Author Archive
Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who first rose to fame in the mid 1960s as the lead singer of the psychedelic/acid rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist with her own backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band.
Her first ever large scale public performance was at the Monterey Pop Festival, which led to her becoming very popular and one of the major attractions at the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour. Joplin charted five singles; other popular songs include: “Down on Me,” “Summertime,” “Piece of My Heart,” “Ball ‘n’ Chain,” “Maybe,” “To Love Somebody,” “Kozmic Blues,” “Work Me, Lord,” “Cry Baby,” “Mercedes Benz,” and her only number one hit, “Me and Bobby McGee.”
Joplin was well known for her performing ability and skill as a multi-instrumentalist. Her fans referred to her stage presence as “electric”; at the height of her career, she was known as “The Queen of Psychedelic Soul.” Known as “Pearl” among her friends, she was also a painter, dancer and music arranger. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time in 2004 and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Joplin remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 15.5 million albums sold in the USA.
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Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, artist and writer. He has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated songs chronicle the social unrest of the 1960s, although Dylan repudiates suggestions from journalists that he is a spokesman for his generation. Nevertheless, early songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin'” became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements. After he left his initial base in the American folk music revival, his six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” altered the range of popular music in 1965. His mid-1960s recordings, backed by rock musicians, reached the top end of the United States music charts while also attracting denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.
Dylan’s lyrics have incorporated various political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the performances of Little Richard, and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, Dylan has amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning 50 years, has explored the traditions in American song—from folk, blues, and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and the Great American Songbook. Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards, and harmonica. Backed by a changing line-up of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but songwriting is considered his greatest contribution.
Since 1994, Dylan has published six books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. As a musician, Dylan has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He has also received numerous awards including eleven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.” In May 2012, Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
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Paul McCartney
Sir Paul McCartney British Artist: (born 18 June 1942) In the early years of The Beatles, John Lennon and former member Stuart Sutcliffe attended Art college, consequently Paul likely felt inhibited in his visual art by his lack of formal art training, and so only began exploring his creative visual art later in life. During the sixties he became friendly with art critic, John Dunbar and gallery owner Robert Fraser. Through their circle of influential friends and young artists, Paul became familiar with contemporary art, meeting people like Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton who were to later design covers for The Beatles’ albums. Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road were both based on ideas that Paul developed with them. Paul would spend lots of time at the Fraser and Indica galleries, helping with the installation of exhibits and feeding his enthusiasm for the medium. McCartney began collecting and bought a number of paintings by the surrealist painter Magritte, whose influence on Paul’s own painting is considerable. Since 1983 he has set up studios in the south of England and in the USA, where he has been continuing to explore the medium of painting.
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Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell’s work – both her music and her visual art – are highly respected by critics, and she has deeply influenced fellow musicians in a diverse range of genres. Rolling Stone has called her “one of the greatest songwriters ever”, and AllMusic has stated: “when the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century”. Her lyrics are noted for their developed poetics, addressing social and environmental ideals alongside personal feelings of romantic longing, confusion, disillusion, and joy.
Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto. In 1965, she moved to the United States and began touring. Some of her original songs (“Urge for Going”, “Chelsea Morning”, “Both Sides, Now”, “The Circle Game”) were covered by folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her debut album in 1968. Settling in Southern California, Mitchell, with popular songs like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock”, helped define an era and a generation. Her 1971 recording Blue was rated the 30th best album ever made in Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. Mitchell switched labels and began moving toward jazz rhythms by way of lush pop textures on 1974’s Court and Spark, her best-selling LP, featuring the radio hits “Help Me” and “Free Man in Paris”.
With roots in visual art, she has designed her own album artwork throughout her career. She describes herself as a “painter derailed by circumstance”.
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Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol is known primarily as a major visual artist and a significant filmmaker. He was not a musician, and probably knew little about the technological processes by which music is recorded. He nonetheless made notable contributions to rock history as a producer and manager of the Velvet Underground. He managed the Velvets until about the summer of 1967, and was credited as producer of the bulk of their classic first album (self-titled, but known as “The Banana Album”), which was largely made before they got a record deal. As is sometimes the case with good production, his contribution probably consisted of not interfering with the music and letting the band be themselves. Warhol also did artwork for several rock album covers including the zippered pants on the sleeve of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers.
Born Andrew Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), Warhol was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist.
Warhol’s art used many types of media, including hand drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, silk screening, sculpture, film, and music. He was also a pioneer in computer-generated art using Amiga computers that were introduced in 1984, two years before his death. He founded Interview magazine and was the author of numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties.
Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression “15 minutes of fame”. Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$105 million for a 1963 canvas titled “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)”. A 2009 article in The Economist described Warhol as the “bellwether of the art market”. Warhol’s works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold.
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Jad Fair
In 1974, Jad Fair co-founded the lo-fi alternative rock group Half Japanese with his brother David. Over the ensuing three decades, Half Japanese released nearly 30 records, and attracted a solid base of fans passionate about the band’s pure, unbridled enthusiasm for rock and roll in the process. Jad also performs and records as a solo artist, occasionally collaborating with such musicians as Daniel Johnston, Teenage Fanclub, Moe Tucker (of Velvet Underground), Yo La Tengo, Steve Shelly and Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth), John Zorn, Kramer, and more.
Jad’s talent for album cover design (he designed many of Half Japanese’s and all of his own solo album covers) led him to a second career as visual artist. His simple, joyous drawings and intricate paper cuttings are shown in galleries around the world. Books of his artwork have been published in the U.S., UK, Germany, France, and Japan.
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Kevin Hearn
Kevin Hearn is best known as a long time member of the band Barenaked Ladies . He has also released seven records of his own , along with his band Thinbuckle. He was Musical Director for the late great Lou Reed’s band, from 2007 to 2013. He has recorded and/or performed with Look People, Rheostatics, The Tragically Hip, Ron Sexsmith, comedian Harland Williams, The Violent Femmes, Rough Trade, and Laurie Anderson.
Kevin creates drawings with ink and pencil crayon on paper. They feature a wild variety of characters from an imagined world. His drawings are featured as the cover on the latest record by The Violent Femmes. His drawings were also featured on the cover and accompanying book for Snacktime, the Juno-award winning record for children by the Barenaked Ladies.
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John Lennon
John Lennon British Artist: b. 1940-1980. Art was actually Lennon’s first love. He began drawing long before he had a guitar, then attended the prestigous Liverpool Art Institute for three years (1957-60) before the Beatles became a full-time occupation. He continued to draw throughout his life. Lennon originally created a portfolio of drawings in 1969 which he entitled “Bag One”. These drawings depicted John and Yoko’s wedding and honeymoon and he presented them to her as a wedding gift.
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Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as 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”.
Bob and Kathy Levine, Hendrix’s publicity agents in the U.S., say that Jimi carried sketchpads and art boards with him and was often seen drawing his vivid images. Some of the paintings appear to have begun as small doodles which he developed into intricate highly involved images. Those familiar with his method of painting say Hendrix worked with 5 or 6 watercolor pens held between the fingers of his right hand as his other hand deftly created the amazingly intricate designs.
Jimi’s outlook on art took a different turn when in 1965 he met Arthur Lee, the creator and producer of several psychedelic record albums. This experience, along with his use of acid and other hard drugs, began the change in Jimi’s style of dress and his expressions in fine art. His paintings represent brightly colored figures and inventive forms in various sizes, with the smallest being about 4 inches and the larger ones approximately 18 inches. All are powerful, highly creative and unique hallucinogenic works of art. Jimi’s art works are always immediate, intimate and precise is because he was extremely nearsighted and never wore glasses. Oddly, his biographers report that as a young boy in school Jimi displayed special talent in art, but had no early interest in music.
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Grace Slick
Grace Wing was born on October 30, 1939, in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, IL. Her Family moved to Southern California in the mid ’40s, and finally settled in Palo Alto, California . Grace stayed in the Bay Area until she left to attend Finch College in New England, and later the university of Miami where she studied art before returning to San Francisco shortly before she joined the Great Society in 1965. Shortly thereafter she and some of the members of Great Society including Darby Slick, the brother of her future husband, Jerry Slick, formed the Jefferson Airplane and recorded the now classic songs “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love”.
Through the next 25 years Grace participated in several incarnations of the band including The Jefferson Starship, Starship and several solo albums with Paul Kantner. Grace retired from rock and roll in 1989 and began a new career in the visual arts in the mid 90s. Her first show was in Ft Lauderdale Fl, in 2000. Since then she has had over 100 exhibits and is represented by some of the best galleries in the US and Europe. The portraits of her rock contemporaries contain a certain mystique that comes from Grace’s personal relationships. Her nudes are somewhat minimal pieces that suggest a Japanese sumi ink style of painting. The Wonderland pieces are a visual version of the song “White Rabbit”. The originals for this series are done on scratchboard to give them the intense detail.
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