When people talk about romantic relationships ruining bands, the name that always comes up is Yoko Ono. This has become such a fixture in our rock vernacular that when The Black Crowes disbanded due to lead singer Chris Robinson's marriage to Kate Hudson, fans started referring to her as Yoko Hudson.
But Ono was not the dagger that carved the Beatles from their once-glorious musical union. Popular wisdom seems to dictate that Ono stepped in, seduced John Lennon and dragged him out of his best musical self, kicking and screaming all the way. In reality, Ono was much more important as a symbol of the ways in which Lennon had changed from his early Beatles persona all by himself.
The beauty of the Beatles was that they were extraordinary pop stars. They made catchy, expressive songs, they were cute and they were easily marketed without destroying the essence of their music. As they grew older and the times changed, they even managed to add a relevant edge to their music to keep up with the rapidly evolving cultural landscape.
While Paul McCartney stayed in line with the poppy love-song mold of the past, even growing softer with fare like \The Long and Winding Road,"" Lennon strove for the credibility of a singer-songwriter and the coolness of a sonic experimenter to go with his political activism. Thus was born John Lennon the counter-cultural artist. Enter Yoko Ono.
As a fringe artist with a stormy, mysterious demeanor from a non-white ethnicity, Ono represented the direction in which Lennon was desperate to steer his career. Together, they consumed a lot of drinks and made three experimental albums of un-listenable music.
Eventually, Lennon's post-Beatles music settled into relatively benign singer-songwriter pop. Ono did not steer him into bad fringe art rock, nor did she steer him out of it. She was his wife, and she was an accessory to his image. But while Ono may have represented the end of a great era of music, the John and Yoko dynamic was not what killed the Beatles. It was just the different trajectories of John and Paul.
John was heading for a break with his band and Yoko got all the blame. Many bands face gender-related problems, and here The Daily Cardinal examines the drama, including one band to watch.
Fleetwood Mac has made its way through the ups and downs of gender differences throughout its long career.
The group's biggest struggle began in 1977 when John and Christine McVie divorced at the same time Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham ended their long-term relationship. With struggle came success.??The group used the emotional turmoil of the break-ups to record its hit album ??After the success of that album, the group members went their separate ways, made solo albums and reunited in 1997 for
The band members have mixed feelings on whether or not the problems they faced stemmed from gender differences.??Since Christine no longer belongs to the dramatic group, Nicks is the only woman in the mix.??She misses the female power they once had.
??Buckingham now admits that he enjoyed the moments when Nicks went solo. Most couples do not have to keep on seeing each other after a big break-up but since they were in the band together they had no choice.
Now with his own wife and kids, Mick Fleetwood acknowledges he finds it better for the band that he and Nicks moved on.??
Although the 2003 album had its share of moments in production, conflict has proven useful for the band's stayingpower.?? It always seems to work through the issues and put out chart-topping albums.??After all, it is the conflict that keeps things interesting.
Jefferson Airplane is often remembered for psychedelic acid-rock songs of the mid-'60s and early '70s, like ""Somebody to Love"" and ""Volunteers.""??Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this band, especially within that era, is the dynamic of six guys-Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Spencer Dryden and Bill Thompson-with one woman, Grace Slick.??
Although Slick did not found the band, nor was she the original female lead, she is often thought of as the essential member, as Mick Jagger was to the Rolling Stones.??Slick revolutionized the position of a female lead in a rock band.??Not only was she a sex symbol that attracted herds of male fans, she contributed to the band's musical repertoire by writing ""White Rabbit"" and many other songs.??
With Slick's good looks and incredible talent she quickly attracted the other members of the band into a love pentagon despite the fact that when she joined the band she was already married to cinematographer Jerry Slick.??Shortly after joining however, she had affairs with Casady, Dryden and Kantner, who fathered her child.??The strain of Slick's affairs, which led to power struggles amongst band members, is thought to be one of the main reasons they fell apart.
Years later, critics would remember Nico as the prototypical goth rock girl. The general public would remember her as ""that chick who slept with Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Jackson Brown, Bob Dylan and John Cale.""
But at the time Nico was introduced into The Velvet Underground, Nico and Lou Reed were at their pinnacles, raunchy and brilliant in ways no band before them could conceive of recording. The Velvet Underground and Nico glamorized dirt in artistic music. Few other bands matched the grit of the Velvet's songs about heroin, transvestites and sex. With well-written songs that would provide the bare-bones foundations of punk and artistic credibility provided by Andy Warhol's endorsement, The Velvet Underground covered incredulous topics with remarkable credibility.
Behind the doors of Warhol's Factory, The Velvet Underground's story was far from civil. After Andy Warhol opted to add Nico to the Velvets, she was technically a band member, but no one else in the band saw it that way. The Velvet Underground used Nico for the sex appeal Lou Reed lacked, only giving Nico three songs to sing on the monumental . The fights that ensued in Warhol's presence did not help the band, nor did the fact that Nico was reportedly wittier than Reed and always got the last word. The hatred between Lou Reed and Nico became the story of the band even after Nico left, having either been fired or quit.
But through all of this, The Velvet Underground pulled one of the greatest albums from one of the most tenuous relationships. would become one of the foundations of the musical genres our generation grew up with; punk, grunge and alternative rock. The Velvet Underground would survive the disappearence of Nico, recording four more classic albums.
In April 1961 a nasal-sounding kid from the north country and a girl with a sweeping soprano voice popped up in Greenwich Village. They were called the king and queen of folk when they came together. They both wrote songs that persist far past their time and place. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez seemed like they should have complemented each other perfectly.
Dylan needed someone to pull him away from the dark landscapes of ""A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"" and the sadness of ""Song to Woody."" He was a successful young man who needed some refinement only a woman could offer. Baez needed someone to expand her repertoire beyond ballads with American and English influences. Naturally, the two came together. For a while, at least.
While Baez brought Dylan along to new audiences, she mined his unreleased material. Though her live albums earned her critical success, her cover of Dylan's ""Love is Just a Four Letter Word"" and ""Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"" made her a folk legend. Dylan, though intimately connected with Baez, stood at a distance with his own material.
Their final breach came when Richard Farina, Baez's brother-in-law, died in a motorcycle accident. Farina and Dylan had been early competitors, and with his death, Dylan wandered off to his own work while Baez persisted in her radical politics.
In his book on the couples, ""Positively Fourth Street,"" author David Hadju mentioned Bob and Joan always seemed like they were sharing a private joke. If they were, the joke has a strange way of persisting.
After being picked as one of the ""10 Artists to Watch"" by Rolling Stone and performing on Leno, Letterman and ""Last Call,"" Damien Rice has been getting a lot of worldwide attention recently. Their American debut,, was released on Vector Records and featured the hit song ""Volcano,"" mixed by Rice himself in his bedroom on a simple eight-track.
Although the band is named after him, this Irish group is much more than just one man. Most of the mainstream press refers to Rice as the next big thing in the increasingly popular singer-songwriter genre.
What sets his band apart from all the John Mayers out there is the key, yet neglected element of female singer Lisa Hannigan. With a flawless voice of Sarah MacLachlin-quality, the songs on which Hannigan duets are by far the best on the album. Her sound is the perfect complement to Rice's lyrics, and their harmonies create a unique feeling that would be impossible for a band with the typical one-singer formula to create. This is why it is unfortunate Rice gets all the credit, for it is the combination of him and Hannigan that makes this band worthy of all the hype.
It will be interesting to see whether this up-and-coming band will face the same experiences of previous inter-gender greats.
