name	Trieste
official name	Comune di Trieste
image shield	Free Territory of Trieste coat of arms.svg
coordinates type	region:IT-TS_type:city(200000)
coordinates display	title
region	Friuli-Venezia Giulia
province	Trieste (TS)
frazioni	Banne (Bani), Barcola (Barkovlje), Basovizza (Bazovica), Borgo San Nazario, Cattinara (Katinara), Conconello (Ferlugi), Contovello (Kontovel), Grignano (Grljan), Gropada (Gropada), Longera (Lonjer), Miramare (Miramar), Opicina (Opčine), Padriciano (Padriče), Prosecco (Prosek), Santa Croce (Križ), Servola (Škedenj), Trebiciano (Trebče)
mayor party	Democratic Party
mayor	Roberto Cosolini
area total km2	84
population total	205374
population as of	April 30, 2009
population demonym	Triestini
elevation m	2
saint	St. Justus of Trieste
day	November 3
postal code	34100
area code	040
website
footnotes	}}

Trieste (, ; ; ; ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south, east and north of the city. Trieste is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste and throughout history it has been influenced by its location at the crossroads of Germanic, Latin, Austro-Hungarian and Slavic cultures. In 2009, it had a population of about 205,000 and it is the capital of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trieste province.

Trieste was one of the oldest parts of the Habsburg Monarchy from 1382 until 1918. In the 19th century, it was the most important port of one of the Great Powers of Europe. As a prosperous seaport in the Mediterranean region, Trieste became the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (after Vienna, Budapest, and Prague). In the fin-de-siecle period, it emerged as an important hub for literature and music. However, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Trieste's union to Italy after World War I led to some decline of its "Mittel-European" cultural and commercial importance. Enjoying an economic revival during the 1930s and throughout the Cold War, Trieste was an important spot in the struggle between the Eastern and Western blocs. Today, the city is in one of the richest regions of Italy, and has been a great centre for shipping, through its port (Port of Trieste), Shipbuilding and financial services.

Name

The original pre-Roman name of the city ''Tergeste'' derives from the Illyrian and Venetic words terg- (market) and est- (place) is etymologically related with the Scandinavian ''torg(et)'', Old Church Slavonic ''tьrgъ'', Romanian ''tirgu'', and Albanian word ''treg'', all meaning "market". Roman authors also transliterated the name as ''Tergestum''. Modern names of the city include: , , , ; .

Geography

Trieste is situated in the northernmost part of the high Adriatic in North-east Italy, near the border with Slovenia. The city lies on the Gulf of Trieste. thumb|left|Satellite view of Trieste. Built mostly on a hillside that becomes a mountain, Trieste's urban territory is situated at the foot of an imposing escarpment that comes down abruptly from the Kras Plateau towards the sea. The Kras heights, close to the city, reach an altitude of 458 metres (1,502 ft) above sea level.

Climate

The territory of Trieste is composed of several different climate zones depending on the distance from the sea and elevation. The average temperatures are in January and in July.

The climate can be severely affected by the ''Bora'', a north to northeast katabatic wind that can reach speeds of up to 200 km per hour.

History

Ancient era

Originally an Illyrian settlement the town was later captured by the Carni. From 177 BC Tergeste was under the Romans. It was granted the status of colony under Julius Caesar, who recorded its name as ''Tergeste'' in his ''Commentarii de bello Gallico'' (51 BC). During 200-1 BC the city was developed as a military colony. At that time Tergeste was defined an "Illyrian city" by Artemidorus of Ephesus, a Greek geographer, and "Carnic" by Strabo.

In imperial times the border of "Roman Italia" was moved from the Timavo river to Formione (today Risano). The Roman Tergeste lived a flourishing period due to its position as a crossroad from Aquileia, the main Roman city in the area, and Istria, and as a port as well, some ruins of which are still visible. Augustus built a line of walls around the city in 33-32 BC, while Trajan built a theatre in the 2nd century AD.

In the Early Christian era it remained a flourishing center, and after the end of the Western Roman Empire (in 476), Trieste was a Byzantine military outpost. In 567 AD the city was destroyed by the Lombards, in the course of their invasion of northern Italy. In 788 it became part of the Frankish kingdom, under the authority of their count-bishop. From 1081 the city came loosely under the Patriarchate of Aquileia, developing into a free commune by the end of the 12th century.

Habsburg Empire

After two centuries of war against the nearby major power, the Republic of Venice (which occupied it briefly from 1369 to 1372), the main citizens of Trieste petitioned Leopold III of Habsburg, Duke of Austria to become part of his domains. The agreement of cessation was signed in October 1382, in St. Bartholomew's church in the village of Šiška (''apud Sisciam''), today one of the city quarters of Ljubljana. The citizens, however, maintained a certain degree of autonomy up until the 17th century.

Following an unsuccessful Habsburg invasion of Venice in the prelude to the War of the League of Cambrai, the Venetians occupied Trieste again in 1508, and under the terms of the peace were allowed to keep the city. The Habsburg Empire recovered Trieste a little over one year later, however, when conflict resumed.

Trieste became an important port and trade hub. In 1719, it was made a free port within the Habsburg Empire by Emperor Charles VI, and remained a free port until 1 July 1891. The reign of his successor, Maria Theresa of Austria, marked the beginning of a flourishing era for the city.

In 1768, the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann was murdered by a robber in Trieste, while on his way from Vienna to Italy.

Trieste was occupied by French troops three times during the Napoleonic Wars, in 1797, 1805 and in 1809. Between 1809 and 1813, it was annexed to the Illyrian Provinces, interrupting its status of free port and losing its autonomy. The municipal autonomy was not restored after the return of the city to the Austrian Empire in 1813. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Trieste continued to prosper as the Free Imperial City of Trieste (''Reichsunmittelbare Stadt Triest''), a status that granted economic freedom, but limited its political self-government. The city's role as main Austrian trading port and shipbuilding centre was later emphasized with the foundation of the merchant shipping line Austrian Lloyd in 1836, whose headquarters stood at the corner of the Piazza Grande and Sanità. By 1913 Austrian Lloyd had a fleet of 62 ships comprising a total of 236,000 tons. With the introduction of the constitutionalism in the Austrian Empire in 1860, the municipal autonomy of the city was restored, with Trieste became capital of the ''Adriatisches Küstenland'', the Austrian Littoral region.

The particular Friulian dialect, called ''Tergestino'', spoken until the beginning of the 19th century, was gradually overcome by the Triestine dialect of Venetian (a language deriving directly from vulgar Latin) and other languages, including German grammar, Slovene and standard Italian languages. While Triestine was spoken by the largest part of the population, German was the language of the Austrian bureaucracy and Slovene was predominant in the surrounding villages. From the last decades of the 19th century, Slovene language speakers grew steadily, reaching 25% of the overall population of the municipality of Trieste in 1911 (30% of the Austro-Hungarian citizens in Trieste).

According to the 1911 census, the proportion of Slovene speakers amounted to 12.4% in the city center, 47.6% in the suburbs, and 90.5% in the surroundings. They were the largest ethnic group in 9 of the 19 urban neighborhoods of Trieste, and represented an absolute majority in 7 of them. The Italian speakers, on the other hand, were 60.1% of the population in the city center, 38.1% in the suburbs, and 6.0% in the surroundings. They were the largest linguistic group in 10 of the 19 urban neighborhoods, and represented the majority in 7 of them (including all 6 in the city center). Of the 11 villages included within the city limits, the Slovene speakers had an overwhelming majority in 10, and the German speakers in one (Miramare).

German speakers amounted to 5% of the city's population, with the highest proportions in the city center.

A small number of the population spoke Croatian (around 1.3% in 1911), and the city also counted several other smaller ethnic communities: Czechs, Istro-Romanians, Serbs and Greeks, which mostly assimilated either to the Italian or Slovene-speaking community.

In the later part of the 19th Century Pope Leo XIII considered moving his residence to Trieste (or to Salzburg), due to what he considered a hostile anti-Catholic climate in Italy, following the Capture of Rome by the newly-founded Kingdom of Italy. However, the Austrian monarch Franz Josef I gently rejected this idea.

The modern Austro-Hungarian Navy used Trieste's shipbuilding facilities for construction and as a base. The construction of the first major trunk railway in the Empire, the Vienna-Trieste Austrian Southern Railway, was completed in 1857, a valuable asset for trade and the supply of coal.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Trieste was a buzzing cosmopolitan city frequented by artists and philosophes such as James Joyce, Italo Svevo, Sigmund Freud, Dragotin Kette, Ivan Cankar, Scipio Slataper, and Umberto Saba. The city was the major port of the Austrian Riviera, an enclave, the only one very real part of Mitteleuropa on the south of Alps. Viennese architecture and coffeehouses still dominate the streets of Trieste to this day.

Annexation to Italy

Together with Trento, Trieste was a main focus of the irredentist movement, which aimed for the annexation to Italy of all the lands they claimed were inhabited by an Italian speaking population. Many local Italians enrolled voluntarily in the Royal Italian Army (a notable example is the writer Scipio Slataper).

After the end of World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, and many of its border areas, including the Austrian Littoral, were disputed among its successor states. On November 3, 1918, the Armistice of villa Giusti was signed ending hostilities between Italy and Austria-Hungary. Trieste was occupied by the Italian Army (warmly welcomed by the Italian portion of the local population)'''' after the Austro-Hungarian troops had been ordered to lay down their arms, a day before the Armistice was due to enter effect, effectively allowing the Italians to claim the region had been taken before the cessation of hostilities (a similar situation occurred in South Tyrol). Trieste was officially annexed to the Kingdom of Italy only with the Treaty of Rapallo in 1920. Immediately a policy of "deslavification" started with the italianisation of the slovene toponyms. The region was reorganized under a new administrative unit, known as the Julian March (Venezia Giulia). The union to Italy, however, brought a small loss of importance for the city, with the new state border depriving it of its former hinterland. The Slovene ethnic group (around 25% of the population according to the 1910 census) suffered persecution by rising Italian Fascism. The period of violent persecution of Slovenes began with the riots of April 13, 1920, which were organized as a retaliation for the assault on Italian occupying troops in Split by the local Croatian population. Many Slovene-owned shops and buildings were destroyed during the riots, which culminated when a group of Italian Fascists, led by Francesco Giunta, burned down the ''Narodni dom'' ("National House"), the community hall of Trieste's Slovenes.

After the emergence of the Fascist regime in 1922, an official policy of Italianization continued. Public use of the Slovene language was prohibited, by 1927 all Slovene associations were dissolved, while names and surnames of Slavic and German origin were Italianized by the end of 1930. Several thousand Slovenes from Trieste, especially intellectuals, emigrated to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and to South America, where many became prominent in their field. Among the notable Slovene émigrés from Trieste were the writers Vladimir Bartol and Josip Ribičič, the legal theorist Boris Furlan, and the architect Viktor Sulčič. Meanwhile several thousands ethnic Italians from Dalmatia moved to Trieste from the newly created Yugoslavia.

In the late 1920s, Yugoslav irredentism started to appear, and the Slovene militant anti-fascist organization TIGR carried out several bomb attacks in the city centre. In 1930 and 1941, two trials against Slovene activists were held in Trieste by the fascist ''Special Tribunal for the Security of the State''.

Despite the demise of its traditional multicultural and pluri-linguistic character, and the emigration of many Slovene and most of the German speakers, the overall population continued to grow. Even the economy enjoyed a significant improvement in the late 1930s, with development of industrial activities.

The Fascist Regime built several new infrastructures and public buildings, including the almost high Victory Lighthouse (''Faro della Vittoria''), which became one of the city's landmarks. The University of Trieste was also established in this period.

Several artistic and intellectual subcultures continued to swarm even under the repressive Fascist regime. In the 1920s, the city was home to an important avant-gardist movement in visual arts, centered around the futurist Tullio Crali and the constructivist Avgust Černigoj. In the same period, Trieste consolidated its role as one of the centres of modern Italian literature, with authors such as Umberto Saba, Biagio Marin, Giani Stuparich, and Salvatore Satta. Among the non-Italian authors and intellectuals that remained in Trieste, the most notable were the Austrian Julius Kugy and the Slovene Boris Pahor. Intellectuals were frequently associated with Caffè San Marco, a cafè in the city which remains open today.

The promulgation of the anti-Jewish racial laws in 1938 was a severe blow to the city's Jewish community, the third largest in Italy. The Fascist anti-semitic campaign resulted in a series of attacks on Jewish property and individuals, culminating in July 1942, when the Great Synagogue was raided and devastated by the Fascist Squads and the mob.

World War II and its aftermath

With the invasion and occupation of Yugoslavia in April 1941, World War Two battlefield came close to Trieste. Starting from the winter 1941, the first Yugoslav partisan units appeared emerged in the Trieste province, although the resistance movement did not reach the city itself until late 1943.

After the Italian armistice in September 1943, the city was occupied by German troops. Trieste became nominally part of the newly constituted Italian Social Republic, but it was de facto ruled by Nazi Germany: the Nazis created the Operation Zone of the Adriatic Littoral out of former Italian north-eastern regions, with Trieste as the administrative center. The new administrative entity was headed by Friedrich Rainer. Under the Nazi occupation, the only concentration camp with crematorium on Italian soil was built in a suburb of Trieste, at the Risiera di San Sabba, on 4 April 1944. Around 3,000 Jews, South Slavs and Italian anti Fascists were killed in the ''Risiera'', while thousands of others were imprisoned before being transferred to other concentration camps.

The city saw a strong Italian and Yugoslav partisan activity, and suffered from Allied bombings. The city's Jewish community was deported to extermination camps, where most of them died.

On April 30, 1945, the Italian anti-Fascist National Liberation Committee (''Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale'', or CLN) of don Marzari and Savio Fonda, constituted of approximately 3,500 volunteers, incited a riot against the German occupiers. On May 1, Allied forces of the Yugoslav Partisans' 8th Dalmatian Corps arrived and took over most of the city, except for the courts and the castle of San Giusto, where the German garrisons refused to surrender to any force other than New Zealanders. The 2nd New Zealand Division continued to advance towards Trieste along Route 14 around the northern coast of the Adriatic sea and arrived in the city the next day (see official histories ''The Italian Campaign'' and ''Through the Venetian Line''). The German forces capitulated on the evening of May 2, but were then turned over to the Yugoslav forces.

The Yugoslavs held full control of the city until June 12, a period known in the Italian historiography as the "forty days of Trieste". During this period, hundreds of local Italians and anti-Communist Slovenes were arrested by the Yugoslav authorities, and many of them disappeared. These included former Fascists and Nazi collaborators, but also Italian nationalists, and any other real or potential opponents of Yugoslav Communism. Some were interned in Yugoslav concentration camps (in particular at Borovnica, Slovenia), while others were murdered and thrown into the potholes ("foibe") on the Kras plateau.

After an agreement between the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito and the British Field Marshal Harold Alexander, the Yugoslav forces withdrew from Trieste, which came under a joint British-U.S. military administration. The Julian March was divided between Anglo-American and Yugoslav military administration until September 1947, when the Paris Peace Treaty established the Free Territory of Trieste.

Zone A of the Free Territory of Trieste (1947-54)

In 1947, Trieste was declared an independent city state under the protection of the United Nations as the Free Territory of Trieste. The territory was divided into two zones, A and B, along the Morgan Line, established in 1945.

From 1947 to 1954, the A Zone was governed by the Allied Military Government, composed of the American "Trieste United States Troops" (TRUST), commanded by Major General Bryant E. Moore, the commanding general of the American 88th Infantry Division, and the "British Element Trieste Forces" (BETFOR), commanded by Sir Terence Airey, who were the joint forces commander and also the military governors. Zone A covered almost the same area of the current Italian Province of Trieste, except for four small villages south of Muggia which were given to Yugoslavia after the dissolution of the Free Territory in 1954. Zone B, which remained under the military administration of the Yugoslav People's Army, was composed of the north-westernmost portion of the Istrian peninsula, between the river Mirna and the Debeli Rtič cape.

In 1954, the Free Territory of Trieste was dissolved. The vast majority of Zone A, including the city of Trieste, was ceded to Italy. Zone B became part of Yugoslavia, along with four villages from the Zone A (Plavje, Spodnje Škofije, Hrvatini, and Jelarji), and was divided among the Socialist Republic of Slovenia and Croatia. The annexation of Trieste to Italy was officially announced on 26 October 1954, and was welcomed by the majority of the Trieste population.

The final border line with Yugoslavia, and the status of the ethnic minorities in the areas, was settled in 1975 with the Treaty of Osimo. This line is now the border between Italy and Slovenia.

Economy

The economy depends on the port and on trade with its neighbouring regions. Trieste is a lively and cosmopolitan city, with more than 7.7% of its population being from abroad, and it is rebuilding some of its former cultural, economic and political influence. The city is a major centre in the EU for trade, politics, culture, shipbuilding, education, transport and commerce. The city is part of the "''Corridor 5''", which aims at ensuring a bigger transport connection between countries in Western Europe and Eastern European nations, such as Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Ukraine and Bosnia. This will be also a great impetus for a further boost to the economy of Trieste. Trieste is also home to some Italian mega-companies, such as Assicurazioni Generali, which was in 2005, Italy's 2nd and the world's 24th biggest company by revenue. Fincantieri, one of the world's leading shipbuilding companies is headquartered in Trieste. Trieste is also home to Banca Generali SpA, Allianz Italia, and Wärtsilä Italia.

During the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Trieste became a leading European city in economy, trade and commerce, and was the fourth largest and most important centre in the Empire, after Vienna, Budapest and Prague. The economy of Trieste, however, fell into a small decline after the city's annexation to Italy after World War I. But Fascist Italy promoted a huge development of Trieste in the 1930s, with new manufacturing activities related even to naval and armament industries (like the famous "Cantieri Aeronautici Navali Triestini (CANT)"). Allied bombings during World War II destroyed the industrial section of the city (mainly the shipyards).

As a consequence, Trieste was a mainly peripheral city during the Cold War. However, since the 1970s, Trieste has had a huge economic boom, thanks to a significant commercial shipping business to the container terminal, steel works and an oil terminal. Trieste is also Italy's and Mediterranean's (and one of Europe's) greatest coffee ports, as the city supplies more than 40% of Italy's coffee. Coffee brands, such as Illy, were founded and are headquartered in the city. Currently, Trieste is one of Europe's most important ports and centres for trade and transport, with Trieste being part of the "''Corridor 5''" plan, to create a bigger transport connection between Western and Eastern European countries.

Demographics

{| cellpadding="1" border="0" style="float:left; margin:0 1em 1em 0; border:1px #bbb solid; border-collapse:collapse; font-size:100%;" |- style="text-align:center; background:#edd5a3;" | colspan="3" | ISTAT 2007 |- align="center" | ||Trieste, FVG||Italy |- style="text-align:center;" |Median age||46 years||42 years |- style="text-align:center;" |Under 18 years old||13.8%||18.1% |- style="text-align:center;" |Over 65 years old||27.9%||20.1% |- style="text-align:center;" |Foreign Population||6.2%||5.8% |- style="text-align:center;" |Births/1000 people||7.63 b||9.45 b |}

As of April 2009, there were 205,507 people residing in Trieste, located in the province of Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, of whom 46.7% were male and 53.3% were female. Trieste had lost roughly 1/3 of its population since the 1970s, due to the crisis of the historical industrial sectors of steel and shipbuilding, a dramatic drop in fertility rates and fast population aging. Minors (children aged 18 and younger) totalled 13.78% of the population compared to pensioners who number 27.9%. This compares with the Italian average of 18.06% (minors) and 19.94% (pensioners). The average age of Trieste residents is 46 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Trieste declined by 3.5%, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.85%. However, in the last two years the city has shown signs of stabilizing thanks to growing immigration fluxes. The crude birth rate in Trieste is only 7.63 per 1,000, one of the lowest in eastern Italy, while the Italian average is 9.45 births.

The dominant local dialect of Trieste is called Triestine ("Triestin", pronounced ), influenced by a form of Venetian. This dialect and the official Italian language are spoken in the city, while Slovene is spoken in some of the immediate suburbs. The Triestin is considered an autochthonous of the area (along with Slovenian, German, and Istro-Romanian). There are also small numbers of Serbian, Croatian, German, and Hungarian speakers.

At the end of 2009, ISTAT estimated that there were 15,795 foreign born residents in Trieste, representing 7.7% of the total city population. The largest autochthonous minority are Slovenes, but there is also a large immigrant group from Balkan nations (particularly nearby Croatia, Albania and Romania): 4.95%, Asia: 0.52%, and sub-saharan Africa: 0.2%. Serbian community consists of both autochthonous and immigrant groups. Trieste is predominantly Roman Catholic, but also has large numbers of Orthodox Christians, mainly Serbs, due to the city's large migrant population from Eastern Europe and its Balkan influence.

The city's most spoken language is Italian and Slovene, Venetian and Friulian language speakers. There are also small groups of native German, Istro-Romanians and Hungarian speakers.

The top countries of origin of the inhabitants of Trieste with foreign citizenship at December 31, 2008 were: Serbia 5741 Romania 1457 Croatia 1368

==Main sights==

Castles

Miramar Castle

The Schloß Miramar, on the waterfront 8 km from Trieste, was built between 1856 and 1860 from a project by Carl Junker working under Archduke Maximilian. The Castle gardens provide a setting of beauty with a variety of trees, chosen by and planted on the orders of Maximilian, that today make a remarkable collection. Features of particular attraction in the gardens include two ponds, one noted for its swans and the other for lotus flowers, the Castle annexe ("Castelletto"), a bronze statue of Maximilian, and a small chapel where is kept a cross made from the remains of the "Novara", the flagship on which Maximilian, brother of Emperor Franz Josef, set sail to become Emperor of Mexico. Much later, the castle was also the home of Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, the last commander of Italian forces in East Africa during the Second World War. During the period of the application of the Instrument for the Provisional Regime of the Free Territory of Trieste, as establish in the Treaty of Peace with Italy (Paris 10/02/1947), the castle served as headquarters for the United States Army's TRUST force.

Castle of San Giusto

Designed on the remains of previous castles on the site, it took almost two centuries to build. The stages of the development of the Castle's defensive structures are marked by the central part built under Frederick III (1470-1), the round Venetian bastion (1508-9), the Hoyos-Lalio bastion and the Pomis, or "Bastione fiorito" dated 1630.

Places of worship

The St. Justus Cathedral. Symbol of Italian Trieste during the Risorgimento.

The Serbian Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity and St. Spyridon (1869). The building adopts the Greek-cross plan with five cupolas in the Byzantine tradition.

The Basilica of St. Silvester (11th century)

The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore (1682)

The Church of San Nicolò dei Greci (1787). This church by the architect Matteo Pertsch (1818), with bell towers on both sides of the facade, follows the Austrian late baroque style.

The Synagogue of Trieste (1912)

The Temple of Monte Grisa (1960)

Archaeological remains

''Arch of Riccardo'' (33 BC). It is a Roman gate built in the Roman walls in 33. It stands in Piazzetta Barbacan, in the narrow streets of the old town. It's called Arco di Riccardo ("Richard's Arch") because is believed to have been crossed by King Richard of England on the way back from the Crusades.

''Basilica Forense'' (2nd century)

''Palaeochristian basilica''

''Roman Age Temples"'' : one dedicated to Athena, one to Zeus, both on the S.Giusto hill.

The ruins of the temple dedicated to Zeus are next to the Forum, those of Athena's temple are under the basilica, visitors can see its basement.

Roman theatre

Trieste or Tergeste, which dates back to the protohistoric period, was enclosed by walls built in 33–32 BC on Emperor Octavian’s orders. The city developed greatly during the 1st and 2nd centuries.

The Roman theatre lies at the foot of the San Giusto hill, facing the sea. The construction partially exploits the gentle slope of the hill, and much of the theatre is made of stone. The topmost portion of the amphitheatre steps and the stage were supposedly made of wood.

The statues that adorned the theatre, brought back to light in the 1930s, are now preserved at the Town Museum. Three inscriptions from the Trajan period mention a certain Q. Petronius Modestus, someone closely connected to the development of the theatre, which was erected during the second half of the 1st century.

Caves

In the whole Trieste province, there are 10 speleological groups out of 24 in the whole ''Friuli-Venezia Giulia'' region. The Trieste plateau (Altopiano Triestino), called Kras or the ''Carso'' and covering an area of about 200 km² within Italy has approximately 1,500 caves of various sizes (like that of Basovizza, now a monument to the Foibe massacres).

Among the most famous are the Grotta Gigante, the largest tourist cave in the world, with a single cavity large enough to contain St Peter's in Rome, and the ''Cave of Trebiciano'' ( deep) at the bottom of which flows the ''Timavo River''. This river dives underground at Škocjan Caves in Slovenia (they are on UNESCO list and only a few kilometres from Trieste) and flows about 30 km before emerging about 1 km from the sea in a series of springs near Duino, reputed by the Romans to be an entrance to Hades ("the world of the dead").

Others

The Revoltella Museum - modern art gallery

The ''Risiera di San Sabba (Risiera di San Sabba Museum)''', a National monument. It was the only Nazi concentration camp with crematorium in Italy.

The ''Foiba di Basovizza'', a National monument. It is a reminder of the killings of Italians (and other ethnic groups) by Yugoslav partisans after World War II, the last episode of an interethnic violence begun in the 19th century, with the rise of nationalism, and heavily intensified by the Fascist government.

Civico Museo di Storia Naturale di Trieste (natural history museum) containing fossils of early man.

Civico Orto Botanico di Trieste, a municipal botanical garden

Orto Botanico dell'Università di Trieste, the University of Trieste's botanical garden

Val Rosandra, a national park on the border between the Province of Trieste and Slovenia.

Caffè San Marco, historical cafè in the center of the city.

Piazza Unità d'Italia, Trieste's central square surrounded by 19th century beautiful buildings.

Culture

Media

Newspaper

''Il Piccolo''

''Primorski dnevnik''

Publishing house

''Asterios Editore'' (sito)

Education

The University of Trieste is a medium-size state supported institution that consists of 12 faculties, boasts a wide and almost complete range of university courses and currently has about 23,000 students enrolled and 1,000 professors. It was founded in 1924.

Sports

The local "calcio" club is called ''Triestina'', one of the oldest in Italy. Indeed, the U.S. Triestina Calcio in 1947/48 was the runner up in the Italian Serie "A" after the champion Torino.

Trieste is notable for having had two soccer clubs participating in the championships of two different nations at the same time during the period of the Free Territory of Trieste. Triestina played in the Italian Serie A. Although it faced relegation after the first season after the Second World War, the FIGC changed the rules to keep it in, as it was seen as important to keep a club of the city in the Italian league, while Yugoslavia had its eye on the city. In the championship of next season the club played its best seaon with a 3rd place finish. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia bought A.S.D. Ponziana, a small team in Trieste, which under a new name, ''Amatori Ponziana Trst'', played in the Yugoslavian league for 3 years. Triestina went bankrupt in the 1990s, but after being re-founded regained a position in the Italian second division Serie B in 2002. Ponziana was renamed as "Circolo Sportivo Ponziana 1912" and currently plays in Friuli-Venezia Giulia Group of Promozione, who is 7th level of Italian league.

Trieste also boasts a famous basketball team Pallacanestro Trieste which reached its zenith in the 1990s when, with large financial backing from sponsors Stefanel, it was able to sign players such as Dejan Bodiroga, Fernando Gentile and Gregor Fučka, all stars of European basketball.

Transport

Maritime transport

Trieste's maritime location and its former long term status as part of the Austrian and Austro-Hungarian empires made the Port of Trieste the major commercial port for much of the landlocked areas of central Europe. In the 19th century, a new port district known as the ''Porto Nuovo'' was built northeast to the city centre.

In modern times, Trieste's importance as a port has declined, both due to the annexation to Italy, for Italy's wider choice of better located ports, and the competition with the nearby new port of Koper in Slovenia. However, there is significant commercial shipping to the container terminal, steel works and oil terminal, all located to the south of the city centre. After many years of stagnation, a change in the leadership placed the port on a steady growth path, recording a 40% increase in shipping traffic as of 2007.

Rail transport

Railways came early to Trieste, due to its port and the need to transport people and goods inland. The first railroad line to reach Trieste was the ''Südbahn'' in 1857. This railway stretches for 1400 km to Lviv, Ukraine, via Ljubljana, Slovenia; Sopron, Hungary; Vienna, Austria; and Kraków, Poland, crossing the backbone of the Alps mountains through the Semmering Pass near Graz. It approaches Trieste through the village of Villa Opicina, a few kilometres from the big city but over 300 metres higher in elevation. Due to this, the line takes a 32 kilometer detour to the north, gradually descending before terminating at the Trieste Centrale railway station.

A second trans-Alpine railway was dedicated in 1906, with the opening of the Transalpina Railway from Vienna, Austria via Jesenice and Nova Gorica. This railway also approached Trieste via Villa Opicina, but it took a rather shorter loop southwards towards Trieste's other main railway station, the Trieste Campo Marzio railway station, south of the central station. This line no longer operates, and the Campo Marzio station is now a railway museum.

To facilitate freight traffic between the two stations and the nearby dock areas, a temporary railway line known as the ''Rivabahn'' was built along the waterfront in 1887. This railway survived until 1981, when it was replaced by the ''Galleria di Circonvallazione'', a 5.7 kilometer railway tunnel route, to the east of the city. Freight services from the dock area now include container services to northern Italy and to Budapest, Hungary, together with rolling highway services to Salzburg, Austria and Frankfurt, Germany.

Passenger rail service to Trieste now mostly consists of trains to and from Venice, Italy, connecting there with trains to Rome and Milan at Mestre. These trains reach the Trieste central station bypassing the Gulf of Trieste, connecting with the Südbahn's northern loop. International trains between Italy and Slovenia now pass through Villa Opicina, bypassing Trieste.

Trieste will be connected to the Italian TAV railway network: a 300 km/hour fast train route is going to connect Trieste with Venice in the next years.

Air transport

Trieste is served by Friuli Venezia Giulia Airport, located at Ronchi near Monfalcone at the head of the Gulf of Trieste.

Local transport

Local public transport in Trieste is operated by Trieste Trasporti, which operates a network of around 60 bus routes and two boat services. They also operate the Opicina Tramway, a hybrid between tramway and funicular railway providing a more direct link between the city centre and Villa Opicina.

Notable people

International relations

Twin towns — Sister cities

Trieste is twinned with: Rijeka, Croatia Pula, Croatia Silivri, Turkey Çankırı, Turkey Como, Italy Graz, Austria Mykolaiv, Ukraine

See also

People from Trieste

Treaty of peace with Italy (1947)

INFN, (National Institute of Nuclear Physics), the nuclear physics laboratory.

International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB),

The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)

International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA)

ELETTRA Synchrotron Light Laboratory

Fincantieri

Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi

Trieste Astronomical Observatory

U.S. Triestina Calcio, Trieste's soccer club, founded in 1918

''Il Piccolo'', Trieste's daily newspaper

''Primorski dnevnik'', Trieste's Slovene language daily newspaper

Free Territory of Trieste

References

;Notes

Further reading

Angelo Ara, Claudio Magris. ''Trieste. Un'identità di frontiera''. Einaudi Editore. Torino, 1982. ISBN 88-06-59823-6

Banti, Alberto Mario. ''Il Risorgimento italiano''. Laterza Editore. Bari, 2004

Morris, Jan - Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere DaCapo Press 2001 www.dacapopress.com

External links

Municipality of Trieste Trieste Chamber of Commerce Grotta Gigante official site

From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion (essay about a journey to Miramar Castle by C.M. Mayo, from Massachusetts Review)

Trieste.me Website Trieste city Trieste - Photo Guide - - (pdf)

Category:Trieste Category:Cities and towns in Friuli-Venezia Giulia Category:Imperial free cities Category:Mediterranean port cities and towns in Italy Category:Roman sites of Friuli Venezia Giulia Category:Port cities and towns of the Adriatic Sea

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name	David Bowie
background	solo_singer
birth name	David Robert Jones
birth date	January 08, 1947
birth place	Brixton, London, England
occupation	Musician, singer-songwriter,record producer, actor
years active	1964–present
instrument
genre	Rock, glam rock, art rock, pop
associated acts	The Riot Squad, Tin Machine
label	Deram, RCA, Virgin, EMI, ISO, Columbia, BMG, Pye
website	davidbowie.com }}

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

Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969, when his song "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album ''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars''. Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture." The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.

In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the hit album ''Young Americans'', which the singer characterised as "plastic soul". The sound constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. He then confounded the expectations of both his record label and his American audiences by recording the minimalist album ''Low'' (1977)—the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno over the next two years. The so-called "Berlin Trilogy" albums all reached the UK top five and garnered lasting critical praise.

After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes" and its parent album, ''Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)''. He paired with Queen for the 1981 UK chart-topping single "Under Pressure", then reached a new commercial peak in 1983 with the album ''Let's Dance'', which yielded the hit singles "Let's Dance", "China Girl", and "Modern Love". Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including blue-eyed soul, industrial, adult contemporary, and jungle. His last recorded album was ''Reality'' (2003), which was supported by the 2003–2004 Reality Tour.

Biographer David Buckley says of Bowie: "His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure." In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie was placed at number 29. Throughout his career, he has sold an estimated 140 million albums. In the United Kingdom, he has been awarded nine Platinum album certifications, 11 Gold and eight Silver, and in the United States, five Platinum and seven Gold certifications. In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked him 39th on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and 23rd on their list of the best singers of all-time.

History

1947–62: early years

David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London, on 8 January 1947. His mother, Margaret Mary "Peggy" (née Burns), of Irish descent, worked as a cinema usherette, while his father, Haywood Stenton "John" Jones, was a promotions officer for Barnardo's. The family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, located near the border of the south London areas of Brixton and Stockwell. A neighbour recalled that "London in the forties was the worst possible place, and the worst possible time for a child to grow up in." Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six years old, acquiring a reputation as a gifted and single-minded child—and a defiant brawler.

In 1953 the family moved to the suburb of Bromley, where, two years later, Bowie progressed to Burnt Ash Junior School. His singing voice was considered "adequate" by the school choir, and his recorder playing judged to demonstrate above-average musical ability. At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: teachers called his interpretations "vividly artistic" and his poise "astonishing" for a child. The same year, his interest in music was further stimulated when his father brought home a collection of American 45s by artists including Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Platters, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley and Little Richard. Upon listening to "Tutti Frutti", Bowie would later say, "I had heard God". Presley's impact on him was likewise emphatic: "I saw a cousin of mine dance to ... 'Hound Dog' and I had never seen her get up and be moved so much by anything. It really impressed me, the power of the music. I started getting records immediately after that." By the end of the following year he had taken up the ukelele and tea-chest bass and begun to participate in skiffle sessions with friends, and had started to play the piano; meanwhile his stage presentation of numbers by both Presley and Chuck Berry—complete with gyrations in tribute to the original artists—to his local Wolf Cub group was described as "mesmerizing ... like someone from another planet." Failing his eleven plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education, Bowie joined Bromley Technical High School.

It was an unusual technical school, as biographer Christopher Sandford writes:

Bowie studied art, music, and design, including layout and typesetting. After Terry Burns, his half-brother, introduced him to modern jazz, his enthusiasm for players like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane led his mother to give him a plastic alto saxophone in 1961; he was soon receiving lessons from a local musician. He received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood, wearing a ring on his finger, punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. Doctors feared he would lose the sight of the eye, and he was forced to stay out of school for a series of operations during a four-month hospitalisation. The damage could not be fully repaired, leaving him with faulty depth perception and a permanently dilated pupil (the latter producing Bowie's appearance of having different coloured eyes, though each iris has the same blue colour). Despite their fisticuffs, Underwood and Bowie remained good friends, and Underwood went on to create the artwork for Bowie's early albums.

1962–68: the Konrads to the Riot Squad

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

Conn quickly began to promote Bowie. The singer's debut single, "Liza Jane", credited to Davie Jones and the King Bees, had no commercial success. Dissatisfied with the King Bees and their repertoire of Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon blues numbers, Bowie quit the band less than a month later to join the Manish Boys, another blues outfit, who incorporated folk and soul — "I used to dream of being their Mick Jagger", Bowie was to recall. "I Pity the Fool" was no more successful than "Liza Jane", and Bowie soon moved on again to join the Lower Third, a blues trio strongly influenced by The Who. "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" fared no better, signalling the end of Conn's contract. Declaring that he would exit the pop world "to study mime at Sadler's Wells", Bowie nevertheless remained with the Lower Third. His new manager, Ralph Horton, later instrumental in his transition to solo artist, soon witnessed Bowie's move to yet another group, the Buzz, yielding the singer's fifth unsuccessful single release, "Do Anything You Say". While with the Buzz, Bowie also joined the Riot Squad; their recordings, which included a Bowie number and Velvet Underground material, went unreleased. Ken Pitt, introduced by Horton, took over as Bowie's manager.

Dissatisfied with his stage name as Davy (and Davie) Jones, which in the mid-1960s invited confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, Bowie re-named himself after the 19th century American frontiersman Jim Bowie and the knife he had popularised. His April 1967 solo single, "The Laughing Gnome", utilising sped-up Chipmunk-style vocals, failed to chart. Released six weeks later, his album debut, ''David Bowie'', an amalgam of pop, psychedelia, and music hall, met the same fate. It would be his last release for two years.

Bowie's fascination with the bizarre was fuelled when he met dancer Lindsay Kemp: "He lived on his emotions, he was a wonderful influence. His day-to-day life was the most theatrical thing I had ever seen, ever. It was everything I thought Bohemia probably was. I joined the circus." Kemp, for his part, recalled, "I didn't really teach him to be a mime artiste but to be more of himself on the outside, ... I enabled him to free the angel and demon that he is on the inside." Studying the dramatic arts under Kemp, from avant-garde theatre and mime to commedia dell'arte, Bowie became immersed in the creation of personae to present to the world. Satirising life in a British prison, meanwhile, the Bowie-penned "Over the Wall We Go" became a 1967 single for Oscar; another Bowie composition, "Silly Boy Blue", was released by Billy Fury the following year. After Kemp cast Bowie with Hermione Farthingale for a poetic minuet, the pair began dating; they soon moved into a London flat together. Playing acoustic guitar, she formed a group with Bowie and bassist John Hutchinson; between September 1968 and early 1969, when Bowie and Farthingale broke up, the trio gave a small number of concerts combining folk, Merseybeat, poetry and mime.

1969–73: psychedelic folk to glam rock

''Space Oddity'' to ''Hunky Dory''

Because of his lack of commercial success, Bowie was forced to try to earn a living in different ways. He featured in a Lyons Maid ice cream commercial, but was rejected for another by Kit Kat. Intended as a vehicle to promote the singer, a 30-minute film featuring performances from his repertoire, ''Love You till Tuesday'', was made. Although not released until 1984, the filming sessions in January 1969 led to unexpected success when Bowie told the producers, "That film of yours—I've got a new song for it." He then demoed the song that would provide his commercial breakthrough. "Space Oddity" was released later in the year to coincide with the first moon landing. Breaking up with Farthingale shortly after completion of the film, Bowie moved in with Mary Finnigan as her lodger. Continuing the divergence from rock and roll and blues begun by his work with Farthingale, Bowie joined forces with Finnigan, Christina Ostrom and Barrie Jackson to run a folk club on Sunday nights at the Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street. This soon morphed into the Beckenham Arts Lab, and became extremely popular. The Arts Lab hosted a free festival in a local park, later immortalised by Bowie in his song "Memory of a Free Festival". "Space Oddity" was released on 11 July, five days ahead of the Apollo 11 launch, to become a UK top five hit. Bowie's second album, ''Space Oddity'', followed in November; originally issued in the UK as ''David Bowie'', it caused some confusion with its predecessor of the same name, and the early US release was instead titled ''Man of Words/Man of Music''. Featuring philosophical post-hippie lyrics on peace, love and morality, its acoustic folk rock occasionally fortified by harder rock, the album was not a commercial success at the time of its release.

Bowie met Angela Barnett in April 1969. They would marry within a year. Her impact on him was immediate, and her involvement in his career far-reaching, leaving Pitt with limited influence. Having established himself as a solo artist with "Space Oddity", Bowie now began to sense a lack: "a full-time band for gigs and recording—people he could relate to personally". The shortcoming was underlined by his artistic rivalry with Marc Bolan, who was at the time acting as his session guitarist. A band was duly assembled. John Cambridge, a drummer Bowie met at the Arts Lab, was joined by Tony Visconti on bass and Mick Ronson on electric guitar. After a brief and disastrous manifestation as the Hype, the group reverted to a configuration presenting Bowie as a solo artist. Their initial studio work was marred by a heated disagreement between Bowie and Cambridge over the latter's drumming style; matters came to a head when Bowie, enraged, accused, "You're fucking up my album." Cambridge summarily quit and was replaced by Mick Woodmansey. Not long after, in a move that would result in years of litigation, at the conclusion of which Bowie would be forced to pay Pitt compensation, the singer fired his manager, replacing him with Tony Defries.

The studio sessions continued and resulted in Bowie's third album, ''The Man Who Sold the World'' (1970). Characterised by the heavy rock sound of his new backing band, it was a marked departure from the acoustic guitar and folk rock style established by ''Space Oddity''. To promote it in the United States, Mercury Records financed a coast-to-coast publicity tour in which Bowie, between January and February 1971, was interviewed by radio stations and the media. Exploiting his androgynous appearance, the original cover of the UK version unveiled two months later would depict the singer wearing a dress: taking the garment with him, he wore it during interviews—to the approval of critics, including ''Rolling Stone''s John Mendelsohn who described him as "ravishing, almost disconcertingly reminiscent of Lauren Bacall"—and in the street, to mixed reaction including laughter and, in the case of one male pedestrian, producing a gun and telling Bowie to "kiss my ass". During the tour Bowie's observation of two seminal American proto-punk artists led him to develop a concept that would eventually find form in the Ziggy Stardust character: a melding of the persona of Iggy Pop with the music of Lou Reed, producing "the ultimate pop idol". A girlfriend recalled his "scrawling notes on a cocktail napkin about a crazy rock star named Iggy or Ziggy", and on his return to England he declared his intention to create a character "who looks like he's landed from Mars".

''Hunky Dory'' (1971) found Visconti, Bowie's producer and bassist, supplanted in both roles, by Ken Scott and Trevor Bolder respectively. The album saw the partial return of the fey pop singer of "Space Oddity", with light fare such as "Kooks", a song written for his son, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, born on 30 May. (His parents chose "his kooky name"—he would be known as Zowie for the next 12 years—after the Greek word ''zoe'', life.) Elsewhere, the album explored more serious themes, and found Bowie paying unusually direct homage to his influences with "Song for Bob Dylan", "Andy Warhol", and "Queen Bitch", a Velvet Underground pastiche. It was not a significant commercial success at the time.

''Ziggy Stardust''

With his next venture, Bowie, in the words of biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture". Dressed in a striking costume, his hair dyed red, Bowie launched his Ziggy Stardust stage show with the Spiders from Mars—Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey—at the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth on 10 February 1972. The show was hugely popular, catapulting him to stardom as he toured the UK over the course of the next six months and creating, as described by Buckley, a "cult of Bowie" that was "unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom." ''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'' (1972), combining the hard rock elements of ''The Man Who Sold the World'' with the lighter experimental rock and pop of ''Hunky Dory'', was released in June. "Starman", issued as an April single ahead of the album, was to cement Bowie's UK breakthrough: both single and album charted rapidly following his July ''Top of the Pops'' performance of the song. The album, which would remain in the chart for two years, was soon joined there by the six-month-old ''Hunky Dory''. At the same time the non-album single "John, I’m Only Dancing", and "All the Young Dudes", a song he wrote and produced for Mott the Hoople, became UK hits. The Ziggy Stardust Tour continued to the United States.

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

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

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

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

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

The fruit of the Philadelphia recording sessions was ''Young Americans'' (1975). Biographer Christopher Sandford writes, "Over the years, most British rockers had tried, one way or another, to become black-by-extension. Few had succeeded as Bowie did now." The album's sound, which the singer identified as "plastic soul", constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. ''Young Americans'' yielded Bowie's first US number one, "Fame", co-written with John Lennon, who contributed backing vocals, and Carlos Alomar. Lennon would call Bowie's work as "great, but just rock and roll with lipstick on". Earning the distinction of being one of the first white artists to appear on the US variety show ''Soul Train'', Bowie mimed "Fame", as well as "Golden Years", his October single, and that it was offered to Elvis Presley to perform, but Presley declined it. ''Young Americans'' was a commercial success in both the US and the UK, and a re-issue of the 1969 single "Space Oddity" became Bowie's first number one hit in the UK a few months after "Fame" achieved the same in the US. Despite his by now well established superstardom, Bowie, in the words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "for all his record sales (over a million copies of ''Ziggy Stardust'' alone), existed essentially on loose change." In 1975, in a move echoing Pitt's acrimonious dismissal 15 years earlier, Bowie fired his manager. At the culmination of the ensuing months-long legal dispute, he watched, as described by Sandford, "millions of dollars of his future earnings being surrendered" in what were "uniquely generous terms for Defries", then "shut himself up in West 20th Street, where for a week his howls could be heard through the locked attic door." Michael Lippman, Bowie's lawyer during the negotiations, became his new manager; Lippman in turn would be awarded substantial compensation when Bowie fired him the following year.

''Station to Station'' (1976) introduced a new Bowie persona, the "Thin White Duke" of its title track. Visually, the character was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the extraterrestrial being he portrayed in the film ''The Man Who Fell to Earth'' the same year. Developing the funk and soul of ''Young Americans'', ''Station to Station'' also prefigured the Krautrock and synthesiser music of his next releases. The extent to which drug addiction was now affecting Bowie was made public when Russell Harty interviewed the singer for his London Weekend Television talk show in anticipation of the album's supporting tour. Shortly before the satellite-linked interview was scheduled to commence, the death of the Spanish dictator General Franco was announced. Bowie was asked to relinquish the satellite booking, to allow the Spanish Government to put out a live newsfeed. This he refused to do, and his interview went ahead. In the ensuing conversation with Harty, as described by biographer David Buckley, "the singer made hardly any sense at all throughout what was quite an extensive interview. [...] Bowie looked completely disconnected and was hardly able to utter a coherent sentence." His sanity—by his own later admission—had become twisted from cocaine; he overdosed several times during the year, and was withering physically to an alarming degree.

''Station to Station''s January 1976 release was followed in February by a three-and-a-half-month concert tour of Europe and North America. Featuring a starkly lit set, the Isolar – 1976 Tour highlighted songs from the album, including the dramatic and lengthy title track, the ballads "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing", and the funkier "TVC 15" and "Stay". The core band that coalesced around this album and tour—rhythm guitarist Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis—would continue as a stable unit for the remainder of the 1970s. The tour was highly successful but mired in political controversy. Bowie was quoted in Stockholm as saying that "Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader", and detained by customs on the Russian/Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia. Matters came to a head in London in May in what became known as the "Victoria Station incident". Arriving in an open-top Mercedes convertible, the singer waved to the crowd in a gesture that some alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and published in ''NME''. Bowie said the photographer simply caught him in mid-wave. He later blamed his pro-Fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his addictions and the character of the Thin White Duke. "I was out of my mind, totally crazed. The main thing I was functioning on was mythology ... that whole thing about Hitler and Rightism ... I'd discovered King Arthur ...". According to playwright Alan Franks, writing later in ''The Times'', "he was indeed 'deranged'. He had some very bad experiences with hard drugs."

1976–79: the Berlin era

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

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

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

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

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

1980–89: from superstar to megastar

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

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

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

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

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

1989–91: Tin Machine

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

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

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

1992–99: electronica

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

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

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

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

1999–present: Neoclassicist Bowie

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

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

Since recuperating from the heart surgery, Bowie has reduced his musical output, making only one-off appearances on stage and in the studio. He sang in a duet of his 1972 song "Changes" with Butterfly Boucher for the 2004 animated film ''Shrek 2''. During a relatively quiet 2005, he recorded the vocals for the song "(She Can) Do That", co-written with Brian Transeau, for the film ''Stealth''. He returned to the stage on 8 September 2005, appearing with Arcade Fire for the US nationally televised event Fashion Rocks, and performed with the Canadian band for the second time a week later during the CMJ Music Marathon. He contributed back-up vocals on TV on the Radio's song "Province" for their album ''Return to Cookie Mountain'', made a commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio, and joined with Lou Reed on Danish alt-rockers Kashmir's 2005 album ''No Balance Palace''.

Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on 8 February 2006. In April, he announced, "I’m taking a year off—no touring, no albums." He made a surprise guest appearance at David Gilmour's 29 May concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The event was recorded, and a selection of songs on which he had contributed joint vocals were subsequently released. He performed again in November, alongside Alicia Keys, at the Black Ball, a New York benefit event for Keep a Child Alive.

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

In late March 2011, ''Toy'', Bowie's previously unreleased album from 2001, was leaked onto the internet, containing material used for ''Heathen'' and most of its single B-sides, as well as unheard new versions of his early back catalogue.

Acting career

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

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

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

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

Sexual orientation

Buckley writes, "If Ziggy confused both his creator and his audience, a big part of that confusion centred on the topic of sexuality." Bowie declared himself bisexual in an interview with Michael Watts of ''Melody Maker'' in January 1972, a move coinciding with the first shots in his campaign for stardom as Ziggy Stardust.

In a 1983 interview with ''Rolling Stone'', Bowie said his public declaration of bisexuality was "the biggest mistake I ever made", and on other occasions he said his interest in homosexual and bisexual culture had been more a product of the times and the situation in which he found himself than his own feelings; as described by Buckley, he said he had been driven more by "a compulsion to flout moral codes than a real biological and psychological state of being".

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

Buckley's view of the period is that Bowie, "a taboo-breaker and a dabbler ... mined sexual intrigue for its ability to shock", and that "it is probably true that Bowie was never gay, nor even consistently actively bisexual ... he did, from time to time, experiment, even if only out of a sense of curiosity and a genuine allegiance with the 'transgressional'." Biographer Christopher Sandford says that according to Mary Finnigan, with whom Bowie had an affair in 1969, the singer and his first wife Angie "lived in a fantasy world [...] and they created their bisexual fantasy." Sandford tells how, during the marriage, Bowie "made a positive fetish of repeating the quip that he and his wife had met while 'fucking the same bloke' [...] Gay sex was always an anecdotal and laughing matter. That Bowie's actual tastes swung the other way is clear from even a partial tally of his affairs with women."

Musicianship

From the time of his earliest recordings in the 1960s, Bowie has employed a wide variety of musical styles. His early compositions and performances were strongly influenced not only by rock and rollers like Little Richard and Elvis Presley but also by the wider world of show business. He particularly strove to emulate the British musical theatre singer-songwriter and actor Anthony Newley, whose vocal style he frequently adopted, and made prominent use of for his 1967 debut release, ''David Bowie'' (to the disgust of Newley himself, who destroyed the copy he received from Bowie's publisher). Bowie's music hall fascination continued to surface sporadically alongside such diverse styles as hard rock and heavy metal, soul, psychedelic folk and pop.

Musicologist James Perone observes Bowie's use of octave switches for different repetitions of the same melody, exemplified in his commercial breakthrough single, "Space Oddity", and later in the song "Heroes", to dramatic effect; Perone notes that "in the lowest part of his vocal register [...] his voice has an almost crooner-like richness."

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

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

Legacy

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

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

Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Through perpetual reinvention, he has seen his influence continue to broaden and extend: music reviewer Brad Filicky writes that over the decades, "Bowie has become known as a musical chameleon, changing and dictating trends as much as he has altered his style to fit", influencing fashion and pop culture to a degree "second only to Madonna". Biographer Thomas Forget adds, "Because he has succeeded in so many different styles of music, it is almost impossible to find a popular artist today that has not been influenced by David Bowie."

Awards and recognition

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

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

Throughout his career he has sold an estimated 136 million albums. In the United Kingdom, he has been awarded 9 Platinum, 11 Gold and 8 Silver albums, and in the United States, 5 Platinum and 7 Gold. In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, he was ranked 29. In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine ranked him 39th on their list of the 100 Greatest Rock Artists of All Time and the 23rd best singer of all time. Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996.

Discography

''David Bowie'' (1967)

''Space Oddity'' (1969)

''The Man Who Sold the World'' (1970)

''Hunky Dory'' (1971)

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

''Aladdin Sane'' (1973)

''Pin Ups'' (1973)

''Diamond Dogs'' (1974)

''Young Americans'' (1975)

''Station to Station'' (1976)

''Low'' (1977)

''"Heroes"'' (1977)

''Lodger'' (1979)

''Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)'' (1980)

''Let's Dance'' (1983)

''Tonight'' (1984)

''Never Let Me Down'' (1987)

''Black Tie White Noise'' (1993)

''Outside'' (1995)

''Earthling'' (1997)

'''Hours...''' (1999)

''Heathen'' (2002)

''Reality'' (2003)

See also

Best selling music artists

Bowie Bonds

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

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

List of David Bowie tours

List of number-one hits (United States)

List of Number 1 Dance Hits (United States)

List of people who have declined a British honour

Notes

References

Further reading

Trynka Paul, ''Starman: David Bowie – The Definitive Biography'', Little, Brown Book Group Limited, 2011

Cann, David, ''Any Day Now: David Bowie the London Years 1947–1974'', Kenneth Pitt in Books, 2011

Jacke, Andreas, ''David Bowie – Station To Station'', Psychosozial- Verlag, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

External links

Official Myspace page

Official YouTube channel

Bowieart – paintings, printmakings, etc.

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James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for ''Ulysses'' (1922), a landmark novel which perfected his stream of consciousness technique and combined nearly every literary device available in a modern re-telling of ''The Odyssey''. Other major works are the short-story collection ''Dubliners'' (1914), and the novels ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' (1916) and ''Finnegans Wake'' (1939). His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.

Joyce was born to a middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College Dublin. In his early twenties he emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; ''Ulysses'' in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of ''Ulysses'' he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, “For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”

Biography

1882–1904: Dublin

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane Murray in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. He was the eldest of ten surviving children; two of his siblings died of typhoid. His father's family, originally from Fermoy in Cork, had once owned a small salt and lime works. Joyce's father and paternal grandfather both married into wealthy families. In 1887, his father was appointed rate collector (i.e., a collector of local property taxes) by Dublin Corporation; the family subsequently moved to the fashionable adjacent small town of Bray from Dublin. Around this time Joyce was attacked by a dog, which engendered in him a lifelong cynophobia. He also suffered from keraunophobia, as an overly superstitious aunt had described thunderstorms to him as a sign of God's wrath.

In 1891, Joyce wrote a poem, ''Et Tu Healy'' on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell. His father was angry at the treatment of Parnell by the Catholic church and at the resulting failure to secure Home Rule for Ireland. The elder Joyce had the poem printed and even sent a part to the Vatican Library. In November of that same year, John Joyce was entered in ''Stubbs Gazette'' (an official register of bankruptcies) and suspended from work. In 1893, John Joyce was dismissed with a pension, beginning the family's slide into poverty caused mainly by John's drinking and general financial mismanagement.

James Joyce had begun his education at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare, in 1888 but had to leave in 1892 when his father could no longer pay the fees. Joyce then studied at home and briefly at the Christian Brothers O'Connell School on North Richmond Street, Dublin, before he was offered a place in the Jesuits', Dublin school, Belvedere College, in 1893. In 1895, Joyce, now aged 13, was elected to join the Sodality of Our Lady by his peers at Belvedere; students were elected to the Sodality on account of their leadership qualities and members of the Sodality, by their positive attitudes and acts of piety, were meant to elicit religious fervour and enthusiasm for studies amongst the student body; most Jesuit Schools and Universities had a Sodality until the 1950s, when families and parishes became the focal point of the Ignatian lay movement, now called the Christian Life Community. By the age of 16, however, Joyce appears to have made a break with his Catholic roots, even though the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas continued to have a strong influence on him for most of his life. L. A. G. Strong, William T. Noon, Robert Boyle and others have argued that Joyce, later in life, reconciled with the faith he rejected earlier in life and that his parting with the faith was succeeded by a not so obvious reunion, and that Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are essentially Catholic expressions. Likewise, Hugh Kenner and T.S. Eliot saw between the lines of Joyce’s work the outlook of a serious Christian and that beneath the veneer of the work lies a remnant of Catholic belief and attitude. Kevin Sullivan maintains that, rather than reconciling with the faith, Joyce never left it. Critics holding this view insist that Stephen, the protagonist of the semi-autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well as Ulysses, is not Joyce. Somewhat cryptically, in an interview after completing Ulysses, in response to the question “When did you leave the Catholic Church”, Joyce answered, “That’s for the Church to say.” Eamonn Hughes maintains that Joyce takes a dialectic approach, both assenting and denying, saying that Stephen’s much noted ''non serviam'' is qualified – “I will not serve ''that which I no longer believe''…”, and that the ''non serviam'' will always be balanced by Stephen’s “I am a servant…” and Molly’s “yes”.

He enrolled at the recently established University College Dublin (UCD) in 1898, studying English, French, and Italian. He also became active in theatrical and literary circles in the city. In 1900 his review of Henrik Ibsen's ''New Drama'' was published in ''Fortnightly Review''; it was his first publication and he received a note of thanks from the Norwegian dramatist himself. Joyce wrote a number of other articles and at least two plays (since lost) during this period. Many of the friends he made at University College Dublin would appear as characters in Joyce's written works.

In 1901, the National Census of Ireland lists James Joyce (19) as a scholar living with his mother and father, six sisters and three brothers at Royal Terrace, Clontarf, Dublin.

After graduating from UCD in 1903, Joyce left for Paris to study medicine, but he soon abandoned this after finding the technical lectures in French too difficult. He stayed on for a few months, appealing for finance his family could ill afford and reading late in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. When his mother was diagnosed with cancer, his father sent a telegraph which read, "NOTHER [sic] DYING COME HOME FATHER". Joyce returned to Ireland. Fearing for her son's impiety, his mother tried unsuccessfully to get Joyce to make his confession and to take communion. She finally passed into a coma and died on 13 August, James and Stanislaus having refused to kneel with other members of the family praying at her bedside. After her death he continued to drink heavily, and conditions at home grew quite appalling. He scraped a living reviewing books, teaching and singing—he was an accomplished tenor, and won the bronze medal in the 1904 Feis Ceoil.

On 7 January 1904 he attempted to publish ''A Portrait of the Artist'', an essay-story dealing with aesthetics, only to have it rejected from the free-thinking magazine ''Dana''. He decided, on his twenty-second birthday, to revise the story into a novel he called ''Stephen Hero''. It was a fictional rendering of Joyce's youth, but he eventually grew frustrated with its direction and abandoned this work. It was never published in this form, but years later, in Trieste, Joyce completely rewrote it as ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man''. The unfinished ''Stephen Hero'' was published after his death.

The same year he met Nora Barnacle, a young woman from Connemara, County Galway who was working as a chambermaid. On 16 June 1904, they first stepped out together, an event which would be commemorated by providing the date for the action of ''Ulysses''.

Joyce remained in Dublin for some time longer, drinking heavily. After one of these drinking binges, he got into a fight over a misunderstanding with a man in Phoenix Park; he was picked up and dusted off by a minor acquaintance of his father's, Alfred H. Hunter, who brought him into his home to tend to his injuries. Hunter was rumoured to be a Jew and to have an unfaithful wife, and would serve as one of the models for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of ''Ulysses''. He took up with medical student Oliver St John Gogarty, who formed the basis for the character Buck Mulligan in ''Ulysses''. After staying in Gogarty's Martello Tower for six nights he left in the middle of the night following an altercation which involved Gogarty shooting a pistol at some pans hanging directly over Joyce's bed. He walked all the way back to Dublin to stay with relatives for the night, and sent a friend to the tower the next day to pack his trunk. Shortly thereafter he eloped to the continent with Nora.

1904–20: Trieste and Zurich

Joyce and Nora went into self-imposed exile, moving first to Zurich, where he had supposedly acquired a post to teach English at the Berlitz Language School through an agent in England. It turned out that the English agent had been swindled, but the director of the school sent him on to Trieste, which was part of Austria-Hungary until World War I (today part of Italy). Once again, he found there was no position for him, but with the help of Almidano Artifoni, director of the Trieste Berlitz school, he finally secured a teaching position in Pola, then also part of Austria-Hungary (today part of Croatia). He stayed there, teaching English mainly to Austro-Hungarian naval officers stationed at the Pola base, from October 1904 until March 1905, when the Austrians—having discovered an espionage ring in the city—expelled all aliens. With Artifoni's help, he moved back to Trieste and began teaching English there. He would remain in Trieste for most of the next ten years.

Later that year Nora gave birth to their first child, George. Joyce then managed to talk his brother, Stanislaus, into joining him in Trieste, and secured him a position teaching at the school. Joyce's ostensible reasons were desire for Stanislaus's company and the hope of offering him a more interesting life than that of his simple clerking job in Dublin. In truth, though, Joyce hoped to augment his family's meagre income with his brother's earnings. Stanislaus and Joyce had strained relations throughout the time they lived together in Trieste, with most arguments centring on Joyce's drinking habits and frivolity with money.

With the chronic wanderlust of Joyce's early years, he became frustrated with life in Trieste and moved to Rome in late 1906, having secured employment in a bank. He intensely disliked Rome, and moved back to Trieste in early 1907. His daughter Lucia was born in the summer of the same year.

Joyce returned to Dublin in mid-1909 with George, in order to visit his father and work on getting ''Dubliners'' published. He visited Nora's family in Galway, meeting them for the first time (a successful visit, to his relief). He also launched Ireland's first cinema, the Volta Cinematograph, with backing from his Italian friends. While preparing to return to Trieste he decided to take one of his sisters, Eva, back with him to help Nora run the home. He spent only a month in Trieste before returning to Dublin, this time as a representative of some cinema owners hoping to set up a regular cinema in Dublin. The venture was successful (but quickly fell apart in Joyce's absence), and he returned to Trieste in January 1910 with another sister, Eileen, in tow. Eva became very homesick for Dublin and returned there a few years later, but Eileen spent the rest of her life on the continent, eventually marrying Czech bank cashier Frantisek Schaurek.

Joyce returned to Dublin again briefly in mid-1912 during his years-long fight with his Dublin publisher, George Roberts, over the publication of ''Dubliners''. His trip was once again fruitless, and on his return he wrote the poem "Gas from a Burner" as an invective against Roberts. After this trip, he never again came closer to Dublin than London, despite many pleas from his father and invitations from fellow Irish writer William Butler Yeats.

One of his students in Trieste was Ettore Schmitz, better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo. They met in 1907 and became lasting friends and mutual critics. Schmitz was a Catholic of Jewish origin and became the primary model for Leopold Bloom; most of the details about the Jewish faith in ''Ulysses'' came from Schmitz's responses to queries from Joyce. While living in Trieste, Joyce was first beset with eye problems that ultimately required over a dozen surgeries.

Joyce concocted a number of money-making schemes during this period, including an attempt to become a cinema magnate in Dublin. He also frequently discussed but ultimately abandoned a plan to import Irish tweeds to Trieste. Correspondence relating to that venture with the Irish Woollen Mills are displayed in the windows of their premises on Aston's Quay in Dublin. His skill at borrowing money saved him from indigence. What income he had came partially from his position at the Berlitz school and partially from teaching private students.

In 1915, after most of his students were conscripted in Trieste for World War I, he moved to Zurich. Two influential private students, Baron Ambrogio Ralli and Count Francesco Sordina, petitioned officials for an exit permit for the Joyces, who in turn agreed not to take any action against the emperor of Austria-Hungary during the war. There, he met one of his most enduring and important friends, Frank Budgen, whose opinion Joyce constantly sought through the writing of ''Ulysses'' and ''Finnegans Wake''. It was also here where Ezra Pound brought him to the attention of English feminist and publisher Harriet Shaw Weaver, who would become Joyce's patron, providing him thousands of pounds over the next 25 years and relieving him of the burden of teaching in order to focus on his writing. While in Zurich he wrote ''Exiles'', published ''A Portrait...'', and began serious work on ''Ulysses''. Zurich during the war was home to exiles and artists from across Europe, and its bohemian, multilingual atmosphere suited him. Nevertheless, after four years he was restless, and after the war he returned to Trieste as he had originally planned. He found the city had changed, and some of his old friends noted his maturing from teacher to full-time artist. His relations with his brother (who had been interned in an Austrian prison camp for most of the war due to his pro-Italian politics) were more strained than ever. Joyce headed to Paris in 1920 at an invitation from Ezra Pound, supposedly for a week, but he ended up living there for the next twenty years.

1920–41: Paris and Zurich

Joyce set himself to finally finishing ''Ulysses'' in Paris, delighted to find that he was gradually gaining fame as an avant-garde writer. A further grant from Miss Shaw Weaver meant he could devote himself full-time to writing again, as well as consort with other literary figures in the city. During this era, Joyce's eyes began to give him more and more problems. He was treated by Dr Louis Borsch in Paris, receiving nine surgeries from him until Borsch's death in 1929. Throughout the 1930s he travelled frequently to Switzerland for eye surgeries and treatments for Lucia, who, according to the Joyces, suffered from schizophrenia. Lucia was analysed by Carl Jung at the time, who after reading ''Ulysses'', concluded that her father had schizophrenia. Jung said she and her father were two people heading to the bottom of a river, except that he was diving and she was falling.

In Paris, Maria and Eugene Jolas nursed Joyce during his long years of writing ''Finnegans Wake.'' Were it not for their unwavering support (along with Harriet Shaw Weaver's constant financial support), there is a good possibility that his books might never have been finished or published. In their now legendary literary magazine "''transition''," the Jolases published serially various sections of Joyce's novel under the title ''Work in Progress.'' He returned to Zurich in late 1940, fleeing the Nazi occupation of France.

On 11 January 1941, he underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer. While at first improved, he relapsed the following day, and despite several transfusions, fell into a coma. He awoke at 2 a.m. on 13 January 1941, and asked for a nurse to call his wife and son before losing consciousness again. They were still on their way when he died 15 minutes later. He is buried in the Fluntern Cemetery within earshot of the lions in the Zurich Zoo.

Although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, neither attended Joyce's funeral, and the Irish government subsequently declined Nora's offer to permit the repatriation of Joyce's remains. Nora, whom Joyce had finally married in London in 1931, survived him by 10 years. She is buried now by his side, as is their son George, who died in 1976. Ellmann reports that when the arrangements for Joyce's burial were being made, a Catholic priest tried to convince Nora that there should be a funeral Mass. She replied, "I couldn't do that to him." Swiss tenor Max Meili sang ''Addio terra, addio cielo'' from Monteverdi's ''L'Orfeo'' at the funeral service.

Major works

''Dubliners''

Joyce's Irish experiences constitute an essential element of his writings, and provide all of the settings for his fiction and much of its subject matter. His early volume of short stories, ''Dubliners'', is a penetrating analysis of the stagnation and paralysis of Dublin society. The stories incorporate epiphanies, a word used particularly by Joyce, by which he meant a sudden consciousness of the "soul" of a thing. The final and most famous story in the collection, "The Dead", was directed by John Huston as his last feature film in 1987.

''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man''

''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' is a nearly complete rewrite of the abandoned novel Stephen Hero. Joyce attempted to burn the original manuscript in a fit of rage during an argument with Nora, though to his subsequent relief it was rescued by his sister. A ''Künstlerroman'', ''Portrait'' is a heavily autobiographical coming-of-age novel depicting the childhood and adolescence of protagonist Stephen Dedalus and his gradual growth into artistic self-consciousness. Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings, are evident throughout this novel. Joseph Strick directed a film of the book in 1977 starring Luke Johnston, Bosco Hogan, T.P. McKenna and John Gielgud.

''Exiles'' and poetry

Despite early interest in the theatre, Joyce published only one play, ''Exiles'', begun shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and published in 1918. A study of a husband and wife relationship, the play looks back to ''The Dead'' (the final story in ''Dubliners'') and forward to ''Ulysses'', which Joyce began around the time of the play's composition.

Joyce also published a number of books of poetry. His first mature published work was the satirical broadside "The Holy Office" (1904), in which he proclaimed himself to be the superior of many prominent members of the Celtic revival. His first full-length poetry collection ''Chamber Music'' (referring, Joyce explained, to the sound of urine hitting the side of a chamber pot) consisted of 36 short lyrics. This publication led to his inclusion in the ''Imagist Anthology'', edited by Ezra Pound, who was a champion of Joyce's work. Other poetry Joyce published in his lifetime includes "Gas From A Burner" (1912), ''Pomes Penyeach'' (1927) and "Ecce Puer" (written in 1932 to mark the birth of his grandson and the recent death of his father). It was published by the Black Sun Press in ''Collected Poems'' (1936).

''Ulysses''

As he was completing work on ''Dubliners'' in 1906, Joyce considered adding another story featuring a Jewish advertising canvasser called Leopold Bloom under the title ''Ulysses''. Although he did not pursue the idea further at the time, he eventually commenced work on a novel using both the title and basic premise in 1914. The writing was completed in October, 1921. Three more months were devoted to working on the proofs of the book before Joyce halted work shortly before his self-imposed deadline, his 40th birthday (2 February 1922).

Thanks to Ezra Pound, serial publication of the novel in the magazine ''The Little Review'' began in 1918. This magazine was edited by Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, with the backing of John Quinn, a New York attorney with an interest in contemporary experimental art and literature. Unfortunately, this publication encountered censorship problems in the United States; serialisation was halted in 1920 when the editors were convicted of publishing obscenity. The novel was not published in the United States until 1933.

At least partly because of this controversy, Joyce found it difficult to get a publisher to accept the book, but it was published in 1922 by Sylvia Beach from her well-known Rive Gauche bookshop, ''Shakespeare and Company''. An English edition published the same year by Joyce's patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, ran into further difficulties with the United States authorities, and 500 copies that were shipped to the States were seized and possibly destroyed. The following year, John Rodker produced a print run of 500 more intended to replace the missing copies, but these were burned by English customs at Folkestone. A further consequence of the novel's ambiguous legal status as a banned book was that a number of "bootleg" versions appeared, most notably a number of pirate versions from the publisher Samuel Roth. In 1928, a court injunction against Roth was obtained and he ceased publication.

With the appearance of both ''Ulysses'' and T. S. Eliot's poem, ''The Waste Land'', 1922 was a key year in the history of English-language literary modernism. In ''Ulysses'', Joyce employs stream of consciousness, parody, jokes, and virtually every other established literary technique to present his characters. The action of the novel, which takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904, sets the characters and incidents of the Odyssey of Homer in modern Dublin and represents Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, parodically contrasted with their lofty models. The book explores various areas of Dublin life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Nevertheless, the book is also an affectionately detailed study of the city, and Joyce claimed that if Dublin were to be destroyed in some catastrophe it could be rebuilt, brick by brick, using his work as a model. In order to achieve this level of accuracy, Joyce used the 1904 edition of Thom's Directory—a work that listed the owners and/or tenants of every residential and commercial property in the city. He also bombarded friends still living there with requests for information and clarification. The book consists of 18 chapters, each covering roughly one hour of the day, beginning around 8 a.m. and ending some time after 2 a.m. the following morning. Each chapter employs its own literary style, and parodies a specific episode in Homer's Odyssey. Furthermore, each chapter is associated with a specific colour, art or science, and bodily organ. This combination of kaleidoscopic writing with an extreme formal schematic structure renders the book a major contribution to the development of 20th-century modernist literature. The use of classical mythology as an organising framework, the near-obsessive focus on external detail, and the occurrence of significant action within the minds of characters have also contributed to the development of literary modernism. Nevertheless, Joyce complained that, "I may have oversystematised ''Ulysses''," and played down the mythic correspondences by eliminating the chapter titles that had been taken from Homer.

''Finnegans Wake''

Having completed work on ''Ulysses'', Joyce was so exhausted that he did not write a line of prose for a year. On 10 March 1923 he informed a patron, Harriet Weaver: "Yesterday I wrote two pages—the first I have since the final ''Yes'' of ''Ulysses''. Having found a pen, with some difficulty I copied them out in a large handwriting on a double sheet of foolscap so that I could read them. ''Il lupo perde il pelo ma non il vizio'', the Italians say. The wolf may lose his skin but not his vice or the leopard cannot change his spots". Thus was born a text that became known, first, as ''Work in Progress'' and later ''Finnegans Wake''.

By 1926 Joyce had completed the first two parts of the book. In that year, he met Eugene and Maria Jolas who offered to serialise the book in their magazine ''transition''. For the next few years, Joyce worked rapidly on the new book, but in the 1930s, progress slowed considerably. This was due to a number of factors, including the death of his father in 1931, concern over the mental health of his daughter Lucia and his own health problems, including failing eyesight. Much of the work was done with the assistance of younger admirers, including Samuel Beckett. For some years, Joyce nursed the eccentric plan of turning over the book to his friend James Stephens to complete, on the grounds that Stephens was born in the same hospital as Joyce exactly one week later, and shared the first name of both Joyce and of Joyce's fictional alter-ego (this is one example of Joyce's numerous superstitions).

Reaction to the work was mixed, including negative comment from early supporters of Joyce's work, such as Pound and the author's brother Stanislaus Joyce. In order to counteract this hostile reception, a book of essays by supporters of the new work, including Beckett, William Carlos Williams and others was organised and published in 1929 under the title ''Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress''. At his 57th birthday party at the Jolases' home, Joyce revealed the final title of the work and ''Finnegans Wake'' was published in book form on 4 May 1939. Later, further negative comments surfaced from doctor and author Hervey Cleckley, who questioned the significance others had placed on the work. In his book, ''The Mask of Sanity'', Cleckley refers to ''Finnegans Wake'' as "a 628-page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hospital."

Joyce's method of stream of consciousness, literary allusions and free dream associations was pushed to the limit in ''Finnegans Wake'', which abandoned all conventions of plot and character construction and is written in a peculiar and obscure language, based mainly on complex multi-level puns. This approach is similar to, but far more extensive than that used by Lewis Carroll in ''Jabberwocky''. This has led many readers and critics to apply Joyce's oft-quoted description in the ''Wake'' of ''Ulysses'' as his "usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles" to the ''Wake'' itself. However, readers have been able to reach a consensus about the central cast of characters and general plot.

Much of the wordplay in the book stems from the use of multilingual puns which draw on a wide range of languages. The role played by Beckett and other assistants included collating words from these languages on cards for Joyce to use and, as Joyce's eyesight worsened, of writing the text from the author's dictation.

The view of history propounded in this text is very strongly influenced by Giambattista Vico, and the metaphysics of Giordano Bruno of Nola are important to the interplay of the "characters". Vico propounded a cyclical view of history, in which civilisation rose from chaos, passed through theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic phases, and then lapsed back into chaos. The most obvious example of the influence of Vico's cyclical theory of history is to be found in the opening and closing words of the book. ''Finnegans Wake'' opens with the words "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." ("vicus" is a pun on Vico) and ends "A way a lone a last a loved a long the". In other words, the book ends with the beginning of a sentence and begins with the end of the same sentence, turning the book into one great cycle. Indeed, Joyce said that the ideal reader of the ''Wake'' would suffer from "ideal insomnia" and, on completing the book, would turn to page one and start again, and so on in an endless cycle of reading.

Legacy

Joyce's work has been subject to intense scrutiny by scholars of all types. He has also been an important influence on writers and scholars as diverse as Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Flann O'Brien, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Phillip Norbert Årp, Salman Rushdie, Robert Anton Wilson, John Updike, and Joseph Campbell. ''Ulysses'' has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire [Modernist] movement".

Some scholars, most notably Vladimir Nabokov, have mixed feelings on his work, often championing some of his fiction while condemning other works. In Nabokov's opinion, ''Ulysses'' was brilliant, ''Finnegans Wake'' horrible—an attitude Jorge Luis Borges shared. In recent years, literary theory has embraced Joyce's innovation and ambition.

Joyce's influence is also evident in fields other than literature. The sentence "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" in Joyce's ''Finnegans Wake'' is the source of the word "quark", the name of one of the elementary particles, proposed by the physicist, Murray Gell-Mann in 1963. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida has written a book on the use of language in ''Ulysses'', and the American philosopher Donald Davidson has written similarly on ''Finnegans Wake'' in comparison with Lewis Carroll. Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used Joyce's writings to explain his concept of the ''sinthome''. According to Lacan, Joyce's writing is the supplementary cord which kept Joyce from psychosis.

The work and life of Joyce is celebrated annually on 16 June, Bloomsday, in Dublin and in an increasing number of cities worldwide.

In 1999, ''Time Magazine'' named Joyce one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, and stated; "Joyce ... revolutionised 20th century fiction". In 1998, the Modern Library ranked ''Ulysses'' No. 1, ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' No. 3, and ''Finnegans Wake'' No. 77, on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Copyright restrictions on Joyce's work, which applied for 70 years since his death, expire at the end of 2011, and it is expected that this event will lead to freer commentary on and use of his oeuvre.

Bibliography

''Chamber Music'' (poems, 1907)

''Dubliners'' (short-story collection, 1914)

''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' (novel, 1916)

''Exiles'' (play, 1918)

''Ulysses'' (novel, 1922)

''Pomes Penyeach'' (poems, 1927)

''Collected Poems'' (poems, 1936)

''Finnegans Wake'' (novel, 1939)

'' The Cat and the Devil'' (a children's book, 1936)

;Posthumous publications

''Stephen Hero'' (precursor to ''A Portrait''; written 1904–06, published 1944)

''Giacomo Joyce'' (written 1907, published 1968)

''Letters of James Joyce Vol. 1'' (Ed. Stuart Gilbert, 1957)

''The Critical Writings of James Joyce'' (Eds. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellman, 1959)

'' The Cat and the Devil'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1965)

''Letters of James Joyce Vol. 2'' (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1966)

''Letters of James Joyce Vol. 3'' (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1966)

''Selected Letters of James Joyce'' (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1975)

Notes

References

Beebe, Maurice (Fall 1972). "''Ulysses'' and the Age of Modernism". ''James Joyce Quarterly'' (University of Tulsa) 10 (1): 172–88

Borges, Jorge Luis, (ed.) Eliot Weinberger, ''Borges: Selected Non-Fictions'', Penguin (31 October 2000). ISBN 0-14-029011-7.

Bulson, Eric. ''The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce''. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-521-84037-8.

Cavanaugh, Tim, "Ulysses Unbound: Why does a book so bad it "defecates on your bed" still have so many admirers?", ''reason'', July 2004.

Deming, Robert H. ''James Joyce: The Critical Heritage''. Routledge, 1997.

Ellmann, Richard, ''James Joyce''. Oxford University Press, 1959, revised edition 1982. ISBN 0-19-503103-2.

Gluck, Barbara Reich. ''Beckett and Joyce: Friendship and Fiction''. Bucknell University Press, 1979.

Hopper, Keith, ''Flann O'Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-Modernist'', Cork University Press (May 1995). ISBN 1-85918-042-6.

Joyce, Stanislaus, ''My Brother's Keeper'', New York: Viking Press, 1969.

MacBride, Margaret. ''Ulysses and the Metamorphosis of Stephen Dedalus''. Bucknell University Press, 2001.

McCourt, John, ''The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste, 1904–1920'', The Lilliput Press, May 2001. ISBN 1-901866-71-8.

McCourt, John, ed. ''James Joyce in Context''. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-521-88662-8.

Pepper, Tara. "Portrait of the Daughter: Two works seek to reclaim the legacy of Lucia Joyce." ''Newsweek International ''. 8 March 2003.

Shloss, Carol Loeb. ''Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake''. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004. ISBN 0-374-19424-6.

Williamson, Edwin, ''Borges: A Life'', Viking Adult (5 August 2004). ISBN 0-670-88579-7.

Further reading

Burgess, Anthony, ''Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader'', Faber & Faber (1965); (published in America as ''Re Joyce'') ASIN B000KW9R3Y; Hamlyn Paperbacks; Rev. ed edition (1982). ISBN 0-600-20673-4.

Burgess, Anthony, ''Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce'' (1973), Harcourt (March 1975). ISBN 0-15-646561-2.

Clark, Hilary, ''The Fictional Encyclopaedia: Joyce, Pound, Sollers''. Taylor & Francis, 1990.

Ellmann, Richard, ''James Joyce'', Oxford University Press, New York 1959, 1982. ISBN 0-19-281465-6. Often praised as the finest biography of the 20th century.

Gravgaard, Anna-Katarina ''Could Leopold Bloom Read Ulysses?'', University of Copenhagen, 2006.

Igoe, Vivien. ''A Literary Guide to Dublin''. ISBN 0-413-69120-9.

Levin, Harry (ed. with introduction and notes). ''The Essential James Joyce''. Cape, 1948. Revised edition Penguin in association with Jonathan Cape, 1963.

Levin, Harry, ''James Joyce''. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1941 (1960).

Max, D. J., "The Injustice Collector", ''The New Yorker'', 19 June 2006.

Quillian, William H. ''Hamlet and the new poetic: James Joyce and T. S. Eliot''. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1983.

Read, Forrest. ''Pound/Joyce: The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, with Pound's Essays on Joyce''. New Directions, 1967.

Special issue on James Joyce, ''In-between: Essays & Studies in Literary Criticism'', Vol. 12, 2003. [''Article''s]

''Irish Writers on Writing'' featuring James Joyce. Edited by Eavan Boland (Trinity University Press, 2007).

External links

An Audio tour of the history of James Joyce's writings

Joyce's Dublin – slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Bibliography of Joycean Scholarship and Literary Criticism

Music in the Works of James Joyce

James Joyce Centre (Dublin)

The James Joyce Scholars' Collection from the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center.

The James Joyce Collection from the University at Buffalo Libraries.

Annoted Ulysses, marked up version of Ulysses.

James Joyce from Dublin to Ithaca Exhibition from the collections of Cornell University

Gisèle Freund Photographs of James Joyce in Paris at University of Victoria, Special Collections

Category:1882 births Category:1941 deaths Category:Alumni of University College Dublin Category:English as a Second Language teachers Category:Irish expatriates in Austria-Hungary Category:Irish expatriates in Croatia Category:Irish expatriates in France Category:Irish expatriates in Italy Category:Irish expatriates in Switzerland Category:Irish novelists Category:Irish poets Category:Irish short story writers Category:People from County Dublin Category:19th-century Irish people Category:Old Clongownians Category:Roman Catholic writers Category:James Joyce

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Width	200
Position	Shooting guard / Small forward
Height ft	6|height_in 6
Weight lbs	216
Number	23, 45, 9, 12
Birth date	February 17, 1963
Birth place	Brooklyn, New York
High school	Emsley A. Laney
League
Career start	1984
Career end	2003
Draftyear	1984
Draftround	1
Draftpick	3
Draftteam	Chicago Bulls
College	North Carolina (1981–1984)
Years1	–, – |team1 Chicago Bulls
Years2	– |team2 Washington Wizards
Stat1label	Points
Stat1value	32,292 (30.1 ppg)
Stat2label	Rebounds
Stat2value	6,672 (6.2 rpg)
Stat3label	Assists
Stat3value	5,633 (5.3 apg)
Letter	j
Bbr	jordami01
Highlights	6× NBA Champion (–, –) 5× NBA Most Valuable Player (, –, , ) 14× NBA All-Star (–, –, –) 6× NBA Finals MVP (–, –) 10× NBA scoring champion (–, –) 3× NBA steals champion (, , ) NBA Defensive Player of the Year () 10× All-NBA First Team (–, –) All-NBA Second Team () 9× NBA All-Defensive First Team (–, –) NBA Rookie of the Year () NBA All-Rookie First Team () 3× NBA All-Star Game MVP (, , ) 2× NBA Slam Dunk Contest champion (–) NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time Team #23 Retired by Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat NCAA Champion (1982) 2× Consensus NCAA All-American First Team (1983–1984) ACC Player of the Year (1984) Oscar Robertson Trophy (1984) Naismith College Player of the Year (1984) John R. Wooden Award (1984) Adolph Rupp Trophy (1984)
Hof player	michael-jordan }}

Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963) is a former American professional basketball player, active businessman, and majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats. His biography on the National Basketball Association (NBA) website states, "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time." Jordan was one of the most effectively marketed athletes of his generation and was instrumental in popularizing the NBA around the world in the 1980s and 1990s.

After a standout career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a member of the Tar Heels' National Championship team in 1982, Jordan joined the NBA's Chicago Bulls in 1984. He quickly emerged as a league star, entertaining crowds with his prolific scoring. His leaping ability, illustrated by performing slam dunks from the free throw line in slam dunk contests, earned him the nicknames "Air Jordan" and "His Airness". He also gained a reputation for being one of the best defensive players in basketball. In 1991, he won his first NBA championship with the Bulls, and followed that achievement with titles in 1992 and 1993, securing a "three-peat". Although Jordan abruptly retired from basketball at the beginning of the 1993–94 NBA season to pursue a career in baseball, he rejoined the Bulls in 1995 and led them to three additional championships (1996, 1997, and 1998) as well as an NBA-record 72 regular-season wins in the 1995–96 NBA season. Jordan retired for a second time in 1999, but returned for two more NBA seasons from 2001 to 2003 as a member of the Washington Wizards.

Jordan's individual accolades and accomplishments include five MVP awards, ten All-NBA First Team designations, nine All-Defensive First Team honors, fourteen NBA All-Star Game appearances, three All-Star Game MVP awards, ten scoring titles, three steals titles, six NBA Finals MVP awards, and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He holds the NBA records for highest career regular season scoring average (30.12 points per game) and highest career playoff scoring average (33.45 points per game). In 1999, he was named the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century by ESPN, and was second to Babe Ruth on the Associated Press's list of athletes of the century. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009.

Jordan is also noted for his product endorsements. He fueled the success of Nike's Air Jordan sneakers, which were introduced in 1985 and remain popular today. Jordan also starred in the 1996 feature film ''Space Jam'' as himself. He is the majority owner and head of basketball operations for the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats, having won a bidding war to buy controlling interest in the team from founding owner Robert L. Johnson.

Early years

Jordan was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Deloris (née Peoples), who worked in banking, and James R. Jordan, Sr., an equipment supervisor. His family moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, when he was a toddler. Jordan attended Emsley A. Laney High School in Wilmington, where he anchored his athletic career by playing baseball, football, and basketball. He tried out for the varsity basketball team during his sophomore year, but at 5'11" (1.80 m), he was deemed too short to play at that level. His taller friend, Harvest Leroy Smith, was the only sophomore to make the team.

Motivated to prove his worth, Jordan became the star of Laney's junior varsity squad, and tallied several 40 point games. The following summer, he grew four inches (10 cm) and trained rigorously. Upon earning a spot on the varsity roster, Jordan averaged about 20 points per game over his final two seasons of high school play. As a senior, he was selected to the McDonald's All-American Team During his three seasons at North Carolina, he averaged 17.7 ppg on 54.0% shooting, and added 5.0 rebounds per game (rpg). He was selected by consensus to the NCAA All-American First Team in both his sophomore (1983) and junior (1984) seasons. After winning the Naismith and the Wooden College Player of the Year awards in 1984, Jordan left North Carolina one year before his scheduled graduation to enter the 1984 NBA Draft. The Chicago Bulls selected Jordan with the third overall pick, after Hakeem Olajuwon (Houston Rockets) and Sam Bowie (Portland Trail Blazers). Jordan returned to North Carolina to complete his degree in 1986.

Professional career

During his first season in the NBA, Jordan averaged 28.2 ppg on 51.5% shooting. He quickly became a fan favorite even in opposing arenas, and appeared on the cover of ''Sports Illustrated'' with the heading "A Star is Born" just over a month into his professional career. Jordan was also voted in as an All-Star starter by the fans in his rookie season. Controversy arose before the All-Star game when word surfaced that several veteran players, led by Isiah Thomas, were upset by the amount of attention Jordan was receiving. This led to a so called "freeze-out" on Jordan, where players refused to pass him the ball throughout the game. The controversy left Jordan relatively unaffected when he returned to regular season play, and he would go on to be voted Rookie of the Year. The Bulls finished the season 38–44, and lost in the first round of the playoffs in four games to the Milwaukee Bucks.

Jordan's second season was cut short by a broken foot which caused him to miss 64 games. Despite Jordan's injury and a 30–52 record, the Bulls made the playoffs. Jordan recovered in time to participate in the playoffs and performed well upon his return. Against a 1985–86 Boston Celtics team that is often considered one of the greatest in NBA history, Jordan set the still-unbroken record for points in a playoff game with 63 in Game 2. The Celtics, however, managed to sweep the series.

Jordan had recovered completely by the 1986–87 season, and had one of the most prolific scoring seasons in NBA history. He became the only player other than Wilt Chamberlain to score 3,000 points in a season, averaging a league high 37.1 points on 48.2% shooting. In addition, Jordan demonstrated his defensive prowess, as he became the first player in NBA history to record 200 steals and 100 blocks in a season. Despite Jordan's success, Magic Johnson won the league's Most Valuable Player Award. The Bulls reached 40 wins, and advanced to the playoffs for the third consecutive year. However, they were again swept by the Celtics.

Mid-career: Pistons roadblock

Jordan led the league in scoring again in the 1987–88 season, averaging 35.0 ppg on 53.5% shooting and won his first league MVP award. He was also named the Defensive Player of the Year, as he had averaged 1.6 blocks and a league high 3.16 steals per game. The Bulls finished 50–32, and made it out of the first round of the playoffs for the first time in Jordan's career, as they defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers in five games. However, the Bulls then lost in five games to the more experienced Detroit Pistons, who were led by Isiah Thomas and a group of physical players known as the "Bad Boys".

In the 1988–89 season, Jordan again led the league in scoring, averaging 32.5 ppg on 53.8% shooting from the field, along with 8 rpg and 8 assists per game (apg). The Bulls finished with a 47–35 record, and advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals, defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks along the way. The Cavaliers series included a career highlight for Jordan when he hit a series-winning shot over Craig Ehlo in the closing moments of the deciding fifth game of the series. However, the Pistons again defeated the Bulls, this time in six games, by utilizing their "Jordan Rules" method of guarding Jordan, which consisted of double and triple teaming him every time he touched the ball.

The Bulls entered the 1989–90 season as a team on the rise, with their core group of Jordan and young improving players like Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant, and under the guidance of new coach Phil Jackson. Jordan averaged a league leading 33.6 ppg on 52.6% shooting, to go with 6.9 rpg and 6.3 apg in leading the Bulls to a 55–27 record. They again advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals beating the Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers en route. However, despite pushing the series to seven games, the Bulls lost to the Pistons for the third consecutive season.

First three-peat

In the 1990–91 season, Jordan won his second MVP award after averaging 31.5 ppg on 53.9% shooting, 6.0 rpg, and 5.5 apg for the regular season. The Bulls finished in first place in their division for the first time in 16 years and set a franchise record with 61 wins in the regular season. With Scottie Pippen developing into an All-Star, the Bulls had elevated their play. The Bulls defeated the New York Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers in the opening two rounds of the playoffs. They advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals where their rival, the Detroit Pistons, awaited them. However, this time the Bulls beat the Pistons in a surprising sweep. In an unusual ending to the fourth and final game, Isiah Thomas led his team off the court before the final minute had concluded. Most of the Pistons went directly to their locker room instead of shaking hands with the Bulls.

The Bulls compiled an outstanding 15–2 record during the playoffs, and advanced to the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history, where they beat the Los Angeles Lakers four games to one. Perhaps the best known moment of the series came in Game 2 when, attempting a dunk, Jordan avoided a potential Sam Perkins block by switching the ball from his right hand to his left in mid-air to lay the shot in. In his first Finals appearance, Jordan posted per game averages of 31.2 points on 56% shooting from the field, 11.4 assists, 6.6 rebounds, 2.8 steals and 1.4 blocks. Jordan won his first NBA Finals MVP award, and he cried while holding the NBA Finals trophy.

Jordan and the Bulls continued their dominance in the 1991–92 season, establishing a 67–15 record, topping their franchise record from 1990 to 91. Jordan won his second consecutive MVP award with averages of 30.1 points, 6.4 rebounds and 6.1 assists per game on 52% shooting. After winning a physical 7-game series over the New York Knicks in the second round of the playoffs and finishing off the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Conference Finals in 6 games, the Bulls met Clyde Drexler and the Portland Trail Blazers in the Finals. The media, hoping to recreate a Magic-Bird rivalry, highlighted the similarities between "Air" Jordan and Clyde "The Glide" during the pre-Finals hype. In the first game, Jordan scored a Finals-record 35 points in the first half, including a record-setting six three-point field goals. After the sixth three-pointer, he jogged down the court shrugging as he looked courtside. Marv Albert, who broadcast the game, later stated that it was as if Jordan was saying, "I can't believe I'm doing this." The Bulls went on to win Game 1, and defeat the Blazers in six games. Jordan was named Finals MVP for the second year in a row and finished the series averaging 35.8 ppg, 4.8 rpg, and 6.5 apg, while shooting 53% from the floor.

In 1992–93, despite a 32.6 ppg, 6.7 rpg and 5.5 apg campaign, Jordan's streak of consecutive MVP seasons ended as he lost the award to his friend Charles Barkley. Coincidentally, Jordan and the Bulls met Barkley and his Phoenix Suns in the 1993 NBA Finals. The Bulls captured their third consecutive NBA championship on a game-winning shot by John Paxson and a last-second block by Horace Grant, but Jordan was once again Chicago's catalyst. He averaged a Finals-record 41.0 ppg during the six-game series, and became the first player in NBA history to win three straight Finals MVP awards. He scored more than 30 points in every game of the series, including 40 or more points in 4 consecutive games. With his third Finals triumph, Jordan capped off a seven-year run where he attained seven scoring titles and three championships, but there were signs that Jordan was tiring of his massive celebrity and all of the non-basketball hassles in his life.

Gambling controversy

During the Bulls' playoff run in 1993, controversy arose when Jordan was seen gambling in Atlantic City, New Jersey the night before a game against the New York Knicks. In that same year, he admitted to having to cover $57,000 in gambling losses, and author Richard Esquinas wrote a book claiming he had won $1.25 million from Jordan on the golf course. In 2005, Jordan talked to Ed Bradley of the CBS evening show ''60 Minutes'' about his gambling and admitted that he made some reckless decisions. Jordan stated, "Yeah, I've gotten myself into situations where I would not walk away and I've pushed the envelope. Is that compulsive? Yeah, it depends on how you look at it. If you're willing to jeopardize your livelihood and your family, then yeah." When Bradley asked him if his gambling ever got to the level where it jeopardized his livelihood or family, Jordan replied, "No."

First retirement and baseball career

On October 6, 1993, Jordan announced his retirement, citing a loss of desire to play the game. Jordan later stated that the murder of his father earlier in the year shaped his decision. James R. Jordan, Sr. was murdered on July 23, 1993, at a highway rest area in Lumberton, North Carolina, by two teenagers, Daniel Green and Larry Martin Demery. The assailants were traced from calls they made on James Jordan's cellular phone, caught, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. Jordan was close to his father; as a child he had imitated his father's proclivity to stick out his tongue while absorbed in work. He later adopted it as his own signature, displaying it each time he drove to the basket. In 1996 he founded a Chicago area Boys & Girls Club and dedicated it to his father.

In his 1998 autobiography ''For the Love of the Game'', Jordan wrote that he had been preparing for retirement as early as the summer of 1992. The added exhaustion due to the Dream Team run in the 1992 Olympics solidified Jordan's feelings about the game and his ever-growing celebrity status. Jordan's announcement sent shock waves throughout the NBA and appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the world.

Jordan then further surprised the sports world by signing a minor league baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox. He reported to spring training and was assigned to the team's minor league system on March 31, 1994. Jordan has stated this decision was made to pursue the dream of his late father, who had always envisioned his son as a Major League Baseball player. The White Sox were another team owned by Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who continued to honor Jordan's basketball contract during the years he played baseball. In 1994, Jordan played for the Birmingham Barons, a Double-A minor league affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, batting .202 with three home runs, 51 runs batted in, 30 stolen bases, and 11 errors. He also appeared for the Scottsdale Scorpions in the 1994 Arizona Fall League, batting .252 against the top prospects in baseball.

"I'm back": Return to the NBA

In the 1993–94 season, the Bulls, without Jordan, achieved a 55–27 record, and lost to the New York Knicks in the second round of the playoffs. But the 1994–95 version of the Bulls was a shell of the championship squad of just two years earlier. Struggling at mid-season to ensure a spot in the playoffs, Chicago was 31–31 at one point in mid-March. The team received a lift, however, when Jordan decided to return to the NBA for the Bulls.

On March 18, 1995, Jordan announced his return to the NBA through a pithy press release: "I'm back." The next day, Jordan donned jersey number 45 (his number with the Barons), as his familiar 23 had been retired in his honor following his first retirement. He took to the court with the Bulls to face the Indiana Pacers in Indianapolis, scoring 19 points. The game had the highest Nielsen rating of a regular season NBA game since 1975.

Although he had not played in an NBA game in a year and a half, Jordan played well upon his return, making a game-winning jump shot against Atlanta in his fourth game back. He then scored 55 points in his fifth game back against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden on March 28, 1995 (his first appearance at Madison Square Garden since retiring). Boosted by Jordan's comeback, the Bulls went 13-4 to make the playoffs and advanced to the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Orlando Magic. At the end of the first game of the series, though, Orlando's Nick Anderson would strip Jordan from behind, leading to the game-winning basket for the Magic; he would later comment that Jordan "didn't look like the old Michael Jordan", after which Jordan returned to wearing his old number (23). Jordan averaged 31 points per game in that series, but Orlando prevailed in six games.

Second three-peat

Freshly motivated by the playoff defeat, Jordan trained aggressively for the 1995–96 season. Strengthened by the addition of rebound specialist Dennis Rodman, the Bulls dominated the league, starting the season 41–3, and eventually finishing with the best regular season record in NBA history: 72–10. Jordan led the league in scoring with 30.4 ppg, and won the league's regular season and All-Star Game MVP awards. In the playoffs, the Bulls lost only three games in four series, defeating the Seattle SuperSonics in the NBA Finals to win the championship. Jordan was named Finals MVP for a record fourth time, surpassing Magic Johnson's three Finals MVP awards. He also achieved only the second sweep of the MVP Awards in the All-Star Game, regular season and NBA Finals, Willis Reed having achieved the first, during the 1969–70 season. Because this was Jordan's first championship since his father's death, and it was won on Father's Day, Jordan reacted very emotionally upon winning the title, including a memorable scene of him sobbing on the locker room floor with the game ball.

In the 1996–97 season, the Bulls started out 69–11, but narrowly missed out on a second consecutive 70-win season by losing their final two games to finish 69–13. However, this year Jordan was beaten for the NBA MVP Award by Karl Malone. The team again advanced to the Finals, where they faced Malone and the Utah Jazz. The series against the Jazz featured two of the more memorable clutch moments of Jordan's career. He won Game 1 for the Bulls with a buzzer-beating jump shot. In Game 5, with the series tied 2–2, Jordan played despite being feverish and dehydrated from a stomach virus. In what is known as the "flu game", Jordan scored 38 points including the game-deciding three-pointer with less than a minute remaining. The Bulls won 90–88 and went on to win the series in six games. For the fifth time in as many Finals appearances, Jordan received the Finals MVP award. During the 1997 NBA All-Star Game, Jordan posted the first triple double in All-Star Game history in a victorious effort; however, he did not receive the MVP award.

Jordan and the Bulls compiled a 62–20 record in the 1997–98 season. Jordan led the league with 28.7 points per game, securing his fifth regular-season MVP award, plus honors for All-NBA First Team, First Defensive Team and the All-Star Game MVP. The Bulls captured the Eastern Conference Championship for a third straight season, including surviving a grueling seven-game series with Reggie Miller's Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals; it was the first time Jordan had played in a Game 7 since the 1992 series with the Knicks. After prevailing, they moved on for a rematch with the Jazz in the Finals.

The Bulls returned to Utah for Game 6 on June 14, 1998 leading the series 3–2. Jordan executed a series of plays, considered to be one of the greatest clutch performances in NBA Finals history. With the Bulls trailing 86–83 with 40 seconds remaining, coach Jackson called a timeout. When play resumed, Jordan received the inbound pass, drove to the basket, and hit a layup over several Jazz defenders. The Jazz brought the ball upcourt and passed the ball to forward Karl Malone, who was set up in the low post and was being guarded by Rodman. Malone jostled with Rodman and caught the pass, but Jordan cut behind him and swatted the ball out of his hands for a steal. Jordan then slowly dribbled upcourt and paused at the top of the key, eyeing his defender, Jazz guard Bryon Russell. With fewer than 10 seconds remaining, Jordan started to dribble right, then crossed over to his left, possibly pushing off Russell, although the officials did not call a foul. Jordan then made what would become the climactic shot of his career. After a desperation three-point shot by John Stockton missed, Jordan and the Bulls claimed their sixth NBA championship, and secured a second three-peat. Once again, Jordan was voted the Finals MVP, having led all scorers by averaging 33.5 points per game, including 45 in the deciding Game 6. Jordan's six Finals MVPs is a record; Shaquille O'Neal, Magic Johnson, and Tim Duncan are tied for second place with three apiece. The 1998 Finals holds the highest television rating of any Finals series in history, and Game 6 holds the highest television rating of any game in NBA history.

Second retirement

With Phil Jackson's contract expiring, the pending departures of Scottie Pippen (who stated his desire to be traded during the season) and Dennis Rodman (who would sign with the Los Angeles Lakers as a free agent) looming, and being in the latter stages of an owner-induced lockout of NBA players, Jordan retired for the second time on January 13, 1999.

On January 19, 2000, Jordan returned to the NBA not as a player, but as part owner and President of Basketball Operations for the Washington Wizards. Jordan's responsibilities with the Wizards were comprehensive. He controlled all aspects of the Wizards' basketball operations, and had the final say in all personnel matters. Opinions of Jordan as a basketball executive were mixed. He managed to purge the team of several highly paid, unpopular players (such as forward Juwan Howard and point guard Rod Strickland), but used the first pick in the 2001 NBA Draft to select high schooler Kwame Brown, who did not live up to expectations and was traded away after four seasons.

Despite his January 1999 claim that he was "99.9% certain" that he would never play another NBA game, in the summer of 2001 Jordan expressed interest in making another comeback, this time with his new team. Inspired by the NHL comeback of his friend Mario Lemieux the previous winter, Jordan spent much of the spring and summer of 2001 in training, holding several invitation-only camps for NBA players in Chicago. In addition, Jordan hired his old Chicago Bulls head coach, Doug Collins, as Washington's coach for the upcoming season, a decision that many saw as foreshadowing another Jordan return.

Washington Wizards comeback

On September 25, 2001 Jordan announced his return to professional play with the Wizards, indicating his intention to donate his salary as a player to a relief effort for the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks. In an injury-plagued 2001–02 season, he led the team in scoring (22.9 ppg), assists (5.2 apg), and steals (1.42 spg). However, torn cartilage in his right knee ended Jordan's season after only 60 games, the fewest he had played in a regular season since playing 17 games after returning from his first retirement during the 1994–95 season.

Playing in his 14th and final NBA All-Star Game in 2003, Jordan passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the all-time leading scorer in All-Star game history. That year, Jordan was the only Washington player to play in all 82 games, starting in 67 of them. He averaged 20.0 points, 6.1 rebounds, 3.8 assists, and 1.5 steals per game. He also shot 45% from the field, and 82% from the free throw line. Even though he turned 40 during the season, he scored 20 or more points 42 times, 30 or more points nine times, and 40 or more points three times. On February 21, 2003, Jordan became the first 40-year-old to tally 43 points in an NBA game. During his stint with the Wizards, all of Jordan's home games at the MCI Center were sold out, and the Wizards were the second most-watched team in the NBA, averaging 20,172 fans a game at home and 19,311 on the road. However, neither of Jordan's final two seasons resulted in a playoff appearance for the Wizards, and Jordan was often unsatisfied with the play of those around him. At several points he openly criticized his teammates to the media, citing their lack of focus and intensity, notably that of the number one draft pick in the 2001 NBA Draft, Kwame Brown.

With the recognition that 2002–03 would be Jordan's final season, tributes were paid to him throughout the NBA. In his final game at his old home court, the United Center in Chicago, Jordan received a four-minute standing ovation. The Miami Heat retired the number 23 jersey on April 11, 2003, even though Jordan had never played for the team. At the 2003 All-Star Game, Jordan was offered a starting spot from Tracy McGrady and Allen Iverson, but refused both; in the end, however, he accepted the spot of Vince Carter, who decided to give it up under great public pressure.

Jordan's final NBA game was on April 16, 2003 in Philadelphia. After scoring only 13 points in the game, Jordan went to the bench with 4 minutes and 13 seconds remaining in the third quarter and with his team trailing the Philadelphia 76ers, 75–56. Just after the start of the fourth quarter, the First Union Center crowd began chanting "We want Mike!". After much encouragement from coach Doug Collins, Jordan finally rose from the bench and re-entered the game for Larry Hughes with 2:35 remaining. At 1:45, Jordan was intentionally fouled by the 76ers' Eric Snow, and stepped to the line to make both free throws. After the second foul shot, the 76ers in-bounded the ball to rookie John Salmons, who in turn was intentionally fouled by Bobby Simmons one second later, stopping time so that Jordan could return to the bench. Jordan received a three-minute standing ovation from his teammates, his opponents, the officials and a crowd of 21,257 fans.

Olympic career

Jordan played on two Olympic gold medal-winning American basketball teams. As a college player he participated, and won the gold, in the 1984 Summer Olympics. Jordan led the team in scoring averaging 17.1 ppg for the tournament.

In the 1992 Summer Olympics he was a member of the star-studded squad that included Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and David Robinson and was dubbed the "Dream Team". Playing limited minutes due to the frequent blowouts, Jordan averaged 12.7 ppg, finishing fourth on the team in scoring. Jordan, Patrick Ewing, and fellow Dream Team member Chris Mullin are the only American men's basketball players to win Olympic gold as amateurs (all in 1984) and professionals.

In addition, Jordan and fellow Dream Team member (and Bulls teammate) Scottie Pippen are the only players to have won both NBA championship and Olympic gold medal in the same year (1992).

After retiring as a player

After his third retirement, Jordan assumed that he would be able to return to his front office position of Director of Basketball Operations with the Wizards. However, his previous tenure in the Wizards' front office had produced the aforementioned mixed results and may have also influenced the trade of Richard "Rip" Hamilton for Jerry Stackhouse (although Jordan was not technically Director of Basketball Operations in 2002). On May 7, 2003, Wizards owner Abe Pollin fired Jordan as Washington's President of Basketball Operations. Jordan later stated that he felt betrayed, and that if he knew he would be fired upon retiring he never would have come back to play for the Wizards.

Jordan kept busy over the next few years by staying in shape, playing golf in celebrity charity tournaments, spending time with his family in Chicago, promoting his Jordan Brand clothing line, and riding motorcycles. Since 2004, Jordan has owned Michael Jordan Motorsports, a professional closed-course motorcycle road racing team that competes with two Suzukis in the premier Superbike class sanctioned by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA). Jordan and his then-wife Juanita pledged $5 million to Chicago's Hales Franciscan High School in 2006, and the Jordan Brand has made donations to Habitat for Humanity and a Louisiana branch of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. On June 15, 2006, Jordan bought a minority stake in the Charlotte Bobcats, becoming the team's second-largest shareholder behind majority owner Robert L. Johnson. As part of the deal, Jordan was named "Managing Member of Basketball Operations," with full control over the basketball side of the operation. Despite Jordan's previous success as an endorser, he has made an effort not to be included in Charlotte's marketing campaigns.

In February 2010, it was reported that Jordan was seeking majority ownership of the Bobcats. As February wore on, it emerged that the leading contenders for the team were Jordan and former Houston Rockets president George Postolos. On February 27, the Bobcats announced that Johnson had reached an agreement with Jordan and his group, MJ Basketball Holdings, to buy the team pending NBA approval. On March 17, the NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved Jordan's purchase, making him the first former NBA player ever to become the majority owner of a league franchise.

Player profile

Jordan was a shooting guard who was also capable of playing small forward (the position he would primarily play during his second return to professional basketball with the Washington Wizards). Jordan was known throughout his career for being a strong clutch performer. He decided numerous games with last-second plays (e.g., The Shot) and performed at a high level even under adverse circumstances (e.g., Flu Game). His competitiveness was visible in his prolific trash-talk and well-known work ethic.

Jordan had a versatile offensive game. He was capable of aggressively driving to the basket, as well as drawing fouls from his opponents at a high rate; his 8,772 free throw attempts are the ninth highest total of all time. As his career progressed, Jordan also developed the ability to post up his opponents and score with his trademark fadeaway jump shot, using his leaping ability to "fade away" from block attempts. According to Hubie Brown, this move alone made him nearly unstoppable. Despite media criticism as a "selfish" player early in his career, Jordan's 5.3 assists per game also indicate his willingness to defer to his teammates. In later years, the NBA shortened its three-point line to 22 feet (from 23 feet, 9 inches), which coupled with Jordan's extended shooting range to make him a long-range threat as well—his 3-point stroke developed from a low 9 / 52 rate (.173) in his rookie year into a stellar 111 / 260 (.427) shooter in the 1995–96 season. For a guard, Jordan was also a good rebounder (6.2 per game).

In 1988, Jordan was honored with the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year Award and became the first NBA player to win both the Defensive Player of the Year and MVP awards in a career (since equaled by Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, and Kevin Garnett; Olajuwon is the only player other than Jordan to win both during the same season). In addition he set both seasonal and career records for blocked shots by a guard, and combined this with his ball-thieving ability to become a standout defensive player. His 2,514 steals are the second highest total of all-time behind John Stockton, while his steals per game average is third all-time. Jerry West often stated that he was more impressed with Jordan's defensive contributions than his offensive ones.

Legacy

Jordan's basketball talent was clear from his rookie season. In his first game in Madison Square Garden against the New York Knicks, Jordan received a prolonged standing ovation, a rarity for an opposing player. After Jordan scored a playoff record 63 points against the Boston Celtics in 1986, Celtics star Larry Bird described him as "God disguised as Michael Jordan."

Jordan led the NBA in scoring in 10 seasons (NBA record) and tied Wilt Chamberlain's record of seven consecutive scoring titles. He was also a fixture on the NBA All-Defensive First Team, making the roster nine times (NBA record shared with Gary Payton). Jordan also holds the top career regular season and playoff scoring averages of 30.1 and 33.4 points per game, respectively. By 1998, the season of his Finals-winning shot against the Jazz, he was well known throughout the league as a clutch performer. In the regular season, Jordan was the Bulls' primary threat in the final seconds of a close game and in the playoffs, Jordan would always demand the ball at crunch time. Jordan's total of 5,987 points in the playoffs is the highest in NBA history. He retired with 32,292 points in regular season play, placing him third on the NBA's all-time scoring list behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone.

With five regular-season MVPs (tied for second place with Bill Russell; only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has won more, six), six Finals MVPs (NBA record), and three All-Star MVPs, Jordan is the most decorated player ever to play in the NBA. Jordan finished among the top three in regular-season MVP voting a record 10 times, and was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996.

Many of Jordan's contemporaries label Jordan as the greatest basketball player of all time. An ESPN survey of journalists, athletes and other sports figures ranked Jordan the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century, above icons such as Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali. Jordan placed second to Babe Ruth in the Associated Press's list of 20th century athletes. In addition, the Associated Press voted him as the basketball player of the 20th century. Jordan has also appeared on the front cover of ''Sports Illustrated'' a record 49 times. In the September 1996 issue of ''Sport'', which was the publication's 50th anniversary issue, Jordan was named the greatest athlete of the past 50 years.

Jordan's athletic leaping ability, highlighted in his back-to-back slam dunk contest championships in 1987 and 1988, is credited by many with having influenced a generation of young players. Several current NBA All-Stars have stated that they considered Jordan their role model while growing up, including LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. In addition, commentators have dubbed a number of next-generation players "the next Michael Jordan" upon their entry to the NBA, including Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway, Grant Hill, Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Vince Carter, and Dwyane Wade. Although Jordan was a well-rounded player, his "Air Jordan" image is also often credited with inadvertently decreasing the jump shooting skills, defense, and fundamentals of young players, a fact which Jordan himself has lamented. Although Jordan has done much to increase the status of the game, some of his impact on the game's popularity in America appears to be fleeting. Television ratings in particular increased only during his time in the league and have subsequently lowered each time he left the game.

In August 2009, the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, opened a Michael Jordan exhibit containing items from his college and NBA careers, as well as from the 1992 "Dream Team". The exhibit also has a batting glove to signify Jordan's short career in baseball. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in September 2009, with former Bulls teammates Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Charles Oakley, Ron Harper, Steve Kerr, and Toni Kukoc in attendance.

Personal life

Jordan is the fourth of five children. He has two older brothers, Larry Jordan and James R. Jordan, Jr., one older sister, Deloris, and a younger sister, Roslyn. Jordan's brother James retired in 2006 as the Command Sergeant Major of the 35th Signal Brigade of the XVIII Airborne Corps in the U.S. Army.

He married Juanita Vanoy in September 1989, and they have two sons, Jeffrey Michael and Marcus James, and a daughter, Jasmine. Jordan and Vanoy filed for divorce on January 4, 2002, citing irreconcilable differences, but reconciled shortly thereafter. They again filed for divorce and were granted a final decree of dissolution of marriage on December 29, 2006, commenting that the decision was made "mutually and amicably". It is reported that Juanita received a $168 million settlement, making it the largest celebrity divorce settlement in history at the time on public record.

On July 21, 2006, a Cook County, Illinois judge determined that Jordan did not owe his alleged former lover Karla Knafel $5 million. Jordan had allegedly paid Knafel $250,000 to keep their relationship a secret. Knafel claimed Jordan promised her $5 million for remaining silent and agreeing not to file a paternity suit after Knafel learned she was pregnant in 1991. A DNA test showed Jordan was not the father of the child.

As of 2007, Jordan lived in Highland Park, Illinois, and both of his sons attended Loyola Academy, a private Roman Catholic high school located in Wilmette, Illinois. Jeffrey graduated as a member of the 2007 graduating class and played his first collegiate basketball game on November 11, 2007, for the University of Illinois. After two seasons, Jeffrey left the Illinois basketball team in 2009. He later rejoined the team for a third season, then received a release to transfer to the University of Central Florida, where Marcus was attending. Marcus transferred to Whitney Young High School after his sophomore year and graduated in 2009. He began attending UCF in the fall of 2009.

Media figure and business interests

Jordan is one of the most marketed sports figures in history. He has been a major spokesman for such brands as Nike, Coca-Cola, Chevrolet, Gatorade, McDonald's, Ball Park Franks, Rayovac, Wheaties, Hanes, and MCI. Jordan has had a long relationship with Gatorade, appearing in over 20 commercials for the company since 1991, including the "Like Mike" commercials in which a song was sung by children wishing to be like Jordan.

Nike created a signature shoe for him, called the ''Air Jordan''. One of Jordan's more popular commercials for the shoe involved Spike Lee playing the part of Mars Blackmon. In the commercials Lee, as Blackmon, attempted to find the source of Jordan's abilities and became convinced that "it's gotta be the shoes". The hype and demand for the shoes even brought on a spate of "shoe-jackings" where people were robbed of their sneakers at gunpoint. Subsequently Nike spun off the Jordan line into its own division named the "Jordan Brand". The company features an impressive list of athletes and celebrities as endorsers. The brand has also sponsored college sports programs such as those of North Carolina, Cincinnati, Cal, St. John's, Georgetown, and North Carolina A&T;.

Jordan also has been associated with the Looney Tunes cartoon characters. A Nike commercial shown during the 1993 Super Bowl XXVII featured Jordan and Bugs Bunny playing basketball against a group of Martian characters. The Super Bowl commercial inspired the 1996 live action/animated movie ''Space Jam'', which starred Jordan and Bugs in a fictional story set during his first retirement. They have subsequently appeared together in several commercials for MCI.

Jordan's yearly income from the endorsements is estimated to be over forty million dollars. In addition, when Jordan's power at the ticket gates was at its highest point the Bulls regularly sold out every game they played in, whether home or away. Due to this, Jordan set records in player salary by signing annual contracts worth in excess of $30 million US$ per season. An academic study found that Jordan’s first NBA comeback resulted in an increase in the market capitalization of his client firms of more than $1 billion.

Most of Jordan's endorsement deals, including the first deal with Nike, were engineered by his agent, David Falk. Jordan has said of Falk that "he's the best at what he does", and that "marketing-wise, he's great. He's the one who came up with the concept of 'Air Jordan.'"

In June 2010, Jordan was ranked by Forbes Magazine as the 20th most powerful celebrity in the world with $55 million earned between June 2009 and June 2010. According to the Forbes article, Brand Jordan generates $1 billion in sales for Nike.

Honors and awards

Jordan won numerous awards and set many records during his career. The following are some of his achievements:

Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2009

2 Olympic Gold Medals – 1984, 1992

6-time NBA Champion

6-time NBA Finals MVP

5-time NBA MVP

10 NBA Scoring Titles

3-time steals leader

3-time minutes leader

14 NBA All-Star Selections

3-time NBA All-Star Game MVP

11 All-NBA Selections

9 All-Defensive First Team Selections

2-time NBA Slam Dunk Contest Champion – 1987, 1988

NBA Rookie of the Year – NBA Defensive Player of the Year –

NCAA National Championship – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 1981–82

ACC Freshman of the Year – 1981–82

2-time Consensus NCAA All-American First Team – 1982–83, 1983–84

ACC Men's Basketball Player of the Year – 1983–84

USBWA College Player of the Year – 1983–84

Naismith College Player of the Year – 1983–84

John R. Wooden Award – 1983–84

Adolph Rupp Trophy – 1983–84

''Sports Illustrated'' Sportsman of the Year – 1991

Named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996

Ranked No.1 by SLAM Magazine's Top 50 Players of All-Time

Ranked No.1 by ESPN Sportscentury's Top 100 Athletes of the 20th century

Elected to North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame

See also

Michael Jordan Steakhouse

Michael Jordan's Restaurant

''Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City''

''Michael Jordan in Flight''

''NBA 2K11''

References

Further reading

External links

Michael Jordan biography at NBA Encyclopedia

Michael Jordan player profile at NBA.com

Michael Jordan Motorsports

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name	The Chemical Brothers
landscape	yes
background	group_or_band
alias	The 237 Turbo Nutters, The Dust Brothers, Chemical Ed & Chemical Tom
origin	London, United Kingdom
genre	Big beat, alternative dance, progressive house, breakbeat, trip hop
years active	1991–present
label	Junior Boy's Own, Astralwerks, Freestyle Dust, Virgin Records, Ultra Records
website	TheChemicalBrothers.com
current members	Tom RowlandsEd Simons
past members	}}

The Chemical Brothers are a Grammy award-winning British electronic music duo comprising Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons. Originating in London in 1991, along with The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, The Crystal Method and fellow acts, they were pioneers at bringing the big beat electronic dance genre to the forefront of pop culture.

History

Background (1984–1991)

Ed Simons was born in Herne Hill, South London, England, on 9 June 1970 to a barrister mother and a father who was not around much when Simons was growing up. Simons’ two main interests when he was young were aeroplanes and musicals. Simons attended two South London public schools, Alleyn's School and Dulwich College. During his school years, he developed a fondness for rare groove and Hip hop music, having frequented a club called The Mud Club from the age of 14. By the time he left school, his two main musical interests were two Manchester bands, New Order and The Smiths. After finishing school with 11 O levels and three A-levels, he continued on to study History, especially Late Medieval History, at the University of Manchester.

Tom Rowlands, a childhood classmate of Simons', was born on 11 January 1971 in Kingston upon Thames, London. When Rowlands was very young, his family relocated to Henley-on-Thames. He later attended Reading Blue Coat School in Berkshire, during which time he became obsessed with Scotland, developing a fondness for the bagpipes in particular. In his early teens, his interest in music broadened to other genres. Initially, some of his favourites included the ''Oh What a Lovely War'' soundtrack, ''2-Tone'', the nascent Goth genre (Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim) and the electro sounds of artists such as Kraftwerk, New Order, Cabaret Voltaire and Heaven 17. He described the first Public Enemy album as the record that probably changed his life, and commented that "Miuzi Weighs a Ton" was one of the most amazing tracks he had ever heard. Rowlands also started collecting hip hop records by artists like Eric B and Schoolly D. Rowlands left school with similar accomplishments to Simons', achieving nine O levels and three A levels. For university, he followed Simons to Manchester primarily to immerse himself in its music scene in general and the Haçienda in particular.

Rowlands was also in a band called Ariel prior to meeting up with Simons. Ariel was formed in London by Rowlands and his friends Brendan Melck and Matt Berry. Their first single was "Sea of Beats". This was essentially a white label, before Philip Brown set up Echo Logik Records, their first promo was Bokadilo (ELR1201), Other songs, released on 12" included "Mustn't Grumble" (ELR1203) and their most well-known, "Rollercoaster" (ELR1202). After a year on Echo Logik they signed to the record label deConstruction. They insisted that they get a female singer and they recruited former Xpansions frontwoman Sally Ann Marsh, and after some disappointing songs like "Let It Slide" (Rowlands would later describe it as "a stinker") the band fell apart. One of the last things Ariel did was the song "T Baby" which was remixed by the pair.

Rowlands and Simons then started to DJ at a club called "Naked Under Leather", in the back of a pub, in 1992 under the alias of "The 237 Turbo Nutters" (named after the number of their house on Dickenson Road in Manchester and a reference to their Blackburn raving days). The pair would play hip hop, techno and house.

The Dust Brothers (1992–1994)

Rowlands and Simons called themselves The Dust Brothers, after the US production duo famous for their work with the Beastie Boys. After a while, they began to run out of suitable instrumental hip hop tracks to use, so they started to make their own. Using a Hitachi hi-fi system, a computer, a sampler and a keyboard, they recorded "Song To The Siren", which sampled This Mortal Coil. "Song To The Siren" was released on their own record label, called "Diamond Records" (after Ed's nickname). In October 1992, they pressed 500 white-label copies and took them to various dance record shops around London, but none would play it, saying that it was too slow (The track played at 111 BPM). They sent a copy to London DJ Andrew Weatherall, who made it a permanent fixture in his DJ sets. Weatherall also signed the band to his Junior Boy's Own label. In May 1993, Junior Boy's Own released 'Song To The Siren'.

Around June 1993, the Dust Brothers did their first remixes. The first was "Packet Of Peace" for Justin Robertson's Lionrock outfit, followed by tracks for Leftfield, Republica and The Sandals. Late in 1993, The Dust Brothers completed work on their ''Fourteenth Century Sky'' EP, released in January 1994. It contained the ground-breaking "Chemical Beats", which epitomized the duo's genre-defining big beat sound, later taken up by Fatboy Slim and many more. The EP also contained "One Too Many Mornings", which for the first time showed the less intense, more chilled-out side of The Dust Brothers. Both "One Too Many Mornings" and "Chemical Beats" would later appear on their debut album. ''Fourteenth Century Sky'' was followed later in 1993 by the ''My Mercury Mouth EP''. "Chemical Beats" was also part of the soundtrack for the first edition of the Wipeout games series, having been featured in ''Wipeout'' for the PlayStation in 1995.

In October 1994, The Dust Brothers became resident DJs at the small, but hugely influential Heavenly Sunday Social Club at the Albany pub in London's Great Portland Street. The likes of Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller, James Dean Bradfield and Tim Burgess were regular visitors. The Dust Brothers were subsequently asked to remix tracks by Manic Street Preachers and The Charlatans, plus Primal Scream's "Jailbird" and The Prodigy's "Voodoo People". These two remixes received television exposure, being playlisted by MTV Europe's "The Party Zone" in 1995. Early in 1994, The Dust Brothers were approached in the club one Sunday by Noel Gallagher, from Oasis, who at the time were becoming one of the most prominent guitar bands in Britain. Gallagher told the duo that he had a Balearic inspired track which he had written, which he would like the Dust Brothers to remix. However, over time, Gallagher changed his mind, and in the end the Brothers did not remix it. The track was "Wonderwall".

In March 1995, The Dust Brothers began their first international tour, which included the United States – where they played with Orbital and Underworld – then a series of European festivals. Also around this time, the original Dust Brothers threatened legal action over the use of their name, and so Rowlands and Simons had to decide on a new name quickly. They decided to then call themselves "The Chemical Brothers" after "Chemical Beats" (Simons' grandmother had suggested they call themselves "The Grit Brothers").

In June 1995, they released their fourth single, the first under their new identity. "Leave Home" was released on Junior Boy's Own, as a preview of the imminent debut album and became the band's first chart hit, peaking at No. 17. It stayed at number 17 for 8 weeks, the most weeks a record has stayed at the same place in the charts (apart from Number 1's).

''Exit Planet Dust'' (1995–1996)

In July 1995, The Chemical Brothers released their debut album ''Exit Planet Dust'' (the title inspired by their name change) on Freestyle Dust/Junior Boy's Own. It entered the UK charts at #9 and featured guest vocalist Beth Orton on the song "Alive Alone". It eventually went on to sell over a million copies worldwide, and was used on the soundtrack of the science fiction TV series pilot Virtuality. Shortly after its release, The Chemical Brothers signed to Virgin Records, to which they took their own offshoot label, Freestyle Dust. For their next single, in September 1995, they again used a guest vocalist, for the release of "Life Is Sweet", featuring their friend Tim Burgess, singer with The Charlatans. It reached #25 in the singles charts. The single was also ''Select'' Magazine's Single Of The Month for October. The release included a Daft Punk remix of "Life Is Sweet".

In August 1995, the Chemical Brothers DJ'ed for Oasis at a Sheffield gig. The gig began to backfire when it became apparent that Liam Gallagher didn't seem to like any of the tracks they were spinning. The closest that they could come to pleasing him was the Happy Mondays' "Wrote For Luck". Gallagher proceeded to kick the Chemical Brothers off the turntables and procured a friend from The Verve to continue to DJ. He subsequently favoured psychedelic material to the displeasure of the crowd.

Around this period, The Stone Roses asked the Chemical Brothers to remix "Begging You", from their ''Second Coming'' album. After beginning work on a remix which they viewed as having potential, the Stone Roses changed their minds and the project was cancelled.

In October 1995, the duo returned to the Heavenly Sunday Social for a second and final run of DJ dates. They then became residents at the Heavenly Social on Saturdays at Turnmills. In November, The Chemical Brothers played the Astoria Theatre in London. At this time the Chems usually used a fusion of "Chemical Beats" and The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" as their encore. During the encore, however, Keith Flint from The Prodigy jumped up on stage to dance, wearing a t-shirt sporting the slogan "Occupation: mad bastard". A few from the crowd subsequently joined in. This resulted in a power cable being kicked loose, bringing the show to a temporary close. The Chemical Brothers confessed to not being too bothered; "because he's Keith from the Prodigy, and he can do whatever the fucking hell he likes" Rowlands said later. Just before Christmas, 1995, they played their biggest gig to date, with The Prodigy, at the Brixton Academy.

In January 1996, ''Exit Planet Dust'' went gold. The Chemical Brothers released their first new material in six months on Virgin, the "Loops Of Fury" EP. The four-track release was limited to 20,000 copies, but is now available for digital download. It entered the UK charts at #13. NME described the lead track as "splashing waves of synths across hard-hitting beats". The EP also contained a Dave Clarke remix of "Chemical Beats", and two other new tracks "Get Up On It Like This" and "(The Best Part Of) Breaking Up".

In February 1996, Select Magazine published a list of the 100 best albums of the 1990s thus far. ''Exit Planet Dust'' was listed at Number 39. In August 1996, The Chemical Brothers supported Oasis at Knebworth, where 125,000 people attended each of the two shows.

During the 1995 Glastonbury Festival, Rowlands and Simons had another conversation with Noel Gallagher. Gallagher told them how much he liked ''Exit Planet Dust'', and asked if he could sing on a future track, similar to the way Tim Burgess had worked on "Life Is Sweet". They didn't think much of the offer at the time, given how busy Gallagher would be with the release of Oasis' ''(What's the Story) Morning Glory?'', plus the complexities of dealing with each others' record companies. However, the duo later worked on a track which they thought would benefit from having a vocal on it. They sent Gallagher a tape of what they had done so far. He worked on it overnight, and left a message with them early the next morning that he was ready to record it. The track was called "Setting Sun" and was finally released in October 1996. It entered the UK charts at the top, giving the duo their first ever Number One single. "Setting Sun" was backed by a longer instrumental version, and also a new track "Buzz Tracks", which was not much more than a DJ tool. The three remaining Beatles' lawyers later wrote to the Chemical Brothers, mistakenly claiming that they had sampled "Tomorrow Never Knows". Virgin Records hired a musicologist to prove that they did not sample the classic 1960s psychedelic song.

Meanwhile, in 1996, ''Live at the Social Volume 1'' was released by Heavenly Records, which became The Chemical Brothers' first mix CD (excluding ''Xmas Dust Up'', a free album that came in a 1994 issue of NME). It was also the duo's first live album, and their only live album (excluding the EP ''Live 05'').

''Dig Your Own Hole'' (1997–1998)

In March 1997, the Brothers released the second track from their forthcoming album, to give the world a further taste of what to expect. "Block Rockin' Beats" went straight to #1 in the UK, possibly thanks, this time, to its Schoolly D vocal sample and re-working of the bassline from 23 Skidoo's single "Coup". The NME named it Single Of The Week and said "It throbs like your head might if you had just done a length underwater in a swimming pool full of amyl." It later won them a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

In the US at this time, "Setting Sun" was sitting at Number 80 in the Billboard Top 100, after selling around 80,000 copies, an uncommon achievement for a European "dance" act. Sales from ''Exit Planet Dust'' were also around 150,000.

On 7 April 1997 the Chemical Brothers released their second album, ''Dig Your Own Hole''. It was recorded at the band's own south London studio, with the title taken from graffiti on the wall outside. The album was well received, ''Mixmag'' rating it 10/10 and calling it "mad enough to be thrilling, slick enough for not even remotely trendy coffee tables".

During the summer of 1997, the Brothers toured extensively, particularly in the States. They also became residents at Tokyo's Liquid Rooms. In August, the Chemical Brothers achieved rapprochement with the US Dust Brothers, and asked them to remix the forthcoming single "Elektrobank". They themselves also became highly sought-after for remixes for other artists. Metallica asked the Brothers several times to remix "Enter Sandman", but were repeatedly turned down. In September, the next single from ''Dig Your Own Hole'', "Elektrobank" was released. In November, the pair played at Dublin's Point Theatre, with support from Carl Cox. They also began a US tour in Detroit.

At the end of the year, ''Dig Your Own Hole'''s final track, the nine minute-long "The Private Psychedelic Reel" gave rise to a limited-edition mini-EP of the same name. The b-side consisted of a live version of "Setting Sun", recorded at the Lowlands Festival, Netherlands on 24 August 1997. Also in December, following four sold-out US shows, The Chemical Brothers toured the UK, finishing with a sold-out gig at London's Brixton Academy.

In 1998, they concentrated more on DJ'ing, although some remixes did see the light of day, including "I Think I'm In Love" from Spiritualized. Both a vocal remix and an instrumental remix were included in the single release. Each came in at over seven-and-a-half minutes. Another remix completed by the Brothers was "Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp", from Mercury Rev. This was another extension in the association between the two bands, since Mercury Rev's Jonathon Donahue contributed to "The Private Psychedelic Reel" on ''Dig Your Own Hole''.

In September 1998, a second mix album, ''Brothers Gonna Work It Out'', was released. It contains some of their own tracks and remixes, as well as songs from artists who have influenced their sound, such as Renegade Soundwave, Meat Beat Manifesto, Carlos "After Dark" Berrios, and Kenny 'Dope' Gonzales.

In May 1999, The Chemical Brothers played three UK dates in Manchester, Sheffield and Brighton, their first since December 1997. Also that month, they released their first new original material in two years, a track called "Hey Boy, Hey Girl". This was more house influenced than hip-hop. In interviews at the time, Rowlands and Simons indicated that the track was inspired by nights out at Sheffield club "Gatecrasher". The track was also one of their more commercially accessible tracks and went to number 3 in the UK charts.

''Surrender'' (1999)

The third album ''Surrender'' was released in June 1999. It featured vocals from Noel Gallagher, Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donahue and Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval. As "Hey Boy, Hey Girl" had suggested, the album was more house-oriented than the previous two. On one of the album's stand out tracks, "Out Of Control", New Order's Bernard Sumner supported by Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie provided vocals. It reached Number 1 in the UK album charts, and was widely praised in the print media. The Michel Gondry-directed music video for "Let Forever Be", which utilized ground-breaking video and film effects in its depiction of a young woman's nightmares, also received a lot of attention.

Later that summer, The Brothers headlined the Glastonbury dance tent on the Friday night, followed by a UK tour which ended in December and included Homelands Scotland on 4 September. In November, "Out Of Control", featuring Sumner and Gillespie on vocals, was released as a single. The release also contained the Sasha remix. The final single from ''Surrender'', in February 2000, was the five track "Music: Response" EP, containing the title track and two remixes, plus Electronic Battle Weapon 4 named "Freak of the Week", and a track called "Enjoyed", which was essentially a remix of "Out Of Control" by the Brothers themselves.

A CD copy of ''Surrender'' was placed in the third ''Blue Peter'' time capsule, buried in January 2000. That same month, they appeared on Primal Scream's album ''Xtrmntr'' at track 11 with a remix.

''Come with Us'' (2000–2003)

In June 2000, Tom and Ed played the Pyramid stage at the Glastonbury Festival pulling in the largest audience ever seen in the Festival's history. In August 2000 they played to a large crowd at the main stage at Creamfields festival, Ireland. In December 2000, The Chemical Brothers aired one of their new tracks, "It Began in Afrika" at their New York DJ gigs, supporting U2.

In 2001, they were quite active with releases and live performances. Early in the year, they began working on a fourth album, provisionally titled "Chemical Four". The first track which fans got a taste of was "It Began In Afrika", as previously played in their DJ set in New York. The track would make its live debut in California in April 2001, at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Another new track also got its public debut at Coachella, "Galaxy Bounce". As had become customary for their releases and experiments, "It Began In Afrika" was first pressed as a promo, as part of the "Electronic Battle Weapon" series. It received much airplay on dance music radio shows in the UK, and became more and more popular in clubs over the course of the summer. It also became one of the "anthems" in Ibiza as the summer progressed. It was given a full commercial single release in September, reaching #8 in the UK singles chart, even though no promotional video was made for the track.

Rowlands and Simons also remixed a track from Fatboy Slim's ''Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars'', entitled "Song For Shelter." This remix was released as a single on 3 September 2001 (one week before "It Began in Afrika") as the CD2 single for "Song for Shelter / Ya Mama". It reached #30 in the UK Singles Charts (sales were combined with the CD1 single).

The Chemical Brothers finished work on another album, ''Come with Us'', in October 2001. It featured collaborations with Richard Ashcroft ("The Test"), of The Verve, and long-time collaborator Beth Orton ("The State We're In"). The album was released in January 2002, preceded by a single, "Star Guitar", a melodic, Balearic Beat number, with a promotional video by Michel Gondry that featured passing scenery synchronized to the beat viewed through a train window. What would be the second track on the album, "It Began in Afrika", was released 10 September 2001 to be circulated around the clubbing scene where it was a popular hit. "Star Guitar" was also released as a DVD single, the pair's first.

The album, ''Come with Us'', was less well received than their previous albums, but nonetheless went straight in at #1 in the UK album charts in the first week of its release, selling 100,000 copies. In April, the title track from the album was released as a single with remixes by Fatboy Slim as part of a double-A sided release with "The Test".

During the summer of 2002, The Chemical Brothers traveled the festival circuit to promote the album. Later in 2002, they released two EPs, one specifically aimed at Japan and the other the US (entitled ''AmericanEP''). Both contained remixes, live versions and B-sides. Additionally, the band produced New Order's final non-album single "Here to Stay" and remixed the song as well.

One of their other major songs from this album was "Galaxy Bounce", which was popular and featured as the main title music for the Xbox game ''Project Gotham Racing'', it was also included on the soundtrack for the movie adaptation of Tomb Raider. "Star Guitar" was featured as a song on the PSP's Lumines II.

Two other songs, "Come with Us (Introduction)" and "Star Guitar (Title Screen)", were featured on a ''PS2'' racing game title ''WRC II: Extreme''. Both songs are instrumental.

The Song ''My Elastic Eye'' from the "Come With Us" album was played in the 2004 movie The Butterfly Effect'''' starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart.

Late 2002 and early 2003, saw Rowlands and Simons back in the studio, working on new material, including "The Golden Path", a collaboration with Wayne Coyne, the lead singer of The Flaming Lips. This was released in September 2003, at the same time as a "best of" album, entitled ''Singles 93-03'' marking ten years of The Chemical Brothers' releases. ''Singles 93-03'' included most, but not all, of their singles. A second new track, in addition to "The Golden Path", was included on the album, called "Get Yourself High". ''Singles 93-03'' was also released on DVD, whose extra features included selected live performances and interviews with Rowlands, Simons and many of their collaborators from throughout the period. "Get Yourself High", which featured Canadian rapper k-os on vocals, was released as a single in November 2003.

In late 2003 and 2004, The Chemical Brothers continued to work in the studio, on new material and a remix of "Slow" by Kylie Minogue. After being released on rare white label vinyl, it was subsequently given a commercial release in March on CD (on her next single "Red Blooded Woman") and on exclusive 12" vinyl picture disc (containing two other Kylie remixes). In Summer 2004 they returned to the festival circuit, including appearances at the Glastonbury Festival, Tokyo, Scotland and Ireland. They also visited South America for the second time (being the first time in 1999), arriving at Chile, Argentina and Brazil. It was during these sets that they played new material, including "Acid Children", which proved to be one of the most popular new tracks.

In September 2004 The Chemical Brothers released the "seventh Electronic Battle Weapon". "Electronic Battle Weapon 7" was being released as a one-sided promo-only 12", containing "Acid Children". A marked departure from the Chemical Brothers' previous musical endeavours, it featured a screeching 303 bassline and a distinctive vocal sample; a pitch-altered vocal sample proclaiming "You Are All My Children Now!", which is lifted from an old horror film, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge. It was coupled with the projection of a sinister clown mouthing these same words at their live gigs.

The Electronic Battle Weapon series of promo releases have typically been newly recorded Chemical Brothers tracks, released on promo to allow DJs to test them in a club environment, and to gauge their popularity.

''Push the Button'' (2004–2006)

In 2004, The Chemical Brothers began work on ''Push the Button'', their fifth studio album, which features collaborations with Tim Burgess, Kele Okereke and Anwar Superstar, amongst others. The album was released on 24 January 2005.

"Galvanize", which features Q-Tip on vocals, was the first single to be taken from ''Push the Button'', and premiered exclusively on iTunes. The single was released on 17 January 2005, and entered the UK chart at #3. The second single "Believe" (featuring Kele Okereke from Bloc Party) failed to crack top 10, but still made it into the top 20, peaking at #18. "The Boxer", featuring Tim Burgess, became the duo's first single to fail to crack the top 40.

The album and single "Galvanize" won a Grammy in the Grammy Awards of 2006. One of the songs in this album, "The Big Jump" appears in the video game ''Burnout Revenge'', as well as ''Project Gotham Racing 3''. The track "Surface To Air" features a pulsing chord progression and bassline reminiscent of the intro to The Strokes song "The Modern Age".

An unofficial, remixed version of the album entitled "Flip the Switch" was released as a free download, along with the "Believe EP", six further remixes of "Believe".

In September 2006, the Chemical Brothers were revealed as the first musicians to be involved in Tate Tracks. Tate Modern invited various groups and songwriters to choose a work that inspired them from the gallery's collection of modern art and then write a track about it. The Chemical Brothers' submission, ''Rock Drill'', was inspired by the Jacob Epstein sculpture ''Torso in Metal from The Rock Drill'', and can be heard on headphones in front of the work in the gallery. From October 2006, it also became available to hear online at the Tate Tracks website.

''We Are the Night'' (2007–2009)

The Chemicals welcomed June 2006 with an announcement on their official forum stating that the duo had been working on fresh material, specifically an album, codenamed 'Chemical 6'. Simons also told everyone that the band would be playing select venues in the Summer 2007 season, specifying Rome, and also fabric in London. Simons is also quoted as saying that the duo are 'hoping to put a battle weapon out for the summer,', retrieved possibly referring to the 'Electronic Battle Weapon' series, which are somewhat experimental tracks the band occasionally release on white label.

Electronic Battle Weapon 8 & 9 were debuted on Pete Tong's BBC Radio 1 show on 8 December 2006. The double sided vinyl was finally released just before The Chemical Brother's much anticipated New Year's Eve gig at the famous Turnmills in London. The vinyl had a limited edition release worldwide and has been received well by fans, DJs and critics alike. Electronic Battle Weapon 8 at about six and a half minutes is very distinct from the 'big acid' style that the earlier battle weapons adhered to. It is characterised by 'thundering dirty drums' with a rising synth line, and to many it is perceived as being one of the most euphoric tracks that the Chemicals have released. A version of this track features on the ''We Are The Night'' album and is entitled 'Saturate'. Electronic Battle Weapon 9 is typical Chemicals dancefloor track with their trademark vocoder vocals coupled with sirens and a basic 'tribal' melody.

At the same Turnmills gig, the Brothers also played a previously unreleased song at midnight to welcome 2007 which went down well with the crowd. This track eventually emerged as Burst Generator, found on the album ''We Are The Night''. Many are left wondering if the latest in the Electronic Battle Weapon series were simply one off genius pieces or signal a new direction they could take with the new album, perhaps swaying from their genre defining 'big beat' psychedelic albums of the past. The song was also the band's 100th released song.

On 21 March 2007, The Chemical Brothers officially announced their forthcoming album on MySpace. The new album entitled ''We Are the Night'', was released on 2 July 2007 in the United Kingdom and 17 July 2007 in the United States. The Chemicals cited a delay in the production of artwork for this delay. EMI subsequently released an online 'old-skool' The Chemical Brothers computer game as an apology. The track listing was released to the fans on the official mailing list on 10 April. The new album is heavily collaborated with the likes of Klaxons (on "All Rights Reversed"), Midlake (on "The Pills Won't Help You Now"), Ali Love (on "Do It Again") and Willy Mason (on "Battle Scars").

On 12 April 2007, Pete Tong again had the privilege of giving the world the very first preview of a Chemicals track. This time it was the first single "Do It Again" off their new album, aired on his BBC Radio 1 "In New Music We Trust" show. . The track is widely regarded as dance floor friendly, dominated by pop vocals and a minimalistic production approach. The track is regarded as a 'grower' after gaining mixed reviews after the first listen on Pete Tong's show, with its simplistic catchy vocals and electro beat. The official release of the single was 4 June (digital download) and 14 June (12", 7" and CD). The album went on general release in the UK on 2 July.

In September 2007, The Chemical Brothers played a free live gig in Trafalgar Square as part of the Becks Fusions event. All who attended were provided with 3D glasses to view the on-screen visual effects.

In 2008, The Chemical Brothers' music will also be featured in a movie adaption of Irvine Welsh's best-selling novel Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance.

The Chemical Brothers supplied a new track for the Heroes Soundtrack titled "Keep My Composure".

''Further'' and motion picture soundtracks (2010–present)

On 30 March 2010, the band announced on their website that their seventh studio album will be titled ''Further'' and will be released 22 June, adding that it will be "the band's first to be released with corresponding films made specifically to match each of the 8 audio tracks." The films have been made with long-time visuals collaborators Adam Smith and Marcus Lyall. The album has been described as their most "psychedelic and melodic to date". Before the release of the album, the band played four shows in May at the London Roundhouse where they played the album and its accompanying films in its entirety. The films will feature on a special edition DVD and on the iTunes LP edition.

Most reviews have been positive with BBC Music declaring that '...Synths are brutally manhandled and pushed to their limits across the eight tracks' with Ian Wade summarising that 'It’s better to continuously explode than fade away, or something. Really rather wonderful indeed...' The Irish Times also reported that 'This is a very impressive collection that is carried along with a stirring sense of velocity and momentum'. However, praise hasn't been unanimous for the LP, with the American rock magazine Spin giving it a rating of three out of five stars.

At the New York Comic Con, on 10 October 2010, English film director Joe Wright announced that the Chemical Brothers would be scoring the soundtrack to his upcoming film, ''Hanna''. Joe Wright, who had worked with the Chemical Brothers in the past as a member of the visual company Vegetable Vision, expressed his feelings on the score, stating that he was "very excited to finally... work with a more modern beat. There's a lot of bass, it's very loud." The soundtrack was released exclusively on iTunes on 15 March 2011. It will be released on CD on 4 July 2011.

Two weeks after the announcement regarding ''Hanna'', rumors began circulating that the Chemical Brothers had recorded part of the score for the movie ''Black Swan'', after a post in Ed Simon's twitter account. A second post on the Chemical Brothers own twitter account seemed to confirm this. On 22 November 2010, a ''Black Swan'' music video was released along with the movie trailer. This music video featured a different version of the track "Don't Think" and announced that the movie would feature new music from the Chemical Brothers, along with a handful of other artists. The next day, the names of the eight tracks not composed by Clint Mansell – ''Black Swan'''s main composer – were released, listing the Chemical Brothers as contributing three new songs for the movie. On 29 November, an exclusive video was posted on rollingstone.com, containing more footage of the alternate version of "Don't Think". Mansell's work was released the next day. No announcement has been made yet on whether the original tracks not by Mansell would be given a release or not.

Live

The Chemical Brothers are credited as being one of the few truly arena-sized electronic acts. Their live acts comprise large screens displaying psychedelic images, strobe lights and lasers that project over the crowd. There has been speculation over how much of their live gigs are pre-recorded, although they insist (on their official website FAQ) that they have a mere outline of track order and the rest is mixed live. This would seem to be confirmed by concertgoers who have seen gigs on consecutive nights and have posted notable differences between the sets played.

The Brothers have also played at many major festivals, from Glastonbury to the Reading, the HFStival, and Leeds festival. They currently hold the record for most gigs performed in a year at the Brixton Academy. The brothers have infamously, despite their high status in the mainstream, never appeared on Top of the Pops, with the use of music videos to replace the performance, sometimes accompanied by a video apologising for their absence. In 1999, a live US tour video of "Hey Boy, Hey Girl" was shown, even though the song was not in the top 40 at the time, and also released other singles before then at the time.

In addition to performing their own music they also hold regular DJ nights where they mix other artist's tracks (in the style of ''Brothers Gonna Work It Out'').

As with their recorded albums, the Chemical Brothers are well known for their incorporation of guest vocalists into their live performances. Notable appearances in recent gigs have included Bernard Sumner of New Order, who sang on the original "Out of Control", Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, and Tim Burgess.

The duo also played at the launch event for the Wii video game console.

On the night of 1 September 2007, the Chemical Brothers played at the main stage of the Electric Picnic to a crowd of around 20,000. The Chemical Brothers appeared in Los Angeles on 29 September 2007, headlining the 13th Annual Nocturnal Wonderland Festival.

The duo was one of the head-liners for Roskilde Festival 2008 in Denmark. The festival is held from the 3rd-6 July and is the biggest festival in Northern Europe.

The Chemical Brothers played at London's Olympia Grand Hall on 30 August 2008. This was the first time any major band has played at Olympia's Grand Hall in over 10 years.

On 18 April 2009, the Chemical Brothers performed a DJ Set at the Coachella Festival, at which they premiered two previously unnamed new tracks. The tracks were the bonus track "Don't Think", and "Escape Velocity", both of which were later included on the album ''Further''.

On 8 February 2010, they confirmed their presence at Sónar Festival in Barcelona in June 2010. They also announced they would be performing another two nights at the London Roundhouse in Camden, on 20 and 21 May. Due to phenomenal demand, as tickets sold out within two minutes, they added a further two nights; 22 and 23 May.

On 3 September 2010, they performed at North Coast Music Festival in Chicago. The following day they performed at Electric Zoo festival in New York City.

4–14 March 2011, they headlined the Future Music Festival in 5 cities across Australia.

On 27 March 2011, they headlined Ultra Music Festival in Miami, FL and closed out the Main Stage for the weekend. They also were the closing performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival Friday 15 April 2011. The Chemical Brothers will headline the UK dance festival Creamfields in Cheshire on 27 August 2011.

The band also played at the 'Other Stage' at Glastonbury Festival 2011 as that stage's lead headliners.

Logo

The typeface used to write the typical "The Chemical Brothers" logo is derived from Sho, designed by Karlgeorg Hoefer in 1992. The Chemical Brothers' original logo differs only in a few details from orthodox Sho, e.g. in the letters a and b. Mergenthaler Linotype Company holds the licence for this typeface.

Discography

Studio albums

''Exit Planet Dust'' (1995)

''Dig Your Own Hole'' (1997)

''Surrender'' (1999)

''Come with Us'' (2002)

''Push the Button'' (2005)

''We Are the Night'' (2007)

''Further'' (2010)

Soundtrack albums

''Hanna'' (2011)

Main compilation albums

''Brothers Gonna Work It Out'' (1998)

''Singles 93-03'' (2003)

''Brotherhood'' (2008)

See also

Daft Punk

Fatboy Slim

Orbital

The Prodigy

References

External links

YouTube Remix Channel (Taiwan)

Category:British electronic music groups Category:British techno music groups Category:English dance music groups Category:English house music groups Category:Musical groups established in 1991 Category:1991 establishments in England Category:Club DJs Category:Remixers Category:Virgin Records artists Category:Astralwerks artists Category:Musical groups from Manchester Category:Celebrity duos Category:Breakbeat musicians Category:Electronic music duos Category:BRIT Award winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:People educated at Alleyn's School

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