__NOTOC__ Year 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Events

January

January 1

* The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark enter the ''European Economic Community'', which later becomes the European Union.

* CBS sells the New York Yankees for $10 million to a 12-person syndicate led by George Steinbrenner (3.2 million dollars more than CBS bought the Yankees for).

January 4 – The pilot episode of the longest-running TV comedy series in the world ''Last of the Summer Wine'' is broadcast in the United Kingdom

January 14

* Elvis Presley's concert in Hawaii. The first worldwide telecast by an entertainer watched by more people than watched the Apollo moon landings.

* Super Bowl VII: The Miami Dolphins defeat the Washington Redskins 14–7 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, to complete the NFL's first Perfect Season in front of 90,182 fans.

January 15 – Vietnam War: Citing progress in peace negotiations, U.S. President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam.

January 17 – Ferdinand Marcos becomes President for Life of the Philippines.

January 18 – Eleven Labour Party councillors in Clay Cross, Derbyshire, England, are ordered to pay £6,985 for not enforcing the Housing Finance Act.

January 20 – U.S. President Richard Nixon is inaugurated for his second term.

January 21 – The Communist League is founded in Denmark.

January 22

* ''Roe v. Wade'': The U.S. Supreme Court overturns state bans on abortion.

* George Foreman defeats Joe Frazier to win the heavyweight world boxing championship.

* A Royal Jordanian Boeing 707 flight from Jeddah crashes in Kano, Nigeria; 176 people are killed.

* Former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson dies at his Stonewall, Texas ranch, leaving no former U.S. President living until the resignation of Richard M. Nixon in 1974.

January 23

* Eldfell on the Icelandic island of Heimaey erupts.

* U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam.

January 25 – English actor Derren Nesbitt is convicted of assaulting his wife Anne Aubrey.

January 27 – U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ends with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords.

January 31 – Pan American and Trans World Airlines cancelled their options to buy 13 Concorde airliners.

February

February 6 – Toronto: Construction on the CN Tower begins.

February 11 – Vietnam War: The first American prisoners of war are released from Vietnam.

February 12 – Ohio becomes the first U.S. state to post distance in metric on signs (see Metric system in the United States).

February 13 – The United States Dollar is devalued by 10%.

February 16 – The Court of Appeal of England and Wales rules that the ''Sunday Times'' can publish articles on Thalidomide and Distillers Company Limited, despite ongoing legal actions by parents (the decision is overturned in July by the House of Lords).

February 21 – Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 (Boeing 727) is shot down by Israeli fighter aircraft over the Sinai Desert, after the passenger plane is suspected of being an enemy military plane. Only 5 (1 crew member and 4 passengers) of 113 survive.

February 22 – Sino-American relations: Following President Richard Nixon's visit to mainland China, the United States and the People's Republic of China agree to establish liaison offices.

February 26 – Edward Heath's British government publishes a Green Paper on prices and incomes policy.

February 27 – The American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

February 28

* The Republic of Ireland general election is held.

* The landmark postmodern novel ''Gravity's Rainbow'' by Thomas Pynchon is published.

March

March 1

*Dick Taverne, having resigned from the Parliament of the United Kingdom on leaving the Labour Party, is re-elected as a 'Democratic Labour' candidate.

* Pink Floyd's ''The Dark Side of the Moon'', one of rock's landmark albums, is released in the US. It is released in the UK on March 24th.

March 3 – Tottenham Hotspur wins the Football League Cup final at Wembley, beating Norwich City 1–0.

March 7 – Comet Kohoutek is discovered.

March 8

* In the 'Border Poll', voters in Northern Ireland vote to remain part of the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists are encouraged to boycott the referendum.

* Provisional Irish Republican Army bombs explode in Whitehall and the Old Bailey in England.

March 10 – Sir Richard Sharples, Governor of Bermuda, is assassinated in Government House.

March 17

* Elizabeth II opens the modern London Bridge.

* Many of the few remaining United States soldiers begin to leave Vietnam. One reunion of a former POW with his family is immortalized in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph ''Burst of Joy''.

March 20 – A British government White Paper on Northern Ireland proposes the re-establishment of an Assembly elected by proportional representation, with a possible All-Ireland council.

March 21 – The Lofthouse Colliery disaster occurs in Great Britain.

March 23 – Watergate scandal (United States): In a letter to Judge John Sirica, Watergate burglar James W. McCord Jr. admits that he and other defendants have been pressured to remain silent about the case. He names former Attorney General John Mitchell as 'overall boss' of the operation.

March 29 – The last United States soldier leaves Vietnam.

April

April 2 – The LexisNexis computerized legal research service begins.

April 3 – The first handheld cellular phone call is made by Martin Cooper in New York City.

April 4 – The World Trade Center officially opens in New York City with a ribbon cutting ceremony.

April 5

* Fahri Korutürk becomes the sixth president of Turkey.

* ''Pioneer 11'' is launched on a mission to study the solar system.

April 6 – Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees becomes the first designated hitter in Major League Baseball.

April 7 – ''Tu te reconnaîtras'' by Anne-Marie David (music by Claude Morgan, text by Vline Buggy) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1973 for Luxembourg.

April 10 – Israeli commandos raid Beirut, assassinating 3 leaders of the Palestinian Resistance Movement. The Lebanese army's inaction brings the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Saib Salam, a Sunni Muslim.

April 11 – The British House of Commons voted against restoring capital punishment by a margin of 142 votes.

April 12 – The Labour Party wins control of the Greater London Council.

April 15 – Naim Talu, a former civil servant forms the new government of Turkey (36th government)

April 17

The German counter-terrorist force GSG 9 is officially formed.

* Federal Express officially begins operations, with the launch of 14 small aircraft from Memphis International Airport. On that night, Federal Express delivers 186 packages to 25 U.S. cities from Rochester, New York, to Miami, Florida.

* The Morganza Spillway on the Mississippi River is opened for the first time to prevent catastrophic flooding of New Orleans.

April 20 – An Indian Pacific train en route to Perth, derails near Broken Hill, New South Wales, destroying a quarter mile of track.

April 26 – This first day of trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange

April 28 – Six Irishmen, including Joe Cahill, are arrested by the Irish Naval Service off County Waterford, on board a coaster carrying 5 tons of weapons destined for the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

April 30 – Watergate Scandal: President Richard Nixon announces that top White House aides H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and others have resigned.

May

May 1 – An estimated 1,600,000 workers in the United Kingdom stop work in support of a Trade Union Congress "day of national protest and stoppage" against the Government's anti-inflation policy.

May 3 – The Sears Tower in Chicago is finished, becoming the world's tallest building at 1,451 feet.

May 5

Shambu Tamang becomes the youngest person to climb to the summit of Mount Everest.

* Sunderland AFC defeats Leeds United A.F.C. in the FA Cup final.

* Secretariat wins the Kentucky Derby.

May 8 – A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and American Indian Movement activists who were occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, ends with the surrender of the militants.

May 10

* The Polisario Front, a Sahrawi movement dedicated to the independence of Western Sahara, is formed.

* The New York Knicks defeat the Los Angeles Lakers, 102–93 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals to win the NBA title.

May 14

* ''Skylab'', the United States' first space station, is launched.

* The British House of Commons votes to abolish capital punishment in Northern Ireland.

May 17 – Watergate scandal: Televised hearings begin in the United States Senate.

May 18 – Cod War: Joseph Godber, British Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, announces that Royal Navy frigates will protect British trawlers fishing in the disputed 50-mile limit round Iceland.

May 19 – Secretariat wins the Preakness Stakes.

May 22 – Lord Lambton resigns from the British government over a 'call girl' scandal.

May 24 – Earl Jellicoe, Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords in Britain, resigns over a separate prostitution scandal.

May 25

* ''Skylab 2'' (Pete Conrad, Paul Weitz, Joseph Kerwin) is launched on a mission to repair damage to the recently launched ''Skylab'' space station.

* Héctor José Cámpora becomes democratic president of the Argentine Republic ending the 1966 to 1973 Revolución Argentina military dictatorship.

May 27 – By virtue of the non-retroactivity of Soviet copyright laws, all works published before this date are public domain. This applies worldwide.

June

June 1 – The Greek military junta abolishes the monarchy and proclaims a republic.

June 3 – A Tupolev Tu-144 crashes at the Paris air show; 15 are killed.

June 4 – A patent for the ATM is granted to Donald Wetzel, Tom Barnes and George Chastain.

June 9 – Secretariat wins the Belmont Stakes, becoming the first Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing winner since 1948.

June 10 – The grandson of J. Paul Getty is kidnapped in Rome.

June 16 – U.S. President Richard Nixon begins several talks with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

June 20 – The Ezeiza massacre occurs in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Snipers shoot on left-wing Peronists, killing at least 13 and injuring more than 300.

June 22 – W. Mark Felt ("Deep Throat") retires from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

June 23 – A house fire in Kingston upon Hull, England, which kills a 6-year-old boy is passed off as an accident; it later emerges as the first of 26 fire deaths caused over the next 7 years by arsonist Peter Dinsdale.

June 24 – Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev addresses the American people on television, the first to do so.

June 25

* Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)

* Erskine Hamilton Childers is elected the 4th President of Ireland.

* Watergate scandal: Former White House counsel John Dean begins his testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee.

June 26 – At Plesetsk Cosmodrome, 9 persons are killed in the explosion of a Cosmos 3-M rocket.

June 28 – Elections are held for the Northern Ireland Assembly, which will lead to power-sharing between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland for the first time.

June 30 – A very long total solar eclipse occurs. During the entire 2nd millennium, only 7 total solar eclipses exceeded 7 minutes of totality.

July

July 1 – The United States Drug Enforcement Administration is founded.

July 2 – The United States Congress passes the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA) mandating Special Education federally.

July 4 – MLB: The New York Mets fall 12½ games back in last place of the National League Eastern Division.

July 5

* The Isle of Man Post begins to issue its own postage stamps.

* The catastrophic BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) in Kingman, Arizona, following a fire that broke out as propane was being transferred from a railroad car to a storage tank, kills 11 firefighters. This explosion has become a classic incident, studied in fire department training programs worldwide.

July 6 – St Andrew's Cathedral, Singapore is gazetted as a national monument.

July 10 – The Bahamas gains full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations.

July 11 – Varig Flight 820 crashes near Orly, France; 123 are killed.

July 12 – 1973 National Archives Fire: A major fire destroys the entire 6th floor of the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri.

July 16 – Watergate Scandal: Former White House aide Alexander Butterfield informs the United States Senate Watergate Committee that President Richard Nixon had secretly recorded potentially incriminating conversations.

July 17 – King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan is deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery.

July 20

* France resumes nuclear bomb tests in Mururoa Atoll, over the protests of Australia and New Zealand.

* Bruce Lee dies.

July 21 – The Philippines receives its second Miss Universe title, with Margarita Moran as the winner.

July 23 – The Avianca Building in Bogotá, Colombia suffers a serious fire.

July 25 – The Soviet ''Mars 5'' space probe is launched.

July 28

* The Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, a massive rock festival featuring The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band and The Band, attracts over 600,000 music fans.

* ''Skylab 3'' (Owen Garriott, Jack Lousma, Alan Bean) is launched, to conduct various medical and scientific experiments aboard ''Skylab''.

July 29 – Formula One racing driver Roger Williamson dies in an accident, witnessed live on European television, during the 1973 Dutch Grand Prix.

July 30 – An 11-year legal action for the victims of Thalidomide ends.

July 31

* Militant protesters led by Ian Paisley disrupt the first sitting of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

* A Delta Air Lines Flight 173 DC9-31 aircraft lands short of Boston's Logan Airport runway in poor visibility, striking a sea wall about 165 feet (50 m) to the right of the runway centerline and about 3,000 feet (914 m) short. All 6 crew members and 83 passengers are killed, 1 of the passengers dying several months after the accident.

August

August 1 – Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) inaugurated.

August 2 – A flash fire kills 51 at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man.

August 5 – Black September members open fire at the Athens airport; 3 are killed, 55 injured.

August 8

* South Korean politician Kim Dae-Jung is kidnapped in Tokyo by the KCIA.

* The death of Dean Corll leads to the discovery of the Houston Mass Murders: 28 boys were killed by 3 men.

August 15 – The U.S. bombing of Cambodia ends, officially halting 12 years of combat activity in Southeast Asia.

August 23 – The Norrmalmstorg robbery occurs, famous for the origin of the term Stockholm syndrome.

September

September 3 – The British Trade Union Congress expels 20 members for registering under the Industrial Relations Act 1971.

September 11 – Chile's democratically elected government is overthrown in a military coup after serious instability. President Salvador Allende commits suicide during the coup in the presidential palace, and General Augusto Pinochet heads a U.S.-backed military junta that governs Chile for the next 16 years.

September 15 – Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden dies. His grandson, Carl XVI Gustaf, becomes king.

September 18 – The two German Republics, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), are admitted to the United Nations.

September 20 – ''The Battle of the Sexes'': Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in a televised tennis match, 6–4, 6–4, 6–3, at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas.

September 22 – Henry Kissinger, United States National Security Advisor, starts his term as United States Secretary of State.

September 23 – The Oakland Raiders defeat the Miami Dolphins 12-7, ending the Dolphins unbeaten streak at 18. It was the Miami Dolphins' first loss since January 16, 1972 in Super Bowl VI.

September 27 – Soviet space program: Soyuz 12, the first Soviet manned flight since the Soyuz 11 tragedy in 1971, is launched.

September 28 – ITT is bombed in New York City by leftist terrorists protesting the restoration of the Chilean Constitution ordered by the Chilean judicial and legislative branches against the Allende administration.

October

October 6 – Yom Kippur War: The fourth and largest Arab–Israeli conflict begins, as Egyptian and Syrian forces attack Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights on Yom Kippur.

October 8 – LBC Radio begins broadcasting on 97.3 FM in London.

October 10

* Spiro T. Agnew resigns as Vice President of the United States and then, in federal court in Baltimore, Maryland, pleads no contest to charges of income tax evasion on $29,500 he received in 1967, while he was governor of Maryland. He is fined $10,000 and put on 3 years' probation.

* The New York Mets win baseball's National League pennant, defeating the heavily favored Cincinnati Reds 3 games to 2.

October 14 – Students revolt in Bangkok, Thailand.

October 17 – The Arab Oil Embargo against several countries which support Israel triggers the 1973 energy crisis.

October 20

* The Saturday Night Massacre: U.S. President Richard Nixon orders Attorney General Elliot Richardson to dismiss Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refuses and resigns, along with Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Solicitor General Robert Bork, third in line at the Department of Justice, then fires Cox. The event raises calls for Nixon's impeachment.

* The Sydney Opera House is opened by Elizabeth II after 14 years of construction work.

October 21 – The Oakland Athletics win baseball's World Series, defeating the New York Mets 4 games to 3.

October 26

* The Yom Kippur War ends.

* The United Nations recognizes the independence of Guinea-Bissau.

October 27 – The Canon City meteorite, a 1.4 kilogram chondrite type meteorite, strikes Earth in Fremont County, Colorado.

October 30 – The Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time in history.

October 31 – Mountjoy Prison helicopter escape: Three Provisional Irish Republican Army members escape from Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, Republic of Ireland after a hijacked helicopter lands in the exercise yard.

November

November 1 – Watergate scandal: Acting Attorney General Robert Bork appoints Leon Jaworski as the new Watergate Special Prosecutor.

November 3

* Pan Am cargo flight 160, a Boeing 707-321C, crashes at Logan International Airport, Boston, killing 3 people.

* Mariner program: NASA launches ''Mariner 10'' toward Mercury (on March 29, 1974 it becomes the first space probe to reach that planet).

November 7 – The Congress of the United States overrides President Richard M. Nixon's veto of the War Powers Resolution, which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.

November 8 – Millennium '73, a festival hosted by Guru Maharaj Ji at the Astrodome, is called by supporters the "most significant event in human history".

November 11 – Egypt and Israel sign a United States-sponsored cease-fire accord.

November 14 – In the United Kingdom, Princess Anne marries a commoner, Captain Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey (they divorce in 1992).

November 16

* Skylab program: NASA launches ''Skylab 4'' (Gerald Carr, William Pogue, Edward Gibson) from Cape Canaveral, Florida on an 84-day mission.

* U.S. President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.

November 17

* Watergate scandal: In Orlando, Florida, U.S. President Richard Nixon tells 400 Associated Press managing editors "I am not a crook."

* The Athens Polytechnic uprising occurs against the military regime in Athens, Greece.

November 21 – U.S. President Richard Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, reveals the existence of an 18½-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate.

November 25 – Greek dictator George Papadopoulos is ousted in a military coup led by Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis.

November 27 – The United States Senate votes 92–3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States.

November 29 – 104 people are killed in a Taiyo department store fire in Kumamoto, Kyūshū, Japan.

December

December – Chile breaks diplomatic contacts with Sweden.

December 1 – Papua New Guinea gains self government from Australia.

December 3 – Pioneer program: ''Pioneer 10'' sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.

December 6 – The United States House of Representatives votes 387–35 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States; he is sworn in the same day.

December 15 – Gay rights: The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its DSM-II.

December 16 – O.J. Simpson of the Buffalo Bills became the first running back to rush for 2,000 yards in a pro football season.

December 18 – Islamic Development Bank created as a specialized agency of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) (effective 12 August 1974).

December 20 – Spanish prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco is assassinated in Madrid by the terrorist organization ETA.

December 23 – OPEC doubles the price of crude oil.

December 28 – The Endangered Species Act is passed in the United States.

December 30 – Terrorist Carlos fails in his attempt to assassinate British businessman Joseph Sieff.

December 31 – In the United Kingdom, due to coal shortages caused by industrial action, the Three-Day Week electricity consumption reduction measure comes into force.

Date unknown

ODECA functions suspended.

Economist E. F. Schumacher publishes his book ''Small is Beautiful''.

The National House Building Council is formed in the United Kingdom.

The COSC The Swiss Official Chronometer testing Institute is founded in Switzerland by 5 Watch Cantons & Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry FH.

The title Queen of Australia is created by the Royal Style and Titles Act.

Confirming the descriptions of bulkhead hull compartments for Chinese sailing ships in Zhu Yu's ''Pingzhou Table Talks'' of 1119, a large Song Dynasty trade ship of c. 1277 A.D. is dredged up from the waters near the southern coast of China that had 12 bulkhead compartment rooms in its hull.

Births

January

January 1 – Danny Lloyd, American actor

January 4 – Greg de Vries, Canadian ice hockey player

January 6 – Scott Ferguson, Canadian ice hockey player

January 7 – Jonna Tervomaa, Finnish singer

January 9 – Sean Paul, Jamaican singer

January 10 – Ryan Drummond, American actor

January 12

* Hande Yener, Turkish Singer

* Joseph M. Smith, American actor, writer and producer

January 13

* Nikolai Khabibulin, Russian hockey player

* Gloria Yip, Hong Kong actress

January 14 – Giancarlo Fisichella, Italian race car driver

January 15 – Tomáš Galásek, Czech football player

January 16 – Josie Davis, American actress

* Scott Greenall, Musician, Recording Engineer / Producer and performance artist.

January 17 – Cuauhtémoc Blanco, Mexican football player

January 18 – Crispian Mills, British musician (The Jeevas, Kula Shaker)

January 19

* Antero Manninen, Finnish cellist

* Karen Lancaume, French actress (d. 2005)

* Ann-Kristin Aarønes, Norwegian footballer

* Aaron Yonda, American YouTube celebrity

* Wang Junxia, Chinese long-distance runner

* Yevgeny Sadovyi, Russian swimmer

January 21

* Chris Kilmore, American rock DJ (Incubus)

* Duane Lee Chapman II American bail bondsman

January 22 – Abi Tucker, Australian actor and singer

January 29 – Jason Schmidt, American baseball player

January 30 – Jalen Rose, American basketball player

January 31 – Shingo Katayama, Japanese golfer

February

February 1

* Yuri Landman, Dutch artist and musician

* Nick Mitchell, American wrestler

February 2 – Aleksander Tammert, Estonian discus thrower

February 3 – Ilana Sod, Mexican journalist

February 4

* Oscar de la Hoya, American boxer

* James Hird, Australian rules footballer

February 5 – Deng Yaping, Chinese table tennis player

February 7 – Kate Thornton, British TV presenter

February 8 – Sonia Deol, British-Asian presenter

February 9 – Svetlana Boginskaya, Soviet gymnast

February 10 – Gunn-Rita Dahle, Norwegian mountain biker

February 11

* Varg Vikernes, Norwegian rock musician (Burzum)

* Craig Jones, American rock sampler (Slipknot)

February 12 – Tara Strong, Canadian-born voice actress

February 14 – Steve McNair, American football player (d. 2009)

February 15 – Amy Van Dyken, American swimmer

February 16 – Cathy Freeman, Australian athlete

February 18 – Claude Makélélé, French footballer

February 20 – Kimberley Davies, Australian actress

February 22

* Shota Arveladze, Georgian football player

* Gustavo Assis-Brasil, Brazilian guitarist

* Scott Phillips, American rock drummer (Creed, Alter Bridge)

February 24 – Jordan Jovtchev, Bulgarian gymnast

February 26

* Anders Björler & Jonas Björler, heavy metal guitarists

* Marshall Faulk, American football player

* Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Norwegian footballer

* Jenny Thompson, American swimmer

February 27 – Peter Andre, English singer and television personality

February 28

* Eric Lindros, Canadian hockey player

* Masato Tanaka, Japanese professional wrestler

March

March 1

* Jack Davenport, English actor

* Chris Webber, American basketball player

* Anton Gunn, American politician

March 3 – Dejan Bodiroga, Serbian basketball player

March 4 – Jennifer Cole, American actress, model and game show hostess

March 5 – Ryan Franklin, American baseball pitcher

March 7 – Rick Emerson, American talk show host and author

March 9 – Aaron Boone, American baseball player

March 10

* Dan Swanö, Swedish musician

* John LeCompt, American musician

March 13

* Edgar Davids, Dutch footballer

* David Draiman song writer and lead singer for the band Disturbed

March 15 – Lee Jung-jae, South Korean actor & model

March 17 – Caroline Corr, Irish musician (The Corrs)

March 19

* Magnus Hedman, Swedish footballer

* Simmone Jade Mackinnon, Australian actor

March 20 – Arjun Atwal, Indian golfer

March 23 – Jason Kidd, American basketball player

March 24

* Jacek Bąk, Polish footballer

* Jim Parsons, American actor

March 26

* T. R. Knight, American actor

* Larry Page, American entrepreneur

March 29 – Marc Overmars, Dutch footballer

March 30 – Adam Goldstein, American DJ (d. 2009)

April

April 1

* Stephen Fleming, New Zealand cricket captain

* Kris Marshall, British actor

April 2 – Roselyn Sanchez, Puerto Rican actress

April 3 – Matthew Ferguson, Canadian actor

April 4

* David Blaine, American magician

* Loris Capirossi, Italian motorcycle racer

April 5 – Pharrell, American musician and producer (The Neptunes)

April 6 – Rie Miyazawa, Japanese actress and singer

April 10 – Roberto Carlos, Brazilian football player

April 11 – Jennifer Esposito, American actress

April 13 – Sergei Shnurov, Russian singer

April 14 – Adrien Brody, Academy Award-winning American actor

April 15 – Emanuel Rego, Brazilian beach volleyball player

April 16 – Bonnie Pink, Japanese singer

April 18 – Haile Gebrselassie, Ethiopian long-distance runner

April 19 – George Gregan, Australian rugby union footballer

April 22 – Christopher Sabat, American voice actor

April 24

* Sachin Tendulkar, Indian cricketer

* Lee Westwood, English golfer

April 25 – Fredrik Larzon, Swedish rock musician (Millencolin)

April 27 – Sharlee D'Angelo, Bassist

April 28 – Melissa Fahn, American actress

April 29 – Johan Hegg

April 30

* Jeff Timmons, American singer

* Akon, Senegalese-American hip hop and R&B; singer

May

May 1

* Oliver Neuville, German footballer

* Paul Burke, Irish rugby player

May 3

* Brad Martin, American musician

* Michael Reiziger, Dutch footballer

May 4 – Guillermo Barros Schelotto, Argentine footballer

May 7 – Paolo Savoldelli, Italian professional road racing cyclist

May 8

* Hiromu Arakawa, Japanese manga artist

* Marcus Brigstocke, British comedian

May 9 – Tegla Loroupe, Kenyan long-distance runner

May 10

* Gareth Ainsworth, English footballer

* Rüştü Reçber, Turkish football goalkeeper

May 12 – Forbes March, American actor

May 14

* Natalie Appleton, Canadian singer

* Shanice, American singer

May 16

* Jason Acuna, American skateboarder and actor

* Tori Spelling, American actress

May 17 – Joshua Homme, American musician

May 18 – Kazuhiro Hayashi, Japanese professional wrestler

May 19 – Dario Franchitti, Scottish race car driver

May 21 – Noel Fielding, British comedian

May 23 – Jacopo Gianninoto, Italian musician

May 24 – Dermot O'Leary, British TV presenter

May 25

* Demetri Martin, American comedian

* Jean-Pierre Canlis, American glass artist

May 30 – Leigh Francis, British comedian

May 31 – Dominique van Roost, Belgian tennis player

June

June 1

* Fred Deburghgraeve, Belgian swimmer

* Heidi Klum, German model

* Derek Lowe, baseball player

June 6 – Kat Swift, American presidential candidate

June 8 – Lexa Doig, Canadian actress

June 9 – Tedy Bruschi, American football player

June 10 – Faith Evans, American singer

June 12 – Darryl White, Australian footballer

June 13 – Sam Adams, American football player

June 14 – Ceca Raznatovic, Serbian Folk singer

June 15

* Neil Patrick Harris, American actor

* Greg Vaughan, American actor

June 19 – Yuko Nakazawa, Japanese singer

June 20 – Chino Moreno, American musician

June 21 – Juliette Lewis, American actress

June 22 – Carson Daly, American talk show host

June 24 – Alexander Beyer, German actor

June 26 – Paweł Małaszyński, Polish actor

June 27 – Olve Eikemo, Norwegian musician

June 28 – Adrián Annus, Hungarian athlete

June 30 – Chan Ho Park, Korean Major League Baseball player

July

July 3 – Emma Cunniffe, British actress

July 4 – Gackt, Japanese singer

July 7 – Natsuki Takaya, Japanese manga artist

July 9 – Kelly Holcomb, American football player

July 11 – Konstantinos Kenteris, Greek athlete

July 12 – Christian Vieri, Italian soccer player

July 14 – Halil Mutlu, Bulgaria-born Turkish weightlifter

July 15 – John Dolmayan, Lebanese-born rock drummer for the band System of a Down

July 16

* Stefano Garzelli, Italian professional road racing cyclist

* Graham Robertson, American filmmaker and author

July 17

* Eric Moulds, American football player

* Liam Kyle Sullivan, American comedian

July 18 – Anders Jivarp, Dark Tranquillity

July 20

* Peter Forsberg, Swedish hockey player

* HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway

July 22

* Daniel Jones, Australian musician and record producer

* Rufus Wainwright, American-Canadian musician

July 23

* Nomar Garciaparra, American baseball player

* Monica Lewinsky, American former White House intern

July 25 – Tony Vincent, American actor and singer

July 26 – Kate Beckinsale, English actress

July 27 – Gorden Tallis, Australian rugby league player

July 28 – Steve Staios, Canadian ice hockey player

July 30

* Markus Näslund, Swedish ice hockey player

* Sonu Nigam, Indian singer

August

August 2

* Miguel Mendonca, Anglo-Azorean writer

August 6

* Asia Carrera, American actress

* Vera Farmiga, American actress

August 9 – Filippo Inzaghi, Italian footballer

August 11 – Carolyn Murphy, American model

August 12 – Richard Reid, English terrorist

August 14

* Jared Borgetti, Mexican footballer

* Kieren Perkins, Australian swimmer

* Jay-Jay Okocha, Nigerian soccer player (footballer)

August 15 – Adnan Sami, music composer, pianist, singer

August 16 – Damian Jackson, baseball player

August 19

* HRH Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway

* Marco Materazzi, Italian football player

August 20 – Todd Helton, American baseball player

August 21

* Steve McKenna, hockey player

* Nikolai Valuev, Russian heavyweight boxing champion

* Sergey Brin, Soviet-born American entrepreneur, co-founder of Google

August 22

* Howie Dorough, American singer (Backstreet Boys)

* Kristen Wiig, American actress and comedian

August 24

* Dave Brown, English comedian, photographer, graphic designer, choreographer and naan bread

* Dave Chappelle, American actor, comedian

* Inge de Bruijn, Dutch swimmer

* Carmine Giovinazzo, American actor

August 28 – Kirby Morrow, Canadian voice actor

August 30 – Lisa Ling, American journalist

September

September 1 – Ram Kapoor, Indian actor

September 4 – Jason David Frank, American actor and martial artist

September 5 – Rose McGowan, American actress

September 6

* Carlo Cudicini, Italian footballer

* Greg Rusedski, Anglo-Canadian tennis player

September 7 – Shannon Elizabeth, American actress

September 9 – Kazuhisa Ishii, Japanese baseball player

September 12

* Darren Campbell, British athlete

* Paul Walker, American actor

September 13 – Fabio Cannavaro, Italian footballer

September 14 – Andrew Lincoln, British actor

September 15

* Julie Cox, English actress

* Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland, né Olof Daniel Westling, Swedish prince, married to crownprincess Victoria

September 17 – Ada Choi, Hong Kong actress

September 18

* Paul Brousseau, Canadian ice hockey player

* James Marsden, actor

* Mark Shuttleworth, South African entrepreneur

* Ami Onuki, Japanese singer

September 19 – José Azevedo, Portuguese cyclist

September 21 – Oswaldo Sanchez, Mexican footballer

September 22

* Craig McRae, Australian footballer

* Yoo Chae-yeong, South Korean singer and actress

September 24 – Eddie George, American football player

September 25 – Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, American actress

September 29 – Joe Hulbig, American ice hockey player

October

October 1 – Christian Borle, American singer and actor

October 3

* Neve Campbell, Canadian actress

* Richard Ian Cox, Canadian voice actor and radio host

October 4 – Chris Parks, American professional wrestler

October 5 – Annabelle Chvostek, Canadian singer/songwriter/singer

October 6 – Ioan Gruffudd, Welsh actor

October 9 – Steven Burns, ''Blues Clues'' Actor

October 10 – Mario López, American actor

October 11 – Takeshi Kaneshiro, Taiwanese/Japanese actor

October 13

* Nanako Matsushima, Japanese actress

* Matt Hughes, American mixed martial arts fighter

October 14 – Lasha Zhvania, Georgian Politician

October 19 – Joaquin Gage, Canadian ice hockey player

October 21 – Beverly Turner, British TV and radio presenter

October 22 – Ichiro Suzuki, Japanese baseball player

October 24 – Levi Leipheimer, American professional cyclist

October 25

* Lamont Bentley, American actor (d. 2005)

* Maxi Mounds, American female stripper, largest breasts in the world

October 26

* Seth MacFarlane, American animator and voice actor

* Taka Michinoku, Japanese professional wrestler

October 28 – MVP, WWE Raw wrestler

October 29 – Robert Pirès, French football player

October 30

* Silvia Corzo, Colombian newsreader

* Edge, Canadian professional wrestler, 2-time WWE Champion

November

November 1

* Assia, Algerian singer

* Aishwarya Rai, Indian actress

* Li Xiaoshuang, Chinese gymnast

November 3 – Mick Thomson, American guitarist (Slipknot)

November 5 – Johnny Damon, baseball player

November 9 – Maija Vilkkumaa, Finnish pop rock singer

November 9- Alyson Court, Canadian actress ( The Big Comfy Couch)

November 14

*Lawyer Milloy, American football player

*Dana Snyder, American voice actor

November 20 – Sav Rocca, American football player and former Australian rules footballer

November 22 – Cassie Campbell, Canadian ice hockey forward and CBC commentator

November 26 – Peter Facinelli, American actor

November 28

* Jade Puget, American guitarist (AFI)

* Rob Conway, American professional wrestler

November 29

* Ryan Giggs, Welsh footballer

* Raphael Smith, South African screenwriter and songwriter

November 30

* Lim Chang-jung, South Korean actor

* Jason Reso, Canadian professional wrestler

December

December 2

* Monica Seles, Yugoslavian-born tennis player

* Jan Ullrich, German professional road bicycle racer

December 3 – Holly Marie Combs, American actress

December 4

* Tyra Banks, American supermodel and talk show host

* Steven Menzies, Australian rugby league player

December 5 – Mikelangelo Loconte, Italian singer

December 7 – Terrell Owens, American football player

December 8 – Corey Taylor, American rock vocalist (Slipknot, ''Stone Sour)

December 11 – Cameron Alexander, British musician and actor

December 14

* Thuy Trang, Vietnamese-born actress (d. 2001)

* Tomasz Radzinski, Canadian footballer

December 15 – Surya Bonaly, French figure skater

December 16 – Scott Storch, American hip-hop producer

December 17 – Paula Radcliffe, British athlete

December 18 – Darryl Brown, Trinidad and West Indian cricketer

December 20 – Antti Kasvio, Finnish swimmer

December 24

* Kerry Nettle, Australian Senator

* Stephenie Meyer, American author

December 25 – Chris Harris, American professional wrestler

December 27

* Wilson Cruz, American actor

* Kristoffer Zegers, Dutch composer

December 28

* Ids Postma, Dutch speed skater

* Seth Meyers, American actor and comedian

December 29 – Theo Epstein, American baseball general manager

December 30

* Jason Behr, American actor

* Ato Boldon, West Indian athlete

December 31 – Nikolay Tsiskaridze, Russian dancer

Deaths

January

January 1

* Sergei Kourdakov, former KGB agent (b. 1951)

* Sir Arthur Elton, pioneer of the British documentary film industry (b. 1906)

January 8 – Dudley Foster, British actor (b. 1924)

January 19 – Max Adrian, Northern Irish actor (b. 1903)

January 22 – Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States (b. 1908)

January 23 – Kid Ory, American musician (b. 1886)

January 24 – J. Carrol Naish, American actor (b. 1897)

January 26 – Edward G. Robinson, American actor (b. 1893)

January 28 – John Banner, Austrian-born actor (b. 1910)

January 29 – Ludwig Stössel, Austrian actor (b. 1883)

January 31 – Ragnar Anton Kittil Frisch, Norwegian economist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1895)

February

February 11 – Hans D Jensen, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1907)

February 15

* Wally Cox, American actor (b. 1924)

* Tim Holt, American actor (b. 1919)

February 16 – Francisco Caamaño, Dominican politician (b. 1932)

February 19 – Joseph Szigeti, Hungarian violinist (b. 1892)

February 22

* Elizabeth Bowen, Irish novelist (b. 1899)

* Katina Paxinou, Greek actress (b. 1900)

February 23 – Dickinson W. Richards, American physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1895)

February 28 – Cecil Kellaway, South African actor (b. 1893)

March

March 3 – Vera Panova, Soviet-Russian writer (b. 1905)

March 6 – Pearl S. Buck, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1892)

March 8 – Ron Pigpen McKernan, American rock musician (Grateful Dead) (b. 1945)

March 10 – Robert Siodmak, German-American director (b. 1900)

March 13 – Melville Cooper, British actor (b. 1896)

March 14

* Rafael Godoy, Colombian composer (b. 1907)

* Chic Young, American cartoonist (b. 1901)

March 18

* Johannes Aavik, Estonian philologist (b. 1880)

* Lauritz Melchoir, Danish opera singer (b. 1890)

March 23 – Ken Maynard, American actor (b. 1895)

March 25 – Edward Steichen, American photographer (b. 1879)

March 26

* Safford Cape, American composer and musicologist (b. 1906)

* Noel Coward, English composer and playwright (b. 1899)

* George Sisler, American baseball player (b. 1893)

April

April 8 – Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist (b. 1881)

April 12

* Arthur Freed, American film producer (b. 1894)

* Henry Darger, reclusive American outsider artist (b. 1892)

April 16

* Istvan Kertesz, Hungarian conductor (b. 1929)

* Nino Bravo, singer (b. 1944)

April 19 – Hans Kelsen, Austrian-born legal theorist (b. 1881)

April 20 – Robert Armstrong, American actor (b. 1890)

April 21

* Merian C. Cooper, American aviator, director, and producer (b. 1893)

* Arthur Fadden, 13th Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1894)

April 26 – Irene Ryan, American actress (b. 1902)

April 28 – Jacques Maritain, Catholic philosopher (b. 1882)

April 30 – Václav Renč, Czech poet, dramatist and translator (b. 1911)

May

May 1 – Asger Jorn, Danish painter (b. 1914)

May 2 – Alan Carney, American actor and comedian (b. 1909)

May 10 – Jack E. Leonard, American comedian (b. 1910)

May 11 – Lex Barker, American actor (b. 1919)

May 12 – Frances Marion, American screenwriter (b. 1888)

May 14 – Jean Gebser, German author, linguist, and poet (b. 1905)

May 18 – Jeannette Rankin, first U.S. Congresswoman (b. 1880)

May 20 – Jarno Saarinen, Finnish motorcycle racer (b. 1945)

May 21 – Vaughn Monroe, American singer (b. 1911)

May 26 – Jay C. Higginbotham, American musician (b. 1906)

June

June 1 – Mary Kornman, American actress (b. 1915)

June 3 – Dory Funk, American professional wrestler (b. 1919)

June 4 – Arna Bontemps, African-American Harlem Renaissance writer (b. 1902)

June 5 – Max Terhune, American actor (b. 1891)

June 10 – William Inge, American playwright (b. 1913)

June 18 – Roger Delgado, English actor (b. 1918)

June 23 – Fay Holden, American actress (b. 1893)

June 24 – Mary Carr, American actress (b. 1874)

June 26 – Ernest Truex, American actor (b. 1889)

June 30

* Nancy Mitford, English novelist (b. 1904)

* Blessed Vasyl Velychkovsky C.Ss.R, Ukrainian Catholic bishop and martyr (b. 1903)

July

July 1 – Yosef Alon, Israeli pilot, co-founder of the Israeli Air Force, assassinated in the United States (b. 1929)

July 2

* Betty Grable, American actress (b. 1916)

* Swede Savage, American race car driver (b. 1946)

July 5 – Golwalkar, Second sarsanghchalak of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (b. 1906)

July 6

* Otto Klemperer, German-born conductor (b. 1885)

* Joe E. Brown, American actor (b. 1892)

July 7 – Veronica Lake, American actress (b. 1922)

July 8

* Ben-Zion Dinur, Russian-born Israeli educator, historian and politician (b. 1884)

* Wilfred Rhodes, English cricketer (b. 1877)

July 11

* Robert Ryan, American actor (b. 1909)

* Alexander Mosolov, Russian composer (b. 1900)

July 12 – Lon Chaney, Jr., American actor (b. 1906)

July 18 – Jack Hawkins, British actor (b. 1910)

July 20

* Robert Smithson, American artist (b. 1938)

* Bruce Lee, Chinese-American martial artist and actor (b. 1940)

July 27 – Eddie Rickenbacker, American World War I flying ace and race car driver (b. 1890)

July 29

* Henri Charriere, French writer (b. 1906)

* Roger Williamson, British race car driver (b. 1948)

August

August 1

* Gian Francesco Malipiero, Italian composer (b. 1882)

* Walter Ulbricht, East German leader (b. 1893)

August 2 – Jean-Pierre Melville, French film director (b. 1917)

August 4 – Eddie Condon, American jazz musician (b. 1905)

August 6

* James Beck, British actor (b. 1929)

* Fulgencio Batista, Cuban dictator (b. 1901)

August 9 – Charles Daniels, American Olympic swimmer (b. 1885)

August 10 – Douglas Kennedy, American actor (b. 1915)

August 11 – Karl Ziegler, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1898)

August 12

* Dayanand Bandodkar, Chief Minister of Goa (b. 1911)

* Walter Rudolf Hess, Swiss physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881)

August 16

* Veda Ann Borg, American actress (b. 1915)

* Selman Waksman, Ukrainian-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1888)

August 17

* Conrad Aiken, American writer (b. 1889)

* Jean Barraqué, French composer (b. 1928)

* Paul Williams, American singer (b. 1939)

August 30 – Michael Dunn, American actor (b. 1934)

August 31 – John Ford, American film director (b. 1895)

September

September 2

* Diana Sands, American actress (b. 1934)

* J. R. R. Tolkien, British writer (b. 1892)

September 11 – Salvador Allende, President of Chile (b. 1908)

September 13 – Betty Field, American actress (b. 1913)

September 15

* King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden (b. 1882)

* Victor Jara, Chilean politician and singer-songwriter (b. 1932)

September 18 – Ken Harada, first diplomat from Japan to the Holy See (age 80)

September 19 – Gram Parsons, American musician (b. 1946)

September 20

* Jim Croce, American songwriter (b. 1943)

* Glenn Strange, American actor (b. 1899)

September 23 – Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1904)

September 24 – Josué de Castro, Brazilian writer, physician, geographer and activist against hunger (b. 1908)

September 26

* Ralph Earnhardt, American race car driver (b. 1928)

* Anna Magnani, Italian actress (b. 1908)

September 29 – W. H. Auden, English poet (b. 1907)

September 28 – Norma Crane, American actress (b. 1928)

September 30 – Peter Pitseolak, Inuit photographer and author (b. 1902)

October

October 2

* Paul Hartman, American dancer and actor (b. 1904)

* Paavo Nurmi, Finnish runner (b. 1897)

October 6

* Sidney Blackmer, American actor (b. 1895)

* François Cevert, French race car driver (b. 1944)

October 8 – Gabriel Marcel, French Catholic existential thinker (b. 1889)

October 10 – Ludwig von Mises, Austrian economist (b. 1881)

October 14

* Edmund A. Chester, American broadcaster and journalist (b.1897)

* Ahmed Hamdi, Egyptian soldier, who fought in Yom Kippur (b.1929)

October 16 – Gene Krupa, American jazz drummer (b. 1909)

October 17 – Ingeborg Bachmann, Austrian writer (b. 1926)

October 18

* Walt Kelly, American cartoonist (b. 1913)

* Crane Wilbur, American actor (b. 1886)

October 19 – Margaret Caroline Anderson, American magazine publisher (b. 1886)

October 22 – Pau Casals, Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor (b. 1876)

October 25 – Abebe Bikila, Ethiopian long-distance runner (b. 1932)

October 27 – Allan "Rocky" Lane, American actor (b. 1909)

October 28 – Cleo Moore, American actress (b. 1928)

November

November 3 – Marc Allégret, French film director (b. 1900)

November 10 – David "Stringbean" Akeman, American banjo player (b. 1915)

November 11 – Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, Finnish chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1895)

November 13 – Lila Lee, American actress (b. 1901)

November 23

* Sessue Hayakawa, Japanese-American actor (b. 1889)

* Constance Talmadge, American actress (b. 1897)

November 25 – Laurence Harvey, English actor (b. 1928)

November 27 – Frank Christian, American musician (b. 1887)

November 28 – John Rostill, English bassist, musician and composer (The Shadows) (b. 1942)

November 30 – Allan Sherman, American musical parodist (b. 1924)

December

December 1 – David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel (b. 1886)

December 3 – Emile Christian, American musician (b. 1895)

December 4 – Michael O'Shea, American actor (b. 1906)

December 5 – Robert Watson-Watt, Scottish engineer, inventor of radar (b. 1892)

December 20

* Bobby Darin, American singer, songwriter, musician, actor, dancer, impressionist and TV presenter (b. 1936)

* Luis Carrero Blanco, first minister of Spain (assassinated) (b. 1907)

December 25

* Gabriel Voisin, French aviation pioneer (b. 1880)

* İsmet İnönü, Turkish general, prime minister, and president (b. 1884)

* Adrian Scott, American screenwriter, one of the Hollywood Ten (b. 1912)

December 26

* William Haines, American actor (b. 1900)

* Harold B. Lee, American president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (b. 1899)

Nobel prizes

Physics – Leo Esaki, Ivar Giaever, Brian David Josephson

Chemistry – Ernst Otto Fischer, Geoffrey Wilkinson

Medicine – Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen

Literature – Patrick White

Peace – Henry A. Kissinger, Le Duc Tho

Economics – Wassily Leontief

References

1973 Coin Pictures

af:1973 am:1973 እ.ኤ.አ. ang:1973 ar:ملحق:1973 an:1973 frp:1973 ast:1973 gn:1973 av:1973 ay:1973 az:1973 bn:১৯৭৩ zh-min-nan:1973 nî map-bms:1973 be:1973 be-x-old:1973 bh:१९७३ bcl:1973 bs:1973 br:1973 bg:1973 ca:1973 cv:1973 cs:1973 cbk-zam:1973 co:1973 cy:1973 da:1973 de:1973 et:1973 el:1973 myv:1973 ие es:1973 eo:1973 eu:1973 fa:۱۹۷۳ (میلادی) hif:1973 fo:1973 fr:1973 fy:1973 fur:1973 ga:1973 gv:1973 gd:1973 gl:1973 gan:1973年 xal:1973 җил ko:1973년 hy:1973 hi:१९७३ hr:1973. io:1973 ilo:1973 bpy:মারি ১৯৭৩ id:1973 ia:1973 os:1973-æм аз is:1973 it:1973 he:1973 jv:1973 kn:೧೯೭೩ pam:1973 ka:1973 csb:1973 kk:1973 kw:1973 sw:1973 kv:1973 во ht:1973 (almanak gregoryen) ku:1973 krc:1973 джыл la:1973 lv:1973. gads lb:1973 lt:1973 m. lij:1973 li:1973 ln:1973 jbo:1973moi lmo:1973 hu:1973 mk:1973 ml:1973 mi:1973 mr:इ.स. १९७३ arz:1973 ms:1973 nah:1973 nl:1973 nds-nl:1973 ne:१९७३ ja:1973年 nap:1973 no:1973 nn:1973 nrm:1973 nov:1973 oc:1973 mhr:1973 or:୧୯୭୩ uz:1973 pa:੧੯੭੩ pi:१९७३ pnb:1973 pap:1973 tpi:1973 nds:1973 pl:1973 pt:1973 ty:1973 ksh:Joohr 1973 ro:1973 qu:1973 rue:1973 ru:1973 год sah:1973 se:1973 sq:1973 scn:1973 simple:1973 sk:1973 sl:1973 so:1973 ckb:١٩٧٣ sr:1973 sh:1973 su:1973 fi:1973 sv:1973 tl:1973 ta:1973 tt:1973 ел te:1973 tet:1973 th:พ.ศ. 2516 tr:1973 tk:1973 udm:1973 ар uk:1973 ur:1973ء vec:1973 vi:1973 vo:1973 fiu-vro:1973 wa:1973 zh-classical:一九七三年 vls:1973 war:1973 yi:1973 yo:1973 zh-yue:1973年 diq:1973 bat-smg:1973 zh:1973年

name	Uriah Heep
series	David Copperfield
creator	Charles Dickens
gender	Male
occupation	Moneylender
nationality	British }}

Uriah Heep is a fictional character created by Charles Dickens in his novel ''David Copperfield''.

The character is notable for his cloying humility, obsequiousness, and insincerity, making frequent references to his own "'umbleness". His name has become synonymous with being a yes man. He is the central antagonist of the later part of the book.

In book

David first meets the 15-year-old Heep when he is living with Mr. Wickfield and his daughter Agnes, in chapter 15: :''[Uriah's face] was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red-haired people. It belonged to a red-haired person—a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older—whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony's head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at us in the chaise.''

Uriah has been employed as clerk to Wickfield for four years, since he was eleven. Uriah's father, who instilled him with the need to be humble, died when Uriah was ten, and for the first part of the novel he lives alone with his mother in their "umble abode". Copperfield takes an immediate and permanent dislike to Uriah, in spite of the latter's persistent, if insincere attempts to win his friendship. Uriah addresses Copperfield as "Master Copperfield" well into their adulthood, an indication of his true patronising view.

Uriah is repeatedly mentioned as ugly and repulsive, even in his youth - tall, lank and pale with red hair and lashless eyes. He may be albino, according to frequent mentions of his pale skin and red eyes, though this is never clearly stated. Dickens negatively emphasizes Uriah's movements as well, described as jerking and writhing; this leads some literary scholars to believe Dickens is describing a form of dystonia, a muscular disorder, to increase Uriah's snakelike character. Uriah explains in another part of the book that his ambition and greed are fueled by resentment from the double-standard of his schooling and from his treatment as a child, and by encouragement from his parents. As Uriah works for Wickfield for the next five or so years, he teaches himself law at night, and by blackmailing Mr. Wickfield, gains control over his business.

He eventually succeeds in having himself made a full partner in the business. His eventual ambition is to marry Agnes and gain control of the Wickfield fortune. Like most of Dickens' villains, greed is his main motivation. Heep is eventually stymied by Mr. Micawber and Tommy Traddles, with help from David and Agnes. Once his fraud and treachery are unmasked, he persists in hounding Micawber and Copperfield. Towards the end of the novel, he is last seen in Mr. Creakle’s prison where we find that he has returned to his "umble" ways, and puts himself forward as a model prisoner. He is said to be sentenced for transportation for life, which likely means he will eventually be sent to one of the penal colonies in Australia.

Origins

Much of ''David Copperfield'' is autobiographical and some scholars believe Heep's mannerisms and physical attributes to be based on Hans Christian Andersen whom Dickens met shortly before writing the novel. Uriah Heep's schemes and behaviour are more likely based on Thomas Powell, employer to a friend of Dickens, Thomas Chapman. Powell "...ingratiated himself into the Dickens household" and was discovered to be a forger and a thief, having embezzled £10,000 from his employer. He later attacked Dickens in pamphlets, calling particular attention to Dickens' social class and background. Powell was later deemed a lunatic.

The characteristics of grasping manipulation and insincerity can lead to a person being labelled "a Uriah Heep" as Lyndon Johnson is called in Robert Caro's biography. Seymour Fleming, a character in the play Babes in Arms, is also called thus. Author Philip Roth once compared President Richard Nixon to Uriah Heep. More recently, the historian Tony Judt used the term to describe Marshall Petain of French Vichy government shame.

Film and television

In film and television adaptations, the character has been played by, amongst others, Roland Young (1935), Colin Jeavons (1966), Ron Moody (1970), Martin Jarvis (1974), Paul Brightwell (1986), Nicholas Lyndhurst (1999), Frank MacCusker (2000) and Simon Pegg (2009).

Cultural references

The British rock band Uriah Heep is named after the character.

In the BBC television series ''Blake's 7'', the computer character Slave was described by Peter Tuddenham, who voiced it, as "...a Uriah Heep type of character...."

References

External links

Information, Illustrations, Analysis, Select Resources on the novel

Category:Fictional characters introduced in 1850 Heep Heep

fr:Uriah Heep (personnage) it:Uriah Heep pl:Uriasz Heep ro:Uriah Heep (personaj) sv:Uriah Heep (fiktiv person)

Name	Alice Cooper
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Vincent Damon Furnier
Born	February 04, 1948Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Instrument	Vocals, harmonica, guitar
Genre	Rock, hard rock, heavy metal, shock rock
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, actor, DJ
Years active	1964–present
Associated acts	Alice Cooper band, Ozzy Osbourne, Slash
Label	Straight, Warner Bros., Atlantic, MCA, Epic, Spitfire, Eagle, New West
Website	}}

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier; February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, boa constrictors, and baby dolls, Cooper has drawn equally from horror movies, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a grandly theatrical and violent brand of heavy metal designed to shock.

Alice Cooper was originally a band consisting of Furnier on vocals and harmonica, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar, and drummer Neal Smith. The original Alice Cooper band broke into the international music mainstream with the 1971 hit "I'm Eighteen" from the album ''Love it to Death'', which was followed by the even bigger single "School's Out" in 1972. The band reached their commercial peak with the 1973 album ''Billion Dollar Babies''.

Furnier's solo career as Alice Cooper, adopting the band's name as his own name, began with the 1975 concept album ''Welcome to My Nightmare''. In 2008 he released ''Along Came a Spider'', his 18th solo album but his 25th album. Expanding from his original Detroit rock roots, over the years Cooper has experimented with many various musical styles, including conceptual rock, art rock, hard rock, new wave, pop rock, experimental rock and industrial rock.

Alice Cooper is known for his social and witty persona offstage. ''The Rolling Stone Album Guide'' goes so far as to call him the world's most "beloved heavy metal entertainer". He helped to shape the sound and look of heavy metal, and is seen as the one who "first introduced horror imagery to rock'n'roll, and whose stagecraft and showmanship have permanently transformed the genre". Away from music, Cooper is a film actor, a golfing celebrity, a restaurateur and, since 2004, a popular radio DJ with his classic rock show ''Nights with Alice Cooper''.

In 2011 the original Alice Cooper band was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Early life

Cooper was born as Vincent Damon Furnier in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Ella Mae (Née McCart) and Ether Moroni Furnier. His father was a lay preacher in the Church of Jesus Christ (also known as the Bickertonite Church) which, historically, is a branch of the Latter Day Saint movement. He has French Huguenot, Sioux Native American, English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry, and was named after one of his uncles (Vincent Collier Furnier) and the writer Damon Runyon. His paternal grandfather, Thurman Sylvester Furnier, was an apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite). Vincent Furnier was active in his church at the ages of 11 and 12.

While growing up in Detroit, Furnier attended Washington Elementary School, then Nankin Mills Jr. High, now Lutheran High School Westland. Following a series of childhood illnesses, Furnier moved with his family to Phoenix, Arizona, where he attended Cortez High School in north Phoenix, and was a member of the Order of DeMolay.

Recording career

1960s

In 1964 sixteen year-old Furnier was eager to take part in the local annual letterman's talent show, so he gathered fellow cross-country teammates to form a group for the show. They named themselves The Earwigs. Since they did not know how to play any instruments at the time, they dressed up like The Beatles and mimed their performance to Beatles songs. As a result of winning the talent show and loving the experience of being onstage, the group immediately proceeded to learn how to play instruments they acquired from a local pawn shop. They soon renamed themselves The Spiders, featuring Furnier on vocals, Glen Buxton on lead guitar, John Tatum on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar, and John Speer on drums. Musically, the group was inspired by artists such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, and The Yardbirds. For the next year the band performed regularly around the Phoenix area with a huge black spider's web as their backdrop, the group's first stage prop. In 1965 they recorded their first single, "Why Don't You Love Me" (originally performed by The Blackwells), with Furnier learning the harmonica for that song.

In 1966 The Spiders graduated from high school, and after North High School footballer, Michael Bruce, replaced John Tatum on rhythm guitar, the band scored a local #1 radio hit with "Don't Blow Your Mind," an original composition from their second single release. By 1967 the band had begun to make regular road trips to Los Angeles, California to play shows. They soon renamed themselves The Nazz and released the single "Wonder Who's Lovin' Her Now," backed with future Alice Cooper track "Lay Down And Die, Goodbye." At around this time drummer John Speer was replaced by Neal Smith. By the end of the year the band had relocated to Los Angeles permanently.

In 1968 upon learning that Todd Rundgren also had a band called Nazz, the band was again in need of another stage name. Believing that the group needed a gimmick to succeed, and that other bands were not exploiting the showmanship potential of the stage, Furnier chose "Alice Cooper" as the band's name and adopted this stage name as his own. Cooper later stated that the name change was one of his most important and successful career moves.

Nonetheless, at the time Cooper and the band realized that the concept of a male playing the role of a villian, a woman killer, in tattered women's clothing and wearing make-up, would have the potential to cause considerable social controversy and grab headlines. In 2007 in his book ''Alice Cooper, Golf Monster'' Cooper stated that his look was inspired in part by film. One of the band's all time favorite movies was ''What Ever Happened to Baby Jane'' starring Bette Davis. "In the movie, Bette wears disgusting caked makeup smeared on her face and underneath her eyes, with deep , dark, black eyeliner." Another movie watched over and over was ''Barbarella''. "When I saw Anita Pallenberg playing the Great Tyrant in that movie in 1968, wearing long black leather gloves with switchblades coming out of them, I thought, 'That's what Alice should look like'. That, and a little bit of Emma Peel from ''The Avengers''".

The conception for the character that Cooper plays on stage came when he took careful observation of the rock world around him. He noticed that rock stars were always made out to be heroes, and that rock villains were scarce. In a 2010 interview he stated, "Why do we always have rock heroes? Why not a rock villain? I was more than happy to be rock's Darth Vader. I was more than happy to be Captain Hook."

The classic Alice Cooper group line-up consisted of singer Alice Cooper (Vincent Furnier), lead guitarist Glen Buxton, rhythm guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway, and drummer Neal Smith. With the exception of Smith, who graduated from Camelback High School (which is referred to in the song "Alma Mater" on the ''School's Out'' album), all of the band members were on the Cortez High School cross-country team, and many of Cooper's stage effects were inspired by their cross-country coach, Emmett Smith (one of Smith's class projects was to build a working guillotine for slicing watermelons). Cooper, Buxton and Dunaway were also art students, and their admiration for the works of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí would further inspire their future stage antics.

One night after an unsuccessful gig at the Cheetah club in Venice, California, where the band emptied the entire room of patrons after playing just ten minutes, they were approached and enlisted by music manager Shep Gordon, who ironically saw the band's negative impact that night as a force that could be turned in a more productive direction. Shep then arranged an audition for the band with composer and renowned record producer, Frank Zappa, who was looking to sign bizarre music acts to his new record label, Straight Records. For the audition Zappa told them to come to his house "at 7 o'clock." The band mistakenly assumed he meant 7 o'clock in the morning. Being woken up by a band willing to play that particular brand of psychedelic rock at seven in the morning impressed Zappa enough to sign them to a three-album deal. Another Zappa-signed act, the all-female GTOs, who liked to "dress the Cooper boys up like full size barbie dolls," played a major role in developing the band's early onstage look.

Cooper's first album ''Pretties for You'' (released in 1969) had a slight psychedelic feel. Although it touched the US charts for one week at #193, it was ultimately a critical and commercial failure.

Alice Cooper's "shock rock" reputation apparently developed almost by accident at first. An unrehearsed stage routine involving Cooper and a live chicken garnered attention from the press, and the band decided to capitalize on the tabloid sensationalism, creating in the process a new subgenre, shock rock. Cooper claims that the infamous "Chicken Incident" at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert in September 1969 was an accident. A chicken somehow made its way onto the stage during Cooper's performance, and not having any experience around farm animals, Cooper presumed that, because the chicken had wings, it would be able to fly. He picked it up and threw it out over the crowd, expecting it to fly away. The chicken instead plummeted into the first few rows occupied by disabled people in wheelchairs, who reportedly proceeded to tear the bird to pieces.

The next day the incident made the front page of national newspapers, and Zappa phoned Cooper and asked if the story, which reported that he had bitten off the chicken's head and drunk its blood on stage, was true. Cooper denied the rumor, whereupon Zappa told him, "Well, whatever you do, don't tell anyone you didn't do it", obviously recognizing that such publicity would be priceless for the band.

1970s

Despite the publicity from the Chicken Incident, the band's stronger second album, ''Easy Action'', released in June 1970, met with the same fate as its predecessor. At around this time the band, fed up with Californians' indifference to their act, relocated to Cooper's birthplace, Detroit, where their bizarre stage act was much better received by the crowds of the Midwest states who were accustomed to the similar hard rock styles of local bands such as The Stooges and The MC5. Despite this, Cooper still managed to receive a cream pie in the face when performing at the Cincinnati Pop Festival. Detroit would remain their steady home base until 1972. "LA just didn’t get it," Cooper stated. "They were all on the wrong drug for us. They were on acid and we were basically drinking beer. We fit much more in Detroit than we did anywhere else."

Alice Cooper appeared at the Woodstock-esque, Strawberry Fields Festival near Toronto, Ontario in August 1970. The band's mix of glam and increasingly violent stage theatrics stood out in stark contrast to the bearded, denim-clad hippie bands of the time. As Cooper himself stated: "We were into fun, sex, death and money when everybody was into peace and love. We wanted to see what was next. It turned out we were next, and we drove a stake through the heart of the Love Generation".

In autumn 1970 the Alice Cooper group teamed with producer Bob Ezrin for the recording of their third album ''Love it to Death''. This was the final album in their Straight Records contract and the band's last chance to create a hit. That first success came with the single "I'm Eighteen", released in November 1970, which reached number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1971. Not long after the album's release in January 1971 Warner Bros. Records purchased Alice Cooper's contract from Straight and re-issued the album, giving the group a higher level of promotion.

''Love it to Death'' proved to be their breakthrough album, reaching number 35 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album charts. It would be the first of eleven Alice Cooper group and solo albums produced by Ezrin, who is widely seen as being instrumental in helping to create and develop the band's definitive sound.

The group's 1971 tour featured a stage show involving mock fights and gothic torture modes being imposed on Cooper climaxing with a staged execution by electric chair, with the band sporting tight, sequined, and color-contrasting glam rock-style costumes made by prominent rock fashion designer Cindy Dunaway (sister of band member Neal Smith, and wife of band member Dennis Dunaway). Cooper's androgynous stage role had developed to present a villainous side, portraying a potential threat to modern society. The success of the band's single, the album, and their tour of 1971, which included their first tour of Europe (audience members reportedly included Elton John and a pre-Ziggy David Bowie), provided enough encouragement for Warner Bros. to offer the band a new multi-album contract.

Their follow-up album ''Killer'', released in late 1971, continued the commercial success of ''Love It To Death'' and included further single success with "Under My Wheels", "Be My Lover" in early 1972, and "Halo Of Flies" which became a Top 10 hit in the Netherlands in 1972. Thematically, ''Killer'' expanded on the villainous side of Cooper's androgynous stage role, with its music becoming the soundtrack to the group's morality-based stage show, which by then featured a boa constrictor hugging Cooper onstage, the murderous axe chopping of bloodied baby dolls, and execution by hanging at the gallows. Back then, the real criticism was aimed at questioning the artists' sexual ambiguity, rather than the stage gore. In January 1972, Cooper was again asked about his peculiar name, and told talk show hostess Dinah Shore that he took the name from a "Mayberry RFD" character.

The summer of 1972 saw the release of the single "School's Out". It went Top 10 in the US, was a #1 single in the UK, and remains a staple on classic rock radio to this day. ''School's Out'' the album reached #2 on the US charts and sold over a million copies. The band now relocated to their new mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. With Cooper's on-stage androgynous persona completely replaced with brattiness and machismo, the band solidified their success with subsequent tours in the US and Europe, and won over devoted fans in droves while at the same time horrifying parents and outraging the social establishment. Controversy seemed to have little negative effect on the band's popularity, as they were selected to be the first band to appear on then-new US television series ABC In Concert in September 1972. In England, Mary Whitehouse, a well known campaigner for values of morality and decency, succeeded in having the BBC ban the video for "School's Out" and Member of Parliament Leo Abse petitioned Home Secretary Reginald Maudling to have the group banned altogether from performing in the country.

In February 1973 ''Billion Dollar Babies'' was released worldwide and became the band's most commercially successful album, reaching #1 in both the US and UK. "Elected", a late-1972 Top 10 UK hit from the album, which inspired one of the first MTV-style story-line promo videos ever made for a song (three years before Queen's promotional video for "Bohemian Rhapsody"), was followed by two more UK Top 10 singles, "Hello Hooray" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy", the latter of which was the last UK single from the album; it reached #25 in the US. The title track, featuring guest vocals by Donovan, was also a US hit single. Due to Glen Buxton's waning health around this time Mick Mashbir was secretly added to the band (who also played, without credit, on ''Muscle of Love'') to supplement Glen's playing.

With a string of successful concept albums and several hit singles, the band continued their gruelling schedule and toured the US once again. Continued attempts by politicians and pressure groups to ban their shocking act only served to fuel the myth of Alice Cooper further and generate even greater public interest. Their 1973 US tour broke box office records previously set by The Rolling Stones and raised rock theatrics to new heights; the multi-level stage show by then featured numerous special effects, including Billion Dollar Bills, decapitated baby dolls and mannequins, a dental psychosis scene complete with dancing teeth, and the ultimate execution prop and highlight of the show: the guillotine. The guillotine and other stage effects were designed for the band by magician James Randi, who appeared on stage during some of the shows as executioner. The Alice Cooper group had now reached its peak and it was among the most visible and successful acts in the industry. (Cooper's stage antics would influence a host of later bands, including, among others, Mercyful Fate, King Diamond, Kiss, Blue Öyster Cult, GWAR, W.A.S.P., Lizzy Borden and, later, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, Rob Zombie and Norwegian black metal bands.) Beneath the surface, however, the repetitive schedule of recording and touring had begun to take its toll on the band, and Cooper, who was under the constant pressure of getting into character for that night's show, was consistently sighted nursing a can of beer.

''Muscle of Love'', released at the end of 1973, was to be the last studio album from the classic line-up, and marked Alice Cooper's last UK Top 20 single of the 1970s with "Teenage Lament '74". An unsolicited theme song was recorded for the James Bond movie ''The Man with the Golden Gun'', but a different song of the same name by Lulu was chosen instead. By 1974, the ''Muscle of Love'' album had not matched the top-charting success of its predecessor, and the band began to have constant disagreements. Cooper wanted to retain the theatrics in the show that had brought them so much attention, while the rest of the group thought they should be toned down so that they could concentrate more on the music which had given them credibility. Largely as a result of this difference of opinion, the band decided to take a much-needed hiatus.

During this time Cooper relocated back to Los Angeles and started appearing regularly on TV shows such as ''Hollywood Squares'', and Warner Bros. released the ''Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits'' compilation album. It featured classic style artwork and reached the US Top 10, performing better than ''Muscle of Love''. However, the band's 1974 feature film ''Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper'' (consisting mainly of 1973 concert footage with 'comedic' sketches woven throughout to a faint storyline), released on a minor theatrical run mostly to drive-in theaters, saw little box office success.

As some of the Alice Cooper band members had begun recording their own solo albums, Cooper decided to do the same himself. In 1975 he released his first solo album, ''Welcome To My Nightmare''. To avoid legal complications over ownership of the group name, Alice Cooper had by then become the singer's new legal name. The success of the solo album marked the final break with the original members of the band with Cooper collaborating with their producer Bob Ezrin, who recruited Lou Reed's backing band, including guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, to play on the album. Spearheaded by the US Top 20 hit ballad, "Only Women Bleed", the album was released by Atlantic Records in March of that year and became a Top 10 hit for Cooper. It was a concept album that was based on the nightmare of a child named Steven, featuring narration by classic horror movie film star Vincent Price (several years after ''Welcome To My Nightmare'', he guested on Michael Jackson's "Thriller"), and serving as the soundtrack to Cooper's new stage show, which now included more theatrics than ever (including an furry Cyclops which Cooper decapitates and kills).

By this time, however, alcohol was clearly affecting Cooper's performances. During the ''Welcome to My Nightmare'' tour in Vancouver, and only a few songs into the routine, Cooper tripped over a foot-light, staggered a few paces, lost his bearings, and plunged head-first off the stage and onto the concrete floor of the Pacific Coliseum. Some fans, thinking it was all part of the act, reached through the barriers to pull at his blood-matted hair before bouncers could pull him away for help. He was taken to a local hospital, where medical staff stitched his head wound and provided him with a skullcap. Cooper returned to the venue a couple of hours later and tried to perform a couple of more songs, but within minutes he had to call it a night. The opening act, Suzi Quatro, had already left the building and the remainder of the concert was canceled.

Accompanying the album and stage show was the TV special ''The Nightmare'', starring Cooper and Vincent Price, which aired on US prime-time TV in April 1975. ''The Nightmare'', the first rock music video album ever made (it was later released on home video in 1983 and gained a Grammy Awards nomination for Best Long Form Music Video), was regarded as another groundbreaking moment in rock history. Adding to all that, a concert film, also called ''Welcome to My Nightmare'' produced, directed and choreographed by the West Side Story cast member David Winters and filmed live at London's Wembley Arena in September 1975, was released to theaters in 1976. Though it failed at the box office, it later became a midnight movie favorite and a cult classic.

Such was the immense success of Cooper's solo project that he decided to continue alone as a solo artist, and the original band became officially defunct. It was also during this time that Cooper co-founded the legendary drinking club The Hollywood Vampires, which gave him yet another reason to indulge his continued ample appetite for alcohol.

Following the 1976 US #12 hit "I Never Cry", another ballad, two albums, ''Alice Cooper Goes to Hell'' and ''Lace and Whiskey'', and another ballad hit, the US #9 "You and Me", it became clear from his performances during his 1977 US tour that he was in dire need of help with his alcoholism (at his alcoholic peak it was rumored that Cooper was consuming up to two cases of Budweiser and a bottle of whiskey a day). Following the tour, Cooper had himself hospitalized in a New York sanitarium for treatment, during which time the live album ''The Alice Cooper Show'' was released. His experience in the sanitarium was the inspiration for his 1978 semi-autobiographical album ''From The Inside'', which Cooper co-wrote with Bernie Taupin. The release spawned another US Top 20 hit "How You Gonna See Me Now", which peaked at #12, and was yet another ballad, based on his fear of how his wife would react to him after his spell in hospital.

The subsequent tour's stage show was based inside an asylum, and was filmed for Cooper's first home video release, ''The Strange Case of Alice Cooper'', in 1979. Around this time, Cooper performed "Welcome To My Nightmare", "You and Me", and "School's Out" on ''The Muppet Show'' (episode # 307) on March 28, 1978 (he played one of the devil's henchmen trying to dupe Kermit the Frog and Gonzo into selling their souls). He also appeared in an against-type casting in the campy role of a piano playing, disco bellboy in Mae West's final film, ''Sextette''. Cooper also led celebrities in raising money to remodel the famous Hollywood Sign in California. Cooper himself contributed over $27,000 to the project, buying an O in the sign in memory of friend and comedian Groucho Marx.

1980s

Cooper's albums from the beginning of the 80s, ''Flush the Fashion'', ''Special Forces'', ''Zipper Catches Skin'', and ''DaDa'', were not as commercially successful as his past releases, and Cooper has claimed that, suffering from acute alcoholic amnesia, he has no recollection of recording the latter two of these albums. ''Flush the Fashion'', produced by Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker, had a thick, edgy New Wave musical sound that baffled even long-time fans, though it still yielded the US Top 40 hit "(We're All) Clones". The album ''Special Forces'' featured a more aggressive but consistent form of New Wave style, and included a new version of "Generation Landslide". The following album, ''Zipper Catches Skin'' was a more power pop-oriented recording, with lots of quirky high-energy guitar-driven songs. While those three albums engaged the experimental New Wave sound with energetic results, 1983 marked the return collaboration of producer Bob Ezrin and guitarist Dick Wagner with the haunting epic ''DaDa'', the final album in his Warner Bros. contract.

In 1983 after the recording of ''DaDa'', Cooper was re-hospitalized for alcoholism. In a deathly state of health he moved back to Phoenix to save his marriage from collapse, and so that he could receive the support of family and friends. Cooper was finally clean and sober by the time ''DaDa'' and ''The Nightmare'' home video (of his 1975 TV Special) were released in the fall of that year; however, both releases performed below expectations. Even with ''The Nightmare'' scoring a nomination for 1984's Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video (he lost to Duran Duran), it was not enough for Warner Bros. to keep Cooper on their books, so in 1984 Cooper became a "free agent" for the first time in his career.

After over a year on hiatus, during which time he spent being a full-time father, perfecting his golf swing every day on the golf course, and finding time to star in the Spanish B-grade horror movie production ''Monster Dog'', Cooper sought to pick up the pieces of his musical career. In 1985 he met and began writing songs with guitarist Kane Roberts. Cooper was subsequently signed to MCA Records, and appeared as guest vocalist on Twisted Sister's song "Be Chrool To Your Scuel". A video was made for the song, featuring Cooper donning his black snake-eyes make-up for the first time since 1979. But any publicity it may have generated toward Cooper's return to the music scene was cut short as the video was promptly banned because of its graphically gory make-up (by Tom Savini), and because of the innumerable zombies in the video and their insatiable appetite for gorging on human flesh.

In 1986 Alice Cooper officially returned to the music industry with the album ''Constrictor''. The album spawned the hits "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" (the theme song for the movie ''Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives''; in the video of the song Cooper was given a cameo role as a deranged psychiatrist) and the fan favorite "Teenage Frankenstein". The Constrictor album was a catalyst for Cooper to make (for the first time since the 1982 ''Special Forces'' tour) a triumphant return to the road, on a tour appropriately entitled ''The Nightmare Returns''. The Detroit leg of this tour, which took place at the end of October 1986 during Halloween, was captured on film as ''The Nightmare Returns'', and is viewed by some as being the definitive Alice Cooper concert film. The concert, which received rave reviews in the rock music press, was also described as bringing "Cooper’s violent, twisted onstage fantasies to a new generation". The ''Constrictor'' album was followed by ''Raise Your Fist and Yell'' in 1987, which had an even rougher sound than its predecessor, as well as the Cooper classic "Freedom". The subsequent tour of ''Raise Your Fist and Yell'', which was heavily inspired by the slasher horror movies of the time such as the Friday the 13th series and Nightmare on Elm Street, served up a shocking spectacle similar to its predecessor, and courted the kind of controversy, especially in Europe, that recalled the public outrage caused by Cooper's public performances in America in the early 1970s.

In Britain Labour M.P. David Blunkett called for the show to be banned, saying "I'm horrified by his behaviour — it goes beyond the bounds of entertainment". The controversy spilled over into the German segment of the tour, with the German government actually succeeding in having some of the gorier segments of the performance removed. It was also during the London leg of the tour that Cooper met with a near fatal accident during the hanging execution sequence at the end of the show. Needless to say the attendant publicity served only to increase public interest and ensure that the tour was completely sold out.

''Constrictor'' and ''Raise Your Fist and Yell'' were recorded with lead guitarist Kane Roberts and bassist Kip Winger, both of whom would leave the band by the end of 1988 (although Kane Roberts played guitar on "Bed Of Nails" on 1989's album Trash). Roberts would continue as a solo artist while Kip Winger would go on to form Winger.

In 1987 Cooper made a brief appearance as a vagrant in the horror movie ''Prince of Darkness'', directed by John Carpenter. His role had no lines and consisted of generally menacing the protagonists before eventually impaling one of them with a bicycle frame. Cooper also appeared at ''WrestleMania III'', escorting wrestler Jake 'The Snake' Roberts to the ring. After the match was over, Cooper got involved and threw Jake's snake Damien at The Honky Tonk Man's manager Jimmy Hart. Jake considered the involvement of Cooper to be an honor, as he had idolized Cooper in his youth and was still a huge fan.

In 1988 Cooper's contract with MCA Records expired and he signed with Epic Records. Then in 1989 his career finally experienced a real revival with the Desmond Child produced album ''Trash'', which spawned a hit single "Poison", which reached #2 in the UK and #7 in the US, and a worldwide arena tour.

1990s

1991 saw the release of Cooper's 19th studio album, ''Hey Stoopid'', again featuring several of rock music’s glitterati guesting on the record. Released as glam metal's popularity was on the wane, and just before the explosion of grunge, it failed to have the same commercial impact as its predecessor. The same year also saw the release of the video ''Alice Cooper: Prime Cuts'' which chronicled his entire career using in depth interviews with Cooper himself, Bob Ezrin, and Shep Gordon. One critic has noted that ''Prime Cuts'' demonstrates how Cooper had used (in contrast to similar artists who succeeded him) themes of satire and moralisation to such good effect throughout his career. It was in the ''Prime Cuts'' video that Bob Ezrin delivered his own summation of the Alice Cooper persona: "He is the psycho killer in all of us. He's the axe murderer, he's the spoiled child, he's the abuser, he's the abused; he's the perpetrator, he's the victim, he's the gun slinger, and he's the guy lying dead in the middle of the street".

By the early 1990s Cooper had become a genuine cultural icon, guesting on records by the most successful bands of the time, such as the Guns N' Roses album ''Use Your Illusion I'', (on which he shared vocal duties with Axl Rose on the track "The Garden"); making a brief appearance as the abusive stepfather of Freddy Krueger in the ''Nightmare On Elm Street'' film ''Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare'' (1991); and making a famous cameo appearance in the 1992 comedy film ''Wayne's World'', in which he and his band intellectually discuss (after a performance of the song "Feed My Frankenstein" from ''Hey Stoopid'') the history of Milwaukee in surprising depth. In a now famous scene, the movie's main characters Wayne and Garth, upon seeing Cooper, kneel and bow reverently before him while chanting "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!" He later made an appearance on an episode of ''That 70s Show'', at the end of which he and two other (minor) guest characters parody ''Dungeons & Dragons''.

In 1994 Cooper released ''The Last Temptation'', his first concept album since ''DaDa''. The album deals with issues of faith, temptation, alienation, and the frustrations of modern life, and has been described as "a young man's struggle to see the truth through the distractions of the 'Sideshow' of the modern world". Concurrent with the release of ''The Last Temptation'' was a three-part comic book series written by Neil Gaiman, fleshing out the album's story. This was to be Cooper’s last album with Epic Records, and his last studio release for six years, though during this period the live album ''A Fistful of Alice'' was released, and in 1997 he lent his voice to the first track of Insane Clown Posse's ''The Great Milenko''. In 1999, the four-disc box set ''The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper'' appeared, which contained an authorized biography of Cooper, ''Alcohol and Razor Blades, Poison and Needles: The Glorious Wretched Excess of Alice Cooper, All-American'', written by ''Creem'' magazine editor Jeffrey Morgan.

During his absence from the recording studio, Cooper toured extensively every year throughout the latter part of the 1990s, including, in 1996, South America, which he had not visited since 1974. Also in 1996, Cooper sang the role of Herod on the London cast recording of the musical ''Jesus Christ Superstar''.

2000s

The first decade of the 21st century saw a sustained period of activity from Alice Cooper. In the decade that he turned sixty, he toured extensively and released (after a significant break) a steady stream of studio albums to favorable critical acclaim. During this period Cooper was also recognized and awarded in various ways: he received a Rock Immortal award at the 2007 Scream Awards; was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003; he received (in May 2004) an honorary doctoral degree from Grand Canyon University; was given (in May 2006) the key to the city of Alice, North Dakota; he scooped the living legend award at the 2006 Classic Rock Roll of Honour event; he won the 2007 Mojo music magazine Hero Award; and fans twice tried to induct him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The lengthy break between studio albums ended in 2000 with ''Brutal Planet'', which was a return to horror-lined heavy metal, with industrial rock, and with subject matter thematically inspired by the brutality of the modern world, set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future, and also inspired by a number of news stories that had recently appeared on the CNN news channel. The album was produced by Bob Marlett, with longtime Cooper production collaborator Bob Ezrin returning as Executive Producer. The accompanying world tour, which included Cooper's first concert in Russia, was a resounding success, introducing Alice Cooper to a new audience and producing the live home video, ''Brutally Live'', in 2001. During one memorable episode in ''Brutally Live'', Britney Spears (being played by Alice Cooper's real life daughter, Calico), and representing "everything that my audience hates — the softening of rock and roll...the sweetness of it" is executed by Cooper.

Brutal Planet was succeeded by the sonically similar and widely acclaimed sequel ''Dragontown'', which saw Bob Ezrin back at the helm as producer. The album has been described as leading the listener down "a nightmarish path into the mind of rock's original conceptual storyteller" and by Cooper himself as being "the worst town on Brutal Planet". Like ''The Last Temptation'', both ''Brutal Planet'' and ''Dragontown'' are albums which explore Cooper's personal faith perspective (born again Christianity). It is often cited in the music media that ''Dragontown'' forms the third chapter in a trilogy begun with ''The Last Temptation''; however, Cooper has himself indicated that this in fact is not the case.

Cooper again adopted a leaner, cleaner sound for his critically acclaimed 2003 release ''The Eyes Of Alice Cooper''. Recognizing that many contemporary bands were having great success with his former sounds and styles, Cooper worked with a somewhat younger group of road and studio musicians who were very familiar with his oeuvre of old. However, instead of rehashing the old sounds, they updated them, often with surprisingly effective results. The resulting ''Bare Bones'' tour adopted a less-orchestrated performance style that had fewer theatrical flourishes and a greater emphasis on musicality. The success of this tour helped support the growing recognition that the classic Cooper songs were exceptionally clever, tuneful and unique.

Cooper's radio show, ''Nights with Alice Cooper'', began airing on January 26, 2004 in several US cities. The program showcases classic rock, Cooper's personal stories about his life as a rock icon, and interviews with prominent rock artists. The show is broadcast on nearly 100 stations in the US and Canada, and has also been broadcast all over the world. In 2005, Alice Cooper was inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame.

A continuation of the songwriting approach adopted on ''The Eyes of Alice Cooper'' was again adopted by Cooper for his 24th studio album, ''Dirty Diamonds'', released in 2005. ''Dirty Diamonds'' became Cooper's highest charting album since 1994's ''The Last Temptation''. The Dirty Diamonds tour launched in America in August 2005 after several European concerts, including a performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland on July 12. Cooper and his band, including Kiss drummer Eric Singer, were filmed for a DVD released as ''Alice Cooper: Live at Montreux 2005''. One critic, in a review of the Montreux release, commented that Cooper was to be applauded for "still mining pretty much the same territory of teenage angst and rebellion" as he had done more than thirty years previously.

In December 2006 the original Alice Cooper band reunited to perform six classic Alice Cooper songs at Cooper's annual charity event in Phoenix, entitled "Christmas Pudding".

On July 1, 2007, Cooper performed a duet with Marilyn Manson at the B'Estival event in Bucharest, Romania. The performance represented a reconciliation between the two artists; Cooper had previously taken issue with Manson over his overtly anti-Christian onstage antics, which included tearing up Bibles, and he had sarcastically made reference to the originality of Manson's choosing a female name and dressing in women's clothing. Cooper and Manson have been the subject of an academic paper on the significance of adolescent antiheroes.

In January 2008 he was one of the guest singers on the new ''Avantasia'' album ''The Scarecrow'', singing the 7th track, ''The Toy Master''. In July 2008, after lengthy delays, Cooper released ''Along Came a Spider'', his 25th studio album. It was Cooper's highest charting album since 1991's ''Hey Stoopid'', reaching #53 in the US and #31 in the UK. The album, visiting similar territory explored in 1987's ''Raise Your Fist and Yell'', deals with the nefarious antics of a deranged serial killer named "Spider" who is on a quest to use the limbs of his victims to create a human spider. The album generally received positive reviews from music critics, though Rolling Stone magazine opined that the music on the record sorely missed Bob Ezrin's production values. The resulting ''Theatre of Death'' tour of the album (during which Cooper is executed on four separate occasions) was described in a long November 2009 article about Cooper in ''The Times'' as "epic" and featuring "enough fake blood to remake Saving Private Ryan".

2010s

On January 22, 2010, it was announced that Alice would be touring with Rob Zombie on the "Gruesome Twosome" tour.

On March 29, 2010, Cooper revealed during his weekly radio show on ''Planet Rock'' that his next record is to be titled ''The Night Shift''. Cooper stated he has 10 demos ready.

On May 26, 2010, Cooper made an appearance during the beginning of the season finale of the reality-show, American Idol, in which he sang "School's Out".

On June 20, 2010, Cooper joined Slash on stage in Paris to perform the song "School's Out". On June 15, 2010 to coincide with the release of the "Alice Cooper Track Pack" for Guitar Hero, a free download of the newly-recorded "Elected" was made available on Alice Cooper's official website. He scored alongside his daughter and band member Dick Wagner the score for the Indie horror flick Silas Gore.

During 2010 Cooper began working on a new album, dubbed ''Welcome 2 My Nightmare'', a sequel to the original ''Welcome to My Nightmare''. In a Radio Metal interview, he said that "[w]e'll put some of the original people on it and add some new people[...]I'm very happy with working with Bob (Ezrin) again."

During a press conference in France Cooper said about ''Welcome to My Nightmare II'': "this album is more bloody and more accomplished than the first. It sounds like the early years." By October 2010, Alice and Bob Ezrin had come up with 13 songs, including the ballads "I Am Made of You" and "Something to Remember Me By." In addition, Cooper cut three new songs with original band members Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith and Michael Bruce.

On December 15, 2010, it was announced Cooper and his former band would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The official Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony took place March 14, 2011, where Cooper was inducted by fellow horror-rocker Rob Zombie. He showed up for the event wearing a (presumably fake) blood-splattered shirt and had a live giant albino boa snake wrapped around his neck. Cooper told ''Rolling Stone'' magazine that he was "elated" by the news and that the nomination had been made for the original band, as "We all did go to the same high school together, and we were all on the track team, and it was pretty cool that guys that knew each other before the band ended up going that far".

On March 10, 2011 Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Alice Cooper, Jennifer Warnes, and others performed at a benefit concert in Tucson, Arizona benefiting The Fund For Civility, Respect, and Understanding, a foundation that raise awareness about and provides medical prevention and treatment services to people with mental disorders. The concert also benefited the injured and the families of victims of the January 8, 2011 shootings in Tucson, AZ. On March 19, 2011, Alice appeared on the Tonight Show With Jay Leno, and on June 26, 2011, he took his place in the Reasonably Priced Car at the BBC auto show Top Gear. He also announced on the BBC One chat show, Lee Mack's All Star Cast, that he would be shooting a small cameo in Tim Burton's upcoming film version of Dark Shadows.

On July 2 he joined the Foo Fighters on the first of their two nights at the Milton Keynes Bowl to perform "Schools Out" and "I'm 18".

Influences and fans

During an interview for the program ''Entertainment USA'' in 1986 Cooper stunned interviewer Jonathan King by stating that The Yardbirds were his favorite band of all time. Perhaps King should not have been so taken aback, as Cooper had as far back as 1969 gone on record as saying that it was music from the mid-sixties, and particularly from British bands The Beatles, The Who, and The Rolling Stones, as well as The Yardbirds, that had the greatest influence on him. Cooper would later pay homage to The Who by singing "I'm A Boy" for ''A Celebration: The Music of Pete Townshend and The Who'' in 1994 at Carnegie Hall in New York, and performing a cover of "My Generation" on the ''Brutal Planet'' tour of 2000.

During an interview Cooper himself conducted with Ozzy Osbourne on his radio show, ''Nights with Alice Cooper'' in 2007, Cooper again affirmed his debt of gratitude to these bands, and to The Beatles in particular. During their discussion, Cooper and Osbourne bemoaned the often inferior quality of songwriting coming from contemporary rock artists. Cooper stated that in his opinion the cause of the problem was that certain modern bands "had forgotten to listen to The Beatles".

On the 25th Anniversary DVD of ''Cabaret'', Liza Minnelli stated that her good friend, Alice Cooper, had told her that his whole career was based on the movie ''Cabaret''.

Evidence of Cooper's eclectic tastes in both classic and contemporary rock music, from the 1960s to the present, can be seen in the track listings of his radio show; in addition, when he appeared on the BBC Radio 2 program ''Tracks of My Years'' in September 2007, he listed his favourite tracks of all time as being: "19th Nervous Breakdown" (1966) by The Rolling Stones; "Turning Japanese" (1980) by The Vapors; "My Sharona" (1979) by The Knack; "Beds Are Burning" (1987) by Midnight Oil; "My Generation" (1965) by The Who; "Welcome To The Jungle" (1987) by Guns N' Roses; "Rebel Rebel" (1974) by David Bowie; "Over Under Sideways Down" (1966) by The Yardbirds; "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" (2003) by Jet; and "A Hard Day's Night" (1964) by The Beatles, and when he appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2010 he chose the songs "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" by The Yardbirds; "I Get Around" by The Beach Boys; "I'm a Boy" by The Who; Timer by Laura Nyro; "21st Century Schizoid Man" by King Crimson; "Been Caught Stealing" by Jane's Addiction; "Work Song" by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and "Ballad of a Thin Man" by Bob Dylan.

Rob Zombie, former frontman of White Zombie, claims his first "metal moment" was seeing Alice Cooper on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert.

In a 1978 interview with ''Rolling Stone'', Bob Dylan stated, "I think Alice Cooper is an overlooked songwriter".

In the foreword to Alice Cooper's CD retrospective box set ''The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper'', John Lydon of The Sex Pistols pronounced ''Killer'' as the greatest rock album of all time, and in 2002 Lydon presented his own tribute program to Cooper on BBC radio. Lydon told the BBC that "I know the words to every Alice Cooper song. The fact is, if you can call what I have a musical career, it all started with me miming to I'm Eighteen on a jukebox".

The Flaming Lips are longtime Alice Cooper fans and used the bass line from "Levity Ball" (an early song from the 1969 release ''Pretties for You'') for their song "The Ceiling Is Bending". They also covered "Sun Arise" for an Alice Cooper tribute album. (Cooper's version, which closes the album ''Love It To Death'', was itself a cover of a Rolf Harris song.)

In 1999 Cleopatra Records released ''Humanary Stew: A Tribute to Alice Cooper'' featuring a number of contributions from rock and metal all-star collaborations, including Dave Mustaine, Roger Daltrey, Ronnie James Dio, Slash, Bruce Dickinson, and Steve Jones. The album was notable for the fact that it was possible to assemble a different supergroup for each cover version on the record, which gave an indication of the depth of esteem in which Cooper is held by other eminent musicians within the music industry.

A song by alternative rock group They Might Be Giants from their 1994 album ''John Henry'' entitled "Why Must I Be Sad?" mentions 13 Cooper songs, and has been described as being "from the perspective of a kid who hears all of his unspoken sadness given voice in the music of Alice Cooper; Alice says everything the kid has been wishing he could say about his alienated, frustrated, teenage world".

Such unlikely non-musician fans of Cooper included Groucho Marx and Mae West, who both reportedly saw the early shows as a form of vaudeville revue, and artist Salvador Dalí, who on attending a show in 1973 described it as being surreal, and made a hologram, ''First Cylindric Chromo-Hologram Portrait of Alice Cooper's Brain''.

Personal life

Cooper, a huge fan of ''The Simpsons'', was asked to contribute a storyline for the September 2004 edition of Bongo Comics's ''Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror'', a special ''Monsters of Rock'' issue that also included stories plotted by Gene Simmons, Rob Zombie and Pat Boone. Cooper's story featured Homer Simpson being a Jason Voorhees, Friday the 13th style killer and Alice and the citizens of Springfield are being stalked by Homer.

On June 20, 2005, ahead of his June–July 2005 tour, Cooper had a wide-ranging interview with interviewer of celebrities Andrew Denton for the Australian ABC Television's ''Enough Rope''. Cooper discussed various issues during a revealing and frank talk, including the horrors of acute alcoholism and his subsequent cure, being a Christian, and his social and work relationship with his family. During the interview, Cooper remarked "I look at Mick Jagger and he's on an 18-month tour and he's six [sic] years older than me, so I figure, when he retires, I have six more years. I will not let him beat me when it comes to longevity."

The actual ownership of the Alice Cooper name is often cited by intellectual property lawyers and law professors as an example of the value of a single copyright or trademark. Since "Alice Cooper" was originally the name of the band, and not the lead singer (e.g. Uriah Heep, Jethro Tull, Amy Meredith, etc.), and it was actually owned by the band as whole, Cooper paid, and continues to pay, a yearly royalty to his original bandmates for the right to use the name commercially. Although the exact amount is not known, insiders agree that it is large enough for the surviving band members to live comfortably.

Relationships and family

In the period when the Alice Cooper group was signed to Frank Zappa's Straight label, Miss Christine of the GTOs became Cooper's girlfriend. Miss Christine (real name: Christine Frka), who had actually recommended Zappa to the group, died on November 5, 1972 of an overdose.

Another long-time girlfriend of Cooper's was Cindy Lang, with whom he lived for several years. They separated in 1975. Lang sued Cooper for palimony, and they eventually settled out of court in the early 1980s.

After his separation from Lang, Cooper was briefly linked with actress Raquel Welch. Cooper then reportedly left Welch, however, to marry, on March 20, 1976, ballerina instructor/choreographer Sheryl Goddard, who performed in the Alice Cooper show from 1975 to 1982. In November 1983, at the height of Cooper's alcoholism, Sheryl filed for divorce, but by mid-1984, she and Cooper had reconciled. The couple has remained together since. In a 2002 television interview, Cooper claimed that he had "never cheated" on his wife in all the time they had been together. In the same interview, he also claimed that the secret to a lasting and successful relationship is to continue going out on dates with your partner. The couple have three children: elder daughter Calico Cooper (born 1981), an actress and singer who has been performing in the Alice Cooper show since 2000; son Dash (b. 1985), a student at Arizona State University, and also plays in a band called Runaway Phoenix; and younger daughter Sonora Rose (b. 1993).

Drug recovery

In 1986, Megadeth was asked to open for Cooper for dates on his US tour. After noticing the hardcore abuse of alcohol and other drugs in the band, Cooper personally approached the band members to try to help them control their abuse, and he has stayed close to front man Dave Mustaine ever since; Mustaine in fact considers him his godfather. Since conquering his own addiction to alcohol in the mid 1980s, Cooper has continued to help and counsel other rock musicians battling addiction problems who turn to him for help. "I've made myself very available to friends of mine - they're people who would call me late at night and say, 'Between you and me, I've got a problem.'" In recognition of the work he has done in helping other addicts in the recovery process, Cooper received in 2008 the Stevie Ray Vaughan Award at the fourth annual MusiCares MAP Fund benefit concert in Los Angeles.

Religion and politics

Although he originally tended to shy away from speaking publicly about his religious beliefs, Cooper has in recent years been quite vocal about his faith as a born-again Christian. He has avoided so called "celebrity Christianity" because, as Cooper states himself: "It's really easy to focus on Alice Cooper and not on Christ. I'm a rock singer. I'm nothing more than that. I'm not a philosopher. I consider myself low on the totem pole of knowledgeable Christians. So, don't look for answers from me".

When asked by the British ''Sunday Times'' newspaper in 2001 how a shock-rocker could be a Christian, Cooper responded "Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that's a tough call. That's real rebellion!"

Throughout his career, Cooper's philosophy regarding politics is that politics should not be mixed with rock music. He has usually kept his political views to himself, and in 2010 said "I am extremely non-political. I go out of my way to be non-political. I'm probably the biggest moderate you know. When John Lennon and Harry Nilsson used to argue politics, I was sitting right in the middle of them, and I was the guy who was going 'I don't care.' When my parents would start talking politics, I would go in my room and put on The Rolling Stones or The Who on as long as I could to avoid politics. And I still feel that way". On occasion he has spoken out against musicians who promote or opine on politics, for example in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, he told the Canadian Press that the then crop of rock stars campaigning for and touring on behalf of Democratic candidate John Kerry were committing "treason against rock n' roll". He also added that upon seeing the list of musicians who supported Kerry, "if I wasn't already a Bush supporter, I would have immediately switched. Linda Ronstadt? Don Henley? Geez, that's a good reason right there to vote for Bush."

Love of golf

Cooper has on several occasions credited golf as having played a major role in helping him to overcome his addiction to alcohol, and has even gone as far to say that when he took up golf, it was a case of replacing one addiction with another. The importance that the game has had in his life is also reflected in the title to his 2007 autobiography, ''Alice Cooper, Golf Monster''. Cooper, who has participated in a number of Pro-Am competitions, plays the game six days a week, off a handicap of two. Since 1997, he has hosted an annual golf competition, the ''Alice Cooper Celebrity AM Golf Tournament'', all proceeds from which go to his charity, the Solid Rock Foundation. In 2005, while playing with manager Shep Gordon on The Champion Course in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, Cooper recorded an impressive round of two-over par 74 on the world-class course. Cooper has also appeared in commercials for Callaway Golf equipment, was a guest of veteran British player and broadcaster Peter Alliss on ''A Golfer's Travels''. He wrote the foreword to the Gary McCord book "Ryder Cup" and participated in the second All*Star Cup in South Wales. In an interview with VH1, friend and fellow golfer Pat Boone said that Cooper was "'this close' to being a pro".

Discography

:''See: Alice Cooper discography''

Awards and Nominations

Grammy Awards

!Year	!Nominated work	!Award	!Result
align=center	Alice Cooper: The Nightmare
align=center	Hands of Death (Burn Baby Burn)

Filmography

:''See: Alice Cooper filmography''

List of Alice Cooper band personnel

;Current

Alice Cooper – vocals, guitar, harmonica (1963–present)

Steve Hunter – guitar (1975–79; 2011–present)

Tommy Henriksen – guitar (2011–present)

Orianthi Panagaris – guitar, vocals (2011–present)

Chuck Garric – bass guitar, vocals (2002–present)

Glen Sobel – drums, percussion (2011–present)

;Past

Bibliography

References

External links

Download music (promotional use only)

Official ''Nights with Alice Cooper'' website

Alice Cooper Artist Page @ VH1.com

Alice Cooper at Allmusic.com

Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:People from Allen Park, Michigan * Category:American heavy metal singers Category:American actors Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of French descent Category:Actors from Michigan Category:American Christians Category:American musicians of English descent Category:American musicians of French descent Category:American musicians of Irish descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American heavy metal musicians Category:American DJs Category:American rock musicians Category:American rock singers Alice Cooper Category:Musicians from Arizona Category:Bands with fictional stage personas Category:Musicians from Detroit, Michigan Category:People from Phoenix, Arizona Category:People from Paradise Valley, Arizona Category:Atlantic Records artists Category:People self-identifying as alcoholics Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees

bg:Алис Купър ca:Alice Cooper cs:Alice Cooper da:Alice Cooper de:Alice Cooper et:Alice Cooper eml:Alice Cooper es:Alice Cooper fa:آلیس کوپر fr:Alice Cooper gl:Alice Cooper hr:Alice Cooper io:Alice Cooper it:Alice Cooper he:אליס קופר la:Alice Cooper lt:Alice Cooper hu:Alice Cooper mk:Елис Купер nl:Alice Cooper ja:アリス・クーパー ka:ელის კუპერი no:Alice Cooper oc:Alice Cooper uz:Alice Cooper pl:Alice Cooper pt:Alice Cooper ro:Alice Cooper ru:Элис Купер scn:Alice Cooper simple:Alice Cooper sk:Alice Cooper sl:Alice Cooper sr:Алис Купер sh:Alice Cooper fi:Alice Cooper sv:Alice Cooper th:อลิซ คูเปอร์ tr:Alice Cooper uk:Еліс Купер

name	Frank Zappa
background	solo_singer
birth name	Frank Vincent Zappa
born	December 21, 1940Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
died	December 04, 1993Los Angeles, California, U.S.
instrument	Guitar, vocals, bass, keyboards, drums, synclavier, bicycle
genre	Progressive rock, jazz fusion,
occupation	Composer, musician, conductor, producer
years active	1950s–1993
label	Verve, Bizarre, Straight, DiscReet, Barking Pumpkin
associated acts	The Mothers of InventionCaptain BeefheartSteve Vai
website
notable instruments	}}

Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.

While in his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands; he later switched to electric guitar. He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with The Mothers of Invention, ''Freak Out!'', combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. He wrote the lyrics to all his songs, which—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship.

Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist and gained widespread critical acclaim. Many of his albums are considered essential in rock and jazz history. He is regarded as one of the most original guitarists and composers of his time. He also remains a major influence on musicians and composers. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and for most of his career was able to work as an independent artist. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

Zappa was married to Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman from 1960 to 1964. In 1967, he married Adelaide Gail Sloatman, with whom he remained until his death from prostate cancer in 1993. They had four children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. Gail Zappa manages the businesses of her late husband under the name the ''Zappa Family Trust''.

Early life

Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 21, 1940. His mother, Rose Marie Colimore, was of Italian and French descent; his father, Francesco Vincente Zappa, was a native of Partinico, Sicily. Zappa was the eldest of four children. The family moved often because his father, a chemist and mathematician, worked in the defense industry. After a time in Florida in the 1940s, the family returned to Maryland, where Zappa's father worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility of the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Due to their home's nearness to the arsenal, which stored mustard gas, gas masks were kept in the home. This had a profound effect on Zappa, and references to germs, germ warfare and the defense industry occur throughout his work.

Zappa was often sick as a child, suffering from asthma, earaches and sinus problems. A doctor treated his sinusitis by inserting a pellet of radium into each of Zappa's nostrils; little was known about the potential dangers of even small amounts of therapeutic radiation. Nasal imagery and references appear in his music and lyrics, as well as in the collage album covers created by his long-time collaborator Cal Schenkel.

Many of Zappa's childhood diseases may have been due to exposure to mustard gas. His health worsened when he lived in Baltimore. In 1952, his family relocated for reasons of health. They moved next to Monterey, California, where his father taught metallurgy at the Naval Postgraduate School. They soon moved to Claremont, then to El Cajon, before finally settling San Diego.

Musical influences

Zappa joined his first band, the Ramblers, at Mission Bay High School in San Diego. He was the band's drummer. About the same time his parents bought a phonograph, which allowed him to develop his interest in music, and to begin building his record collection. R&B; singles were early purchases, starting a large collection he kept for the rest of his life. He was interested in sounds for their own sake, particularly the sounds of drums and other percussion instruments. By age 12, he had obtained a snare drum and began learning the basics of orchestral percussion. Zappa's deep interest in modern classical music began when he read a ''LOOK'' magazine article about the Sam Goody record store chain that lauded its ability to sell an LP as obscure as ''The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One''. The article described Varèse's percussion composition ''Ionisation'', produced by EMS Recordings, as "a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds". Zappa decided to seek out Varèse's music. After searching for over a year, Zappa found a copy (he noticed the LP because of the "mad scientist" looking photo of Varèse on the cover). Not having enough money with him, he persuaded the salesman to sell him the record at a discount. Thus began his lifelong passion for Varèse's music and that of other modern classical composers.

Zappa grew up influenced by avant-garde composers such as Varèse, Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern, R&B; and doo-wop groups (including the Medallions and local pachuco groups), and modern jazz. His own heterogeneous ethnic background, and the diverse social and cultural mix in and around greater Los Angeles, were crucial in the formation of Zappa as a practitioner of underground music and of his later distrustful and openly critical attitude towards "mainstream" social, political and musical movements. He frequently lampooned musical fads like psychedelia, rock opera and disco. Television also exerted a strong influence, as demonstrated by quotations from show themes and advertising jingles found in his later works.

Youth and beginning of career (1955–1960)

By 1956, the Zappa family had moved to Lancaster, a small aerospace and farming town in the Antelope Valley of the Mojave Desert close to Edwards Air Force Base, in northern Los Angeles County. Zappa's mother encouraged him in his musical interests. Although she disliked Varèse's music, she was indulgent enough to give her son a long distance call to the composer as a 15th birthday present. Unfortunately, Varèse was in Europe at the time, so Zappa spoke to the composer's wife. He later received a letter from Varèse thanking him for his interest, and telling him about a composition he was working on called "Déserts". Living in the desert town of Lancaster, Zappa found this very exciting. Varèse invited him to visit if he ever came to New York. The meeting never took place (Varèse died in 1965), but Zappa framed the letter and kept it on display for the rest of his life.

At Antelope Valley High School, Zappa met Don Vliet (who later expanded his name to Don Van Vliet and adopted the stage name Captain Beefheart). Zappa and Vliet became close friends, sharing an interest in R&B; records and influencing each other musically throughout their careers. Around the same time, Zappa started playing drums in a local band, The Blackouts. The band was racially diverse, and included Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood who later became a member of The Mothers of Invention. Zappa's interest in the guitar grew, and in 1957 he was given his first guitar. Among his early influences were Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Howlin' Wolf and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. (In the 1970s and '80s, he invited Watson to perform on several albums.) Zappa considered soloing as the equivalent of forming "air sculptures", and developed an eclectic, innovative and highly personal style.

Zappa's interest in composing and arranging proliferated in his last high-school years. By his final year, he was writing, arranging and conducting avant-garde performance pieces for the school orchestra. He graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1958, and later acknowledged two of his music teachers on the sleeve of the 1966 album ''Freak Out!'' Due to his family's frequent moves, Zappa attended at least six different high schools, and as a student he was often bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with juvenile antics. He left community college after one semester, and maintained thereafter a disdain for formal education, taking his children out of school at age 15 and refusing to pay for their college.

Zappa left home in 1959, and moved into a small apartment in Echo Park, Los Angeles. After meeting Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman during his short stay at Pomona College, they moved in together in Ontario, and were married December 28, 1960. Zappa worked for a short period in advertising. His sojourn in the commercial world was brief, but gave him valuable insights into how it works. Throughout his career, he took a keen interest in the visual presentation of his work, designing some of his album covers and directing his own films and videos.

Early 1960s: Studio Z

Zappa attempted to earn a living as a musician and composer, and played different nightclub gigs, some with a new version of The Blackouts. Financially more rewarding were Zappa's earliest professional recordings, two soundtracks for the low-budget films ''The World's Greatest Sinner'' (1962) and ''Run Home Slow'' (1965). The former score was commissioned by actor-producer Timothy Carey and recorded in 1961. It contains many themes that appeared on later Zappa records. The latter soundtrack was recorded in 1963 after the film was completed, but it was commissioned by one of Zappa's former high school teachers in 1959 and Zappa may have worked on it before the film was shot. Excerpts from the soundtrack can be heard on the posthumous album ''The Lost Episodes'' (1996).

During the early 1960s, Zappa wrote and produced songs for other local artists, often working with singer-songwriter Ray Collins and producer Paul Buff. Their "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by The Penguins, although only Cleve Duncan of the original group was featured. Buff owned the small Pal Recording Studio in Cucamonga, which included a unique five-track tape recorder he had built. At that time, only a handful of the most sophisticated commercial studios had multi-track facilities; the industry standard for smaller studios was still mono or two-track. Although none of the recordings from the period achieved major commercial success, Zappa earned enough money to allow him to stage a concert of his orchestral music in 1963 and to broadcast and record it. He appeared on Steve Allen's syndicated late night show the same year, in which he played a bicycle as a musical instrument. With Captain Beefheart, Zappa recorded some songs under the name of The Soots. They were rejected by Dot Records for having "no commercial potential", a verdict Zappa subsequently quoted on the sleeve of ''Freak Out!''

In 1964, after his marriage started to break up, he moved into the Pal studio and began routinely working 12 hours or more per day recording and experimenting with overdubbing and audio tape manipulation. This set a work pattern that endured for most of his life. Aided by his income from film composing, Zappa took over the studio from Paul Buff, who was now working with Art Laboe at Original Sound. It was renamed Studio Z. Studio Z was rarely booked for recordings by other musicians. Instead, friends moved in, notably James "Motorhead" Sherwood. Zappa started performing as guitarist with a power trio, The Muthers, in local bars in order to support himself.

An article in the local press describing Zappa as "the Movie King of Cucamonga" prompted the local police to suspect that he was making pornographic films. In March 1965, Zappa was approached by a vice squad undercover officer, and accepted an offer of $100 to produce a suggestive audio tape for an alleged stag party. Zappa and a female friend recorded a faked erotic episode. When Zappa was about to hand over the tape, he was arrested, and the police stripped the studio of all recorded material. The press was tipped off beforehand, and next day's ''The Daily Report'' wrote that "Vice Squad investigators stilled the tape recorders of a free-swinging, a-go-go film and recording studio here Friday and arrested a self-styled movie producer". Zappa was charged with "conspiracy to commit pornography". This felony charge was reduced and he was sentenced to six months in jail on a misdemeanor, with all but ten days suspended. His brief imprisonment left a permanent mark, and was key in the formation of his anti-authoritarian stance. Zappa lost several recordings made at Studio Z in the process, as the police only returned 30 out of 80 hours of tape seized. Eventually, he could no longer afford to pay the rent on the studio and was evicted. Zappa managed to recover some of his possessions before the studio was torn down in 1966.

Late 1960s: The Mothers of Invention

In 1965, Zappa was approached by Ray Collins who asked him to take over as the guitarist in local R&B; band The Soul Giants, following a fight between Collins and the group's original guitarist. Zappa accepted, and soon he assumed leadership and the role as co-lead singer (even though he never considered himself a singer). He convinced the other members that they should play his music to increase the chances of getting a record contract. The band was renamed The Mothers, coincidentally on Mother's Day. The group increased their bookings after beginning an association with manager Herb Cohen, while they gradually gained attention on the burgeoning Los Angeles underground music scene. In early 1966, they were spotted by leading record producer Tom Wilson when playing "Trouble Every Day", a song about the Watts Riots. Wilson had earned acclaim as the producer for singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and the folk-rock act Simon & Garfunkel, and was notable as one of the few African Americans working as a major label pop music producer at this time.

Wilson signed The Mothers to the Verve Records division of MGM Records, which had built up a strong reputation in the music industry for its releases of modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was attempting to diversify into pop and rock audiences. Verve insisted that the band officially re-title themselves "The Mothers of Invention" because "Mother", in slang terminology, was short for "motherfucker" — a term that apart from its profane meanings can denote a skilled musician.

Debut album: ''Freak Out!'' (1966)

With Wilson credited as producer, The Mothers of Invention, augmented by a studio orchestra, recorded the groundbreaking ''Freak Out!'' (1966) which, preceded by Bob Dylan's ''Blonde on Blonde'', was the second rock double album ever released. It mixed R&B;, doo-wop, musique concrète, and experimental sound collages that captured the "freak" subculture of Los Angeles at that time. Although he was dissatisfied with the final product—in a late '60s radio interview (included in the posthumous ''MOFO Project/Object'' compilation) Zappa recounted that the side-long closing track "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" was intended to be the basic track for a much more complex work which Verve did not allow him to complete – ''Freak Out'' immediately established Zappa as a radical new voice in rock music, providing an antidote to the "relentless consumer culture of America". The sound was raw, but the arrangements were sophisticated. While recording in the studio, some of the additional session musicians were shocked that they were expected to read the notes on sheet music from charts with Zappa conducting them, since it was not standard when recording rock music. The lyrics praised non-conformity, disparaged authorities, and had dadaist elements. Yet, there was a place for seemingly conventional love songs. Most compositions are Zappa's, which set a precedent for the rest of his recording career. He had full control over the arrangements and musical decisions and did most overdubs. Wilson provided the industry clout and connections to get the group the financial resources needed.

During the recording of ''Freak Out!'', Zappa moved into a house in Laurel Canyon with friend Pamela Zarubica, who appeared on the album. The house became a meeting (and living) place for many LA musicians and groupies of the time, despite Zappa's disapproval of their illicit drug use. He labeled people on drugs "assholes in action", and he tried cannabis only a few times, but without any pleasure. He was a regular tobacco smoker for most of his life, and strongly critical of anti-tobacco campaigns. After a short promotional tour following the release of ''Freak Out!'', Zappa met Adelaide Gail Sloatman. He fell in love within "a couple of minutes", and she moved into the house over the summer. They married in 1967, had four children and remained together until Zappa's death.

Wilson nominally produced The Mothers' second album ''Absolutely Free'' (1967), which was recorded in November 1966, and later mixed in New York, although by this time Zappa was in ''de facto'' control of most facets of the production. It featured extended playing by The Mothers of Invention and focused on songs that defined Zappa's compositional style of introducing abrupt, rhythmical changes into songs that were built from diverse elements. Examples are "Plastic People" and "Brown Shoes Don't Make It", which contained lyrics critical of the hypocrisy and conformity of American society, but also of the counterculture of the 1960s. As Zappa put it, "[W]e're satirists, and we are out to satirize everything." At the same time, Zappa had recorded material for a self-produced album based on orchestral works to be released under his own name. Due to contractual problems, the recordings were shelved and only made ready for release late in 1967. Zappa took the opportunity to radically restructure the contents, adding newly recorded, improvised dialogue to finalize what became his first solo album (under the name ''Francis Vincent Zappa''), ''Lumpy Gravy'' (1968). It is an "incredible ambitious musical project", a "monument to John Cage", which intertwines orchestral themes, spoken words and electronic noises through radical audio editing techniques.

New York period (1966–1968)

The Mothers of Invention played in New York in late 1966 and were offered a contract at the Garrick Theater during Easter 1967. This proved successful and Herb Cohen extended the booking, which eventually lasted half a year. As a result, Zappa and his wife, along with The Mothers of Invention, moved to New York. Their shows became a combination of improvised acts showcasing individual talents of the band as well as tight performances of Zappa's music. Everything was directed by Zappa's famous hand signals. Guest performers and audience participation became a regular part of the Garrick Theater shows. One evening, Zappa managed to entice some U.S. Marines from the audience onto the stage, where they proceeded to dismember a big baby doll, having been told by Zappa to pretend that it was a "gook baby".

Situated in New York, and only interrupted by the band's first European tour, The Mothers of Invention recorded the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late 1960s work, ''We're Only in It for the Money'' (released 1968). It was produced by Zappa, with Wilson credited as executive producer. From then on, Zappa produced all albums released by The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. ''We're Only in It for the Money'' featured some of the most creative audio editing and production yet heard in pop music, and the songs ruthlessly satirized the hippie and flower power phenomena. The cover photo parodied that of The Beatles' ''Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''. The cover art was provided by Cal Schenkel whom Zappa met in New York. This initiated a life-long collaboration in which Schenkel designed covers for numerous Zappa and Mothers albums.

Reflecting Zappa's eclectic approach to music, the next album, ''Cruising with Ruben & the Jets'' (1968), was very different. It represented a collection of doo-wop songs; listeners and critics were not sure whether the album was a satire or a tribute. Zappa has noted that the album was conceived in the way Stravinsky's compositions were in his neo-classical period: "If he could take the forms and clichés of the classical era and pervert them, why not do the same ... to doo-wop in the fifties?" A theme from Stravinsky's ''The Rite of Spring'' is heard during one song.

In New York, Zappa increasingly used tape editing as a compositional tool. A prime example is found on the double album ''Uncle Meat'' (1969), where the track "King Kong" is edited from various studio and live performances. Zappa had begun regularly recording concerts, and because of his insistence on precise tuning and timing, he was able to augment his studio productions with excerpts from live shows, and vice versa. Later, he combined recordings of different compositions into new pieces, irrespective of the tempo or meter of the sources. He dubbed this process "xenochrony" (strange synchronizations) — reflecting the Greek "xeno" (alien or strange) and "chrono" (time). Zappa also evolved a compositional approach which he called "conceptual continuity," meaning that any project or album was part of a larger project. Everything was connected, and musical themes and lyrics reappeared in different form on later albums. Conceptual continuity clues are found throughout Zappa's entire œuvre.

During the late 1960s, Zappa continued to develop the business sides of his career. He and Herb Cohen formed the Bizarre Records and Straight Records labels, distributed by Warner Bros. Records, as ventures to aid the funding of projects and to increase creative control. Zappa produced the double album ''Trout Mask Replica'' for Captain Beefheart, and releases by Alice Cooper, Wild Man Fischer, and The GTOs, as well as Lenny Bruce's last live performance.

Disbanding the original Mothers of Invention (1969)

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Zappa and The Mothers of Invention returned to Los Angeles in the summer of 1968, and the Zappas moved into a house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, only to move again to one on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the autumn. This was to be Zappa's home for the rest of his life. Despite being a success with fans in Europe, The Mothers of Invention were not faring well financially. Their first records were vocally oriented, but Zappa wrote more instrumental jazz and classical oriented music for the band's concerts, which confused audiences. Zappa felt that audiences failed to appreciate his "electrical chamber music". In 1969 there were nine band members and Zappa was supporting the group himself from his publishing royalties whether they played or not. 1969 was also the year Zappa, fed up with MGM's interference, left MGM Records for Warner Bros. Records' Reprise Records subsidiary where Zappa/Mothers recordings would bear the Bizarre Records imprint. In late 1969, Zappa broke up the band. He often cited the financial strain as the main reason, but also commented on the band members' lack of sufficient effort. Many band members were bitter about Zappa's decision, and some took it as a sign of Zappa's concern for perfection at the expense of human feeling. Others were irritated by 'his autocratic ways', exemplified by Zappa's never staying at the same hotel as the band members. Several members would, however, play for Zappa in years to come. Remaining recordings with the band from this period were collected on ''Weasels Ripped My Flesh'' and ''Burnt Weeny Sandwich'' (both released in 1970).

After he disbanded The Mothers of Invention, Zappa released the acclaimed solo album ''Hot Rats'' (1969). It features, for the first time on record, Zappa playing extended guitar solos and contains one of his most enduring compositions, "Peaches en Regalia", which reappeared several times on future recordings. It was backed by jazz, blues and R&B; session players including violinist Don "Sugarcane" Harris, drummers John Guerin and Paul Humphrey, multi-instrumentalist and previous member of Mothers of Invention Ian Underwood, and multi-instrumentalist Shuggie Otis on bass, along with a guest appearance by Captain Beefheart (providing vocals to the only non-instrumental track, "Willie the Pimp"). It became a popular album in England, and had a major influence on the development of the jazz-rock fusion genre.

1970s: From The Mothers to Zappa

In 1970 Zappa met conductor Zubin Mehta. They arranged a May 1970 concert where Mehta conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic augmented by a rock band. According to Zappa, the music was mostly written in motel rooms while on tour with The Mothers of Invention. Some of it was later featured in the movie ''200 Motels''. Although the concert was a success, Zappa's experience working with a symphony orchestra was not a happy one. His dissatisfaction became a recurring theme throughout his career; he often felt that the quality of performance of his material delivered by orchestras was not commensurate with the money he spent on orchestral concerts and recordings.

Rebirth of The Mothers and filmmaking (1970)

Later in 1970, Zappa formed a new version of The Mothers (from then on, he mostly dropped the "of Invention"). It included British drummer Aynsley Dunbar, jazz keyboardist George Duke, Ian Underwood, Jeff Simmons (bass, rhythm guitar), and three members of The Turtles: bass player Jim Pons, and singers Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, who, due to persistent legal and contractual problems, adopted the stage name "The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie", or "Flo & Eddie".

This version of The Mothers debuted on Zappa's next solo album ''Chunga's Revenge'' (1970), which was followed by the double-album soundtrack to the movie ''200 Motels'' (1971), featuring The Mothers, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Ringo Starr, Theodore Bikel, and Keith Moon. Co-directed by Zappa and Tony Palmer, it was filmed in a week at Pinewood Studios outside London. Tensions between Zappa and several cast and crew members arose before and during shooting. The film deals loosely with life on the road as a rock musician. It was the first feature film photographed on videotape and transferred to 35 mm film, a process which allowed for novel visual effects. It was released to mixed reviews. The score relied extensively on orchestral music, and Zappa's dissatisfaction with the classical music world intensified when a concert, scheduled at the Royal Albert Hall after filming, was canceled because a representative of the venue found some of the lyrics obscene. In 1975, he lost a lawsuit against the Royal Albert Hall for breach of contract.

After ''200 Motels'', the band went on tour, which resulted in two live albums, ''Fillmore East - June 1971'' and ''Just Another Band From L.A.''; the latter included the 20-minute track "Billy the Mountain", Zappa's satire on rock opera set in Southern California. This track was representative of the band's theatrical performances in which songs were used to build up sketches based on ''200 Motels'' scenes as well as new situations often portraying the band members' sexual encounters on the road.

Accident, attack and their aftermath (1971–1972)

In December 1971, there were two serious setbacks. While performing at Casino de Montreux in Switzerland, The Mothers' equipment was destroyed when a flare set off by an audience member started a fire that burned down the casino. Immortalized in Deep Purple's song "Smoke on the Water", the event and immediate aftermath can be heard on the bootleg album ''Swiss Cheese/Fire'', released legally as part of Zappa's ''Beat the Boots II'' compilation. After a week's break, The Mothers played at the Rainbow Theatre, London, with rented gear. During the encore, an audience member pushed Zappa off the stage and into the concrete-floored orchestra pit. The band thought Zappa had been killed—he had suffered serious fractures, head trauma and injuries to his back, leg, and neck, as well as a crushed larynx, which ultimately caused his voice to drop a third after healing. This left him wheelchair bound, forcing him off the road for over half a year. Upon his return to the stage in September 1972, he was still wearing a leg brace, had a noticeable limp and could not stand for very long while on stage. Zappa noted that one leg healed "shorter than the other" (a reference later found in the lyrics of songs "Zomby Woof" and "Dancin' Fool"), resulting in chronic back pain. Meanwhile, The Mothers were left in limbo and eventually formed the core of Flo and Eddie's band as they set out on their own.

During 1971–1972 Zappa released two strongly jazz-oriented solo LPs, ''Waka/Jawaka'' and ''The Grand Wazoo'', which were recorded during the forced layoff from concert touring, using floating line-ups of session players and Mothers alumni. Musically, the albums were akin to ''Hot Rats''. Zappa began touring again in late 1972. His first effort was a series of concerts in September 1972 with a 20-piece big band referred to as the Grand Wazoo. This was followed by a scaled-down version known as the Petit Wazoo that toured the U.S. for five weeks from October to December 1972.

Top 10 album (1973–1975)

Zappa then formed and toured with smaller groups that variously included Ian Underwood (reeds, keyboards), Ruth Underwood (vibes, marimba), Sal Marquez (trumpet, vocals), Napoleon Murphy Brock (sax, flute and vocals), Bruce Fowler (trombone), Tom Fowler (bass), Chester Thompson (drums), Ralph Humphrey (drums), George Duke (keyboards, vocals), and Jean-Luc Ponty (violin). By 1973 the Bizarre and Straight labels were discontinued. In their place, Zappa and Cohen created DiscReet Records, also distributed by Warner Bros. Zappa continued a high rate of production through the first half of the 1970s, including the solo album ''Apostrophe (')'' (1974), which reached a career-high No. 10 on the Billboard pop album charts helped by the chart single "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow". Other albums from the period are ''Over-Nite Sensation'' (1973), which contained several future concert favorites, such as "Dinah-Moe Humm" and "Montana", and the albums ''Roxy & Elsewhere'' (1974) and ''One Size Fits All'' (1975) which feature ever-changing versions of a band still called The Mothers, and are notable for the tight renditions of highly difficult jazz fusion songs in such pieces as "Inca Roads", "Echidna's Arf (Of You)" and "Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)". A live recording from 1974, ''You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2'' (1988), captures "the full spirit and excellence of the 1973–75 band". Zappa released ''Bongo Fury'' (1975), which featured live recordings from a tour the same year that reunited him with Captain Beefheart for a brief period. They later became estranged for a period of years, but were in contact at the end of Zappa's life.

Business breakups and touring (1976–1979)

Zappa's relationship with long-time manager Herb Cohen ended in 1976. Zappa sued Cohen for skimming more than he was allocated from DiscReet Records, as well as for signing acts of which Zappa did not approve. Cohen filed a lawsuit against Zappa in return, which froze the money Zappa and Cohen had gained from an out-of-court settlement with MGM over the rights of the early Mothers of Invention recordings. It also prevented Zappa having access to any of his previously recorded material during the trials. Zappa therefore took his personal master copies of the rock-oriented ''Zoot Allures'' (1976) directly to Warner Bros., thereby bypassing DiscReet.

In the mid-1970s Zappa prepared material for ''Läther'' (pronounced "leather"), a four-LP project. ''Läther'' encapsulated all the aspects of Zappa's musical styles — rock tunes, orchestral works, complex instrumentals, and Zappa's own trademark distortion-drenched guitar solos. Wary of a quadruple-LP, Warner Bros. Records refused to release it. Zappa managed to get an agreement with Mercury-Phonogram, and test pressings were made targeted at a Halloween 1977 release, but Warner Bros. prevented the release by claiming rights over the material. Zappa responded by appearing on the Pasadena, California radio station KROQ, allowing them to broadcast ''Läther'' and encouraging listeners to make their own tape recordings. A lawsuit between Zappa and Warner Bros. followed, during which no Zappa material was released for more than a year. Eventually, Warner Bros. issued major parts of ''Läther'' against Zappa's will as four individual albums with limited promotion. ''Läther'' was released posthumously in 1996.

Although Zappa eventually gained the rights to all his material created under the MGM and Warner Bros. contracts, the various lawsuits meant that for a period Zappa's only income came from touring, which he therefore did extensively in 1975–1977 with relatively small, mainly rock-oriented, bands. Drummer Terry Bozzio became a regular band member, Napoleon Murphy Brock stayed on for a while, and original Mothers of Invention bassist Roy Estrada joined. Among other musicians were bassist Patrick O'Hearn, singer-guitarist Ray White and keyboardist Eddie Jobson. In December 1976, Zappa appeared as a featured musical guest on the NBC television show ''Saturday Night Live''. The performances included an impromptu musical collaboration with cast member John Belushi during the instrumental piece "The Purple Lagoon". Belushi appeared as his Samurai Futaba character playing the tenor sax with Zappa conducting. Zappa's song, "I'm the Slime", was performed with a voice-over by ''SNL'' booth announcer Don Pardo, who also introduced "Peaches En Regalia" on the same airing.

Zappa's band at the time, with the additions of Ruth Underwood and a horn section (featuring Michael and Randy Brecker), performed during Christmas in New York, recordings of which appear on one of the albums released by Warner Bros., ''Zappa in New York'' (1978). It mixes intense instrumentals such as "The Black Page" and humorous songs like "Titties and Beer". The former composition, written originally for drum kit but later developed for larger bands, is notorious for its complexity in rhythmic structure, radical changes of tempo and meter, and short, densely arranged passages.

''Zappa in New York'' featured a song about sex criminal Michael H. Kenyon, "The Illinois Enema Bandit", which featured Don Pardo providing the opening narrative in the song. Like many songs on the album, it contained numerous sexual references, leading to many critics objecting and being offended by the content. Zappa dismissed the criticism by noting that he was a journalist reporting on life as he saw it. Predating his later fight against censorship, he remarked: "What do you make of a society that is so primitive that it clings to the belief that certain words in its language are so powerful that they could corrupt you the moment you hear them?" The remaining albums released by Warner Bros. Records without Zappa's consent were ''Studio Tan'' in 1978 and ''Sleep Dirt'' in 1979, which contained complex suites of instrumentally-based tunes recorded between 1973 and 1976, and whose release was overlooked in the midst of the legal problems. Also released by the label without the artist's consent was ''Orchestral Favorites'' in 1979, which featured recordings of a concert with orchestral music from 1975.

Zappa as an independent artist (1979)

Resolving the lawsuits successfully, Zappa ended the 1970s "stronger than ever", by releasing two of his most successful albums in 1979: the best selling album of his career, ''Sheik Yerbouti'', and the "bona fide masterpiece", ''Joe's Garage''. The double album ''Sheik Yerbouti'' was the first release on Zappa Records, and contained the Grammy-nominated single "Dancin' Fool", which reached No. 45 on the ''Billboard'' charts, and "Jewish Princess", which received attention when a Jewish lobby group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), attempted to prevent the song from receiving radio airplay due to its alleged anti-Semitic lyrics. Zappa vehemently denied any anti-Semitic sentiments and dismissed the ADL as a "noisemaking organization that tries to apply pressure on people in order to manufacture a stereotype image of Jews that suits their idea of a good time". The album's commercial success was attributable in part to "Bobby Brown". Due to its explicit lyrics about a young man's encounter with a "dyke by the name of Freddie", the song did not get airplay in the U.S., but it topped the charts in several European countries where English is not the primary language. The triple LP ''Joe's Garage'' featured lead singer Ike Willis as the voice of the character "Joe" in a rock opera about the danger of political systems, the suppression of freedom of speech and music — inspired in part by the Islamic revolution that had made music illegal within its jurisdiction at the time — and about the "strange relationship Americans have with sex and sexual frankness". The album contains rock songs like "Catholic Girls" (a riposte to the controversies of "Jewish Princess"), "Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up", and the title track, as well as extended live-recorded guitar improvisations combined with a studio backup band dominated by drummer Vinnie Colaiuta (with whom Zappa had a particularly good musical rapport) adopting the xenochrony process. The album contains one of Zappa's most famous guitar "signature pieces", "Watermelon in Easter Hay".

On December 21, 1979, Zappa's movie ''Baby Snakes'' premiered in New York. The movie's tagline was "A movie about people who do stuff that is not normal". The 2 hour and 40 minutes movie was based on footage from concerts in New York around Halloween 1977, with a band featuring keyboardist Tommy Mars and percussionist Ed Mann (who would both return on later tours) as well as guitarist Adrian Belew. It also contained several extraordinary sequences of clay animation by Bruce Bickford who had earlier provided animation sequences to Zappa for a 1974 TV special (which later become available on the video ''The Dub Room Special'' (1982)). The movie did not do well in theatrical distribution, but won the Premier Grand Prix at the First International Music Festival in Paris in 1981. The Zappa Family Trust released it on DVD, and it has been available since 2003.

Zappa later expanded on his television appearances in a non-musical role. He was an actor or voice artist in episodes of ''Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre'', ''Miami Vice'' and ''The Ren and Stimpy Show''. A voice part in ''The Simpsons'' never materialized, to creator Matt Groening's disappointment.

1980s: Productive as ever

After spending most of 1980 on the road, Zappa released ''Tinsel Town Rebellion'' in 1981. It was the first release on his own Barking Pumpkin Records, and it contains songs taken from a 1979 tour, one studio track and material from the 1980 tours. The album is a mixture of complicated instrumentals and Zappa's use of ''sprechstimme'' (speaking song or voice)—a compositional technique utilized by such composers as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg — showcasing some of the most accomplished bands Zappa ever had (mostly featuring drummer Vinnie Colaiuta). While some lyrics still raised controversy among critics, in the sense that some found them sexist, the political and sociological satire in songs like the title track and "The Blue Light" have been described as a "hilarious critique of the willingness of the American people to believe anything". The album is also notable for the presence of guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, who joined Zappa's touring band in the fall of 1980.

The same year the double album ''You Are What You Is'' was released. Most of it was recorded in Zappa's brand new Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (UMRK) studios, which were located at his house, thereby giving him complete freedom to work. The album included one complex instrumental, "Theme from the 3^rd Movement of Sinister Footwear", but focused mainly on rock songs with Zappa's sardonic social commentary—satirical lyrics targeted at teenagers, the media, and religious and political hypocrisy. "Dumb All Over" is a tirade on religion, as is "Heavenly Bank Account", wherein Zappa rails against TV evangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson for their purported influence on the U.S. administration as well as their use of religion as a means of raising money. Songs like "Society Pages" and "I'm a Beautiful Guy" show Zappa's dismay with the Reagan era and its "obscene pursuit of wealth and happiness". In 1981, Zappa also released three instrumental albums, ''Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar'', ''Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More'', and ''The Return of the Son of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar'', which were initially sold via mail order, but later released through the CBS label due to popular demand. The albums focus exclusively on Frank Zappa as a guitar soloist, and the tracks are predominantly live recordings from 1979–1980; they highlight Zappa's improvisational skills with "beautiful performances from the backing group as well". Another guitar-only album, ''Guitar'', was released in 1988, and a third, ''Trance-Fusion'', which Zappa completed shortly before his death, was released in 2006.

From hit single to classical performances

In May 1982, Zappa released ''Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch'', which featured his biggest selling single ever, the Grammy Award-nominated song "Valley Girl" (topping out at No. 32 on the ''Billboard'' charts). In her improvised lyrics to the song, Zappa's daughter Moon Unit satirized the vapid speech of teenage girls from the San Fernando Valley, which popularized many "Valspeak" expressions such as "gag me with a spoon," "fer sure, fer sure," "grody" (gross), and "barf out". Most Americans who only knew Zappa from his few singles successes now thought of him as a person writing "novelty songs", even though the rest of the album contained highly challenging music. Zappa was irritated by this and never played the song live.

In 1983, two different projects were released, beginning with ''The Man from Utopia,'' a rock-oriented work. The album is eclectic, featuring the vocal-led "Dangerous Kitchen" and "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats", both continuations of the sprechstimme excursions on ''Tinseltown Rebellion.'' The second album, ''London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 1'', contained orchestral Zappa compositions conducted by Kent Nagano and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). A second record of these sessions, ''London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 2'' was released in 1987. The material was recorded under a tight schedule with Zappa providing all funding, helped by the commercial success of "Valley Girl". Zappa was not satisfied with the LSO recordings. One reason is "Strictly Genteel", which was recorded after the trumpet section had been out for drinks on a break: the track took 40 edits to hide out-of-tune notes. Conductor Nagano, who was pleased with the experience, noted that in "fairness to the orchestra, the music is humanly very, very difficult". Some reviews noted that the recordings were the best representation of Zappa's orchestral work so far. In 1984 Zappa teamed again with Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra for a live performance of ''A Zappa Affair'' with augmented orchestra, life-size puppets, and moving stage sets. Although critically acclaimed the work was a financial failure, and only performed twice. Zappa was invited by conference organizer Thomas Wells to be the keynote speaker at the American Society of University Composers at the Ohio State University. It was there Zappa delivered his famous "Bingo! There Goes Your Tenure" address, and had two of his orchestra pieces, "Dupree's Paradise" and "Naval Aviation in Art?" performed by the Columbus Symphony and ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus.

Synclavier

For the remainder of his career, much of Zappa's work was influenced by his use of the Synclavier as a compositional and performance tool. Even considering the complexity of the music he wrote, the Synclavier could realize anything he could dream up. The Synclavier could be programmed to play almost anything conceivable, to perfection: "With the Synclavier, any group of imaginary instruments can be invited to play the most difficult passages ... with ''one-millisecond'' accuracy—every time". Even though it essentially did away with the need for musicians, Zappa viewed the Synclavier and real-life musicians as separate. In 1984, he released four albums. ''Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger,'' contains orchestral works commissioned and conducted by world-renowned conductor Pierre Boulez (who was listed as an influence on ''Freak Out!'') and performed by his Ensemble InterContemporain, juxtaposed with premiere Synclavier pieces. Again, Zappa was not satisfied with the performances of his orchestral works as he found them under-rehearsed, but in the album liner notes he respectfully thanks Boulez's demands for precision. The Synclavier pieces stood in contrast to the orchestral works, as the sounds were electronically generated and not, as became possible shortly thereafter, sampled.

The album ''Thing-Fish'' was an ambitious three-record set in the style of a Broadway play dealing with a dystopian "what-if" scenario involving feminism, homosexuality, manufacturing and distribution of the AIDS virus, and a eugenics program conducted by the United States government. New vocals were combined with previously released tracks and new Synclavier music; "the work is an extraordinary example of bricolage". Finally, in 1984, Zappa released ''Francesco Zappa'', a Synclavier rendition of works by 18th century composer Francesco Zappa (no known relation), and ''Them or Us,'' a two-record set of heavily edited live and session pieces.

Senate testimony

On September 19, 1985, Zappa testified before the United States Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music organization co-founded by Tipper Gore, wife of then-senator Al Gore. The PMRC consisted of many wives of politicians, including the wives of five members of the committee, and was founded to address the issue of song lyrics with sexual or satanic content. Zappa saw their activities as on a path towards censorship, and called their proposal for voluntary labelling of records with explicit content "extortion" of the music industry. In his prepared statement, he said:

The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years dealing with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in the proposal's design. It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC's demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation ... The establishment of a rating system, voluntary or otherwise, opens the door to an endless parade of moral quality control programs based on things certain Christians do not like. What if the next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow "J" on all material written or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine?

Zappa set excerpts from the PMRC hearings to Synclavier music in his composition "Porn Wars" on the 1985 album ''Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention'', and the full recording was released in 2010 as ''Congress Shall Make No Law...''. Zappa is heard interacting with Senators Fritz Hollings, Slade Gorton, Al Gore (who claimed, at the hearing, to be a Zappa fan), and in an exchange with Florida Senator Paula Hawkins over what toys Zappa's children played with. Zappa expressed opinions on censorship when he appeared on CNN's ''Crossfire TV series'' and debated issues with ''Washington Times'' commentator John Lofton in 1986. Zappa's passion for American politics was becoming a bigger part of his life. He had always encouraged his fans to register to vote on album covers, and throughout 1988 he had registration booths at his concerts. He even considered running for President of the United States.

Digital medium and last tour

Around 1986, Zappa undertook a comprehensive re-release program of his earlier vinyl recordings. He personally oversaw the remastering of all his 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s albums for the new digital compact disc medium. Certain aspects of these re-issues were, however, criticized by some fans as being unfaithful to the original recordings. Nearly twenty years before the advent of online music stores, Zappa had proposed to replace "phonographic record merchandising" of music by "direct digital-to-digital transfer" through phone or cable TV (with royalty payments and consumer billing automatically built into the accompanying software). In 1989, Zappa considered his idea a "miserable flop".

The album ''Jazz From Hell,'' released in 1986, earned Zappa his first Grammy Award in 1987 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Except for one live guitar solo (St. Etienne), the album exclusively featured compositions brought to life by the Synclavier. Although an instrumental album, containing no lyrics whatsoever, Meyer Music Markets sold ''Jazz from Hell'' featuring an "explicit lyrics" sticker — a warning label introduced by the Recording Industry Association of America in an agreement with the PMRC.

Zappa's last tour in a rock and jazz band format took place in 1988 with a 12-piece group which had a repertoire of over 100 (mostly Zappa) compositions, but which split under acrimonious circumstances before the tour was completed. The tour was documented on the albums ''Broadway the Hard Way'' (new material featuring songs with strong political emphasis), ''The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life'' (Zappa "standards" and an eclectic collection of cover tunes, ranging from Maurice Ravel's ''Boléro'' to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"), and ''Make a Jazz Noise Here'' (mostly instrumental and avant-garde music). Parts are also found on ''You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore'', volumes 4 and 6.

1990s: Classical music and death

In early 1990, Zappa visited Czechoslovakia at the request of President Václav Havel, and was asked to serve as consultant for the government on trade, cultural matters and tourism. Havel was a lifelong fan of Zappa who had great influence in the avant-garde and underground scene in Central Europe in the 1970s and 1980s (a Czech rock group that was imprisoned in 1976 took its name from Zappa's 1968 song "Plastic People"). Zappa enthusiastically agreed and began meeting with corporate officials interested in investing in Czechoslovakia. Within a few weeks, however, the U.S. administration put pressure on the Czech government to withdraw the appointment. Havel made Zappa an unofficial cultural attaché instead. Zappa also planned to develop an international consulting enterprise to facilitate trade between the former Eastern Bloc and Western businesses. Most of Zappa's projects came to a halt in 1990, when he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. The disease had been developing unnoticed for ten years and was considered inoperable. After his diagnosis, Zappa devoted most of his energy to modern orchestral and Synclavier works. In 1993 he completed ''Civilization, Phaze III'' shortly before his death. It was a major Synclavier work which he had begun in the 1980s.

In 1991, Zappa was chosen to be one of four featured composers at the world-acclaimed Frankfurt Festival in 1992 (the others were John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Alexander Knaifel). Zappa was approached by the German chamber ensemble, Ensemble Modern, which was interested in playing his music for the event. Although ill, Zappa invited them to Los Angeles for rehearsals of new compositions and new arrangements of older material. In addition to being satisfied with the ensemble's performances of his music, Zappa also got along with the musicians, and the concerts in Germany and Austria were set up for the fall. In September 1992, the concerts went ahead as scheduled, but Zappa could only appear at two in Frankfurt due to illness. At the first concert, he conducted the opening "Overture", and the final "G-Spot Tornado" as well as the theatrical "Food Gathering in Post-Industrial America, 1992" and "Welcome to the United States" (the remainder of the program was conducted by the ensemble's regular conductor Peter Rundel). Zappa received a 20-minute ovation. It would become his last professional public appearance, as the cancer was spreading to such an extent that he was in too much pain to enjoy an event that he otherwise found "exhilarating". Recordings from the concerts appeared on ''The Yellow Shark'' (1993), Zappa's last release during his lifetime, and some material from studio rehearsals appeared on the posthumous ''Everything Is Healing Nicely'' (1999).

Frank Zappa died on Saturday, December 4, 1993 in his home surrounded by his wife and children. At a private ceremony the following day, Zappa was interred in an unmarked grave at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles, next to the grave of actor Lew Ayres. On Monday, December 6 his family publicly announced that "Composer Frank Zappa left for his final tour just before 6:00 pm on Saturday".

Legacy

Acclaim and honors

Zappa earned widespread critical acclaim in his lifetime and after his death. ''The Rolling Stone Album Guide'' (2004) writes: "Frank Zappa dabbled in virtually all kinds of music — and, whether guised as a satirical rocker, jazz-rock fusionist, guitar virtuoso, electronics wizard, or orchestral innovator, his eccentric genius was undeniable". Even though his work drew inspiration from many different genres, Zappa was seen establishing a coherent and personal expression. In 1971, biographer David Walley noted that "The whole structure of his music is unified, not neatly divided by dates or time sequences and it is all building into a composite". On commenting on Zappa's music, politics and philosophy, Barry Miles noted in 2004 that they cannot be separated: "It was all one; all part of his 'conceptual continuity. ''Guitar Player'' devoted a special issue to Zappa in 1992, and asked on the cover "Is FZ America's Best Kept Musical Secret?" Editor Don Menn remarked that the issue was about "The most important composer to come out of modern popular music". Among those contributing to the issue was composer and musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, who conducted premiere performances of works of Ives and Varèse in the 1930s. He became friends with Zappa in the 1980s, and said "I admire everything Frank does, because he practically created the new musical millennium. He does beautiful, beautiful work ... It has been my luck to have lived to see the emergence of this totally new type of music." Conductor Kent Nagano remarked in the same issue that "Frank is a genius. That's a word I don't use often ... In Frank's case it is not too strong ... He is extremely literate musically. I'm not sure if the general public knows that". Pierre Boulez stated in ''Musician'' magazine's posthumous Zappa tribute article that Zappa "was an exceptional figure because he was part of the worlds of rock and classical music and that both types of his work would survive." Many music scholars acknowledge Zappa as one of the most influential composers of his generation. As an electric guitarist, he has become highly regarded.

In 1994, jazz magazine ''Down Beat'''s critics poll placed Zappa in its Hall of Fame. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. There, it was written that "Frank Zappa was rock and roll's sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic. He was the most prolific composer of his age, and he bridged genres — rock, jazz, classical, avant-garde and even novelty music — with masterful ease". He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. In 2005, the U.S. National Recording Preservation Board included ''We're Only in It for the Money'' in the National Recording Registry as "Frank Zappa's inventive and iconoclastic album presents a unique political stance, both anti-conservative and anti-counterculture, and features a scathing satire on hippiedom and America's reactions to it". The same year, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine ranked him at No. 71 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2011, he was ranked at No. 45 on the list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time by the same magazine.

Artists influenced by Zappa

A number of notable musicians, bands and orchestras from diverse genres have been influenced by Frank Zappa's music. Rock artists like Alice Cooper, Primus, Fee Waybill of The Tubes all cite Zappa's influence, as do progressive rock artists like Henry Cow, Trey Anastasio of Phish, and John Frusciante. Paul McCartney regarded ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' as The Beatles' ''Freak Out!'' Heavy rock and metal acts like Black Sabbath, Mike Portnoy, Warren DeMartini, Steve Vai, Strapping Young Lad, System of a Down, Clawfinger, and Devin Townsend acknowledge Zappa's inspiration. On the classical music scene, Tomas Ulrich, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Ensemble Ambrosius and the Fireworks Ensemble regularly perform Zappa's compositions and quote his influence. Contemporary jazz musicians and composers Bill Frisell and John Zorn are inspired by Zappa, as is funk legend George Clinton. Other artists whose work is affected by Zappa include new age pianist George Winston, electronic composer Bob Gluck, parody singer "Weird Al" Yankovic, industrial music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge, and noise music artist Masami Akita of Merzbow.

References in arts and sciences

Scientists from various fields have honored Zappa by naming new discoveries after him. In 1967, paleontologist Leo P. Plas, Jr. identified an extinct mollusc in Nevada and named it ''Amaurotoma zappa'' with the motivation that, "The specific name, ''zappa'', honors Frank Zappa". In the 1980s, biologist Ed Murdy named a genus of gobiid fishes of New Guinea ''Zappa'', with a species named ''Zappa confluentus''. Biologist Ferdinando Boero named a Californian jellyfish ''Phialella zappai'' (1987), noting that he had "pleasure in naming this species after the modern music composer". Belgian biologists Bosmans and Bosselaers discovered in the early 1980s a Cameroonese spider, which they in 1994 named ''Pachygnatha zappa'' because "the ventral side of the abdomen of the female of this species strikingly resembles the artist's legendary moustache". A gene of the bacterium ''Proteus mirabilis'' that causes urinary tract infections was in 1995 named ''zapA'' by three biologists from Maryland. In their scientific article, they "especially thank the late Frank Zappa for inspiration and assistance with genetic nomenclature". In the late 1990s, American paleontologists Marc Salak and Halard L. Lescinsky discovered a metazoan fossil, and named it ''Spygori zappania'' to honor "the late Frank Zappa ... whose mission paralleled that of the earliest paleontologists: to challenge conventional and traditional beliefs when such beliefs lacked roots in logic and reason".

In 1994, lobbying efforts initiated by psychiatrist John Scialli led the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center to name an asteroid in Zappa's honor: ''3834 Zappafrank''. The asteroid was discovered in 1980 by Czechoslovakian astronomer Ladislav Brozek, and the citation for its naming says that "Zappa was an eclectic, self-trained artist and composer ... Before 1989 he was regarded as a symbol of democracy and freedom by many people in Czechoslovakia".

In 1995, a bust of Zappa by sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas was installed in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. A replica was offered to the city of Baltimore in 2008, and on September 19, 2010 — the twenty-fifth anniversary of Zappa's testimony to the U.S. Senate — a ceremony dedicating the replica was held, with the bust installed at the Southeast Anchor Branch Library in Baltimore's Highlandtown. Speakers at the event included Gail Zappa and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake In 2002, a bronze bust was installed in German city Bad Doberan, since 1990 location of the ''Zappanale'', an annual music festival celebrating Zappa. At the initiative of musicians community ORWOhaus, the city of Berlin named a street in the Marzahn district "Frank-Zappa-Straße" in 2007. The same year, Baltimore's mayor Sheila Dixon proclaimed August 9 as the city's official "Frank Zappa Day" citing Zappa's musical accomplishments as well as his defense of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Discography

References

Notes

External links

The official Frank Zappa website

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