Geoffrey Giuliano | |
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Born | Rochester, New York, U.S. | September 11, 1953
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Website | www |
Geoffrey Giuliano (born September 11, 1953) [1] is an American author, radio personality, and film actor, best known for his biographies of rock musicians.
Giuliano was born in Rochester, New York [1] and raised in the villages of Albion and Olcott Beach, New York. He was the youngest of five children. His father, Joseph Robert Juliana, was a heating contractor. He and his mother, Myrna Oneita Juliana, moved to Tampa, Florida when he was 12. There, he first became interested in acting, Vedic philosophy and fine art seriography.
He was born "Jeffrey Joseph Juliana", but later adopted "Geoffrey Giuliano" as a pen name. In 1997, he changed his legal name to "Jagannatha Dasa". [2] For a brief period, the honorific title of "Puripada" was awarded him by several Indian yoga students, but Giuliano ultimately rejected the title as inappropriate. [3]
Giuliano attended Madison Junior High School, H.B. Plant High School and Hillsborough Community College (all in Tampa).[ citation needed ] In the mid-1970s, he graduated from the State University of New York at Brockport and began working as an actor. [3]
Giuliano has written extensively on popular music, particularly the Beatles. By 1999, he had authored 20 books, including Dark Horse: The Private Life of George Harrison (1990) and Blackbird: The Life and Times of Paul McCartney (1991). Rolling Stone magazine described Dark Horse as "evenhanded and soundly researched", [3] while Barry Miller of Library Journal said it was "a revelatory biography of the elusive Harrison and his constellation of secular and spiritual interests, passions, pursuits, friends, and loves ... Harrison's own autobiographical I, Me, Mine is unsurpassed for the song-by-song explication, but Dark Horse should be its on-shelf companion." [4]
In an interview for The Guardian in September 1992, Giuliano offended George Harrison's wife Olivia by referring to the Beatles as "real shits in real life" and dismissing Paul McCartney as "just shallow and vacuous". [5] On October 5 that year, The Guardian published a letter from Olivia Harrison in which she wrote that "like a starving dog he [Giuliano] scavenges his heroes, picking up bits of gristle and sinew along the way." [6] [7] She also complained about Giuliano's use of a quote by Harrison on the cover of Dark Horse, saying: "My husband once made the remark: 'That guy knows more about my life than I do.' Giuliano missed the joke and used it to endorse his book." [7] When interviewed in Los Angeles on December 14, 1992, Harrison said of Giuliano: "Yeah, I met him briefly. I have no way of recalling what year it was. I met him at the home of "Legs" Larry Smith for possibly thirty minutes." [8]
Giuliano's Pete Townshend biography, Behind Blue Eyes, was published in 1996 by Dutton Books. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly said that Giuliano "peels away the layers of Townshend's public persona to find a complex, passionate man who is full of contradictions" and described the book as a "penetrating look" at the musician's life. [9] Booklist commented that Behind Blue Eyes covered the subject's rock-star excesses, his spiritual preoccupations, and "lots of overintellectualizing about rock", adding: "In other words, this is the perfect Pete Townshend bio." [10]
Giuliano's biography of John Lennon, Lennon in America: 1971–1980 (Cooper Square Press, 2000), was controversial. Giuliano said the book was based in part on transcripts of Lennon's diaries given to him by the late American singer Harry Nilsson and on audio tapes recorded by Lennon. Several people close to Nilsson said they did not believe that he ever had the transcripts in his possession; others familiar with the journal and the tapes disputed the accuracy of Giuliano's interpretation. [2] Writing in The Washington Post , David Segal described Giuliano's text as "a highly critical, luridly detailed account"; he quoted Giuliano's response when he was asked to corroborate his claim that Nilsson gave him the diaries: "It's obvious that I'm going to do things in an ethical manner." Steven Gutstein, a former New York assistant district attorney who read the diaries during an early 1980s larceny lawsuit, recalled that they contained "a lot of philosophical musings combined with mundane details of everyday life". [11] Colin Carlson of Library Journal said of Lennon in America, "Non-fans will be put off by this image of Lennon as cad, drug addict, and paranoiac; this often sensationalized account is for voyeurs and fans with deconstructive tendencies and is one of the best, most detailed books available on this subject." [12] Less impressed, a Publishers Weekly reviewer commented, "If Giuliano's own double-talk isn't enough to diminish this work's credibility, his endless, voyeuristic descriptions of Lennon's sexual encounters are." [13]
In April 2009, The Daily Telegraph in London reported that Giuliano was instructing lawyers to file suit against Julia Baird, Lennon's half-sister and the co-author of his book John Lennon, My Brother. Giuliano maintained that Baird had based her 2007 book Imagine This, which was being adapted for screen as the Miramax film Nowhere Boy , on material he had gathered in their earlier collaboration. Giuliano stated that his lawsuit would request the recall and destruction of Baird's book, as well as a halt to the production of Nowhere Boy. [14] The following month, Kevin Loader, the film's producer, commented on the story: "It's nothing to do with us. I haven't heard from anyone's lawyers." [15]
In early 2010, Giuliano set about re-launching his literary career, founding Icon Editions [16] to publish his extensive backlist and several new books authored with his middle daughter, Avalon Oneita Juliana. The author redesigned, updated and re-recorded his 200-plus audio books for download.
Giuliano co-directed the DVD The Beatles: A Celebration. In 2005, he played a supporting role in the made-for-television film Mysterious Island . Since that time he appeared in Mechanic Resurrection, also in Scorpion King 3 and the costume drama Vikingdom .
On November 19, 2005, the film Stoned: The Wild & Wicked World of Brian Jones premiered in London. The film was "based on and inspired by" Guiliano's book Paint It Black: The Murder of Brian Jones, as well as Terry Rawlings' Who Killed Christopher Robin and Anna Wohlin's The Murder of Brian Jones. [18] [19]
In late 2005 Giuliano hosted a series of radio shows titled Geoffrey Giuliano's Roots of Rock, the shows aired on more than 60 stations in the United States and Canada. The program highlighted classic rock acts such as the Beatles, U2, and Jimi Hendrix. [20]
In 2021, he portrayed VIP #4 in the Netflix series Squid Game , in a performance that was much derided. [21]
George Harrison was an English musician, singer and songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian culture and helped broaden the scope of popular music through his incorporation of Indian instrumentation and Hindu-aligned spirituality in the Beatles' work. Although the majority of the band's songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, most Beatles albums from 1965 onwards contained at least two Harrison compositions. His songs for the group include "Taxman", "Within You Without You", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something". Harrison's earliest musical influences included George Formby and Django Reinhardt; subsequent influences were Carl Perkins, Chet Atkins and Chuck Berry.
Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe was a British painter and musician best known as the original bass guitarist of the Beatles. Sutcliffe left the band to pursue his career as a painter, having previously attended the Liverpool College of Art. Sutcliffe and John Lennon are credited with inventing the name "Beetles" (sic), as they both liked Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets. They also had a fascination of group names with double meanings, so Lennon then came up with "The Beatles", from the word beat. As a member of the group when it was a five-piece band, Sutcliffe is one of several people sometimes referred to as the "Fifth Beatle".
Malcolm Frederick Evans was an English road manager and personal assistant employed by the Beatles from 1963 until their break-up in 1970.
Klaus Otto Wilhelm Voormann is a German artist, musician, and record producer.
"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" otherwise known as simply "Norwegian Wood", is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was written mainly by John Lennon, with lyrical contributions from Paul McCartney, and credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership. Influenced by the introspective lyrics of Bob Dylan, the song is considered a milestone in the Beatles' development as songwriters. The track features a sitar part, played by lead guitarist George Harrison, that marked the first appearance of the Indian string instrument on a Western rock recording. The song was a number 1 hit in Australia when released on a single there in 1966, coupled with "Nowhere Man".
Olivia Trinidad Harrison is an American author and film producer, and the widow of English musician George Harrison of the Beatles. She first worked in the music industry in Los Angeles, for A&M Records, where she met Harrison and then helped run his Dark Horse record label. In 1990, she launched the Romanian Angel Appeal to raise funds for the thousands of orphans left abandoned in Romania after the fall of Communism there.
Apple Corps Limited is a multi-armed multimedia corporation founded in London in January 1968 by the members of The Beatles to replace their earlier company and to form a conglomerate. Its name, pronounced "apple core", is a pun. Its chief division is Apple Records, which was launched in the same year. Other divisions included Apple Electronics, Apple Films, Apple Publishing and Apple Retail, whose most notable venture was the short-lived Apple Boutique, on the corner of Baker Street and Paddington Street in central London. Apple's headquarters in the late 1960s was at the upper floors of 94 Baker Street, after that at 95 Wigmore Street, and subsequently at 3 Savile Row. The last of these addresses was also known as the Apple Building, which was home to the Apple studio.
May Fung Yee Pang is an American former music executive. She worked for John Lennon and Yoko Ono as a personal assistant and production coordinator. When Lennon and Ono separated in 1973, Pang and Lennon began a relationship that lasted more than 18 months. Lennon later referred to this time as his "Lost Weekend". Pang published two books about her relationship with Lennon; a memoir, Loving John, and a book of photographs, Instamatic Karma. A documentary about their relationship, The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, was produced in 2022.
"Eleanor Rigby" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. It was also issued on a double A-side single, paired with "Yellow Submarine". The song was written primarily by Paul McCartney with significant lyrical contributions from John Lennon, and credited to Lennon–McCartney.
"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 double album The Beatles. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. Following the album's release, the song was issued as a single in many countries, although not in the United Kingdom or the United States, and topped singles charts in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland and West Germany. When belatedly issued as a single in the United States in 1976, it peaked at number 49 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"You Can't Do That" is a song written by John Lennon and released by the English rock band the Beatles as the B-side of their sixth British single "Can't Buy Me Love". It was later released on their third UK album A Hard Day's Night (1964). A live rendition of the song was released on the 2016 re-release of The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl.
Kenwood is a house on the St George's Hill estate, Weybridge, Surrey, England. Originally called the Brown House, it was designed by architect T. A. Allen, and built in 1913 by Love & Sons, a local building firm. The estate was constructed around the Weybridge Golf Club, which was designed in 1912 by Harry Colt.
"Back Off Boogaloo" is a song by English rock musician Ringo Starr that was released as a non-album single in March 1972. Starr's former Beatles bandmate George Harrison produced the recording and helped Starr write the song, although he remained uncredited as a co-writer until 2017. Recording took place in London shortly after the pair had appeared together at Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh shows in August 1971. The single was a follow-up to Starr's 1971 hit song "It Don't Come Easy" and continued his successful run as a solo artist. "Back Off Boogaloo" peaked at number 2 in Britain and Canada, and number 9 on America's Billboard Hot 100. It remains Starr's highest-charting single in the United Kingdom.
Julia Baird is a British retired teacher and author. She is the younger half-sister of English musician John Lennon, and is the eldest daughter of his mother Julia Lennon and John 'Bobby' Albert Dykins. She also has an older maternal half-sister, Ingrid Pedersen. Her younger sister is Jacqueline 'Jackie' Dykins.
The Beatles were originally a quartet, but only Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr remain.
In February 1968, the English rock band the Beatles travelled to Rishikesh in northern India to take part in a Transcendental Meditation (TM) training course at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The visit followed the group's denunciation of drugs in favour of TM and received widespread media attention. The band's interest in the Maharishi's teachings was led by George Harrison's commitment, and it changed Western attitudes about Indian spirituality and encouraged the study of Transcendental Meditation. The visit was also the most productive period for the Beatles' songwriting.
In His Life: The John Lennon Story is a 2000 American made-for-television biographical film about John Lennon's teenage years, written by the film's executive producer, Michael O'Hara, and directed by David Carson.
"See Yourself" is a song by English musician George Harrison, released on his 1976 album Thirty Three & 1/3. Harrison began writing the song in 1967, while he was a member of the Beatles, in response to the public outcry surrounding bandmate Paul McCartney's admission that he had taken the hallucinogenic drug LSD. McCartney's announcement created a reaction in the press similar to that caused in 1966 by John Lennon's statement that the Beatles were more popular than Christianity. In its finished form, the song's lyrics advocate self-awareness and consideration for the consequences of one's actions. Musically, the composition contains unusual shifts in time signature from standard 4/4 to 9/8, while the songwords reflect the era of its genesis by recalling themes first espoused in the Beatles tracks "Within You Without You" and "All You Need Is Love".
The Fest for Beatles Fans is a twice-annual, three-day festival that honors the lasting legacy of the Beatles. The festival takes place in the New York metropolitan area, ordinarily in March or April, and in Chicago, Illinois, each August. Running Friday through Sunday, the Fest features special guests, live concerts, exhibits, art contests, a Beatles marketplace, a sound-alike contest, a Battle of the Beatles Bands, and more.
Lennon Remembers is a 1971 book by Rolling Stone magazine co-founder and editor Jann Wenner. It consists of a lengthy interview that Wenner carried out with former Beatle John Lennon in December 1970 and which was originally serialised in Rolling Stone in its issues dated 21 January and 4 February 1971. The interview was intended to promote Lennon's primal therapy-inspired album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and reflects the singer's emotions and mindset after undergoing an intense course of the therapy under Arthur Janov. It also serves as a rebuttal to Paul McCartney's public announcement of the Beatles' break-up, in April 1970.