Rock and Roll

Hailing from the same state as Cheap Trick (Illinois), the Pezband was a mostly fine, occasionally wonderful, power pop band that specialized in hook-filled hard rock with sweet multi-part harmonies. Led by the strong, blues-inflected singing of Mimi (a guy) Betinis and the rampaging Jeff Beck-influenced guitar playing of Tommy Gawenda, the Pezzers' first LP (released in 1977) was not as hard and heavy as Cheap Trick, nor did it exhibit the berserk panache of their fellow Illinoisans. But that all changed with their second LP, Laughing in the Dark, which contained a high quotient of good-to-great songs, excellent production by Jesse Hood Jackson, and a wonderful lack of smugness and calculation that was slowly infiltrating every power pop band in America. A huge public reaction, however, was not forthcoming. The band had its supporters (like most of the editorial staff of -Trouser Press), but power pop/hard rock from Illinois was dominated by Cheap Trick, and everybody else had to find a place in the pecking order. For bands like the Pezband, that meant far less coverage than they deserved. There was also another issue: the band didn't deliver another record as good as Laughing, nor could they recapture the excitement and messy mania of their live show (forever preserved on an excellent pair of EPs, Too Old, Too Soon and Thirty Seconds Over Schaumburg) in the studio. Hence, the rest of their recorded output is serviceable, but only hints at what the band was truly capable of doing. It's too bad, because they were such unpretentious, likable guys. By the early '80s, the Pezband had virtually vanished from the music scene, but in 1994 a Chicago-based independent label released some outtakes and other previously unreleased material

Featuring ex-Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Brad Gillis and former Montrose keyboardist Alan Fitzgerald, Night Ranger was one of the most popular mainstream hard rock bands of the mid-'80s. The group formed in the early '80s in San Francisco; in addition to Gillis and Fitzgerald, the members included Jack Blades (vocals, bass), Jeff Watson (guitar), and Kelly Keagy (drums). After a few local gigs, promoter Bill Graham managed to get them supporting slots on Judas Priest, Santana, and Doobie Brothers concerts. Night Ranger's first album, Dawn Patrol (1982), reached number 38 on the U.S. charts, yet it was 1983's Midnight Madness that established the band as a commercial force. Featuring the AOR hit "(You Can Still) Rock in America" and the number five single "Sister Christian," the record peaked at number 15 and sold over a million copies. 1985's 7 Wishes was just as successful, reaching number ten on the charts. Night Ranger's audience began to diminish after 1987's Big Life. Fitzgerald left the following year and the band released their last album, Man in Motion, which failed to go gold or spawn any Top 40 singles. Night Ranger broke up the next year. Jack Blades joined the supergroup Damn Yankees, which also featured Ted Nugent and Tommy Shaw. A reunited Night Ranger returned in 1998 with Seven

Sam Cooke was the most important soul singer in history -- he was also the inventor of soul music, and its most popular and beloved performer in both the black and white communities. Equally important, he was among the first modern black performers and composers to attend to the business side of the music business, and founded both a record label and a publishing company as an extension of his careers as a singer and composer. Yet, those business interests didn't prevent him from being engaged in topical issues, including the struggle over civil rights, the pitch and intensity of which followed an arc that paralleled Cooke's emergence as a star -- his own career bridged gaps between black and white audiences that few had tried to surmount, much less succeeded at doing, and also between generations; where Chuck Berry or Little Richard brought black and white teenagers together, James Brown sold records to white teenagers and black listeners of all ages, and Muddy Waters got young white folkies and older black transplants from the South onto the same page, Cooke appealed to all of the above, and the parents of those white teenagers as well -- yet he never lost his credibility with his core black audience.


In a sense, his appeal anticipated that of the Beatles, in breadth and depth. He was born Sam Cook in Clarksdale, MS, on January 22, 1931, one of eight children of a Baptist minister and his wife. Even as a young boy, he showed an extraordinary voice and frequently sang in the choir in his father's church. During the middle of the decade, the Cook family moved to Chicago's South Side, where the Reverend Charles Cook quickly established himself as a major figure in the religious community. Sam and three of his siblings also formed a group of their own, the Singing Children, in the 1930s. Although his own singing was confined to gospel music, he was aware and appreciative of the popular music of the period, particularly the melodious, harmony-based sounds of the Ink Spots, whose influence could later be heard in songs such as "You Send Me" and "For Sentimental Reasons." As a teenager, he was a member of the Teen Highway QCs, a gospel group that performed in churches and at religious gatherings. His membership in that group led to his introduction to the Soul Stirrers, one of the top gospel groups in the country, and in 1950 he joined them.


If Cooke had never recorded a note of music on his own, he would still be remembered today in gospel circles for his work with the Soul Stirrers. Over the next six years, his role within the group and his prominence within the black community rose to the point where he was already a star, with his own fiercely admiring and devoted audience, through his performances on songs like "Touch the Hem of His Garment," "Nearer to Thee," and "That's Heaven to Me." The group was one of the top acts on Art Rupe's Specialty Records label, and he might have gone on for years as their most popular singer, but Cooke's goal was to reach audiences beyond the religious community, and beyond the black population, with his voice. This was a tall order at the time, as the mere act of recording a popular song could alienate the gospel listenership in an instant; singing for God was regarded in those circles as a gift and a responsibility, and popular music, rock & roll, and R&B were to be abhorred, at least coming from the mouth of a gospel singer; the gap was so great that when a blues singer such as Blind Gary Davis became "sanctified" (that is, found religion) as the Rev. Gary Davis, he could still sing and play his old blues melodies, but had to devise new words, and he never sang the blues words again.


He tested the waters of popular music in 1956 with the single "Lovable," produced by Bumps Blackwell and credited under the name Dale Cooke so as not to attract too much attention from his existing audience. It was enough, however, to get Cooke dropped by the Soul Stirrers and their record label, but that freed him to record under his real name. The result was one of the biggest selling singles of the 1950s, a Cooke original entitled "You Send Me," which sold over two million copies on the tiny Keen Records label and hit number one on both the pop and R&B charts. Although it seems like a tame record today, "You Send Me" was a pioneering soul record in its time, melding elements of R&B, gospel, and pop into a sound that was new and still coalescing at the time.


Cooke was with Keen for the next two years, a period in which he delivered up some of the prettiest romantic ballads and teen pop singles of the era, including "For Sentimental Reasons," "Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha," "Only Sixteen," and "(What A) Wonderful World." These were extraordinarily beautiful records, and in between the singles came some early album efforts, most notably Tribute to the Lady, his album of songs associated with Billie Holiday. He was unhappy, however, with both the business arrangement that he had with Keen and the limitations inherent with recording for a small label -- equally to the point, major labels were knocking on Cooke's door, including Atlantic and RCA Records; Atlantic, which was not yet the international conglomerate that it later became, was the top R&B-oriented label in the country and Cooke almost certainly would have signed there and found a happy home with the company, except that they wanted his publishing, and Cooke had seen the sales figures on his songs, as well as their popularity in cover versions by other artists, and was well aware of the importance of owning his copyrights.


Thus, he signed with RCA Records, then one of the three biggest labels in the world (the others being Columbia and Decca), even as he organized his own publishing company, Kags Music, and a record label, SAR, through which he would produce other artists' records -- among those signed to SAR were the Soul Stirrers, Bobby Womack (late of the Valentinos, who were also signed to the label), former Soul Stirrers member Johnny Taylor, Billy Preston, Johnnie Morisette, and the Simms Twins.


Cooke's RCA sides were a strangely schizophrenic body of work, at least for the first two years. He broke new ground in pop and soul with the single "Chain Gang," a strange mix of sweet melodies and gritty, sweaty sensibilities that also introduced something of a social conscience to his work -- a number two hit on both the pop and R&B charts, it was his biggest hit since "You Send Me" and heralded a bolder phase in his career. Singles like bluesy, romantic "Sad Mood," the idyllic romantic soul of "Cupid," and the straight-ahead dance tune "Twistin' the Night Away" (a pop Top Ten and a number one R&B hit), and "Bring It on Home to Me" all lived up to this promise, and also sold in huge numbers. But the first two albums that RCA had him do, Hits of the Fifties and Cooke's Tour, were among the lamest LPs ever recorded by any soul or R&B singer, comprised of washed-out pop tunes in arrangements that showed almost none of Cooke's gifts to their advantage.


In 1962, Cooke issued Twistin' the Night Away, a somewhat belated "twist" album that became one of his biggest-selling LPs. He didn't really hit his stride as an LP artist, however, until 1963 with the release of Night Beat, a beautifully self-contained, dark, moody assembly of blues-oriented songs that were among the best and most challenging numbers that Cooke had recorded up to that time. By the time of its release, he was mostly identified through his singles, which were among the best work of their era, and had developed two separate audiences, among white teen and post-teen listeners and black audiences of all ages. It was Cooke's hope to cross over to the white audience more thoroughly, and open up doors for black performers that, up to that time, had mostly been closed -- he had tried playing the Copa in New York as early as 1957 and failed at the time, mostly owing to his inexperience, but in 1964 he returned to the club in triumph, an event that also yielded one of the most finely recorded live performances of its period. The problem with the Copa performance was that it didn't really represent what Sam Cooke was about in full -- it was Cooke at his most genial and non-confrontational, doing his safest repertory for a largely middle-aged, middle-class white audience; they responded enthusiastically, to be sure, but only to Cooke's tamest persona.


In mid-1963, however, Cooke had done a show at the Harlem Square Club in Miami that had been recorded. Working in front of a black audience and doing his "real" show, he delivered a sweaty, spellbinding performance built on the same elements found in his singles and his best album tracks, combining achingly beautiful melodies and gritty soul sensibilities. The two live albums sum up the split in Cooke's career and the sheer range of his talent, the rewards of which he'd finally begun to realize more fully in 1963 and 1964.


The drowning death of his infant son in mid-1963 had made it impossible for Cooke to work in the studio until the end of that year. During that time, however, with Allen Klein now managing his business affairs, Cooke did achieve the financial and creative independence that he'd wanted, including more money than any black performer had ever been advanced before, and the eventual ownership of his recordings beginning in November of 1963 -- he had achieved creative control of his recordings as well, and seemed poised for a breakthrough. It came when he resumed making records, amid the musical ferment of the early '60s. Cooke was keenly aware of the music around him, and was particularly entranced by Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' in the Wind," its treatment of the plight of black Americans and other politically oppressed minorities, and its success in the hands of Peter, Paul & Mary -- all of these factors convinced him that the time was right for songs that dealt with more than twisting the night away.


The result was "A Change Is Gonna Come," perhaps the greatest song to come out of the civil rights struggle, and one that seemed to close and seal the gap between the two directions of Cooke's career, from gospel to pop. Arguably his greatest and his most important song, it was an artistic apotheosis for Cooke. During this same period, he had also devised a newer, more advanced dance-oriented soul sound in the form of the song "Shake." These two recordings heralded a new era for Cooke and a new phase of his career, with seemingly the whole world open to him.


None of it was to be. Early in the day on December 11, 1964, while in Los Angeles, Cooke became involved in an altercation at a seedy motel, with a woman guest and the night manager, and was shot to death while allegedly trying to attack the manager. The case is still shrouded in doubt and mystery, and was never investigated the way the murder of a star of his stature would be today. Cooke's death shocked the black community and reverberated far beyond -- his single "Shake" was a posthumous Top Ten hit, as were "A Change Is Gonna Come" and the At the Copa album, released in 1965. Otis Redding, Al Green, and Solomon Burke, among others, picked up key parts of Cooke's repertory, as did white performers, including the Animals and the Rolling Stones. Even the Supremes recorded a memorial album of his songs, which is now one of the most sought-after of their original recordings, in either LP or CD form.


His reputation survived, at least among those who were smart enough to look behind the songs -- to hear Redding's performance of "Shake" at the Monterey Pop Festival, for example, and see where it came from. Cooke's own records were a little tougher to appreciate, however. Listeners who heard those first two, rather poor RCA albums, Hits of the Fifties and Cooke's Tour, could only wonder what the big deal was about, and several of the albums that followed were uneven enough to give potential fans pause. Meanwhile, the contractual situation surrounding Cooke's recordings greatly complicated the reissue of his work -- Cooke's business manager, Allen Klein, exerted a good deal of control, especially over the songs cut during that last year of the singer's life. By the 1970s, there were some fairly poor, mostly budget-priced compilations available, consisting of the hits up through early 1963, and for a time there was even a television compilation out there, but that was it. The movie National Lampoon's Animal House made use of a pair of Cooke songs, "(What A) Wonderful World" and "Twistin' the Night Away," which greatly raised his profile among college students and younger baby-boomers, and Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes made almost a mini-career out of reviving Cooke's songs (most notably "Having a Party," and even part of "A Change Is Gonna Come") in concert. In 1986, The Man and His Music went some way to correcting the absence of all but the early hits in a career-spanning compilation, but since the mid-'90s, Cooke's final year's worth of releases have been separated from the earlier RCA and Keen material, and is in the hands of Klein's ABKCO label. Finally, in the late '90s and beyond, RCA, ABKCO, and even Specialty (which still owns Cooke's gospel sides with the Soul Stirrers) each issued comprehensive collections of their portions of Cooke's catalog.

Led Zeppelin was the definitive heavy metal band. It wasn't just their crushingly loud interpretation of the blues -- it was how they incorporated mythology, mysticism, and a variety of other genres (most notably world music and British folk) -- into their sound. Led Zeppelin had mystique. They rarely gave interviews, since the music press detested the band. Consequently, the only connection the audience had with the band was through the records and the concerts. More than any other band, Led Zeppelin established the concept of album-oriented rock, refusing to release popular songs from their albums as singles. In doing so, they established the dominant format for heavy metal, as well as the genre's actual sound.


Led Zeppelin formed out of the ashes of the Yardbirds. Jimmy Page had joined the band in its final days, playing a pivotal role on their final album, 1967's Little Games, which also featured string arrangements from John Paul Jones. During 1967, the Yardbirds were fairly inactive. While the Yardbirds decided their future, Page returned to session work in 1967. In the spring of 1968, he played on Jones' arrangement of Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man." During the sessions, Jones requested to be part of any future project Page would develop. Page would have to assemble a band sooner than he had planned. In the summer of 1968, the Yardbirds' Keith Relf and James McCarty left the band, leaving Page and bassist Chris Dreja with the rights to the name, as well as the obligation of fulfilling an upcoming fall tour. Page set out to find a replacement vocalist and drummer. Initially, he wanted to enlist singer Terry Reid and Procol Harum's drummer B.J. Wilson, but neither musician was able to join the group. Reid suggested that Page contact Robert Plant, who was singing with a band called Hobbstweedle.
After hearing him sing, Page asked Plant to join the band in August of 1968, the same month Chris Dreja dropped out of the new project. Following Dreja's departure, John Paul Jones joined the group as its bassist. Plant recommended that Page hire John Bonham, the drummer for Plant's old band, the Band of Joy. Bonham had to be persuaded to join the group, as he was being courted by other artists who offered the drummer considerably more money. By September, Bonham agreed to join the band. Performing under the name the New Yardbirds, the band fulfilled the Yardbirds' previously booked engagements in late September 1968. The following month, they recorded their debut album in just under 30 hours. Also in October, the group switched its name to Led Zeppelin. The band secured a contract with Atlantic Records in the United States before the end of the year. Early in 1969, Led Zeppelin set out on their first American tour, which helped set the stage for the January release of their eponymous debut album. Two months after its release, Led Zeppelin had climbed into the U.S. Top Ten. Throughout 1969, the band toured relentlessly, playing dates in America and England. While they were on the road, they recorded their second album, Led Zeppelin II, which was released in October of 1969. Like its predecessor, Led Zeppelin II was an immediate hit, topping the American charts two months after its release and spending seven weeks at number one. The album helped establish Led Zeppelin as an international concert attraction, and for the next year, the group continued to tour relentlessly. Led Zeppelin's sound began to deepen with Led Zeppelin III. Released in October of 1970, the album featured an overt British folk influence. The group's infatuation with folk and mythology would reach a fruition on the group's untitled fourth album, which was released in November of 1971. Led Zeppelin IV was the band's most musically diverse effort to date, featuring everything from the crunching rock of "Black Dog" to the folk of "The Battle of Evermore," as well as "Stairway to Heaven," which found the bridge between the two genres. "Stairway to Heaven" was an immediate radio hit, eventually becoming the most played song in the history of album-oriented radio; the song was never released as a single. Despite the fact that the album never reached number one in America, Led Zeppelin IV was their biggest album ever, selling well over 16 million copies over the next two and a half decades.


Led Zeppelin did tour to support both Led Zeppelin III and Led Zeppelin IV, but they played fewer shows than they did on their previous tours. Instead, they concentrated on only playing larger venues. After completing their 1972 tour, the band retreated from the spotlight and recorded their fifth album. Released in the spring of 1973, Houses of the Holy continued the band's musical experimentation, featuring touches of funk and reggae among their trademark rock and folk. The success of Houses of the Holy set the stage for a record-breaking American tour. Throughout their 1973 tour, Led Zeppelin broke box-office records -- most of which were previously held by the Beatles -- across America. The group's concert at Madison Square Garden in July was filmed for use in the feature film The Song Remains the Same, which was released three years later. After their 1973 tour, Led Zeppelin spent a quiet year during 1974, releasing no new material and performing no concerts. They did, however, establish their own record label, Swan Song, which released all of Led Zeppelin's subsequent albums, as well as records by Dave Edmunds, Bad Company, the Pretty Things, and several others. Physical Graffiti, a double album released in February of 1975, was the band's first release on Swan Song. The album was an immediate success, topping the charts in both America and England. Led Zeppelin launched a large American tour in 1975, but it came to a halt when Robert Plant and his wife suffered a serious car crash while vacationing in Greece. The tour was canceled and Plant spent the rest of the year recuperating from the accident.


Led Zeppelin returned to action in the spring of 1976 with Presence. Although the album debuted at number one in both America and England, the reviews for the album were lukewarm, as was the reception to the live concert film The Song Remains the Same, which appeared in the fall of 1976. The band finally returned to tour America in the Spring of 1977. A couple of months into the tour, Plant's six-year-old son Karac died of a stomach infection. Led Zeppelin immediately canceled the tour and offered no word whether or not it would be rescheduled, causing widespread speculation about the band's future. For a while, it did appear that Led Zeppelin was finished. Robert Plant spent the latter half of 1977 and the better part of 1978 in seclusion. The group didn't begin work on a new album until late in the summer of 1978, when they began recording at ABBA's Polar studios in Sweden. A year later, the band played a short European tour, performing in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and Austria. In August of 1979, Led Zeppelin played two large concerts at Knebworth; the shows would be their last English performances.


In Through the Out Door, the band's much-delayed eighth studio album, was finally released in September of 1979. The album entered the charts at number one in both America and England. In May of 1980, Led Zeppelin embarked on their final European tour. In September, Led Zeppelin began rehearsing at Jimmy Page's house in preparation for an American tour. On September 25, John Bonham was found dead in his bed -- following an all-day drinking binge, he had passed out and choked on his own vomit. In December of 1980, Led Zeppelin announced they were disbanding, since they could not continue without Bonham.


Following the breakup, the remaining members all began solo careers. John Paul Jones returned to producing and arranging, finally releasing his solo debut, Zooma, in 1999. After recording the soundtrack for Death Wish II, Jimmy Page compiled the Zeppelin outtakes collection Coda, which was released at the end of 1982. That same year, Robert Plant began a solo career with the Pictures at Eleven album. In 1984, Plant and Page briefly reunited in the all-star oldies band the Honeydrippers. After recording one EP with the Honeydrippers, Plant returned to his solo career and Page formed the Firm with former Bad Company singer Paul Rogers. In 1985, Led Zeppelin reunited to play Live Aid, sparking off a flurry of reunion rumors; the reunion never materialized. In 1988, the band re-formed to play Atlantic's 25th anniversary concert. During 1989, Page remastered the band's catalog for release on the 1990 box set Led Zeppelin. The four-disc set became the biggest-selling multi-disc box set of all time, which was followed up three years later by another box set, the mammoth ten-disc set The Complete Studio Recordings.


In 1994, Page and Plant reunited to record a segment for MTV Unplugged, which was released as No Quarter in the fall of 1994. Although the album went platinum, the sales were disappointing considering the anticipation of a Zeppelin reunion. The following year, Page and Plant embarked on a successful international tour, which eventually led to an all-new studio recording in 1998, the Steve Albini-produced Walking Into Clarksdale. Surprisingly, the album was met with a cool reception by the record-buying public, as Page and Plant ended their union shortly thereafter, once again going their separate ways (Page went on to tour with the Black Crowes, while Plant resumed his solo career). Further Zeppelin compilation releases saw the light of day in the late '90s, including 1997's stellar double-disc BBC Sessions, plus Zep's first true best-of collections -- 1999's Early Days: The Best Of, Vol. 1 and 2000's Latter Days: The Best Of, Vol. 2.

Neil Diamond held onto the secret for decades, but he has finally revealed that President Kennedy's daughter was the inspiration for his smash hit "Sweet Caroline."

"I've never discussed it with anybody before - intentionally," the 66-year-old singer-songwriter said on Monday during a break from recording. "I thought maybe I would tell it to Caroline when I met her someday."
He got his chance last week when he performed the song via satellite at Caroline Kennedy's 50th birthday party.

Diamond was a "young, broke songwriter" when a photo of the president's daughter in a news magazine caught his eye.

"It was a picture of a little girl dressed to the nines in her riding gear, next to her pony," Diamond recalled. "It was such an innocent, wonderful picture, I immediately felt there was a song in there."

Years later, holed up in a hotel in Memphis, Tenn., he would write the words and music in less an hour.



"It was a No. 1 record and probably is the biggest, most important song of my career, and I have to thank her for the inspiration," he said. "I'm happy to have gotten it off my chest and to have expressed it to Caroline. I thought she might be embarrassed, but she seemed to be struck by it and really, really happy."

The enduring hit recently reappeared on the singles chart, thanks in part to the Boston Red Sox. "Sweet Caroline" is played at every home game.

"I think they consider it good luck," Diamond said, adding that the Red Sox have become his favorite baseball team.

The tune's return to the charts leaves Diamond "speechless," he said. "That song was written 40 years ago, so I am just overwhelmed by the fact that it has returned and that, more importantly, people have taken it into their hearts for so many years."

Diamond is now at work on a new album, his second collaboration with producer Rick Rubin.

"We're both very excited about it," Diamond said. "I think it's going to be one of my best ever."

'Sweet Caroline' by Neil Diamond

Where it began
I can't begin to knowin'
But then I know it's growing strong


Was in the spring
And spring became the summer
Who'd have believed you'd come along

Hands, touchin' hands
Reachin' out
Touchin' me
Touchin' you

Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I've been inclined
To believe they never would

But now I
Look at the night
And it don't seem so lonely
We fill it up with only two
And when I hurt
Hurtin' runs off my shoulders
How can I hurt when I'm with you

Warm, touchin' warm
Reachin' out
Touchin' me
Touchin' you

Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I've been inclined
To believe they never would
Oh, no, no

Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I've been inclined
To believe they never would

1969 Stonebridge Music (ASCAP)

The arena rock group behind one of the fastest-selling debut albums in history, Boston was essentially the vehicle of studio wizard Tom Scholz, born March 10, 1947, in Toledo, OH. A rock fan throughout his teen years, he began writing songs while earning a master's degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduation, he began work for Polaroid, and eventually joined a local band led by guitarist Barry Goudreau. Though Scholz signed on as a keyboardist, he also began learning guitar, and his quick mastery of the instrument soon allowed him to take full control of the band.


At the same time, Scholz set about constructing his own 12-track recording studio in the basement of his home, where the group -- now dubbed Boston and including Goudreau, vocalist Brad Delp, bassist Fran Sheehan, and drummer John "Sib" Hashian -- recorded the demos that earned them a contract with Epic in 1975. Although some recording and overdubs were later done in Los Angeles, the 1976 release of Boston consisted largely of Scholz's original basement tapes; spawning three hit singles ("More Than a Feeling," "Long Time," and "Peace of Mind"), the LP shot immediately to the top of the charts, and remained the best-selling pop debut effort in history before it was supplanted by Whitney Houston's first album in 1986.


Despite the record's overwhelming success, Scholz spent over two years working on the follow-up, 1978's number one hit Don't Look Back; a perfectionist, he only then released the album because of intense label pressure for product. Unsatisfied with the results, he swore to produce the next album at his own pace; as a result, the chart-topping Third Stage did not appear until 1986, at which time only Scholz and Delp remained from the original lineup.


Scholz spent the next several years in the courtroom: first, he was sued by Goudreau, who alleged that Scholz had damaged his solo recording career (they settled out of court); next, he won a seven-year battle against Epic, which claimed Boston had reneged on its contract by taking so long between releases. When the band resurfaced again in 1994 with Walk On, Scholz was the lone remaining member; Delp and Goudreau had reunited in 1992 as RTZ, releasing the album Return to Zero. Unlike previous returns, Walk On was a notable failure. Radio and MTV ignored any attempts at singles or videos, and the minimalist approach taken by the popular alternative artists of the era made the crystalline production and lengthy recording time seem like an egotistical exercise. Compounding the problem was the poor songwriting, which could no longer be hidden with glossy production techniques. Scholz still hit the road to support it, but upon his return to the studio he knew he had to approach his situation differently.


Taking another eight years to work on the next record, he targeted the Internet crowd first by releasing a single to www.MP3.com in the summer of 2002. The track became the site's number one download, and word of their new album spread quickly. Secondly, Scholz set his lyrical sights on political targets, going so far as to title the record Corporate America as he emphasized his disdain for the system he had been a vital part of at one time. After releasing the record in the fall of that year, Boston embarked on a tour that took them into 2004. In 2006 it was announced that a new album was in the works with Scholz, Delp, and Goudreau all involved. This new project remained unreleased when Delp passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on March 9th, 2007.


In addition to his fame as a musician, Scholz also found success as an inventor and businessman. In 1981, he formed Scholz Research & Design, Inc., a company founded to create high-tech music equipment. After first developing the Power Soak, a volume-control device, SR&D introduced the Rockman, a small and inexpensive guitar amplifier with headphones. The Rockman proved phenomenally popular with other musicians, and the capital generated from its sales helped fund Scholz's further musical ambitions

PINK FLOYD is the premier space rock band. Since the mid-'60s, their music relentlessly tinkered with electronics and all manner of special effects to push pop formats to


their outer limits. At the same time they wrestled with lyrical themes and concepts of such massive scale that their music has taken on almost classical, operatic quality, in both sound and words. Despite their astral image, the group was brought down to earth in the 1980s by decidedly mundane power struggles over leadership and, ultimately, ownership of the band's very name. After that time, they were little more than a dinosaur act, capable of filling stadiums and topping the charts, but offering little more than a spectacular recreation of their most successful formulas. Their latter-day staleness cannot disguise the fact that, for the first decade or so of their existence, they were one of the most innovative groups around, in concert and (especially) in the studio.


While Pink Floyd are mostly known for their grandiose concept albums of the 1970s, they started as a very different sort of psychedelic band. Soon after they first began playing together in the mid-'60s, they fell firmly under the leadership of lead guitarist Syd Barrett, the gifted genius who would write and sing most of their early material. The Cambridge native shared the stage with Roger Waters (bass), Rick Wright (keyboards), and Nick Mason (drums). The name Pink Floyd, seemingly so far-out, was actually derived from the first names of two ancient bluesmen (Pink Anderson and Floyd Council). And at first, Pink Floyd were much more conventional than the act into which they would evolve, concentrating on the rock and R&B material that were so common to the repertoires of mid-'60s British bands.


Pink Floyd quickly began to experiment, however, stretching out songs with wild instrumental freak-out passages incorporating feedback; electronic screeches; and unusual, eerie sounds created by loud amplification, reverb, and such tricks as sliding ball bearings up and down guitar strings. In 1966, they began to pick up a following in the London underground; on-stage, they began to incorporate light shows to add to the psychedelic effect. Most importantly, Syd Barrett began to compose pop-psychedelic gems that combined unusual psychedelic arrangements (particularly in the haunting guitar and celestial organ licks) with catchy melodies and incisive lyrics that viewed the world with a sense of poetic, childlike wonder.


The group landed a recording contract with EMI in early 1967 and made the Top 20 with a brilliant debut single, "Arnold Layne," a sympathetic, comic vignette about a transvestite. The follow-up, the kaleidoscopic "See Emily Play," made the Top Ten. The debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, also released in 1967, may have been the greatest British psychedelic album other than Sgt. Pepper's. Dominated almost wholly by Barrett's songs, the album was a charming fun house of driving, mysterious rockers ("Lucifer Sam"); odd character sketches ("The Gnome"); childhood flashbacks ("Bike," "Matilda Mother"); and freakier pieces with lengthy instrumental passages ("Astronomy Domine," "Interstellar Overdrive," "Pow R Toch") that mapped out their fascination with space travel. The record was not only like no other at the time; it was like no other that Pink Floyd would make, colored as it was by a vision that was far more humorous, pop-friendly, and lighthearted than those of their subsequent epics.


The reason Pink Floyd never made a similar album was that Piper was the only one to be recorded under Barrett's leadership. Around mid-1967, the prodigy began showing increasingly alarming signs of mental instability. Barrett would go catatonic on-stage, playing music that had little to do with the material, or not playing at all. An American tour had to be cut short when he was barely able to function at all, let alone play the pop star game. Dependent upon Barrett for most of their vision and material, the rest of the group was nevertheless finding him impossible to work with, live or in the studio.


Around the beginning of 1968, guitarist Dave Gilmour, a friend of the band who was also from Cambridge, was brought in as a fifth member. The idea was that Gilmour would enable the Floyd to continue as a live outfit; Barrett would still be able to write and contribute to the records. That couldn't work either, and within a few months Barrett was out of the group. Pink Floyd's management, looking at the wreckage of a band that was now without its lead guitarist, lead singer, and primary songwriter, decided to abandon the group and manage Barrett as a solo act.


Such calamities would have proven insurmountable for 99 out of 100 bands in similar predicaments. Incredibly, Pink Floyd would regroup and not only maintain their popularity, but eventually become even more successful. It was early in the game yet, after all; the first album had made the British Top Ten, but the group was still virtually unknown in America, where the loss of Syd Barrett meant nothing to the media. Gilmour was an excellent guitarist, and the band proved capable of writing enough original material to generate further ambitious albums, Waters eventually emerging as the dominant composer. The 1968 follow-up to Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, made the British Top Ten, using Barrett's vision as an obvious blueprint, but taking a more formal, somber, and quasi-classical tone, especially in the long instrumental parts. Barrett, for his part, would go on to make a couple of interesting solo records before his mental problems instigated a retreat into oblivion.


Over the next four years, Pink Floyd would continue to polish their brand of experimental rock, which married psychedelia with ever-grander arrangements on a Wagnerian operatic scale. Hidden underneath the pulsing, reverberant organs and guitars and insistently restated themes were subtle blues and pop influences that kept the material accessible to a wide audience. Abandoning the singles market, they concentrated on album-length works, and built a huge following in the progressive rock underground with constant touring in both Europe and North America. While LPs like Ummagumma (divided into live recordings and experimental outings by each member of the band), Atom Heart Mother (a collaboration with composer Ron Geesin), and More... (a film soundtrack) were erratic, each contained some extremely effective music.


By the early '70s, Syd Barrett was a fading or nonexistent memory for most of Pink Floyd's fans, although the group, one could argue, never did match the brilliance of that somewhat anomalous 1967 debut. Meddle (1971) sharpened the band's sprawling epics into something more accessible, and polished the science fiction ambience that the group had been exploring ever since 1968. Nothing, however, prepared Pink Floyd or their audience for the massive mainstream success of their 1973 album, Dark Side of the Moon, which made their brand of cosmic rock even more approachable with state-of-the-art production; more focused songwriting; an army of well-time stereophonic sound effects; and touches of saxophone and soulful female backup vocals.


Dark Side of the Moon finally broke Pink Floyd as superstars in the United States, where it made number one. More astonishingly, it made them one of the biggest-selling acts of all time. Dark Side of the Moon spent an incomprehensible 741 weeks on the Billboard album chart. Additionally, the primarily instrumental textures of the songs helped make Dark Side of the Moon easily translatable on an international level, and the record became (and still is) one of the most popular rock albums worldwide.


It was also an extremely hard act to follow, although the follow-up, Wish You Were Here (1975), also made number one, highlighted by a tribute of sorts to the long-departed Barrett, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond." Dark Side of the Moon had been dominated by lyrical themes of insecurity, fear, and the cold sterility of modern life; Wish You Were Here and Animals (1977) developed these morose themes even more explicitly. By this time Waters was taking a firm hand over Pink Floyd's lyrical and musical vision, which was consolidated by The Wall (1979).


The bleak, overambitious double concept album concerned itself with the material and emotional walls modern humans build around themselves for survival. The Wall was a huge success (even by Pink Floyd's standards), in part because the music was losing some of its heavy-duty electronic textures in favor of more approachable pop elements. Although Pink Floyd had rarely even released singles since the late '60s, one of the tracks, "Another Brick in the Wall," became a transatlantic number one. The band had been launching increasingly elaborate stage shows throughout the '70s, but the touring production of The Wall, featuring a construction of an actual wall during the band's performance, was the most excessive yet.


In the 1980s, the group began to unravel. Each of the four had done some side and solo projects in the past; more troublingly, Waters was asserting control of the band's musical and lyrical identity. That wouldn't have been such a problem had The Final Cut (1983) been such an unimpressive effort, with little of the electronic innovation so typical of their previous work. Shortly afterward, the band split up -- for a while. In 1986, Waters was suing Gilmour and Mason to dissolve the group's partnership (Wright had lost full membership status entirely); Waters lost, leaving a Roger-less Pink Floyd to get a Top Five album with Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1987. In an irony that was nothing less than cosmic, about 20 years after Pink Floyd shed their original leader to resume their career with great commercial success, they would do the same again to his successor. Waters released ambitious solo albums to nothing more than moderate sales and attention, while he watched his former colleagues (with Wright back in tow) rescale the charts.


Pink Floyd still had a huge fan base, but there's little that's noteworthy about their post-Waters output. They knew their formula, could execute it on a grand scale, and could count on millions of customers -- many of them unborn when Dark Side of the Moon came out, and unaware that Syd Barrett was ever a member -- to buy their records and see their sporadic tours. The Division Bell, their first studio album in seven years, topped the charts in 1994 without making any impact on the current rock scene, except in a marketing sense. Ditto for the live Pulse album, recorded during a typically elaborately staged 1994 tour, which included a concert version of The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety. Waters' solo career sputtered along, highlighted by a solo recreation of The Wall, performed at the site of the former Berlin Wall in 1990, and released as an album. Syd Barrett continued to be completely removed from the public eye except as a sort of archetype for the fallen genius

The Monkees were the brainchild of television producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, who decided to emulate the zany, madcap humour of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night for the small screen. In September 1965, they placed in ad in the show biz trade paper, Variety, for four "folk & rock musicians" to appear in a TV series. Over 400 applied for the job, including Stephen Stills and Harry Nilsson, but as it turned out, only one of the four winners, guitarist and songwriter Michael Nesmith , actually saw the ad. Micky Dolenz (who would play drums), Davy Jones (who would sing), and Peter Tork (bass) found out about the opportunity from other sources. Nesmith and Tork had experience in the folk scene; Dolenz and Jones were primarily actors (although Nesmith and Jones had already made some obscure solo recordings).

From the outset, it was made clear that the Monkees were hired to be television actors first, and musicians a distant second. There would be original material generated for them to sing in the series, mostly by professional songwriters like Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Carole King, Gerry Goffin, and Neil Diamond. There would be records as well, with weekly exposure to promote the tunes, but the group wouldn't do much more than sing, although the series would give the impression that they played their own instruments.

On the other hand, they weren't devoid of musical talent, and at their best, managed to craft some enduring pop/rock hits. "I'm a Believer", "Last Train to Clarksville", "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You", "Pleasant Valley Sunday", "Stepping Stone", "Valleri" and "Daydream Believer" were all pleasantly jangling, harmony rock numbers with clever hook lines, and all were huge hits in 1966-68. Scorned at their peak by hipsters for not playing on many of their own records, the group gained some belated critical respect for their catchy, good-time brand of pop.

The TV show was a big hit with young audiences between 1966 and 1968, with slapstick comedy, super-fast editing, and thin plots that could be banded together by almost surreal humour. It wasn't A Hard Day's Night, but it was, in its way, innovative relative to the conventions of television at the time. The irony was that, by the time the series debuted in September 1966, the Beatles themselves had just released Revolver, and had evolved way beyond their moptop phase into psychedelia.

Also in September 1966, their debut single "Last Train to Clarksville" became their first big hit, reaching number one, as did the follow-up, "I'm a Believer". They were quickly one of the most popular acts in the business, yet they were not allowed to play anything on most of their first records, only to sing; the instruments would be handled by session players. This was particularly hard for Mike Nesmith, a serious musician and songwriter, to swallow, although he did manage to place a few of his own tunes on their records from the start.

Eventually the Monkees revealed that they didn't play on most of their own records, and Nesmith in particular incited the group to wrest control of their recordings into their own hands. Partly to deflect criticism of the group as nothing more than puppets, and partly to effect control over their musical destiny (some of their early recordings had been packaged and released without their consent), the Monkees did indeed play and write much of the music on their third album, "Headquarters" (1967), with a lot of help from producer Chip Douglas . It didn't prove the band to be hidden geniuses, in fact sounding not much different from their previous releases, but as a hard-won victory to establish their own identity, it was a major point of pride. They would continue, however, to rely upon industry songwriters for the rest of their hit singles, and frequently employ session musicians throughout the rest of their career.

Despite the questions surrounding their musical competence, the Monkees did tour before live audiences. They made their own contribution to rock history by enlisting Jimi Hendrix , then barely known in the U.S., as an opening act for a 1967 tour; Hendrix lasted only a few shows before everyone agreed that the combination was a mismatch (to put it mildly). But the Monkees were always a lot hipper personally than many assumed from their bubblegum packaging. Their albums are strewn with rather ambitious, even mildly psychedelic cuts, some rather successful, some absolutely awful.

In 1968, they gained their freak credentials with the movie "Head", a messy, indulgent, occasionally inspired piece of drug-addled weirdness that was co-written and co-produced by Jack Nicholson (before he had broken through to stardom with Easy Rider).

By 1968, the Monkee phenomenon was drawing to a close. The show's final episode aired in March 1968, and Head, released in November, was not a commercial success, confusing the teenyboppers and confounding the critics. Surprisingly, it was not Nesmith, but Tork who was the first to leave the group, at the end of 1968. They carried on as a trio, releasing a couple of fairly dismal albums in 1969, as well as producing a little-seen TV special.

By the end of the '60s, Nesmith, who had established his credentials as a songwriter with "Different Drum," which was taken into the Top 20 by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys, was also gone, to start a lengthy solo career that finally allowed him to stretch out as a serious artist. That left only Dolenz and Jones, who fulfilled the Monkees contract with the pointless 'Changes' album in 1970.

When enough years separated the music from the hype, the Monkees underwent a critical rehab of sorts, as listeners fondly remembered their singles as classy, well-executed, fun pop/rock. That led to a predictable clamour for a reunion, especially after their albums were reissued to surprisingly swift sales in the mid-'80s, and their series was rerun on MTV.

Nesmith was having none of it; by this time he was a respected and hugely successful music video mogul with his Pacific Arts company. The other three did reunite to tour and record a predictably horrendous album, "Pool It!" (Nesmith did join them once onstage in 1989). Rhino records has treated the Monkee catalogue with a great deal of respect, reissuing all of their original albums on CD with added unreleased/rare bonus tracks, and even assembling a box set.

Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork celebrated the Monkees' 30th anniversary with a concert tour that ran throughout 1996. In 1997, Michael Nesmith joined them for a spring concert tour of Great Britain and Ireland. All four Monkees were with their concert tour in the U.S. in the summer of 1997.

In 1999 Davy Jones was to have co-starred again with Peter Noone and Bobby Sherman on the Teen Idols concert tour, but in early April, Davy announced he would be leaving the tour immediately. Davy did not appear on any Teen Idols dates that year. In 2003, Davy was performing solo shows with his band around the country, as well as training horses.

Micky Dolenz began working seriously on his directing career in 1999. He directed an episode of the ABC-TV sitcom "Boy Meets World". With Davy's departure from the 1999 edition of the Teen Idols tour, Micky was asked to take his place on the tour, and he accepted the invitation. He continues to act and perform solo on the oldies circut.

Peter Tork has been touring regularly with his blues band Shoe Suede Blues.

Michael Nesmith completed a bicoastal book tour to promote his novel, "The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora" (1998, St. Martin's Press). He also began working on his second novel, and trying to drum up interest in getting his script, "Fried Pies", turned into a feature film. Michael Nesmith's long-running legal trouble with PBS was finally concluded when a federal court jury awarded him a settlement of nearly $47 million dollars. PBS appealed the verdict. In 2003, Michael was working on a new album, "Rays".

By 2006, the members of the Monkees were saying that they have no plans to work together in the future. "I would not work with those guys again if my life depended on it," Jones told Scripps Howard News Service. "I can't be responsible for their attitudes and the way they treat people."

In the end, although many critics dismiss the band as "the fabricated four", The Monkees left us with a series of fondly remembered, toe-tapping hits from the classic age of rock and roll.

This was the first band that I personally saw live in 1973, with the warm up band being Billy Preston,Now 1000's of shows later I will always remember my virgin concert initiation.!!!!!


The foundation of what was to become "Grand Funk Railroad" was laid in Flint, Michigan in the mid 1960's. Richard Terrance Knapp was a popular local D.J. who decided to leave radio to enter the music end of the business. After deejaying at record hops with a local band named "The Jazz Masters", which consisted of Don Brewer (drums), Al Pippins (guitar), Bob Caldwell (keyboards), and Herm Jackson (bass), Knapp lied to them that he was personal friends with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. Because of this and his radio connections, the band invited him to join the group as their lead singer. To sound more "English", they renamed the band "The Pack", and Richard Knapp started using "Terry Knight" as his stage name.

The group soon developed a large local following and reached number 46 on the national record charts with a song called "I Who Have Nothing", released on the small "Lucky Eleven" label. Herman Jackson was drafted, and was replaced by a local kid named Mark Farner. Eventually, Terry Knight left the band and The Pack continued on without him.

By 1968, Farner and Brewer decided to leave and form a new band of their own. They recruited bass player Mel Schacher from Question Mark and The Mysterians, and renamed themselves "Grand Funk Railroad", inspired by a Michigan landmark, The Grand Trunk Railroad. By this time, Terry Knight had landed a job at Capitol Records in New York, but accepted an invitation to become the trio's manager.

After a wildly successful performance at the Atlanta Pop Festival on July 4, 1969, the band landed a recording contract with Capitol Records and immediately began making its name by performing at several large pop festivals. Their first singles reached the charts but Grand Funk soon proved its real strength in the album market. "On Time" reached number 27 in 1969, followed by the number 11, "Grand Funk" in 1970. By the summer of that year they had become a major concert attraction, and their albums routinely reached the Top 10 for the next four years.

The group's huge success is often attributed to the public relations expertise of manager Knight. In 1970, for example, Knight reportedly paid $100,000 for a huge billboard in New York City's Times Square to promote the group's "Closer To Home" LP, which subsequently became their first Top 10 album, reaching number 6 and spawning the FM radio-staple title track.

In June 1971, Grand Funk became only the second group (after the Beatles ) to sell out New York's Shea Stadium. Their recordings sold in greater quantity, even though many radio stations ignored their releases. 1970's "Live" Album reached number 5 and included another concert and radio favourite in Farner's "Mean Mistreater". The next year saw the release of "Survival" and "E Pluribus Funk", the latter most notable for its round album cover.

Around the time of recording E Pluribus Funk, it was decided to replace Terry Knight as Manager. Andy Cavaliere and later, John Eastman, father of Linda McCartney, were hired to take his place. The next few years were spent in litigation over the rights to the name "Grand Funk Railroad" and song royalties. The band eventually got to keep their name, but had to pay Knight a huge settlement.

In 1973, the group shortened its name officially to "Grand Funk", and added a fourth member, former "Fabulous Pack" member, keyboard player Craig Frost. Now produced by Todd Rundgren, they finally cracked the singles market, reaching number 1 with the album title track "We're An American Band", a celebration of the group's times on the road. In 1974, a major revision of Little Eva 's "The Loco-Motion" also reached the top (the first time in US chart history that a cover version of a song that had previously reached number 1 also attained that position). Later that year, they scored another top twenty hit with "Bad Time" (To Be In Love).

By the time 1975 rolled around, and the disco craze in full swing, the band found that their style of "garage band music", had lost much of its appeal. The following year, the group reverted to its original name of "Grand Funk Railroad" and signed with MCA Records to record "Good Singin', Good Playin", produced by Frank Zappa.

Although it is considered one of their finest by many fans, the album failed to reach the Top 50, and a discouraged Mark Farner decided to quit the group. He then went on to record two solo albums, while Don Brewer, Mel Schacher and Craig Frost added guitarist Billy Elworthy to form a new group they called simply "Flint". The new band failed to find commercial success with their solitary album.

In 1981, Farner and Brewer added bassist, Dennis Ballinger and re-formed to record "Grand Funk Lives" and "What's Funk?" for the Full Moon label. Failing to recapture former glories, they split again. Farner returned to his solo career, recording three Christian albums, before joining a band called "Adrenalin". Don Brewer and Craig Frost joined Bob Seger's Silver Bullet Band.

In 1995, Mark Farner was asked to join "Ringo Starr's All Starr Band", and during the next year, Mark, Don and Mel decided to go out and play a few "Reunion" concerts back east. Howard Eddy Jr. was asked to join as a sideman on keyboards, rhythm guitar, and back ground vocals. It wasn't long after that it became official, Grand Funk Railroad was reunited. The band toured extensively from 1996 to 1998, including a benefit for Bosnian orphans in 1997. Their 1998 tour was listed in Pollstar's Top 100 Shows as one of the top grossing tours of the year. Capitol Records released Grand Funk's Anthology "Thirty Years of Funk" on June 29, 1999.

The new millennium saw founding members Don Brewer and Mel Schacher joined by singer Max Carl (38 Special), lead guitarist Bruce Kulick (12 years with KISS), and keyboardist, Tim Cashion (Bob Seger and Robert Palmer).

Together, Brewer and Schacher created a new, dynamic and multi-talented five-piece band to not only carry on the tradition of the Grand Funk hits, but also having the potential to create a brand new chapter in the legacy of Grand Funk Railroad.

Emerson, Lake and Palmer were one of rock and roll's earliest "supergroups" who were formed from members of three already successful bands, The Nice, King Crimson and Atomic Rooster.
The Nice had enjoyed several minor hits and were beginning to build a following in the United States, gaining attention for their wild stage show that was a showcase for keyboard wizard, Keith Emerson. King Crimson had risen to fame after their debut album "The Court Of The Crimson King" had caught on with underground rock lovers. The amazingly tight LP had brought the band from obscurity to a major concert attraction in the UK, Europe and America in just a few months.

In the summer and fall of 1969, the two groups shared the bill at two major concerts in England. Inner turmoil had already begun to tear King Crimson apart and Keith Emerson was feeling that he'd taken The Nice as far as it would go. During a sound check, King Crimson's bassist, Greg Lake began to jam with Keith Emerson. After some discussion, the pair came away with the feeling that it was time to move on from their current bands.

The final live performance for the original King Crimson took place on December 16th and the band returned home. The group still had contractual obligations and were desperately trying to re-build King Crimson with Greg Lake still at the forefront. Although he had already made up his mind to leave, Lake did stick around long enough to finish a second album, using studio musicians to fill in for band members who had already split. The album, called "In The Wake Of Poseidon" was released in March of 1970 and featured Lake singing on just three tracks. King Crimson made one final appearance on the BBC TV show, "Top Of The Pops" with Greg Lake on an acoustic guitar, later the same month.

Two weeks later, Britain's New Musical Express ran the headline: "Keith Emerson and Greg Lake to form new group", while the pair were busy holding auditions for a third member. Several drummers were considered, spoken to, or auditioned; among them were Coliseum's Jon Hiseman, Cream's Ginger Baker, as well as Mitch Mitchell from The Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was Cream's manager, Robert Stigwood, who suggested Carl Palmer, a 20 year old drummer who had worked with Atomic Rooster and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. After a pair of auditions, Palmer was hired.

Although Emerson wanted to keep the project a keyboard-bass-drums trio, there were serious talks about adding Jimi Hendrix to the line up. A jam session was set up with Hendrix for late summer, 1970, but Jimi died before it came together. The rumours of the potential band with Hendrix did leak out to the British music press, who began running articles saying the band would be called "Hendrix, Emerson, Lake & Palmer" or HELP for short.

Before they even had an album out, the band began playing shows. Although most ELP fans believe their first gig was at the massive three day long Isle Of Wight Pop Music Festival on August 29th., the band has since revealed that their first gig actually took place six days earlier at a 3000 seat hall in Plymouth Guildhall. According to Lake, the band was paid $500. The show that ELP played at the Isle of Wight was spectacular. Keith Emerson played the Hammond organ, piano, and his custom Moog synthesizer. Since their first album had not yet been released, the audience was not familiar with their music, but responded with thunderous applause, nonetheless.

Although some critics, such as Melody Maker's Chris Welch, praised the band's early shows and its debut album, not everyone in the media was a fan. John Peel, a popular British DJ called ELP's performance at the Isle of Wight, "a tragic waste of time, talent and electricity."

The trio spent much of the summer of 1970 rehearsing and writing material for its debut album after signing with Island Records for Europe, and an Atlantic subsidiary, Cotillion Records, for the US. Recording commenced in July, 1970, with Lake producing. The resulting album, simply entitled "Emerson, Lake & Palmer", remains one of the most popular rock LPs of all time. It would be the album's final track, an acoustic / folk ballad called " Lucky Man" - penned solely by Lake - that would launch the group, bring Greg Lake's voice to the forefront of the pop music scene, and give the band its biggest hit.

In early 1971, ELP began work on its next studio album. The LP, called simply "Tarkus", was completed in February of 1971 after just six days of recording. The LP was released in July and went straight to #1 in England and #9 in the US. A single," Stones of Years"/"A Time and Place", was released in the US, but failed to chart.

As a follow-up album, the band wanted to release its live recording of "Pictures At An Exhibition". However, the band's US label, Atlantic refused to release it. Manager Stewart young remembers: "The label told the band it was a piece of shit and would damage their careers. We felt otherwise, and had released it in Europe, where it was a huge hit. The British import started to filter to US shops and eventually sold 50,000 copies.The next thing I know the label is on the phone telling me they'd like to put the album out. I told them to go to hell. Three days later the President of the label flew to London to try to get us to change our mind. Eventually, we put the deal together and the album came out. Ultimately, it was a multi-platinum hit." The disc charted at #3 in England and in the US, it reached #10 on Billboard's Hot 200 chart.

The band toured England in the fall of 1971 and the US and Canada in the spring of '72, before releasing their third studio album "Trilogy" in July. Originally, the album cover was to have featured a work by Salvador Dali, but his demand for £50,000 killed the idea by the band's label. The LP reached #2 in England and #5 in the US. A single, "From the Beginning" was released stateside and managed to climb to #39. Several other cuts, especially "Hoedown", received considerable airplay on US radio stations.

By 1972, ELP was performing about 180 concerts a year, mainly in the US. Melody Maker Magazine voted the band "Best Group" in both British and International sections. By autumn, there were a few changes for ELP. One of them was the introduction of King Crimson's Peter Sinfield as a writing partner with Greg Lake. The other change was the start of ELP's own record company, Manticore Records, to ensure more control artistically. Manticore also began signing other acts to release. Among them: Peter Sinfield, PFM, Stray Dog, Keith Christmas, Junior Hanson, and Banco. Manticore Records was in full operation by April, 1973.

ELP returned to the road in March of 1973, touring Europe for three months and started recording songs for their next studio album, which would be called "Brain Salad Surgery". The LP was released in both the US and England in November 1973 and went on to reach #2 on the charts in England and #11 in the US. ELP toured the US from December 1973 to February 1974 to promote the album. By this time, the band's stage act had grown to immense size. They traveled with 25 roadies and 35 tons of equipment, including a revolving drum kit, Quadrophonic sound, 32 sound cabinets, a grand piano that rose 30 feet into the air and flipped end over end, and a special lighting system. ELP returned to the US to play additional shows through March and April.

On April 6, ELP played the biggest show in its career, when the band co-headlined at the California Jam. The festival was held at the Ontario Motor Speedway with several other established acts including Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Black Oak Arkansas, Earth Wind & Fire and The Eagles. It was attended by 350,000 people. The show was filmed for television and later broadcast by ABC, marking the first time US viewers had seen ELP perform on television. Today, this video remains one of the most in-demand titles for collectors, especially because of the memorable shot where Keith Emerson was spun around and around, 40 feet in the air while playing his 9 foot Grand piano.

In late April of 1974, ELP returned to England to play a sold out show at Wembley Arena. Then, it was back to the US for another tour that would last until the end of the summer. In August, the triple album "Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends...Ladies and Gentlemen, Emerson, Lake & Palmer" was released. As with the other ELP recordings, fans eagerly embraced it. The live album hit #4 on the US charts and went platinum. It remains one of only a few triple albums to ever hit the US Top 10.

After the '74 tour, the band took a long vacation. Keith took up flying and scuba diving. Greg and his wife gave birth to a daughter. Carl and his then-girlfriend moved to a house in Tenerife on the Canary Islands near Spain and he took up karate. When they had rested, they all began work on solo albums. It had been decided that each member would do a solo album and the band would not work together for three years.

Keith Emerson started planning a piano concerto for his solo recording. It would eventually become his most ambitious work. Lake re-grouped with Peter Sinfield and started writing acoustic songs to be recorded with a full orchestra. Among the songs put to disc during this period were " C'est LaVie," and "Watching Over You". Carl Palmer began recording a percussion concerto, a collection of big band recordings made with Harry South and a series of individual tracks that included "LA '74" with Eagles guitarist, Joe Walsh.

With the exception of few solo singles ( Greg Lake's " I Believe In Father Christmas" and Emerson's "Honky Tonk Blues" ) ELP was completely out of the public eye in 1975 and most of 1976. Keith spent more time completing his piano concerto, and started to record it with a full symphony. It was an experience he would later say was among the most difficult of his career.

Said Emerson: "When I recorded the Piano Concerto with the London Philharmonic, to them it was just a joke. It was ridiculous. The brass section at the back would be reading porney magazines and the conductor wouldn't even see it. They couldn't give a damn about this new piece of music. So I was pretty stubborn. I booked studio time in London for six sessions. I said, ' You're not taking me seriously and I'm going to book 'em until they get it right.'"

Later in 1976, Emerson was approached to write the music for a Norman Jewison film entitled, The Dogs Of War. The film score never happened (although the movie did come out in 1981), but out of it came "Pirates", which featured lyrics by Greg Lake and Pete Sinfield. "Greg and Pete worked like mad -- the longest they've ever worked on one piece of music" said Emerson. "They literally delved into the history of pirates, and that's why the lyrics turned out so well. The idea of pirates was very good for my music because my music is often very adventurous, much like an adventure novel. It demanded to have visuals with it." It would also mark the beginning of the project that eventually became Works Vol. I and Vol. II. In a unique double LP concept, Works Vol. I featured three solo sides of material and one side of ELP recordings.

As ambitious as the Works Volume I album was, it was no match for what the band had up its sleeve for the road show. Fulfilling a life long dream of Keith Emerson's, ELP launched its seventh US Tour with a full symphony orchestra and choir consisting of 75 union musicians. They were taken from a pool of over 1,500 musicians auditioned by the band in six cities around the world.

In 1977, Emerson, Lake & Palmer was touring with an entourage of over 130 people, and a daily payroll cost of $20,000 per day. The tour ran into further complications when union regulations prevented the band from more than three shows a week or travel over 250 miles per day. These regulations made routing nearly impossible and made it financially impossible for the band to make any money with anything less than a sell out wherever the tour went. Before the start of the tour, the band knew it would take a lot just to break even, but after two weeks, they were on track to lose over $3 million dollars. The truth was painfully evident: the orchestra would have to be dropped. A week later, it was and the band continued on the tour as a trio from the Fall of 1977 through March 6th, 1978, when the band played its final show in New Haven, Connecticut. A collection of additional tracks from the Works sessions was released after the tour as Works Vol. II.

By 1978, the band wanted to take a few years off to pursue solo projects, but Atlantic Records wouldn't let the ELP out of its contract. The label demanded a new studio album, as required in its agreement. Emerson, Lake and Palmer were forced to head to Compass Point Studios in The Bahamas to record what would become an album called "Love Beach", a disjointed, uninspired collection of songs released in mid 1979, It also marked the end of ELP for 12 years.

Emerson, Lake and Palmer announced their break-up to the press in December of 1979. After reported record sales of over 30 million records, the members now looked to their own plans for the future. Keith Emerson was already busy in Rome composing and recording music for the movie "Inferno". Greg was writing songs for his solo album and Carl formed the group PM. All three members would see varying degrees of artistic and commercial success as solo artists during the 1980s. Emerson did several film scores ( including Sylvester Stallone's Nighthawks ) and a few solo albums, including 1982's Honky ( a hit in Italy). Greg Lake put a rock'n'roll band together with ex-Thin Lizzy axeman Gary Moore. He returned to playing guitar and released two well received solo albums, "Greg Lake" ( 1981) and "Manoevres" (1983) and had hit singles with both records, and did a US / UK tour in 1981 with the solo band.

Although Carl Palmer's PM only did one record and never toured, he would emerge in 1982 with Asia, a progressive pop rock super group that also featured Yes's Steve Howe ( on guitar), King Crimson's John Wetton (on bass and vocals) and ex-Buggles keyboardist, Geoff Downes. With the advent of MTV and the help of the new medium of music videos, Asia would soon hit #1 with hits like "In The Heat Of The Moment", " Sole Survivor" and " Only Time Will Tell." During almost six years with Asia, Palmer would see a multi platinum success and sold out concerts throughout the world. In 1983, Palmer and Lake would work together again when Lake agreed to sing and play bass with Asia for a series of shows in Japan and a worldwide MTV broadcast. He was recruited when John Wetton had temporarily left the line-up.

During the summer of 1985, Keith received a call from Jim Lewis, a vice-president with Polydor Records, about a possible ELP reunion. He eventually did meet with Greg Lake in London to discuss a joint project. The two hadn't seen much of each other since the break-up, staying in touch only whenever ELP business matters needed attention. Palmer was still contracted to Asia and was unable to participate, but gave his blessing to Emerson and Lake to work together again.

After auditioning several drummers, Keith thought of his friend Cozy Powell, then a drummer on tour in South America with Whitesnake. Powell had also belonged to the Jeff Beck Group and Rainbow and had released some solo material. Once Powell started playing with Keith and Greg, they decided to formally become a trio.

Emerson Lake & Powell released their debut LP in 1986 and began rehearsing in England for a US tour. Before heading out on a tour with Asia, Carl Palmer dropped by to wish them luck. The tour began in El Paso, Texas on August 15 and continued until October 30th. Emerson, Lake & Powell, although unable to attain the success of ELP, would make one of the best albums of both Emerson and Lake's career. Rockers like "Touch & Go" and misty-eyed ballads such as "Lay Down Your Guns" firmly re-established them again with progressive rock audiences. High anticipation came when the trio announced a North American tour in 1986, which would end up being the group's only trek across the US. "That was a good band, and a strong album, but the tour was difficult," says Lake. Shortly after the tour ended, so did Emerson, Lake and Powell. Sadly, Cozy Powell was killed in a car accident near Bristol, England on April 5th, 1998 at the age of 50.

The following year, 1987, Keith got a hold of Carl and asked him to sit in on a session. Carl explained that he had left Asia and was planning a new band with a Californian named Robert Berry. Keith had some new songs and was working at the time with a songwriter named Sue Schriffin. Emerson, Palmer and Berry got together, recorded a few demos, and formed the band '3'. They were signed by A&R wizard John Kalodner to Geffen Records and released one studio album called "To The Power Of 3". In the spring of 1988, they embarked on a tour of US theaters and clubs. The tour was a success, but the record failed to ignite sales, and eventually the trio disbanded to work on solo projects.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s all three members kept busy with a myriad of projects. Emerson cut more tracks for a solo album; Lake recorded several songs with Asia's Geoff Downes for a band project that was eventually shelved and Palmer returned to the Asia line up for a series of tours.

It was in 1991 that all three were contacted by record maven Phil Carson to see about working together once again as ELP. Initially, the idea was for the band to write and record music for a film project that Carson's Victory Records was involved with. The film project never materialized, but a new ELP album, "Black Moon" did.

In 1992, the band returned to concert stages and fans as well as the rock press embraced the reunion. "Black Moon" was spearheaded by the insightful production of Mark Mancina, a true fan of the band and an accomplished musician himself. (Mancina has since gone on to do film score work for several Hollywood blockbusters, including The Lion King, Twister, and Con Air. ) "Black Moon" firmly returned ELP to the contemporary music scene and magically bridged the traditional ELP sound with a vibrant, modern sonic landscape.

The band toured extensively throughout 1992 and 1993, and moved to LA in late '93 to record the follow up LP. It was during this time that Keith Emerson began having problems with nerves in his right arm. The health issues would force him to have an operation on his ulner nerve, and would eventually affect the outcome of 1994's "In The Hot Seat", which had to be recorded in separate segments and pieced together in the studio. It was also plagued by uneven material. Emerson's health problems also forced the band to suspend touring. The members took two years off, and returned in 1996 for a triumphant US tour with old friends, Jethro Tull.

The ELP/Tull tour was among the best received, - and best attended - concert series of that summer. And although, all three members have continued to develop projects outside the band, the warm reception from the fans and the press which ELP has received since it returned to touring solidified the group once again.

In 1997 and 1998, ELP continued to tour, but have now split to continue their solo careers.

Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer enjoyed nearly three decades as a premier Progressive Rock band and their music has remained powerful and thought-provoking throughout.

Eric Patrick Clapton was born on March 30, 1945, in Surrey, England. He was the illegitimate son of Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward Fryer, a Canadian soldier stationed in England. After W.W.II, Fryer returned to his wife in Canada, Patricia left Eric in the custody of his grandparents, Rose and Jack Clapp. (The surname Clapton is from Rose's first husband, Reginald Cecil Clapton.) Patricia moved to Germany where she eventually married another Canadian soldier, Frank McDonald.

Eric, who was called "Ricky" by his grandparents, was a quiet and polite child, an above average student with an aptitude for art. He was raised believing that his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his sister, to shield him the stigma that illegitimacy carried with it. The truth was eventually revealed to him at the age of nine by his grandmother. Later, when Eric would visit his mother, they would still pretend to be brother and sister.

As an youngster, Clapton's first exposure to rock and roll was a Jerry Lee Lewis appearance on British television. Lewis' explosive performance, coupled with young Eric's emerging love of the blues and American R&B, inspired him to learn to play guitar. Eric enrolled at the Kingston College of Art, but was soon expelled for playing guitar in class.

At seventeen, he took a job as a manual labourer and spent most of his free time playing the electric guitar he persuaded his grandparents to purchase for him. In time, Clapton joined a number of British blues bands, including the Roosters and Casey Jones, and eventually rose to prominence as a member of the Yardbirds, whose line-up would eventually include all three British guitar heroes of the sixties: Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. The group became a sensation for their blues-tinged rock, as did the budding guitar virtuoso Clapton, who earned the nickname "Slowhand" because his forceful string-bending often resulted in broken guitar strings, which he would replace onstage while the crowd engaged in a slow hand-clapping.

Despite the popularity of the band's first two albums, "Five Live Yardbirds" and "For Your Love", Clapton left in 1965 because he felt the band was veering away from blues in favour of a more commercially viable pop focus. He joined John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and his talent blossomed at an accelerated rate. He quickly became the defining musical force of the group. "Clapton is God" was the hue and cry of a fanatic following that propelled the band's Bluesbreakers album to No. 6 on the English pop charts.

Clapton parted company with the Bluesbreakers in mid-1966 to form his own band, "Cream", with bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker. With this line-up, Clapton sought "to start a revolution in musical thought, to change the world, to upset people and to shock them." His vision was more than met as Cream quickly became the pre-eminent rock trio of the late sixties. On the strength of their first three albums (Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears, and Wheels of Fire) and extensive touring, the band achieved a level of international fame approaching that of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and Clapton became even more almighty in the minds of his fans. Drug abuse and inflated egos eventually led to a split of the band and to a farewell tour in 1968 as well as the release of the Goodbye album in 1969.

Early in 1969, Clapton united with Baker, bassist Rick Grech, and Steve Winwood, formerly of The Spencer Davis Group and Traffic, to record one album as Blind Faith, rock's first "supergroup." In support of their self-titled album, Blind Faith set out on a sold-out, twenty-four-city American tour, the stress of which resulted in the demise of the band less than a year after its inception.

Clapton kept busy for a time as an occasional guest player with Delaney and Bonnie, the husband-and-wife team that had been Blind Faith's opening act during their tour. A disappointing live album and the single, "Never Ending Love" were released in 1970, as was Clapton's self-titled solo debut. That album featured three other musicians--bassist Carl Radle, keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, and drummer Jim Gordon, from Delaney's band, and yielded a modest pop hit with Clapton's version of J.J. Cale's "After Midnight." The four eventually called themselves Derek and the Dominos, and recorded Clapton's double album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs", with the added contribution of slide guitarist Duane Allman. An anguished lament of unrequited love, "Layla" was inspired by a difficult love triangle between Clapton, his close friend George Harrison, and Harrison's wife Pattie (she and Clapton eventually married in 1979 and divorced in 1988). Unfortunately, personal struggles and career pressure on the guitarist led to a major heroin addiction. Derek and the Dominos crumbled during the course of an American tour and an aborted attempt to record a second album.

Clapton withdrew from the spotlight in the early seventies, wallowing in his addiction and then struggling to conquer it. Following the advice of the Who's Pete Townsend, he underwent a controversial but effective electro-acupuncture treatment and was fully rehabilitated. He rebounded creatively with a role in the film version of Townsend's rock opera, Tommy, and with a string of albums, including the reggae-influenced 461 Ocean Boulevard, which yielded a chart-topping single cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff." Some critics and fans were disappointed by Clapton's post-rehab efforts, feeling that he had abandoned his former guitar-heavy approach in favour of a more laid-back and vocal-conscious one.

"Just One Night", Clapton's 1980 live album, reminded fans just exactly who their guitar hero was, but unfortunately, this period marked Clapton's slide into a serious drinking problem that eventually hospitalized him for a time in 1981. He experienced a creative resurgence after overcoming his alcoholism, releasing a string of consistently successful albums - "Another Ticket" (1981), "Money and Cigarettes" (1983), "Behind the Sun" (1985), "August" (1986), "Journeyman" (1989) and turning his personal life around. Though some say Clapton never regained the musical heights of his heroin days, his legend nevertheless continued to grow. That he was a paragon of rock became more than apparent when Polygram released a rich four-CD retrospective of his career, "Crossroads", in 1988; the set scored Grammy awards for Best Historical Album and Best Liner Notes.

In late 1990, the fates delivered Clapton a terrible blow when guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan and Clapton road crew members Colin Smythe and Nigel Browne - all close friends of Clapton's - were killed in a helicopter crash. A few months later, he was dealt another cruel blow when Conor, his son by Italian model Lori Del Santo, fell forty-nine stories from Del Santo's Manhattan high-rise apartment to his death. Clapton channelled his shattering grief into writing the heart-wrenching 1992 Grammy-winning tribute to his son, "Tears in Heaven." (Clapton received a total of six Grammys that year for the single and for the album "Unplugged".)

In 1994, he began once again to play traditional blues; the album, "From the Cradle", marked a return to raw blues standards and it hit with critics and fans. Clapton showed no signs of slowing down: in February of 1997 he picked up Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance Grammys for "Change the World," from the soundtrack of the John Travolta movie "Phenomenon". The year 2000 saw Clapton's "My Father's Eyes" climb the charts, to score another hit for the legendary guitarist.

In his 40-year-plus career, Eric Clapton has rolled up plenty of honors - numerous hits, 18 Grammys and becoming the first musician inducted three times into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Prior to forming Dr. Hook And The Medicine Show, George Cummings, Ray Sawyer and Billy Francis were members of an earlier group called "The Chocolate Papers", along with Bobby Dimingus, Popeye Phillips and Jimmy "Wolf Cub" Allen. After touring clubs in Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, the six settled in Biloxi to open up their own club called "Chez Joey". The group played as the house band for a while, then went to Chicago, where after a brief stint, Cummings left to form a new band in the New York area.

The year was 1968 when Cummings called his old friend Ray Sawyer to come to New Jersey and join him. This new group began performing using no name at all, until one night, a club owner asked George what name to use when advertising the band. Right on the spot, George came up with the name, "Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show", in reference to Ray's eye patch making him look like Captain Hook from 'Peter Pan' (Ray had lost his eye in an auto accident) and since drugs were all the rage at the time, he tacked on "The Medicine Show".

They had been performing together for about a month or two, when Dennis Locorriere came in one night and sat in on guitar. By the end of the evening, he was asked to join the group. As time passed, George brought two other former 'Chocolate Papers' members in, Popeye Phillips on drums and then Bill Francis to play keyboards. Popeye didn't stay long and moved back to Mobile. He was replaced by Jay David.

Their first big professional break came in 1970 when record producer Ron Haffkine heard a tape of the band's music and asked them to perform the Shel Silverstein song 'Last Morning' in the Dustin Hoffman film, 'Who Is Harry Kellerman And Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?' Silverstein, a Playboy magazine cartoonist, had composed the film's musical score and he was subsequently to play an important role in Dr. Hook's story, writing many of their earliest successes. Ron Haffkine meanwhile went on to produce all of Dr. Hook's recordings.

The band signed their first record deal with CBS/Columbia and began the recording of their debut album in New York City, completing all but the track that was to become their first hit single.

After being invited to play at the CBS Records convention in Los Angeles, the band moved to California, settling in San Francisco. It was there that Shel Silverstein played the newly written 'Sylvia's Mother' for them and they decided to include it on their self titled album, released later that year. Initial reaction was encouraging and CBS issued the track, 'Sylvia's Mother' as a single.

The quirky, offbeat love song got off to a slow start when it was first released, managing only to make the lower end of the U.S. pop charts before leaving without a trace. Undeterred, Clive Davis, then boss of CBS Records, was determined to salvage 'Sylvia's Mother'.

Davis believed the record could be a hit and put CBS' full promotion efforts behind the single. It was re-released in July 1972, and this time, 'Sylvia's Mother' climbed all the way to number one, selling over a million copies. Shortly after, the record repeated its American success in Britain where it topped out at number two, spending 13 weeks in the British Top 50 - a considerable achievement for an act that had been unheard of only 12 months before.

Later that year, again with Haffkine producing and with two new members, bassist Jance Garfat and guitarist Rik Elswit, the band recorded their second album, irreverently titled 'Sloppy Seconds'. From this album, their second single, 'Carry Me, Carrie', was chosen. Although the single was a moderate success, reaching the higher end of the Billboard Top 100, the album just missed the Top 40. The band's chart fortunes were restored however, with the release of 'The Cover Of The Rolling Stone', another wry Shel Silverstein composition, again taken from 'Sloppy Seconds'. The single was a huge success in the U.S., climbing to number two and securing the band their very own cover of Rolling Stone magazine in March 1973.

'The Cover Of The Rolling Stone' gave Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show their second million-selling single. Ironically however, the record ran into problems in Great Britain when it was released. The BBC steadfastly refused to play it on either TV or radio because the song's title was deemed an advertisement for the famous American rock music magazine. CBS Records in London attempted to sidestep the airplay problem by setting up special phone lines whereby fans could call up and hear the record. There was even an 'alternative' version in which a group of BBC radio disc jockeys were heard to chant 'Radio Times' over the offending words. Despite these efforts, the single failed to make any impact on the British charts.

The follow ups to 'Rolling Stone' failed to match the group's earlier success. 'Ballad Of Lucy Jordan', (later successfully revived by Marianne Faithful), 'Roland The Roadie And Gertrude The Groupie', and 'Life Ain't Easy', failed to make any significant impact. The singles struggled to make the Billboard Hot 100 while the sales of 'Belly Up', their third album, were equally disappointing (the album peaked at number 141 in the Billboard chart).

It was at this point that the band's long-time co-manager, Bobby Heller, entered the picture. Heller, had been a life-long friend and confidant of Haffkine's and had followed the band's career with interest. He received a phone call from Haffkine asking him to help sort out major band and label problems, together with other complicated business and legal issues. This resulted in Heller flying out to San Francisco. The group had become disillusioned with CBS Records following the sudden departure of Clive Davis, the man who had been their main champion there and they were anxious to obtain a contract release.

After Davis left, three executives attempted to run CBS by committee. They shuffled Heller from one office to another and ignored his plea to support the band financially or to let them out of their contract. The band's foreign sales success was one of the main reasons for CBS' reluctance to grant them a release. Eventually, Heller, with the right legal support, got the band out of the deal by commencing a successful bankruptcy proceeding. The group was now free to deal with another label.

It was decided to shorten their name to just 'Dr. Hook', and a change of fortune arrived when Capitol Records showed interest in the band. Dr. Hook were subsequently offered a one-year deal with the company and thus began the most successful and musically creative period of their career.

Their recording comeback was slow in taking off however. Their first album for Capitol Records, appropriately title 'Bankrupt', reached only number 141 in the Billboard chart, while 'The Millionaire', their debut single for the label, peaked at number 55. Undaunted, and with a new drummer, John Wolters, the band finished 1975 with a U.K. tour which helped to lay the foundations for their future British success.

In early 1976, Capitol Records released a second single from the album, a revival of the Sam Cooke classic 'Only Sixteen'. There had been some resistance within the record company over the release of a cover version as a new single, but Bobby Heller, together with Bruce Wendell, the head of promotion at Capitol at the time, were the persuasive factors. Eventually, the song was released and entered the American charts in early February, just as their contract was about to run out.

Capitol increased its promotional efforts on 'Only Sixteen' and the single eventually enjoyed a 14 week chart run in the American Top 40 and reached number 6, giving the group their third million selling single. Capitol's investment in the band was further rewarded when Dr. Hook secured another major hit with the title song from the 'A Little Bit More' album, recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, which was now the group's new home base. George Cummings however, decided to leave the Hook line-up mid-way through the recording of the album.

'A Little Bit More' reached number 11 in the U.S., and spent 14 weeks in the Top 40, and also stayed for four weeks at number 2 in the U.K. charts, only being prevented from reaching number one by the Elton John and Kiki Dee duet, 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart'. Meanwhile their album was also a huge hit this side of the Atlantic, climbing to number 5 and spending a total of 42 weeks in the charts (in the U.S. the album reached number 62 in the Billboard chart).

Underlining their country music influences, the band appeared at a benefit performance at the world-famous Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and followed it with more recording sessions in the country music capital. 1976 ended on a triumphant note when another single 'If Not You', penned by Dennis Locorriere and also taken from the album 'A Little Bit More', reached number 5 in the U.K. (spending ten weeks in the Top 50), but stalled at number 55 in the Billboard Hot 100.

The first half of 1977 saw Dr. Hook back in the studios, recording their next album 'Makin' Love And Music', (while Ray Sawyer simultaneously made his own solo album of country songs in the next-door studio). In late summer, they released a new single from the album, a revamp of 'Walk Right In', originally a number one for The Rooftop Singers in 1963, which failed miserably. The album however, went top 40, and a follow up single scored a U.K. Top 20 single in April 1978 with Shel Silverstein's 'More Like The Movies'. In October 1978 their latest U.S. single 'Sharing The Night Together', taken from their forthcoming Capitol album 'Pleasure And Pain', started climbing the Billboard Hot 100.

'Sharing The Night Together' climbed to number 6 on the American chart, spent a total of four months in the Top 40, and sold over a million copies. The release of the 'Pleasure And Pain' album in early 1979 also became a milestone for the band as it became their first gold album, selling over 500,000 copies in the U.S. alone. Tragically, guitarist Rik Elswit became seriously ill with cancer and had to leave the line-up for a year. Rik's place in the band was taken over by Bob 'Willard' Henke, who remained within the ranks for some time after Elswit's return.

Dr Hook's next U.S. single, 'All The Time In The World', also from the 'Pleasure And Pain' album, could only reach number 54 in February 1979 but was followed by what was to ultimately become Dr. Hook's biggest-selling single, 'When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman', composed by Even Stevens. The single received little response in England, but following its international success, was re-issued by Capitol/EMI and Dennis Locorriere and Ray Sawyer flew to London to help promote it. Locorriere and Sawyer's efforts paid dividends. 'When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman' broke into the British Top 50 in September 1979 and within two months had sailed gracefully to the top chart position, where it remained firmly planted for three weeks. It racked up a 17 week chart residency in the Top 50 and back in the U.S., the song was also a huge hit for the band, climbing to number 6 on the Billboard chart and spending 16 weeks in the Top 40.

The new decade began with yet another transatlantic smash hit for Dr. Hook. 'Better Love Next Time' reached number 12 in the U.S. (with 14 weeks in the Top 40), and made number 8 in the U.K. Three months later, in March 1980, the band released the infectious 'Sexy Eyes' and it notched up yet another Top 10 hit for them, reaching number 5 in the U.S. charts (with a total of 15 weeks in the Billboard Top 40) and providing Dr. Hook with their sixth million selling single. In the U.K. 'Sexy Eyes' fared equally as well, soaring to number 4 and spending nine weeks in the Top 50. The single was featured on their latest album, 'Sometimes You Win', which reached number 14 in the U.K., and spent 44 weeks in the Top 50, earning the band another gold disc.

Ironically, 'Sexy Eyes' proved to be the last major hit single for Dr. Hook. There were two more minor hit singles during 1980 - 'Years From Now', which peaked at number 47 in the charts (and made number 51 in the Billboard Hot 100), followed by 'Sharing The Night Together' which stalled at number 43 in Britain, two years after its original American chart success. By now the band's contract with Capitol Records was about to expire and they decided to part company with the label.

Now with new guitarist Rod Smarr replacing Henke, Dr. Hook signed a new recording deal which saw their music released on Casablanca in the U.S., and on the Mercury label in the U.K. Their first album under the new arrangement, 'Rising', barely made the Billboard albums chart and did only marginally better in the U.K. where it reached number 44. Their single however, 'Girls Can Get It', made the Top 40 on both sides of the Atlantic.

There were several other minor American hits including 'Loveline' and 'Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk' (which reached number 25 in the U.S.) taken from their final studio album, 'Players In The Dark', but increased tensions and musical differences were taking their toll. Ray Sawyer left the band in 1982 to pursue a solo career and Dennis Locorriere carried on with the band, doing two more sell out tours of the U.K and Australia - including " Dr. Hook's One and Only Farewell Tour" before disbanding the group in 1985.

Since then, Sawyer has returned to live performance with a new band, however, Locorriere's company owns all the rights to the Dr. Hook name and licenses it to Sawyer.

Dennis Locorriere has toured the U.K. several times in recent years, performing his own successful solo gigs, as well as helping to promote the best-selling anthology album, 'Completely Hooked'. During 1996, he completed work on his solo album, 'Running With Scissors', which he produced with former Dr. Hook member Rod Smarr, and released in Autumn '96.

In 1995, Sawyer released an album containing re-recordings of many of the classic Dr. Hook hits under the name 'Dr. Hook featuring Ray Sawyer', a group which consists of no original members other than Sawyer himself.