Mellencamp, John

john Mellencamp

Singer, songwriter

Played the American Fool

Reluctant Small Town Spokesperson

Selected discography

Sources

Seymour, Indiana, a blue collar town about forty minutes from Bloomington, is populated by about 20,000, mostly electronics industry workers. But it also produced at least one musician, celebrated son, John Mellencamp. Bucking the rock star tradition of leaving the hometown for more glamorous pastures, Mellencamp remains a resident of Indiana. Known for his unpretentious manner and brutal honesty, Mellencamp wishes to be taken seriously on his own terms, without losing sight of where he comes from, which granted, is hard when you’ve never really left.

John Mellencamp, with his two sisters and two brothers, was raised strictly. His father, vice president of Robbins Electric in Seymour, pushed Mellencamp to excel at school and sports, neither of which the boy took to heart. As a teenager, Mellencamp had few interests other than hanging out, getting high, and listening to rock n’ roll. At the age of eighteen, Mellencamp took off to Kentucky and married his twenty-three year old girlfriend, Priscilla. In Rolling Stone, Mellencamp recalled, “You could get married there at eighteen without your parents’ permission.” The couple were in love and Priscilla was pregnant. With the intent of making a living for themselves, the newlyweds moved into Priscilla’s parents’ house with their newborn daughter Michelle. Attending junior college, studying communications, and barely holding down a job for more than a few months, Mellencamp reverted to his old partying ways. At that time, the only productive thing Mellencamp did was play music in local bar bands, using the guitar skills he started building at the age of fourteen. Considering the fact that he had a wife and daughter to support, his in-laws did not see guitar playing as a stable occupation. They kicked the young couple out with the typical “you’ll never go any where with this silly rock and roll business.”

After being kicked out, the Mellencamps stayed together for another ten years. Gradually growing apart from his first wife, Mellencamp had started to record demos of his own songs and take music as a career more seriously, much to the derision of seemingly everyone he knew. Mellencamp told Edwin Miller of Seventeen,“Everybody said, ’John, you’re dumb. People from Seymour don’t make records. They work in the fields, and they work in the factory, and if you’re lucky, you can be like your old man. Get a good job by the time you’re fifty, and that’s that.’ That’s what made me want to get out and do it—everyone saying you can’t!”

Played the American Fool

Around this time Mellencamp decided to go to New York City to try to sell himself as a rock star. The demo tape

For the Record…

Born October 7, 1951, in Seymour, IN; son of Richard and Marilyn Mellencamp; married Priscilla Esterline, 1969 (marriage ended, 1981); married Vicki Granucci, 1981 (marriage ended, 1989); married Elaine Irwin, 1992; children: Michelle (first marriage), Teddi Jo, Justice Renee (second marriage), Hud, Speck (third marriage).

Formed a “glam-rock” band called Trash, 1971; signed with MainMan in 1975, name changed to John Cougar; scored first top 40 hit in 1978 with “I Need a Lover”; widespread fame achieved with American Fool in 1982; Uh-Huh released in 1982, under the name John Cougar Mellencamp. Debuted as an actor and director in 1992’s Falling from Grace.Participant and co-organizer of Farm Aid concerts, 1987—.

Addresses: Home —Bloomington, IN. Record company —Mercury/Polygram Records, 825 8th Avenue. New York, NY 10019.

he had been hustling around had not aroused much enthusiasm until it fell into the hands of Tony DeFries, head of MainMan Management, whose most notable client was David Bowie. DeFries saw the future in young Mellencamp. In Esquire, DeFries’s associate Jamie Andrews explained it like this, “We felt there was a whole revival of small-town Americanism going on.” As De-Fries himself hyped it up, “He’s so American, the most American artist I’ve seen since Bob Dylan, and I think he will capture the same kind of thing Dylan did.”The one problem DeFries foresaw was that no one would want to buy an album by a guy with a name like Mellencamp. Andrews explained in Seventeen, “We wanted something uniquely American, something hot and wild. Johnny Indiana was one of our choices, Puma, Mustang—but nothing was as hot as Cougar!”Johnny Cougar it was, a name that made Mellencamp absolutely ill. He recalls in Rolling Stone, “I didn’t realize it when I started, but when I thought about it—what a… stupid name. I didn’t want to be anybody but John Mellencamp.”

The newly christened Johnny Cougar’s first album, Chestnut Street Incident, was released on MCA in 1976. Met with widespread apathy, the album quickly fell out of print and a second album was never released by MCA, who duly dropped him. Mellencamp was soon dropped by MainMan as well. His live shows received terrible reviews, the most predominant view being that of a third rate Springsteen or Seger imitator. Given another chance to redeem himself, he was signed to PolyGram where he released three more albums and had a minor U.S. hit with “I Need a Lover” in 1978, which incidentally went to number one in Australia.

By the early 1980s, the musical climate had shifted from polished disco music and glitter rock and it seemed that DeFries might just be right in his all-American visions. Springsteen had released The Riverand had his first top ten hit with “Hungry Heart” and Bob Seger had moved from down home Michigan boy to superstar. Looking back, it seems natural that Mellencamp’s fifth album, 1982’s American Fool would strike such a nerve. With two top ten singles, “Jack and Diane” and “Hurts So Good,” American Fool would go on to sell several million copies and propel Mellencamp to established fame. Despite his successes, John Cougar would receive little respect from critics until his next few albums. Greil Marcus wrote in ArtForum, “As sounds they were solid but one-dimensional, and as sentiments they were shallow when they weren’t dumb.… Still, the performances had heart—you heard the voice of someone who wanted desperately to tell you what he had to say but didn’t know what it was, or the voice of someone who wanted desperately to have something to say. But who cared what?”

Reluctant Small Town Spokesperson

1983’s Uh-Huh marked the first time that Mellencamp went by the name “John Cougar Mellencamp” and contained three more hit singles, “Pink Houses,” “Crum-blin’ Down,” and “Authority Song.” By this time, Mellencamp was starting to be seen as somewhat of a spokesperson for small town America. Speaking inLife, Mellencamp said, “For me to pretend I’m the keeper of the small town mentality or that’s all I’m interested in is wrong. When I wrote ’Pink Houses’ nobody was talking about that, right? The next thing I know you can’t see the TV without hearing commercials with ’Listen to the heartbeat of America, ’ or’ Born the American way.’ That whole America thing now—I hate it.”

As much as Mellencamp hated jingoism, his next album, 1985’s Scarecrow, seemed full of patriotism, especially considering titles like “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.,” “Justice and Independence ’85,” and “Small Town.” Critically the LP was his first to really be taken seriously. In ArtForum Greil Marcus wrote, “[O]ne morning I heard the songs from Scarecrow along side the best of Aretha, Dylan, and the others and Mellencamp’s songs stood up to them—carried the same charge.” The album was also a massive hit yielding five hit singles. Around the same time Mellencamp started organizing the Farm Aid concerts to benefit struggling farmers and their families in the midwest. With help from the likes of Willie Nelson and Neil Young, four annual shows were held that raised millions.

The Lonesome Jubilee, 1987’s entry, brought in a new sound for Mellencamp. Previous Mellencamp albums contained standard issue guitar rock, but this album featured fiddles and accordions to give it a strange folk/country feel. Just as successful as Scarecrow critically and commercially, the singles “Paper in Fire”and “Cherry Bomb” garnered much airplay on radio and MTV. In such a fickle pop world, Mellencamp’s music provided him longevity.

Somewhat of a womanizer, he started seeing Vicky Granucci while still married to his first wife. Mellencamp admitted in Life, “I was out of control. I was on the road all the time and hard to pin down. But I’ve pretty much curbed chasing women the last few years, man. You feel guilty. You get isolated from your spouse.”Unfortunately, while his career was coming together, his second marriage was falling apart. Efforts to save his marriage to Vicky, who he married in 1981, were futile. Relapses occurred and she stuck it out through two more children, Teddi Jo and Justice, yet they divorced in 1989.

Mellencamp worked through his feelings over the divorce in his album Big Daddy. The album includes the songs “Void In My Heart,” and the bitter “Big Daddy of them All.” Critics considered this album one of Mellencamp’s darkest. Mellencamp told Rolling Stone’s Elysa Gardner, “I’ve heard the word dark used to describe it, but I think sober is more like it. That record was based very firmly in my reality—if reality is dark, then I’m sorry.”

By the 1990s, Mellencamp had moved into the realm occupied by contemporaries like Springsteen and Seg-er. No longer a top forty MTV darling and no longer using “Cougar” as a middle name, his music had become increasingly more adult in nature. Talking with Rolling Stone’s Elysa Gardner about his guitar heavy 1991 album Whenever We Wanted, he said he wanted to address “the trouble between men and women.” In addition to his changing musical themes, Mellencamp also pursued non-musical projects such as painting, film directing and acting—making his debut in the latter two for the 1992 film Falling from Grace. Mellencamp also married third wife, model Elaine Irwin (she appeared in the video for his song “Get a Leg Up”), with whom he has two sons, Hud and Speck.

Critics for the most part praised Mellencamp’s next three albums. His 1993 release Human Wheels boast-ed, as with Whenever We Wanted, a very full hard-rocking group sound mixed in with some of the mandolins of his 1980s country forays. In talking about the album Rolling Stone’s Don McLeese opined, “Mellencamp may not know what it all means, but he knows exactly how it feels.” For his 1994 album Dance Naked, Mellencamp stripped away his longtime band and left the listener with a thirty minute collection of near-demos. The only pop relief was his duet with Me’shell Ndege-Ocello, Van Morrison’s “Wild Night,” which made the top ten that same year. A tour followed which was cut short by a minor heart attack which Mellencamp didn’t even know that he had until being diagnosed later. He put it this way to Rolling Stonewriter Mike Leonard, “It’s my fault. I’m a smoking machine.… The moral of my story is that 80 cigarettes a day and a cholesterol level of 300 is like a loaded gun.” His next album, 1996’s Mr. Happy Go Lucky, introduced funk to the mix with production by techno-dance type Junior Vasquez and bass by Tony! Toni! Tone! bassist Raphael Saadiq, while still retaining Mellencamp’s usual non-trendy rock sound. Critical response to Mr. Happy Go Lucky was positive. In his review for the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot extolled upon the album’s virtues, noting that it makes a “ripple with memorable melodies” and “crackles with new life.”

Having weathered criticism through his whole career for being himself, John Mellencamp has turned out to be one of the most consistent songwriters of the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to his music, he has also been known to have one of the biggest attitudes in rock. Talking about his career, Mellencamp remarked to Rolling Stone ’s Mike Leonard, “This cycle of make a record, tour has been going on for 20 years now. I don’t even know why I do it sometimes. Do I need more money? Do I need more platinum and gold records? The only thing I can think of is ego.”

Selected discography

Chestnut Street Incident, MCA, 1976.

A Biography, Riva, 1978.

John Cougar, Riva, 1979.

Nothin’ Matters and What if It Did?, Riva, 1980.

American Fool, Riva, 1982.

Uh-Huh, Riva, 1982.

Scarecrow, Mercury, 1985.

The Lonesome Jubilee, Mercury, 1987.

Big Daddy, Mercury, 1989.

(With others) Falling from Grace (soundtrack), Mercury, 1991.

Whenever We Wanted, Mercury, 1991.

Human Wheels, Mercury, 1993.

Dance Naked, Mercury, 1994.

Mr. Happy Go Lucky, Mercury, 1996.

Sources

ArtForum, January 1986.

Esquire, March 1992.

Journal of Popular Culture, Winter 1994.

Life, October 1987.

Rolling Stone, December 9, 1982; February 6, 1992; September 16, 1993; September 30, 1993; July 14-28, 1994; September 8, 1994; December 1, 1994; September 19, 1996; May 15, 1997.

Seventeen, March 1983.

Time, September 27, 1993.

—Nathan Shafer

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rock music

ock music, type of music originating in the United States in the mid-1950s and increasingly popular throughout much of the world. 

Origins of Rock

Essentially hybrid in origin, rock music includes elements of several black and white American music styles: black guitar-accompanied blues; black rhythm and blues, noted for saxophone solos; black and white gospel music; whitecountry and western music; and the songs of white popular crooners and harmony groups. Emerging in 1954–55, rock music was initially referred to as "rock 'n' roll." After 1964 it was simply called "rock music." The change in terminology indicates both a continuity with and a break from the earlier period; rock music was no longer just for dancing. After 1964 the music was influenced by British groups such as theBeatles. 

The 1950s—Bill Haley and Rock 'n' Roll

The first rock 'n' roll record to achieve national popularity was "Rock Around the Clock" made by Bill Haley and the Comets in 1955. Haley succeeded in creating a music that appealed to youth because of its exciting back beat, its urgent call to dance, and the action of its lyrics. The melody was clearly laid down by electric guitar; the lyrics were earthy and simple. Haley abruptly ended the ascendancy of the bland and sentimental ballads popular in the 1940s and early 50s. He also succeeded in translating black rhythm and blues into a form that adolescent white audiences could understand.

Blues, and rhythm and blues, were too adult, sexual, angry, and solely identified with black culture to be acceptable either emotionally or commercially without adaptation. Major record companies had for years been producing records for black audiences called "race records." The emergence of rock 'n' roll signified a slight weakening in resistance to black culture. The unadulterated black rock 'n' roll that Haley transformed can be heard in the sexually adult work of such artists as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters ( "Work with Me, Annie" ) or "Big" Joe Turner ( "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" ), the latter song adapted by Haley for white audiences and the former transformed into "Dance with Me, Henry." 

Rock 'n' roll was for and about adolescents. Its lyrics articulated teenage problems: school, cars, summer vacation, parents, and, most important, young love. The primary instruments of early rock 'n' roll were guitar, bass, piano, drums, and saxophone. All aspects of the music—its heavy beat, loudness, self-absorbed lyrics, and raving delivery—indicated a teenage defiance of adult values and authority. Influential performers of the 1950s include Chuck Berry ( "Johnny B. Goode" ), Little Richard ( "Good Golly Miss Molly" ), Sam Cooke ( "You Send Me" ), Buddy Holly ( "Peggy Sue" ), Jerry Lee Lewis ( "Great Balls of Fire" ), and Carl Perkins ( "Blue Suede Shoes" ). 

The Late 1950s and Early 60s—Elvis, Motown, and the British Invasion

The greatest exponent of rock 'n' roll from 1956 to 1963 was Elvis Presley, a truck driver and aspiring singer from Tupelo, Miss., whose plaintive, wailing, dynamic delivery and uninhibited sexuality appealed directly to young audiences while horrifying older people. As rock 'n' roll became a financial success, record companies that had considered it a fad began to search for new singers; they generally succeeded in commercializing the music, robbing it of much of its gutsy, rebellious quality. In the late 1950s, for example, there was a fad for sentimentally morbid songs such as "Laura" and "Teen Angel." 

At the turn of the decade Detroit became an important center for black singers, and a certain type of sound known as "Motown" [motor town], named for Motown Records, developed. The style is characterized by a lead singer singing an almost impressionistic melody story line to the accompaniment of elegant, tight, articulate harmonies of a backup group. Popular exponents of this style are the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Gladys Knight and the Pips.

Rock music again surged to popularity in 1962 with the emergence of the Beatles, a group of four long-haired lads from Liverpool, England. They were initially acclaimed for their energy and appealing individual personalities rather than for any innovations in their music, which was derived from Berry and Presley. Their popularity inevitably produced other groups with unusual names. One of the most important of these was theRolling Stones, whose music derived from the black blues tradition. These British bands instigated a return to the blues orientation of rock 'n' roll, albeit in ever louder and more electric reincarnations. 

The Late 1960s and Early 70s—Rock's Golden Age

Folk Rock

An important transformation of rock occurred in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan, noted as a composer and writer of poetic folk songs and songs of social protest like "Blowin' in the Wind," appeared, playing electric guitar and backed by an electrified rock band. A synthesis of the folk revival and rock subsequently took place, with folk groups using rock arrangements and rock singers composing poetic lyrics for their songs (e.g., the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood," "Eleanor Rigby" ). The Byrds' arrangement of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" is a folk-rock classic. Performers like the Mamas and the Papas; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Donovan; and the Lovin Spoonful sang a kind of music designated "folk rock." 

Protest Songs and the Drug Culture

In the 1960s music mirrored the tensions of the Vietnam War era and played an important role in American culture. The verbal content of rock songs turned toward rebellion, social protest, sex, and, increasingly, drugs. Many groups, among them Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, tried to approximate in music the aural experience of psychedelic drugs, producing long, repetitive, occasionally exquisite songs with surreal lyrics (known as "acid rock" or "hard rock" ).

In 1967 the Beatles again made history with their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which, in addition to including drug-oriented songs, presented a body of interrelated pieces that constituted an organic whole. This is considered the first "concept album." Subsequent products of this trend were rock musicals such as Hair (1968) and rock operas like Tommy, composed and sung by the Who.

Rock Comes of Age

By the late 1960s rock was widely regarded as an important musical form. Musicians such as Miles Davisand John McLaughlin and groups like Traffic or Blood, Sweat, and Tears tried to fuse rock and jazz, while such disparate artists as Leonard Bernstein and Frank Zappa attempted to connect rock and classical music. Groups featuring virtuoso guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, and Jimmy Page continued to perform variations on classic blues themes using the traditional instruments of rock 'n' roll.

From 1967 onward, the rock festival was regarded as the ideal context in which to hear rock music, and thousands of fans attended. The most successful and peaceful rock festival, Woodstock, was held near Bethel, N.Y., in Aug., 1969. Later, however, a similar event, featuring the Rolling Stones, was held at Altamont, Calif., and was marked by several violent incidents caught on film, including a murder. By 1970 several of rock's top performers—Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix—were dead from substance abuse. The dangerous, androgynous quality projected by the Rolling Stones was taken to extremes by performers such as Alice Cooper and David Bowie, who were perhaps as famous for their sexual ambiguity and outrageous behavior as for their music. 

The Late 1970s to the Present—Punk Rock, the Music Video, and Middle-aged Rockers

A turning point in rock music occurred in the mid-1970s in the form of punk rock, which was a response to the stagnation of the genre and a nihilistic political statement. The music was filled with contempt for previous styles; its fast-tempoed songs, usually propelled by electric guitar, featured irreverant lyrics often obscured by the clangerous music. Evident in Great Britain, performed by such bands as the Sex Pistols and the Clash, punk also quickly became popular in the United States, played by the Ramones and other American groups. By the early 1980s, it had changed rock music considerably as Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and other groups adopted political protest themes as the core of their music.

During the 1980s music videos became a popular form of promotion and entertainment. In the late 1980s, however, several bands, including Nirvana and Pearl Jam, continued to follow the path of early punk rock by focusing on political themes and celebrating their own lack of technical virtuosity. Punk persisted into the 1990s with such bands as Green Day and the Offspring. Also in the 90s the continuing popularity of older bands, such as the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones, bore witness to the enduring appeal of this form among both the young and the increasingly middle-aged. The appeal of older and past rock bands was also evident in the fanfare surrounding the opening (1995) of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Meanwhile, a young audience made rap music, with its pounding rhythms and strong, sometimes shocking spoken lyrics, a popular phenomenon, and other young rockers, largely club-goers, made the dance-based, electronically sophisticated techno another, though less pervasive, popular form.

Bibliography

See C. Gillett, The Sound of the City (1970); C. Belz, The Story of Rock (2d ed. 1972); M. Jahn, Rock (1973); A. DeCurtis, ed., Rock and Roll and Culture (1992); P. Romanowski et al., ed., The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (rev. ed. 1995); P. Friedlander, Rock and Roll: A Social History (1996); F. Goodman, The Mansion on the Hill (1997); B. Ward, Just My Soul Responding (1998); D. Clarke, ed., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music (rev. ed. 1999); J. Miller, Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947–1977 (1999); J. Stuessy and S. Lipscomb, Rock and Roll: Its History and Stylistic Development (4th ed. 2003).

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The Notorious B.I.G.

Notorious B.I.G. 1972–1997

Rap artist

Released Ready to Die

Friendship Turned to Deadly Rivalry

A Targeted Hit

Selected discography

Sources

Notorious B.I.G. fully embodied the gangsta life he portrayed on his rap albums. A former crack dealer and convict, B.I.G. rapped his way to a better life only to lose that life to the street violence he could not leave behind. At age 24 he became the victim of a drive-by shooting—the second death connected to a purported deadly feud between rap music’s East Coast and West Coast factions which had claimed the life of rapper Tupac Shakur only months before. B.I.G.’s death cut short a career that promised to propel him into the upper echelons of the music business. His posthumous second album—ironically and prophetically titled Life After Death… ‘Til Death Do Us Part —confirmed that the heavyweight rapper had the potential to be big on the music charts.

Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace, was the only child of Voletta Wallace, a preschool teacher who raised him alone in the tough Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Although he was described as a shy, overweight youngster, Christopher Wallace soon took on the hardened mentality of the gang members around him and began dealing drugs under the street name Biggie Smalls. He never finished high school and, at age 17, was arrested on drug charges in North Carolina and spent nine months in jail. Even after finding success in the music industry, B.I.G. continued to run afoul of the law. In 1995, he was arrested in New York and charged with assault after he allegedly chased two people with a baseball bat and smashed the window of their cab. He was twice arrested in New Jersey—first for allegedly robbing and assaulting a man, then on drug and weapons charges. In the rap world, these incidents established his credibility as someone well-acquainted with the streets but B.I.G. understood the dangers of living out the life he rapped about. In 1994, after the release of his first album, he told the Chicago Tribune that he was “scared to death…. Scared of getting my brains blown out.” B.I.G. moved out of his Brooklyn neighborhood to a safer locale in New Jersey.

Released Ready to Die

B.I.G. shook the music world with his debut album, Ready to Die, an unflinching portrayal of the despair experienced daily in much of urban America. The album

At a Glance…

Born Christopher G. Wallace, in Brooklyn, New York; shot to death March 9, 1997, in Los Angeles, CA; son of Voletta Wallace; married Faith Evans (a singer); children: T’Yanna, Christopher, Jr, Known by the street name Biggie Smalls and the stage name Notorious B.I.G.

Career: Rapper, Albums: Ready to Die, 1994; Ufe After Death… ‘Til Death Do Us Part, 1997. Guest appearance on Martin, Fox-TV.

Awards: Billboard Award, Rap Artist of the Year, 1995.

detailed drug sales, sex, violence, incarceration, and death, much of which was drawn from his own life. “I can’t say I’m proud of dealing drugs,” B.I.G. once said. “But you do what you can to survive in the ’hood. Live in the real bad part of the ’hood for a while and you’ll see how desperate it can make you,” he continued. B.I.G. drew on that desperation and his law-breaking past in his songs, in which he matter-of-factly“described himself as a former drug dealer and stickup man who had turned to rapping,” Jon Parales wrote in the New York Times “He recalled the mundane details of bagging, transporting and selling drugs; he boasted about sexual conquests and mourned a murdered girlfriend.” After transporting listeners through a brutal urban landscape, the album closes with the death of its rapping narrator who takes his own life. The Los Angeles Times said the album was “jolting and uncompromising” and called B.I.G. “one of (rap) music’s most talented and promising voices.” He was named Rap Artist of the Year at the Billboard Awards in 1995 and cited as Rap Singer of the Year for the song One More Chance.

Friendship Turned to Deadly Rivalry

B.I.G. was the protégé of Sean “Puffy” Combs, head of the New York City record company Bad Boy Entertainment. When B.I.G first appeared on the scene, he hung around with Tupac Shakur. The two rappers once shared a friendship, but it had evolved into a bitter rivalry. Shakur accused B.I.G. of copying his musical style and being involved in a 1994 incident in which Shakur was robbed and shot. B.I.G. made references to Shakur in his music and Shakur rapped back that he had had sex with B.I.G’s wife, rhythm and blues vocalist Faith Evans. The rivalry grew and expanded including Combs and Deathrow CEO Marion “Suge”Knight, rap groups Mobb Deep, The Dogg Pound, Junior M.A.F.I.A. and fans of the two rap artists. In September of 1996, Shakur was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. The media immediately picked up on the rift between B.I.G. and Shakur as a possible motive for murder but the speculation regarding B.I.G.’s involvement in the slaying did not result in any arrests.

A Targeted Hit

B.I.G. was sitting in the passenger side of his GMC Suburban following a music industry party in Los Angeles shortly after midnight on March 9, 1997, listening to a tape of his second album which was to be released in two weeks. A dark-colored car—which police believe had been waiting for the rapper—pulled up beside the Suburban. Several shots from a nine-millimeter handgun were fired into B.I.G.’s upper body before the car raced away. Notorious B.I.G. was pronounced dead when his body arrived at Los Angeles’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. “The way it went down,” said a police official, “it was a targeted hit.” Police and music industry insiders quickly speculated that B.I.G.’s murder may have been a retaliation killing for the death of Shakur. But in spite of the very public nature of the murder, committed in front of dozens of witnesses that included several off-duty police officers who were acting as security guards, there were no arrests in the case and the investigation seemed permanently stalled. Family and friends of B.I.G. accused the police of dragging their feet because the death of a young black man does not take high priority. The death of Tupac Shakur has likewise been unsolved. “The deaths of Shakur and (B.I.G.) have forced official America to peer into the world of the leading rappers, who have made millions and surrounded themselves with armed heavies,” wrote a London Times contributor. In 1998, Vibe magazine reported that Orlando Anderson, who was a suspect in Shakur’s murder, was also questioned in B.I.G.’s murder. The car used in B.I.G.’s drive-by shooting had been found and belonged to Anderson’s cousin. Anderson had reportedly also been at the same industry party as B.I.G. Orlando Anderson was murdered in a shooting unrelated to both Shakur’s and B.I.G.’s murders.

B.I.G. commented on the day before his death that he wanted “to see my kids get old,” a wish that was to go unfulfilled. B.I.G.’s funeral attracted rap’s elite and drew hordes of fans onto Brooklyn streets to honor the rap star buried in a white double-breasted suit in an extra-large mahogany casket. At the time of his death, B.I.G. was separated from his wife, singer Faith Evans. He and Evans had a son, also named Christopher, and B.I.G had a 4-year-old daughter, T’yanna, from a previous relationship. Two weeks before his death, according to the Los Angeles Times, B.I.G. was fatalistically quoted as saying: “There’s nothing that protects you from the inevitable. If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen, no matter what you do. It doesn’t matter if you clean your life up and live it differently. What goes around comes around, man.”

Selected discography

Ready to Die, Bad Boy Entertainment, 1994.

Life After Death… Til Death Do Us Part, Bad Boy Entertainment, 1997.

Sources

Associated Press, March 10, 1997.

Facts on File, March 13, 1997, p. 170.

London Times, March 11, 1997.

Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1997, p. A1; March 11, 1997, p. B1; March 19, 1997, p. B1.

Newsweek, March 24, 1997, p. 74.

New York Times, March 10, 1997, p. A8.

People, March 24, 1997, p. 69; March 31, 1997, p.108.

Vibe, December/January 1997–1998; September 1998.

—Dave Wilkins and Rebecca Parks

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Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin

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Rock group

The member of Led Zeppelin have been called the "grandfathers" of the heavy metal genre. At their height in the early to mid 1970s, they frequently outsold the Rolling Stones in concert tickets. And by 1973, they had sold more albums than any other band worldwide. Their anthemic song, "Stairway to Heaven," is the most played song in the history of radio.

Led Zeppelin was formed out of the ashes of the 1960s supergroup The Yardbirds, once featuring renowned guitarists Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, and later, a young studio session guitarist, Jimmy Page. (Page, it is estimated, played on 50 to 90 percent of the popular rock records made in England from 1963 to 1965.) In 1965, he joined the Yardbirds, having turned down an offer to replace Eric Clapton just a year earlier. With the Yard-birds, Page and fellow guitarist Jeff Beck pioneered the two-guitar style of rock. Beck left only a year later, however, to pursue a solo career. The band continued for another year and a half, but split by 1968.

Page decided to form The New Yardbirds and sought new musicians. First, he recruited John Paul Jones, a fellow session player, to play bass and keyboards. Then, following a tip, he went to listen to a young blues singer, Robert Plant in Birmingham. Plant suggested drummer John Bonham who had played with him in the Band of Joy. The Who's drummer, Keith Moon, had said something about the new incarnation going down like a lead balloon. Thus, the name Led Zeppelin was coined.

Led Zeppelin's first British show was on October 5, 1968, at Surrey University. An unexpected American tour followed that winter, when the Jeff Beck Group cancelled their spot on a tour with Vanilla Fudge. The band's ambitious manager, Peter Grant, took the opportunity, convinced all involved, and Led Zeppelin left for Los Angeles on Christmas Eve in 1968.

Led Zeppelin signed with Atlantic Records and released its self-titled first album in February 1969. The band's sound had diverse influences, including the Delta blues and performers like Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, The Incredible String Band, and Elvis Presley. Between Plant's incredible vocal range, and Page's utilization of the new technology of the time—including fuzz boxes, boosters, split pickups on his guitars, and super-amplifiers for the maximum distortion—the band roared into the underground rock consciousness.

Led Zeppelin's best-known song, "Stairway to Heaven," first performed at a 1971 concert in Belfast, was from their fourth album—untitled, save for four strange, runic symbols. Led Zeppelin's fourth album was recorded at Headley Grange, a converted poor-house in Hampshire, England. Page and Jones wrote the music for "Stairway to Heaven" first, and Plant wrote most of the lyrics in one sitting. Plant later recalled to journalist Cameron Crowe in Led Zeppelin: The Complete Studio Recordings, "It was done very quickly. It took a little working out, but it was a fluid, unnaturally easy track. It was almost as if—uh oh—it just had to be gotten out at the time. There was something pushing it saying, 'You guys are okay, but if you want to do something timeless, here's a wedding song for you.'"

The band followed up with Houses of the Holy in 1973. Some of the concerts on that tour were filmed for posterity and later released in the film, The Song Remains the Same. Following this album, Led Zeppelin started its own label, Swan Song. Signings to the label included Dave Edmunds, Bad Company, the Pretty Things, and Maggie Bell.

In the early years, the band did not have a publicist, did not release singles, and avoided the press. While the idea had been to keep the band mysterious, the band became notorious instead when all their press had to do with riots over concert tickets and the band members and their entourage trashing hotel rooms. Nevertheless, album and concert sales climbed continuously. In the beginning, they made around $200 a night playing small clubs, but at their height were making more than $500,000 a night. After their fourth album, the band purchased it's own plane, nicknamed "The Starship."

Crowe, in the liner notes to The Complete Studio Recordings, summed it up: "The Zeppelin attitude had something to do with Peter Grant, their brilliant and imposing manager. A little bit to do with the wicked humor of Richard Cole, their road manager. Something to do with John Bonham thundering down the aisle of the Starship, performing Monty Python routines. With John Paul Jones, lost in dry ice, playing 'No Quarter.' It had a lot to do with Page and Plant, side-by-side, sharing a single spotlight, ripping through 'Over the Hills and Far Away.'"

In 1974, the band returned to Headley Grange and recorded a double-album, Physical Graffiti. The standout song on the album was the hypnotic "Kashmir," a song the band members claim as their favorite. (Rapper Puff Daddy teamed with Page and Plant as well as Tom Morrello of Rage Against the Machine to create a reworking of "Kashmir" called "Come With Me," featuring a 70-piece orchestra, for the Godzilla soundtrack in 1998.) After the album's release in February 1975, the band decided to take some vacation time before touring again.

On August 4, during a trip to the Greek island of Rhodes, Plant and his wife rolled over a cliff in their car and both were seriously injured. Upcoming tours were postponed and for 18 months, it was not known whether Plant would walk again. The band released its live concert film, The Song Remains the Same to fill the void for their fan base during their time away. Presence, the band's seventh album, was recorded in Munich with Robert Plant in a wheelchair, his ankle still on the mend. The album was released in March of 1976, and a tour followed the next year.

That tour was interrupted by tragedy when Plant's son Karac died at the age of five from a rare viral infection. The band abandoned their tour of the United States. "It was the toughest part of my entire life," Plant told reporter Deborah Wilker at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. "It didn't haunt me. I was just incredibly aggrieved."

Around this time, darker rumors about the band started, like stories of Page's excessive drug and alcohol use, rumors of his dabbling in black magic. There was speculation that karmic retribution was to blame for the tragedies. James Rotondi, in Guitar Player magazine, recalled, "Enough preconceptions, bad raps and spurious accusations have swirled around Page over the last 30 years to fill the National Enquirer, Blues Revue, and an entire season of The X-Files."

The band regrouped and in November and December of 1978 recorded In Through the Out Door, which was to be their final album. A rare single, "Fool in the Rain," was released in December of 1979. An American tour was planned for autumn of 1980, however, their last show would be performed at the British Knebworth Festival in 1979.

For the Record …

Members include John Bonham (born on May 31, 1949, in Redditch, England; died on September 25, 1980), drums; John Paul Jones (born on January 3, 1946, in Kent, England), bass, keyboards; Jimmy Page (born on January 9, 1944, in Middlesex, England), guitar; Robert Plant (born on August 20, 1948, in Bromwich, England), vocals.

Group formed in October, 1968; signed with Atlanta Records, 1968; released self-titled debut and embarked on first American tour, early 1969; released Led Zeppelin II, 1969; issued Led Zeppelin III, 1970; followed withLed Zeppelin IV, also known as the Runes LP, 1971; retreated from spotlight following 1972 tour to record next album, Houses of the Holy, spring 1973; broke previous box office records (held by the Beatles) during 1973 tour; formed Swan Song (record label) and released albums by Bad Company, Dave Edmunds, and the Pretty Things, 1974; released Physical Graffiti on Swan Song, 1975; canceled American tour following an automobile accident involving Robert Plant and his wife, 1975; Presence debuted at number one in England and American, spring 1976; released concert film and album, The Song Remains the Same, fall 1976; canceled American tour following the death of Plant's son, 1977; performed two live dates at Knebworth, 1979; released In Through the Out Door, September 1979; disbanded in December 1980, following death of founding drummer John Bonham, September 25, 1980; Plant and Page reunited for MTV Unplugged, 1994; Plant and Page recorded Walking Into Clarksdale, 1998.

Awards: American Music Award, International Artist Award, 1994; Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted, 1995; "Dazed and Confused," "Rock and Roll," Stair way to Heaven," and "Whole Lotta Love" included in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll, 1997; Grammy Award (Robert Plant and Jimmy Page), Best Hard Rock Performance, 1999.

Addresses: Record company—Atlantic Records, 1290 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10104, phone: (212) 707-2000, website: http://www.atlantic-records.com/. Website—Led Zeppelin Official Website: http://www.led-zeppelin.com/.

On September 25, 1980, the band was assembled for rehearsals at Page's home and set to leave on tour the next day. During the night, however, Bonham was found dead in a bedroom. After drinking around 40 shots of vodka in a 12-hour period, Bonham died of asphyxiation. The remaining three members decided instantly that they could not go on without him. They later met in a London hotel room to write a statement for the press.

Page and Plant each embarked on other projects in the 1980s. Page formed The Firm, releasing a self-titled first album in 1985, which had success with the single, "Radioactive." The Firm released a second album,Mean Business, the following year. Page released a solo album, Outrider, in 1988 and embarked on a brief project with David Coverdale in 1993, with one album, Coverdale/Page.

Plant released his first solo album, Pictures at Eleven in 1982, followed by The Principle of Moments (1983) and Shaken 'n' Stirred (1985). During these years, Plant distanced himself from his connections with Led Zeppelin.

Plant's stance seemed to change in 1985 when the remaining members reunited to play Live Aid concert with Bonham's son Jason on drums. Three years later, they reunited, again with Jason Bonham on drums, to play the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary celebration. That same year, Plant released his fourth solo effort, Now and Zen, which contained samples of Zeppelin songs. His following solo efforts, Manic Nirvana (1990) andFate of Nations (1993) also veered closer to his Zeppelin past.

"Led Zeppelin was so big and so successful that I wanted to distance myself from it," Plant told reporter Gary Graff in the Houston Chronicle in June 1988. "I was fooling myself, really. I've learned that I can lean on my past—without thinking that I'm taking the easy way out."

Hopes of a more permanent reunion sprang eternal among fans, and the remaining members of Led Zeppelin were offered $100 million to tour America. They turned it down. Two years later, Plant was still adamant about not reforming the band. He told Deborah Wilker of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, "I can't imagine anything more horrifying than three middle-aged men trying to pretend that 'Black Dog' is significant. It's inappropriate."

The mid-1990s finally saw a reunion of sorts. Plant was invited to play MTV Unplugged in 1994 and included Page plus a group of Egyptian, Moroccan, and Western classical musicians in addition to bassist Charlie Jones, drummer Michael Lee, and Porl Thompson of the Cure on rhythm guitar. The show was called "Unledded" and a recording of the program was released titled No Quarter.

In 1995, The Sporting Life, John Paul Jones's venture with avant-garde vocalist Diamanda Galas, was released. Jones told writer Joe Gore at Guitar Player, "I suppose I was disappointed that they didn't feel they had to tell me about it [Page and Plant's project No Object]. I read it in the newspapers, which was kind of embarrassing. I'm a great Led Zeppelin fan. I thought it was a fantastic band, and I'm very proud of what we did. But Diamanda is a stunning artist, and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else right now."

In January 1995 Led Zeppelin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by fellow heavy-rockers Aerosmith. "They were like Lord Byron—mad, bad and dangerous to know," Joe Perry of Aerosmith told The Boston Globe. "It was kind of like Howling Wolf meets the Loch Ness monster."

Led Zeppelin's record sales as strong as ever, a 1997 Billboard reported that Led Zeppelin were the number two-selling act of all time, according to the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA). Ten of their albums were certified at multi-platinum levels. By 1999, Led Zeppelin became the third act in music history to be awarded four or more Diamond albums, according to the RIAA.

Page and Plant continued the collaboration they'd renewed on No Quarter on Walking Into Clarksdale in 1998. The album, produced by indie-rock icon Steve Albini, represented the first new material from the duo since In Through the Out Door in 1979.

The two continued their solo efforts as well. Recorded over two nights in Los Angeles in October of 1999,Jimmy Page & the Black Crowes Live at the Greek was the first major release exclusively available online (at musicmaker.com), where it could be customized by the purchaser. Page toured with The Black Crowes again the following year. Plant released his seventh solo album, Dreamland, in 2002, and toured behind it with his band, Strange Sensation, which again included Thompson from The Cure and Clive Deamer, drummer from British trip-hop group Portishead. John Paul Jones released two solo CDs, 1999's Zoomba andThe Thunderthief, featuring some guitar work by Robert Fripp, in 2002.

While the band had historically balked at commercializing their music, the new century saw a change of heart. First, Page and Plant licensed Zeppelin's "That's The Way" for use on the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe's 2001 film, Almost Famous. The film chronicled Crowe's early career as a rock journalist who, among other bands, interviewed and went on tour with Led Zeppelin. In 2002, Led Zeppelin sold a song for use in a commercial for the first time in the band's history, selling "Rock and Roll" to Cadillac. The car manufacturer has used the ad to sell its Cadillac CTS, XLR, Escalade, and Escalade EXT. In 2003, in honor of their 35th anniversary, Led Zeppelin released the Led Zeppelin DVD, which contains live performance footage, previously unreleased, from four of their tours during the 1970s. At the same time, the group also releasedHow the West Was Won, a three-disc CD with live material compiled from their concerts in 1972 in California.

Selected discography

Led Zeppelin I, Atlantic, 1969.

Led Zeppelin II, Atlantic, 1969.

Led Zeppelin III, Atlantic, 1970.

Led Zeppelin IV, Atlantic, 1971.

Houses of the Holy, Atlantic, 1973.

Physical Graffiti, Swan Song, 1975.

The Song Remains the Same, Swan Song, 1976.

Presence, Swan Song, 1976.

In Through the Out Door, Swan Song, 1979.

Coda, Swan Song, 1982.

(Jimmy Page and Robert Plant) Walking Into Clarksdale, Atlantic, 1998.

How the West Was Won, Atlantic, 2003.

Sources

Books

Crowe, Cameron, "Light and Shade," Led Zeppelin: The Complete Studio Recordings, 1993.

Zalkind, Ronald, Contemporary Music Almanac 1980/81, Schirmer, 1980.

Periodicals

Associated Press, March 28, 2000, March 18, 2002.

Atlanta Journal and Constitution, September 2, 1988.

Billboard, December 13, 1997; April 21, 1998.

Boston Globe, August 10, 1992; January 13, 1995.

Boston Herald, November 14, 1993; January 13, 1995; October 21, 1999.

Buffalo News, September 19, 1993; November 18, 1994; April 24, 1998; May 12, 1998.

Calgary Herald, October 13, 2002.

Canadian Press, January 22, 2002.

Charleston Gazette, July 18, 2002.

Chicago Sun-Times, December 1, 1999.

Commercial Appeal, March 3, 1995.

Globe and Mail, May 16, 1988.

Guitar Player, February 1, 1995; February 1, 1998.

Herald, August 18, 1999.

Herald Express, October 13, 2000.

Houston Chronicle, June 5, 1988.

MX, October 17, 2001.

New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 12, 1995.

New York Times, August 15, 1975.

Plain Dealer, March 24, 1995; December 9, 1997.

Richmond News Leader, November 20, 1990.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 7, 1998.

San Diego Union-Tribune, August 15, 2000.

Scottsman, February 2, 1999.

Seattle Times, March 16, 2000.

Times Union, July 9, 1998.

Toronto Star, August 27, 2002.

Turkish Daily News, March 8, 1998.

Western Mail, October 10, 2002.

Online

"Led Zeppelin," RollingStone.com, http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/bio.asp?oid=366 (February 13, 2003).

"Led Zeppelin," VH1.com, http://www.vh1.com/artists/az/led_zeppelin/bio.jhtml (February 13, 2003).

"Led Zeppelin," Yesterdayland, http://www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/shows/music/mu1253.php(February 13, 2003).

—Emily Pettigrew and

Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

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