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Howard Sounes | |
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Born | 1965 (age 58–59) Welling, South East London, England, United Kingdom |
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Howard Sounes (born 1965) is a British author, journalist and biographer.
Born in Welling, South East London, Sounes began his journalistic career as a staff reporter for the Sunday Mirror . He broke major stories, including one of the most notorious murder cases in British criminal history: that of Fred and Rosemary West. Sounes reported that the house at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester was the grave site of nine young women, with more victims buried nearby. He went on to report the case for the Sunday and Daily Mirror , and upon conclusion of the trial he published his book Fred & Rose.
Sounes wrote a biography of American poet, novelist and short-story writer Charles Bukowski, becoming so engrossed in the subject that he resigned from his newspaper job to devote himself to the project. Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life was published in 1998 by Grove Press in the US and Canongate in the UK. Sounes also wrote a companion book in 2000 called Bukowski in Pictures. He was able to publish the first known photo of Bukowski's lover and muse, Jane Cooney Baker.[ citation needed ]
Since his teenage years Sounes had been a fan of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, and in early 1990 he began research for a major biography of the musician. Sounes interviewed over 250 people including members of the Dylan, Zimmerman, Lownds and Rutman families, as well as ex-girlfriends including Suze Rotolo, her elder sister Carla, their mother Mary Pezzati Rotolo, friends and other musicians. His extensive and painstaking research of unseen evidence concerning Dylan's life included birth, death and marriage certificates, court papers, property and tax records which enabled him to pin down precise details of Dylan's life where in the past only erroneous speculation had existed. Members of the Dylan family, with the exception of Jakob Dylan, were interviewed by Sounes on the understanding that they would not be named and merely identified as "a member of the Dylan family."[ citation needed ] The biography, entitled Down the Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, was published in 2001 (the year Dylan turned 60). It contained the revelation that unknown to fans and media alike, Dylan had married one of his backing singers, Carolyn Dennis.
Sounes has worked as a full-time author since publishing his Dylan biography. His later works have included a scathing investigation of professional golf, The Wicked Game, and a cultural history of the 1970s, entitled Seventies. In the mid-2000s it was reported that he was working on a book called Heist, an account of the world's biggest cash robbery. His biography of Sir Paul McCartney, FAB: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, was published in August 2010. Sounes subsequently admitted that his work represented too many of his personal opinions about McCartney's music. [1]
Sounes' latest book, Amy, 27: Amy Winehouse and the 27 Club, was published in July 2013 by Hodder & Stoughton. The book is a study of British singer Amy Winehouse's life in the context of the 27 Club, the group of iconic music stars who died at the same young age, including Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones whose death in 1969 was followed by Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin in 1970, Jim Morrison in 1971, and Kurt Cobain in 1994.
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on May 27, 1963 by Columbia Records. Whereas his self-titled debut album Bob Dylan had contained only two original songs, this album represented the beginning of Dylan's writing contemporary lyrics to traditional melodies. Eleven of the thirteen songs on the album are Dylan's original compositions. It opens with "Blowin' in the Wind", which became an anthem of the 1960s, and an international hit for folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary soon after the release of the album. The album featured several other songs which came to be regarded as among Dylan's best compositions and classics of the 1960s folk scene: "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right".
Susan Elizabeth Rotolo, known as Suze Rotolo, was an American artist, and the girlfriend of Bob Dylan from 1961 to 1964. Dylan later acknowledged her strong influence on his music and art during that period. Rotolo is the woman walking with him on the cover of his 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, a photograph by the Columbia Records studio photographer Don Hunstein. In her book A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, Rotolo described her time with Dylan and other figures in the folk music and bohemian scene in Greenwich Village, New York. She discussed her upbringing as a "red diaper" baby; a child of Communist Party USA members during the McCarthy Era. As an artist, she specialized in artists' books and taught at the Parsons School of Design in New York City.
"It Ain't Me Babe" is a song by Bob Dylan that originally appeared on his fourth album Another Side of Bob Dylan, which was released in 1964 by Columbia Records. According to music critic Oliver Trager, this song, along with others on the album, marked a departure for Dylan as he began to explore the possibilities of language and deeper levels of the human experience. Within a year of its release, the song was picked up as a single by folk rock act the Turtles and country artist Johnny Cash. Jan & Dean also covered the track on their "Folk 'N Roll" LP in 1965.
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid is the twelfth studio album and first soundtrack album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on July 13, 1973, by Columbia Records for the Sam Peckinpah film of the same name. Dylan himself appeared in the film as the character "Alias". The soundtrack consists mainly of instrumental music and was inspired by the movie itself. The album includes "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", which became a trans-Atlantic Top 20 hit.
"A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" is a song written by American musician and Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan in the summer of 1962 and recorded later that year for his second studio album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). Its lyrical structure is based on the question-and-answer refrain pattern of the traditional British ballad "Lord Randall", published by Francis Child.
Mary Teresa Pezzati Rotolo Bowes was an American writer and political activist. Her daughters were Carla and Suze Rotolo. Suze Rotolo was one of Bob Dylan's early girlfriends in New York City.
Sara Dylan is an American former actress and model who was the first wife of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In 1959, Noznisky married magazine photographer Hans Lownds; during their marriage, she was known as Sara Lownds.
Alan Jules Weberman is an American writer, political activist, gadfly, and inventor of the terms "garbology" and "Dylanology". He is best known for his controversial opinions on, and personal interactions with, the musician Bob Dylan. Together with New York folk singer David Peel, Weberman founded the Rock Liberation Front in 1971 with the aim of "liberating" artists from bourgeois tendencies and ensuring that rock musicians continued to engage with and represent the counterculture of the 1960s.
"Masters of War" is a song by Bob Dylan, written over the winter of 1962–63 and released on the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in the spring of 1963. The song's melody was adapted from the traditional "Nottamun Town." Dylan's lyrics are a protest against the Cold War nuclear arms build-up of the early 1960s.
Barry Miles is an English author known for his participation in and writing on the subjects of the 1960s London underground and counterculture. He is the author of numerous books and his work has also regularly appeared in leftist newspapers such as The Guardian. In the 1960s, he was co-owner of the Indica Gallery and helped start the independent newspaper International Times.
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter. Generally regarded as one of the greatest songwriters ever, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 60-year career. He rose to prominence in the 1960s, when his songs "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements. Initially modeling his style on Woody Guthrie's folk songs, Robert Johnson's blues, and what he called the "architectural forms" of Hank Williams's country songs, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry". His lyrics incorporated political, social, and philosophical influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture.
"Someday Baby" is a Grammy Award-winning blues song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as the fifth track on his 2006 album Modern Times. The song had considerable success, garnering more airtime on U.S. radio than any other track on the album. It spent twenty weeks on Billboard's Adult Alternative Songs chart, peaking at #3 in November 2006. It was also anthologized on the compilation album Dylan in 2007.
"Pledging My Time" is a blues song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan from his seventh studio album, Blonde on Blonde (1966). The song, written by Dylan and produced by Bob Johnston, was recorded on March 8, 1966 in Nashville, Tennessee. Dylan is featured on lead vocals, harmonica, and guitar, backed by guitarist Robbie Robertson and an ensemble of veteran Nashville session men.
Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns was a mimeographed literary magazine published between 1969 and 1971 in Los Angeles, California by Charles Bukowski and Neeli Cherkovski. The original title was to be "Laugh Literary and Man the Fucking Guns," but Cherkovski convinced Bukowski to substitute a less graphic word due to censorship concerns. In the late 1960s, the U.S. Post Office was actively prosecuting publishers for sending "obscene" publications through the mail. At the time of its publication, Bukowski was working as a clerk at the Post Office, having not yet made the transition to full-time writer.
Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life, a book by Howard Sounes, published in 1998 by Grove Press, is a biography of American writer Charles Bukowski.
"John Wesley Harding" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan that appears as the opening track on his 1967 album of the same name.
The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of the Beatles is a 1983 book by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines. Brown was personal assistant to the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, a senior executive at Apple Corps, as well as best man to John Lennon at the latter's wedding to Yoko Ono in March 1969.
"Mama, You Been on My Mind" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Written in 1964 during a trip to Europe, the song dealt with his recent breakup with his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo. Dylan first recorded the song in June of that year during a session for his album Another Side of Bob Dylan. However, the song was not included on the album, and Dylan's version remained unreleased until 1991. In total, in the 1990s and 2000s four versions were put out on Dylan's Bootleg Series of releases, including two live performances with Joan Baez from 1964 and 1975.
Carla Rotolo was an American artist, folk singer and folk music researcher.
"Down the Highway" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. It was recorded on July 9, 1962 at Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios, New York, produced by John Hammond. The song was released on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan on May 27, 1963. It is a twelve-bar blues love song, which Dylan told his girlfriend Suze Rotolo he had written about her.