name	Blue
director	Derek Jarman
producer	James Mackay Takashi Asai
writer	Derek Jarman
narrator	Derek Jarman Tilda Swinton Nigel Terry John Quentin
music	Simon Fisher Turner John Balance Momus Peter Christopherson Karol Szymanowski Erik Satie
studio	Channel Four Films BBC Radio 3 Arts Council of Great Britain
distributor	Basilisk Communications Ltd
released	Venice Biennale, June 1993, Edinburgh International Film Festival, August 1993, 3 October 1993 (New York Film Festival)
runtime	79 min.
country	United Kingdom
language	English
followed by	}}

Blue is the twelfth and final feature film by director Derek Jarman, released four months before his death from AIDS-related complications. Such complications had already rendered him partially blind at the time of the film's release.

The film was his last testament as a film-maker, and consists of a single shot of saturated blue colour filling the screen, as background to a soundtrack where Jarman's and some of his favourite actors' narration describes his life and vision.

On its premiere, Channel 4 and BBC Radio 3 collaborated on a simultaneous broadcast so viewers could enjoy a stereo soundtrack. Radio 3 subsequently broadcast the soundtrack separately as a radio play and it was later released as a CD.

The film ends with the words:

In time, No one will remember our work Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud And be scattered like Mist that is chased by the Rays of the sun
For our time is the passing of a shadow And our lives will run like Sparks through the stubble.

I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave

The film has been released on DVD in Germany and in Italy. On 23 July 2007 British distributor Artificial Eye released DVD tying Blue together with Glitterbug, a collage of Jarman's Super 8 footage.

Notes

See also

Themes For Derek Jarman's Blue

External links

A review of Blue

Text of Jarman's soundtrack for the film Blue

Blue DVD page

Category:1993 films Category:Avant-garde and experimental films Category:Films directed by Derek Jarman Category:British LGBT-related films

de:Blue (1993) fr:Blue (film, 1993) it:Blue (film 1993) ja:ブルー (映画) pl:Blue (film)

birth date	March 09, 1964
birth place	Paris, France
years active	1983–present
other names	"La Binoche"
occupation	Actress, artist, dancer, poet, designer, human rights campaigner
partner	Leos Carax (1986–1991)André Hallé (1991–1993)Benoît Magimel (1998–2003)Santiago Amigorena (2005–2009)
children	Raphaël Hallé (b 1993)Hana Magimel (b 1999)
signature	Binochejuliette.svg }}

Juliette Binoche (French pronunciation: [ʒylˈjɛt biˈnɔʃ]; born 9 March 1964) is a French actress, artist and dancer. She has appeared in more than 40 feature films, been recipient of numerous international accolades, is a published author and has appeared on stage across the world. Coming from an artistic background, she began taking acting lessons during adolescence. After performing in several stage productions, she was propelled into the world of auteurs Jean-Luc Godard (Hail Mary, 1985), Jacques Doillon (Family Life, 1985) and André Téchiné, who made her a star in France with the leading role in his 1985 drama Rendez-vous. Her sensual performance in her English-language debut The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), directed by Philip Kaufman, launched her international career.

She sparked the interest of Steven Spielberg, who offered her several parts including a role in Jurassic Park which she declined, choosing instead to join Krzysztof Kieślowski on the set of Three Colors: Blue (1993), a performance for which she won the Venice Film Festival Award for Best Actress and a César. Three years later Binoche gained further acclaim in Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient (1996), for which she was awarded an Academy Award and a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress in addition to the Best Actress Award at the 1997 Berlin Film Festival. For her performance in Lasse Hallström’s romantic comedy Chocolat (2000) Binoche was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

During the 2000s she maintained a successful, critically acclaimed career, alternating between French and English language roles in both mainstream and art-house productions. In 2010 she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy making her the first actress to win the European “best actress triple crown”.

Throughout her career Binoche has intermittently appeared on stage, most notably in a 1998 London production of Luigi Pirandello’s Naked and in a 2000 production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal on Broadway for which she was nominated for a Tony Award. In 2008 she began a world tour with a modern dance production in-i devised in collaboration with Akram Khan. Affectionately referred to as "La Binoche" by the French press, her other notable performances include: Mauvais Sang (1986), Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Damage (1992), The Horseman on the Roof (1995), Code Unknown (2000), Caché (2005), Breaking and Entering (2006) and Flight of the Red Balloon (2007).

Biography

Early life and career

Juliette Binoche was born in Paris, the daughter of Jean-Marie Binoche, a director, actor and sculptor, and Monique Stalens, a teacher, director and actress. Her mother is of Polish descent. Her maternal Polish Catholic grandparents were imprisoned at Auschwitz because they were considered to be intellectuals by the Nazi occupiers. She also has French, Flemish, Brazilian and Moroccan ancestry. When her parents divorced in 1968, four year old Binoche and her sister Marion were sent to a provincial boarding school. During their teens, the Binoche sisters spent their school holidays with their maternal grandmother, not seeing either parent for months at a time. Binoche has stated that this perceived parental abandonment had a profound effect on her.

She was not particularly academic and in her teenage years she began acting at school in amateur stage productions. At 17, she directed and starred in a student production of the Eugène Ionesco play, Exit the King. She studied acting at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique (CNSAD), but quit after a short time as she disliked the curriculum. In the early 1980s, she found an agent through a friend and joined a theater troupe with which she toured France, Belgium and Switzerland under the pseudonym "Juliette Adrienne". Around this time she began lessons with the famed acting coach Vera Gregh.

Her first professional screen experience was as an extra in the three part TF1 television series Dorothée, danseuse de corde (1983) directed by Jacques Fensten, which was followed by a similarly small role in the provincial television film Fort bloque directed by Pierrick Guinnard. Following this Binoche secured her first feature film appearance with a minor role in Pascal Kané's Liberty Belle (1983). Her role required just two days on set, but was enough to inspire Binoche to pursue a career in film.

1984–1991

Binoche's early films would see her established as a French star of some renown. In 1983, she auditioned for the female lead in Jean-Luc Godard's' controversial Hail Mary, a modern retelling of the Virgin birth. Godard requested a meeting with Binoche having seen a photo of her taken by her boyfriend of the time. She has said that she spent six months on the set of the film in Geneva, although her role in the final cut is contained to only a few scenes. Further supporting roles followed in a variety of French films: Annick Lanoë's Les Nanas was to give Binoche her most noteworthy role to date, playing opposite established stars Marie-France Pisier and Macha Meril, in a mainstream comedy. However, she has stated that the experience was not particularly memorable or influential. She gained more significant exposure in Jacques Doillon's critically acclaimed Family Life, which cast her as the volatile teenage step-daughter of Sami Frey's central character. This film was to set the tone of her early career. Doillon has commented that in the original screenplay her character was written to be 14 years old, he was so impressed with Binoche's audition he changed the character's age to 17 to allow her take the role. In April 1985, Binoche followed this with another supporting role in Bob Decout's Adieu Blaireau, a policier thriller starring Philippe Léotard and Annie Girardot. Adieu Blaireau failed to have much impact with critics or audiences.

It was to be later in 1985 that Binoche would fully emerge as a leading actress with her role in André Téchiné's Rendez-vous. She was cast at short notice when Sandrine Bonnaire had to abandon the film due to a scheduling conflict. Rendez-vous premiered at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, winning Best Director. The film was a sensation and Binoche became the darling of the festival. Rendez-Vous is the story of a provincial actress, Nina (Binoche), who arrives in Paris and embarks on a series of dysfunctional liaisons with several men, including the moody, suicidal Quentin (Lambert Wilson). However it is her collaboration with theatre director Scrutzler, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, which comes to define Nina. In a review of Rendez-Vous in Film Comment, Armond White described it as "Juliette Binoche's career defining performance". In 1986, Binoche was nominated for her first César for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in the film. Following Rendez-Vous, she was unsure of what role to take next. She auditioned unsuccessfully for Yves Boisset's Bleu comme l'enfer and Robin Davis's Hors la loi, but was eventually cast in My Brother-in-law Killed My Sister (1986) by Jacques Rouffio opposite the popular French stars Michel Serrault and Michel Piccoli. This film was a critical and commercial failure. Binoche has commented that Rouffio's film is very significant to her career as it taught her to judge roles based on the quality of the screenplay and her connection with a director, not on the reputation of other cast members. Later in 1986, she again starred opposite Michel Piccoli in Leos Carax's Mauvais Sang. This film was a critical and commercial success, leading to Binoche's second César nomination. Mauvais Sang is an avant-garde thriller in which she plays Anna the vastly younger lover of Marc (Piccoli) who falls in love with Alex (Denis Lavant), a young thief. Binoche has stated that she, "discovered the camera", while shooting this film.

In August 1986, Binoche began filming Philip Kaufman's adaptation of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, portraying the young and innocent Tereza. Released in 1988, this was Binoche's first English language role and was a worldwide success with critics and audiences alike Set against the Russian invasion of Prague in 1968, the film tells the story of the relationships a Czech surgeon, Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis), has with his wife Tereza and his lover Sabina (Lena Olin). Binoche has stated that at the time her English was very limited and that she relied on a French translation to fully grasp her role. After this success, Binoche decided to return to France rather than pursue an international career. In 1988, she filmed the lead in Pierre Pradinas's Un tour de manège, a little-seen French film opposite François Cluzet. She has stated that her attraction to this film was that it gave her the opportunity to work with close friends and family. Pradinas is the husband of her sister Marion Stalens who was set photographer on the film and appeared in a cameo role. In the summer of 1988, Binoche returned to the stage in an acclaimed production of Anton Checkov’s The Seagull directed by Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky at Théâtre De L'odéon in Paris. Later that year she began work on Léos Carax's Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. The film was beset by problems and took three years to complete, requiring investment from three producers and funds from the French government. When finally released in 1991, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf was a critical success. Binoche won a European Film Award as well as securing her third César nomination for her performance. In the film Binoche portrays an artist who lives rough on the famous Parisian bridge where she meets another young vagrant (Denis Lavant). This iconic part of the city becomes the backdrop for a wildly passionate love story and some of the most visually arresting images of the city ever created. The paintings featured in the film were Binoche's own work. She also designed the French poster for the film which features an ink drawing of the eponymous lovers locked in embrace. During a break in filming in 1990, Binoche spent five days shooting Mara for Mike Figgis, based on Henry Miller's Quiet Days at Clichy. This 30 minute film was part of HBO's anthology series Women & Men 2. The film became somewhat contentious when, according to Mike Figgis, HBO altered it once he had completed it. The film premiered on HBO in the U.S. on 18 August 1991.

At this point, Binoche seemed to be at a crossroads in her career. She was recognized as one of the most significant French actresses of her generation. However, the long production of Les Amants du Pont-Neuf had forced her to turn down several significant roles in international productions including The Double Life of Véronique by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Cyrano de Bergerac by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Night and Day by Chantal Akerman and Beyond the Aegean an aborted project with Elia Kazan. Now Binoche chose to pursue an international career outside France.

1992–2000

The 1990s saw Juliette Binoche inaugurated as a European leading lady in a series of international films that were critical and commercial successes winning Binoche much praise and numerous awards for her performances. This period saw her persona develop from that of a young gamine to a more melancholic, tragic presence. Critics suggested that many of her roles were notable for her almost passive intensity in the face of tragedy and despair. In fact Binoche has nicknamed her characters from this period as her "sorrowful sisters". Following the long shoot of Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Binoche relocated to London for the 1992 productions of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Damage, both of which considerably enhanced her international reputation. Yet, from a professional and personal point-of-view, both films were significant challenges for Binoche; Her casting opposite Ralph Fiennes's Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, in favour of English actresses Helena Bonham Carter and Kate Beckinsale, was immediately contentious and drew derision from the British press, unimpressed that a uniquely English role had gone to a French Actress. The film had its world premiere at the 1992 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Reviews were poor, with Binoche being cynically dubbed "Cathy Clouseau" and being derided for her "franglais" accent. Both Binoche and director Peter Kosminsky distanced themselves from the film, with Binoche refusing to do any promotion for the film or to redub it into French. Damage, a UK and French co-production, is the story of a British Conservative Minister played by Jeremy Irons who embarks on a torrid affair with his son's fiancé (Binoche). Based on the novel by Josephine Hart and directed by veteran French director Louis Malle, Damage seemed to be the ideal international vehicle for Binoche, however the production was wrought with difficulties and dogged by rumours of serious conflict. In an on-set interview Louis Malle stated that it was the "most difficult" film he had ever made, while Binoche commented that "the first day was one big argument". Damage opened in the UK late in 1992 and debuted early in 1993 on U.S. screens. Reviews were somewhat mixed. For her performance Juliette Binoche received her fourth César nomination.

In 1993, she appeared in Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors: Blue to much critical acclaim. The first film in a trilogy inspired by the ideals of the French republic and the colors of its flag, Three Colors: Blue is the story of a young woman who loses her composer husband and daughter in a car accident. Though devastated she learns to cope by rejecting her previous life in favour of conscious "nothing", rejecting all people, belongings and emotions. Three Colors: Blue premiered at the 1993 Venice Film Festival, landing Binoche the Best Actress Prize. She also won a César, and a nomination for the Golden Globe. Binoche has said her inspirations for the role were her friend and coach Vernice Klier who suffered a similar tragedy and the book The Black Veil by Anny Duperey which deals with the author's grief at losing her parents at a young age. Binoche made cameo appearances in the other two films in Kieślowski's trilogy, Three Colors: White and Three Colors: Red. Around this time, Steven Spielberg offered her roles in Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. She turned down both parts. After the success of Three Colors: Blue, Binoche took a short sabbatical during which she gave birth to her son Raphaël in September 1993.

In 1995, Binoche returned to the screen in a big-budget adaptation of Jean Giono's The Horseman on the Roof directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau. The film was particularly significant in France as it was the first French production to use digital special effects and was at the time the most expensive film in the history of French cinema. The film was a box-office success around the world and Binoche was again nominated for a César for Best Actress. This role, as a romantic heroine, was to color the direction of many of her subsequent roles in the late 1990s. In 1996, Binoche appeared in her first comedic role since My Brother-in-Law Killed My Sister a decade before; A Couch in New York was directed by Chantal Akerman and co-starred William Hurt. This screw-ball comedy tells the story of a New York psychiatrist who swaps homes with a Parisian dancer. The film was a critical and commercial failure. Three Colors: Blue, The Horseman on the Roof and A Couch in New York all gave Binoche the opportunity to work with prestigious directors she had turned down during the prolonged shoot of Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. Her next role would significantly reinforce her position as a bona-fide international movie star, The English Patient, based on the prize winning novel by Michael Ondaatje and directed by Anthony Minghella, was a worldwide hit. Produced by Saul Zaentz, producer of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the film reunited Juliette Binoche with Ralph Fiennes, Heathcliff to her Cathy four years previously. Binoche has said that the shoot on location in Tuscany and at the famed Cinecitta in Rome was among the happiest professional experiences of her career. The film, which tells the story of a badly burned, mysterious man found in the wreckage of a plane during World War II, won nine Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress for Juliette Binoche. With this film, she became the second French actress to win an Oscar, following Simone Singnoret’s win for Room at the Top in 1960. After this international hit, Binoche returned to France and began work opposite Daniel Auteuil on Claude Berri’s Lucie Aubrac, the true story of a French Resistance heroine. Binoche was released from the film six weeks into the shoot due to differences with Berri regarding the authenticity of his script. Binoche has described this event as being like "an earthquake" to her.

Next Juliette Binoche was reunited with director André Téchiné for Alice et Martin (1998), the story of a relationship between an emotionally damaged Parisian musician and her younger lover who hides a dark family secret. The film failed to find an audience in France, although it was critically acclaimed in the UK. In February 1998 Binoche made her London stage debut in a new version of Luigi Pirandello’s Clothe the Naked retitled Naked and adapted by Nicolas Wright. The production, directed by Jonathan Kent, was very favorably received. Following this acclaimed performance, she returned to French screens with Children of the Century (1999), a big budget romantic epic, in which she played 19th-century French proto-feminist author George Sand. The film depicted Sand's affair with the poet and dandy Alfred de Musset played by Benoit Magimel. This lavish costume drama was filmed on location in Paris and Venice and featured couture costumes by the renowned fashion designer Christian Lacroix. The following year saw Binoche in four contrasting roles, each of which enhanced her reputation. La Veuve de Saint-Pierre (2000) by Patrice Leconte, for which she was nominated for a César for Best Actress, was a period drama which saw Binoche appear opposite Daniel Auteuil in the role of a woman who attempts to save a condemned man from the guillotine. The film won favourable reviews, particularly in the U.S. where it was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. The film won the Audience Award at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival Next she appeared in Michael Haneke's Code Unknown, a film which was made following Binoche's approach to the Austrian director. The film premiered in competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. This critically acclaimed role was a welcome change from playing the romantic heroine in a series of costume dramas. Later that year, Binoche made her Broadway debut in an adaptation of Harold Pinter's Betrayal for which she was nominated for a Tony Award. Staged by the Roundabout Theatre Company and directed by David Leveaux, the production also featured Liev Schreiber and John Slattery. Back on screen, Binoche was the heroine of the Lasse Hallstrom film Chocolat from the best selling novel by Joanne Harris. For her role Binoche won a European Film Audience Award for Best Actress and was nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA. Chocolat is the story of a mysterious stranger who opens a chocolaterie in a conservative French village in 1959. The film was a worldwide hit.

Between 1995 and 2000, Binoche was the advertising face of the Lancôme perfume Poème, her image adorning print campaigns photographed by Richard Avedon and a television advertising campaign, including an advert directed by Anthony Minghella and scored by Gabriel Yared.

By the end of this period and following roles in a number of prestige productions, critics were wondering if Binoche was typecast as the tragic, despairing muse. In a feature article entitled "The Erotic Face" in the June 2000 edition of British film criticism magazine Sight and Sound, Ginette Vincendeau pondered Binoche's persona; Vincendeau suggested that the fixation of numerous directors upon her face had led to an erasure of her body, and to her being perceived only as a romantic icon rather than a versatile actress.

2001–2006

Following the success of Chocolat, the early 2000s saw Juliette Binoche internationally recognized as an A-list movie star. However, her persona seemed to be somewhat fixed following a series of period roles where she played the always stoic heroine facing tragedy and desolation. Ever keen to try something new, Binoche returned to French cinema in 2002 for an unlikely role; Jet Lag opposite Jean Reno saw Binoche play a ditzy beautician. The film, directed by Daniele Thompson, was a box-office hit in France and saw Binoche once again nominated for a César for Best Actress. The film tells the story of a couple who meet at an airport during a strike. Initially the pair despises each other, but, over the course of one night, they find common ground and maybe even love. This playful spirit continued when Binoche featured in a 2003 Italian television commercial for the chocolates Ferrero Rocher. The advertisement played upon her Chocolat persona featuring Binoche handing out the chocolates to people on the streets of Paris.

In a more serious vein, Binoche travelled to South Africa to make John Boorman's In My Country (2004) opposite Samuel L. Jackson. Based on the book Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog, the film examines The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings following the abolition of Apartheid in the mid 1990s. Although the film premiered at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival, it received much criticism for the inclusion of a fictional romantic liaison and for its depiction of black South Africans. Despite the negative reception, Binoche was extremely enthusiastic about the film and her connection with Boorman. Her sister, Marion Stalens, also travelled to South Africa to shoot a documentary, La reconciliation?, which explores the TRC process and follows Binoche's progress as she acts in Boorman's film. Next, Binoche re-teamed with Michael Haneke for Caché. The film was an immediate success, winning best director for Haneke at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, while Binoche was nominated for a European Film Award for Best Actress for her role. The film tells the story of a bourgeois Parisian couple, played by Binoche and Daniel Auteuil, who begin to receive anonymous videotapes containing footage shot over long periods, surveying the outside of their home. Caché went on to feature in the number one position on the "Top 10 of the 2000s" list published by The Times at the end of the decade. Binoche's next film, Bee Season, based on the celebrated novel by Myla Goldberg, cast her opposite Richard Gere. The film was not a success at the box office taking less than $5 million worldwide. For many critics the film, although intelligent, was “distant and diffuse”. Bee Season depicts the emotional disintegration of a family just as their daughter begins to win national spelling bees. Mary (2005) featured Binoche in a somewhat unlikely collaboration with the controversial American director Abel Ferrara for an investigation of modern faith and Mary Magdalene's position within the Catholic Church. Featuring Forest Whittaker, Matthew Modine and Marion Cotillard, Mary was an immediate success, winning the Grand Prix at the 2005 Venice Film Festival. Despite these accolades and favorable reviews, particularly from the influential cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles, Mary failed to secure a distributor in key markets such as the U.S. and the U.K.

The Cannes Film Festival in 2006 saw Binoche feature in the portmanteau film Paris, je t'aime appearing in a section directed by the Japanese director Nobuhiro Suwa. Suwa's Place des Victoires is the story of a grief stricken mother who manages to have a final brief moment with her dead son. The segment also features Willem Dafoe and Hippolyte Girardot. Paris, je t'aime was a popular success, taking over $17 million, at the world box-office. In September 2006, Binoche appeared at the Venice Film Festival to launch A Few Days in September, written and directed by Santiago Amigorena. Despite an impressive cast including John Turturro, Nick Nolte and up-coming French star Sara Forestier, the film was a failure. A Few Days in September is a thriller set between 5 and 11 September 2001, in which Binoche plays a French secret service agent, who may, or may not, have information relating to impending attacks on the U.S. The film was the recipient of harsh criticism from the press for its perceived trivialization of the events of 11 September 2001. While promoting the film in the U.K., Binoche told an interviewer she believed the CIA and other government agencies must have had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks, as depicted in the film. Next Binoche traveled to the 2006 Toronto Film Festival for the premiere of Breaking and Entering, her second film with Anthony Minghella in the director's chair, based on his first original screenplay since his break-through film Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991). In Breaking and Entering, Binoche played a Bosnian refugee living in London, while Jude Law co-starred as a well-to-do businessman drawn into her life via an act of deception. In preparation for her role, Binoche travelled to Sarajevo where she met women who had survived the war of the 1990s. Lushly photographed by Benoît Delhomme, Breaking and Entering portrays intersecting lives amongst the flux of urban renewal in inner-city London. Despite the fact that Binoche was praised for her performance, the film did not ring true for critics and failed to find an audience. In a review in Variety, Todd McCarthy writes that, "Binoche, physically unchanged as ever, plays Amira's controlled anguish with skill". Breaking and Entering also featured Robin Wright, Vera Farmiga, Juliet Stevenson, Rafi Gavron and Martin Freeman.

Although Binoche began the decade on a professional high with an Academy Award nomination for Chocolat, she struggled at the beginning of the 2000s to secure roles that did not confine her to the tragic, melancholic persona developed in the 1990s. Despite the huge success of Caché, other high profile films such as In My Country, Bee Season and Breaking and Entering failed critically and commercially, Binoche seemed to be at a crossroads in her career.

2007–present

2007 was the start of a particularly busy period for Juliette Binoche, one that would see her take on diverse roles in a series of critically acclaimed international movies giving her film career a new impetus as she shed the restrictions that seemed to have stifled her career in the early part of the decade. The Cannes Film Festival saw the premiere of Flight of the Red Balloon (2007) by the widely acclaimed Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien. It was originally conceived as a short film to form part of a 20th anniversary tribute to the Musée D'Orsay, to be produced by Serge Lemoine president of the museum. When that idea failed to find sufficient funding, Hou developed it into a feature length film and secured the necessary financing. The film was well received by international critics and went on to debut around the world early in 2008. Paying homage to Albert Lamorisse's 1957 short The Red Balloon, Hou's film tells the story of a woman's efforts to juggle her responsibilities as a single mother with her commitment to her career as a voice artist. Shot on location in Paris, the film was entirely improvised by the cast. The film was number one on the influential critic J. Hoberman's "Top 10 List" for 2008 published in The Village Voice. Disengagement by Amos Gitai premiered out-of-competition at the 2007 Venice Film Festival. Co-starring Liron Levo and Jeanne Moreau, Disengagement is a political drama charting the story of a French woman, of Dutch/Palestinian origin, who goes in search of a daughter she abandoned 20 years previously on the Gaza strip. She arrives in Gaza during the 2005 Israeli disengagement. The film won the prestigious Premio Roberto Rossellini and was critically acclaimed, particularly by the eminent Cahiers du Cinema. However the film proved more controversial in Israel where state television station Channel 1 withdrew financial support for the film citing the "right-wing nature of Gitaï's films".

In stark contrast, Peter Hedges co-wrote and directed the Disney produced Dan in Real Life, a romantic comedy featuring Binoche along side Steve Carell. It was released in October 2007, becoming a popular commercial success in the US, before debuting around the world in 2008. The film grossed over $65 million at the worldwide box-office. Dan in Real Life is the story of a widowed man (Carell) who meets, and instantly falls for, a woman (Binoche) only to discover she is the new girlfriend of his brother. The film also features Dane Cook, Emily Blunt and Diane Weist Back in France, Binoche was seen to popular and critical success in Paris directed by Cédric Klapisch. Paris is Klapisch's personal ode to the French capital and features an impressive ensemble of French talent including; Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini and Melanie Laurent. Paris was one of the most successful French films internationally in recent years having grossed over $22 million at the world box office. Binoche and Klapisch had originally met on the set of Mauvais Sang in 1986, where Klapisch was working as a set electrician. Also in France, Summer Hours (2008), directed by Olivier Assayas, is the critically acclaimed story of three siblings who struggle with the responsibility of disposing of their late mother's valuable art collection following her death. The film premiered in France in March 2008 and had its U.S. debut at the 2008 New York Film Festival, before going on general release in the U.S. on 19 May 2009. Widely acclaimed, the film was nominated for the Prix Louis Delluc in France and appeared on numerous U.S. "Top 10 lists" including first place on David Edelstein's "Top 10 of 2009" list in New York Magazine, and J.R. Jones's list in the Chicago Reader. Summer Hours also features Charles Berling, Jérémie Renier and Edith Scob.

In the Autumn of 2008 Binoche starred in a theatrical dance production titled in-i co-created with renowned choreographer Akram Khan. The show, a love story told through dance and dialogue, featured stage design by Anish Kapoor and music by Philip Sheppard. It premiered at the National Theatre in London before embarking on a world tour. Writing in The Australian, John McCallum wrote that, “Binoche has radiant presence as an actor, her dancing is relaxed and naturalistic”, while The Sunday Times in the UK commented that, “Binoche’s physical achievement is incredible: Khan is a master mover”. The production was part of a ‘Binoche Season' titled Ju'Bi'lations, also featuring a retrospective of her film work and an exhibition of her paintings, which were also published in a bilingual book Portraits in Eyes. The book featured ink portraits of Binoche as each of her characters and of each director she had worked with to that time. She also penned a few lines to each director.

In April 2006 and again in December 2007, Binoche travelled to Tehran at the invitation of Abbas Kiarostami. While there in 2007 she shot a cameo appearance in his film Shirin (2008) which he was shooting at the time. Binoche’s visit proved controversial when two Iranian MPs raised the matter in parliament advising more caution be exercised in granting visas to foreign celebrities which might lead to “cultural destruction”. In June 2009 Binoche began work on Certified Copy directed by Kiarostami. The film was an Official Selection in competition at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Binoche won the Best Actress Award at the festival for her performance. The film went on general release in France on 19 May 2010 to very positive reviews. Her win at the 2010 Cannes Film festival makes Binoche the first actress to win the European “best actress triple crown”: Best Actress at Venice for Three Colors: Blue, Best Actress at Berlin for The English Patient and Best Actress at Cannes for Certified Copy. The Septemner 2010 UK release of the film was overshadowed when French actor Gérard Depardieu made disparaging comments about Binoche to the Austrian magazine Profil, "Please can you explain to me what the mystery of Juliette Binoche is meant to be?" he said. "I would really like to know why she has been so esteemed for so many years. She has nothing – absolutely nothing". In response Binoche spoke to movie magazine Empire saying, “I don't know him. I understand you don't have to like everyone and you can dislike someone's work. But I don't understand the violence [of his statements]... I do not understand why he is behaving like this. It is his problem.” Certified Copy proved to be controversial in Kiarostami's homeland when Iranian authorities announced on 27 May 2010 that the film was to be banned in Iran, apparently due to Binoche's attire; Deputy Culture Minister Javad Shamaqdari is quoted as saying, "If Juliette Binoche were better clad it could have been screened but due to her attire there will not be a general screening,".

Following the success of Certified Copy, Binoche appeared in a supporting role in The Son of No One for American writer and director Dito Montiel. The film also stars Channing Tatum, Al Pacino and Ray Liotta. The Son of No One premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival to fairly negative reaction. It has been acquired by Anchor Bay Entertainment for distribution in the US and other key territories. In June 2010, Binoche started work on Elles for Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska. Elles, produced under the working title Sponsoring, is an examination of teenage prostitution with Juliette Binoche playing a journalist for Elle. The film is due for release in France on 9 November 2011. On 12 January 2011, Variety announced that Juliette Binoche has signed to star in The Life of Another based on the novel by Frederique Deghelt. The film will be the directorial debut of the highly regarded French Actress Sylvie Testud and will co-star actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz. In the film, a young woman falls in love, then wakes up a decade later, the mother of a young boy and on the verge of a divorce. The film began shooting on 4 April 2011. On 17 February 2011, Screendaily announced that Juliette Binoche has been cast in David Cronenberg's film Cosmopolis with Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamati, Mathieu Amalric and Samantha Morton. The film, produced by Paulo Branco, is due to begin principal photography on 24 May 2011.

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Personal life

Binoche has two children: a son Raphaël (born on 2 September 1993), whose father is André Halle, a professional scuba diver, and a daughter Hana (born on 16 December 1999), whose father is actor Benoît Magimel, with whom Binoche starred in the 1999 film Children of the Century. Her sister, Marion Stalens, is a professional photographer with Corbis, as well as a director of documentary films, including; La réconciliation?, a documentary shot on the set of John Boorman's film In My Country, The Actress and the Dancer, exploring the genesis of Binoche's dance show in-i and Juliette Binoche - Sketches for a Portrait a documentary which follows Binoche as she paints the portraits that would later appear in her book Portraits in Eyes. Her half brother Camille Humeau (born 1978) is an acclaimed musician and has been part of the line-up of Oncle Strongle, before top-lining the group Artichaut Orkestra. In 2007, he appeared in a stage production of Cabaret directed by Sam Mendes. Stage director Pierre Pradinas is married to her sister Marion.

Binoche previously had romantic relationships with Leos Carax, Olivier Martinez, Benoit Magimel and Santiago Amigorena, as well as brief relationships with Daniel Day-Lewis and Mathieu Amalric.

Charitable work

Since 1992, Binoche is a patron of the French Cambodian charity Enfants d'Asie (previously ASPECA). Through this charity she is godmother to five Cambodian orphans, and has funded the construction of a children's home in Battambang. Starting in 2000, Juliette Binoche has been involved with the organization Reporters Without Borders. In 2002, she presided over "Photos of Stars" with Thierry Ardisson. Nearly 100 French stars were given disposable cameras, which were then auctioned, the buyer then having the exclusive photos taken by the star developed.

Political views and activism

She supported José Bové in the 2007 French presidential elections which were won by Nicolas Sarkozy. She has disclosed on a number of occasions that she does not approve of the Sarkozy administration, stating that the president is creating a monarchic republic. In April 2002, Binoche and several other French stars including Catherine Deneuve and Mathieu Kassovitz attended a "protest picnic" to object to the firing of Canal+ chairman Pierre Lescure by the Vivendi Universal company. On 7 February 2006, Binoche attented a high profile demonstration organised by Reporters Without Borders in support of Jill Carroll and two Iraqi journalists who had been abducted in Baghdad. Binoche and numerous other French personalities including Isabelle Adjani, Yvan Attal, Jane Birkin and Josiane Balasko joined Réseau Education Sans Frontieres (RESF) on 7 January 2010 with a symbolic "cake of solidarity" to highlight the taxation and legitimacy issues being faced by undocumented workers in France. Binoche was a signatory to a June 2010 petition organized by Reporters Without Borders and Shirin Ebadi to protest against the detention of numerous people, including members of the press, who were protesting the occasion of the first anniversary of disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At the 2010 Cannes Film Festival Binoche spoke out against the detention of Iranian director Jafar Panahi, incarcerated in Teheran's Evin Prison since 1 March 2010 without charge or conviction. At the press conference following the press screening of Copie Conforme, Binoche was informed that Panahi had begun a hunger strike. The following day Binoche attended a press conference called especially to demand the release of Panahi. Also in attendance were Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Gilles Jacob. Binoche read a letter which pointed out that Panahi's detention was "unwarranted and intolerable". When Binoche was awarded the Best Actress award at the festival, brandishing his name on a placard, she used her speech as an opportunity to raise Panahi's plight once again. On 25 May it was announced that Panahi had been released on bail. It was generally agreed that the publicity Binoche and Kiarostami elicited for his case was a strong factor in his release. On 20 December 2010 Panahi, after being prosecuted for “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic,” was handed a six-year jail sentence and a 20-year ban on making or directing any movies, writing screenplays, giving any form of interview with Iranian or foreign media as well as leaving the country. Binoche continues to lobby on his behalf.

Filmography and awards

! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
1983	Dorothée, danseuse de corde	minor role
1983		Girl at the rally
1985		A friend of Veronique	Also known as A Better Life
1985		Nina/Anne Larrieux	Nominated – César Award for Best Actress
1985	Adieu Blaireau	Brigitte	Also known as Farewell to Fred
1985		Natacha	Also known as La Vie de famille
1985		Antoinette	Also known as The Girls
1985		Juliette	Also known as Je Vous salue, Marie
1985	Fort bloqué	Nicole	Television film
1986	Mauvais Sang	Anna	Nominated – César Award for Best ActressAlso known as Bad Blood and The Night is Young
1986	My Brother-in-law Killed My Sister	Esther Bouloire	Also known as Mon Beau-frère a tué ma soeur
1988		Tereza
1989		Elsa	Also known as Once Around the Park
1991		Michèle Stalens
1991	Women & Men 2	Mara	Television film Appeared in segment Henry Miller's Mara
1992		Anna Barton	Nominated – César Award for Best Actress
1992	Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights	Cathy Linton / Catherine Earnshaw
1993	Three Colors: Blue	Julie Vignon (de Courcy)
1994	Three Colors: White	Julie Vignon (de Courcy)	Also known as Trois couleurs blanc
1994	Three Colors: Red	Julie Vignon (de Courcy)	Also known as Trois couleurs rouge
1995		Pauline de Théus	Nominated – César Award for Best Actress.Also known as Le Hussard sur le toit
1996		Hana
1996		Beatrice Saulnier	Also known as Un Divan à New York
1998	Alice et Martin	Alice	Also known as Alice and Martin
1999	Children of the Century	George Sand/Baroness Aurore Dudevant	Also known as Les Enfants du siècle
2000		Vianne Rocher
2000	Code Unknown	Anne Laurent	Also known as Code inconnu
2000		Pauline (Madame La)	Nominated – César Award for Best ActressAlso known as La Veuve de Saint-Pierre
2002		Rose	Nominated – César Award for Best ActressAlso known as Décalage horaire
2004	In My Country	Anna Malan	Also known as Country of My Skull
2005		Marie Palesi / Mary Magdalene
2005		Miriam
2005		Anne Laurent	Nominated – European Film Award for Best ActressAlso known as Hidden
2006		Amira
2006		Irène Montano	Also known as Quelques jours en septembre
2006	Paris, je t'aime	Suzanne
2007	Dan in Real Life	Marie
2007		Ana
2007		Suzanne	Also known as Le Voyage du ballon Rouge
2008		Elise
2008	Summer Hours	Adrienne	Also known as L'Heure d'été
2008		Woman in audience
2010		Elle
2011		Lauren
2011		Anne	post-productionAlso known as Sponsoring
2012		Didi Fancher	filming
2012	The Life of Another	Marie	post-productionAlso known as La Vie d'une autre

Other awards

Won

1986 – Prix Romy Schneider

1992 – European Film Award – Best Actress – Les Amants du Pont-Neuf

1993 – Berlin International Film Festival – Berlinale Camera

1993 – Venice Film Festival – Best Actress – Three Colors: Blue

1996 – National Board of Review – Best Supporting Actress – The English Patient

1997 – Berlin International Film Festival – Best Actress – The English Patient

1997 – European Film Award – Best Actress – The English Patient

1997 – Screen Actors Guild Award – Best Supporting Actress – The English Patient

2010 – Cannes Film Festival – Best Actress – Certified Copy

2010 – Kerry Film Festival – Maureen O'Hara Award 2010 – Cairo International Film Festival – Lifetime achievement

Nominations

2001 – Screen Actors Guild Award – Best Actress – Chocolat

2001 – Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role – Chocolat

2001 – Screen Actors Guild Award – Outstanding Cast – Chocolat

2005 – European Film Award Best Actress; – Caché

2005 – London Critics Circle Film Awards – Best Actress – Caché

2006 – British Independent Film Award – Best Actress – Breaking & Entering

References

External links

Juliette Binoche at filmsdefrance.com

Juliette Binoche Interview at AMCtv.com

Category:1964 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from Paris Category:European Film Awards winners (people) Category:BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress Category:Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners Category:César Award winners Category:French film actors Category:French people of Polish descent

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name	The Verve
landscape	yes
background	group_or_band
origin	Wigan, England
genre	Alternative rock, neo-psychedelia, britpop, shoegazing, dream pop, space rock
years active	1990–19951997–19992007–2009
label	EMI, Hut Records, Virgin Records, Parlophone, Vernon Yard
associated acts	RPA & The United Nations of Sound, Richard Ashcroft, The Black Ships, The Shining
website	theverve.co.uk
past members	Richard AshcroftNick McCabeSimon JonesPeter SalisburySimon Tong }}

The Verve was an English rock band formed in 1989 in Wigan by lead vocalist Richard Ashcroft, guitarist Nick McCabe, bassist Simon Jones, and drummer Peter Salisbury. Guitarist and keyboardist Simon Tong later became a member. Beginning with a psychedelic sound indebted to shoegazing and space rock, by the mid-1990s the band had released several EPs and three albums. They also endured name and line-up changes, breakups, health problems, drug abuse and various lawsuits. Filter referred to them as "one of the tightest knit, yet ultimately volatile bands in history". Their commercial breakthrough was the 1997 album Urban Hymns and their single "Bitter Sweet Symphony", which became a worldwide hit. Soon after this commercial peak, the band broke up in April 1999, citing internal conflicts. During their eight year split, Ashcroft dismissed talk of a reunion, saying: "You're more likely to get all four Beatles on stage". The band's original line-up reunited in June 2007, embarking on a tour later that year and releasing the album Forth in August 2008. In 2009, the band broke up for the third time.

History

Formation and Verve (1989–1992)

The founding members of Verve met at Winstanley Sixth Form College, in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Greater Manchester. The band's first gig was at a friend's birthday party at the Honeysuckle Pub, in Wigan, on 15 August 1990. Most of the band's early material was created through extensive jam sessions. Fronted by singer Richard Ashcroft, the band caused a buzz in early 1991 for its ability to captivate audiences with its musical textures and avant-garde sensibilities.

The group were signed by Hut Records in 1991 and their first studio releases in 1992, "All In The Mind", "She's a Superstar", and "Gravity Grave" (along with the December 1992 Verve) saw the band become a critical success, making an impression with freeform guitar work by McCabe and unpredictable vocals by Ashcroft. Those first 3 singles reached the first spot in the UK Indie charts, and "She's a Superstar" did enter the UK Top 75 Singles Chart. The band saw some support from these early days in the United States in some music scenes in big cities like New York connected with psychedelic spacey music.

A Storm in Heaven (1993–1994)

1993's A Storm in Heaven was the band's full-length debut, produced by esteemed record producer John Leckie (of Radiohead, The Stone Roses, XTC and The Fall fame). "Blue" was released as the lead single and again managed to enter in the UK Top 75 at #69 and reached #2 in the Indie charts. The album was a critical smash, but was only a moderate commercial success, reaching #27 in the UK album chart that summer. The second single from the album, "Slide Away", topped the UK indie rock charts. During this period the band played a number of gigs with Oasis who, at the time, were relatively unknown.

In 1994, the band released the album No Come Down, a compilation of b-sides plus a live version of "Gravity Grave" performed at Glastonbury Festival in 1993. It was the band's first release under the name The Verve, following legal difficulties with the jazz label Verve Records.

The band then played on the travelling U.S. alternative rock festival, Lollapalooza, in the summer of 1994. A new mix of "Blue" was released in the U.S. to promote the band. The tour became notorious for the events of 11 July - Ashcroft was hospitalised for dehydration after a massive session of drinking, and Salisbury was arrested for destroying a hotel room in Kansas in a drug-fuelled delirium. However, the band were performing again the very next day. Ashcroft later recalled: "At the start, it was an adventure, but America nearly killed us."

A Northern Soul and first breakup (1995–1996)

The band's physical and mental turmoil continued into the chaotic recording sessions of the band's second album, 1995's A Northern Soul, produced by Owen Morris. The band departed from the neo-psychedelic sounds of A Storm in Heaven and focused more on conventional alternative rock, with Ashcroft's vocals taking a more prominent role in the songs, although reminiscent of some of the early work. Around this period, Oasis guitarist and friend of Ashcroft, Noel Gallagher, dedicated the song "Cast No Shadow" on the album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? to Ashcroft, and Ashcroft returned the gesture by dedicating the song "A Northern Soul" to Noel.

The band released the album's first single "This Is Music" in May, and it reached #35, their first single to reach the Top 40. It was followed by "On Your Own" in June which performed even better, reaching #28. This single was particularly new for The Verve as it was a soulful ballad. The album reached the UK Top 20 upon its release in July, but Ashcroft broke up the band three months later, just before the release of the third single "History", which reached #24 in September. Ashcroft later stated: "I knew that I had to do it earlier on, but I just wouldn't face it. Once you're not happy in anything, there's no point living in it, is there? But my addiction to playing and writing and being in this band was so great that I wouldn't do anything about it. It felt awful because it could have been the greatest time of our lives, with "History" doing well, but I still think I can look myself in the mirror in 30 years time and say, 'Yeah man, you did the right thing.' The others had been through the same thing. It was a mixture of sadness and regret, and relief that we would have some time away."

Ashcroft reunited with Jones and Salisbury just a few weeks after the breakup, but McCabe did not rejoin them. The new band hired former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, but he spent only a couple of days with the band. The band then chose Simon Tong, a school friend credited with originally teaching Ashcroft and Jones to play guitar. The band made no live appearances for all of 1996, apart from a solo performance from Ashcroft supporting Oasis in New York. The rest of the year was spent playing and recording songs for a new album.

Commercial success and second breakup (1997–1999)

However, in early 1997, Ashcroft decided to ask McCabe to return, claiming "I got to the point where nothing other than The Verve would do for me". McCabe obliged and with the original lineup back together (Tong remained on guitar alongside McCabe), the group went through a "spiritual" recording process to finish their third album Urban Hymns which was completed by early summer.

For the first time in their career, The Verve experienced widespread commercial success with their new material. The album's first single "Bitter Sweet Symphony" entered the UK charts at #2 in June 1997, though the song's success was marred by legal problems regarding ownership of the song. In August, the band began playing their first gigs in two years, beginning the Urban Hymns Tour. The next single, "The Drugs Don't Work" gave the band their first UK #1 single in September. The album immediately reached #1 on the charts later that month, knocking off Oasis' highly anticipated album Be Here Now in the process. The band saw an overwhelming increase in popularity overseas, and "Bitter Sweet Symphony" reached #12 on the U.S. charts, the band's highest ever American position. The album reached the US Top 30, going platinum in the process.

Critic Mike Gee of iZINE said of this time, "The Verve, as he (Richard Ashcroft) promised, had become the greatest band in the world. ...The Verve were no longer the question mark or the cliché. They were the statement and the definition."

By November the band released "Lucky Man" in the UK and reached #7. The band's singles were given extensive airplay on US rock stations and Ashcroft, sans band mates, appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in March 1998. Then, as the band was on a successful tour to promote the album, Jones collapsed on stage. This was the first of many problems to come for the band in the next months.

In 1998, McCabe, Tong, Jones and drummer Leon Parr formerly with Mr. So & So and Mosque were commissioned for a soundtrack for a Jonny Lee Miller film which was recorded in Kilburn. These never made it to the final film due to delays on their part.

On 24 May of that year, the band played a homecoming concert in front of 33,000 fans in the grounds of Haigh Hall & Country Park, Aspull, supported by Beck and John Martyn. The band then played gigs in mainland Europe. However, on 7 June a post-show bust-up at Düsseldorf-Philipshalle left McCabe with a broken hand and Ashcroft with a sore jaw. After this, McCabe decided he could not tolerate the pressures of life on the road any longer and pulled out of the tour, leaving the band's future in jeopardy, with rumours of disbandment circulating in the press.

Despite this, the band continued with established session guitarist B. J. Cole replacing McCabe. McCabe's guitar work was heavily sampled and triggered on stage. The band played another American tour, which was riddled with problems as venues were downsized and the support act Massive Attack dropped out. The band then returned to England for two headline performances at the V Festivals, which received poor reviews, with NME stating "where songs used to spiral upwards and outwards, they now simply fizzle tamely." The band played their last gig at Slane Castle in Ireland on 29 August. A long period of inactivity followed. Finally, in April 1999, it was announced that The Verve had split up.

Post-breakup activities (2000–2006)

By the time the band had split, Ashcroft had already been working on solo material accompanied by, among others, Salisbury and Cole. In 2000, he released his first solo album, Alone With Everybody which reached #1 in the UK album charts. Ashcroft's next album Human Conditions was released to less positive reviews and poorer sales in 2002, and Ashcroft was subsequently absent from the music business for several years. During this time Salisbury was the drummer for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's UK tour in 2004, after their original drummer briefly left due to alcohol and drug abuse. Salisbury also owns a drum shop in Stockport. Ashcroft appeared with Coldplay at Live 8 in 2005, followed by the release of Keys to the World in 2006 and a particularly successful tour that included gigs as the support act for Coldplay's Twisted Logic Tour.

Tong and Jones formed a new group called The Shining, which initially included former Stone Roses guitarist John Squire; however Squire left the band before recording and touring had begun. The band released one album, True Skies, before disbanding in 2003. Jones went on to join the band of Irish artist Cathy Davey. Tong appeared as a live replacement for ex-guitarist Graham Coxon in Blur, and as additional guitarist for Gorillaz (both Jones and Tong played guitar for Demon Days Live). Tong is also a member of an unnamed supergroup formed by Damon Albarn of Blur which released its first album The Good, the Bad & the Queen in January 2007.

McCabe worked in different projects like the London-based Neotropic project and played with some established artists, including John Martyn, Leeds-based band The Music, The Beta Band and Faultline.

The Verve's members sometimes expressed bitter sentiments about the band's later years. In his only interview after the split, McCabe said of Urban Hymns: "By the time I got my parts in there it's not really a music fan's record. It just sits nicely next to the Oasis record", though conceding, "I'm not going to say it was bad. I mean, we were good as far as pop goes". During his solo career, Ashcroft expressed regret at having asked McCabe to return for the album instead of releasing it under his own name, saying: "Imagine being the guy that's written an album on his own, bottles it near the end, feels like there's unfinished business, rings Nick McCabe up who adds some guitars, puts it out as The Verve and the same problems arise again. Imagine being that mug. I've now got to rewrite history. Everyone thinks those songs are somehow associated with another bunch of people that I'm not with now". Jones claimed that "The Verve were going off in a direction of strings and ballads, and that's not where I was coming from at all. Loud guitars is it for me", though noting that this was not why the band split up.

Reunion and Forth (2007–2008)

Ashcroft had been adamant that The Verve would not reform, once remarking: "You're more likely to get all four Beatles on stage". However, after Ashcroft learned that Salisbury was in contact with McCabe over a possible side project, Ashcroft contacted McCabe and Jones, making peace with them, and the band reformed. Tong was not asked to rejoin, so as to keep the internal issues that split the band up a decade ago to an absolute minimum. Jones explained this decision by stating: "It would have been too hard, it's hard enough for the four of us. If you bring more people to it, it's harder to communicate and communication has always been our difficulty". On 26 June 2007, the band's reunion was announced by Jo Whiley on BBC Radio 1. The band, reuniting in their original line-up, announced they would tour in November 2007, and release an album in 2008. The band stated: "We are getting back together for the joy of music", though they turned down a multi-album deal offer "because the "treadmill" of releasing albums and touring marked the beginning of the end for the band a decade ago".

Tickets for their six-gig tour in early November 2007 sold out in less than 20 minutes. The tour began in Glasgow on 2 November, and included 6 performances at the Carling Academy Glasgow, The Empress Ballroom and the London Roundhouse. Since the 6-gig tour went extremely well in sales, the band booked a second, and bigger tour for December. They played at O2 arena, the SECC in Glasgow, the Odyssey in Belfast, the Nottingham Arena and Manchester Central. Each show from the first and second part of the tour were sold out immediately. The band continued touring in 2008. They played at most of the biggest summer festivals and a few headline shows all over North America, Europe, Japan and the UK between April and August. Including shows at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, also at the Madison Square Garden Theater, and the Pinkpop festival, T in the Park, the V Festival, Oxegen Festival, Rock Werchter, Rock am Ring and Rock im Park and The Eden Project Sessions. The band's new single, "Love Is Noise", was premiered by Zane Lowe on BBC Radio 1 on 23 June. They performed at the coveted Sunday night slot on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury on 29 June, closing the show with the new song. The Verve released a free download of a non-album track, "Mover", on 30 June. The song had been performed by the band in 1994, but had never seen a proper recording until the reunion. The track was available for download from their official website for one week only.

The band announced the new album's title: Forth, which was released in the UK on 25 August and the following day in North America. The album reached #1 on the UK Albums Chart on 31 August. The lead single "Love Is Noise" was released in the UK on 3 August digitally and one week later (11 August) on its physical form, peaking at #4 in the UK. The song was a moderate success in Europe, charting at #16 in the European chart (with 6 weeks in the Top 20). "Rather Be", the second single from the album, was released in November 2008 and wasn't as successful as "Love Is Noise" was, peaking at only number 56 on the UK Singles Chart.

The Verve on holiday (2009- )

In August 2009 The Guardian speculated that The Verve have broken up for a third time, with Jones and McCabe no longer speaking to Ashcroft as they felt he was using the reunion as a vehicle to get his solo career on track. Being asked about the supposed split, Ashcroft told Daily Telegraph "I can confirm we did what we set out to do [...] Right now there are no plans to be doing anything in the near future."

McCabe and Jones have since started their own project, The Black Ships, along with electric violinist and arranger Davide Rossi and drummer Mig Schillace. Nick McCabe says "The Verve seems to be on holiday" on his myspace page

On July 7, 2010 Ashcroft confirmed that the band "is over for good", though some weeks later did not rule out another Verve reunion.

Band members

Official members

Richard Ashcroft - lead & backing vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards, bass, percussion (1990–1995, 1996–1999, 2007–2009)

Nick McCabe - lead guitar, piano, keyboards, accordion (1990–1995, 1997–1998, 2007–2009)

Simon Jones - bass, keyboards, backing vocals (1990–1995, 1996–1999, 2007–2009)

Peter Salisbury - drums, percussion (1990–1995, 1996–1999, 2007–2009)

Simon Tong - guitar, keyboards (1996–1999)

Live or session members

Bernard Butler - lead guitar (1996) (Session member, considered for becoming a full time member before McCabe returned to the band and record Urban Hymns)

B. J. Cole - lead guitar (1998) (Live member in the final months of 1998 after McCabe's second quit)

Discography

A Storm in Heaven (1993)

A Northern Soul (1995)

Urban Hymns (1997)

Forth (2008)

Legacy

After The Verve split in 1999, many of their songs have been covered or reinterpreted in recent years, such as in these examples:

Limp Bizkit created a mashup of "Bitter Sweet Symphony" on their Greatest Hitz album.

Singer/songwriter Ben Harper covered the song "The Drugs Don't Work" in a live show, which is found on the live album Live From Mars.

The string section of "Bitter Sweet Symphony" has been sampled by artists such as Madonna and Kanye West in live concerts, while Justin Timberlake used the song as his curtain call for the FutureSex/LoveSounds Tour. Moby has created a remix of the song "Bitter Sweet Symphony".

In the movie Cruel Intentions, "Bitter Sweet Symphony" is played at the final scene.

The music video for "Bitter Sweet Symphony" was parodied by Fat Les for the 1998 World Cup song "Vindaloo".

Also notably Vernon Kay is a big fan of The Verve, and conducted his last interview on T4 with Richard Ashcroft.

Noel Gallagher of Oasis has covered "Bitter Sweet Symphony" on a few occasions, most recently on the 2006 Acoustic Stop The Clocks Tour. Also, the song "Cast No Shadow" was written as a homage to Richard Ashcroft, who in turn wrote "A Northern Soul" from the band's second album for Noel Gallagher.

Both "Lucky Man" and "Rather Be" are featured in the film Marley & Me.

"Lucky Man" is featured in the 2004 film The Girl Next Door.

"Slide Away" is featured in the film The New Age, during the jacuzzi/party scene, and has also been featured in the House M.D. episode "Ugly".

"Star Sail", the opening track of A Storm In Heaven, is featured in the 1993 film Sliver and is featured on the Virgin Records US release of the soundtrack.

"Appalachian Springs" is featured in season 4, episode 19 of the show The Unit.

"Lucky Man" is featured in the 6th season premiere of HBO's Entourage.

In 2009, Bitter Sweet Symphony was voted number # 14 in Triple Js Hottest 100 of all time.

"One Day" and "The Drugs Don't Work" are played on BBC Two comedy-drama Home Time.

Three Days Grace's Adam Gontier did an Acoustic Cover of The Verve's "The Drugs Don't Work"

References

External links

The Verve Live

The Verve Online

Category:BRIT Award winners Category:English alternative rock groups Category:Britpop groups Category:English rock music groups Category:Music from Wigan Category:Musical groups disestablished in 2009 Category:Musical groups established in 1990 Category:Musical groups reestablished in 1997 Category:Musical groups reestablished in 2007 Category:Musical quartets Category:Parlophone artists Category:Psychedelic rock music groups Category:Shoegazing musical groups Category:Virgin Records artists

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Name	J. J. Johnson
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	James Louis Johnson
Birth date	January 22, 1924
Death date	February 04, 2001
Origin	Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
Instrument	Trombone
Genre	Jazz, Bebop, hard bop, Third Stream,
Occupation	Bandleader, Composer, Performer
Years active	1942–1996 }}

J. J. Johnson (born James Louis Johnson, January 22, 1924, Indianapolis, Indiana; died February 4, 2001) was a United States jazz trombonist, composer and arranger. He was sometimes credited as Jay Jay Johnson.

Johnson was one of the first trombonists to embrace bebop music. He has long been regarded as one of the leading trombonists of the post-swing era, exerting a pervasive influence on other jazz musicians.

Biography

Big bands

After studying the piano beginning at age 9, Johnson decided to play trombone at the age of 14. In 1941, he started his professional career with Clarence Love, and then played with Snookum Russell in 1942. In Russell's band he met the trumpeter Fats Navarro, who influenced him to play in the style of the tenor saxophonist Lester Young. Johnson played in Benny Carter's orchestra between 1942 and 1945, and made his first recordings in 1942 under Carter's leadership, recording his first solo (on Love for Sale) in October, 1943. In 1944, he took part in the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert, presented in Los Angeles and organized by Norman Granz. In 1945 he joined the big band of Count Basie, touring and recording with him until 1946.

Bebop

While the trombone was featured prominently in dixieland and swing music, it fell out of favor among bebop and later jazz fusion musicians, largely because instruments with valves and keys (trumpet, saxophone) were believed to be more suited to bebop's often rapid tempos and demand for technical mastery. In 1946, Bebop "co-inventor" Dizzy Gillespie encouraged the young trombonist's development with the comment, "I've always known that the trombone could be played different, that somebody'd catch on one of these days. Man, you're elected."

After leaving Count Basie in 1946 to play in small bebop bands in New York clubs, Johnson toured in 1947 with Illinois Jacquet. During this period he also began recording as a leader of small groups featuring Max Roach, Sonny Stitt and Bud Powell. He performed with Charlie Parker at the 17 December 1947 Dial Records session following Parker's release from Camarillo State Mental Hospital.

In 1951, with bassist Oscar Pettiford and trumpeter Howard McGhee, he toured the military camps of Japan and Korea before returning to the United States and taking a day job as a blueprint inspector. Johnson admitted later he was still thinking of nothing but music during that time, and indeed, his classic Blue Note recordings as both a leader and with Miles Davis date from this period. Johnson's compositions Enigma and Kelo were recorded by Davis for Blue Note and J. J. was part of the Davis studio session band that recorded the jazz classic Walkin' (1954).

Jay and Kai

In 1954 producer Ozzie Cadena, then with Savoy Records, convinced Johnson to set up a combo with trombonist Kai Winding: the "Jay and Kai Quintet." The trombone styles and personalities of the two musicians, although very different, blended so well that the pairing, which lasted till August, 1956, was a huge success both musically and commercially. They toured U.S. nightclubs constantly and recorded numerous albums before parting amicably, satisfied that they had fully explored (and exploited) their novel group. The duo reunited again in 1958 for a tour of Great Britain, an Impulse! studio album in 1960 and in 1968-1969 (two albums for CTI/A&M; Records). In January 1967, Johnson and Winding were in an all-star line-up (alongside the likes of Clark Terry, Charlie Shavers and Joe Newman) backing Sarah Vaughan on her last-ever sessions for Mercury Records, released as the album Sassy Swings Again, with three of the cuts, including Billy Strayhorn's "Take the "A" Train", being arranged by Johnson himself. The duo also made some jazz festival appearances in Japan in the early 1980s, the last shortly before Winding died in May, 1983.

Solo success

Following the mid-1950s collaboration with Winding, J. J. Johnson began leading his own touring small groups for about 3 years, covering the United States, United Kingdom and Scandinavia. These groups (ranging from quartets to sextets) included tenor saxophonists Bobby Jaspar and Clifford Jordan, cornetist Nat Adderley, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, pianists Tommy Flanagan and Cedar Walton, and drummers Elvin Jones, Albert "Tootie" Heath, and Max Roach. His classic quartet albums First Place and Blue Trombone, with Tommy Flanagan, Paul Chambers and Max Roach, were recorded in 1957. He also toured with the Jazz at the Philharmonic show in 1957 and 1960, the first tour yielding a memorable live album featuring Johnson and tenor saxophonist Stan Getz. In 1958-59 Johnson was one of three plaintiffs in a court case which hastened the abolition of the cabaret card system.

This period overlaps a bit with the beginnings of Johnson's serious forays into Third Stream music (see below). Periods of concentrating on writing and recording his music would alternate with tours demanding attention to his playing.

Following the six months he spent writing Perceptions (see below), late 1961 found J. J. in the studio for a date which at first might have seemed an odd pairing on paper. Andre Previn's trio (adding Johnson as the only horn) recorded an entire album of the music of Kurt Weill. The inventive arrangements and inspired playing of both stars bore out the producer's foresight, yet this is one of few J. J. Johnson albums which remains unreleased on CD. In 1962 J. J. toured for a number of months with Miles Davis' sextet of that year, which went unrecorded.

Johnson's 1963 solo album J. J.'s Broadway is an excellent example of both his mature trombone style and sound, and his arranging abilities. 1964 saw the recording of his last working band for a period of over 20 years- Proof Positive. Beginning in 1965 Johnson recorded a number of large group studio albums under his name, featuring many of his own compositions and arrangements. The late 1960s saw a radical downturn in the fortunes of many jazz musicians and Johnson was consequently heard almost exclusively on big band-style studio records, usually backing a single soloist.

The composer

From the mid-fifties, but especially the early sixties on, J. J. Johnson dedicated more and more time to composition. He became an active contributor to the Third Stream movement in jazz music, (which included such other notable musicians as Gunther Schuller and John Lewis), and wrote a number of large-scale works which incorporated elements of both classical and jazz music. He contributed his Poem for Brass to a Third Stream compilation titled Music for Brass in 1957, and composed a number of original works which were performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in the late fifties and early sixties. In 1961, he composed a suite in six movements, titled Perceptions, with Dizzy Gillespie as soloist. The First International Jazz Festival, held in Washington, D.C. in 1962, featured another extended work. In 1965 he spent time in Vienna to perform and record his Euro Suite with a jazz-classical fusion orchestra led by Friedrich Gulda. In 1968, a Johnson work titled Diversions was commissioned by the American Wind Symphony and performed in Pittsburgh.

Hollywood

In 1970, Quincy Jones convinced Johnson to move from New York to California to compose for cinema and television, where he eventually scored movies such as Across 110th Street, Cleopatra Jones, Top of the Heap and Willie Dynamite, as well as TV series such as Starsky & Hutch, Mike Hammer and The Six Million Dollar Man. Despite his small level of success, Johnson acknowledged that racism and other prejudices kept a black jazz musician such as himself from securing the amount and quality of work he was qualified to perform. During this period, he played almost no concerts, except in 1977 and 1982 in Japan, and in 1984 in Europe. Despite the low profile, he did record six albums as a leader between 1977 and 1984 (including a 1984 trombone duo album with Al Grey) and a few albums as a sideman, two with Count Basie, and on The Sting II soundtrack. During the California period he also played in the Coconut Grove orchestra of Sammy Davis, Jr. and the TV orchestra of Carol Burnett.

Return to performing

Johnson returned to performing and recording in November 1987, with an engagement at the Village Vanguard in New York City. Tours of the United States, Europe and Japan followed as well as a return engagement to the Vanguard in July, 1988 which yielded two albums worth of material.

While on tour of Japan in December, 1988, Johnson's wife Vivian suffered a stroke which incapacitated her for her remaining three and a half years of life. During this period Johnson cancelled all work, devoting his energy to caring for his ailing wife. After her death in 1991, he dedicated an album to her on Concord. A year later the former Carolyn Reid became his second wife, and Johnson began actively performing once again. Following this second "comeback" in 1992, Johnson's contracts with a variety of record labels, including Verve and Antilles, resulted in five albums as a leader, from small groups to separate brass orchestra and string orchestra recordings, as well as sideman appearances with his leading disciple, trombonist Steve Turre and the vocalist Abbey Lincoln. He earned several Grammy nominations during this period. He retired from active performing and touring in late 1996, after having performed his last concert at William Paterson College on November 10, 1996, then choosing to stay at his home in Indianapolis where he could indulge his passion of composing and arranging music with computers and MIDI.

Later, diagnosed with prostate cancer, he maintained a positive outlook and underwent treatment. He wrote a book of original exercises and etudes for jazz musicians, published later by Hal Leonard. A biography, titled The Musical World of J. J. Johnson, was published in 2000. On February 4, 2001, he committed suicide by shooting himself. His funeral in Indianapolis drew jazz musicians, friends and family from around the country.

Influence

Johnson's work in the 1940s and 1950s demonstrated that the slide trombone could be played in the bebop style. Contemporary trombonist Steve Turre has summarized, "J. J. did for the trombone what Charlie Parker did for the saxophone. And all of us that are playing today wouldn't be playing the way we're playing if it wasn't for what he did. And not only, of course, is he the master of the trombone — the definitive master of this century — but, as a composer and arranger, he is in the top shelf as well."

The two-trombone jazz combo setup pioneered by Johnson and Winding has been imitated by more recent trombonists, with such combinations as Jim Pugh/Dave Taylor, Conrad Herwig/Steve Davis, and Michael Davis/Bill Reichenbach.

Several of his compositions, including "Wee Dot", "Lament", and "Enigma" have become jazz standards.

From the mid-1950s on, Johnson was a perennial polling favorite in jazz circles, even winning "Trombonist of the Year" in Down Beat magazine during years he wasn't active. In 1970 he ceased performing in public before making a comeback in the late 1980s. He was voted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame in 1995.

Discography

Bibliography

The Musical World of J. J. Johnson by Joshua Berrett and Louis G. Bourgois (Rowman & Littlefield). ISBN 0-8108-3648-3

Exercises and Etudes for the Jazz Instrumentalist by J. J. Johnson (Hal Leonard Corporation, February 1, 2002). ISBN 0-634-02120-6

References

External links

A tribute page on www.trombone.org with links to numerous interviews

An article on a very busy month early in Johnson's career- December, 1947

YouTube video of J. J. Johnson, Sonny Stitt and Howard McGhee on Now's The Time.

YouTube video of J. J. Johnson and Jamey Aebersold on Just Friend's

Album cover gallery

An obituary on The Dead Musician Directory

J. J. Johnson at Find-A-Grave

"The Incredible Kai Winding, His Official Site" - has some photos of J.J. and information on the music partnership between J. J. and Kai, as well as a pictorial discography on their recordings.

J. J. Johnson at Trombone Page of the World

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name	Pete Townshend
alias	Bijou Drains
birth name	Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend
born	May 19, 1945London, England
instrument	Guitar, vocals, bass guitar, harmonica, drums, keyboards, banjo, tin whistle, mandolin, ukulele, violin, viola, cello, accordion, piano
background	solo_singer
genre	Rock, art rock, hard rock, power pop
occupation	Musician, singer-songwriter, musical arranger, author
years active	1962–present
label	Track, Polydor, Atlantic, Atco, Decca, Rykodisc
associated acts	The Who, Deep End, Ronnie Lane, Thunderclap Newman
website	The Who's official webpage
notable instruments	Rickenbacker 330Fender StratocasterGibson SG SpecialGibson Les PaulGretsch 6120Gibson J-200 }}

Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend (born 19 May 1945) is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career. His career with The Who spans more than forty years, during which time the band grew to be considered one of the most influential bands of the 1960s and 1970s, and, according to Eddie Vedder, "possibly the greatest live band ever."

Townshend is the primary songwriter for The Who, having written well over one hundred songs for the band's eleven studio albums, including concept albums and the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia, plus popular rock and roll radio staples like Who's Next, and dozens more that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues, and tracks on rarities compilations like Odds & Sods. He has also written over one hundred songs that have appeared on his solo albums, as well as radio jingles and television theme songs. Although known primarily as a guitarist, he also plays other instruments such as keyboards, banjo, accordion, synthesiser, bass guitar and drums, on his own solo albums, several Who albums, and as a guest contributor to a wide array of other artists' recordings. Townshend has never had formal lessons in any of the instruments he plays.

Townshend has also been a contributor and author of newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews, essays, books, and scripts, as well as collaborating as a lyricist (and composer) for many other musical acts. Townshend was ranked #3 in Dave Marsh's list of Best Guitarists in The New Book of Rock Lists, #10 in Gibson.com's list of the top fifty guitarists, and #50 in Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. Townshend was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Who in 1990.

Early life

Born in Chiswick, London into a musical family (his father Cliff Townshend was a professional saxophonist in The Squadronaires and his mother Betty (née Dennis) was a singer), Townshend exhibited a fascination with music at an early age. In the mid-1950s he was drawn to American rock and roll; his mother recounts that he repeatedly saw the 1956 film Rock Around the Clock. When he was 12, his grandmother gave him his first guitar, which he has described as a "cheap Spanish thing". Townshend's biggest guitar influences include Link Wray, John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley and Hank Marvin of The Shadows.

Townshend's brother Simon (who also became a musician) was born in 1960. In 1961, Townshend enrolled at Ealing Art College, with the intention to become a graphic artist and a year later, he and his school friend from Acton County Grammar School John Entwistle founded their first band, The Confederates, a Dixieland duet featuring Townshend on banjo and Entwistle on horns. From this beginning they moved on to The Detours, a skiffle/rock and roll band fronted by Roger Daltrey, another former schoolmate. With the encouragement and assistance of his old classmate Entwistle, Daltrey invited Townshend to join as well. In early 1964, because another band had the same name, The Detours renamed themselves The Who. Drummer Doug Sandom was replaced by Keith Moon not long afterwards. The band (now comprising Daltrey on lead vocals and harmonica, Townshend on guitar, Entwistle on bass guitar and french horn, and Moon on drums) were soon taken on by a mod publicist named Peter Meaden who convinced them to change their name to The High Numbers to give the band more of a mod feel. After bringing out one failed single ("I'm the Face/Zoot Suit"), they dropped Meaden and were signed on by two new managers, Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert, who had paired up with the intention of finding new talent and creating a documentary about them. The band anguished over a name that all felt represented the band best, and dropped The High Numbers name, reverting to The Who.

Music career

Breakthrough

After The High Numbers once again became The Who, Townshend wrote several successful singles for the band, including "I Can't Explain", "Pictures of Lily", "Substitute", and "My Generation". Townshend became known for his eccentric stage style during the band's early days, often interrupting concerts with lengthy introductions of songs. He developed a signature move in which he would swing his right arm against the guitar strings in a style reminiscent of the vanes of a windmill. He became one of the first musicians known for smashing guitars on stage and would repeatedly throw them into his amplifiers and speaker cabinets. The first incident of guitar-smashing happened when Townshend accidentally broke the neck of his guitar on the low ceiling of an early concert venue at the Railway Tavern in Harrow. The stage, only about a foot high, nevertheless brought the ceiling to within 7 feet. After smashing the instrument to pieces, he carried on by grabbing another guitar and acting as if the broken guitar had been part of the act. Drummer Keith Moon was delighted; he loved attention and destruction on any level, and smashed his drum kit as well. The press sensationalised the incidents. The on-stage destruction of instruments soon became a regular part of The Who's performances. This was further dramatised with pyrotechnics, an idea which came from Moon, who incorporated it in his exploding drum kits. At a concert in Germany, a police officer walked up to Townshend, pointed his gun at him, and ordered him to stop smashing the guitar. Townshend, always a voluble interview subject, would later relate these antics to German/British artist Gustav Metzger's theories on auto-destructive art, to which he had been exposed at art school. However, on several occasions, he admitted that the destruction was a gimmick that set the band out apart from the others and gave them the publicity edge that they needed to be noticed.

The Who thrived, and continue to thrive, despite the deaths of two of the original members. They are regarded by many rock critics as one of the best live bands from a period of time that stretched from the mid-1960s to the 2000s, the result of a unique combination of high volume, showmanship, a wide variety of rock beats, and a high-energy sound that alternated between tight and free-form. The Who continue to perform critically acclaimed sets in the 21st century, including highly regarded performances at The Concert For New York City in 2001, the 2004 Isle of Wight Festival, Live 8 in 2005 and the 2007 Glastonbury Festival.

Townshend remained the primary songwriter and leader of the group, writing over one hundred songs which appeared on the band's eleven studio albums. Among his most well-known accomplishments are the creation of Tommy, for which the term "rock opera" was coined, and a second pioneering rock opera, Quadrophenia; his dramatic stage persona; his use of guitar feedback as sonic technique; and the introduction of the synthesiser as a rock instrument. Townshend revisited album-length storytelling throughout his career and remains the musician most associated with the rock opera form. Many studio recordings also feature Townshend on piano or keyboards, though keyboard-heavy tracks increasingly featured guest artists in the studio, such as Nicky Hopkins, John Bundrick or Chris Stainton.

Townshend is one of the key figures in the development of feedback in rock guitar. When asked who first used feedback, Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore said, "Pete Townshend was definitely the first. But not being that good a guitarist, he used to just sort of crash chords and let the guitar feedback. He didn't get into twiddling with the dials on the amplifier until much later. He's overrated in England, but at the same time you find a lot of people like Jeff Beck and Hendrix getting credit for things he started. Townshend was the first to break his guitar, and he was the first to do a lot of things. He's very good at his chord scene, too." Similarly, when Jimmy Page was asked about the development of guitar feedback, he said, "I don't know who really did feedback first; it just sort of happened. I don't think anybody consciously nicked it from anybody else. It was just going on. But Pete Townshend obviously was the one, through the music of his group, who made the use of feedback more his style, and so it's related to him. Whereas the other players like Jeff Beck and myself were playing more single note things than chords."

Many rock guitarists have cited Townshend as an influence, among them Slash, Alex Lifeson and Steve Jones.

Solo career

In addition to his work with The Who, Townshend has been sporadically active as a solo recording artist. Between 1969 and 1971 Townshend, along with other devotees to Meher Baba, recorded a trio of albums devoted to his teachings: Happy Birthday, I Am, and With Love. In response to bootlegging of these, he compiled his personal highlights (and "Evolution", a collaboration with Ronnie Lane), and released his first major-label solo title, 1972's Who Came First. It was a moderate success and featured demos of Who songs as well as a showcase of his acoustic guitar talents. He collaborated with The Faces' bassist and fellow Meher Baba devotee Ronnie Lane on a duet album (1977's Rough Mix). Townshend's solo breakthrough, following the death of Who drummer Keith Moon, was the 1980 release Empty Glass, which included a top-10 single, "Let My Love Open the Door". This release was followed in 1982 by All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, which included the popular radio track "Slit Skirts". While not a huge commercial success, noted music critic Timothy Duggan listed it as "Townshend's most honest and introspective work since Quadrophenia." Through the rest of the 1980s and early 1990s Townshend would again experiment with the rock opera and related formats, releasing several story-based albums including White City: A Novel (1985), The Iron Man: A Musical (1989), and Psychoderelict (1993). Townshend also got the chance to play with his hero Hank Marvin for Paul McCartney's "Rockestra" sessions, along with other respected rock musicians such as David Gilmour, John Bonham and Ronnie Lane.

Townshend has also recorded several concert albums, including one featuring a supergroup he assembled called Deep End, who performed just two concerts and a television show session for The Tube, to raise money for a charity supporting drug addicts. In 1984 Townshend published a collection of short stories entitled Horse's Neck. He has also reported that he is writing an autobiography. In 1993 he and Des McAnuff wrote and directed the Broadway adaptation of the Who album Tommy, as well as a less successful stage musical based on his solo album The Iron Man, based upon the book by Ted Hughes. McAnuff and Townshend later co-produced the animated film The Iron Giant, also based on the Hughes story.

A production described as a Townshend rock-opera and titled The Boy Who Heard Music debuted as part of Vassar College's Powerhouse Summer Theater program in July 2007.

Recent Who work

From the mid-1990s through the present, Townshend has participated in a series of tours with the surviving members of The Who, including a 2002 tour that continued despite Entwistle's death.

In February 2006, a major world tour by The Who was announced to promote their first new album since 1982. Townshend published a semi-autobiographical story The Boy Who Heard Music as a serial on a blog beginning in September 2005. The blog closed in October 2006, as noted on Townshend's website. It is now owned by a different user and does not relate to Townshend's work in any way. On 25 February 2006, he announced the issue of a mini-opera inspired by the novella for June 2006. In October 2006 The Who released their first album in 26 years, Endless Wire.

The Who performed at the Super Bowl XLIV half-time show on 7 February 2010, playing a medley of songs that included "Pinball Wizard", "Who Are You", "Baba O'Riley", "See Me Feel Me" and "Won't Get Fooled Again".

Hearing loss

Townshend suffers from partial deafness and tinnitus believed to be the result of noise-induced hearing loss; in other words, his extensive exposure to loud music. Some such incidents include a Who concert at the Charlton Athletic Football Club, London, on 31 May 1976 that was listed as the "Loudest Concert Ever" by the Guinness Book of Records, where the volume level was measured at 126 decibels 32 metres from the stage. Townshend has also attributed the start of his hearing loss to Keith Moon's famous exploding drum set during The Who's 1967 appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. NME – April 1970

In 1989, Townshend gave the initial funding to allow the formation of the non-profit hearing advocacy group H.E.A.R. (Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers). After the Who performed at half-time at the Super Bowl XLIV, Townshend stated that he is concerned that his tinnitus has grown to such a point that he might be forced to discontinue performing with the band altogether. He told Rolling Stone, "If my hearing is going to be a problem, we’re not delaying shows. We're finished. I can’t really see any way around the issue." Neil Young introduced him to an audiologist who gave him the possible option of a hearing device to use, and although The Who have cancelled their spring touring schedule, Townshend planned a test run with the aid at their one remaining London concert on 30 March 2010, to ascertain the feasibility of continuing to perform with The Who.

In March 2011, Roger Daltrey said in an interview with the BBC that Townshend had recently experienced gradual but severe hearing loss and was now trying to save what remained of his hearing.

"Pete's having terrible trouble with his hearing. He's got really, really bad problems with it...not tinnitus, it's deterioration and he's seriously now worried about actually losing his hearing."

Interviews

From The Who's emergence on the British musical landscape, Pete Townshend could always be counted upon for a good interview. By early 1966 he had become the band's spokesman, interviewed separately from the band for the BBC television series A Whole Scene Going admitting that the band used drugs and that he considered The Beatles' backing tracks "flippin' lousy". In a 1967 interview, however, Townshend complimented one of The Beatles' songs: "I think "Eleanor Rigby" was a very important musical move forward. It certainly inspired me to write and listen to things in that vein." Throughout the 1960s Townshend made regular appearances in the pages of British music magazines, but it was a very long interview he gave to Rolling Stone in 1968 that sealed his reputation as one of rock's leading intellectuals and theorists.

Townshend gave interview after interview to the newly risen underground press, not only providing them with a star for their covers, but firmly establishing his reputation as a commentator on the rock 'n' roll scene. In addition, he wrote his own articles, starting a regular monthly column in Melody Maker, and contributing to Rolling Stone with an article on his guru Meher Baba and a review of The Who's album Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy.

Townshend has withdrawn from the press on occasion. On his 30th birthday, Townshend discussed his feelings that The Who were failing to journalist Roy Carr, making unflattering comments on fellow Who member Roger Daltrey and other leading members of the British rock community. Carr printed his remarks in the NME causing strong friction within The Who and embarrassing Townshend. Feeling betrayed, he stopped interviews with the press for over two years.

Nevertheless, Townshend has maintained close relationships with journalists, and sought them out in 1982 to describe his two-year battle with cocaine and heroin. Some of those press members turned on him in the 1980s as the punk rock revolution led to widespread dismissal of the old guard of rock, Townshend attacked two of them, Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons, in the song "Jools And Jim" on his album Empty Glass after they made some derogatory remarks about Who drummer Keith Moon. Meanwhile several journalists denounced Townshend for what they saw as a betrayal of the idealism about rock music he had espoused in his earlier interviews when The Who participated in a tour sponsored by Schlitz in 1982 and by Miller Brewing in 1989. Townshend's 1993 concept album Psychoderelict offers a scathing commentary on journalists in the character of Ruth Streeting, who attempts to scandalise the main character, Ray High.

On 25 October 2006, Townshend declined at the last minute to do a scheduled interview with Sirius Satellite Radio star Howard Stern after Stern's co-host Robin Quivers and sidekick Artie Lange made joking references to his 2003 arrest. Stern conducted an interview instead with Roger Daltrey and repeatedly expressed regret about the utterances of his on-air colleagues, stating that they did not reflect his own feelings of respect for Townshend.

Later in 2006, Townshend appeared on the Living Legends radio show in an exclusive interview with Opal Bonfante. The interview, broadcasted worldwide on Radio London, was his first live interview in 15 years. Townshend spoke about his forthcoming UK tour, his online novella and his memories of the old pirate radio stations.

Also in late 2006, Townshend granted an interview with author Mark Wilkerson, which led to Wilkerson's 2008 biography Who Are You: The Life of Pete Townshend.

In a BBC Radio 4 interview, first broadcast on 27 October 2009, Townshend informed the audience that from the time he was involved in writing the music for the Who's first album, he has been influenced by the works of the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell.

Musical equipment

Throughout his solo career and his career with The Who, Townshend has played (and destroyed) a large variety of guitars – including various Gretsch, Gibson, and Fender models. He has also used Guild, Takamine and Gibson J-200 acoustic models.

In the early days with The Who, Townshend played an Emile Grimshaw SS De Luxe and 6-string and 12-string Rickenbacker semi-hollow electric guitars primarily (particularly the Rose-Morris UK-imported models with special f-holes). However, as instrument-smashing became increasingly integrated into The Who's concert sets, he switched to more durable and resilient (and sometimes cheaper) guitars for smashing, such as the Fender Stratocaster, Fender Telecaster and various Danelectro models. On The Who's famous The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour appearance in 1967, Townshend used a Vox Cheetah guitar, which he only used for that performance; and the guitar was smashed to smithereens by Townshend and Moon's drum explosion. In the late 1960s, Townshend began playing Gibson SG models almost exclusively, specifically the Special models. He used this guitar at the Woodstock and Isle of Wight shows in 1969 and 1970, as well as the Live at Leeds performance in 1970.

By 1970, Gibson changed the design of the SG Special which Townshend had been using previously, and thus he began using other guitars. For much of the 1970s, he used a Gibson Les Paul DeLuxe, some with only two mini-humbucker pick-ups and others modified with a third pick-up in the "middle position" (a DiMarzio Superdistortion / Dual Sound). He can be seen using several of these guitars in the documentary The Kids Are Alright, although in the studio he often played a '59 Gretsch 6120 guitar (given to him by Joe Walsh of The Eagles), most notably on the albums Who's Next and Quadrophenia.

During the 1980s, Townshend mainly used Fenders, Rickenbackers and Telecaster-style models built for him by Schecter and various other luthiers. Since the late-1980s, Townshend has used the Fender Eric Clapton Signature Stratocaster, with Lace Sensor pick-ups, both in the studio and on tour. Some of his Stratocaster guitars feature a Fishman PowerBridge piezo pick-up system to simulate acoustic guitar tones. This piezo system is controlled by an extra volume control behind the guitar's bridge.

During The Who's 1989 Tour Townshend played a Rickenbacker guitar that was ironically smashed accidentally when he tripped over it. Instead of throwing the smashed parts away, Townshend reassembled the pieces as a sculpture. The sculpture was featured at the Rock Stars, Cars And Guitars 2 exhibit during the summer of 2009 at The Henry Ford museum.

There are several Gibson Pete Townshend signature guitars, such as the Pete Townshend SG, the Pete Townshend J-200, and three different Pete Townshend Les Paul Deluxes. The SG was clearly marked as a Pete Townshend limited edition model and came with a special case and certificate of authenticity, signed by Townshend himself. There has also been a Pete Townshend signature Rickenbacker limited edition guitar of the model 1998, which was his main 6-string guitar in the Who's early days. The run featured 250 guitars which were made between July 1987-March 1988, and according to Rickenbacker CEO John Hall, the entire run sold out before serious advertising could be done.

He also used the Gibson ES-335, one of which he donated to the Hard Rock Cafe. Townshend also used a Gibson EDS-1275 double neck very briefly circa late 1967, and both a Harmony Sovereign H1270 and a Fender Electric XII for the studio sessions for Tommy for the 12-string guitar parts.

In 2006, Townshend had a pedal board designed by long-time gear guru Pete Cornish. The board apparently is composed with a compressor, an old Boss OD-1 overdrive pedal, as well as a T-Rex Replica delay pedal.

Over the years, Pete Townshend has used many types of amplifiers, including Vox, Fender, Marshall, Hiwatt etc., sticking to using Hiwatt amps for most of four decades. Around the time of Who's Next, he used a tweed Fender Bassman amp, which he also used for Quadrophenia and The Who by Numbers. Since 1989, his rig consisted of four Fender Vibro-King stacks and a Hiwatt head driving two custom made 2x12" Hiwatt/Mesa Boogie speaker cabinets. However, since 2006, he has only three Vibro-King stacks, one of which is a backup.

Townshend figured prominently in the development of what is widely known in rock circles as the "Marshall Stack". It has been recounted by others during the start of popularity of Jim Marshall's guitar amplifiers, that Townshend became a user of these amps.

He also ordered several speaker cabinets that contained eight speakers in a housing standing nearly six feet in height with the top half of the cabinet slanted slightly upward. These became hard to move and were incredibly heavy.

Jim Marshall then cut the massive speaker cabinet into two separate speaker cabinets, at the suggestion of Townshend, with each cabinet containing four 12-inch speakers. One of the cabinets had half of the speaker baffle slanted upwards and Marshall made these two cabinets stackable. The Marshall stack was born, and Townshend used these as well as Hiwatt stacks.

His amplifier rig currently usually consists of four Fender Vibro King amps with extension cabinets.

He has always regarded his instruments as being merely tools of the trade and has, in latter years, determinedly kept his most prized instruments well away from the concert stage. These instruments include a few vintage and reissue Rickenbackers, the Gretsch 6120, an original 1952 Fender Telecaster, Gibson Custom Shop's artist limited edition reissues of Townshend's Les Paul DeLuxe models 1, 3 and 9 as well his signature SG Special reissue.

Townshend also worked with synthesisers that made their debut on Who's Next that included the EMS VCS3, the ARP Instruments, Inc. ARP 2600, some of which modified a Lowrey TBO Berkshire organ. Current photos of his home studio also show an ARP 2500. Townshend was featured in ARP promotional materials in the early 1970s.

Literary work

Although known for his musical compositions and musicianship, Pete Townshend has been extensively involved in the literary world for more than three decades, writing newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews, essays, books, and scripts.

An early example of Townshend’s writing came in August 1970 with the first of nine installments of "The Pete Townshend Page", a monthly column written by Townshend for the British music paper Melody Maker. The column provided Townshend’s perspective on an array of subjects, such as the media and the state of U.S. concert halls and public address systems, as well as providing valuable insight into Townshend’s mindset during the evolution of his Lifehouse project.

Townshend also wrote three sizeable essays for Rolling Stone magazine, the first of which appeared in November 1970. In Love With Meher Baba described Townshend’s spiritual leanings. "Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy", a blow-by-blow account of The Who compilation album of the same name, followed in December 1971. The third article, "The Punk Meets the Godmother", appeared in November 1977.

Also in 1977, Townshend founded Eel Pie Publishing, which specialised in children's titles, music books, and several Meher Baba-related publications. A bookstore named Magic Bus (after the popular Who song) was opened in London. The Story of Tommy, a book written by Townshend and his art school friend Richard Barnes (now the Who's official biographer) about the writing of Townshend’s 1969 rock opera and the making of the 1975 Ken Russell-directed film, was published by Eel Pie the same year.

In July 1983, Townshend took a position as an acquisitions editor for London publisher Faber and Faber. Notable projects included editing Animals frontman Eric Burdon’s autobiography, Charles Shaar Murray’s award-winning Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and Post-War Pop, Brian Eno and Russell Mills's More Dark Than Shark, and working with Prince Charles on a volume of his collected speeches. Townshend commissioned Dave Rimmer’s Like Punk Never Happened, and was commissioning editor for radical playwright Steven Berkoff.

Two years after joining Faber and Faber, Townshend decided to publish a book of his own. Horse's Neck, published in May 1985, was a collection of short stories he’d written between 1979 and 1984, tackling subjects such as childhood, stardom and spirituality. As a result of his position with Faber and Faber, Townshend developed a friendship with the Nobel prize-winning author of Lord of the Flies, Sir William Golding, and became friends with British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. His friendship with Hughes led to Townshend’s musical interpretation of Hughes's children's story, The Iron Man, six years later, as The Iron Man: The Musical by Pete Townshend, released in 1989.

Townshend has written several scripts spanning the breadth of his career, including numerous drafts of his elusive Lifehouse project, the last of which, co-written with radio playwright Jeff Young, was published in 1999. In 1978, Townshend wrote a script for Fish Shop, a play commissioned but not completed by London Weekend Television, and in mid-1984 he wrote a script for White City: A Novel which led to a short film.

In 1989, Townshend began work on a novel entitled Ray High & The Glass Household, a draft of which was later submitted to his editor. While the original novel remains unpublished, elements from this story were used in Townshend’s 1993 solo album Psychoderelict.

In 1993, Townshend authored another book, The Who's Tommy, a chronicle of the development of the award-winning Broadway version of his rock opera.

The opening of his personal website and his commerce site Eelpie.com, both in 2000, gave Townshend another outlet for literary work. Several of Townshend’s essays have been posted online, including "Meher Baba—The Silent Master: My Own Silence" in 2001, and "A Different Bomb", an indictment of the child pornography industry, the following year.

Townshend’s most recent literary contribution is The Boy Who Heard Music, a novella which began a chapter-a-week online posting in September 2005. It is now available to read at his website. Like Psychoderelict this is yet another extrapolation of Lifehouse and Ray High & The Glass Household.

Townshend signed a deal with Little, Brown and Company publishing in 1997 to write his autobiography. Reportedly half-complete and titled Pete Townshend: Who He? this is a work in progress. Townshend's creative vagaries and conceptual machinations have been chronicled by Larry David Smith in his book The Minstrel's Dilemma (Praeger 1999).

Religion

Townshend showed no predilection for religious belief in the first years of The Who's career. By the beginning of 1968, however, Townshend had begun to explore spiritual ideas. In January 1968, The Who recorded his song "Faith in Something Bigger" (Odds & Sods). Townshend's art school friend Mike McInnerney gave him a copy of C. B. Purdom's book The God-Man, introducing him to the writings of the Indian "perfect master" Meher Baba, who blended elements of Vedantic, Sufi, and Mystic schools.

Townshend swiftly absorbed all of Baba's writings that he could find; by April 1968, he announced himself Baba's disciple. At about this time, Townshend, who had been searching the past two years for a basis for a rock opera, created a story inspired by the teachings of Baba and other Indian spiritualists that would ultimately become Tommy.

Tommy did more than revitalise The Who's career (which was moderately successful at this point but had reached a plateau); it also marked a renewal of Townshend's songwriting and his spiritual studies infused most of his work from Tommy forward, including the unfinished Who project Lifehouse. The Who song "Baba O'Riley", written for Lifehouse and eventually appearing on the album Who's Next, was named for Meher Baba and minimalist composer Terry Riley. His newfound passion was not shared by his bandmates, whose attitude was tolerant, but who were unwilling to become the spokesmen for a particular religion. Few of the thousands of fans who packed stadiums across Europe and the U.S. to see The Who noticed the religious message in the songs: that "Bargain" and the middle section of "Behind Blue Eyes" from Who's Next and "Listening To You" from Tommy were all originally written as prayers, that "Drowned" from Quadrophenia and "Don't Let Go The Coat" from Face Dances were based on Baba's sayings, that the "who are you, who, who, who, who" chorus from the song "Who Are You" was based on Sufi chants, or that "Let My Love Open The Door" was not a message from a lover but from God.

In interviews Townshend was more open about his beliefs, penning an article on Baba for Rolling Stone in 1970 and stating that following Baba's teachings, he was opposed to the use of all psychedelic drugs, making him one of the first rock stars with counterculture credibility to turn against their use.

His stardom quickly made him the world's most notable follower of Baba. Having missed out on meeting his guru with Baba's death 31 January 1969 (work on Tommy kept him from making the pilgrimage), Townshend made several trips to visit Baba's tomb in India as well as becoming a frequent visitor to the Meher Baba Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. At home he recorded and released his most overtly spiritual songs on records assembled, pressed and sold by Baba organisations. When these records became widely bootlegged, Townshend put together a selection of the tracks for release as the solo album Who Came First. One of the songs from that album, "Parvardigar", a Baba prayer set to music by Townshend, would gradually be accepted as a hymn by the Baba movement. In 1976 he opened the Oceanic Centre in London, using it as a haven for English Baba followers and Americans making a pilgrimage to Baba's tomb in Meherabad, India as well as a place for small concerts (one such in 1979 was released on CD in 2001 as Pete Townshend & Raphael Rudd—The Oceanic Concerts) and a repository for films made of Baba.

Townshend became a lower-profile member after 1982, having felt that his former addictions to cocaine and heroin made him a poor candidate for spokesman. Nevertheless, his discipleship continues to the current day.

Personal life

Townshend met Karen Astley (born 12 June 1947, daughter of composer Ted Astley and sister of record producer Jon Astley), while in art school and married her in 1968. The couple separated in 1994 and divorced in 2009. They have three children: Emma (b. 1969), who is a singer/songwriter, Aminta (b. 1971), and Joseph (b. 1990). Townshend currently lives with his long-time partner, musician Rachel Fuller, in The Wick, Richmond, England. He also owns a house in Churt, Surrey, England, and in 2010 purchased a lease on the historic National Trust property Ashdown House in Oxfordshire. According to The Sunday Times Rich List his assets are worth £40 million as of 2009.

Townshend has two younger brothers by nearly a generation, Paul Townshend (b. 1958) and Simon Townshend, (b. 10 October 1960). Simon is a guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist. Simon initially has had a career as a solo artist, and has performed with other bands, but began to record with The Who in the studio as early as their work on the film version of Tommy, and began to play with Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle on their solo efforts. By 1996, Simon joined The Who on their Quadrophenia support tour for two years as a backup guitarist and singer. He also returned again after the death of Entwistle as a part of their touring band. Paul played the voice of his brother, Pete, in The Simpsons episode, "A Tale of Two Springfields" as Pete was unavailable.

Charity work

Pete Townshend has woven a long history of involvement with various charities and other philanthropic efforts throughout his career, both as a solo artist and with The Who. His first solo concert, for example, was a 1974 benefit show which was organised to raise funds for the Camden Square Community Play Center.

The earliest public example of Townshend’s involvement with charitable causes was in 1968, when Townshend donated the use of his former Wardour Street apartment to the Meher Baba Association. The following year, the association was moved to another Townshend-owned apartment, the Eccleston Square former residence of wife Karen. Townshend sat on a committee which oversaw the operation and finances of the centre. "The committee sees to it that it is open a couple of days a week, and keeps the bills paid and the library full," he wrote in a 1970 Rolling Stone article.

In 1969 and 1972 Townshend produced two limited-release albums, Happy Birthday and I Am, for the London-based Baba association. This led to 1972’s Who Came First, a more widespread release, 15 percent of the revenue of which went to the Baba association. A further limited release, With Love, was released in 1976. A limited-edition boxed set of all three limited releases on CD, Avatar, was released in 2000, with all profits going to the Avatar Meher Baba Trust in India, which provided funds to a dispensary, school, hospital and pilgrimage centre.

In July 1976, Townshend opened Meher Baba Oceanic, a London activity centre for Baba followers which featured film dubbing and editing facilities, a cinema and a recording studio. In addition, the centre served as a regular meeting place for Baba followers. Townshend offered very economical (reportedly £1 per night) lodging for American followers who needed an overnight stay on their pilgrimages to India. "For a few years, I had toyed with the idea of opening a London house dedicated to Meher Baba," he wrote in a 1977 Rolling Stone article. "In the eight years I had followed him, I had donated only coppers to foundations set up around the world to carry out the Master’s wishes and decided it was about time I put myself on the line. The Who had set up a strong charitable trust of its own which appeased, to an extent, the feeling I had that Meher Baba would rather have seen me give to the poor than to the establishment of yet another so-called 'spiritual center'." Townshend also embarked on a project dedicated to the collection, restoration and maintenance of Meher Baba-related films. The project was known as MEFA, or Meher Baba European Film Archive.

Children's charities

Townshend has been an active champion of children’s charities. The debut of Pete Townshend’s stage version of Tommy took place at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse in July 1992. The show was earmarked as a benefit for the London-based Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Foundation, an organisation which helps children with autism and mental retardation.

Townshend performed at a 1995 benefit organised by Paul Simon at Madison Square Garden's Paramount Theatre, for The Children’s Health Fund. The following year, Townshend performed at a benefit for the annual Bridge School Benefit, a California facility for children with severe speech and physical impairments with concerts organised by Neil and Pegi Young. In 1997, Townshend established a relationship with Maryville Academy, a Chicago area children’s charity. Between 1997 and 2002, Townshend played five benefit shows for Maryville Academy, raising at least $1,600,000. His 1998 album A Benefit for Maryville Academy was made to support their activities and proceeds from the sales of his release were donated to them.

As a member of The Who, Pete Townshend has also performed a series of concerts, beginning in 2000, benefiting the Teenage Cancer Trust in the UK, raising several million pounds. In 2005, Townshend performed at New York’s Gotham Hall for Samsung’s Four Seasons of Hope, an annual children's charity fundraiser, and donated a smashed guitar to the Pediatric Epilepsy Project.

Drug rehabilitation

Townshend has also advocated for drug rehabilitation. In a 1985 radio interview, he said:

The "large clinic" Townshend was referring to was a plan he and drug rehabilitation experimenter Meg Patterson had devised to open a drug treatment facility in London; however, the plan failed to come to fruition. Two early 1979 concerts by The Who raised £20,000 for Patterson’s Pharmakon Clinic in Sussex.

Further examples of Townshend’s drug rehabilitation activism took place in the form of a 1984 benefit concert, an article he wrote a few days later for Britain’s Mail On Sunday urging better care for the nation’s growing number of drug addicts, and the formation of a charitable organisation, Double-O Charities, to raise funds for the causes he’d recently championed. Townshend also personally sold fund-raising anti-heroin T-shirts at a series of UK Bruce Springsteen concerts, and reportedly financed a trip for former Clash drummer Topper Headon to undergo drug rehabilitation treatment. Townshend's 1985–86 band, Deep End, played two benefits at Brixton Academy in 1985 for Double-O Charities.

Amnesty International

In 1979, Townshend donated his services to the human rights organisation Amnesty International when he performed three songs for its benefit show The Secret Policeman's Ball – performances that were released on record and seen in the film of the show. Townshend's acoustic performances of three of his songs ("Pinball Wizard", "Drowned", and "Won't Get Fooled Again") were subsequently cited as having been the forerunner and inspiration for the "unplugged" phenomenon in the 1990s. Townshend had been invited to perform for Amnesty by Martin Lewis, the producer of The Secret Policeman's Ball who stated later that Townshend's participation had been the key to his securing the subsequent participation for Amnesty (in the 1981 sequel show) of Sting, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Phil Collins and Bob Geldof. Other performers inspired to support Amnesty International in future Secret Policeman's Ball shows and other benefits because of Townshend's early commitment to the organisation include Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, David Gilmour and U2 singer Bono who in 1986 told Rolling Stone magazine: "I saw The Secret Policeman's Ball and it became a part of me. It sowed a seed...."

Miscellaneous efforts

Highlights of Pete Townshend’s other public charitable efforts include the following:

A 1972 Tommy performance which raised nearly £10,000 for the Stars Organization for Spastics charity.

A 1979 Rock Against Racism benefit concert, organised to raise money to pay the legal costs of those arrested in a London area anti-racism demonstration. Townshend helped organise the show, topped the bill, and supplied the event lighting and equipment.

A 1981 Rock Against Unemployment benefit concert, part of the People’s March For Jobs campaign.

A 1982 Prince’s Trust Gala Benefit performance.

Performing with The Who at the 1985 Live Aid concert.

Involvement in fundraising supportive of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.

Performing in a 1986 Royal Albert Hall benefit show for the victims of a Colombian Volcano disaster which killed over 25,000 people.

A 2001 benefit show for San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse which raised approximately $100,000.

Performing in Rock the Dock, a 1998 benefit for striking Liverpool dock workers.

Organizing an online auction in 2000 to raise funds for Oxfam's emergency services to help those affected by floods in Mozambique and a combination of drought and food shortages in Ethiopia. Among the auctioned items were a selection of gold and platinum awards, letters from celebrities such as Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney, and musical instruments (including a smashed Rickenbacker guitar and the guitar on which Townshend composed the Who classic "Behind Blue Eyes"). The centerpiece of the auction, however, was a 1957 Fender Stratocaster which was given to Townshend as a gift by Eric Clapton after Townshend had helped arrange Clapton’s 1973 recovery from his own heroin addiction, and comeback show at the Rainbow. The guitar was ultimately purchased by Pete Townshend, Mick Jagger and David Bowie, and presented to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Performing with The Who at the 2001 all-star The Concert for New York City at Madison Square Garden, honouring policemen and emergency personnel killed in the 11 September attacks.

Performing at the Royal Albert Hall in a 2004 Ronnie Lane tribute show which served as a fundraiser for both Lane’s family and multiple sclerosis research.

Performing with The Who at the 2005 Live 8 concert.

In 1998, Townshend was named in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the UK Labour Party. He refused to let Michael Moore use "Won't Get Fooled Again" in Fahrenheit 9/11, saying that he watched Bowling for Columbine and was not convinced.

Performing with The Who in Detroit in 2008, donating all profits to Focus: HOPE and Gleaners Community Food Bank.

Operation Ore investigation and police caution

Townshend was cautioned by the British police in 2003 as part of Operation Ore. Following a news leak that Townshend was among the subjects of the investigation, he publicly stated that on one occasion he had used a credit card to access a website advertising child pornography. Townshend, who had posted essays on his personal website in 2002 as part of his campaign against the widespread availability of child pornography on the internet, said that he had entered the site for research purposes and had not downloaded any images. A four-month police investigation, including forensic examination of all of his computers, established that Townshend was not in possession of any illegal downloaded images. Instead of pressing charges, the police elected to caution him, stating, "It is not a defence to access these images for research or out of curiosity." In a statement issued by his lawyer, Townshend said, "I accept that I was wrong to access this site, and that by doing so, I broke the law, and I have accepted the caution that the police have given me."

Discography

Guest appearances

"Because You're Young" with David Bowie on Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)

Acoustic guitar on "Ball and Chain" with Elton John on Jump Up! (1982)

"Lonely at the Top" and "Hard Women" with Mick Jagger on She's the Boss (1985)

Guitar on "Town of Plenty" with Elton John on Reg Strikes Back (1988)

Acoustic guitar with Prefab Sprout on "Hey Manhattan!" on From Langley Park to Memphis (1988)

"Substitute" with The Ramones on Acid Eaters (1993)

"Joy" and "Gun" with Mick Jagger on Goddess in the Doorway (2001)

"Slow Burn" with David Bowie on Heathen (2002)

In 1968 Townshend helped assemble a band called Thunderclap Newman consisting of three musicians he knew. Pianist Andy Newman (an old art school friend), drummer John "Speedy" Keen (who had written "Armenia City in the Sky" for The Who to record for their 1967 album The Who Sell Out) and teenage guitarist Jimmy McCulloch (later to join Wings). Townshend produced the band and played bass on their recordings under the tongue-in-cheek pseudonym "Bijou Drains". Their first recording was the single "Something in the Air", which became a number one hit in the UK and a substantial hit elsewhere in the world. This was the only number one hit in the UK that Townshend performed on (The Who had none.) Following this success, Townshend produced their sole album, Hollywood Dream.

Townshend also produced "Fire" by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown in 1968 that was No. 1 in the UK and No. 2 in the US.

In 1971, Townshend, along with Keith Moon and Ronnie Lane, backed Mike Heron (of the Incredible String Band) on one song "Warm Heart Pastry" from Heron's first solo LP, Smiling Men with Bad Reputations. On the album notes, they are listed as "Tommy and the Bijoux". Also present on the track was John Cale on viola.

In 1984, Townshend contributed lyrics to two songs ("Love on The Air" and "All Lovers are Deranged") on David Gilmour's solo album About Face.

For albums Townshend composed as a member of The Who, see their entry. Not included are albums by other artists on which Townshend played as a session musician. Through much of 2005, Pete Townshend recorded and performed alongside his partner Rachel Fuller, a classically trained pianist and singer-songwriter.

In 2006, Townshend opened a website for implementation of The Lifehouse Method based on his 1971 Lifehouse concept. This website was in collaboration with composer Lawrence Ball and software developer David Snowden. Applicants at the website could input data to compose a musical "portrait" which the musical team could then develop into larger compositions for a planned concert or series of concerts.

Awards

BRIT Awards 1983 – Life Achievement Award

Tony Award 1993 – Best Original Score (music & lyrics) – The Who's Tommy (tie)

Grammy Awards 1993 – Best Musical Show Album (as composer and lyricist of The Who's Tommy)

Kennedy Center Honors 2008

See also

Guitar showmanship

Cliff Townshend

Simon Townshend

References

Further reading

Horses Neck by Pete Townshend Mariner Books 1985, new edition, (21 May 1998) ISBN 0-395-90559-1 ISBN 978-0-395-90559-3

The Who: Maximum R&B; by Pete Townshend and Richard Barnes Plexus Publishing; 5th edition (27 September 2004) ISBN 0-85965-351-X ISBN 978-0-85965-351-0

Pete Townshend: A Minstrel's Dilemma by Larry David Smith Praeger Publishers (30 March 1999) ISBN 0-275-96472-8, ISBN 978-0-275-96472-6

Who Are You: The Life Of Pete Townshend by Mark Ian Wilkerson Omnibus Press; 1st edition (30 November 2008) ISBN 1-84772-243-1 ISBN 978-1-84772-243-0

External links

The Who's official web site

Pete Townshend's commercial Eelpie web site

In Love With Meher Baba (Townshend's 1970 Rolling Stone article)

video of Townshend's 1996 Fillmore West performance of his song "O Parvardigar"

Category:1945 births Category:Living people Category:English rock musicians Category:English male singers Category:English tenors Category:English guitarists Category:Lead guitarists Category:English rock guitarists Category:English composers Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Tony Award winners Category:English-language singers Category:English songwriters Category:English rock singers Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Deaf musicians Category:Followers of Meher Baba Category:The Who members Category:Townshend family Category:British rhythm and blues boom musicians Category:People from Chiswick

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