A rock band or pop band is a small musical ensemble which performs rock music, pop music or a related genre. The four-piece band is the most common configuration in rock and pop music. Before the development of the electronic keyboard, the configuration was typically two guitarists (a lead guitarist and a rhythm guitarist, with one of them singing lead vocals), a bassist, and a drummer (e.g. Avenged Sevenfold, KISS, Franz Ferdinand). Another common formation is a vocalist who does not play an instrument, electric guitarist, bass guitarist, and a drummer (e.g. The Who, The Monkees, Led Zeppelin, Queen, and U2). Instrumentally, these bands can be considered as trios.

The smallest ensemble that is commonly used in rock music is the trio format. Two-member rock and pop bands are relatively rare, because of the difficulty in providing all of the musical elements which are part of the rock or pop sound (vocals, chords, bass lines, and percussion or drumming). In a hard rock or blues-rock band, or heavy metal rock group, a “power trio” format is often used, which consists of an electric guitar player, an electric bass guitar player and a drummer, and typically one or more of these musicians also sing (sometimes all three members will sing, e.g. Bee Gees or Alkaline Trio). Some well-known power trios with the guitarist on lead vocals are The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Nirvana, The Jam, and ZZ Top.

The smallest ensemble that is commonly used in rock music is the trio format. In a hard rock or blues-rock band, or heavy metal rock group, a “power trio” format is often used, which consists of an electric guitar player, an electric bass guitar player and a drummer, and typically one or more of these musicians also sing (sometimes all three members will sing, e.g. Bee Gees or Alkaline Trio). Some well-known power trios with the guitarist on lead vocals are The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Nirvana, Green Day, Violent Femmes, Gov’t Mule, The Melvins, The Minutemen, James Gang, Triumph, Shellac, Sublime, Chevelle, Muse, The Jam, Stray Cats, and ZZ Top.

A handful of others with the bassist on vocals include Primus, Motörhead, The Police, MxPx, Blue Cheer, Rush, The presidents of the United States of America, Venom, and Cream.

Some power trios feature two lead vocalists. For example, in the band blink-182 vocals are split between bassist Mark Hoppus and guitarist Tom DeLonge, or in the band Dinosaur Jr., guitarist J. Mascis is the primary songwriter and vocalist, but bassist Lou Barlow writes some songs and sings as well.

An alternative to the power trio are organ trios formed with an electric guitarist, a drummer and a keyboardist. Although organ trios are most commonly associated with 1950s and 1960s jazz organ trio groups such as those led by organist Jimmy Smith, there are also organ trios in rock-oriented styles, such as jazz-rock fusion and Grateful Dead-influenced jam bands such as Medeski Martin & Wood. In organ trios, the keyboard player typically plays a Hammond organ or similar instrument, which permits the keyboard player to perform bass lines, chords, and lead lines, one example being hard rock band Zebra. A variant of the organ trio are trios formed with an electric bassist, a drummer and an electronic keyboardist (playing synthesizers) such as the progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Triumvirat, and Atomic Rooster. Another variation is to have a vocalist, a guitarist and a drummer, an example being Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Another variation is two guitars, a bassist, and a drum machine, examples including Magic Wands and Big Black. Progressive metal band Animals as Leaders has two guitarists and a drummer. Both guitarists, Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes, use seven and eight-string guitars in their music for an extended range. This allows for bass-playing techniques to be utilized on the lower strings in order to compensate for the lack of bass guitar.

The Mini Mansions features drummer Michael Shuman as their frontman. Shuman does not use a bass drum, but instead incorporates electronic drum pads into his kit. The band also uses a keyboardist, Tyler Parkford, and a bass player, Zach Dawes. Parkford and Shuman share lead vocal duties, occasionally duetting, or handing off vocal duties to a guest vocalist such as Alex Turner or Fred Schneider. Shuman will also occasionally play lead guitar, utilizing a relay-like system, in which he will begin the drum part himself, passing the ‘baton’ to a drum machine while playing guitar riffs and/or solos, then returning to his kit when finished. Dawes will also occasionally switch with Shuman, and play drums while Shuman plays guitar or bass.

A power trio with the guitarist on lead vocals is a popular record company lineup, as the guitarist and singer will usually be the songwriter. Therefore, the label only has to present one “face” to the public. The backing band may or may not be featured in publicity. If the backup band is not marketed as an integral part of the group, this gives the record company more flexibility to replace band members or use substitute musicians. This lineup often leads to songs that are fairly simple and accessible, as the frontman (or frontwoman) will have to sing and play guitar at the same time.

The four-piece band is the most common configuration in rock and pop music. Before the development of the electronic keyboard, the configuration was typically two guitarists (a lead guitarist and a rhythm guitarist, with one of them singing lead vocals), a bassist, and a drummer(e.g. The Beatles, KISS, Jackyl, Metallica, The Clash, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Kinks, Sonic Youth, The Smashing Pumpkins, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand). This is popular with bands for its versatility.

Another common formation is a vocalist, electric guitarist, bass guitarist, and a drummer (e.g. Tool, The Who, The Monkees, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Ramones, Sex Pistols, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, R.E.M., Blur, The Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Stone Roses, Creed, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Rage Against the Machine, The Stooges, Joy Division, and U2). Instrumentally, these bands can be considered as trios. This format is popular with new bands, as there are only two instruments that need tuning, the melody and chords formula prevalent with their material is easy to learn, four members are commonplace to work with, the roles are clearly defined and generally are: instrumental melody line, rhythm section which plays the chords and/or countermelody, and vocals on top.

In some early rock bands, keyboardists were used, performing on piano (e.g. The Seeds and The Doors) with a guitarist, singer, drummer and keyboardist. Some bands will have a guitarist, bassist, drummer, and keyboard player (for example, Talking Heads, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Small Faces, The Stranglers, King Crimson, The Guess Who, Pink Floyd, Queen, Porcupine Tree, Coldplay, The Killers and Blind Faith).

Some bands will have the bassist on lead vocals, such as Thin Lizzy, The Chameleons, Skillet, Pink Floyd, Motörhead, NOFX, +44, Slayer, The All-American Rejects or even the lead guitarist, such as Death, Dire Straits, Megadeth and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Some bands, such as The Beatles, have a lead guitarist, a rhythm guitarist and a bassist that all sing lead and backing vocals, that also play keyboards regularly, as well as a drummer. Others, such as The Four Seasons, have a lead vocalist, a lead guitarist, a keyboard player, and a bassist, with the drummer not being a member of the band.

Five-piece bands have existed in rock music since the development of the genre. The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones (until 1993), Aerosmith, Def Leppard, The Runaways (until 1977), AC/DC, Oasis, Pearl Jam, Guns N’ Roses (until 1990), Radiohead, The Strokes, The Yardbirds, 311, My Chemical Romance and The Hives are examples of the common vocalist, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass, and drums lineup. An alternative to the five-member lineup replaces the rhythm guitarist with a keyboard–synthesizer player (examples being the bands Journey, Elbow, Dream Theater, Genesis, Jethro Tull, The Zombies, The Animals, Bon Jovi, Yes, Snow Patrol, Fleetwood Mac, Marilyn Manson and Deep Purple, all of which consist of a vocalist, guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, and a drummer) or with a turntablist such as Deftones, Hed PE, Incubus or Limp Bizkit. Pink Floyd, during the recordings for their second album – A Saucerful of Secrets -, even consisted of five musicians at once, when guitarist David Gilmour joined the band as Syd Barrett’s mental health began to decline. However, Syd quit the band during the album recording and it turned back to a quartet, Gilmour having assumed the guitar for good.

Alternatives include a keyboardist, guitarist, drummer, bassist, and saxophonist, such as The Sonics, The Dave Clark 5, and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. Another alternative is three guitarists, a bassist and a drummer, such as Radiohead and The Byrds. Some five-person bands feature two guitarists, a keyboardist, a bassist and a drummer, with one or more of these musicians (typically one of the guitarists) handling lead vocals on top of their instrument (examples being Children of Bodom, Styx, The Music Machine, Relient K, Ensiferum and the current line up of Status Quo). In some cases, typically in cover bands, one musician plays either rhythm guitar or keyboards, depending on the song (one notable band being Firewind, with Bob Katsionis handling this particular role).

Other times, the vocalist will bring another musical “voice” to the table, most commonly a harmonica or percussion; Mick Jagger, for example, played harmonica and percussion instruments like maracas and tambourine. Ozzy Osbourne was also known to play the harmonica on some occasions (i.e. “The Wizard” by Black Sabbath). Vocalist Robert Brown of lesser known steampunk band Abney Park plays harmonica, accordion, and darbuka in addition to mandolin. Flutes are also commonly used by vocalists, most notably Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull and Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues.

Iron Maiden is a six-part band with a lead vocalist, three guitarists, a bassist, and drummer lineup. (Not shown in this image are Bruce Dickinson and Nicko McBrain.)

Larger bands have long been a part of rock and pop music, in part due to the influence of the “singer accompanied with orchestra” model inherited from popular big-band jazz and swing and popularized by Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. To create larger ensembles, rock bands often add an additional guitarist, an additional keyboardist, additional percussionists or second drummer, an entire horn section, and even a flutist. An example of a six-member rock band is Toto with a lead vocalist, guitarist, bassist, two keyboard players, and drummer. Other examples include Australian band INXS and American Blondie; both they consist in a lead vocalist, two guitarists, a keyboard player, a bassist and a drummer. The American heavy metal band Slipknot is composed of nine members, with a vocalist, two guitarists, a drummer, a bassist, two custom percussionists, a turntablist, and a sampler.

In larger groups (such as The Band), instrumentalists could play multiple instruments, which enabled the ensemble to create a wider variety of instrument combinations. More modern examples of such a band are Arcade Fire and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. More rarely, rock or pop groups will be accompanied in concerts by a full or partial symphony orchestra, where lush string orchestra arrangements are used to flesh out the sound of slow ballads. Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca started doing performances in the late 1970s with orchestras consisting of ten to hundred (Branca) and even four hundred guitars. Some groups have a large number of members that all play the same instrument, such as guitar, keyboard, horns or strings.

Dick Clark (1929-2012) is an American music-performance show that aired in various versions from 1952 to 1989 and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as producer. The show featured teenagers dancing to Top 40 music introduced by Clark; at least one popular musical act—over the decades, running the gamut from Jerry Lee Lewis to Run–D.M.C.—would usually appear in person to lip-sync one of their latest singles. Freddy “Boom Boom” Cannon holds the record for most appearances at 110.

The show’s popularity helped Dick Clark become an American media mogul and inspired similar long-running music programs, such as Soul Train and Top of the Pops. Clark eventually assumed ownership of the program through his Dick Clark Productions company.

American Bandstand premiered locally in late March 1950 as Bandstand on Philadelphia television station WFIL-TV Channel 6 (now WPVI-TV), as a replacement for a weekday movie that had shown predominantly British films. Hosted by Bob Horn as a television adjunct to his radio show of the same name on WFIL radio, Bandstand mainly featured short musical films produced by Snader Telescriptions and Official Films, with occasional studio guests. This incarnation was an early predecessor of sorts of the music video shows that became popular in the 1980s, featuring films that are themselves the ancestors of music videos.

Horn, however, was disenchanted with the program, so he wanted to have the show changed to a dance program, with teenagers dancing along on camera as the records played, based on an idea that came from a radio show on WPEN, The 950 Club, hosted by Joe Grady and Ed Hurst. This more-familiar version of Bandstand debuted on October 7, 1952 in “Studio ‘B’,” which was located in their just-completed addition to the original 1947 building in West Philadelphia (4548 Market Street), and was hosted by Horn, with Lee Stewart as co-host until 1955. Stewart was the owner of a TV/Radio business in Philadelphia and even though he was an older gentleman, his advertising account was a large one for WFIL-TV at the time and was put on the program to appease the account. As WFIL grew financially and the account became less important, Stewart wasn’t needed and was eventually dropped from the program. Tony Mammarella was the original producer with Ed Yates as director. The short Snader and Official music films continued in the short term, mainly to fill gaps as they changed dancers during the show—a necessity, as the studio could not fit more than 200 teenagers.

On July 9, 1956, Horn was fired after a drunk-driving arrest, as WFIL and dual owner Walter Annenberg’s The Philadelphia Inquirer at the time were doing a series on drunken driving. He was also reportedly involved in a prostitution ring and brought up on morals charges. Horn was temporarily replaced by producer Tony Mammarella before the job went to Dick Clark permanently.

In late spring of 1956, the ABC television network asked their O&O’s and affiliates for programming suggestions to fill their 3:30 p.m. (ET) time slot (WFIL had been pre-empting the ABC programming with Bandstand). Clark decided to pitch the show to ABC president Thomas W. Moore, and after some badgering the show was picked up nationally, becoming American Bandstand on August 5, 1957. One show from this first season (December 18, 1957, indicated as the “Second National Telecast”) is now in the archives of Chicago’s Museum Of Broadcast Communications.

“Studio ‘B'” measured 80’x42’x24’, but appeared smaller due to the number of props, television cameras, and risers that were used for the show. It was briefly shot in color in 1958 when WFIL-TV began experimenting with the then-new technology. Due to a combination of factors that included the size of the studio, the need to have as much space available for the teenagers to dance, and the size of the color camera compared to the black-and-white models, it was only possible to have one RCA TK-41 where three RCA TK-10s^[3] had been used before. WFIL went back to the TK-10s two weeks later when ABC refused to carry the color signal and management realized that the show lost something without the extra cameras.

Rate-a-Record

Clark would often interview the teenagers about their opinions of the songs being played, most memorably through the “Rate-a-Record” segment. During the segment, two audience members each ranked two records on a scale of 35 to 98, after which the two opinions were averaged by Clark, who then asked the audience members to justify their scores. The segment gave rise, perhaps apocryphally, to the phrase “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.” In one humorous segment broadcast for years on retrospective shows, comedians Cheech and Chong appeared as the record raters.

Featured artists typically performed their current hits by lip-syncing to the released version of the song.

Hosts

The only person to ever co-host the show with Dick Clark was Donna Summer, who joined him to present a special episode dedicated to the release of the Casablanca film Thank God It’s Friday on 27 May 1978. From the late 1950s and most of the 1960s, Clark’s on-camera sidekick was announcer Charlie O’Donnell, who later went on to announce Wheel of Fortune and other programs hosted or produced by Clark, such as The $100,000 Pyramid. During this time, there were occasionally shows that were not hosted by Clark, in which case a substitute host (among them being Rick Azar) would be brought in to host in Clark’s stead.

Theme music

Bandstand originally used “High Society” by Artie Shaw as its theme song, but by the time the show went national, it had been replaced by various arrangements of Charles Albertine’s “Bandstand Boogie,” including Larry Elgart’s big-band recording remembered by viewers of the daily version. From 1969 to 1974, “Bandstand Theme,” a synthesized rock instrumental written by Mike Curb, opened each show. From 1974 to 1977, there was a newer, orchestral disco version of “Bandstand Boogie,” arranged and performed by Joe Porter, played during the opening and closing credits.

From 1977 to the end of its ABC run in 1987, the show opened and closed with Barry Manilow’s rendition of “Bandstand Boogie,” which he originally recorded for his 1975 album Tryin’ to Get the Feeling. This version introduced lyrics written by Manilow and Bruce Sussman, referencing elements of the series. The previous theme was retained as bumper music.

The Manilow version was replaced by an updated instrumental arrangement of “Bandstand Boogie” when Bandstand went into syndication, arranged by David Russo.

From 1974 to the end of the ABC run in 1987, Bandstand featured another instrumental at its mid-show break: Billy Preston’s synth hit “Space Race.”

Early changes

When ABC picked up the game show Do You Trust Your Wife? from CBS in November 1957, they renamed the program as Who Do You Trust? and scheduled the program at 3:30PM ET—almost in the middle of Bandstand. Instead of shortening or moving Bandstand, ABC opted to just begin Bandstand at 3PM, cut away to Who Do You Trust? at 3:30PM, then rejoin Bandstand at 4PM. In Philadelphia, however, WFIL opted to tape-delay the game show for later broadcast in another time slot, and to continue on with Bandstand, though only for the local audience.

A half-hour evening version of American Bandstand aired on Monday nights from 7:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (ET), beginning on October 7, 1957. It preceded The Guy Mitchell Show. Both were ratings disasters. Dick Clark later stated that he knew the prime-time edition would fail because its core audience — teenagers and housewives — was occupied with other interests in the evenings. The Monday-night version aired its last program in December 1957, but ABC gave Clark a Saturday-night time slot for The Dick Clark Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show, which originated from the Little Theatre in Manhattan, beginning on February 15, 1958. The Saturday show would run until 1960.

The program was broadcast live, weekday afternoons and, by 1959, the show had a national audience of 20 million. In the fall of 1961, ABC truncated American Bandstand’s airtime from 90 to 60 minutes (4:00–5:00pm ET), then even further as a daily half-hour (4:00–4:30pm ET) program in September 1962; beginning in early 1963, all five shows for the upcoming week were videotaped the preceding Saturday. The use of videotape allowed Clark to produce and host a series of concert tours around the success of American Bandstand and to pursue other broadcast interests. On September 7, 1963, the program was moved from its weekday slot and began airing weekly every Saturday afternoon, restored to an hour, until 1989.

Production of the show moved from Philadelphia to the ABC Television Center in Los Angeles (now known as The Prospect Studios) on February 8, 1964, which coincidentally was the same weekend that WFIL-TV moved from 46th and Market to their then-new facility on City Line Avenue. The program was permanently in color from September 9, 1967. The typical production schedule consisted of videotaping three shows on a Saturday and three shows on a Sunday, every six weeks. The shows were usually produced in either Stage 54 or Stage 55 at ABC Television Center.

For a brief time in 1973, Bandstand alternated its time slot with Soul Unlimited, a show featuring soul music that was hosted by Buster Jones. Soul Unlimited was not well-received among its target audience of African-Americans, ostensibly due to its being created by a white man (Clark), and because of its alleged usage of deliberately racial overtones despite this fact. Don Cornelius, the creator and host of Soul Train, along with Jesse Jackson, entered into a dispute with Clark over this upstart program, and it was canceled within a few weeks. Set pieces from Soul Unlimited were utilized by Bandstand for its 1974–1978 set design. During the 1978 season of Bandstand, Donna Summer became the only music artist in Bandstand’s history to co-host the program.

As Bandstand moved towards the 1980s, the ratings began to decline. Many factors were involved in this, particularly the launch of MTV and other music programs on television, and along with that, the number of ABC affiliates opting to pre-empt or delay the program. The increase in competition hurt Bandstand and the variety of options for music on TV decreased its relevance. The other reason was that American Bandstand was pre-empted on many occasions by televised college football games (which expanded greatly in number in the wake of a court-ordered deregulation in 1984) which were becoming huge ratings successes, as well as occasional special presentations (i.e. unsold game show pilots).

Making matters worse, for the 1986–87 season, ABC reduced Bandstand from a full hour to 30 minutes; at Clark’s request, the final ABC episode (with Laura Branigan performing “Shattered Glass”) aired on September 5, 1987. Two weeks later, Bandstand moved to first-run syndication, restored to its former hour length, and videotaped at KCET studios. The show’s new set was similar to that of Soul Train. Clark continued as host of the series, which primarily aired on NBC affiliates (including KYW-TV, in the show’s former Philadelphia base), from September 19, 1987 until June 4, 1988; it was distributed by LBS Communications.

After a ten-month hiatus, Bandstand moved to USA Network on April 8, 1989, with comedian David Hirsch taking over hosting duties. In another format shift, it was shot outdoors at Universal Studios Hollywood. Clark remained as executive producer. This version was canceled after 26 weeks, and its final show (with The Cover Girls performing “My Heart Skips a Beat” and “We Can’t Go Wrong”) aired on October 7, 1989.

Dick Clark (1929-2012) Was an American radio and television personality, as well as a cultural icon who remains best known for hosting American Bandstand from 1957 to 1987. He also hosted the game show Pyramid and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, which transmitted Times Square’s New Year’s Eve celebrations. Clark was also well known for his trademark sign-off, “For now, Dick Clark — so long!”, accompanied with a military salute.

As host of American Bandstand, Clark introduced rock & roll to many Americans. The show gave many new music artists their first exposure to national audiences, including Ike and Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Talking Heads and Simon & Garfunkel. Episodes he hosted were among the first in which blacks and whites performed on the same stage and among the first in which the live studio audience sat without racial segregation. Singer Paul Anka claimed that Bandstand was responsible for creating a “youth culture.” Due to his perennial youthful appearance and his fame as the host of American Bandstand, Clark was often referred to as “America’s oldest teenager” or “the world’s oldest teenager”.

In his capacity as a businessman, Clark served as Chief Executive Officer of Dick Clark Productions, part of which he sold off in his later years. He also founded the American Bandstand Diner, a restaurant chain modeled after the Hard Rock Cafe. In 1973, he created and produced the annual American Music Awards show, similar to the Grammy Awards.

Clark suffered a stroke in December 2004. With speech ability still impaired, Clark returned to his New Year’s Rockin’ Eve show a year later on December 31, 2005. Subsequently, he appeared at the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2006, and every New Year’s Rockin’ Eve show through the 2011–12 show. Clark died on April 18, 2012 of a heart attack at the age of 82 following a medical procedure.

Clark was born and raised in Mount Vernon, New York, to Richard Augustus Clark and Julia Fuller (Barnard) Clark. His only sibling, older brother Bradley, was killed in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.

Clark attended A.B. Davis High School (later renamed A.B. Davis Middle School) in Mount Vernon, where he was an average student. At age 10, Clark decided to pursue a career in radio. In pursuit of that goal, he attended Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, graduating in 1951 with a degree in advertising and a minor in radio. While at Syracuse, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Phi Gamma).

In 1945, Clark began his career working in the mailroom at WRUN, an AM radio station in Rome, New York, that was owned by his uncle and managed by his father. Almost immediately, he was asked to fill in for the vacationing weatherman, and within a few months, he was announcing station breaks.

While attending Syracuse, Clark worked at WOLF-AM, then a country music station. After graduation, he returned to WRUN for a short time where he went by the name Dick Clay. After that, Clark got a job at the television station WKTV in Utica, New York. His first television hosting job was on Cactus Dick and the Santa Fe Riders, a country music program. He would later replace Robert Earle (who would later host the GE College Bowl) as a newscaster.

Clark was principal in pro broadcasters operator of 1440 KPRO in Riverside, California, from 1962 to 1982. In the 1960s, he was owner of KGUD AM/FM (later KTYD AM/FM) in Santa Barbara, California.

American Bandstand

In 1952, Clark moved to Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, where he took a job as a disc jockey at radio station WFIL, adopting the Dick Clark handle. WFIL had an affiliated television station (now WPVI) with the same call sign, which began broadcasting a show called Bob Horn‘s Bandstand in 1952. Clark was responsible for a similar program on the company’s radio station, and served as a regular substitute host when Horn went on vacation. In 1956, Horn was arrested for drunk driving and was subsequently dismissed. On July 9, 1956, Clark became the show’s permanent host.

Bandstand was picked up by the ABC television network, renamed American Bandstand, and debuted nationally on August 5, 1957. The show took off, due to Clark’s natural rapport with the live teenage audience and dancing participants as well as the non-threatening image he projected to television audiences. As a result, many parents were introduced to rock and roll music. According to Hollywood producer Michael Uslan, “he was able to use his unparalleled communication skills to present rock ‘n roll in a way that was palatable to parents.”

In 1958, The Dick Clark Show was added to ABC’s Saturday night lineup. By the end of year, viewership exceeded 20 million, and featured artists were “virtually guaranteed” large sales boosts after appearing. In a surprise television tribute to Clark in 1959 on This Is Your Life, host Ralph Edwards called him “America’s youngest starmaker,” and estimated the show had an audience of 50 million.

Clark moved the show from Philadelphia to Los Angeles in 1964. The move was related to the popularity of new “surf” groups based in Southern California, including The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. The show ran daily Monday through Friday until 1963, then weekly on Saturdays until 1987. Bandstand was briefly revived in 1989, with Clark again serving as host. By the time of its cancellation, the show had become longest-running variety show in TV history.

In the 1960s, the show’s emphasis changed from merely playing records to including live performers. During this period, many of the leading rock groups of the 1960s had their first exposure to nationwide audiences. A few of the many artists introduced were Ike and Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, Simon and Garfunkel, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino and Chubby Checker.

During an interview with Clark by Henry Schipper of Rolling Stone magazine in 1990, it was noted that “over two-thirds of the people who’ve been initiated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had their television debuts on American Bandstand, and the rest of them probably debuted on other shows [they] produced.” During the show’s lifetime, it featured over 10,000 live performances, many by artists who would have been unable to appear anywhere else on TV, as the variety shows during much of this period were “antirock.” Schipper points out that Clark’s performers were shocking to general audiences:

The music establishment, and the adults in general, really hated rock and roll. Politicians, ministers, older songwriters and musicians foamed at the mouth. Frank Sinatra reportedly called Elvis Presley a “rancid-smelling aphrodisiac.”

Clark was therefore considered to have a negative influence on youth, and was well aware of that impression held by most adults:

I was roundly criticized for being in and around rock and roll music at its inception. It was the devil’s music, it would make your teeth fall out and your hair turn blue, whatever the hell. You get through that.

In 2002, many of the groups he introduced appeared at the 50th anniversary special to celebrate American Bandstand. Clark noted during the special that American Bandstand was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as “the longest-running variety show in TV history.” Hank Ballard, who wrote “The Twist,” described Clark’s popularity during the early years of American Bandstand:

The man was big. He was the biggest thing in America at that time. He was bigger than the president.

I played records, the kids danced, and America watched.

Shortly after taking over, Clark also ended the show’s all-white policy by featuring black artists such as Chuck Berry. In time, blacks and whites performed on the same stage, and studio seating was desegregated. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Clark produced and hosted a series of concert tours around the success of American Bandstand, which by 1959 had a national audience of 20 million. However, Clark was unable to get the Beatles to appear when they came to America.

In 1960, the United States Senate investigated payola, the practice of music-producing companies paying broadcasting companies to favor their product. As a result, Clark’s personal investments in music publishing and recording companies were considered a conflict of interest, and he sold his shares in those companies.

When asked about some of the causes for the hearings, Clark speculated about some of the contributing factors not mentioned by the press:

Politicians . . . did their damnedest to respond to the pressures they were getting from parents and publishing companies and people who were being driven out of business [by rock]. . . . It hit a responsive chord with the electorate, the older people. . . . they full-out hated the music. [But] it stayed alive. It could’ve been nipped in the bud, because they could’ve stopped it from being on television and radio.

Beginning in late 1963, Clark branched out into hosting game shows, presiding over The Object Is. The show was cancelled in 1964, and replaced by Missing Links, which had moved from NBC. Clark took over as host, replacing Ed McMahon.

Clark became the first host of The $10,000 Pyramid, which premiered on CBS March 26, 1973. The show — a word-association game created and produced by daytime television producer Bob Stewart — moved to ABC in 1974. Over the coming years, the top prize changed several times (and with it the name of the show), and several primetime spinoffs were created.

As the program moved back to CBS in September 1982, Clark continued to host the daytime version through most of its history, winning three Emmy Awards for best game show host. In total, Pyramid won nine Emmy Awards for best game show during his run, a mark that is eclipsed only by the twelve won by the syndicated version of Jeopardy!. Clark’s final Pyramid hosting gig, The $100,000 Pyramid, ended in 1988.

Clark subsequently returned to Pyramid as a guest in later incarnations. During the premiere of the John Davidson version in 1991, Clark sent a pre-recorded message wishing Davidson well in hosting the show. In 2002, Clark played as a celebrity guest for three days on the Donny Osmond version. Earlier, he was also a guest during the Bill Cullen version of The $25,000 Pyramid which aired simultaneously with Clark’s daytime version of the show.

Clark hosted the syndicated television game show The Challengers, during its only season (1990–91). The Challengers was a co-production between the production companies of Dick Clark and Ron Greenberg. Also during the 1990–91 season, Clark and Greenberg co-produced a revival of Let’s Make a Deal for NBC with Bob Hilton as the host. Hilton would later be replaced by original host Monty Hall. Clark would later host Scattergories on NBC in 1993; and The Family Channel’s version of It Takes Two in 1997. In 1999, along with Bob Boden, he was one of the executive producers of Fox’s TV game show Greed, which ran from November 5, 1999, to July 14, 2000, and was hosted by Chuck Woolery. At the same time, Clark also hosted the Stone-Stanley-created Winning Lines, which ran for six weeks on CBS from January 8 through February 12, 2000.

In 1972, Dick Clark first produced New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, a New Year’s Eve music special for NBC which included coverage of the ball drop festivities in New York City. Clark aimed to challenge the dominance of Guy Lombardo’s New Year’s specials on CBS, as he believed its big band music skewed too old. After two years on NBC, and being hosted by Three Dog Night and George Carlin respectively, the program moved to ABC and Clark assumed hosting duties. Following Lombardo’s death in 1977, Rockin’ Eve experienced a surge in popularity, and would go on to become the most watched New Year’s Eve broadcast yearly. Clark would also serve as a special correspondent for ABC News’s ABC 2000 broadcast, covering the arrival of 2000.

Following his stroke (which prevented him from appearing at all on the 2004–05 edition), Clark returned to make minimal appearances on the 2005–06 edition, while ceding the majority of hosting duties to Ryan Seacrest. Reaction to Clark’s appearance was mixed. While some TV critics (including Tom Shales of The Washington Post, in an interview with the CBS Radio Network) felt that he was not in good enough shape to do the broadcast, stroke survivors and many of Clark’s fans praised him for being a role model for people dealing with post-stroke recovery. Seacrest has remained host and an executive producer of the special ever since, taking over full duties after Clark’s death.

Clark’s first love was radio, and in 1963 he began hosting a radio program called The Dick Clark Radio Show. It was produced by Mars Broadcasting of Stamford. Despite Clark’s enormous popularity on American Bandstand, the show was only picked up by a few dozen stations and lasted less than a year.

On March 25, 1972, Clark hosted American Top 40, filling in for Casey Kasem. In 1981, he created The Dick Clark National Music Survey for the Mutual Broadcasting System. The program counted down the top 30 contemporary hits of the week in direct competition with American Top 40. Clark left Mutual in 1986, and Charlie Tuna took over the National Music Survey.

Clark then launched his own radio syndication group with partners Nick Verbitsky and Ed Salamon called the United Stations Radio Network. That company later merged with the Transtar Network to become Unistar, and took over the countdown program Countdown America. The program ran until 1994, when Unistar was sold to Westwood One Radio. The following year, Clark and Verbitsky started over with a new version of the USRN, bringing into the fold Dick Clark’s Rock, Roll & Remember, written and produced by Pam Miller (who also came up with the line used in the show and later around the world: “the soundtrack of our lives”), and a new countdown show: The U.S. Music Survey, produced by Jim Zoller. Clark served as its host until his 2004 stroke. United Stations Radio Networks continues in operation as of 2013.

Dick Clark’s longest running radio show began on February 14, 1982. Dick Clark’s Rock, Roll & Remember was a four-hour oldies show named after Clark’s 1976 autobiography. The first year, it was hosted by veteran Los Angeles disc jockey Gene Weed. Then in 1983, voiceover talent Mark Elliot co-hosted with Clark. By 1985, Clark hosted the entire show. Pam Miller wrote the program and Frank Furino served as producer. Each week, Clark would profile a different artist from the rock and roll era and count down the top four songs that week from a certain year in the 1950s, 1960s or early 1970s. The show ended production when Clark suffered his 2004 stroke. However, reruns from the 1995–2004 era continue to air in syndication and on Clark’s website, dickclarkonline.com.

At the peak of his American Bandstand fame, Clark also hosted a 30-minute Saturday night program called The Dick Clark Show (aka The Dick Clark Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show). It aired from February 15, 1958, until September 10, 1960, on the ABC television network. It was broadcast live from the “Little Theater” in New York City and was sponsored by Beech-Nut gum. It featured the rock and roll stars of the day lip-synching their hits, just as on American Bandstand. However, unlike the afternoon Bandstand program, which focused on the dance floor with the teenage audience demonstrating the latest dance steps, the audience of The Dick Clark Show sat in a traditional theater setting. While some of the musical numbers were presented simply, others were major production numbers. The high point of the show was Clark’s unveiling, with great fanfare at the end of each program, of the top ten records of the coming week. This ritual became so embedded in American culture that it was imitated in many media and contexts, which in turn were satirized nightly by David Letterman on his own Top Ten lists.

From September 27 to December 20, 1959, Clark hosted a 30-minute weekly talent/variety series entitled Dick Clark’s World of Talent at 10:30 p.m. Sundays on ABC. A variation of producer Irving Mansfield’s earlier CBS series, This Is Show Business (1949–1956), it featured three celebrity panelists, including comedian Jack E. Leonard, judging and offering advice to amateur and semi-professional performers. While this show was not a success during its nearly three-month duration, Clark was one of the few personalities in television history on the air nationwide seven days a week.

One of Clark’s most well-known guest appearances was in the final episode (“The Case of the Final Fade-Out”) of the original Perry Mason TV series, in which Clark was revealed to be the killer of an egomaniacal actor during a take of a television show. He appeared as a drag-racing-strip owner in a 1973 episode of the procedural drama series Adam-12.

Clark attempted to branch into the realm of soul music with the series Soul Unlimited in 1973. The series, hosted by Buster Jones, was a more risqué and controversial imitator of the then-popular series Soul Train and alternated in the Bandstand time slot. The series lasted for only a few episodes. Despite a feud between Clark and Soul Train creator and host Don Cornelius, the two would later collaborate on several specials featuring black artists.

Clark hosted the short-lived Dick Clark’s Live Wednesday in 1978. In 1980, Clark served as host of the short-lived series The Big Show, an unsuccessful attempt by NBC to revive the variety show format of the 1950s/60s.

In 1984, Clark produced and hosted the NBC series TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes with co-host with Ed McMahon. The series ran through 1988 and continued in specials hosted by Clark (sometimes joined by another TV personality) into the 21st century, first on NBC, later on ABC, and currently on TBS (the last version re-edited into 15-minute/filler segments airing at about 5:00 a.m.)

Clark and McMahon were longtime Philadelphia acquaintances, and McMahon praised Clark for first bringing him together with future TV partner Johnny Carson when all three worked at ABC in the late 1950s. The “Bloopers” franchise stems from the Clark-hosted (and produced) NBC “Bloopers” specials of the early 1980s, inspired by the books, record albums and appearances of Kermit Schafer, a radio and TV producer who first popularized outtakes of broadcasts. For a period of several years in the 1980s, Clark simultaneously hosted regular programs on the three major American television networks: ABC (Bandstand), CBS (Pyramid) and NBC (Bloopers).

In July 1985, Clark hosted the ABC primetime portion of the historic Live Aid concert, an all-star concert designed by Bob Geldof to end world hunger.

Clark also hosted various pageants from 1988-93 on CBS. He did a brief stint as announcer on The Jon Stewart Show in 1995. He also created and hosted two Fox television specials in 2000 called Challenge of the Child Geniuses, the last game show he would host.

From 2001 to 2003, Clark was a co-host of The Other Half with Mario Lopez, Danny Bonaduce and Dorian Gregory, a syndicated daytime talk show intended to be the male equivalent of The View. Clark also produced the television series American Dreams about a Philadelphia family in the early 1960s whose daughter is a regular on American Bandstand. The series ran from 2002 to 2005.

Clark was featured in the 2002 documentary film Bowling for Columbine. He was criticized for hiring poor, unwed mothers to work long hours in his chain of restaurants for little pay. The mother featured is shown to work over 80 hours per week and is still unable to make her rent and then gets evicted which results in her having to have her son stay at his uncle’s house. At his uncle’s house the boy finds a gun and brings it to school where he shoots another first grader. In the documentary footage, Michael Moore, with cameraman in tow, approached Clark as he was pulling into his work parking space and attempted to question Clark about welfare policies that allow for those conditions. Moore tried to query him about the people he employed and the tax breaks he allegedly took advantage of, in employing welfare recipients; Clark refused to answer any of Moore’s questions, shutting the car door and driving away.

Clark also appeared in interview segments of another 2002 film, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which was based on the “unauthorized autobiography” of Chuck Barris. (Barris had worked at ABC as a standards-and-practices executive during American Bandstand‘s run on that network.)

In the 2002 Dharma and Greg episode “Mission: Implausible,” Greg is the victim of a college prank, and devises an elaborate plan to retaliate, part of which involves his use of a disguise kit; the first disguise chosen is that of Dick Clark. During a fantasy sequence that portrays the unfolding of the plan, the real Clark plays Greg wearing his disguise.

He also made brief cameos in two episodes of the The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. In one episode he plays himself at a Philadelphia diner, and in the other he helps Will Smith’s character host bloopers from past episodes of that sitcom.

In 1965, Clark branched out from hosting, producing Where The Action Is, an afternoon television program shot at different locations every week featuring house band Paul Revere and the Raiders. In 1973, Clark began producing the highly-successful American Music Awards. In 1987, Dick Clark Productions went public. Clark remained active in television and movie production into the 1990s.

Clark had a stake in a chain of music-themed restaurants licensed under the names “Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Grill”, “Dick Clark’s AB Grill”, “Dick Clark’s Bandstand — Food, Spirits & Fun” and “Dick Clark’s AB Diner”. There are currently two airport locations in Newark, New Jersey and Phoenix, Arizona, one location in the Molly Pitcher travel plaza on the New Jersey Turnpike in Cranbury, New Jersey, and one location at “Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Theater” in Branson, Missouri. Until recently, Salt Lake City, Utah had an airport location.

“Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Theater” opened in Branson in April 2006, and nine months later, a new theater and restaurant entitled “Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Music Complex” opened near Dolly Parton’s Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

From 1979 to 1980, Clark reportedly owned the former scandal-ridden Westchester Premier Theatre in Greenburgh, NY and renamed it the Dick Clark Westchester Theatre. A recently opened Stop & Shop supermarket now stands at that location.

Clark was married three times. His first marriage was to Barbara Mallery in 1952; the couple had one son, Richard A. Clark, and divorced in 1961. He married Loretta Martin in 1962; the couple had two children, Duane and Cindy, and divorced in 1971. His third marriage, to Kari Wigton, who he married in 1977, lasted until his death.

During an interview on Larry King Live in April 2004, Clark revealed that he had type 2 diabetes.

On December 8, 2004, the then 75-year-old was hospitalized in Los Angeles after suffering what was initially termed a minor stroke. Although he was expected to be fine, it was later announced that Clark would be unable to host his annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve broadcast. Clark returned to the series the following year, but the dysarthria that resulted from the stroke rendered him unable to speak clearly for the remainder of his life.

On April 18, 2012, Clark died following a transurethral resection of the prostate; he had been suffering from benign prostatic hyperplasia (an enlarged prostate). His death certificate gives the immediate causes of death as acute myocardial infarction (a heart attack) and coronary artery disease.

Clark’s family did not immediately decide on whether there would be a public memorial service, but stated “there will be no funeral”. He was cremated on April 20, and his ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.

Following his death, U.S. President Barack Obama praised Clark’s career: “With American Bandstand, he introduced decades’ worth of viewers to the music of our times. He reshaped the television landscape forever as a creative and innovative producer. And, of course, for 40 years, we welcomed him into our homes to ring in the New Year.” Motown founder Berry Gordy and singer Diana Ross spoke of Clark’s impact on the recording industry: “Dick was always there for me and Motown, even before there was a Motown. He was an entrepreneur, a visionary and a major force in changing pop culture and ultimately influencing integration,” Gordy said. “He presented Motown and the Supremes on tour with the “Caravan of Stars” and on American Bandstand, where I got my start,” Ross said.

The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. Crowd estimates for the festival have ranged from 25,000-90,000 people, who congregated in and around the festival grounds. The fairgrounds’ enclosed performance arena, where the music took place, had an approved festival capacity of 7,000, but it was estimated that 8,500 jammed into it for Saturday night’s show.

Festival-goers who wanted to see the musical performances were required to have either an ‘all-festival’ ticket or a separate ticket for each of the five scheduled concert events they wanted to attend in the arena: Friday night, Saturday afternoon and night, and Sunday afternoon and night. Ticket prices varied by seating area, and ranged from $3 to $6.50 ($22–47, adjusted for inflation).

The festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Who and Ravi Shankar, the first large-scale public performance of Janis Joplin and the introduction of Otis Redding.

The Monterey Pop Festival embodied the theme of California as a focal point for the counterculture and is generally regarded as one of the beginnings of the “Summer of Love” in 1967; the first rock festival had been held just one week earlier at Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, the KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival. Because Monterey was widely promoted and heavily attended, featured historic performances, and was the subject of a popular theatrical documentary film, it became an inspiration and a template for future music festivals, including the Woodstock Festival two years later.

The festival was planned in seven weeks by John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, record producer Lou Adler, Alan Pariser and publicist Derek Taylor. Monterey and Big Sur had been known as the site for the long-running Monterey Jazz Festival and Big Sur Folk Festival; the promoters saw the Monterey Pop festival as a way to validate rock music as an art form in the way in which jazz and folk were regarded. The organizers succeeded beyond all expectations.

The artists performed for free with all revenue donated to charity, except for Ravi Shankar, who was paid $3,000 for his afternoon-long performance on the sitar. Country Joe and the Fish were paid $5,000 not by the festival itself, but from revenue generated from the D.A. Pennebaker documentary.

Lou Adler later reflected:

Our idea for Monterey was to provide the best of everything — sound equipment, sleeping and eating accommodations, transportation — services that had never been provided for the artist before Monterey…

We set up an on-site first aid clinic, because we knew there would be a need for medical supervision and that we would encounter drug-related problems. We didn’t want people who got themselves into trouble and needed medical attention to go untreated. Nor did we want their problems to ruin or in any way disturb other people or disrupt the music…

Our security worked with the Monterey police. The local law enforcement authorities never expected to like the people they came in contact with as much as they did. They never expected the spirit of ‘Music, Love and Flowers’ to take over to the point where they’d allow themselves to be festooned with flowers.

Monterey’s bill boasted a lineup that put established stars like The Mamas and the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel and The Byrds alongside groundbreaking new acts from the UK and the USA.

Jefferson Airplane

With two huge singles behind them, Jefferson Airplane was one of the major attractions of the festival.

The Who

Although already a big act in the UK, and now gaining some attention in the US after playing some New York dates two months earlier, The Who were propelled into the American mainstream at Monterey. The band used rented Vox amps for their set, which were not as powerful as their regular Sound City amps which they had left in England to save shipping costs. At the end of their frenetic performance of “My Generation”, the audience was stunned as guitarist Pete Townshend smashed his guitar, smoke bombs exploded behind the amps and frightened concert staff rushed onstage to retrieve expensive microphones. At the end of the mayhem, drummer Keith Moon kicked over his drum kit as the band exited the stage. During Jimi Hendrix’ stay in England he and the Who had seen each other perform, they were both impressed with and intimidated by each other, so neither wanted to be upstaged by the other. They decided to toss a coin, with The Who ending up performing just before Hendrix.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Hendrix’ use of extremely high volumes, the feedback this produced, and the combination of the two along with his dive-bombing use of the vibrato bar on his guitar, produced sounds that, with the exception of the British in attendance, none of the audience had ever heard before. This, along with his look, his clothing, and his erotic antics onstage, had an enormous impact on the audience. To take things further, after seeing The Who’s explosive finale, he asked around for a can of lighter fluid, which he placed behind one of his amplifier stacks before beginning his set. He ended his Monterey performance with an unpredictable version of “Wild Thing”, which he capped by kneeling over his guitar, pouring lighter fluid over it, setting it on fire, and then smashing it onto the stage seven times before throwing its remains into the audience. This performance put Hendrix on the map and generated an enormous amount of attention in the music press and newspapers alike.

Big Brother and the Holding Company (Janis Joplin)

Monterey Pop was also one of the earliest major public performances for Janis Joplin, who appeared as a member of Big Brother and the Holding Company. Joplin gave a provocative rendition of the song “Ball ‘n’ Chain”. Columbia Records signed Big Brother and The Holding Company on the basis of their performance at Monterey.

Eric Burdon and the Animals

Eric Burdon changed gears with his performance at Monterey. After six years of playing with the original Animals as part of the British Invasion, and the breakup of that band, Eric assembled a new band, a “New Animals” and at the festival, they performed the seminal work “Paint It Black” which showcased Burdon’s new style: anti-war, hard rock. Monterey affected his career intensely, as later captured in the song he wrote about it.

Otis Redding

Redding, backed by Booker T. & The MG’s, was included on the bill through the efforts of promoter Jerry Wexler, who saw the festival as an opportunity to advance Redding’s career. Until that point, Redding had performed mainly for black audiences, besides a few successful shows at the Whisky a Go Go. Redding’s show, received well by the audience (“there is certainly more audible crowd participation in Redding’s set than in any of the others filmed by Pennebaker that weekend”) included “Respect” and a version of “Satisfaction”. The festival would be one of his last major performances. He died six months later in a plane crash at the age of 26.

Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar was another artist who was introduced to America at the Monterey festival. The Raga Dhun (Dadra and Fast Teental) (which was later miscredited as “Raga Bhimpalasi“), an excerpt from Shankar’s four-hour performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, concluded the Monterey Pop film, introducing the artist to a new generation of music fans.

The Mamas & the Papas

The Mamas & the Papas closed the festival. They also brought on Scott McKenzie to play his John Phillips-written single “San Francisco, (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)”. Their set included their biggest hits, “Monday, Monday” and “California Dreamin'”.

Several acts were also notable for their non-appearance.

The Beach Boys, who had been involved in the conception of the event and were at one point scheduled to headline and close the show, failed to perform. This resulted from a number of issues plaguing the group. Carl Wilson was in a feud with officials for his refusal to be drafted into military service during the Vietnam War. The group’s new, radical album Smile had recently been aborted, with band leader Brian Wilson in a depressed state and unwilling to perform (he hadn’t performed live with the group since late 1964, although he would do so in Honolulu, Hawaii in August 1967). Since Smile had not been released, the group felt their older material would not go over well. The cancellation permanently damaged their reputation and popularity in the US, which would contribute to their replacement album Smiley Smile charting lower than any other of their previous album releases.

The Beatles were rumored to appear because of the involvement of their press officer Derek Taylor, but they declined, since their music had become too complex to be performed live. Instead, at the instigation of Paul McCartney, the festival booked The Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

The Kinks were invited but could not get a work visa to enter the US because of a dispute with the American Federation of Musicians.

Donovan was refused a visa to enter the United States because of a 1966 drug bust.

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band was also invited to appear but, according to the liner notes for the CD reissue of their album Safe as Milk, the band turned the offer down at the insistence of guitarist Ry Cooder, who felt the group was not ready.

Dionne Warwick and The Impressions were advertised on some of the early posters for the event, but Warwick dropped out because of a conflict in booking that weekend. She was booked at the Fairmont Hotel; the hotel was reluctant to release her and it was thought that canceling that appearance would negatively affect her career.

Bob Dylan did receive an invitation, but he declined due to the fact that he was still recovering from his motorcycle accident the previous year. Hendrix paid tribute to him by covering “Like a Rolling Stone”.

The Mothers of Invention were invited to perform, but their leader Frank Zappa declined because of his refusal to share the stage with any of the San Francisco bands who he felt were inferior.

Even though the logo for the band Kaleidoscope is seen in the film as a pink sign just below the stage, the band did not perform at the Monterey Festival.

Although The Rolling Stones did not play, guitarist and founder Brian Jones attended and appeared on stage to introduce Hendrix. The group was on the short list of invitees, but was unable to get work visas because of the drug arrests of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

It was long rumored that Love had declined an invitation to Woodstock, but Mojo Magazine later confirmed that it was the Monterey Festival they had rejected.

The promoters also invited several Motown artists to perform and even were going to give the label’s artists their own slot. However, Berry Gordy refused to let any of his acts appear, even though Smokey Robinson was on the board of directors.

The Monkees were the biggest-selling musical act in the United States in 1967 and were seriously considered to play, but after weeks of deliberation, John Phillips and Lou Adler decided not to invite them. However, group members Micky Dolenz (in full American Indian buckskins and headdress) and Peter Tork attended the festival and mingled with musicians backstage. Tork was asked to introduce Buffalo Springfield, his favorite group, for their set. Tork also introduced Lou Rawls and was involved in a bizarre incident where he walked out onstage in the middle of the Grateful Dead’s set to try to stop fans from climbing on stage and dancing. Tork also informed the crowd that The Beatles were not at the festival in disguise.

According to Eric Clapton, Cream did not perform because the band’s manager wanted to make a bigger splash for their American debut. However, it has since been revealed that the band were not considered by the festival organizers.

Music writer Rusty DeSoto argues that pop music history tends to downplay the importance of Monterey in favor of the “bigger, higher-profile, more decadent” Woodstock Festival, held two years later. But, as he notes:

…Monterey Pop was a seminal event… featuring debut performances of bands that would shape the history of rock and affect popular culture from that day forward. The County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California … had been home to folk, jazz and blues festivals for many years. But the weekend of June 16–18, 1967 was the first time it was used to showcase rock music.

The festival launched the careers of many who played there, making some of them into stars virtually overnight, including Janis Joplin, Laura Nyro, Canned Heat, Otis Redding, Steve Miller, and Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar.

Monterey was also the first high-profile event to mix acts from major regional music centers in the U.S.A. — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, and New York City — and it was the first time many of these bands had met each other in person. It was a particularly important meeting place for bands from the Bay Area and L.A., who had tended to regard each other with a degree of suspicion — Frank Zappa for one made no secret of his low regard for some of the San Francisco bands — and until that point the two scenes had been developing separately along fairly distinct lines. Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane said “The idea that San Francisco was heralding was a bit of freedom from oppression.”

Monterey also marked a significant changing of the guard in British music. The Who and Eric Burdon and The Animals represented the UK, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones conspicuously absent. The Stones’ Brian Jones wafted through the crowd, resplendent in full psychedelic regalia, and appeared on stage briefly to introduce Jimi Hendrix. It would be two more years before The Stones hit the road, by which time Jones was dead, and the Beatles never toured again. Meanwhile, The Who leaped into the breach and became the top British touring act of the period.

Also notable was the festival’s innovative sound system, designed and built by audio engineer Abe Jacob, who started his career doing live sound for San Francisco bands and went on to become a leading sound designer for the American theater. Jacob’s groundbreaking Monterey sound system was the progenitor of all the large-scale PAs that followed. It was a key factor in the festival’s success and it was greatly appreciated by the artists—in the Monterey film, David Crosby can clearly be seen saying “Great sound system!” to band-mate Chris Hillman at the start of the Byrds’ sound check. Lighting by Chip Monck attracted the attention of the Woodstock Festival promoters.

Electronic music pioneers Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause set up a booth at Monterey to demonstrate the new electronic music synthesizer developed by Robert Moog. Beaver and Krause had bought one of Moog’s first synthesizers in 1966 and had spent a fruitless year trying to get someone in Hollywood interested in using it. Through their demonstration booth at Monterey, they gained the interest of acts including The Doors, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, and others. This quickly built into a steady stream of business, and the eccentric Beaver was soon one of the busiest session men in L.A. He and Krause earned a contract with Warner Brothers.

Eric Burdon and the Animals later that same year, in their hit “Monterey”, quoted a line from the Byrds’ song “Renaissance Fair” (“I think that maybe I’m dreamin'”) and mentioned performers the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Ravi Shankar, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Hugh Masekela, Grateful Dead, and the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones (“His Majesty Prince Jones smiled as he moved among the crowd”). The instruments used in the song imitate the styles of these performers.

The festival was the subject of a documentary movie entitled Monterey Pop, by noted documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker. Pennebaker’s team used recently developed portable 16mm crystal-sync motion picture cameras that stayed synchronized with double-system sound recording systems. The film stock was Eastman Kodak’s recently released “high-speed” 16mm Ektachrome 100 ASA color reversal motion picture stock, without which the nighttime shows would have been virtually impossible to shoot in color. Sound was captured by Wally Heider’s mobile studio on a then state-of-the-art eight-channel recorder, with one track used for the crystal-sync tone, to synchronize it with the film cameras. The Grateful Dead believed that the film was too commercial and refused permission to be shown. The screening of the film in theaters nationwide helped raise the festival to mythic status, rapidly swelled the ranks of would-be festival-goers looking for the next festival, and inspired new entrepreneurs to stage more such festivals around the country.

The audio recordings of the festival eventually became the basis for many albums, most notably the 1970 release Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival featuring partial sets by Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix. Other releases recorded at the festival included dedicated live albums by the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Shankar. In 1992, a four-CD box set was released featuring performances by most of the artists; various other compilations have been released over the years. According to a radio promotional feature that accompanied the box set release, on modified stages, including flatbed Kaleidscope (LA) trucks, set up in the surrounding environs, there had been several spontaneous jam sessions for the overflow crowds and campers. Among them was one at the Monterey Peninsula Community College sports stadium (right across the Hwy. 1 interchange), where Jimi Hendrix, flanked by Jorma Kaukonen and John Cipollina, played for an enthusiastic audience. It was also reported locally that Eric Burdon had checked out the provisions and healthcare facilities.

Friday, June 16

• The Association
• The Paupers
• Lou Rawls
• Beverly
• Johnny Rivers
• Eric Burdon and The Animals
• Simon & Garfunkel

Saturday, June 17

• Canned Heat
• Big Brother and the Holding Company
• Country Joe and the Fish
• Al Kooper
• The Butterfield Blues Band
• The Electric Flag
• Quicksilver Messenger Service
• Steve Miller Band
• Moby Grape
• Hugh Masekela
• The Byrds
• Laura Nyro
• Jefferson Airplane
• Booker T. & the M.G.’s
• The Mar-Keys
• Otis Redding

Sunday, June 18

• Ravi Shankar
• The Blues Project
• Big Brother and the Holding Company
• The Group With No Name
• Buffalo Springfield (played w/ David Crosby)
• The Who
• Grateful Dead
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience
• Scott McKenzie
• The Mamas & the Papas

Chuck Berry was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as “Maybellene” (1955), “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956), “Rock and Roll Music” (1957) and “Johnny B. Goode” (1958), Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive. Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Born into a middle-class African-American family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory, where he was held from 1944 to 1947. After his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of the blues musician T-Bone Walker, Berry began performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio.

His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. With Chess, he recorded “Maybellene”—Berry’s adaptation of the country song “Ida Red”—which sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine’s rhythm and blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star, with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis nightclub, Berry’s Club Bandstand. But in January 1962, he was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.

After his release in 1963, Berry had several more hits, including “No Particular Place to Go”, “You Never Can Tell”, and “Nadine”. But these did not achieve the same success, or lasting impact, of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgic performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality. His insistence on being paid in cash led in 1979 to a four-month jail sentence and community service, for tax evasion.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986; he was cited for having “laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance.” Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazine’s “greatest of all time” lists; he was ranked fifth on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll includes three of Berry’s: “Johnny B. Goode”, “Maybellene”, and “Rock and Roll Music”. Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry was the fourth child in a family of six. He grew up in the north St. Louis neighborhood known as The Ville, an area where many middle-class people lived. His father, Henry William Berry, was a contractor and deacon of a nearby Baptist church; his mother, Martha Bell (Banks), was a certified public school principal. His upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age. He gave his first public performance in 1941 while still a student at Sumner High School.

In 1944, while still a student at Sumner High School, he was arrested for armed robbery after robbing three shops in Kansas City, Missouri, and then stealing a car at gunpoint with some friends. Berry’s account in his autobiography is that his car broke down and he flagged down a passing car and stole it at gunpoint with a nonfunctional pistol. He was convicted and sent to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near Jefferson City, Missouri, where he formed a singing quartet and did some boxing. The singing group became competent enough that the authorities allowed it to perform outside the detention facility. Berry was released from the reformatory on his 21st birthday in 1947.

On October 28, 1948, Berry married Themetta “Toddy” Suggs, who gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry on October 3, 1950. Berry supported his family by taking various jobs in St. Louis, working briefly as a factory worker at two automobile assembly plants and as a janitor in the apartment building where he and his wife lived. Afterwards he trained as a beautician at the Poro College of Cosmetology, founded by Annie Turnbo Malone. He was doing well enough by 1950 to buy a “small three room brick cottage with a bath” on Whittier Street, which is now listed as the Chuck Berry House on the National Register of Historic Places.

By the early 1950s, Berry was working with local bands in clubs in St. Louis as an extra source of income. He had been playing blues since his teens, and he borrowed both guitar riffs and showmanship techniques from the blues musician T-Bone Walker. He also took guitar lessons from his friend Ira Harris, which laid the foundation for his guitar style.

By early 1953 Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson’s trio, starting a long-time collaboration with the pianist. The band played mostly blues and ballads, but the most popular music among whites in the area was country. Berry wrote, “Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering ‘who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?’ After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it.”

Berry’s calculated showmanship, along with a mix of country tunes and R&B tunes, sung in the style of Nat King Cole set to the music of Muddy Waters, brought in a wider audience, particularly affluent white people.

In May 1955, Berry traveled to Chicago, where he met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. Berry thought his blues music would be of more interest to Chess, but to his surprise it was a traditional country fiddle tune, “Ida Red”, as recorded by Bob Wills, that got Chess’s attention. Chess had seen the rhythm and blues market shrink and was looking to move beyond it, and he thought Berry might be the artist for that purpose. On May 21, 1955, Berry recorded an adaptation of the song “Ida Red”, under the title “Maybellene”, with Johnnie Johnson on the piano, Jerome Green (from Bo Diddley’s band) on the maracas, Jasper Thomas on the drums and Willie Dixon on the bass. “Maybellene” sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine’s rhythm and blues chart and number five on its Best Sellers in Stores chart for September 10, 1955. Berry said, “It came out at the right time when Afro-American music was spilling over into the mainstream pop.” (NBC Evening News, March 18, 2017)

At the end of June 1956, his song “Roll Over Beethoven” reached number 29 on the Billboard‘s Top 100 chart, and Berry toured as one of the “Top Acts of ’56”. He and Carl Perkins became friends. Perkins said that “I knew when I first heard Chuck that he’d been affected by country music. I respected his writing; his records were very, very great.” As they toured, Perkins discovered that Berry not only liked country music but also knew about as many songs as he did. Jimmie Rodgers was one of his favorites. “Chuck knew every Blue Yodel and most of Bill Monroe’s songs as well”, Perkins remembered. “He told me about how he was raised very poor, very tough. He had a hard life. He was a good guy. I really liked him.”

In late 1957, Berry took part in Alan Freed’s “Biggest Show of Stars for 1957”, touring the United States with the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and others. He was a guest on ABC’s Guy Mitchell Show, singing his hit song “Rock ‘n’ Roll Music”. The hits continued from 1957 to 1959, with Berry scoring over a dozen chart singles during this period, including the US Top 10 hits “School Days”, “Rock and Roll Music”, “Sweet Little Sixteen”, and “Johnny B. Goode”. He appeared in two early rock-and-roll movies: Rock Rock Rock (1956), in which he sang “You Can’t Catch Me”, and Go, Johnny, Go! (1959), in which he had a speaking role as himself and performed “Johnny B. Goode”, “Memphis, Tennessee”, and “Little Queenie”. His performance of “Sweet Little Sixteen” at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 was captured in the motion picture Jazz on a Summer’s Day.

By the end of the 1950s, Berry was a high-profile established star with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had opened a racially integrated St. Louis nightclub, Berry’s Club Bandstand, and invested in real estate. But in December 1959, he was arrested under the Mann Act after allegations that he had sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old Apache waitress, Janice Escalante, whom he had transported across state lines to work as a hat check girl at his club. After a two-week trial in March 1960, he was convicted, fined $5,000, and sentenced to five years in prison. He appealed the decision, arguing that the judge’s comments and attitude were racist and prejudiced the jury against him. The appeal was upheld, and a second trial was heard in May and June 1961, resulting in another conviction and a three-year prison sentence. After another appeal failed, Berry served one and one-half years in prison, from February 1962 to October 1963. He had continued recording and performing during the trials, but his output had slowed as his popularity declined; his final single released before he was imprisoned was “Come On”.

When Berry was released from prison in 1963 his return to recording and performing was made easier because British invasion bands—notably the Beatles and the Rolling Stones—had sustained interest in his music by releasing cover versions of his songs, and other bands had reworked some of them, such as the Beach Boys’ 1963 hit “Surfin’ U.S.A.”, which used the melody of Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen”. In 1964 and 1965 Berry released eight singles, including three that were commercially successful, reaching the top 20 of the Billboard 100: “No Particular Place to Go” (a humorous reworking of “School Days”, concerning the introduction of seat belts in cars), “You Never Can Tell”, and the rocking “Nadine”. Between 1966 and 1969 Berry released five albums for Mercury Records, including his first live album, Live at Fillmore Auditorium, in which he was backed by the Steve Miller Band.

While this was not a successful period for studio work, Berry was still a top concert draw. In May 1964, he had made a successful tour of the UK, but when he returned in January 1965 his behavior, perhaps influenced by the injustice of his prison experience, was erratic and moody, and his touring style of using unrehearsed local backing bands and a strict non-negotiable contract was earning him a reputation as a difficult and unexciting performer. He also played at large events in North America, such as the Schaefer Music Festival, in New York City’s Central Park in July 1969, and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival in October.

Berry returned to Chess from 1970 to 1973. There were no hit singles from the 1970 album Back Home, but in 1972 Chess released a live recording of “My Ding-a-Ling”, a novelty song which he had recorded in a different version as “My Tambourine” on his 1968 LP From St. Louie to Frisco. The track became his only number-one single. A live recording of “Reelin’ and Rockin'”, issued as a follow-up single in the same year, was his last Top 40 hit in both the US and the UK. Both singles were included on the part-live, part-studio album The London Chuck Berry Sessions (other albums of London sessions were recorded by Chess’s mainstay artists Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf). Berry’s second tenure with Chess ended with the 1975 album Chuck Berry, after which he did not make a studio record until Rock It for Atco Records in 1979, which would be his last studio album for 38 years.

In the 1970s Berry toured on the strength of his earlier successes. He was on the road for many years, carrying only his Gibson guitar, confident that he could hire a band that already knew his music no matter where he went. AllMusic said that in this period his “live performances became increasingly erratic, … working with terrible backup bands and turning in sloppy, out-of-tune performances” which “tarnished his reputation with younger fans and oldtimers” alike. In March 1972 he was filmed, at the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherds Bush, for Chuck Berry in Concert part of a 60-date tour backed by the band Rocking Horse.

Among the many bandleaders performing a backup role with Berry in the 1970s were Bruce Springsteen and Steve Miller when each was just starting his career. Springsteen related in the documentary film Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll that Berry did not give the band a set list and expected the musicians to follow his lead after each guitar intro. Berry neither spoke to nor thanked the band after the show. Nevertheless, Springsteen backed Berry again when he appeared at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. At the request of Jimmy Carter, Berry performed at the White House on June 1, 1979.

Berry’s touring style, traveling the “oldies” circuit in the 1970s (often being paid in cash by local promoters) added ammunition to the Internal Revenue Service’s accusations that Berry had evaded paying income taxes. Facing criminal sanction for the third time, Berry pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was sentenced to four months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service—performing benefit concerts—in 1979.

Berry continued to play 70 to 100 one-nighters per year in the 1980s, still traveling solo and requiring a local band to back him at each stop. In 1986, Taylor Hackford made a documentary film, Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll, of a celebration concert for Berry’s sixtieth birthday, organized by Keith Richards. Eric Clapton, Etta James, Julian Lennon, Robert Cray and Linda Ronstadt, among others, appeared with Berry on stage and in the film. During the concert, Berry played a Gibson ES-355, the luxury version of the ES-335 that he favored on his 1970s tours. Richards played a black Fender Telecaster Custom, Cray a Fender Stratocaster and Clapton a Gibson ES 350T (de), the same model that Berry used on his early recordings.

In the late 1980s, Berry bought The Southern Air, a restaurant in Wentzville, Missouri. In 1990 he was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the bathroom. Berry claimed that he had the camera installed to catch a worker who was suspected of stealing from the restaurant. Though his guilt was never proved in court, Berry opted for a class action settlement with 59 women. His biographer, Bruce Pegg, estimated that it cost Berry over $1.2 million plus legal fees. During this time Berry began using Wayne T. Schoeneberg as his legal counsel. Reportedly, a police raid on his house found videotapes of women using the restroom, as well as one minor. Also found in the raid were 62 grams of marijuana. Felony drug and child-abuse charges were filed. In order to avoid the child-abuse charges, Berry agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. He was given a six-month suspended jail sentence and two years’ unsupervised probation and was ordered to donate $5,000 to a local hospital.

In November 2000, Berry faced legal issues when he was sued by his former pianist Johnnie Johnson, who claimed that he co-wrote over 50 songs, including “No Particular Place to Go”, “Sweet Little Sixteen” and “Roll Over Beethoven”, that credit Berry alone. The case was dismissed when the judge ruled that too much time had passed since the songs were written.

In 2008, Berry toured Europe, with stops in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland and Spain. In mid-2008, he played at the Virgin Festival in Baltimore, Maryland. During a concert on New Year’s Day 2011 in Chicago, Berry, suffering from exhaustion, passed out and had to be helped off stage.

Berry lived in Ladue, Missouri, approximately 10 miles (16 km) west of St. Louis. He regularly performed one Wednesday each month at Blueberry Hill, a restaurant and bar located in the Delmar Loop neighborhood of St. Louis, from 1996 to 2014.

Berry announced on his 90th birthday that his first new studio album since Rock It in 1979, entitled Chuck, would be released in 2017. His first new record in 38 years, it includes his children, Charles Berry Jr. and Ingrid, on guitar and harmonica, with songs “covering the spectrum from hard-driving rockers to soulful thought-provoking time capsules of a life’s work” and dedicated to his wife of 68 years, Themetta Berry.

Death

On March 18, 2017, police in St. Charles County, Missouri, were called to Berry’s house, where he was found unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the scene, aged 90. TMZ website posted an audio recording in which the 911 operator can be heard responding to a reported “cardiac arrest” at Berry’s home.

From Elvis In Memphis and the International

Buoyed by the experience of the Comeback Special, Presley engaged in a prolific series of recording sessions at American Sound Studio, which led to the acclaimed From Elvis in Memphis. Released in June 1969, it was his first secular, non-soundtrack album from a dedicated period in the studio in eight years. As described by Dave Marsh, it is “a masterpiece in which Presley immediately catches up with pop music trends that had seemed to pass him by during the movie years. He sings country songs, soul songs and rockers with real conviction, a stunning achievement.”

Presley was keen to resume regular live performing. Following the success of the Comeback Special, offers came in from around the world. The London Palladium offered Parker $28,000 for a one-week engagement. He responded, “That’s fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?”

In May, the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas, boasting the largest showroom in the city, announced that it had booked Presley, scheduling him to perform 57 shows over four weeks beginning July 31. Moore, Fontana, and the Jordanaires declined to participate, afraid of losing the lucrative session work they had in Nashville. Presley assembled new, top-notch accompaniment, led by guitarist James Burton and including two gospel groups, The Imperials and The Sweet Inspirations.

Nonetheless, he was nervous: his only previous Las Vegas engagement, in 1956, had been dismal, and he had neither forgotten nor forgiven that failure. To revise his approach to performances, Presley visited Las Vegas hotel showrooms and lounges, at one of which, that of the Flamingo, he encountered Tom Jones, whose aggressive style was similar to his own 1950s approach; the two became friends.

Already studying karate at the time, Presley recruited Bill Belew to design variants of karatekas’s gis for him; these, in jumpsuit form, would be his “stage uniforms” in his later years. Parker, who intended to make Presley’s return the show business event of the year, oversaw a major promotional push. For his part, hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian arranged to send his own plane to New York to fly in rock journalists for the debut performance.

Presley took to the stage without introduction. The audience of 2,200, including many celebrities, gave him a standing ovation before he sang a note and another after his performance. A third followed his encore, “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (a song that would be his closing number for much of the 1970s).

At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to him as “The King”, Presley gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene. “No,” Presley said, “that’s the real king of rock and roll.” The next day, Parker’s negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at an annual salary of $1 million.

Newsweek commented, “There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars.” Rolling Stone called Presley “supernatural, his own resurrection.”

In November, Presley’s final non-concert film, Change of Habit, opened. The double album From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis came out the same month; the first LP consisted of live performances from the International, the second of more cuts from the American Sound sessions. “Suspicious Minds” reached the top of the charts—Presley’s first U.S. pop number one in over seven years, and his last.

Cassandra Peterson, later television’s Elvira, met Presley during this period in Las Vegas, where she was working as a showgirl. She recalls of their encounter, “He was so anti-drug when I met him. I mentioned to him that I smoked marijuana, and he was just appalled. He said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.'”

Presley was not only deeply opposed to recreational drugs, he also rarely drank. Several of his family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.

Back on tour and meeting Nixon

Presley returned to the International early in 1970 for the first of the year’s two month-long engagements, performing two shows a night. Recordings from these shows were issued on the album On Stage.

In late February, Presley performed six attendance-record–breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome. In April, the single “The Wonder of You” was issued—a number one hit in the UK, it topped the U.S. adult contemporary chart, as well. MGM filmed rehearsal and concert footage at the International during August for the documentary Elvis: That’s the Way It Is.

Presley was by now performing in a jumpsuit, which would become a trademark of his live act. During this engagement, he was threatened with murder unless $50,000 was paid. Presley had been the target of many threats since the 1950s, often without his knowledge.

The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows. Presley went onstage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 pistol in his waistband, but the concerts went off without incident.

The album That’s the Way It Is, produced to accompany the documentary and featuring both studio and live recordings, marked a stylistic shift. As music historian John Robertson notes, “The authority of Presley’s singing helped disguise the fact that the album stepped decisively away from the American-roots inspiration of the Memphis sessions towards a more middle-of-the-road sound.

With country put on the back burner, and soul and R&B left in Memphis, what was left was very classy, very clean white pop—perfect for the Las Vegas crowd, but a definite retrograde step for Elvis.”

After the end of his International engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on a week-long concert tour, largely of the South, his first since 1958. Another week-long tour, of the West Coast, followed in November.

Presley meets U.S. President Richard Nixon in the White House Oval Office, December 21, 1970

On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a meeting with President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and his contempt for the hippies, the growing drug culture, and the counterculture in general.

He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts. Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was therefore important he “retain his credibility”. Presley told Nixon that the Beatles, whose songs he regularly performed in concert during the era, exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism and drug abuse in popular culture. (Presley and his friends had had a four-hour get-together with the Beatles five years earlier.) On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said he “felt a bit betrayed” and commented: “The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him”, a reference to Presley’s death, hastened by prescription drug abuse.

The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley one of its annual Ten Most Outstanding Young Men of the Nation on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located “Elvis Presley Boulevard”.

The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization.

Three new, non-film Presley studio albums were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years. Best received by critics was Elvis Country, a concept record that focused on genre standards. The biggest seller was Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, “the truest statement of all”, according to Greil Marcus. “In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of ‘Merry Christmas Baby,’ a raunchy old Charles Brown blues.”

According to Guralnick, “the one real highlight” of one of the 1971 sessions were the recording of “I Will Be True,” “It’s Still Here,” and “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,” a trio of songs that Presley recorded in a rare solo set, sitting at the piano after everyone else had gone home: “Yearning, wistfulness, loneliness, need—all were communicated with a naked lack of adornment that Elvis was seeming to find increasingly difficult to display in the formal process of recording.”

Marriage breakdown and Aloha from Hawaii

MGM again filmed Presley in April 1972, this time for Elvis on Tour, which went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film that year. His gospel album He Touched Me, released that month, would earn him his second Grammy Award, for Best Inspirational Performance. A 14-date tour commenced with an unprecedented four consecutive sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The evening concert on July 10 was recorded and issued in LP form a week later. Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden became one of Presley’s biggest-selling albums. After the tour, the single “Burning Love” was released—Presley’s last top ten hit on the U.S. pop chart. “The most exciting single Elvis has made since ‘All Shook Up'”, wrote rock critic Robert Christgau. “Who else could make ‘It’s coming closer, the flames are now licking my body’ sound like an assignation with James Brown’s backup band?”

Presley in Aloha from Hawaii, broadcast live via satellite on January 14, 1973. The singer himself came up with his famous outfit’s eagle motif, as “something that would say ‘America’ to the world.”

Presley and his wife, meanwhile, had become increasingly distant, barely cohabiting. In 1971, an affair he had with Joyce Bova resulted—unbeknownst to him—in her pregnancy and an abortion.

He often raised the possibility of her moving into Graceland, saying that he was likely to leave Priscilla. The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972, after Priscilla disclosed her relationship with Mike Stone, a karate instructor Presley had recommended to her.

Priscilla relates that when she told him, Presley “grabbed … and forcefully made love to” her, declaring, “This is how a real man makes love to his woman.”

Five months later, Presley’s new girlfriend, Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, moved in with him.

Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18. According to Joe Moscheo of the Imperials, the failure of Presley’s marriage “was a blow from which he never recovered.”

In January 1973, Presley performed two benefit concerts for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund in connection with a groundbreaking TV special, Aloha from Hawaii. The first show served as a practice run and backup should technical problems affect the live broadcast two days later. Aired as scheduled on January 14, Aloha from Hawaii was the first global concert satellite broadcast, reaching millions of viewers live and on tape delay.

Presley’s costume became the most recognized example of the elaborate concert garb with which his latter-day persona became closely associated. As described by Bobbie Ann Mason, “At the end of the show, when he spreads out his American Eagle cape, with the full stretched wings of the eagle studded on the back, he becomes a god figure.”

The accompanying double album, released in February, went to number one and eventually sold over 5 million copies in the United States. It proved to be Presley’s last U.S. number one pop album during his lifetime.

At a midnight show the same month, four men rushed onto the stage in an apparent attack. Security men leapt to Presley’s defense, and the singer’s karate instinct took over as he ejected one invader from the stage himself. Following the show, he became obsessed with the idea that the men had been sent by Mike Stone to kill him. Though they were shown to have been only overexuberant fans, he raged, “There’s too much pain in me … Stone [must] die.” His outbursts continued with such intensity that a physician was unable to calm him, despite administering large doses of medication. After another two full days of raging, Red West, his friend and bodyguard, felt compelled to get a price for a contract killing and was relieved when Presley decided, “Aw hell, let’s just leave it for now. Maybe it’s a bit heavy.”

Medical crises and last studio sessions

Presley’s divorce took effect on October 9, 1973. He was now becoming increasingly unwell. Twice during the year he overdosed on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first incident. Toward the end of 1973, he was hospitalized, semicomatose from the effects of pethidine addiction.

According to his primary care physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, Presley “felt that by getting [drugs] from a doctor, he wasn’t the common everyday junkie getting something off the street.” Since his comeback, he had staged more live shows with each passing year, and 1973 saw 168 concerts, his busiest schedule ever. Despite his failing health, in 1974 he undertook another intensive touring schedule.

Presley’s condition declined precipitously in September. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembers the singer’s arrival at a University of Maryland concert: “He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, ‘Don’t help me.’ He walked on stage and held onto the mike for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody’s looking at each other like, Is the tour gonna happen?”

Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, “He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so fucked up. … It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. … I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions”.

Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, “I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move. So often I thought, ‘Boss, why don’t you just cancel this tour and take a year off …?’ I mentioned something once in a guarded moment. He patted me on the back and said, ‘It’ll be all right. Don’t you worry about it.'” Presley continued to play to sellout crowds.

On July 13, 1976, Vernon Presley—who had become deeply involved in his son’s financial affairs—fired “Memphis Mafia” bodyguards Red West (Presley’s friend since the 1950s), Sonny West, and David Hebler, citing the need to “cut back on expenses”.

Presley was in Palm Springs at the time, and some suggest the singer was too cowardly to face the three himself. Another associate of Presley’s, John O’Grady, argued that the bodyguards were dropped because their rough treatment of fans had prompted too many lawsuits. However, Presley’s stepbrother David Stanley has claimed that the bodyguards were fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley’s drug dependency.

RCA, which had enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley for over a decade, grew anxious as his interest in spending time in the studio waned. After a December 1973 session that produced 18 songs, enough for almost two albums, he did not enter the studio in 1974.

Parker sold RCA on another concert record, Elvis Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis. Recorded on March 20, it included a version of “How Great Thou Art” that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award. (All three of his competitive Grammy wins—out of 14 total nominations—were for gospel recordings.) Presley returned to the studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker’s attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful. In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley’s home. Even in that comfortable context, the recording process was now a struggle for him.

For all the concerns of his label and manager, in studio sessions between July 1973 and October 1976, Presley recorded virtually the entire contents of six albums. Though he was no longer a major presence on the pop charts, five of those albums entered the top five of the country chart, and three went to number one: Promised Land (1975), From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (1976), and Moody Blue (1977).

The story was similar with his singles—there were no major pop hits, but Presley was a significant force in not just the country market, but on adult contemporary radio as well. Eight studio singles from this period released during his lifetime were top ten hits on one or both charts, four in 1974 alone. “My Boy” was a number one adult contemporary hit in 1975, and “Moody Blue” topped the country chart and reached the second spot on the adult contemporary chart in 1976.

Perhaps his most critically acclaimed recording of the era came that year, with what Greil Marcus described as his “apocalyptic attack” on the soul classic “Hurt”. “If he felt the way he sounded”, Dave Marsh wrote of Presley’s performance, “the wonder isn’t that he had only a year left to live but that he managed to survive that long.”

Final year and death

Presley and Linda Thompson split in November 1976, and he took up with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden. He proposed to Alden and gave her an engagement ring two months later, though several of his friends later claimed that he had no serious intention of marrying again.

Journalist Tony Scherman writes that by early 1977, “Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts.”

In Alexandria, Louisiana, the singer was on stage for less than an hour and “was impossible to understand”. Presley failed to appear in Baton Rouge; he was unable to get out of his hotel bed, and the rest of the tour was canceled. Despite the accelerating deterioration of his health, he stuck to most touring commitments. In Rapid City, South Dakota, “he was so nervous on stage that he could hardly talk”, according to Presley historian Samuel Roy, and unable to “perform any significant movement.”

Guralnick relates that fans “were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Presley, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books.”

A cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room and chat for hours, sometimes recounting favorite Monty Python sketches and his own past escapades, but more often gripped by paranoid obsessions that reminded Smith of Howard Hughes. “Way Down”, Presley’s last single issued during his lifetime, came out on June 6. On the next tour, CBS filmed two concerts for a TV Special, Elvis in Concert, to be aired in October. On the first of these, captured in Omaha on June 19, Presley’s voice, Guralnick writes, “is almost unrecognizable, a small, childlike instrument in which he talks more than sings most of the songs, casts about uncertainly for the melody in others, and is virtually unable to articulate or project.”

He did better on the second night, two days later in Rapid City: “He looked healthier, seemed to have lost a little weight, and sounded better, too”, though his appearance was still a “face framed in a helmet of blue-black hair from which sweat sheets down over pale, swollen cheeks.” His final concert was held in Indianapolis, Indiana at Market Square Arena, on June 26.

The book Elvis: What Happened?, co-written by the three bodyguards fired the previous year, was published on August 1. It was the first exposé to detail Presley’s years of drug misuse. He was devastated by the book and tried unsuccessfully to halt its release by offering money to the publishers. By this point, he suffered from multiple ailments: glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each aggravated—and possibly caused—by drug abuse. Genetic analysis of a hair sample in 2014 found evidence of genetic variants that could have caused his glaucoma, migraines and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis on the evening of August 16, 1977, to begin another tour. That afternoon, Ginger Alden discovered him unresponsive on his bathroom floor. Attempts to revive him failed and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 p.m. at Baptist Memorial Hospital.

President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with having “permanently changed the face of American popular culture”. Thousands of people gathered outside Graceland to view the open casket. One of Presley’s cousins, Billy Mann, accepted $18,000 to secretly photograph the corpse; the picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer‘s biggest-selling issue ever. Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will.

Presley’s funeral was held at Graceland on Thursday, August 18. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third. Approximately 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother. Within a few days, “Way Down” topped the country and UK pop charts.

Following an attempt to steal the singer’s body in late August, the remains of both Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland’s Meditation Garden on October 2.

Since his death, there have been numerous alleged sightings of Presley. A long-standing theory among some fans is that he faked his death. Fans have noted alleged discrepancies in the death certificate, reports of a wax dummy in his original coffin and numerous accounts of Presley planning a diversion so he could retire in peace.