John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, better known as John Peel, was an English radio presenter and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original disc jockeys on BBC Radio 1, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004.
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as the greatest and one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music."
Britpop was a mid-1990s British-based music culture movement that emphasised Britishness. It produced brighter, catchier alternative rock, partly in reaction to the popularity of the darker lyrical themes and soundscapes of the US-led grunge music and to the UK's own shoegaze music scene. The movement brought British alternative rock into the mainstream and formed the backbone of a larger British popular cultural movement, Cool Britannia, which evoked the Swinging Sixties and the British guitar pop of that decade.
Richard St John Francis Harris was an Irish actor and singer. Having studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, he rose to prominence as an icon of the British New Wave. He received numerous accolades including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, and a Grammy Award. In 2020, he was listed at number 3 on The Irish Times's list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Electric Ladyland is the third and final studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released in October 1968. A double album, it was the only record from the Experience with production solely credited to Hendrix. The band's most commercially successful release and its only number one album, it was released by Reprise Records in the United States on October 16, 1968, and by Track Records in the UK nine days later. By mid-November, it had reached number 1 on the Billboard Top LPs chart, spending two weeks there. In the UK it peaked at number 6, where it spent 12 weeks on the British charts.
Bernard John Taupin is an English-American lyricist and visual artist. He is most well known for his songwriting partnership with Elton John, recognised as one of the most successful partnerships of its kind in history. Taupin is behind the majority of John's songs, dating back to the 1960s.
Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold was an English composer. His works feature music in many genres, including a cycle of nine symphonies, numerous concertos, concert works, chamber music, choral music and music for brass band and wind band. His style is tonal and rejoices in lively rhythms, brilliant orchestration, and an unabashed tunefulness. He wrote extensively for the theatre, with five ballets specially commissioned by the Royal Ballet, as well as two operas and a musical. He also produced scores for more than a hundred films, among these The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won an Oscar.
"Gentle on My Mind" is a song that was written and originally recorded by John Hartford, and released on his second studio album, Earthwords & Music (1967). Hartford composed the song after watching Doctor Zhivago in 1966, as he was inspired by the film and his own personal experiences. The lyrics describe the reminiscences of lost love of a man as he travels through the country. An obituary for Hartford provided more specifics, indicating that the lyrics are "about a hobo reminiscing about a lost love". The following year, Hartford released the song as a single on RCA Records.
"Kevin Carter" is a song by Manic Street Preachers, released as the third single from their album Everything Must Go in 1996. The song peaked at number nine on the UK Singles Chart.
Paul Robert Morley is a British music journalist. He wrote for the New Musical Express from 1977 to 1983, and has since written for a wide range of publications and written his own books. He was a co-founder of the record label ZTT Records and was a member of the synthpop group Art of Noise. He has also been a band manager, promoter, and television presenter.
Terence "Jet" Harris was an English rock and roll musician. He was an original member of Cliff Richard's backing band the Shadows, serving as the bass guitarist from the group's inception until April 1962, after which he had success as a soloist and as a duo with that band's drummer Tony Meehan.
The Notorious Byrd Brothers is the fifth album by the American rock band the Byrds, and was released in January 1968, on Columbia Records. The album represents the pinnacle of the Byrds' late-‘60s musical experimentation, with the band blending together elements of psychedelia, folk rock, country, electronic music, baroque pop, and jazz. With producer Gary Usher, they made extensive use of a number of studio effects and production techniques, including phasing, flanging, and spatial panning. The Byrds also introduced the sound of the pedal steel guitar and the Moog modular synthesizer into their music, making it one of the first LP releases on which the Moog appears.
"In My Life" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, released on their 1965 studio album, Rubber Soul. Credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership, the song is one of only a few in which there is dispute over the primary author; John Lennon wrote the lyrics, but he and Paul McCartney later disagreed over who wrote the melody. George Martin contributed the piano solo bridge.
"Motown Junk" is the second single by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers. It was released on 21 January 1991.
Michael Azerrad is an American author, music journalist, editor, and musician. A graduate of Columbia University, he has written for publications such as Spin, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. Azerrad's 1993 biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana was named by Q as one of the 50 greatest rock books ever written. His 2001 book Our Band Could Be Your Life, a collection of profiles on prominent indie rock bands, received similar critical acclaim.
Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now is a 1997 biography of Paul McCartney by Barry Miles. It is the "official" biography of McCartney and was written "based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews undertaken over a period of five years", according to the back cover of the 1998 paperback edition. The title is a phrase from McCartney's song "When I'm Sixty-Four", from the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The book was first published in the United Kingdom in October 1997 by Secker & Warburg.
John David Robb is an English musician and journalist best known as the bassist and singer for the mid-1980s post-punk band the Membranes.
Robert Patrick Weston was an English songwriter. He was responsible for many successful songs and comic monologues between the 1900s and 1930s, mostly written in collaboration with other writers, notably Fred J. Barnes and Bert Lee, and performed successfully by Harry Champion, Stanley Holloway, and Gracie Fields, among others.
A Spaniard in the Works is a nonsense book by English musician John Lennon, first published on 24 June 1965. The book consists of nonsensical stories and drawings similar to the style of his previous book, 1964's In His Own Write. The name is a pun on the expression "a spanner in the works".
Sylvie Simmons is a London-born, California-based music journalist, named as a "principal player" in Paul Gorman's book on the history of the rock music press In Their Own Write. A widely regarded writer and rock historian since the late 1970s, she is one of the few women to be included among the predominantly male rock elite. Simmons is the author of a number of books, including biography and cult fiction. Simmons is also a singer-songwriter, ukulele player and recording artist.
