MUSIC

Do you believe in rock 'n roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
Don McLean (American Pie)

One cannot imagine sixties without music. The 60s decade produced some of the best music of all time. Even today it is listened to not only by the 60s generation but by our children and grandchildren. As Hippie movement and revolution in music took place in the same time, these cultural phenomenons influenced each other greatly.

Here we are going to tell you about some famous musicians of that time.

Music is my religion.  Jimi Hendrix

http://www.newenglandmusicnews.com/featured/jimi-hendrix-new-tracks-to-be-released/

Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle, Washington, on November 27, 1942. His mother named him John Allen Hendrix and raised him alone while his father, Al Hendrix, was off fighting in World War II. When his father returned from Europe in 1945 he took back Hendrix, divorced his wife, and renamed him James Marshall Hendrix. When Jimi was 13 his father taught him to play an acoustic guitar. In 1959 Jimi dropped out of high school and enlisted in the U.S. Army, but soon became disenchanted with military service. After he broke his ankle during a training parachute jump, he was honorably discharged. He then went to work as a sideman on the rhythm-and-blues circuit, honing his craft but making little or no money. Jimi got restless being a sideman and moved to New York City hoping to get a break in the music business.

http://www.rockbook.hu/zenekar/jimi-hendrix

Through his friend Curtis Knight, Jimi discovered the music scene in Greenwich Village, which left indelible impressions on him. It was here that he began taking drugs, among them marijuana, pep pills and cocaine. In 1966, while Jimi was performing with his own band called James & the Blue Flames at Cafe Wha?, John Hammond Jr. approached Jimi about the Flames playing backup for him at Cafe Au Go Go. Jimi agreed and during the show's finale, Hammond let Jimi cut loose on Bo Diddley's "I'm the Man." Linda Keith, girlfriend of The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, was one of Jimi's biggest fans and it was she who told friend Chase Chandler, a band manager, about Jimi. When Chandler heard Jimi play, he asked him to come to London to form his own band, and while there Chandler made the simple change in Jimi's name by formally dropping James and replacing it with Jimi. Having settled in England with a new band called the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which consisted of Jimi as guitarist and lead singer, bass player Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, Jimi took the country by storm with the release of his first single "Hey, Joe." In the summer of 1967 Jimi performed back in the USA at the Monterey Pop Festival, a mix-up backstage forced Jimi to follow The Who onstage, where after a superb performance Jimi tore up the house by trashing his guitar in a wild frenzy. Afterwards, Jimi's career skyrocketed with the release of the Experience's first two albums, "Are You Experienced?" and "Axis: Bold as Love," which catapulted him to the top of the charts.

However, tensions, possibly connected with Jimi's drug use and the constant presence of hangers-on in the studio and elsewhere, began to fracture some of his relationships, including Chas Chandler, who quit as manager in February 1968. In September 1968 the Experience released their most successful album, "Electric Ladyland." However, in early 1969 bassist Redding left the Experience and was replaced by Billy Cox, an old army buddy who Jimi had jammed with. Jimi began experimenting with different musicians. For the Woodstock music festival Jimi put together an outfit called the Gypsies, Sun and Rainbows, with Mitchell and Cox as well as a second guitarist and two percussionists. Their one and only performance in August 1969 at Woodstock took place near Bethel, New York, where Hendrix and his band were to be the closing headline act. 

http://rock1on1.blogspot.ru/2012/06/woodstock-1969-history-in-rock-part-4.html#more

Because of the delay getting there and the logistical problems, Jimi performed on the morning of the fourth and final day and  "The Star-Spangled Banner" became the anthem for counterculture. After Woodstock, Jimi formed a new band. Jimi's last album was "Cry of Love". Jimi's drug problem finally caught up with him. On the night of September 17, 1970, while living in London, Jimi took some sleeping pills, which were prescribed for his live-in girlfriend Monika Danneman. Sometime after midnight, Jimi threw up from an apparent allergic reaction to the pills and then passed out. Danneman, thinking him to be all right, went out to get cigarettes for them. When she returned, she found him lying where he collapsed, having inhaled his own vomit, and and she couldn't wake him. Danneman called an ambulance, which took him to a nearby hospital, but Jimi Hendrix was pronounced dead a short while later without regaining consciousness. He was 27 years old. Jimi Hendrix's life was short, but his impact on the rock guitar is still being heard which set the course for a new era of rock music.

Sources:http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001342/bio

We are obscene, lawless, hideous, dangerous, dirty, violent, and young, but we all should be together. Jefferson Airplane (‘We Can Be Together’)

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http://www.jeffersonairplane.com/

Inductees: Marty Balin (vocals; born January 30, 1943), Jack Casady (bass; born April 13, 1944), Spencer Dryden (drums; born April 7, 1938, died January 11, 2005), Paul Kantner (vocals, guitar; born March 17, 1941), Jorma Kaukonen (guitar, vocals; born December 23, 1940), Grace Slick (vocals, keyboards, flute, recorder; born October 30, 1939).

http://www.herbgreenefoto.com/gallery/58170-jefferson-airplane

In terms of music and lifestyle, Jefferson Airplane epitomized the San Francisco scene of the mid-to-late Sixties. Their heady psychedelia, combustible group dynamic and adventuresome live shows made them one of the defining bands of the era. Much like their contemporaries on the San Francisco scene - Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Big Brother and the Holding Company principal among them – the Airplane evolved from roots in folk and blues to become a psychedelic powerhouse and a cornerstone of the San Francisco sound. They were the first band on that scene to play a dance concert, sign a major-label record contract (with RCA), and tour the U.S. and Europe. In addition, they espoused boldly anarchistic political views and served as a force for social change, challenging the prevailing conservative mind set in “White Rabbit” and issuing a call to arms in “Volunteers.” In a sense, San Francisco became the American Liverpool in the latter half of the Sixties, and Jefferson Airplane were its Beatles.

http://nameigoob.blogspot.ru/2011/08/psychedelic-pioneers-jefferson-airplane.html#.UZUEXKJuz84

Jefferson Airplane’s debut show was on August 13, 1965 at the Matrix nightclub in San Francisco. The first performance featured Marty Balin on vocals, Paul Kantner on vocals/rhythm guitar, and Jorma Kaukonen on lead guitar. Signe Anderson, (who sang on Jefferson Airplane’s first recording “Jefferson Airplane Takes Off”) also performed. The bass player, Jack Casady and drummer Skip Spence, (who was later one of the original members of Moby Grape) joined the band two months later. Spencer Dryden became the drummer in June of 1966 and Grace Slick joined as vocalist in October of 1966. The band performed the first concert for Bill Graham at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco in February of 1966.Jefferson Airplane performed at the Berkeley Folk Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock, and Altamont. They had hit singles White Rabbit and Somebody to Love, from the album “Surrealistic Pillow”. They were on the cover of Life Magazine in 1968. The band co- headlined with the Doors in Europe in the summer of 1968. Many legendary bands opened for the Airplane: Grateful Dead, Santana, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, Janis Joplin, Steve Miller, and many others. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Sources: http://rockhall.com/inductees/jefferson-airplane/bio/

http://www.jeffersonairplane.com/the-band/

I'm one of those regular weird people. Janis Joplin 

http://www.wikifeet.com/Janis_Joplin

http://culturacolectiva.com/janis-joplin-al-cine/

Janis Lyn Joplin was born at St. Mary's Hospital in the oil-refining town of Port Arthur, Texas, near the border with Louisiana. Her father was a cannery worker and her mother was a registrar for a business college. As an overweight teenager, she was a folk-music devotee (especially Odetta, Leadbelly and Bessie Smith). After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School, she attended Lamar State College and the University of Texas, where she played auto-harp in Austin bars. A fraternity voted her the Ugliest Man on Campus in 1963, and she spent two years traveling, performing and becoming drug-addicted. Back home in 1966, her friend Chet Helms suggested she become lead singer for Big Brother and the Holding Company, an established Haight-Ashbury band consisting of guitarists James Gurley and Sam Andrew, bassist Peter Albin and drummer Dave Getz). She got wide recognition through the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, highlights of which were released in Monterey Pop (1968), and with the band's landmark second album, "Cheap Thrills". She formed her "Kosmic Blues Band" the following year and achieved still further recognition as a solo performer at Woodstock in 1969, highlights released in Woodstock (1970). In the spring of 1970, she sang with the "Full Tilt Boogie Band" and, on October 4 of that year, she was found dead in Hollywood's Landmark Motor Hotel (now known as Highland Gardens Hotel) from a heroin-alcohol overdose the previous day. Her ashes were scattered off the coast of California. Her biggest selling album was the posthumously released "Pearl", which contained her quintessential song: "Me & Bobby McGee".

Sources: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0429767/bio