-white "screen test" portraits of Factory visitors. One of his most famous films, Sleep, monitors poet John Giorno sleeping for six hours. The 35-minute film Blow Job is one continuous shot of the face of DeVeren Bookwalter supposedly receiving oral sex from filmmaker Willard Maas, although the camera never tilts down to see this. Another, Empire (1964), consists of eight hours of footage of the Empire State Building in New York City at dusk. The film Eat consists of a man eating a mushroom for 45 minutes. Warhol attended the 1962 premiere of the static composition by LaMonte Young called Trio for Strings and subsequently created his famous series of static films including Kiss, Eat, and Sleep (for which Young initially was commissioned to provide music). Uwe Husslein cites filmmaker Jonas Mekas, who accompanied Warhol to the Trio premiere, and who claims Warhol's static films were directly inspired by the performance.

Batman Dracula is a 1964 film that was produced and directed by Warhol, without the permission of DC Comics. It was screened only at his art exhibits. A fan of the Batman series, Warhol's movie was an "homage" to the series, and is considered the first appearance of a blatantly campy Batman. The film was until recently thought to have been lost, until scenes from the picture were shown at some length in the 2006 documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis.

Warhol's 1965 film Vinyl is an adaptation of Anthony Burgess' popular dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange. Others record improvised encounters between Factory regulars such as Brigid Berlin, Viva, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Ondine, Nico, and Jackie Curtis. Legendary underground artist Jack Smith appears in the film Camp.

His most popular and critically successful film was Chelsea Girls (1966). The film was highly innovative in that it consisted of two 16 mm-films being projected simultaneously, with two different stories being shown in tandem. From the projection booth, the sound would be raised for one film to elucidate that "story" while it was lowered for the other. The multiplication of images evoked Warhol's seminal silk-screen works of the early 1960s.

Other important films include Bike Boy, My Hustler, and Lonesome Cowboys, a raunchy pseudo-western. These and other titles document gay underground and camp culture, and continue to feature prominently in scholarship about sexuality and art. Blue Movie – a film in which Warhol superstar Viva makes love and fools around in bed with a man for 33 minutes of the film's playing-time – was Warhol's last film as director. The film was at the time scandalous for its frank approach to a sexual encounter. For many years Viva refused to allow it to be screened. It was publicly screened in New York in 2005 for the first time in over thirty years.

After his June 3, 1968, shooting, a reclusive Warhol relinquished his personal involvement in filmmaking. His acolyte and assistant director, Paul Morrissey, took over the film-making chores for the Factory collective, steering Warhol-branded cinema towards more mainstream, narrative-based, B-movie exploitation fare with Flesh, Trash, and Heat. All of these films, including the later Andy Warhol's Dracula and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, were far more mainstream than anything Warhol as a director had attempted. These latter "Warhol" films starred Joe Dallesandro – more of a Morrissey star than a true Warhol superstar.

In the early '70s, most of the films directed by Warhol were pulled out of circulation by Warhol and the people around him who ran his business. After Warhol's death, the films were slowly restored by the Whitney Museum and are occasionally projected at museums and film festivals. Few of the Warhol-directed films are available on video or DVD.

Factory in New York

Factory: 1342 Lexington Avenue (the first Factory)

The Factory: 231 East 47th street 1963–1967 (the building no longer exists)

Factory: 33 Union Square 1967–1973 (Decker Building)

Factory: 860 Broadway (near 33 Union Square) 1973–1984 (the building has now been completely remodeled and was for a time (2000–2001) the headquarters of the dot-com consultancy Scient)

Factory: 22 East 33rd Street 1984–1987 (the building no longer exists)

Home: 1342 Lexington Avenue

Home: 57 East 66th street (Warhol's last home)

Last personal studio: 158 Madison Avenue

Filmography

Music

In the mid 1960s, Warhol adopted the band the Velvet Underground, making them a crucial element of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia performance art show. Warhol, with Paul Morrissey, acted as the band's manager, introducing them to Nico (who would perform with the band at Warhol's request). In 1966 he "produced" their first album The Velvet Underground & Nico, as well as providing its album art. His actual participation in the album's production amounted to simply paying for the studio time. After the band's first album, Warhol and band leader Lou Reed started to disagree more about the direction the band should take, and their artistic friendship ended. In 1989, after Warhol's death, Reed and John Cale re-united for the first time since 1972 to write, perform, record and release the concept album Songs for Drella, a tribute to Warhol.

Warhol designed many album covers for various artists starting with the photographic cover of John Wallowitch's debut album, This Is John Wallowitch!!! (1964). He designed the cover art for the Rolling Stones albums Sticky Fingers (1971) and Love You Live (1977), and the John Cale albums The Academy In Peril (1972) and Honi Soit in 1981. In 1975, Warhol was commissioned to do several portraits of Mick Jagger, and in 1982 he designed the album cover for the Diana Ross album Silk Electric. One of his last works was a portrait of Aretha Franklin for the cover of her 1986 gold album Aretha, which was done in the style of the Reigning Queens series he had completed the year before.

Warhol strongly influenced the New Wave/punk rock band Devo, as well as David Bowie. Bowie recorded a song called "Andy Warhol" for his 1971 album Hunky Dory. Lou Reed wrote the song "Andy's Chest", about Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Warhol, in 1968. He recorded it with the Velvet Underground, and this version was released on the VU album in 1985.

Books and print

Beginning in the early 1950s, Warhol produced several unbound portfolios of his work.

The first of several bound self-published books by Warhol was 25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy, printed in 1954 by Seymour Berlin on Arches brand watermarked paper using his blotted line technique for the lithographs. The original edition was limited to 190 numbered, hand colored copies, using Dr. Martin's ink washes. Most of these were given by Warhol as gifts to clients and friends. Copy #4, inscribed "Jerry" on the front cover and given to Geraldine Stutz, was used for a facsimile printing in 1987 and the original was auctioned in May 2006 for US $35,000 by Doyle New York.

Other self-published books by Warhol include:

A Gold Book

Wild Raspberries

Holy Cats

After gaining fame, Warhol "wrote" several books that were commercially published: a, A Novel (1968, ISBN 0-8021-3553-6) is a literal transcription– containing spelling errors and phonetically written background noise and mumbling– of audio recordings of Ondine and several of Andy Warhol's friends hanging out at the Factory, talking, going out. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again) (1975, ISBN 0-15-671720-4)– according to Pat Hackett's introduction to The Andy Warhol Diaries, Pat Hackett did the transcriptions and text for the book based on daily phone conversations, sometimes (when Warhol was traveling) using audio cassettes that Andy Warhol gave her. Said cassettes contained conversations with Brigid Berlin (also known as Brigid Polk) and former Interview magazine editor Bob Colacello.

(1980, ISBN 0-15-672960-1), authored by Warhol and Pat Hackett is a retrospective view of the sixties and the role of pop art.

The Andy Warhol Diaries (1989, ISBN 0-446-39138-7), edited by Pat Hackett, is a diary dictated by Warhol to Hackett in daily phone conversations. Warhol started the diary to keep track of his expenses after being audited, although it soon evolved to include his personal and cultural observations.

Warhol created the fashion magazine Interview that is still published today. The loopy title script on the cover is thought to be either his own handwriting or that of his mother, Julia Warhola, who would often do text work for his early commercial pieces.

Other media

Although Andy Warhol is most known for his paintings and films, he authored works in many different media. Drawing: Warhol started his career as a commercial illustrator, producing drawings in "blotted-ink" style for advertisements and magazine articles. Best known of these early works are his drawings of shoes. Some of his personal drawings were self-published in small booklets, such as Yum, Yum, Yum (about food), Ho, Ho, Ho (about Christmas) and (of course) Shoes, Shoes, Shoes. His most artistically acclaimed book of drawings is probably A Gold Book, compiled of sensitive drawings of young men. A Gold Book is so named because of the gold leaf that decorates its pages. Sculpture: Warhol's most famous sculpture is probably his Brillo Boxes, silkscreened ink on wood replicas of Brillo soap pad boxes (designed by James Harvey), part of a series of "grocery carton" sculptures that also included Heinz ketchup and Campbell's tomato juice cases. Other famous works include the Silver Clouds– helium filled, silver mylar, pillow-shaped balloons. A Silver Cloud was included in the traveling exhibition Air Art (1968–69) curated by Willoughby Sharp. Clouds was also adapted by Warhol for avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham's dance piece RainForest (1968). Audio: At one point Warhol carried a portable recorder with him wherever he went, taping everything everybody said and did. He referred to this device as his "wife". Some of these tapes were the basis for his literary work. Another audio-work of Warhol's was his "Invisible Sculpture", a presentation in which burglar alarms would go off when entering the room. Warhol's cooperation with the musicians of The Velvet Underground was driven by an expressed desire to become a music producer. Time Capsules: In 1973, Warhol began saving ephemera from his daily life– correspondence, newspapers, souvenirs, childhood objects, even used plane tickets and food– which was sealed in plain cardboard boxes dubbed Time Capsules. By the time of his death, the collection grew to include 600, individually dated "capsules". The boxes are now housed at the Andy Warhol Museum. Television: Andy Warhol dreamed of a television show that he wanted to call The Nothing Special, a special about his favorite subject: Nothing. Later in his career he did create two cable television shows, Andy Warhol's TV in 1982 and Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes (based on his famous "fifteen minutes of fame" quotation) for MTV in 1986. Besides his own shows he regularly made guest appearances on other programs, including The Love Boat wherein a Midwestern wife (Marion Ross) fears Andy Warhol will reveal to her husband (Tom Bosley, who starred alongside Ross in sitcom Happy Days) her secret past as a Warhol superstar named Marina del Rey. Warhol also produced a TV commercial for Schrafft's Restaurants in New York City, for an ice cream dessert appropriately titled the "Underground Sundae". Fashion: Warhol is quoted for having said: "I'd rather buy a dress and put it up on the wall, than put a painting, wouldn't you?" One of his most well-known Superstars, Edie Sedgwick, aspired to be a fashion designer, and his good friend Halston was a famous one. Warhol's work in fashion includes silkscreened dresses, a short sub-career as a catwalk-model and books on fashion as well as paintings with fashion (shoes) as a subject. Performance Art: Warhol and his friends staged theatrical multimedia happenings at parties and public venues, combining music, film, slide projections and even Gerard Malanga in an S&M; outfit cracking a whip. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable in 1966 was the culmination of this area of his work. Theater: Andy Warhol's PORK opened on May 5, 1971 at LaMama theater in New York for a two week run and was brought to the Roundhouse in London for a longer run in August, 1971. Pork was based on tape-recorded conversations between Brigin Berlin and Andy during which Brigid would play for Andy tapes she had made of phone conversations between herself and her mother, socialite Honey Berlin. The play featured Jayne County as "Vulva" and Cherry Vanilla as "Amanda Pork". In 1974, Andy Warhol also produced the stage musical Man On The Moon, which was written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Photography: To produce his silkscreens, Warhol made photographs or had them made by his friends and assistants. These pictures were mostly taken with a specific model of Polaroid camera that Polaroid kept in production especially for Warhol. This photographic approach to painting and his snapshot method of taking pictures has had a great effect on artistic photography. Warhol was an accomplished photographer, and took an enormous amount of photographs of Factory visitors, friends. Computer: Warhol used Amiga computers to generate digital art, which he helped design and build with Amiga, Inc. He also displayed the difference between slow fill and fast fill on live TV with Debbie Harry as a model. (video)

Producer and product

Warhol had assistance in producing his paintings. This is also true of his film-making and commercial enterprises.

He founded the gossip magazine Interview, a stage for celebrities he "endorsed" and a business staffed by his friends. He collaborated with others on all of his books (some of which were written with Pat Hackett.) He adopted the young painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the band The Velvet Underground, presenting them to the public as his latest interest, and collaborating with them. One might even say that he produced people (as in the Warholian "Superstar" and the Warholian portrait). He endorsed products, appeared in commercials, and made frequent celebrity guest appearances on television shows and in films (he appeared in everything from Love Boat to Saturday Night Live and the Richard Pryor movie, Dynamite Chicken).

In this respect Warhol was a fan of "Art Business" and "Business Art"– he, in fact, wrote about his interest in thinking about art as business in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back Again.

Personal life

Sexuality

It is thought that Warhol was homosexual, and quite likely a virgin. His family maintains that he was not homosexual and was celibate. The question of how Warhol's sexuality influenced his work and shaped his relationship to the art world is a major subject of scholarship on the artist and is an issue that Warhol himself addressed in interviews, in conversation with his contemporaries, and in his publications (e.g. Popism: The Warhol Sixties). Throughout his career, Warhol produced erotic photography and drawings of male nudes. Many of his most famous works (portraits of Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor, and films like Blow Job, My Hustler and Lonesome Cowboys) draw from gay underground culture and/or openly explore the complexity of sexuality and desire. Many of his films premiered in gay porn theaters. The first works that he submitted to a fine art gallery, homoerotic drawings of male nudes, were rejected for being too openly gay. In Popism, furthermore, the artist recalls a conversation with the film maker Emile de Antonio about the difficulty Warhol had being accepted socially by the then more famous (but closeted) gay artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. De Antonio explained that Warhol was "too swish and that upsets them." In response to this, Warhol writes, "There was nothing I could say to that. It was all too true. So I decided I just wasn't going to care, because those were all the things that I didn't want to change anyway, that I didn't think I 'should' want to change... Other people could change their attitudes but not me". In exploring Warhol's biography, many turn to this period – the late 1950s and early 1960s – as a key moment in the development of his persona. Some have suggested that his frequent refusal to comment on his work, to speak about himself (confining himself in interviews to responses like "Um, no" and "Um, yes", and often allowing others to speak for him) – and even the evolution of his pop style – can be traced to the years when Warhol was first dismissed by the inner circles of the New York art world.

Religious beliefs

Warhol was a practicing Ruthenian Rite Catholic. He regularly volunteered at homeless shelters in New York, particularly during the busier times of the year, and described himself as a religious person. Several of Warhol's later works depicted religious subjects, including two series, Details of Renaissance Paintings (1984) and The Last Supper (1986). In addition, a body of religious-themed works was found posthumously in his estate.

Movies about Warhol

;Dramatic portrayals

on the set of 1979's Cocaine Cowboys, in which Warhol appeared as himself]]

In 1979, Warhol appeared as himself in the film Cocaine Cowboys.

After his passing, Warhol was portrayed by Crispin Glover in Oliver Stone's film The Doors (1991), by David Bowie in Basquiat, a film by Julian Schnabel, and by Jared Harris in the film I Shot Andy Warhol directed by Mary Harron (1996). Warhol appears as a character in Michael Daugherty's 1997 opera Jackie O. Actor Mark Bringleson makes a brief cameo as Warhol in (1997). Many films by avant-garde cineast Jonas Mekas have caught the moments of Andy's life. Sean Gregory Sullivan depicted Warhol in the 1998 film 54. Guy Pearce portrayed Warhol in the 2007 film, Factory Girl, about Edie Sedgwick's life. Actor Greg Travis portrays Warhol in a brief scene from the 2009 film Watchmen.

Gus Van Sant was planning a version of Warhol's life with River Phoenix in the lead role just before Phoenix's death in 1993.

;Documentaries The 2001 documentary, Absolut Warhola was produced by Polish director Stanislaw Mucha, featuring Warhol's parents' family and hometown in Slovakia. is a reverential four-hour 2006 movie by Ric Burns. Andy Warhol: Double Denied is a 52 minute movie by lan Yentob about the difficulties in authenticating Warhol's work.

See also

Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board

Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000

Andy Warhol Bridge in Pittsburgh.

Bodley Gallery

15 minutes of fame

Moon Museum

References

Further reading

"A symposium on Pop Art". Arts Magazine, April 1963, pp. 36–45. The symposium was held in 1962, at The Museum of Modern Art, and published in this issue the following year.

Doyle, Jennifer, Jonathan Flatley, and José Esteban Muñoz eds. (1996). Pop Out: Queer Warhol. Durham: Duke University Press.

Foster, Hal, The Return of the Real (ch.5), MIT Press / October Book, 1996.

James, James, "Andy Warhol: The Producer as Author", in Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties (1989), pp. 58–84. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Krauss, Rosalind E. "Warhol's Abstract Spectacle". In Abstraction, Gesture, Ecriture: Paintings from the Daros Collection. New York: Scalo, 1999, pp. 123–33.

Lippard, Lucy R., Pop Art, Thames and Hudson, 1970 (1985 reprint), ISBN 0-500-20052-1

Scherman, Tony & Dalton, David, POP: The Genius of Andy Warhol, HarperCollins, New York, N.Y. 2009

Suarez, Juan Antonio (1996). Bike Boys, Drag Queens, & Superstars: Avant-Garde, Mass Culture, and Gay Identities in the 1960s Underground Cinema. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

External links

Warhol Foundation in New York City

Andy Warhol Collection in Pittsburgh

Time Capsules: the Andy Warhol Collection

Documentation of recent exhibitions of work by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol at Brooke Alexander Gallery

Andy Warhol's Empire group on Facebook

David Cronenberg speaking about the work of Andy Warhol">David Cronenberg speaking about the work of Andy Warhol on UbuWeb

Warholstars: Andy Warhol Films, Art and Superstars

Pop Art Masters – Andy Warhol

Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work

"Warhol, Soup Cans, Cowboys" (Studio 360 radio program, December 10, 2005)

exhibition of 10 statues of liberty in Gallerie Lavignes bastille, Paris 1986

The Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art – city of origin

Warhol in Paris - slideshow by The First Post

digital painting of Debbie Harry at the Commodore Amiga product launch press conference in 1985">Andy Warhol makes a digital painting of Debbie Harry at the Commodore Amiga product launch press conference in 1985

Category:1928 births Category:1987 deaths Category:20th-century artists Category:20th-century painters Category:20th-century writers Category:American artists Category:American cinematographers Category:American Eastern Catholics Category:American experimental filmmakers Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American painters Category:American people of Rusyn descent Category:American people of Slovak descent Category:American printmakers Category:American screenwriters Category:American shooting survivors Category:American socialites Category:Artists from New York Category:Artists from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Attempted assassination survivors Category:Carnegie Mellon University alumni Category:Censorship in the arts Category:Contemporary artists Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Deaths from surgical complications Category:Fashion illustrators Category:Gay artists Category:Gay writers Category:LGBT Christians Category:LGBT directors Category:LGBT people from the United States Category:LGBT visual artists Category:Photographers from New York Category:Pop artists Category:Postmodern artists Category:Ruthenian Catholics Category:The Velvet Underground Category:Warhola family

Name	Edie Sedgwick
Caption	Edie Sedgwick (center) from Ciao! Manhattan.
Birth name	Edith Minturn Sedgwick
Birth date	April 20, 1943
Birth place	Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
Death date	November 16, 1971
Death place	Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
Occupation	Artist, socialite, model, actress
Years active	1965–1971
Spouse

Edith Minturn "Edie" Sedgwick (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971) was an American actress, socialite, model and heiress. She is best known for being one of Andy Warhol's superstars. Sedgwick became known as "The Girl of the Year" in 1965 after starring in several of Warhol's short films, in the 1960s. Dubbed an "It Girl", Vogue magazine also named her a "Youthquaker".

Family background and early life

Edie Sedgwick was born in Santa Barbara, California, to Alice Delano de Forest (1908–1988) and Francis Minturn Sedgwick, (1904–1967, known as either "Duke" or "Fuzzy"), a philanthropist, rancher and sculptor. She was named after her father's aunt, Edith Minturn, famously painted, with her husband, Isaac Newton Phelps-Stokes, by John Singer Sargent.

Sedgwick's family was long established in Massachusetts history. Her seventh-great grandfather, English-born Robert Sedgwick, was the first Major General of the Massachusetts Bay Colony settling in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1635. Edie's family later originated from Stockbridge, Massachusetts where her great-great-great grandfather Judge Theodore Sedgwick had settled after the American Revolution. Theodore married Pamela Dwight who was the daughter of Abigail (Williams) Dwight, which means that Ephraim Williams, the founder of Williams College, was her fifth-great grandfather. Theodore Sedgwick was the first to plead and win a case for the freedom of a black woman, Elizabeth Freeman, under the Massachusetts Bill of Rights that declared all men to be born free and equal. Sedgwick's mother was the daughter of Henry Wheeler de Forest (President and Chairman of the Board of the Southern Pacific Railroad and a direct descendant of Jessé de Forest whose Dutch West India Company helped to settle New Amsterdam). Jessé de Forestt was also Edie's seventh-great grandfather. Her paternal grandfather was the historian and acclaimed author Henry Dwight Sedgwick III; her great grandmother, Susanna Shaw, was the sister of Robert Gould Shaw, the American Civil War Colonel; and her great-great grandfather, Robert Bowne Minturn, was a part owner of the Flying Cloud clipper ship, and is credited with creating and promoting Central Park in New York City. And her great-great-great grandfather, William Ellery, was a signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence.

Several weeks before the December 29, 2006 one-week release of the controversial film Factory Girl, described by The Village Voice review as "Edie for Dummies." The Weinstein Company and the film's producers interviewed Sedgwick's older brother, Jonathan, who asserted that she had "had an abortion of the child she was (supposedly) carrying by Dylan." Jonathan Sedgwick, a retired airplane designer, was flown in from Idaho to New York City by the distributor to meet Sienna Miller, who was playing his late sister, as well as to give an eight-hour video interview with details about the purported liaison between Edie and Dylan, which the distributor promptly released to the news media. Jonathan claims an abortion took place soon after "Edie was badly hurt in a motorcycle crash and sent to an emergency unit. As a result of the accident, doctors consigned her to a mental hospital where she was treated for drug addiction." No hospital records or Sedgwick family records exist to support this story. Nonetheless, Edie's brother also claimed "Staff found she was pregnant but, fearing the baby had been damaged by her drug use and anorexia, forced her to have the abortion." However, according to Edie Sedgwick's personal medical records and oral life-history tape recorded less than a year before her death for her final film, Ciao! Manhattan, there is credible evidence that the only abortion she underwent in her lifetime was at age 20 in 1963.

Throughout most of 1966, Sedgwick was involved in an intensely private yet tumultuous relationship not with Bob Dylan, but with Dylan's closest friend, Bob Neuwirth. During this period, she became increasingly dependent on barbiturates. Although she experimented with illegal substances including opiates, there is no evidence that Sedgwick ever became a heroin addict. In early 1967, Neuwirth, unable to cope with Sedgwick's drug abuse and erratic behavior, broke off their relationship.

Later years

Sedgwick auditioned for Norman Mailer's play The Deer Park, but Mailer thought she "wasn't very good... She used so much of herself with every line that we knew she'd be immolated after three performances."

In April 1967, Sedgwick began shooting Ciao! Manhattan, an underground movie. After initial footage was shot in New York, co-directors John Palmer and David Weisman continued working on the film over the course of the next five years. Sedgwick's rapidly deteriorating health saw her return to her family in California, spending time in several different psychiatric institutions. In August 1969, she was hospitalized in the psychiatric ward of Cottage Hospital after being arrested for drug offenses by the local police. While in the hospital, Sedgwick met another patient, Michael Brett Post, whom she would later marry. Sedgwick was in the hospital again in the summer of 1970, but was let out under the supervision of a psychiatrist, two nurses, and the live-in care of filmmaker John Palmer and his wife Janet. Staunchly determined to finish Ciao! Manhattan and have her story told, Sedgwick recorded audio-tapes reflecting upon her life story, which enabled Weisman and Palmer to incorporate her actual reality into the film's dramatic arc.

Death

When Sedgwick married Michael Post on July 24, 1971, she reportedly stopped drinking and abusing drugs for a short time. Her sobriety lasted until October, when pain medication was given to her to treat a physical illness. She remained under the care of her physician Dr. Wells, who prescribed her barbiturates, but she would demand more pills or claim that she had lost them in order to get more. Sedgwick often combined the medications with alcohol. Post was later put in charge of administering her medication; by his account, she took at least two 300 mg Quaalude tablets and two capsules of three-grain Tuinal every night, in addition to alcohol and whatever other drugs she may have been secretly consuming.

On the night of November 15, 1971, Sedgwick went to a fashion show at the Santa Barbara Museum, a segment of which was filmed for the television show An American Family. After the fashion show, she attended a party where (according to the accounts of her husband and brother-in-law) a drunken guest verbally attacked her by calling her a heroin addict and repeatedly asserting that her marriage would fail. Sedgwick phoned Post, who arrived at the party and, seeing that she was disturbed by the accusations, took her back to their apartment around one in the morning. On the way home, Sedgwick expressed thoughts of uncertainty about their marriage. Before they both fell asleep, Post gave Sedgwick the medication that had been prescribed for her. According to Post, Sedgwick started to fall asleep very quickly, and her breathing was, "bad – it sounded like there was a big hole in her lungs," but he attributed that to her heavy smoking habit and went to sleep.

When Post awoke the following morning, Edie Sedgwick was dead. The coroner ruled Sedgwick's death as "undetermined/accident/suicide." The time of death was estimated to be 9:20 A.M. The death certificate claims the immediate cause was "probable acute barbiturate intoxication" due to ethanol intoxication. Sedgwick's alcohol level was registered at 0.17% and her barbiturate level was 0.48 mg%. She was 28.

Sedgwick was buried in the small Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard, California in a simple grave. Her epitaph reads "Edith Sedgwick Post – Wife Of Michael Brett Post 1943–1971." Her mother Alice was buried next to her in 1988.

In popular culture

In music

Bob Dylan's "Just Like a Woman" and "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" from his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde are purportedly about Sedgwick. His 1965 #2 single "Like a Rolling Stone" was also reportedly inspired by her.

The Velvet Underground song "Femme Fatale" from the 1967 album The Velvet Underground & Nico is an ode to Edie. It is explicitly stated before the beginning of the song on their live set in San Francisco (Documented in the Quine Tapes) on November 7, 1969.

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions included a song about Edie Sedgwick called "Grace" on their 1985 Easy Pieces album.

The alternative rock band Dramarama used a photograph of Sedgwick on their 1985 album Cinéma Vérité. On that album, the song "All I Want" makes a reference to Edith Sedgwick Post. Dramarama also recorded a version of The Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale" on their first Cinema Verite, and their debut EP Comedy.

Etienne Daho song "La Ballade d'Edie S." from 1985 is about Edie Sedgwick

The Adult Net released a single called 'Edie' in 1985 on Beggars Banquet which was an homage to Edie Sedgwick.

James Ray and the Performance wrote a song about her called "Edie Sedgwick" on the b-side of the 12" version of their debut 1986 single, "Mexico Sundown Blues". A remake was recorded on the James Rays Gangwar LP, Psychodalek, titled "Edie."

Edie Brickell & New Bohemians wrote a song about her called "Little Miss S" which was on their Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars album released in 1988.

The Cult wrote a song about her life called "Edie (Ciao Baby)" which was on their Sonic Temple album, released in 1989. It was released as a single and video-clip starring an Edie-Double. The cover featured the famous Ciao! Manhattan cover shot and a tribute to Angel.

The Dream Academy dedicated the song "Girl In a Million" to Edie Sedgwick on their Three Steps Past the Edge of Forever release in 1997.

Will Young's 2002 music video for the remake of The Doors song "Light My Fire" features model Fanni Bostrom as Sedgwick. The video is loosely based on Sedgwick's last film Ciao! Manhattan.

The Long Blondes reference Edie, along with Arlene Dahl, in the song "Lust in the Movies" from the 2006 album, Someone To Drive You Home. Following the reference is the line 'I just want to be a sweetheart.'

Alizée released a song in 2008 called "Fifty-Sixty", which centers on the relationship of Edie and Andy Warhol. In 2010, Alizée released an album inspired by and about Sedgwick titled Une Enfant Du Siècle.

Leddra Chapman's 2009 song Edie, in her album Telling Tales, is based on Edie's role as a muse.

Justin Moyer (formerly of El Guapo/Supersystem) has a 2010 solo project called "Edie Sedgwick" in which he dresses in drag.

Martin Lyon's "Edie Sedgwick's Waltz" by the Dream Machine Experience.

In films

In the 1980s, Warren Beatty bought the rights to Edie's life story and was planning to make a movie with Molly Ringwald starring as Sedgwick. It was also reported a film entitled The War at Home was to be loosely based on her life during The Factory years, with Linda Fiorentino slated to portray her. It was to be based on John Byrum's fictionalized account of a working-class man who becomes enamored with her. Neither was ever produced.

Sedgwick was portrayed by Jennifer Rubin in Oliver Stone's 1991 film The Doors, starring Val Kilmer, during the Factory party scene when Jim Morrison meets Andy Warhol.

In the 2002 film Igby Goes Down, Amanda Peet's character, Rachel is described as an "Edie Sedgwick wanna-be" and dresses in Edie inspired attire throughout the film. Director Mike Nichols and actress Natalie Portman considered doing a film about Edie and Andy Warhol, but instead decided to film an adaption of Patrick Marber's play Closer, released in 2004. Sienna Miller played Sedgwick in George Hickenlooper's film Factory Girl, a fictionalized film about Sedgwick's life and times, released in December 2006. The film portrays Warhol, played by Guy Pearce, as a cynic who leads Edie to psychiatric problems and later death. In the film, Hayden Christensen plays "Billy Quinn", an apparent conglomeration of various characters but a look-alike of Bob Dylan. (As of late 2006, Dylan was apparently threatening to pursue a defamation lawsuit, claiming the film implicates him as having driven Sedgwick to her ultimate demise and eventual death.) Michael Post, Sedgwick's widower, appears as a taxi driver in one of the last scenes of the film.

The 2007 film I'm Not There based on Bob Dylan's life and times features an Edie-like character named "CoCo Rivington," played by Michelle Williams.

Other

One of the poems from Patti Smith's 1972 book Seventh Heaven is called "Edie Sedgwick".

A 2004 off-Broadway play entitled Andy & Edie, written and produced by Peter Braunstein, ran for ten days. Misha Moore, who portrayed Sedgwick, represented to the media that she was Sedgwick's niece. At the request of the Sedgwick family, the New York Times published a notice of correction.

In the fall of 2006, Ciao! Manhattan co-Director, David Weisman, announced on Access Hollywood that a documentary about Sedgwick is being developed with the same title of the book he co-authored, Edie: Girl on Fire.

Filmography

{| class="wikitable sortable" |+Film |- ! Year ! Title ! Role ! class="unsortable" | Notes |- |- | 1965 | Horse | | Non-speaking role |- | 1965 | Vinyl | | Non-speaking role |- | 1965 | Bitch | | |- | 1965 | Screen Test No.1 | Herself | |- | 1965 | Screen Test No.2 | Herself | |- | 1965 | Poor Little Rich Girl | | |- | 1965 | Face | | |- | 1965 | Restaurant | | |- | 1965 | Kitchen | | |- | 1965 | Afternoon | | |- | 1965 | Space | | |- | 1965 | Beauty II | | |- | 1965 | Factory Diaries | | |- | 1965 | Outer and Inner Space | | |- | 1965 | Prison | | Alternative title: Girls in Prison |- | 1966 | Lupe | | |- | 1966 | | | |- | 1967–1968 |**** | | Alternative title: The Four Star Movie |- | 1969 | Diaries, Notes and Sketches | Herself | Alternative title: Walden |- | 1972 | Ciao! Manhattan | Susan Superstar | |}

Bibliography

Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga: Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story

Victor Bockris: Andy Warhol

Michael Opray: Andy Warhol. Film Factory

Jean Stein: Edie: An American Biography

Andy Warhol: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Melissa Painter and David Weisman: Edie: Girl on Fire Book and Film

Steven Watson: Factory Made: Warhol And the Sixties

Nat Finkelstein and David Dalton: Edie: Factory Girl

References

External links

Blast Magazine Article "Girl on Fire"

Category:1943 births Category:1971 deaths Category:Actors from California Category:American female models Category:American film actors Category:American socialites Category:Delano family Category:Drug-related deaths in California Category:People from New York City Category:People from Santa Barbara, California Category:Sedgwick family Category:Warhol Superstars

Name	David Bowie
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	David Robert Jones
Born	January 08, 1947Brixton, London, England
Years active	1964–present
Occupation	Musician, actor, record producer, arranger, singer
Voice type	Baritone
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, saxophone, piano, keyboards, synthesizers, Mellotron, harmonica, Stylophone, xylophone, vibraphone, koto, drums, percussion
Genre	Rock, Pop, glam rock, art rock, blue-eyed soul
Associated acts	The Riot Squad, Tin Machine
Label	Deram, RCA, Rykodisc, Virgin, EMI, ISO, Columbia, BMG, Parlophone, Pye, Hanso
Url	Official Website

David Bowie ( ; born David Robert Jones, 8 January 1947) is an English rock musician and singer who has also worked as an actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for five decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s, and is known for his distinctive voice and the intellectual depth of his work.

Although he released an album (David Bowie) and several singles earlier, Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969, when the song "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture."

The family moved in 1953 to nearby suburb, Bromley, where, two years later, Bowie progressed to Burnt Ash Junior School. His singing voice was considered "adequate" by the school choir, and his recorder playing judged to demonstrate above-average musical ability. At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: teachers called his interpretations "vividly artistic" and his poise "astonishing" for a child. Presley's impact on him was likewise emphatic: "I saw a cousin of mine dance to ... 'Hound Dog' and I had never seen her get up and be moved so much by anything. It really impressed me, the power of the music. I started getting records immediately after that." By the end of the following year he had taken up the ukelele and tea-chest bass and begun to participate in skiffle sessions with friends, and had started to play the piano; meanwhile his stage presentation of numbers by both Presley and Chuck Berry—complete with gyrations in tribute to the original artists—to his local Wolf Cub group was described as He received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood, wearing a ring on his finger, punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. Doctors feared he would lose the sight of the eye, and he was forced to stay out of school for a series of operations during a four-month hospitalisation. The damage could not be fully repaired, leaving him with faulty depth perception and a permanently dilated pupil (the latter producing Bowie's appearance of having different coloured eyes, though each iris has the same blue colour). Despite their fisticuffs, Underwood and Bowie remained good friends, and Underwood went on to create the artwork for Bowie's early albums.

1962–1968: The Kon-rads to the Riot Squad

Graduating from his plastic saxophone to a real instrument in 1962, Bowie formed his first band at the age of 15. Playing guitar-based rock and roll at local youth gatherings and weddings, the Kon-rads had a varying line-up of between four and eight members, Underwood among them. When Bowie left the technical school the following year, he informed his parents of his intention to become a pop star. His mother promptly arranged his employment as an electrician's mate. Frustrated by his band-mates' limited aspirations, Bowie left the Kon-rads and formed another band, the King Bees. He wrote to the newly successful washing-machine entrepreneur John Bloom inviting him to "do for us what Brian Epstein has done for the Beatles—and make another million." Bloom did not respond to the offer, but his referral to Dick James's partner Leslie Conn led to Bowie's first personal management contract.

Conn quickly began to promote Bowie. The singer's debut single, "Liza Jane", credited to Davie Jones and the King Bees, had no commercial success. Dissatisfied with the King Bees and their repertoire of Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon blues numbers, Bowie quit the band less than a month later to join the Manish Boys, another blues outfit, who incorporated folk and soul—"I used to dream of being their Mick Jagger", Bowie was to recall.

Dissatisfied with his stage name as Davy (and Davie) Jones, which in the mid-1960s invited confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, Bowie re-named himself after the 19th century American frontiersman Jim Bowie and the knife he had popularised. His April 1967 solo single, "The Laughing Gnome", utilising sped-up Chipmunk-style vocals, failed to chart. Released six weeks later, his album debut, David Bowie, an amalgam of pop, psychedelia, and music hall, met the same fate. It would be his last release for two years. Kemp, for his part, recalled, "I didn't really teach him to be a mime artiste but to be more of himself on the outside, ... I enabled him to free the angel and demon that he is on the inside." After Kemp cast Bowie with Hermione Farthingale for a poetic minuet, the pair began dating; they soon moved into a London flat together. Playing acoustic guitar, she formed a group with Bowie and bassist John Hutchinson; between September 1968 and early 1969, when Bowie and Farthingale broke up, the trio gave a small number of concerts combining folk, Merseybeat, poetry and mime.

1969–1973: Psychedelic folk to glam rock

Space Oddity to Hunky Dory

Because of his lack of commercial success, Bowie was forced to try to earn a living in different ways. He featured in a Lyons Maid ice cream commercial, but was rejected for another by Kit Kat. Intended as a vehicle to promote the singer, a 30-minute film featuring performances from his repertoire, Love You till Tuesday, was made. Although not released until 1984, the filming sessions in January 1969 led to unexpected success when Bowie told the producers, "That film of yours—I've got a new song for it." He then demoed the song that would provide his commercial breakthrough. "Space Oddity" was released later in the year to coincide with the first moon landing. Continuing the divergence from rock and roll and blues begun by his work with Farthingale, Bowie joined forces with Finnigan, Christina Ostrom and Barrie Jackson to run a folk club on Sunday nights at the Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street. "Space Oddity" was released on 11 July, five days ahead of the Apollo 11 launch, to become a UK top five hit. Bowie's second album, Space Oddity, followed in November; originally issued in the UK as David Bowie, it caused some confusion with its predecessor of the same name, and the early US release was instead titled Man of Words/Man of Music. Featuring philosophical post-hippie lyrics on peace, love and morality, its acoustic folk rock occasionally fortified by harder rock, the album was not a commercial success at the time of its release. presents David Bowie. Cleveland Press magazine in November 3, 1972. WMMS played a key role in breaking several major acts at the time. It helped break many new rock artists nationally, most notably Bowie, who along with the Spiders from Mars, kicked off his American tour in Cleveland, based on the market's huge sales figures for the Bowie album, primarily due to WMMS airplay.|left]] Bowie met Angela Barnett in April 1969. They would marry within a year. Her impact on him was immediate, and her involvement in his career far-reaching, leaving Pitt with limited influence. Having established himself as a solo artist with "Space Oddity", Bowie now began to sense a lack: "a full-time band for gigs and recording—people he could relate to personally". A band was duly assembled. John Cambridge, a drummer Bowie met at the Arts Lab, was joined by Tony Visconti on bass and Mick Ronson on electric guitar. After a brief and disastrous manifestation as the Hype, the group reverted to a configuration presenting Bowie as a solo artist. Not long after, in a move that would result in years of litigation, at the conclusion of which Bowie would be forced to pay Pitt compensation, the singer fired his manager, replacing him with Tony Defries. During the tour Bowie's observation of two seminal American proto-punk artists led him to develop a concept that would eventually find form in the Ziggy Stardust character: a melding of the persona of Iggy Pop with the music of Lou Reed, producing "the ultimate pop idol". (His parents chose "his kooky name"—he would be known as Zowie for the next 12 years—after the Greek word zoe, life.) Elsewhere, the album explored more serious themes, and found Bowie paying unusually direct homage to his influences with "Song for Bob Dylan", "Andy Warhol", and "Queen Bitch", a Velvet Underground pastiche. It was not a significant commercial success at the time.

Ziggy Stardust

Tour]] With his next venture, Bowie, in the words of biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture". The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), combining the hard rock elements of The Man Who Sold the World with the lighter experimental rock and pop of Hunky Dory, was released in June. "Starman", issued as an April single ahead of the album, was to cement Bowie's UK breakthrough: both single and album charted rapidly following his July Top of the Pops performance of the song. The album, which would remain in the chart for two years, was soon joined there by the six-month-old Hunky Dory. At the same time the non-album single "John, I’m Only Dancing", and "All the Young Dudes", a song he wrote and produced for Mott the Hoople, became UK hits. The Ziggy Stardust Tour continued to the United States.

Bowie contributed backing vocals to Reed's 1972 solo breakthrough Transformer, co-producing the album with Ronson. His own Aladdin Sane (1973) topped the UK chart, his first number one album. Described by Bowie as "Ziggy goes to America", it contained songs he wrote while travelling to and across the United States during the earlier part of the Ziggy tour, which now continued to Japan to promote the new album. Aladdin Sane spawned the UK top five singles "The Jean Genie" and "Drive-In Saturday".

Bowie's love of acting led his total immersion in the characters he created for his music. "Offstage I'm a robot. Onstage I achieve emotion. It's probably why I prefer dressing up as Ziggy to being David." With satisfaction came severe personal difficulties: acting the same role over an extended period, it became impossible for him to separate Ziggy Stardust—and, later, the Thin White Duke—from his own character offstage. Ziggy, Bowie said, "wouldn't leave me alone for years. That was when it all started to go sour ... My whole personality was affected. It became very dangerous. I really did have doubts about my sanity." His later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, were ultra-theatrical affairs filled with shocking stage moments, such as Bowie stripping down to a sumo wrestling loincloth or simulating oral sex with Ronson's guitar. Bowie toured and gave press conferences as Ziggy before a dramatic and abrupt on-stage "retirement" at London's Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973. Footage from the final show was released in 1983 for the film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

After breaking up the Spiders from Mars, Bowie attempted to move on from his Ziggy persona. His back catalogue was now highly sought: The Man Who Sold the World had been re-released in 1972 along with Space Oddity. "Life on Mars?", from Hunky Dory, was released in June 1973 and made number three in the UK singles chart. Entering the same chart in September, Bowie's novelty record from 1967, "The Laughing Gnome", would reach number four. Pin Ups, a collection of covers of his 1960s favourites, followed in October, producing a UK number three hit in "Sorrow" and itself peaking at number one, making David Bowie the best-selling act of 1973 in the UK. It brought the total number of Bowie albums currently in the UK chart to six.

1974–1976: Soul, funk and the Thin White Duke

Bowie moved to the United States in 1974, initially staying in New York City before settling in Los Angeles. Diamond Dogs (1974), parts of which found him heading towards soul and funk, was the product of two distinct ideas: a musical based on a wild future in a post-apocalyptic city, and setting George Orwell's 1984 to music. The album went to number one in the UK, spawning the hits "Rebel Rebel" and "Diamond Dogs", and number five in the US. To promote it, Bowie launched the Diamond Dogs Tour, visiting cities in North America between June and December 1974. Choreographed by Toni Basil, and lavishly produced with theatrical special effects, the high-budget stage production was filmed by Alan Yentob. The resulting documentary, Cracked Actor, featured a pasty and emaciated Bowie: the tour coincided with the singer's slide from heavy cocaine use into addiction, producing severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional problems. He later commented that the accompanying live album, David Live, ought to have been titled "David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only In Theory". David Live nevertheless solidified Bowie's status as a superstar, charting at number two in the UK and number eight in the US. It also spawned a UK number ten hit in Bowie's cover of "Knock on Wood". After a break in Philadelphia, where Bowie recorded new material, the tour resumed with a new emphasis on soul.

The fruit of the Philadelphia recording sessions was Young Americans (1975). Biographer Christopher Sandford writes, "Over the years, most British rockers had tried, one way or another, to become black-by-extension. Few had succeeded as Bowie did now." The album's sound, which the singer identified as "plastic soul", constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. Young Americans yielded Bowie's first US number one, "Fame", co-written with John Lennon, who contributed backing vocals, and Carlos Alomar. Earning the distinction of being one of the first white artists to appear on the US variety show Soul Train, Bowie mimed "Fame", as well as "Golden Years", his October single. Young Americans was a commercial success in both the US and the UK, and a re-issue of the 1969 single "Space Oddity" became Bowie's first number one hit in the UK a few months after "Fame" achieved the same in the US.

Despite his by now well established superstardom, Bowie, in the words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "for all his record sales (over a million copies of Ziggy Stardust alone), existed essentially on loose change." In 1975, in a move echoing Pitt's acrimonious dismissal 15 years earlier, Bowie fired his manager. At the culmination of the ensuing months-long legal dispute, he watched, as described by Sandford, "millions of dollars of his future earnings being surrendered" in what were "uniquely generous terms for Defries", then "shut himself up in West 20th Street, where for a week his howls could be heard through the locked attic door."

at the O'Keefe center, Toronto 1976]] Station to Station (1976) introduced a new Bowie persona, the "Thin White Duke" of its title track. Visually, the character was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the extraterrestrial being he portrayed in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth the same year. Developing the funk and soul of Young Americans, Station to Station also prefigured the Krautrock and synthesiser music of his next releases. The extent to which drug addiction was now affecting Bowie was made public when Russell Harty interviewed the singer for his London Weekend Television talk show in anticipation of the album's supporting tour. Shortly before the satellite-linked interview was scheduled to commence, the death of the Spanish dictator General Franco was announced. Bowie was asked to relinquish the satellite booking, to allow the Spanish Government to put out a live newsfeed. This he refused to do, and his interview went ahead. In the ensuing conversation with Harty, as described by biographer David Buckley, "the singer made hardly any sense at all throughout what was quite an extensive interview. [...] Bowie looked completely disconnected and was hardly able to utter a coherent sentence." His sanity—by his own later admission—had become twisted from cocaine; he overdosed several times during the year, and was withering physically to an alarming degree. Matters came to a head in London in May in what became known as the "Victoria Station incident". Arriving in an open-top Mercedes convertible, the singer waved to the crowd in a gesture that some alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and published in NME. Bowie said the photographer simply caught him in mid-wave. He later blamed his pro-Fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his addictions and the character of the Thin White Duke. "I was out of my mind, totally crazed. The main thing I was functioning on was mythology ... that whole thing about Hitler and Rightism ... I'd discovered King Arthur ...". According to playwright Alan Franks, writing later in The Times, "he was indeed 'deranged'. He had some very bad experiences with hard drugs."

1976–1979: The Berlin era

Bowie moved to Switzerland in 1976, purchasing a chalet in the hills to the north of Lake Geneva. In the new environment, his cocaine use increased; so too did his interest in pursuits outside his musical career. He took up painting, producing a number of post-modernist pieces. When on tour, he took to sketching in a notebook, and photographing scenes for later reference. Visiting galleries in Geneva and the Brücke Museum in Berlin, Bowie became, in the words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "a prolific producer and collector of contemporary art. [...] Not only did he become a well-known patron of expressionist art: locked in Clos des Mésanges he began an intensive self-improvement course in classical music and literature, and started work on an autobiography".

Before the end of 1976, Bowie's interest in the burgeoning German music scene, as well as his drug addiction, prompted him to move to West Berlin to clean up and revitalise his career. Working with Brian Eno while sharing an apartment in Schöneberg with Iggy Pop, he began to focus on minimalist, ambient music for the first of three albums, co-produced with Tony Visconti, that would become known as his Berlin Trilogy. During the same period, Pop, with Bowie as a co-writer and musician, completed his solo album debut, The Idiot, and its follow-up, Lust for Life, touring the UK, Europe, and the US in March and April 1977. Low (1977), partly influenced by the Krautrock sound of Kraftwerk and Neu!, evidenced a move away from narration in Bowie's songwriting to a more abstract musical form in which lyrics were sporadic and optional. It received considerable negative criticism upon its release—a release which RCA, anxious to maintain the established commercial momentum, did not welcome, and which Bowie's ex-manager, Tony Defries, who still maintained a significant financial interest in the singer's affairs, tried to prevent. Despite these forebodings, Low yielded the UK number three single "Sound and Vision", and its own performance surpassed that of Station to Station in the UK chart, where it reached number two. Leading contemporary composer Philip Glass described Low as "a work of genius" in 1992, when he used it as the basis for his Symphony No. 1 "Low"; subsequently, Glass used Bowie's next album as the basis for his 1996 Symphony No. 4 "Heroes". Glass has praised Bowie's gift for creating "fairly complex pieces of music, masquerading as simple pieces".

Echoing Lows minimalist, instrumental approach, the second of the trilogy, "Heroes" (1977), incorporated pop and rock to a greater extent, seeing Bowie joined by guitarist Robert Fripp. Like Low, "Heroes" evinced the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city of Berlin. Incorporating ambient sounds from a variety of sources including white noise generators, synthesizers and koto, the album was another hit, reaching number three in the UK. Its title track, though only reaching number 24 in the UK singles chart, gained lasting popularity, and within months had been released in both German and French. Towards the end of the year, Bowie performed the song for Marc Bolan's television show Marc, and again two days later for Bing Crosby's televised Christmas special, when he joined Crosby in "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy", a version of "The Little Drummer Boy" with a new, contrapuntal verse. Five years later, the duet would prove a worldwide seasonal hit, charting in the UK at number three on Christmas Day, 1982.

After completing Low and "Heroes", Bowie spent much of 1978 on the Isolar II world tour, bringing the music of the first two Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70 concerts in 12 countries. By now he had broken his drug addiction; biographer David Buckley writes that Isolar II was "Bowie's first tour for five years in which he had probably not anaesthetised himself with copious quantities of cocaine before taking the stage. [...] Without the oblivion that drugs had brought, he was now in a healthy enough mental condition to want to make friends." Recordings from the tour made up the live album Stage, released the same year.

The final piece in what Bowie called his "triptych", Lodger (1979), eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature of the other two, making a partial return to the drum- and guitar-based rock and pop of his pre-Berlin era. The result was a complex mixture of New Wave and World Music, in places incorporating Hejaz non-Western scales. Some tracks were composed using Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies cards: "Boys Keep Swinging" entailed band members swapping instruments, "Move On" used the chords from Bowie's early composition "All the Young Dudes" played backwards, and "Red Money" took backing tracks from "Sister Midnight", a piece previously composed with Iggy Pop. The album was recorded in Switzerland. Ahead of its release, RCA's Mel Ilberman stated, "It would be fair to call it Bowie's Sergeant Pepper [...] a concept album that portrays the Lodger as a homeless wanderer, shunned and victimized by life's pressures and technology." As described by biographer Christopher Sandford, "The record dashed such high hopes with dubious choices, and production that spelt the end—for fifteen years—of Bowie's partnership with Eno." Lodger reached number 4 in the UK and number 20 in the US, and yielded the UK hit singles "Boys Keep Swinging" and "DJ". Towards the end of the year, Bowie and Angela initiated divorce proceedings, and after months of court battles the marriage was ended in early 1980.

1980–1989: From superstar to megastar

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) produced the number one hit "Ashes to Ashes", featuring the textural work of guitar-synthesist Chuck Hammer and revisiting the character of Major Tom from "Space Oddity". The song gave international exposure to the underground New Romantic movement when Bowie visited the London club "Blitz"—the main New Romantic hangout—to recruit several of the regulars (including Steve Strange of the band Visage) to act in the accompanying video, renowned as one of the most innovative of all time. While Scary Monsters utilised principles established by the Berlin albums, it was considered by critics to be far more direct musically and lyrically. The album's hard rock edge included conspicuous guitar contributions from Fripp, Pete Townshend, Chuck Hammer and Tom Verlaine. As "Ashes to Ashes" hit number one on the UK charts, Bowie opened a three-month run on Broadway on 24 September, starring in The Elephant Man.

Bowie paired with Queen in 1981 for a one-off single release, "Under Pressure". The duet was a hit, becoming Bowie's third UK number one single. The same year, he made a cameo appearance in the German movie Christiane F., a real-life story of teenage drug addiction in 1970s Berlin. The soundtrack, in which Bowie's music featured prominently, was released as Christiane F. a few months later. Bowie was given the lead role in the BBC's 1981 televised adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play Baal. Coinciding with its transmission, a five-track EP of songs from the play, recorded earlier in Berlin, was released as David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht's Baal. In March 1982, the month before Paul Schrader's film Cat People came out, Bowie's title song, "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", was released as a single, becoming a minor US hit and entering the UK top 30.

Bowie reached a new peak of popularity and commercial success in 1983 with Let's Dance. Co-produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers, the album went platinum in both the UK and the US. Its three singles became top twenty hits in both countries, where its title track reached number one. "Modern Love" and "China Girl" made number two in the UK, accompanied by a pair of acclaimed promotional videos that, as described by biographer David Buckley, "were totally absorbing and activated key archetypes in the pop world. 'Let's Dance', with its little narrative surrounding the young Aborigine couple, targeted 'youth', and 'China Girl', with its bare-bummed (and later partially-censored) beach lovemaking scene (a homage to the film From Here to Eternity), was sufficiently sexually provocative to guarantee heavy rotation on MTV. By 1983, Bowie had emerged as one of the most important video artists of the day. Let's Dance was followed by the Serious Moonlight world tour, during which Bowie was accompanied by guitarist Earl Slick and backing vocalists Frank and George Simms. The tour lasted six months and was extremely popular.

Tonight (1984), another dance-oriented album, found Bowie collaborating with Tina Turner and, once again, Iggy Pop. It included a number of cover songs, among them the 1966 Beach Boys hit "God Only Knows". The album bore the transatlantic top ten hit "Blue Jean", itself the inspiration for a short film that won Bowie a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video, "Jazzin' for Blue Jean". Bowie performed at Wembley in 1985 for Live Aid, a multi-venue benefit concert for Ethiopian famine relief. During the event, the video for a fundraising single was premièred, Bowie's duet with Jagger. "Dancing in the Street" quickly went to number one on release. The same year, Bowie worked with the Pat Metheny Group to record "This Is Not America" for the soundtrack of The Falcon and the Snowman. Released as a single, the song became a top 40 hit in the UK and US.

Bowie was given a role in the 1986 film Absolute Beginners. The movie was poorly received by critics, but Bowie's theme song rose to number two in the UK charts. He also appeared as Jareth, the Goblin King, in the 1986 Jim Henson film Labyrinth, for which he wrote five songs. His final solo album of the decade was 1987's Never Let Me Down, where he ditched the light sound of his previous two albums, instead offering harder rock with an industrial/techno dance edge. Peaking at number six in the UK, the album yielded the hits "Day-In, Day-Out" (his 60th single), "Time Will Crawl", and "Never Let Me Down". Bowie later described it as his "nadir", calling it "an awful album". Supporting Never Let Me Down, and preceded by nine promotional press shows, the 86-concert Glass Spider Tour commenced on 30 May. Bowie's backing band included Peter Frampton on lead guitar. Critics maligned the tour as overproduced, saying it pandered to the current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancing.

1989–1991: Tin Machine

Bowie shelved his solo career in 1989, retreating to the relative anonymity of band membership for the first time since the early 1970s. A hard-rocking quartet, Tin Machine came into being after Bowie began to work experimentally with guitarist Reeves Gabrels. The line-up was completed by Tony and Hunt Sales, known by Bowie since the late 1970s for their contribution, on drums and bass respectively, to Iggy Pop's 1977 album Lust For Life.

Though he intended Tin Machine to operate as a democracy, Bowie dominated, both in songwriting and in decision-making. The band's album debut, Tin Machine (1989), was initially popular, though its politicised lyrics did not find universal approval: Bowie described one song as "a simplistic, naive, radical, laying-it-down about the emergence of neo-Nazis"; in the view of biographer Christopher Sandford, "It took nerve to denounce drugs, fascism and TV [...] in terms that reached the literary level of a comic book." EMI complained of "lyrics that preach" as well as "repetitive tunes" and "minimalist or no production". The album nevertheless reached number three in the UK. A series of Tin Machine singles failed to chart, and Bowie, after a disagreement with EMI, left the label. Like his audience and his critics, Bowie himself became increasingly disaffected with his role as just one member of a band. Tin Machine began work on a second album, but Bowie put the venture on hold and made a return to solo work. Performing his early hits during the seven-month Sound+Vision Tour, he found commercial success and acclaim once again.

In October 1990, a decade after his divorce from Angela, Bowie and Somali-born supermodel Iman were introduced by a mutual friend. Bowie recalled, "I was naming the children the night we met ... it was absolutely immediate." They would marry in 1992. Tin Machine resumed work the same month, but their audience and critics, ultimately left disappointed by the first album, showed little interest in a second. Tin Machine IIs arrival was marked by a widely publicised and ill-timed conflict over the cover art: after production had begun, the new record label, Victory, deemed the depiction of the four nude band members in statuesque pose, judged by Bowie to be "in exquisite taste", "a show of wrong, obscene images", requiring air-brushing and patching to render the figures sexless. Tin Machine toured again, but after the live album failed commercially, the band drifted apart, and Bowie, though he continued to collaborate with Gabrels, resumed his solo career.

1992–1999: Electronica

In April 1992 Bowie appeared at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, following the Queen frontman's death the previous year. As well as performing "Heroes" and "All the Young Dudes", he was joined on "Under Pressure" by Annie Lennox, who took Mercury's vocal part. Four days later, Bowie and Iman were married in Switzerland. Intending to move to Los Angeles, they flew in to search for a suitable property, but found themselves confined to their hotel, under curfew: the 1992 Los Angeles riots began the day they arrived. They settled in New York instead.

1993 saw the release of Bowie's first solo offering since his Tin Machine departure, the soul, jazz and hip-hop influenced Black Tie White Noise. Making prominent use of electronic instruments, the album, which reunited Bowie with Let's Dance producer Nile Rodgers, confirmed Bowie's return to popularity, hitting the number one spot on the UK charts and spawning three top 40 hits, including the top 10 song "Jump They Say". Bowie explored new directions on The Buddha of Suburbia (1993), a soundtrack album of incidental music composed for the TV series adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's novel. It contained some of the new elements introduced in Black Tie White Noise, and also signalled a move towards alternative rock. The album was a critical success but received a low-key release and only made number 87 in the UK charts.

Reuniting Bowie with Eno, the quasi-industrial Outside (1995) was originally conceived as the first volume in a non-linear narrative of art and murder. Featuring characters from a short story written by Bowie, the album achieved US and UK chart success, and yielded three top 40 UK singles. In a move that provoked mixed reaction from both fans and critics, Bowie chose Nine Inch Nails as his tour partner for the Outside Tour. Visiting cities in Europe and North America between September 1995 and February the following year, the tour saw the return of Gabrels as Bowie's guitarist.

Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996. Incorporating experiments in British jungle and drum 'n' bass, Earthling (1997) was a critical and commercial success in the UK and the US, and two singles from the album became UK top 40 hits. Bowie's song "I'm Afraid of Americans" from the Paul Verhoeven film Showgirls was re-recorded for the album, and remixed by Trent Reznor for a single release. The heavy rotation of the accompanying video, also featuring Reznor, contributed to the song's 16-week stay in the US Billboard Hot 100. The Earthling Tour took in Europe and North America between June and November 1997. Bowie reunited with Visconti in 1998 to record "(Safe in This) Sky Life" for The Rugrats Movie. Although the track was edited out of the final cut, it would later be re-recorded and released as "Safe" on the B-side of Bowie's 2002 single "Everyone Says 'Hi'". The reunion led to other collaborations including a limited-edition single release version of Placebo's track "Without You I'm Nothing", co-produced by Visconti, with Bowie's harmonised vocal added to the original recording.. In 1998, Bowie recorded "A Foggy Day (In London Town)" with Angelo Badalamenti for the Red Hot Organization’s compilation album Red Hot + Rhapsody a tribute to George Gershwin which raised money for various charities devoted to increasing AIDS awareness and fighting the disease.

1999–present: Neoclassicist Bowie

during the Heathen Tour in 2002.]] Bowie created the soundtrack for , a 1999 computer game in which he and Iman also appeared as characters. Released the same year and containing re-recorded tracks from Omikron, his album 'Hours...' featured a song with lyrics by the winner of his "Cyber Song Contest" Internet competition, Alex Grant. Making extensive use of live instruments, the album was Bowie's exit from heavy electronica. Sessions for the planned album Toy, intended to feature new versions of some of Bowie's earliest pieces as well as three new songs, commenced in 2000, but the album was never released. Bowie and Visconti continued their collaboration, producing a new album of completely original songs instead: the result of the sessions would be the 2002 album Heathen. Alexandria Zahra Jones, Bowie and Iman's daughter, was born on 15 August.

In October 2001, Bowie opened The Concert for New York City, a charity event to benefit the victims of the September 11 attacks, with a minimalist performance of Simon & Garfunkel's "America", followed by a full band performance of "Heroes". 2002 saw the release of Heathen, and, during the second half of the year, the Heathen Tour. Taking in Europe and North America, the tour opened at London's annual Meltdown festival, for which Bowie was that year appointed artistic director. Among the acts he selected for the festival were Philip Glass, Television and The Polyphonic Spree. As well as songs from the new album, the tour featured material from Bowie's Low era. Reality (2003) followed, and then a world tour. Covering Europe, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Japan, 'A Reality Tour', with an estimated attendance of 722,000, grossed more than any other tour in 2004. Onstage in Oslo, Norway, on 18 June, Bowie was hit in the eye with a lollipop thrown by a fan; a week later he suffered chest pain while performing at the Hurricane Festival in Scheeßel, Germany. Originally thought to be a pinched nerve in his shoulder, the pain was later diagnosed as an acutely blocked artery, requiring an emergency angioplasty in Hamburg. The remaining 14 dates of the tour were cancelled.

at the premiere of Jones' directorial debut Moon]] Recuperating from the heart surgery, Bowie reduced his musical output for the first time in several years, making only one-off appearances on stage and in the studio. He sang in a duet of his 1972 song "Changes" with Butterfly Boucher for the 2004 animated film Shrek 2. During a relatively quiet 2005, he recorded the vocals for the song "(She Can) Do That", co-written with Brian Transeau, for the movie Stealth. He returned to the stage on 8 September 2005, appearing with Arcade Fire for the US nationally televised event Fashion Rocks, and performed with the Canadian band for the second time a week later during the CMJ Music Marathon. He contributed back-up vocals on TV on the Radio's song "Province" for their album Return to Cookie Mountain, made a commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio, and joined with Lou Reed on Danish alt-rockers Kashmir's 2005 album No Balance Palace. Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on 8 February 2006. In April, he announced, "I’m taking a year off—no touring, no albums." He made a surprise guest appearance at David Gilmour's 29 May concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The event was recorded, and a selection of songs on which he had contributed joint vocals were subsequently released. He performed again in November, alongside Alicia Keys, at the Black Ball, a New York benefit event for Keep a Child Alive.

Bowie was chosen to curate the 2007 High Line Festival, selecting musicians and artists for the Manhattan event, and performed on Scarlett Johansson's 2008 album of Tom Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head. On the 40th anniversary of the July 1969 moon landing—and Bowie's accompanying commercial breakthrough with "Space Oddity"—EMI released the individual tracks from the original eight-track studio recording of the song, in a 2009 contest inviting members of the public to create a remix. A Reality Tour, a double album of live material from the 2003 concert tour, was released in January 2010.

Acting career

Biographer David Buckley writes, "The essence of Bowie's contribution to popular music can be found in his outstanding ability to analyse and select ideas from outside the mainstream—from art, literature, theatre and film—and to bring them inside, so that the currency of pop is constantly being changed." Buckley says "Just one person took glam rock to new rarefied heights and invented character-playing in pop, marrying theatre and popular music in one seamless, powerful whole." Bowie's career has also been punctuated by various roles in film and theatre productions, earning him some acclaim as an actor in his own right.

The beginnings of his acting career predate his commercial breakthrough as a musician. Studying avant-garde theatre and mime under Lindsay Kemp, he was given the role of Cloud in Kemp's 1967 theatrical production Pierrot in Turquoise (later made into the 1970 TV movie The Looking Glass Murders). In the black and white short film The Image (1969), he played a ghostly boy who emerges from a troubled artist's painting to haunt him. The same year, the film of Leslie Thomas's 1966 comic novel The Virgin Soldiers saw Bowie make a brief appearance as an extra. Bowie starred in The Hunger (1983), a revisionist vampire movie, with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. In Nagisa Oshima's film the same year, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, based on Laurens van der Post's novel The Seed and the Sower, Bowie played Major Jack Celliers, a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. Another musician, Ryuichi Sakamoto, played the camp commandant who begins to be undermined by Celliers' bizarre behaviour. Bowie had a cameo in Yellowbeard, a 1983 pirate comedy created by Monty Python members, and a small part as Colin, the hitman in the 1985 film Into the Night. He declined to play the villain Max Zorin in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985).

Absolute Beginners (1986), a rock musical based on Colin MacInnes's 1959 novel about London life, featured Bowie's music and presented him with a minor acting role. The same year, Jim Henson's dark fantasy Labyrinth found him with the part of Jareth, the king of the goblins. Two years later he played Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ. Bowie portrayed a disgruntled restaurant employee opposite Rosanna Arquette in The Linguini Incident (1991), and the mysterious FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch's (1992). He took a small but pivotal role as Andy Warhol in Basquiat, artist/director Julian Schnabel's 1996 biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and co-starred in Giovanni Veronesi's spaghetti western Il Mio West (1998, released as Gunslinger's Revenge in the US in 2005) as the most feared gunfighter in the region. He played the aging gangster Bernie in Andrew Goth's Everybody Loves Sunshine (1999), and appeared in the TV horror serial of The Hunger. In Mr. Rice's Secret (2000), he played the title role as the neighbour of a terminally ill twelve-year-old, and the following year appeared as himself in Zoolander.

Bowie portrayed Nikola Tesla, the physicist who pioneered AC electricity, co-starring with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman in The Prestige (2006), Christopher Nolan's film of Christopher Priest's epistolary novel about the bitter rivalry between two magicians in the early 20th century. He voice-acted in the animated movie Arthur and the Invisibles as the powerful villain Maltazard, and lent his voice to the character Lord Royal Highness in the SpongeBob's Atlantis SquarePantis TV movie. In the 2008 film August, directed by Austin Chick, he played a supporting role as Ogilvie, alongside Josh Hartnett and Rip Torn, with whom he had worked in 1976 for The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Sexual orientation

Buckley writes, "If Ziggy confused both his creator and his audience, a big part of that confusion centred on the topic of sexuality." Bowie declared himself bisexual in an interview with Melody Maker in January 1972, a move coinciding with the first shots in his campaign for stardom as Ziggy Stardust. In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, Bowie said his public declaration of bisexuality was "the biggest mistake I ever made", and on other occasions he said his interest in homosexual and bisexual culture had been more a product of the times and the situation in which he found himself than his own feelings; as described by Buckley, he said he had been driven more by "a compulsion to flout moral codes than a real biological and psychological state of being".

Asked in 2002 by Blender whether he still believed his public declaration was the biggest mistake he ever made, he replied:

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Buckley's view of the period is that Bowie, "a taboo-breaker and a dabbler ... mined sexual intrigue for its ability to shock", and that "it is probably true that Bowie was never gay, nor even consistently actively bisexual ... he did, from time to time, experiment, even if only out of a sense of curiosity and a genuine allegiance with the 'transgressional'." Biographer Christopher Sandford says that according to Mary Finnigan, with whom Bowie had an affair in 1969, the singer and his first wife Angie "lived in a fantasy world [...] and they created their bisexual fantasy." Sandford tells how, during the marriage, Bowie "made a positive fetish of repeating the quip that he and his wife had met while 'fucking the same bloke' [...] Gay sex was always an anecdotal and laughing matter. That Bowie's actual tastes swung the other way is clear from even a partial tally of his affairs with women." but biographer also reinforces that his public statements on sex had no other purpose but to do marketing and draw attention to his "transgressional" work.

Musicianship

Voice and instruments

A man of many voices, Bowie, from the time of his earliest recordings in the 1960s, has employed a wide variety of musical styles. His early compositions and performances were strongly influenced not only by rock and rollers like Little Richard and Elvis Presley but also by the wider world of show business. He particularly strove to emulate the British musical theatre singer-songwriter and actor Anthony Newley, whose vocal style he frequently adopted, and made prominent use of for his 1967 debut release, David Bowie (to the disgust of Newley himself, who destroyed the copy he received from Bowie's publisher). Bowie's music hall fascination continued to surface sporadically alongside such diverse styles as hard rock and heavy metal, soul, psychedelic folk and pop. Musicologist James Perone observes Bowie's use of octave switches for different repetitions of the same melody, exemplified in his commercial breakthrough single, "Space Oddity", and later in the song "Heroes", to dramatic effect; Perone notes that "in the lowest part of his vocal register [...] his voice has an almost crooner-like richness."

Voice instructor Jo Thompson describes Bowie's vocal vibrato technique as "particularly deliberate and distinctive". Schinder and Schwartz call him "a vocalist of extraordinary technical ability, able to pitch his singing to particular effect." Here, too, as in his stagecraft and songwriting, the singer's chamaeleon-like nature is evident: historiographer Michael Campbell says that Bowie's lyrics "arrest our ear, without question. But Bowie continually shifts from person to person as he delivers them [...] His voice changes dramatically from section to section."

Bowie plays many instruments, among them electric, acoustic, and twelve-string guitar, alto, tenor and baritone saxophone, keyboards including piano, synthesizers and Mellotron, harmonica, Stylophone, xylophone, vibraphone, koto, drums and percussion, and string instruments including viola and cello. , 1974.]]

Compositions

Bowie's compositions are suffused with philosophical and literary lyrics. Songs like "The Width of a Circle", "Quicksand" and "The Superman" receive influences of Buddhism, occultism, mysticism and especially the concept of Übermensch by Friedrich Nietzsche. The first of the three alluded to a sexual encounter with God or Devil in Hell, or other supernatural being, according to different interpretations. Indeed, his early compositions were influenced by poetry and writings of Aleister Crowley, William Hughes Mearns and H. P. Lovecraft, and "The Jean Genie" is a reference to Jean Genet.

With these influences Bowie created a new world through his music. "Oh! You Pretty Things" from Hunky Dory (1971) is a fine example of this and has been considered a sci-fi song about 'homo superior' concepts in a "teasing, unquestionably gay tinged manner." The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is another example; an album around a fictional sci-fi story created by Bowie himself. Track "Five Years", for example, desperately says that the world will end to five years, and is one of many examples of his artistic endeavors with the collapse of society. Diamond Dogs also presents a vision of a post-apocalyptic world. Later, in Outside, he returned to the idea of a concept album based on stories he wrote and characters he had created. And Heathen reflected his impressions on the Attacks of September 11, 2001, with lyrics focused on humanity degradation. To conclude, Reality reflects on his career and in the title track he sings: "I've been right and I've been wrong"/ "I look for sense but I get next to nothing" / "Hey boy welcome to reality" on a hard song moved with three guitars, syncopated drums and bass such as the rock songs of his past phases.

Legacy

Bowie's innovative songs and stagecraft brought a new dimension to popular music in the early 1970s, strongly influencing both its immediate forms and its subsequent development. A pioneer of glam rock, Bowie, according to music historians Schinder and Schwartz, has joint responsibility with Marc Bolan for creating the genre. At the same time, he inspired the innovators of the punk rock music movement—historiographer Michael Campbell calls him "one of punk's seminal influences". While punk musicians trashed the conventions of pop stardom, Bowie moved on again—into a more abstract style of music making that would in turn become a transforming influence. Biographer David Buckley writes, "At a time when punk rock was noisily reclaiming the three-minute pop song in a show of public defiance, Bowie almost completely abandoned traditional rock instrumentation." Bowie's record company sought to convey his unique status in popular music with the slogan, "There is old wave, there is new wave, and there is Bowie..." Musicologist James Perone credits him with having "brought sophistication to rock music", and critical reviews frequently acknowledge the intellectual depth of his work and influence.

Buckley writes that, in an early 1970s pop world that was "Bloated, self-important, leather-clad, self-satisfied, [...] Bowie challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day." As described by John Peel, "The one distinguishing feature about early-70s progressive rock was that it didn't progress. Before Bowie came along, people didn't want too much change." Buckley says that Bowie "subverted the whole notion of what it was to be a rock star", with the result that "After Bowie there has been no other pop icon of his stature, because the pop world that produces these rock gods doesn't exist any more. [...] The fierce partisanship of the cult of Bowie was also unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom." Buckley concludes that "Bowie is both star and icon. The vast body of work he has produced [...] has created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture. [...] His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure."

Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

David Bowie's influence remains immense, musically and socially. According to many authors, for example, incorporating androgynous characters like Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane in his 1970 glam era that communicate through sexual languages Bowie re-create a independent adolescent class at the time and also helped movements such as the gay liberation. In this era he also helped to create new fashions around the rock and music scenes that still appeals people nowadays.

Musically, his albums were also very influential. The Man Who Sold the World (1970), for example, has been cited as influencing the goth rock, darkwave and science fiction elements of work by artists such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Gary Numan, John Foxx and Nine Inch Nails. In his journal, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana listed this album at number 45 in his top 50 favourite albums. In 1993, the band re-recorded its title-track in their MTV Unplugged in New York. After the glam era Bowie produced works such as Diamond Dogs (1974) which its elements of raw guitar style and visions of urban chaos, scavenging children and nihilistic lovers have been credited with anticipating the punk revolution of bands like The Germs and Sex Pistols, that would take place in the following years. 1976 saw the appraised album Station to Station, that has also been described as "enormously influential on post-punk" and influenced band Magazine. On the following year, "Heroes" (1977) of 'Berlin Trilogy' influenced Double Fantasy (1980) by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

His work in the 80's, especially "Ashes to Ashes" song and its video showing a creative Bowie's music and image, provided the basis for a new musical movement of the time, called New Romantic, influencing acts such as Blitz Kids, Keanan Duffty, and Steve Strange. In fact, critics have written that this song was considered the anthem for the New Romantic movement musicians. Pixies also began in 1986 with Joey Santiago introducing Black Francis to the Bowie's music and punk rock, then the pair began to jam together.

David Bowie's influence continues nowadays, even among artists and acts of diverse genres and countries. Examples include Marilyn Manson (in fact, Bowie is their biggest influence), Boy George, Groove Armada (especially album Black Light), Spacehog, Neïmo, Arckid, Stacey Q, Buck-Tick, Lady Gaga, All the Pretty Horses (a Minnesota's transgender rock band), and many others. On November 2010, Bono Vox of U2 compared Bowie to Elvis Presley and said he was very influential on Britain and also in his generation and band. As biographer Thomas Forget adds, "Because he has succeeded in so many different styles of music, it is almost impossible to find a popular artist today that has not been influenced by David Bowie."

Awards and recognition

Bowie's 1969 commercial breakthrough, the song "Space Oddity", won him an Ivor Novello Special Award For Originality. For his performance in the 1976 science fiction film The Man Who Fell to Earth, he won a Saturn Award for Best Actor. In the ensuing decades he has been honoured with numerous awards for his music and its accompanying videos, receiving, among others, two Grammy Awards and two BRIT Awards.

In 1999, Bowie was made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music the same year. He declined the British honour Commander of the British Empire in 2000, and a knighthood in 2003, stating: "I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don't know what it's for. It's not what I spent my life working for."

Throughout his career he has sold an estimated 136 million albums. In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, he was ranked 29. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 39th on their list of the 100 Greatest Rock Artists of All Time and the 23rd best singer of all time.

Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996.

Discography

David Bowie (1967)

Space Oddity (1969)

The Man Who Sold the World (1970)

Hunky Dory (1971)

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)

Aladdin Sane (1973)

Pin Ups (1973)

Diamond Dogs (1974)

Young Americans (1975)

Station to Station (1976)

Low (1977)

"Heroes" (1977)

Lodger (1979)

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)

Let's Dance (1983)

Tonight (1984)

Never Let Me Down (1987)

Black Tie White Noise (1993)

The Buddha of Suburbia (1993)

Outside (1995)

Earthling (1997)

'Hours...' (1999)

Heathen (2002)

Reality (2003)

See also

100 Greatest Britons

Best selling music artists

David Bowie filmography

Bowie Bonds

List of artists who reached number one on the Hot 100 (US)

List of artists who reached number one on the US Dance chart

List of David Bowie tours

List of number-one hits (United States)

List of Number 1 Dance Hits (United States)

List of people who have declined a British honour

Low Symphony and Heroes Symphony

Notes

References

Further reading

Seabrook, Thomas Jerome, Bowie in Berlin: A New Career in a New Town, Jawbone Press, 2008.

Spitz, Marc, Bowie: A Biography, Crown Publishers, 2009.

Tremlett, George, David Bowie: Living on the Brink, Carroll and Graf, 1997.

Waldrep, Shelton, "Phenomenology of Performance", The Aesthetics of Self-Invention: Oscar Wilde to David Bowie, University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

Welch, Chris, David Bowie: We Could Be Heroes: The Stories Behind Every David Bowie Song, Da Capo Press, 1999.

Wilcken, Hugo, 33⅓: David Bowie's Low, Continuum, 2005.

External links

Official Myspace page

Official YouTube channel

Bowieart – paintings, printmakings, etc.

Charlie Rose interview (1998)

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:1960s singers Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Bisexual actors Category:Bisexual musicians Category:BRIT Award winners Category:British expatriates in Switzerland Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres * Category:Daytime Emmy Award winners Category:Decca Records artists Category:English baritones Category:English film actors Category:English male singers Category:English multi-instrumentalists Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English record producers Category:English rock musicians Category:English singer-songwriters Category:Glam rock Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:LGBT musicians from the United Kingdom Category:LGBT people from England Category:Musicians from London Category:Parlophone artists Category:People from Brixton Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees‎ Category:Rykodisc artists Category:Saturn Award winners Category:Virgin Records artists

Name	Stereo Total
Background	group_or_band
Origin	Berlin, Germany
Genre	Electropop, New Wave, Punk rock, Synth Pop, Garage Rock, Indie, Lo-Fi
Years active	1993–present
Label	Peace 95Little Teddy RecordsDesert RecordsBungalowL'Appareil Photo (Japan)Bobsled Records (US)
Associated acts	Les LolitasPalestina
Url	http://www.stereototal.de
Current members	Françoise CactusBrezel Göring
Past members	Angie ReedSan ReimoIznogoodLesley Campbell.

Stereo Total is a Berlin-based multilingual, French-German duo comprising Françoise Cactus (born Françoise Van Hove and formerly co-leader of the band Les Lolitas) and Brezel ('pretzel') Göring (aka Friedrich von Finsterwalde, born Friedrich Ziegler).

Musical style

Their music, which can be described as a humorous mix of synth-pop, new wave, electronica, punk rock and pop music, tends to embody a retro-hip European 1960s mod style, with references to that period evident in their music. Some songs evoke a mod/psych/garage-rock vibe, both in production aesthetic and lyrical content, along with 1960s French-pop, in the vein of Françoise Hardy. Some of their tracks are playful, low-fi versions of pop, rock and soul songs that employ the use of analogue recording equipment and reverberation. In that vein, they made a pop version of Salt-N-Pepa's electro rap hit "Push It".

Their songs are often sung in German, French and English, but some of their output also features a number of other languages, such as Japanese, Spanish and Turkish. The band has covered songs by Sylvie Vartan, Françoise Hardy, Brigitte Bardot, Serge Gainsbourg, Johnny Hallyday, Velvet Underground, Nico, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Pizzicato Five, Hot Chocolate, Die Tödliche Doris, KC and the Sunshine Band and Marjo (Corbeau).

Songs used in advertisements

"I Love You, Ono",—a re-titled cover version of "I Love You, Oh No!" by Japanese new wave band, The Plastics—from their album My Melody, was used by Sony in a European commercial for the Handycam in June 2005, and was also featured in Robot Food's snowboarding hit "Afterbang". In 2009, the song was used in a Dell commercial for the Studio 15. The title of the Stereo Total version is a play on both the original Plastics title and Yoko Ono, and is a likely homage to the original's Japanese origin.

Another one of their songs, "L'Amour à trois" (the French version of the song "Liebe zu Dritt"), was used in a commercial for 3G-phones in Sweden in the fall of 2005 by the company 3, as well as by the Spanish TV Channel Cuatro in an advert for the company and in the disco scene in the independent Argentinian film "Glue". Their song "Cannibale" was included in the console game Dance Dance Revolution ULTRAMIX 4, released in November 2006. "Megaflittchen" was also used in a commercial by Estonian mobile operator EMT.

Discography

Albums

1995 · Oh Ah!

1997 · Monokini

1998 · Juke-Box Alarm

1999 · My Melody

2001 · Musique Automatique

2002 · Trésors cachés [Hidden Treasures] [available free on their website]

2005 · Do the Bambi

2006 · Discotheque

2007 · Paris-Berlin

2009 · No Controles

2010 · Baby ouh!

External links

The Official Website of Stereo Total

Stereo Total News

French Page about Stereo Total

Monokini, Stereo Total Fan Page

Stereo Total on Last.fm

Stereo Total in Chaos Control Digizine

References

Category:German pop music groups Category:French pop music groups Category:German New Wave musical groups Category:Electronic music groups

Name	Debbie Harry
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Angela Trimble
Born	July 01, 1945Miami, Florida, U.S.
Voice type	Mezzo-soprano
Instrument	Vocals, percussion, tambourine, , finger cymbals, clarinet
Genre	New Wave, pop, rock, punk rock, Power Pop
Occupation	Vocalist, musician, actress
Years active	1966–present
Associated acts	The Wind in the Willows The Stilettos BlondieThe Jazz PassengersChris SteinJimmy DestriLos Fabulosos CadillacsClem Burke
Url	Official Website

Deborah Ann "Debbie" Harry (born July 1, 1945) is an American singer-songwriter and actress, best known for being the lead singer of the punk rock and new wave band Blondie. She has also had success as a solo artist, and in the mid-1990s she performed and recorded as part of The Jazz Passengers. Her acting career spans over thirty film roles and numerous television appearances.

Life and early career

Harry is the daughter of Catherine and Richard Harry, gift shop proprietors in Hawthorne, New Jersey, who adopted her at the age of three-months-old, in Miami, Florida. According to Harry's website, her birth parents' names on her original birth certificate are Scottish: MacKenzie and Trimble. She also stated that her name prior to adoption was Angela Trimble. She has never traced the roots of her birth parents, but said she may do so in the future. She attended Hawthorne High School, where she graduated in 1963. She graduated from Centenary College in Hackettstown, New Jersey, with an Associate of Arts degree in 1965. Before starting her singing career she moved to New York City in the late 1960s and worked as a secretary at BBC Radio's office there for one year. Later, she was a waitress at Max's Kansas City, and worked in a Dunkin' Donuts shop, after which she was a dancer in Union City, New Jersey, and a Playboy Bunny.

She began her musical career in the late 60's with a folk rock group, The Wind in the Willows.{The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia Of Rock & Roll c1983, page 48} Harry then joined a girl-group trio, The Stilettos, in the early 1970s. The Stilettos' backup band included her eventual boyfriend and Blondie guitarist, Chris Stein. Harry and Stein formed the band Blondie in the mid-1970s, naming it for the term of address men often yelled at Harry from passing cars. Blondie quickly became regulars at Max's Kansas City and CBGB in New York City. After a debut album in 1976, commercial success followed in the late 1970s to the early 1980s, first in Australia and Europe, then in the United States.

While leading Blondie, Harry and Stein became life as well as musical partners, although they never married; Harry has no children. In the mid-1980s, she took a few years off to nurse Stein back to health after he suffered a life-threatening disease. Stein and Harry broke up in the 1990s, but they have continued to work together. In 1999, she was called the 12th greatest woman of rock and roll by VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll and in 2002, she was called the 18th sexiest artist of all time by VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists Harry resides in Red Bank, New Jersey, and in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.

Blondie

With her two-tone bleached-blonde hair, Harry quickly became a recognizable punk icon. Her look was further popularized by the band's early presence in the music video revolution of the era. She was a continued regular at Studio 54 and was associated with Andy Warhol. In June 1979, Blondie graced the cover of Rolling Stone. Harry's stage persona of cool sexuality and streetwise style became so closely associated with the group's name that many came to believe the singer's name to be "Blondie." The difference between the individual Harry and the band Blondie was famously highlighted with a "Blondie is a Group" button campaign by the band in 1979. To complicate matters further, Harry sometimes described her character in the band as being named "Blondie", as in this quote from the No Exit tour book:

During 1976 and 1977 Blondie released their first two albums. The second experienced some marginal success outside the United States. However, 1978's Parallel Lines (US #6, UK #1) shot the group to international success and included the global smash hit single, "Heart of Glass." Riding the crest of Disco's domination, the infectous track hit #1 in the US and sold nearly two million copies. The follow-up single, "One Way Or Another" reached #24 on Billboard's Hot 100. The album was the band's biggest success, having sold over 6 million copies in the United States alone. The band were also pioneers of the music video movement with Eat To The Beat being heralded as the first ever music video cassette album.

The release of the platinum-plus Eat to the Beat album (US #17, UK #1) in 1979 and Autoamerican (US #7, UK #3) in 1980, continued the band's run of hits, including "Dreaming", Atomic" and three more US #1 singles: "The Tide Is High", "Rapture" and "Call Me" from the film soundtrack American Gigolo which became Billboard's #1 song of 1980.

After a year long hiatus in 1981, during which Harry released her first solo album (see below), Blondie regrouped and released their sixth studio album The Hunter (US #33, UK #9). The album met with a disastrous reception, peaking at #33 and falling rapidly off the charts. The single "Island of Lost Souls" briefly cracked the US Top 40. The band's "War Child" was released as a single in the UK. Blondie launched a North American tour to support the release, but it was cut short when Stein fell seriously ill with the rare autoimmune disease, pemphigus. Coupled with declining commercial fortunes, the band split up.

Later in the 1980s, the remix album Once More Into The Bleach was released, featuring remixes of tracks by Blondie and from Harry's solo career. The mid-1990s saw the release of further Blondie remix albums Beautiful in Europe and Remixed Remade Remodeled in the U.S. New mixes of "Heart of Glass", "Atomic" and "Union City Blue" were released as singles and all made the UK Top 40, while remixes of "Atomic", "Rapture" and "Heart of Glass" had major success on the U.S. dance charts.

In 1997, Blondie began working together again for the first time in 15 years. Two tracks were recorded with TV Mania, the production trio of two Duran Duran members, Nick Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo, and producer Anthony J. Resta. "Studio 54" and "Pop Trash Movie" were scheduled to be released on a Blondie compilation, entitled This Is Blondie. However, the project and the tracks were shelved as the four original members (Harry, Stein, Clem Burke and Jimmy Destri) embarked on sessions for what would become Blondie's seventh studio album. During this period, they released a cover of Iggy Pop's "Ordinary Bummer" on the tribute album We Will Fall (1997).

After a final tour of Europe with The Jazz Passengers in the summer of 1998, Deborah Harry resumed duties as lead vocalist of Blondie. Prior to the release of No Exit, the band completed a sold out tour of Europe. Dates at London's Lyceum Theatre were recorded by the BBC and aired on national BBC Radio 1. A week prior to the release of No Exit, the lead single "Maria" debuted at number one in the UK, giving Blondie their sixth UK No.1 hit. "Maria" also reached #1 in 14 different countries, the top 10 on the U.S. Dance Charts and Top 15 on the U.S. Adult Top 40 Charts. No Exit debuted at No.3 in the UK and #17 in the U.S. and Blondie announced dates for a major arena tour that summer, during which they played the Glastonbury Festival and Party in the Park in London. "Nothing Is Real but the Girl" was another UK Top 30 hit, while the title track was released as a limited edition single to coincide with further arena dates in November of that year.

Tracks culled from dates throughout the 1999 world tour were released as a live album, titled Live in the U.S. and Livid in the UK and were released in late 1999 and early 2000, respectively. A Blondie Live companion DVD was also released, recorded at a show in New York City's The Town Hall.

Although Blondie commenced recording tracks for the follow-up to No Exit in 2001, the sessions were besieged with problems including the loss of master tapes after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the winter of 2002, Blondie returned with a full scale UK tour. This preceded the release of a new single in 2003 entitled "Good Boys" (a hit across the UK and Europe that autumn, and top 10 on the U.S. Dance Charts the following spring) and the release of Blondie's eighth studio album, The Curse of Blondie. The band toured throughout 2003 and 2004, completing two further full scale tours of the UK.

A second live album, entitled Live By Request, was released in 2005, along with a companion DVD set. In that year, the band also released the mash-up "Rapture Riders", which combined their 1981 hit "Rapture" with The Doors' "Riders on the Storm". This track was taken from a greatest hits compilation entitled (first issued in the UK as ), released with a companion DVD disk and new mixes of "In the Flesh" and "Good Boys".

In the winter of 2005, Blondie toured the UK for the fourth time in as many years. In 2006, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Around this time, Blondie released a new studio track, a cover of Roxy Music's 1982 hit "More Than This". This was to promote their "Road Rage" tour and the single was made available for free download.

At the end of 2006, a new mix of "Heart of Glass" became a club hit in Europe, while Harry released the single "New York New York", a collaboration with Moby. The song debuted on YouTube, some four weeks before its official release.

In the summer of 2007, Blondie toured in the UK once again. Around this time, Harry delineated the different personas (Blondie the band, her role in the band and Deborah Harry, the singer) in an interview which asked why she played only solo music on the 2007 True Colors Tour: "I've put together a new trio with no Blondie members in it - I really want to make a clear definition between Debbie's solo projects and Blondie - and I hope that the audience can appreciate that and also appreciate this other material."

On July 3, 2008, Blondie commenced a world tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Parallel Lines with a sell-out concert at the amphitheatre in Ra'anana, Israel. During the tour, drummer Clem Burke stated that the tour had inspired the band to make another record, Panic of Girls. It will be their first new album since the release of The Curse of Blondie in 2003.

In 2009, Blondie went on tour with Pat Benatar for the "Call Me Invincible" tour. The majority of the shows were opened by The Donnas. In December 2009, Blondie recorded their version of the traditional song "We Three Kings" to coincide with the bands much awaited 2010 album.

In the summer of 2010, Blondie began a UK tour, including venues in Newcastle, Manchester, Sheffield and Dublin. They also played festivals including the Isle of Wight and Rockness Festival in Inverness, Scotland. Tracks from their forthcoming album 'Panic of Girls' have been performed during their tour of the UK, notably 'D-Day' and 'What I heard'. The album is due for release around September 2010. In an interview at the Isle of Wight Festival, drummer Clem Burke indicated that Blondie may return for another tour in 2011, depending on how well the record is received.

Solo albums

To date, Harry has released five solo albums. Harry began her solo career with the Chrysalis Records album Koo Koo in 1981. The album peaked at #28 in the US and #6 in the UK; it was later certified gold in the US and Silver in the UK. "Backfired", the first single from the album, had a video directed by H. R. Giger (who also painted the album's eye-catching cover featuring Harry's face with metal skewers through it) and climbed to #43 on the Billboard Hot 100, #29 on the Hot Dance Club Songs and #32 on the UK Singles Chart. "The Jam Was Moving" was lifted as the second single and peaked at #82 in the US. In 1986, Harry released her second solo album on Geffen Records called Rockbird, which peaked at #97 in the US (where it sold 200,000 copies) and #31 in the UK (where it has been certified Gold for 100,000 sales by the BPI). The single "French Kissin' in the USA" gave Harry her only UK solo top 10 hit (#8) and became a moderate US hit (#57). Other singles released from the album were "Free to Fall" and "In Love with Love" which hit #1 on the U.S. Dance Charts and was released with several remixes.

Her next solo venture was the Sire/Red Eye/Reprise album Def, Dumb and Blonde in 1989. At this point Harry reverted from "Debbie" to "Deborah" for her professional name. The first single "I Want That Man" was a hit in Europe, Australia, and on the U.S. Modern Rock Charts. The success of the single propelled the album to #12 on the UK charts. However, with little promotion from her record company in the US, it peaked at #123. She followed this up with the ballad "Brite Side" and the club hit "Sweet and Low". "Maybe for Sure", a track originally recorded by Blondie for the Rock and Rule animated film, was the fourth single released from the album in June 1990 to coincide with a UK tour (her second in six months). "Kiss It Better" was also a Top 15 Modern Rock single in the U.S.

From 1989 to 1991, Harry toured extensively across the world with former Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, Underworld's Karl Hyde, and future Blondie bassist Leigh Foxx. In July 1991, she played Wembley Stadium with INXS. In 1991, Chrysalis released a "best of" compilation in Europe entitled , containing hits with Blondie as well as solo hits. The collection reached #3 in the UK album charts. The album also included her duet with Iggy Pop on the Cole Porter song "Well, Did You Evah!" from the Red Hot + Blue AIDS charity album produced by the Red Hot Organization and released at the end of 1990.

Harry's fourth solo album, Debravation, appeared in July 1993. The album's first single was "I Can See Clearly", which peaked at #23 in the UK and #2 on the U.S. dance charts. This was followed by "Strike Me Pink" in September. Controversy surrounded the latter track's promotional video which featured a man drowning in a water tank, resulting in it being banned. U.S. editions of the album feature two additional tracks recorded with pre-recorded music by R.E.M.: "Tear Drops" and "My Last Date (With You)".

In November 1993, Harry toured the UK with Stein, Peter Min, Greta Brinkman and . The set list of the Debravation Tour featured an offbeat selection of Harry material including the previously unreleased track "Close Your Eyes" (from 1989) and "Ordinary Bummer" (from the Stein- produced Iggy Pop album Zombie Birdhouse; a track which under the moniker "Adolph's Dog" Blondie would cover in 1997). Tentative plans to record these shows and release them as a double live CD never came to fruition. However, a cover of The Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses" is available as a bootleg. At the end of 1993, Chrysalis released the Blondie rarities collection Blonde and Beyond, which featured the previously unreleased tracks "Scenery" and "Underground Girl". In early 1994, Harry took the Debravation tour to the U.S.

In 2006, Harry started work in New York City on tracks for her fifth solo album Necessary Evil (2007). Working with production duo Super Buddha (who produced the remix of Blondie's "In the Flesh" for the 2005 compilation) the first music to surface in was a hip hop track entitled "Dirty and Deep" in which she spoke out against rapper Lil' Kim's incarceration.

Throughout 2006, a number of new tracks surfaced on Harry's MySpace page, including "Charm Alarm", "Deep End", "Love With A Vengeance", "School for Scandal" and "Necessary Evil", as well as duets she recorded with Miss Guy (of Toilet Böys fame). These were "God Save New York" and "New York Groove". A streaming version of the lead single, "Two Times Blue", was added to Harry's My Space page in May 2007. On June 6, 2007, an iTunes downloadable version was released via her official web site, www.deborahharry.com.

Harry joined Cyndi Lauper's True Colors Tour for the Human Rights Campaign. She is a strong advocate for gay rights and same-sex marriage. Though she has stated that she identifies as mostly heterosexual, Harry has said she has had intimate relationships with both men and women.

Necessary Evil was released on Eleven Seven Music after Harry completed both a solo tour of the US in June 2007 and a European tour with Blondie in July 2007. The first single, "Two Times Blue", peaked at #5 on the US Dance Club Play chart. The album debuted at #86 in the UK and #37 in the US Billboard Top Independent Albums chart.

To promote the album, Harry appeared on various talk shows to perform "Two Times Blue". She also started a 22-date U.S. tour on November 8, lasting until December 9, playing small venues and clubs across the country. On January 18, 2008, an official music video for "If I Had You" was released.

Other musical projects

In 1983 Harry teamed up with Giorgio Moroder (with whom she had worked previously on Blondie's "Call Me") on the song "Rush Rush", which was featured in the film Scarface and in the video game Grand Theft Auto III. Harry's single "Feel the Spin", produced by John "Jellybean" Benitez, was released (as a 12" single only) in 1985. That song, along with the whole soundtrack to the film Krush Groove, peaked at #5 on the U.S. Dance Charts. The song's "uno dos tres quatro" intro has been sampled on a number of records, including S'Express' "Theme from S'Express". of the Ramones and Harry attend a screening of Burning Down the House, a 2009 documentary about CBGB's heyday.]] While recording her fourth album in 1992, Harry collaborated with German heavy metal band Die Haut on the track "Don't Cross My Mind", and released the song "Prelude to a Kiss" on the soundtrack to the film of the same name. She also released a cover of "Summertime Blues" from the soundtrack to the film That Night in Australia.

In the mid-1990s, Harry teamed up with New York avant-garde jazz ensemble The Jazz Passengers. Between 1994 and 1998 she was a permanent member of the troupe, touring North America and Europe. She was a featured vocalist on their 1994 album In Love singing the track "Dog In Sand". The follow-up album, 1997's Individually Twisted, is credited as "The Jazz Passengers featuring Deborah Harry" and Harry sings vocals throughout, teaming up with guest Elvis Costello for a cover of "Doncha Go Way Mad". The album also features a re-recorded version of the song "The Tide Is High". A live album entitled Live In Spain, again featuring Harry on vocals, was released in 1998.

Harry collaborated on a number of other projects with other artists. She featured as vocalist on Talking Heads side project The Heads' 1996 release No Talking, Just Head (performing the title track and "Punk Lolita"). She also sings on a cover of "Strawberry Fields Forever" and on the song "Estrella de Mar" by Argentine band Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. In 1997 she collaborated with Jazz Passenger Bill Ware in his side project Groove Thing, singing lead vocals on the club hit "Command and Obey". Another JP collaboration appeared on the Edgar Allan Poe tribute album Closed on Account of Rabies (1997). Harry also reunited with Blondie keyboardist Jimmy Destri for a cover of Otis Blackwell's "Don't Be Cruel" for the 1995 tribute album Brace Yourself. During this period she also recorded a duet with Robert Jacks entitled "Der Einzige Weg (The Only Way) - Theme from ", which was recorded in German and in English, although these did not surface until 1999. Likewise, at the end of 1999, Chrysalis Records released a best of her solo recordings entitled Most of All - The Best of Deborah Harry and a remix of "I Want That Man".

Aside from writing and recording material for Blondie, Harry pursued various other projects. She appears on the 2001 Bill Ware album Vibes 4 singing the track 'Me and You' as well as on ex-Police guitarist Andy Summers's album, Peggy's Blue Skylight on the track "Weird Nightmare". A techno cover of Stan Jones' "Ghost Riders in the Sky" was featured on the soundtrack to the film Three Business Men and was available on her website to download. Harry sings on two tracks on Andrea Griminelli's Cinema Italiano project; "You'll Come To Me" (inspired in "Amarcord's main theme") and "Whe Love Comes By" (from "Il Postino"), as well as on a tribute album reinterpreting the music of Harold Arlen, on which she sings the title track "Stormy Weather". In May 2002, she accompanied The Jazz Passengers and the BBC Concert Orchestra in a performance of her jazz material at the Barbican Centre in London. In 2003, she was featured vocalist on the song "Uncontrollable Love" by electro-clash dance producers Blow Up.

Harry also contributed to Fall Out Boy's 2008 album Folie à Deux. She sings on the chorus of the album's closer "West Coast Smoker".

Harry is a credited co-writer on a song called "Supersensual" that appears on Australian singer Natalie Bassingthwaighte's debut album 1000 Stars. The song samples the recognizable "woo-ooo-wo-oh" refrain from "Heart of Glass".

Acting roles

Harry appeared on Broadway with Andy Kaufman in the wrestling play Teaneck Tanzi. A retitled version of the British play, Trafford Tanzi, the show opened and closed in one night. Later that year Harry, who had already appeared in a number of independent and underground films, made her major motion picture debut in the David Cronenberg film Videodrome.

Following the release of Rockbird, Harry took a number of acting roles including the villainous Velma Von Tussle in John Waters' Hairspray (1988).

A cover of The Castaways' "Liar Liar" from the soundtrack to the film Married to the Mob was released as a single in the U.S. Harry's version of Michael Jay's "Mind Over Matter" was also recorded in this period, but never released. Harry starred in a film called Forever Lulu, also known as Crazy Streets, in 1987 alongside Alec Baldwin. She had only one line but made appearances throughout the film. She also starred in the film Intimate Stranger, as Cory Wheeler, who was a telephone sex worker being pursued by a serial killer. Harry's other film roles include Videodrome, Roadie, Union City, New York Beat Movie (otherwise known as Downtown '81), Rock & Rule, , Six Ways to Sunday, The Fluffer, Cop Land, Heavy, My Life Without Me, "Spun" and Full Grown Men. Her television appearances include roles on Tales from the Darkside, The Muppet Show, MADtv, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Absolutely Fabulous, Saturday Night Live, Pete and Pete, and Wiseguy.

Current projects

Harry was one of the faces of MAC Cosmetics' Viva Glam VI campaign. The campaign donates every cent of the selling price of their iconic lipstick shades to the MAC AIDS Fund, which helps people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. On April 25, 2010, she sang on the TV Land Awards program performing "Call Me" and "One Way or Another".

She is currently recording a new album with Blondie, "Panic Of Girls", and is touring Australia and New Zealand in December to promote the album.

Discography

Albums

Compilation albums

Other albums

In Love (The Jazz Passengers featuring Deborah Harry) (1994)

Individually Twisted (The Jazz Passengers featuring Deborah Harry) (1996)

Live In Spain (The Jazz Passengers featuring Deborah Harry) (1997)

Singles

Filmography

Features

Unmade Beds (1976)

Deadly Hero (1976)

The Blank Generation (1976) (documentary)

The Foreigner (1978)

Mr. Mike's Mondo Video (1979)

Union City (1980)

Roadie (1980)

Downtown 81 (1981)

Rock & Rule (1983 (voice)

Videodrome (1983)

Terror in the Aisles (1984)

Forever Lulu (1987)

Satisfaction (1988)

Hairspray (1988)

New York Stories (1989)

(1990)

(1992)

''Body Bags (1993)

Dead Beat (1994)

Drop Dead Rock (1995)

Heavy (1995)

(1995) (documentary)

Cop Land (1997)

Six Ways to Sunday (1997)

Joe's Day (1998)

Zoo (1999)

Red Lipstick (2000)

The Fluffer (2001)

Deuces Wild (2002)

Spun (2002)

All I Want (2002)

(2003) (documentary)

My Life Without Me (2003)

A Good Night to Die (2003)

Ghostlight (2003)

The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003)

Mayor of the Sunset Strip (2003) (documentary)

Picture This: Blondie and Debbie Harry (2004) (documentary)

Kiki and Herb Reloaded (2005) (documentary)

Face Addict (2005) (documentary)

Too Tough to Die: A Tribute to Johnny Ramone (2006) (documentary)

Full Grown Men (2006)

Anamorph (2007)

Elegy (2008)

Hotel Gramercy Park (2008) (documentary)

Short subjects

A New Face of Debbie Harry (1982)

Sandman (1996)

Who Is Harry Smith? (1998)

Drive (2002)

Honey Trap (2005)

Patch (2005)

I Remember You Now... (2005)

References

External links

Official sites

Debbie Harry — official website & blog

www.dhbis.com — Deborah Harry & Blondie Mailing List

Deborah Harry discography at Discogs

www.blondie.net/deborah_harry.shtml, Deborah Harry's personal blog on Blondie site

Media links

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame entry

Blondie at Rolling Stone Magazine

Debbie Harry Pop Culture Madness interview

Debbie Harry Interview on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos

Debbie Harry at NNDB

Category:1945 births Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:American dance musicians Category:American female singers Category:American film actors Category:American punk rock musicians Category:American punk rock singers Category:Blondie members Category:Sire Records artists Category:Chrysalis Records artists Category:Geffen Records artists Category:Female New Wave singers Category:Musicians from Florida Category:People from Miami, Florida Category:Pop punk singers Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:American adoptees Category:Living people Category:American New Wave musicians

Name	Allen Ginsberg
Caption	Allen Ginsberg at the Miami Book Fair International of 1985
Birthname	Irwin Allen Ginsberg
Birthdate	June 03, 1926
Birthplace	Newark, New Jersey, United States of America
Deathdate	April 05, 1997
Deathplace	New York City, New York, United States of America
Occupation	Writer, poet
Movement	Beat, New American Poets, Hippies, Postmodernism
Influences	Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, Wavy Gravy, Gregory Corso, William S. Burroughs, William Blake, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Percy Shelley, John Keats, Ezra Pound, Christopher Smart, Arthur Rimbaud, Antonin Artaud, James Joyce, Jean Genet, Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hart Crane, William Shakespeare, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Lynd Ward, Fritz Lang
Influenced	Bob Dylan, Wavy Gravy, LeRoi Jones, Robert Lowell, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Andrei Codrescu, Saul Williams, Hunter S. Thompson, Rage Against the Machine, Beau Sia, Jim Morrison, Patti Smith, John S. Hall

Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet who vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression. In the 1950s, Ginsberg was a leading figure of the Beat Generation, an anarchic group of young men and women who joined poetry, song, sex, wine and illicit drugs with passionate political ideas that championed personal freedoms. Ginsberg's epic poem "Howl", in which he celebrates his fellow "angel-headed hipsters" and excoriates what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States, is one of the classic poems of the Beat Generation The poem, dedicated to writer Carl Solomon, has the opening:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix...

In October 1955, Ginsberg and five other unknown poets gave a free reading at an experimental art gallery in San Francisco. Ginsberg's "Howl" electrified the audience. According to fellow poet Michael McClure, it was clear "that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America and its supporting armies and navies and academies and institutions and ownership systems and power support bases." In 1957, "Howl" attracted widespread publicity when it became the subject of an obscenity trial in which a San Francisco prosecutor argued it contained "filthy, vulgar, obscene, and disgusting language." The poem seemed especially outrageous in 1950s America because it depicted both heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made homosexual acts a crime in every U.S. state. "Howl" reflected Ginsberg's own homosexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong partner. Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that "Howl" was not obscene, adding, "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"

In "Howl" and in his other poetry, Ginsberg drew inspiration from the epic, free verse style of the 19th century American poet Walt Whitman. Both wrote passionately about the promise (and betrayal) of American democracy; the central importance of erotic experience; and the spiritual quest for the truth of everyday existence. J. D. McClatchy, editor of the Yale Review called Ginsberg "the best-known American poet of his generation, as much a social force as a literary phenomenon." McClatchy added that Ginsberg, like Whitman, "was a bard in the old manner – outsized, darkly prophetic, part exuberance, part prayer, part rant. His work is finally a history of our era's psyche, with all its contradictory urges."

Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist who studied Eastern religious disciplines extensively. One of his most influential teachers was the Tibetan Buddhist, the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa, founder of the Naropa Institute, now Naropa University at Boulder, Colorado. At Trungpa's urging, Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman started a poetry school there in 1974 which they called the "Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics". In spite of his attraction to Eastern religions, the journalist Jane Kramer argues that Ginsberg, like Whitman, adhered to an "American brand of mysticism" that was, in her words, "rooted in humanism and in a romantic and visionary ideal of harmony among men." Ginsberg's political activism was consistent with his religious beliefs. He took part in decades of non-violent political protest against everything from the Vietnam War to the War on Drugs. The literary critic, Helen Vendler, described Ginsberg as "tirelessly persistent in protesting censorship, imperial politics, and persecution of the powerless." His achievements as a writer as well as his notoriety as an activist gained him honors from established institutions. Ginsberg's book of poems, The Fall of America, won the National Book Award for poetry in 1974. Other honors included the National Arts Club gold medal and his induction into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, both in 1979. In 1995, Ginsberg won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992.

Life

Early life and family

Ginsberg was born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Paterson.

As a young teenager, Ginsberg began to write letters to The New York Times about political issues, such as World War II and workers' rights.

In 1943, Ginsberg graduated from Eastside High School and briefly attended Montclair State College before entering Columbia University on a scholarship from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson. While at Columbia, Ginsberg contributed to the Columbia Review literary journal, the Jester humor magazine, won the Woodberry Poetry Prize and served as president of the Philolexian Society, the campus literary and debate group. Ginsberg's mother, Naomi Livergant Ginsberg, was affected by a rare psychological illness that was never properly diagnosed. She was also an active member of the Communist Party and took Ginsberg and his brother Eugene to party meetings. Ginsberg later said that his mother "made up bedtime stories that all went something like: 'The good king rode forth from his castle, saw the suffering workers and healed them.'" Naomi's mental illness often manifested as paranoid delusions. She would claim, for example, that the president had implanted listening devices in their home and that Louis' mother was trying to kill her. Her suspicion of those around her caused Naomi to draw closer to young Allen, "her little pet," as Bill Morgan says in his biography of Ginsberg, entitled, I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg. She also tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists and was soon taken to Greystone, a mental hospital; she would spend much of Ginsberg's youth in mental hospitals. His experiences with his mother and her mental illness were a major inspiration for his two major works, "Howl" and his long autobiographical poem "Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894–1956)".

When he was in junior high school, he accompanied his mother by bus to her therapist. The trip deeply disturbed Ginsberg — he mentioned it and other moments from his childhood in "Kaddish". This is followed soon by the line "with mother finally ******." Ginsberg later admitted the deletion was the expletive "fucked." He also says of Solomon in section three, "I'm with you in Rockland where you imitate the shade of my mother," once again showing the association between Solomon and his mother.

Naomi died in 1956, and she did not have a kaddish at her funeral because there were not ten Jewish men present. Ginsberg tried to have one performed for her, but was unable to since the two companions with him, Jack Kerouac and Peter Orlovsky, were not Jewish. Ginsberg received a letter from his mother, responding to a copy of "Howl" he had sent her, after Naomi had died. It admonished Ginsberg to be good and stay away from drugs; she says, "The key is in the window, the key is in the sunlight at the window -- I have the key -- Get married Allen don't take trugs -- the key is in the bars, in the sunlight in the window". In a letter she wrote to Ginsberg's brother Eugene, she said, "God's informers come to my bed, and God himself I saw in the sky. The sunshine showed too, a key on the side of the window for me to get out. The yellow of the sunshine, also showed the key on the side of the window." These letters and the inability to perform the kaddish ceremony inspired Ginsberg to write "Kaddish" which makes references to many details from Naomi's life, Ginsberg's experiences with her, and the letter, including the lines "the key is in the light" and "the key is in the window".

New York Beats

In Ginsberg's freshman year at Columbia he met fellow undergraduate Lucien Carr, who introduced him to a number of future Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and John Clellon Holmes. They bonded because they saw in one another an excitement about the potential of American youth, a potential that existed outside the strict conformist confines of post-World War II, McCarthy-era America. Kerouac later described the meeting between Ginsberg and Cassady in the first chapter of his 1957 novel On the Road. The event, in essence, brought together the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation. Of more personal significance to Ginsberg: that night was the first public reading of "Howl", a poem that brought worldwide fame to Ginsberg and to many of the poets associated with him. An account of that night can be found in Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums, describing how change was collected from audience members to buy jugs of wine, and Ginsberg reading passionately, drunken, with arms outstretched. A taped recording of the reading of "Howl" that Ginsberg gave at Reed College was rediscovered and appeared on their multimedia website from 9am PST 15 February 2008.

Ginsberg's principal work, "Howl", is well-known for its opening line: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...." "Howl" was considered scandalous at the time of its publication, because of the rawness of its language. Shortly after its 1956 publication by San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore, it was banned for obscenity. The ban became a cause célèbre among defenders of the First Amendment, and was later lifted, after Judge Clayton W. Horn declared the poem to possess redeeming artistic value. Shortly after his arrival, he gave a reading at Better Books, which was described by Jeff Nuttall as "the first healing wind on a very parched collective mind".

Soon after the bookshop reading, plans were hatched for the International Poetry Incarnation,

Buddhism and Krishnaism

Ginsberg's spiritual journey began early on with his spontaneous visions, and continued with an early trip to India and a chance encounter on a New York City street with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (they both tried to catch the same cab), a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master of the Kagyu and Nyingma sects, who became his friend and life-long teacher. Ginsberg helped Trungpa (and New York poet Anne Waldman) in founding the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

Ginsberg was also involved with Krishnaism. He befriended A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna movement in the Western world, a relationship that is documented by Satsvarupa Das Goswami in his biographical account Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta. Ginsberg donated money, materials, and his reputation to help the Swami establish the first temple, and toured with him to promote his cause.

at the San Francisco Airport. January 17, 1967]]Despite disagreeing with many of Bhaktivedanta Swami's required prohibitions, Ginsburg often sang the Hare Krishna mantra publicly as part of his philosophy and declared that it brought a state of ecstacy. He was glad that Bhaktivedanta Swami, an authentic swami from India, was now trying to spread the chanting in America. Along with other counterculture ideologists like Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, and Alan Watts, Ginsberg hoped to incorporate Bhaktivedanta Swami and his chanting into the hippie movement, and agreed to take part in the Mantra-Rock Dance concert and to introduce the swami to the Haight-Ashbury hippie community.

On January 17, 1967 Allen Ginsberg helped plan and organize a reception for Bhaktivedanta Swami at the San Francisco Airport, where fifty to a hundred hippies greeted the Swami chanting Hare Krishna in the airport lounge with flowers in hands. To further support and promote Bhaktivendata Swami's message and chanting in San Francisco, Allen Ginsberg agreed to attend the Mantra-Rock Dance—a musical event held at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. It featured some leading rock bands of the time: Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, and Moby Grape, who performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami and donated proceeds to the Krishna temple. Ginsberg introduced Bhaktivedanta Swami to some three thousand hippies in the audience and led the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra.

promotional poster featuring Allen Ginsberg along with leading rock bands.]]Music and chanting were both important parts of Ginsberg's live delivery during poetry readings. He often accompanied himself on a harmonium, and was often accompanied by a guitarist. When Ginsberg asked if he could sing a song in praise of Lord Krishna on William F. Buckley, Jr.'s TV show Firing Line on September 3, 1968, Buckley acceded and the poet chanted slowly as he played dolefully on a harmonium. According to Richard Brookhiser, an associate of Buckley's, the host commented that it was "the most unharried Krishna I've ever heard."

Attendance to his poetry readings was generally standing room only for most of his career, no matter where in the world he appeared. Ginsberg came in touch with the Hungryalist poets of Bengal, especially Malay Roy Choudhury, who introduced Ginsberg to the three fishes with one head of Indian emperor Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar. The three fishes symbolised coexistence of all thought, philosophy and religion.

Death

Ginsberg won the National Book Award for his book . In 1993, the French Minister of Culture awarded him the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (the Knight of Arts and Letters).

With the exception of a special guest appearance at the NYU Poetry Slam on February 20, 1997, Ginsberg gave what is thought to be his last reading at The Booksmith in San Francisco on December 16, 1996. He died April 5, 1997, surrounded by family and friends in his East Village loft in New York City, succumbing to liver cancer via complications of hepatitis. He was 70 years old.

Ginsberg is buried in his family plot in Gomel Chesed Cemetery.

Social and political activism

Free speech

Ginsberg's willingness to talk about taboo subjects made him a controversial figure during the conservative 1950s, and a significant figure in the 1960s. In the mid-1950s, no reputable publishing company would even consider publishing "Howl". At the time, such “sex talk” employed in "Howl" was considered a form of vulgar pornography, and could even be prosecuted under law. Ginsberg used phrases such as “cocksucker”, “fucked in the ass”, and “cunt” to show the underbelly of America. Numerous books that discussed sex were banned at the time, including Lady Chatterley’s Lover. thus setting an important legal precedent. Even so, Ginsberg continued to broach controversial subjects throughout the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. When explaining how he approached controversial topics, he often pointed to Herbert Huncke: he said that when he first got to know Huncke in the 1940s, Ginsberg saw that he was sick from his heroin addiction, but at the time heroin was a taboo subject and Huncke was left with nowhere to go for help.

Role in Vietnam War protests

Ginsberg also played a key role in ensuring that a 1965 protest of the Vietnam war, which took place at the Oakland-Berkeley city line and drew several thousand marchers, was not violently interrupted by the California chapter of the notorious motorcycle gang, the Hells Angels, and their leader, Sonny Barger. The day prior to the scheduled march, the Hell's Angels attacked the front line of a smaller scale protest, where a confrontation between police and demonstrators was brewing. The Hell's Angels came in on motorcycles and slashed banners while yelling "Go back to Russia, you fucking communists!" at the protesters. The Hell's Angels then vowed to disrupt the larger protest the next day.

Ginsberg travelled to Barger's home in Oakland to talk the situation through. It is rumored that he offered Barger and other members of the Hell's Angels LSD as a gesture of friendship and goodwill. In the end, Barger and the other Hell's Angels that were present came away deeply impressed by the courage of Ginsberg and his companion Ken Kesey. They vowed not to attack the next day's protest march, and, furthermore, deemed Ginsberg a man who was worth helping out.

He was present the night of the massive Tompkins Square Park Police Riot in 1988 and provided an eyewitness account to The New York Times. It was shortly after the Tompkins Square Park riots in New York that Ginsberg was involved in a fracas with the Mentofreeist group and was assaulted by its leader, Vargus Pike. Pike was arrested, and was later released when Ginsberg, sporting a black eye, refused to press charges.

Relationship to Communism

Ginsberg talked openly about his connections with Communism and his admiration for past communist heroes and the labor movement at a time when the Red Scare and McCarthyism were still raging. He admired Castro and many other quasi-Marxist figures from the 20th century. In "America" (1956), Ginsberg writes: "America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry...." Biographer Jonah Raskin has claimed that, despite his often stark opposition to communist orthodoxy, Ginsberg held "his own idiosyncratic version of communism". On the other hand, when Donald Mains, a New York City politician, publicly accused Ginsberg of being a member of the Communist Party, Ginsberg objected: "I am not, as a matter of fact, a member of the Communist party, nor am I dedicated to the overthrow of [the U.S.] government or any government by violence. ... I must say that I see little difference between the armed and violent governments both Communist and Capitalist that I have observed ..."

Ginsberg travelled to several Communist countries to promote free speech. He claimed that Communist countries, such as China, welcomed him because they thought he was an enemy of Capitalism, but often turned against him when they saw him as a trouble maker. For example, in 1965 Ginsberg was deported from Cuba for publicly protesting persecution of homosexuals. The Cubans sent him to Czechoslovakia, where one week after being named the Král majálesu ("King of Majáles" – students' festivity, celebration of the spring and student life), Ginsberg was labelled an "immoral menace" by the Czechoslovak government because of his free expression of radical ideas, and was then deported on May 7, 1965. Václav Havel points to Ginsberg as an important inspiration in striving for freedom.

Gay rights

One contribution that is often considered his most significant and most controversial was his openness about homosexuality. Ginsberg was an early proponent of freedom for gay people. In 1943, he discovered within himself "mountains of homosexuality." He expressed this desire openly and graphically in his poetry. He also struck a note for gay marriage by listing Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong companion, as his spouse in his Who's Who entry. Subsequent gay writers saw his frank talk about homosexuality as an opening to speak more openly and honestly about something often before only hinted at or spoken of in metaphor. In "Thoughts on NAMBLA", a 1994 essay published in the collection Deliberate Prose, Ginsberg stated, "I joined NAMBLA in defense of free speech." In the essay, he referred to NAMBLA "as a forum for reform of those laws on youthful sexuality which members deem oppressive, a discussion society not a sex club." Ginsberg expressed the opinion that the appreciation of youthful bodies and "the human form divine" has been a common theme throughout the history of culture, "from Rome's Vatican to Florence's Uffizi galleries to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art", and that laws regarding the issue needed to be more openly discussed.

Demystification of drugs

Ginsberg also talked often about drug use. Throughout the 1960s he took an active role in the demystification of LSD, and, with Timothy Leary, worked to promote its common use. He was also for many decades an advocate of marijuana legalization, and, at the same time, warned his audiences against the hazards of tobacco in his Put Down Your Cigarette Rag (Don't Smoke): "Don't Smoke Don't Smoke Nicotine Nicotine No / No don't smoke the official Dope Smoke Dope Dope."

Health

In the 1970s Ginsberg suffered two minor strokes which were first diagnosed as Bell's Palsy, which gave him significant paralysis, and stroke-like drooping of the muscles in one side of his face. When the drooping (apparent in later television interviews) did not disappear, Allen was diagnosed with Raymond's disease. Later in life, he also suffered constant minor ailments such as high blood pressure. Much of these symptoms were related to stress, but with gaining fame and plans, he never slowed his schedule.

Career

Though early on he had intentions to be a labor lawyer, Ginsberg wrote poetry for most of his life. Most of his very early poetry was written in formal rhyme and meter like that of his father or his idol William Blake. His admiration for the writing of Jack Kerouac inspired him to take poetry more seriously. Though he took odd jobs to support himself, in 1955, upon the advice of a psychiatrist, Ginsberg dropped out of the working world to devote his entire life to poetry. Soon after, he wrote "Howl", the poem that brought him and his friends much fame and allowed him to live as a professional poet for the rest of his life. Later in life, Ginsberg entered academia, teaching poetry as Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College from 1986 until his death.

Inspiration from friends

Since Ginsberg's poetry is intensely personal, and since much of the vitality of those associated with the beat generation comes from mutual inspiration, much credit for style, inspiration, and content can be given to Ginsberg's friends.

Ginsberg claimed throughout his life that his biggest inspiration was Kerouac's concept of "spontaneous prose". He believed literature should come from the soul without conscious restrictions. Ginsberg was much more prone to revise than Kerouac. For example, when Kerouac saw the first draft of "Howl" he disliked the fact that Ginsberg had made editorial changes in pencil (transposing "negro" and "angry" in the first line, for example). Kerouac only wrote out his concepts of Spontaneous Prose at Ginsberg's insistence because Ginsberg wanted to learn how to apply the technique to his poetry. Moloch has subsequently been interpreted as any system of control, including the conformist society of post-World War II America, focused on material gain, which Ginsberg frequently blamed for the destruction of all those outside of societal norms.

Inspiration from mentors and idols

Ginsberg's poetry was strongly influenced by Modernism (specifically Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Hart Crane, and most importantly William Carlos Williams), Romanticism (specifically Percy Shelley and John Keats), the beat and cadence of jazz (specifically that of bop musicians such as Charlie Parker), and his Kagyu Buddhist practice and Jewish background. He considered himself to have inherited the visionary poetic mantle handed down from the English poet and artist William Blake, and the American poet Walt Whitman. The power of Ginsberg's verse, its searching, probing focus, its long and lilting lines, as well as its New World exuberance, all echo the continuity of inspiration that he claimed.

He studied poetry under William Carlos Williams, who was then in the middle of writing his epic poem Paterson about the industrial city near his home. Ginsberg, after attending a reading by Williams, sent the older poet several of his poems and wrote an introductory letter. Most of these early poems were rhymed and metered and included archaic pronouns like "thee." Williams hated the poems. He told Ginsberg later, "In this mode perfection is basic, and these poems are not perfect." opiates, alcohol, and psychedelics, as a Dexedrine Clown. The phrases "eyeball kick" and "hydrogen jukebox" both show up in "Howl", as well as a direct quote from Cézanne: "Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus".

Style and technique

From the study of his idols and mentors and the inspiration of his friends—not to mention his own experiments—Ginsberg developed an individualistic style that's easily identified as Ginsbergian. "Howl" came out during a potentially hostile literary environment less welcoming to poetry outside of tradition; there was a renewed focus on form and structure among academic poets and critics partly inspired by New Criticism. Consequently, Ginsberg often had to defend his choice to break away from traditional poetic structure, often citing Williams, Pound, and Whitman as precursors. Ginsberg's style may have seemed to critics chaotic or unpoetic, but to Ginsberg it was an open, ecstatic expression of thoughts and feelings that were naturally poetic. He believed strongly that traditional formalist considerations were archaic and didn't apply to reality. Though some, Diana Trilling, for example, have pointed to Ginsberg's occasional use of meter (for example the anapest of "who came back to Denver and waited in vain"), Ginsberg denied any intention toward meter and claimed instead that meter follows the natural poetic voice, not the other way around; he said, as he learned from Williams, that natural speech is occasionally dactylic, so poetry that imitates natural speech will sometimes fall into a dactylic structure, but only accidentally. Like Williams, Ginsberg's line breaks were often determined by breath: one line in "Howl", for example, should be read in one breath. Ginsberg claimed he developed such a long line because he had long breaths (saying perhaps it was because he talked fast, or he did yoga, or he was Jewish). The long line could also be traced back to his study of Walt Whitman; Ginsberg claimed Whitman's long line was a dynamic technique few other poets had ventured to develop further. Whitman is often compared to Ginsberg because their poetry sexualized aspects of the male form — though there is no direct evidence Whitman was homosexual.

Many of Ginsberg's early long line experiments contain some sort of anaphora, repetition of a "fixed base" (for example "who" in "Howl", "America" in America) and this has become a recognizable feature of Ginsberg's style. He said later this was a crutch because he lacked confidence; he didn't yet trust "free flight". In the 60s, after employing it in some sections of "Kaddish" ("caw" for example) he, for the most part, abandoned the anaphoric experiment.

Several of his earlier experiments with methods for formatting poems as a whole become regular aspects of his style in later poems. In the original draft of "Howl", each line is in a "stepped triadic" format reminiscent of Williams (see Ivy Leaves for example). He abandoned the "stepped triadic" when he developed his long line, but the stepped lines showed up later, most significantly in the travelogues of The Fall of America. "Howl" and "Kaddish", arguably his two most important poems, are both organized as an inverted pyramid, with larger sections leading to smaller sections. In America, he experimented with a mix of longer and shorter lines.

''"Lightning's blue glare fills Oklahoma plains, ''the train rolls east ''casting yellow shadow on grass ''Twenty years ago ''approaching Texas, ''I saw ''sheet lightning ''cover Heaven's corners... ''An old man catching fireflies on the porch at night ''watched the Herd Boy cross the Milky Way ''to meet the Weaving Girl... How can we war against that?" (From Iron Horse, composed July 22–23, 1966, while riding a train from the West Coast to Chicago. The poem was dictated to a tape recorder, and later transcribed. The second part of the poem takes place on a Greyhound bus.)

Bibliography

Howl and Other Poems (1956) ISBN 978-0-87286-017-9

Howl & Other Poems 50th Anniversary Edition (2006) ISBN 978-0-06-113745-7

Kaddish and Other Poems (1961) ISBN 978-0-87286-019-3

(1961)

Reality Sandwiches (1963) ISBN 978-0-87286-021-6

The Yage Letters (1963) – with William S. Burroughs

Planet News (1971) ISBN 978-0-87286-020-9

(1975), ISBN 0-916190-05-6

1948–1951 (1972)

(1973) ISBN 978-0-87286-063-6

Iron Horse (1972)

(1975)

Mind Breaths (1978) ISBN 978-0-87286-092-6

1977–1980 (1981) ISBN 978-0-87286-125-1

Collected Poems 1947–1980 (1984) Republished with later material added as Collected Poems 1947-1997, New York, Harper Collins, 2006

White Shroud Poems: 1980–1985 (1986)

Cosmopolitan Greetings Poems: 1986–1993 (1994)

Howl Annotated (1995)

Illuminated Poems (1996)

(1996)

1993–1997 (1999)

Deliberate Prose 1952–1995 (2000)

(Da Capo Press, 2006)

The Letters of Allen Ginsberg (Philadelphia, Da Capo Press, 2008) ISBN 978-0-306-81463-1

The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder (Counterpoint, 2009)

See also

The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg

:Category:Works by Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg Live in London

Hungry generation

Howl (2010 film)

Central Park Be-In

Mind Breaths

References

Notes

Resources

The Allen Ginsberg Papers, 1937–1994(1,330 linear ft.) are housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries

Further reading

Bullough, Vern L. "Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context." Harrington Park Press, 2002. pp 304–311.

Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (pbk)

Clark, Thomas. "Allen Ginsberg." Writers at Work—The Paris Review Interviews. 3.1 (1968) pp. 279–320.

Gifford, Barry (ed.). As Ever: The Collected Letters of Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady. Berkeley: Creative Arts Books (1977).

Ginsberg, Allen. Travels with Ginsberg: A Postcard Book. San Francisco: City Lights (2002). ISBN 978-0-87286-397-2

Hrebeniak, Michael. Action Writing: Jack Kerouac's Wild Form, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2006.

Podhoretz, Norman. "At War with Allen Ginsberg", in Ex-Friends (Free Press, 1999), 22–56. ISBN0-684-85594-1.

McBride, Dick: Cometh With Clouds (Memory: Allen Ginsberg) Cherry Valley Editions, 1982 ISBN 0-916156-51-6

Miles, Barry. Ginsberg: A Biography. London: Virgin Publishing Ltd. (2001), paperback, 628 pages, ISBN 0-7535-0486-3

Morgan, Bill. Kaddish and Other Poems: 50th Anniversary Edition. (City Lights Publishers, 2010) ISBN 978-0-87286-511-2.

Raskin, Jonah. American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. ISBN 0-520-24015-4

Schumacher, Michael (ed.). Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son. Bloomsbury (2002), paperback, 448 pages, ISBN 1-58234-216-4

Schumacher, Michael. . New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.

Trigilio, Tony. Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist Poetics. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-8093-2755-4

Trigilio, Tony. "Strange Prophecies Anew": Rereading Apocalypse in Blake, H.D., and Ginsberg. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8386-3854-6.

Tytell, John. Naked Angels: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1976. ISBN 1-56663-683-3

Warner, Simon (ed.). Howl for Now: A 50th anniversary celebration of Allen Ginsberg's epic protest poem. West Yorkshire, UK: Route (2005), paperback, 144 pages, ISBN 1-901927-25-3

Warner, Simon. "Raising the Consciousness? Re-visiting Allen Ginsberg's 1965 trip to Liverpool", chapter in Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant Garde, edited by Christoph Grunenberg and Robert Knifton. Liverpool & Chicago: Liverpool University Press & Chicago University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84631-081-2 (pbk); ISBN 1-84631-081-4 (hc)

External links

The Allen Ginsberg Trust

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid;=7477649

Official website of THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ALLEN GINSBERG

BBC Interview with Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg on Poets.org With audio clips, poems, and related essays, from the Academy of American Poets

After 50 Years, Ginsberg's Howl Still Resonates

Allen Ginsberg photographs with hand-written captions

Allen Ginsberg Collection, Photographs at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin

Allen Ginsberg Live in London

Allen Ginsberg @ Kerouac Alley

Autobiographical Article in Shambhala Sun Magazine

How Allen Died

Photograph: Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, last public appearance, November 2, 1996, Lawrence, KS

Modern American Poetry, interview

Allen Ginsberg and a group of hippies receive Bhaktivedanta Swami at the San Francisco airport, January 17, 1967 (0:00-1:01)

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