Soft Rock-Easy Listening Pt 3

Elton John is an English singer, pianist, and composer. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriting partner since 1967; they have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date. In his five-decade career Elton John has sold more than 300 million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world.

He has more than fifty Top 40 hits, including seven consecutive No. 1 US albums, 58 Billboard Top 40 singles, 27 Top 10, four No. 2 and nine No. 1. For 31 consecutive years (1970–2000) he had at least one song in the Billboard Hot 100. His tribute single, re-penned in dedication to the late Princess Diana, “Candle in the Wind 1997” sold over 33 million copies worldwide and is the best-selling single in the history of the UK and US singles charts. He has also composed music, produced records, and has occasionally acted in films. John owned Watford Football Club from 1976 to 1987, and 1997 to 2002. He is an honorary Life President of the club, and in 2014 had a stand named after him at the club’s home stadium.

Raised in the Pinner area of London, John learned to play piano at an early age, and by 1962 had formed Bluesology. John met his songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, in 1967, after they had both answered an advert for songwriters. For two years they wrote songs for other artists, including Lulu, and John also worked as a session musician for artists such as the Hollies and the Scaffold. In 1969 his debut album, Empty Sky, was released. In 1970 a single, “Your Song”, from his second album, Elton John, reached the top ten in the UK and the US, his first hit single. After decades of commercial chart success, John has also achieved success in musical theatre, both in the West End and on Broadway, composing the music for The Lion King (film and musical), Aida and Billy Elliot the Musical.

He has received five Grammy Awards, five Brit Awards – winning two awards for Outstanding Contribution to Music and the first Brits Icon in 2013 for his “lasting impact on British culture”, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, a Disney Legends award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him Number 49 on its list of 100 influential musicians of the rock and roll era. In 2013, Billboard ranked him the most successful male solo artist on the Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists (third overall behind the Beatles and Madonna).

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, is an inductee into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and is a fellow of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. Having been named a Order of the British Empire in 1996, John was made a Knight Bachelor by Elizabeth II for “services to music and charitable services” in 1998.

John has performed at a number of royal events, such as the funeral of Princess Diana at Westminster Abbey in 1997, the Party at the Palace in 2002 and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert outside Buckingham Palace in 2012.

Paul McCartney/Wings were an Anglo-American rock band formed in 1971 by former Beatle Paul McCartney with his wife Linda on keyboards, session drummer Denny Seiwell, and former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine. Wings were noted for frequent personnel changes as well as commercial success, going through three lead guitarists and four drummers. However, the core trio of the McCartneys and Laine remained intact throughout the group’s existence and McCartney continued playing bass and other assorted instruments, just as he had done with The Beatles.

Created following the McCartneys’ 1971 album Ram, the band’s first two albums, Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway (the latter featuring guitarist Henry McCullough), were viewed as artistic disappointments beside Paul McCartney’s work with the Beatles. After the release of the title track of the James Bond movie Live and Let Die, McCullough and Seiwell resigned from the band. The McCartneys and Laine then released 1973’s Band on the Run, a commercial and critical success that spawned two top ten singles in “Jet” and the title track. Following that album, the band recruited guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Geoff Britton, only for Britton to quit shortly afterward and be replaced by Joe English. With the new line-up, Wings released Venus and Mars, which included the US number one single “Listen to What the Man Said”, and undertook a highly successful world tour over 1975–76. Intended as more of a group effort, Wings at the Speed of Sound was issued midway through the tour and featured the hit singles “Silly Love Songs” and “Let ‘Em In”.

In 1977, the band earned their only UK number one single, with “Mull of Kintyre”, which became the then-best-selling UK single in history. Wings experienced another line-up shuffle, however, with both McCulloch and English departing before the release of the group’s 1978 album London Town. The McCartneys and Laine again added new members, recruiting guitarist Laurence Juber and drummer Steve Holley. The resulting album, Back to the Egg, was a relative flop, with its singles under-performing and the critical reception negative. During the supporting tour, Paul McCartney was arrested in Japan for cannabis possession, putting the band on hold. Despite a final US number one, the live version of McCartney’s solo single “Coming Up”, Wings broke up permanently in 1981.

Paul Simon is an American musician, singer-songwriter and actor. Simon’s fame, influence, and commercial success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, formed in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote nearly all of the pair’s songs, including three that reached No. 1 on the U.S. singles charts: “The Sound of Silence”, “Mrs. Robinson”, and “Bridge over Troubled Water”.

The duo split up in 1970 at the height of their popularity and Simon began a successful solo career as a guitarist and singer-songwriter, recording three highly acclaimed albums over the next five years.

In 1986, he released Graceland, an album inspired by South African township music, which sold 14 million copies worldwide on its release and remains his most popular solo work.

Simon also wrote and starred in the film One-Trick Pony (1980) and co-wrote the Broadway musical The Capeman (1998) with the poet Derek Walcott. On June 3, 2016, Simon released his 13th solo album, titled Stranger to Stranger, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Album Chart and the UK charts.

Pilot were a Scottish rock band, formed during 1973 in Edinburgh by David Paton and Billy Lyall. They are best known for their 1974 hit songs “Magic” and “January. Joined by drummer Stuart Tosh, the band recorded several demos during 1972 and 1974. They were signed to a management contract with Nick Heath and Tim Heath, sons of British bandleader Ted Heath, and John Cavanagh. In due course, they signed to a worldwide recording deal with EMI Records. After the recording of their debut album, From the Album of the Same Name, guitarist Ian Bairnson (who had played on the album as a session musician) joined the band permanently.

The 1974 single “Magic” from their first album, produced by Alan Parsons and written by Paton, was a No. 11 UK and No. 5 US success. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in August 1975. The song “January” gave them their greatest success in the UK, securing the number one spot in the UK Singles Chart on 1 February 1975. It stayed at number one for three weeks. (It also went to number one in Australia where it stayed up top for eight weeks; in the United States, it reached the lower ends of the Hot 100.) However, the group failed to make the Top 30 again. The arranger of “January”, Andrew Powell, went on to record Kate Bush, and both Paton and Bairnson played on her debut album, The Kick Inside, which included “Wuthering Heights”. And then, David Paton, Ian Bairnson and Stuart Elliot played on Kate Bush’s second album Lionheart published in 1978.

The band’s other singles chart successes were “Call Me Round” and “Just a Smile” (both 1975), which each hit the top 40 in the UK and nowhere else.[6] By 1977, only Paton and Bairnson were left from the original foursome, and they recorded Pilot’s final album (the aptly titled Two’s a Crowd) with session musicians.

By 1978, all of Pilot’s members had begun other projects, notably Tosh, Paton and Bairnson becoming members of the Alan Parsons Project, and Tosh also working with 10cc. Lyall died of AIDS-related causes in 1989.

Paton and Bairnson reconvened in 2002, to re-record the original Pilot album Two’s a Crowd. The subsequent issue was entitled Blue Yonder.

As they approached the 40th anniversary of Pilot’s debut album, David Paton, Ian Bairnson, and Stuart Tosh reunited as Pilot. They released A Pilot Project in August 2014 as an homage to The Alan Parsons Project singer Eric Woolfson.

REO Speedwagon is an American rock band. Formed in 1967, the band cultivated a following during the 1970s and achieved significant commercial success throughout the 1980s. Hi Infidelity (1980) contained four US Top 40 hits and is the group’s best-selling album, with over ten million copies sold.

Over the course of its career, the band has sold more than 40 million records and has charted thirteen Top 40 hits, including the number ones “Keep On Loving You”, “Take It on the Run”, and “Can’t Fight This Feeling”. REO Speedwagon’s mainstream popularity dissipated in the 1990s but the band remains a popular live act.

Cat Stevens a British singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, humanitarian, and education philanthropist. His 1967 debut album reached the top 10 in the UK, and the album’s title song “Matthew and Son” charted at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart. His albums Tea for the Tillerman (1970) and Teaser and the Firecat (1971) were both certified triple platinum in the US by the RIAA. His musical style consists of folk, pop, rock, and Islamic music.

His 1972 album Catch Bull at Four spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, and fifteen weeks at number one in the Australian ARIA Charts.[6][7] He earned two ASCAP songwriting awards in 2005 and 2006 for “The First Cut Is the Deepest”, and the song has been a hit for four different artists. His other hit songs include “Father and Son”, “Wild World”, “Peace Train”, “Moonshadow”, and “Morning Has Broken”. In 2007 he received the British Academy’s Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection.

In December 1977, Stevens converted to Islam,[10] and he adopted the name Yusuf Islam the following year. In 1979, he auctioned all his guitars for charity[11] and left his music career to devote himself to educational and philanthropic causes in the Muslim community. He was embroiled in a long-running controversy regarding comments he made in 1989 about the death fatwa on author Salman Rushdie. He has received two honorary doctorates and awards for promoting peace from two organizations founded by Mikhail Gorbachev.

James Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 100 million records worldwide.
Taylor achieved his breakthrough in 1970 with the No. 3 single “Fire and Rain” and had his first No. 1 hit the following year with “You’ve Got a Friend”, a recording of Carole King’s classic song. His 1976 Greatest Hits album was certified Diamond and has sold 12 million US copies. Following his 1977 album, JT, he has retained a large audience over the decades. Every album that he released from 1977 to 2007 sold over a million copies. His chart performance had a resurgence during the late 1990s and 2000s, when he recorded some of his most-awarded work (including Hourglass, October Road, and Covers). He achieved his first number one album in the US in 2015 with his recording Before This World.

Seals and Crofts Jim Seals and Dash Crofts were both born in Texas, Seals in Sidney and Crofts in Cisco. They first met when Crofts was a drummer for a local band. Later, Seals joined a band called Dean Beard and the Crew Cats, where he played guitar; later on Crofts joined the band. With Beard, they moved to Los Angeles to join The Champs, but the two did so only after the group’s “Tequila” reached #1 in 1958. Seals also spent time during 1959 in the touring band of Eddie Cochran.

In 1963, Jimmy Seals, Dash Crofts, Glen Campbell, and Jerry Cole left The Champs to form a band named “Glen Campbell and the GCs” which played at The Crossbow in Van Nuys. The band only lasted a couple of years before the members went their separate ways. Crofts returned to Texas and Seals joined a band named The Dawnbreakers (a reference to a book by the same name about the beginnings of the Baha’i Faith).

Crofts eventually returned to California to join The Dawnbreakers and thus both Seals and Crofts were introduced to and became members of the Bahá’í Faith. However, the band turned out to be unsuccessful. Crofts married fellow Dawnbreaker Billie Lee Day in 1969 and Seals married Ruby Jean Anderson in 1970.

After the failure with The Dawnbreakers, the two decided to play as a duo, with Seals on guitar, saxophone and violin, and Crofts on guitar and mandolin. They signed a contract with the record division of Talent Associates (TA) in 1969 and released two LPs, of which only the second reached the Billboard 200 chart, peaking at No. 122 in October 1970. The pair signed a new contract with Warner Bros. Records in August 1971.[2] Their first album with their new label did not break into the charts, but their second album Summer Breeze charted at No. 7 in 1972. The record sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in December 1972.

The duo played at the California Jam festival in Ontario, California, on April 6, 1974. Attracting over 200,000 fans, the concert put them alongside ’70s acts such as Black Sabbath; Eagles; Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Deep Purple; Earth, Wind & Fire; Black Oak Arkansas; and Rare Earth. Portions of the show were telecast on ABC Television in the US, exposing the duo to a wider audience.

After a long and successful run of recordings in the 1970s, the two lost their contract with Warner Brothers in 1980 and decided to set aside music for a while.

Seals and Crofts are longtime adherents of the Baha’i faith. A number of their songs contain Baha’i references, including passages from Baha’i scriptures. When they appeared in concert, they often remained on stage after the performance to talk about the faith while local Baha’is passed out literature to anyone interested.

During the 80s, despite their no longer being officially together as a duo, they continued to appear at several Bahá’í gatherings, including a world peace concert at the Bahá’í Center in Los Angeles for the film and music community in February of 1989. After this, they made the rounds of Canadian radio stations and some American talk shows to promote the Peace Document.

Crofts lived in Mexico, Australia and then Nashville, Tennessee, playing country music and making occasional hit singles. Crofts currently resides on a ranch in the Texas hill country. Seals moved to Costa Rica and lived on a coffee farm off and on since 1980, as well as in Nashville.

In 1991 Seals and Crofts officially reunited and made concert appearances once again until disbanding again a year later. In 1998 Dash released a solo CD titled Today, which contained some re-recordings of Seals and Crofts material and in 2004 the duo reunited again and recorded their first new album since 1980, released as Traces.

In December 2010 the bandmates’ daughters Juliet Seals and Amelia Crofts, along with Genevieve Dozier, daughter of Seals & Crofts engineer Joey Bogan, formed a musical trio called The Humming Birds. They released their eponymous EP The Humming Birds in September 2012.

Seals is the brother of “England” Dan Seals, of England Dan & John Ford Coley, and later a well-known country music star. Seals and Crofts were instrumental in England Dan & John Ford Coley becoming adherents to the Baha’i Faith, some 28 years before Coley became a Christian. Dan Seals died of cancer in 2009. At the time of his death, Dan and Jimmy Seals had been working on songs together. The status of those recordings is unknown.

Nilsson was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. His work is characterized by pioneering overdub experiments, returns to the Great American Songbook, and fusions of Caribbean sounds. A tenor with a three-and-a-half octave range, Nilsson was one of the few major pop-rock recording artists of his era to achieve significant commercial success without ever performing major public concerts or undertaking regular tours.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Nilsson fled to Los Angeles as a teenager, landing a job as a computer programmer at a local bank. It was there that he began taking an interest in musical composition and close-harmony singing, and was successful in having some of his songs recorded by various popular artists such as the Monkees. In 1966, he debuted with Spotlight on Nilsson (1966) followed by Pandemonium Shadow Show (1967), the latter of which started a decade-spanning string of 13 studio albums released on the RCA Victor label.

After a period of widely publicized, alcohol-fueled antics with his fellow Hollywood Vampire members in the mid-1970s, Nilsson left RCA, and his record output subsequently diminished. In response to John Lennon’s 1980 death by shooting, he took a hiatus from the music industry to campaign for gun control. For the rest of his life, he recorded only on sporadic occasions. In 1994, Nilsson died of a heart attack while recording new material for a since-unreleased comeback album.

The RIAA have certified Nilsson’s albums Nilsson Schmilsson (1971) and Son of Schmilsson (1972) as gold records, indicating over 500,000 units sold each. His singles to reach the US top 10 were “Everybody’s Talkin'” (1969), “Without You” (1971), and “Coconut” (1972). He also wrote the song “One” (1968), made famous by the rock band Three Dog Night.[3] Nilsson’s honors include Grammy Awards for two of his recordings; Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male in 1970 for “Everybody’s Talkin'”, a prominent song in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male in 1973 for “Without You”. In 2015, Nilsson was voted No. 62 in Rolling Stone’s list of “The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time”, where he was described as “a pioneer of the Los Angeles studio sound, a crucial bridge between the baroque psychedelic pop of the late Sixties and the more personal singer-songwriter era of the Seventies”.

Simon and Garfunkel were an American folk rock duo consisting of singer-songwriter Paul Simon and singer Art Garfunkel. They were one of the best-selling music groups of the 1960s and became counterculture icons of the decade’s social revolution, alongside artists such as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and Bob Dylan. Their biggest hits—including “The Sound of Silence” (1964), “Mrs. Robinson” (1968), “Bridge over Troubled Water” (1969), and “The Boxer” (1969)—reached number one on singles charts worldwide. Their often rocky relationship led to artistic disagreements, which resulted in their breakup in 1970. Their final studio record, Bridge over Troubled Water (released in January of that year), was their most successful, becoming one of the world’s best-selling albums. Since their split in 1970 they have reunited several times, most famously in 1981 for the “The Concert in Central Park”, which attracted more than 500,000 people, the seventh-largest concert attendance in history.

The duo met as children in Queens, New York, in 1953, where they learned to harmonize together and began writing original material. By 1957, under the name Tom & Jerry, the teenagers had their first minor success with “Hey Schoolgirl”, a song imitating their idols The Everly Brothers. Afterward, the duo went their separate ways, with Simon making unsuccessful solo records. In 1963, aware of a growing public interest in folk music, they regrouped and were signed to Columbia Records as Simon & Garfunkel. Their début, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., sold poorly, and they once again disbanded; Simon returned to a solo career, this time in England. In June 1965, their song “The Sound of Silence” was overdubbed, adding electric guitar and a drumkit to the original 1964 recording. This later version became a major U.S. AM radio hit in 1965, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Simon & Garfunkel reunited, releasing their second studio album Sounds of Silence and touring colleges nationwide. On their third release, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966), the duo assumed more creative control. Their music was featured in the 1967 film The Graduate, giving them further exposure. Bookends (1968), their next album, topped the Billboard 200 chart and included the number-one single “Mrs. Robinson” from the film. After their 1970 breakup following the release of Bridge over Troubled Water, they both continued recording, Simon releasing a number of highly acclaimed albums, including 1986’s Graceland.

Garfunkel also briefly pursued an acting career, with leading roles in two Mike Nichols films, Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge, and in Nicolas Roeg’s 1980 Bad Timing, as well as releasing some solo hits such as “All I Know”.

Simon & Garfunkel were described by critic Richie Unterberger as “the most successful folk-rock duo of the 1960s” and one of the most popular artists from the decade in general. They won 10 Grammy Awards and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. Their Bridge over Troubled Water album was nominated at the 1977 Brit Awards for Best International Album and is ranked at number 51 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.