William Haislip "Billy" Squier (born May 12, 1950) is an American rock musician. Squier had a string of arena rock hits in the 1980s. He is best known for the song "The Stroke" on his 1981 album release Don't Say No. Other hits include "In the Dark", "Rock Me Tonite", "Lonely Is the Night", "My Kinda Lover", "Everybody Wants You", "All Night Long" and "Emotions in Motion".

Squier was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He is a 1968 graduate of Wellesley High School. While growing up, he began playing piano and guitar, but did not become serious with music until discovering Eric Clapton. When Squier was nine, his grandfather taught him how to play the piano. He took lessons from his grandfather for two years. After he stopped taking piano lessons, he became interested in guitar and bought one from a neighbor for $95. Squier took guitar lessons for a couple of months until he decided to teach himself.^{[citation needed]} He later attended Berklee College of Music.

Billy Squier's first public performance was at a Boston nightclub in Kenmore Square called the Psychedelic Supermarket in 1968 which is where he saw Eric Clapton and the band Cream perform. Squier originally performed with the band Magic Terry & The Universe, which also included Klaus Flouride, who went on to play with the Dead Kennedys. In the early 1970s, he joined The Sidewinders, and played with members including Mike Reed, Alex Phillips, Henry Stern, and Bryan Chase. Squier left the group to form the band Piper, which released two albums in the mid '70s, Piper and Can't Wait, but left soon after. Bruce Kulick of KISS fame played with him during this period also. Upon reviewing the debut Piper, Circus Magazine touted it as the greatest debut album ever produced by an American rock band. Piper was managed by the same management company as KISS, and opened for KISS during their 1977 tour, including the second and third nights of a three-night, sold-out run at New York's Madison Square Garden.

Richard Starkey, MBE (born 7 July 1940), better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for the Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He joined the Beatles in August 1962, taking the place of Pete Best. In addition to his drumming, Starr is featured on lead vocals on a number of successful Beatles songs (in particular, "With a Little Help from My Friends", "Yellow Submarine", and the Beatles version of "Act Naturally"). He is credited as a co-writer of the songs "What Goes On" and "Flying", and as the writer of "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden".

As drummer for the Beatles, Starr was musically creative, and his contribution to the band's music has received high praise from notable drummers in more recent times. Starr described himself as "your basic offbeat drummer with funny fills". Drummer Steve Smith said that Starr's popularity "brought forth a new paradigm" where "we started to see the drummer as an equal participant in the compositional aspect" and that Starr "composed unique, stylistic drum parts for The Beatles songs". In 2011, Starr was picked as the fifth-best drummer of all-time by Rolling Stone readers.

The Greek is a fictional character on the HBO drama The Wire, played by actor Bill Raymond. The Greek is the head of an international criminal organization involved in narcotics and human trafficking. The Greek is a mysterious figure involved in numerous criminal activities. His given name is never mentioned on the show, and though he is known only as "The Greek", he has stated (in the episode Port in a Storm) that he is not actually Greek. A quiet and unassuming man, the Greek prefers to keep a low profile, operating all of his business through his lieutenant Spiros "Vondas" Vondopoulos. His smuggling organization operated from a small diner in Baltimore for years, and while Vondas would conduct business the Greek would listen in quietly at the counter. Nick Sobotka, upon seeing the Greek identify himself, was amazed that the shadowy figure had been in plain sight the entire time.

Despite his calm appearance, the Greek is cunning and ruthless, and only interested in facts that make him more money. Series creator David Simon has said that The Greek is an embodiment of raw unencumbered capitalism. Anyone interfering in this process is eliminated immediately, and he prefers to leave victims headless and handless to hinder identification.