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Roger McGuinn

James Roger McGuinn (born James Joseph McGuinn III; July 13, 1942) is an American musician, best known for being the frontman and leader of  the Byrds. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with the Byrds. As a solo artist he has released 10 albums and collaborated with, among others, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Chris Hillman. The 12-string Rickenbacker guitar is his signature instrument.

Early life
McGuinn was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, son of James Joseph McGuinn Jr (b. 1909) and Dorothy Irene (b. 1911), daughter of engineer Louis Heyn. His parents worked in journalism and public relations, and during his childhood, they had written a bestseller titled Parents Can't Win. He attended the Latin School of Chicago. He became interested in music after hearing Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel", and asked his parents to buy a guitar for him. (During the early 1980s, he paid tribute to the song that encouraged him to play guitar by including "Heartbreak Hotel" in his autobiographical show.) Around the same time, he was also influenced by country artists and/or groups such as Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent and the Everly Brothers.

In 1957, he enrolled as a student at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music, where he learned the five-string banjo and 12-string guitar. After graduation, McGuinn performed solo at various coffeehouses on the folk music circuit where he was hired as a sideman by the Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and Judy Collins and other folk music artists in the same vein. In 1962, after he ended his association with the Chad Mitchell Trio, McGuinn was hired by Bobby Darin as a backup guitarist and harmony singer. Darin wanted to add a folk roots element to his repertoire because it was a burgeoning musical field. Darin opened T.M. Music in New York City's Brill Building, hiring McGuinn as a songwriter for $35 a week. About a year and a half later, Darin became ill and retired from singing.

During 1963, just one year before he co-founded the Byrds in Los Angeles, McGuinn was working as a studio musician in New York, recording with Judy Collins and Simon & Garfunkel. At the same time, he was hearing about the Beatles (whose first American appearances would come in February 1964) and wondering how Beatlemania might affect folk music. When he saw George Harrison play a 12-string Rickenbacker in the film A Hard Days Night, it inspired McGuinn to buy the same instrument.

By the time Doug Weston gave McGuinn a job at The Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles, he had begun to include Beatles' songs in his act. He gave rock style treatments to traditional folk tunes and thereby caught the attention of another folkie Beatles fan, Gene Clark, who joined forces with McGuinn in July 1964. Together they formed the beginning of what was to become the Byrds.

The Byrds
During his time with the Byrds, McGuinn developed two innovative and very influential styles of electric guitar playing. The first was "jingle-jangle" – generating ringing arpeggios based on banjo finger picking styles he learned while at the Old Town School of Folk – which was influential in the folk rock genre. The second style was a merging of saxophonist John Coltrane's free-jazz atonalities, which hinted at the droning of the sitar – a style of playing, first heard on the Byrds' 1966 single "Eight Miles High", which was influential in psychedelic rock. While "tracking" the Byrds' first single, "Mr. Tambourine Man", at Columbia studios, McGuinn discovered an important component of his style. "The 'Ric' [ 12 string Rickenbacker guitar ] by itself is kind of thuddy," he notes. "It doesn't ring. But if you add a compressor, you get that long sustain. To be honest, I found this by accident. The engineer, Ray Gerhardt, would run compressors on everything to protect his precious equipment from loud rock and roll. He compressed the heck out of my 12-string, and it sounded so great we decided to use two tube compressors (likely Teletronix LA-2As) in series, and then go directly into the board. That's how I got my 'jingle-jangle' tone. It's really squashed down, but it jumps out from the radio. With compression, I found I could hold a note for three or four seconds, and sound more like a wind instrument. Later, this led me to emulate John Coltrane's saxophone on "Eight Miles High". Without compression, I couldn't have sustained the riff's first note."

"I practiced eight hours a day on that 'Ric,'" he continues, "I really worked it. In those days, acoustic 12s had wide necks and thick strings that were spaced pretty far apart, so they were hard to play. But the Rick's slim neck and low action let me explore jazz and blues scales up and down the fretboard, and incorporate more hammer-ons and pull-offs into my solos. I also translated some of my banjo picking techniques to the 12-string. By combining a flat pick with metal finger picks on my middle and ring fingers, I discovered I could instantly switch from fast single-note runs to banjo rolls and get the best of both worlds."

Another sound that McGuinn developed is made by playing a seven string guitar, featuring a doubled G-string (with the second string tuned an octave higher). The C. F. Martin guitar company has even released a special edition called the HD7 Roger McGuinn Signature Edition, that claims to capture McGuinn's "jingle-jangle" tone which he created with 12 string guitars, while maintaining the ease of playing a 6-string guitar.

After Mr. Tambourine Man in 1965, "Turn! Turn! Turn!", written by Pete Seeger with the lyrics drawn from Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, was the Byrds' second Number One success in late 1965. In 1966, “Eight Miles High” peaked at no. 14 on the U.S. charts, achieving enduring classic status, even though the song was subject to a U.S. radio ban due to its alleged reference to recreational drug use. 1967 found the Byrds sliding still further in the charts, while maintaining their musical excellence, with “So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star” which peaked at no. 29. “My Back Pages”, another Bob Dylan cover, was released later the same year and was to be their last top 40 hit. In 1969, McGuinn's solo version of the "Ballad of Easy Rider" appeared in the film Easy Rider, while a full band version was the title track for the album released later that year. McGuinn also performed a cover of Bob Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" for the Easy Rider soundtrack. 1970's Untitled album featured a 16-minute version of the Byrds' 1966 hit "Eight Miles High", with all four members taking extended solos representative of the "jam-band" style of playing during that period.

In 1968, McGuinn helped create the groundbreaking album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, to which many attribute the rise in popularity of country rock. McGuinn originally conceived the album as a blend of rock, jazz, folk and other styles; but Gram Parsons's and Chris Hillman's bluegrass-western-country influences came to the forefront.

Post-Byrds
After the break-up of the Byrds, McGuinn released several solo albums throughout the 1970s. In 1973 he collaborated with Bob Dylan on songs for the sound track of the Sam Peckinpah movie Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid including "Knockin' on Heaven's Door". He toured with Bob Dylan in 1975 and 1976 as part of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, cancelling a planned tour of his own in order to participate. In late 1975, he played guitar on the track titled "Ride the Water" on Bo Diddley's The 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll all-star album. In 1976, he released the album Cardiff Rose where he worked with Mick Ronson.

In 1977, he released an LP titled Thunderbyrd, which was also the name of his contemporaneous band. Other members included future John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers and Fleetwood Mac guitarist Rick Vito, future Poco bassist Charlie Harrison and drummer Greg Thomas.

In 1977, McGuinn joined fellow ex-Byrds Gene Clark and Chris Hillman to form McGuinn, Clark & Hillman. The trio recorded an album with Capitol Records in 1979. They performed on many TV rock shows, including repeated performances on The Midnight Special, where they played both new material and Byrds hits. McGuinn's "Don't You Write Her Off" reached No. 33 in April 1979. While some believe that the slick production and disco rhythms didn't flatter the group, it sold well enough to generate a follow-up. McGuinn, Clark and Hillman's second release was to have been a full group effort entitled "City", but Clark's unreliability and drug problems resulted in the billing change on their next LP City to "Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, featuring Gene Clark".

Since 1981, McGuinn has regularly toured (primarily playing clubs and small theaters) as a solo singer-guitarist. In 2018 he embarked on a tour with Chris Hillman, a fellow original Byrd, backed by Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, after which McGuinn returned to touring solo.

In 1987, McGuinn was the opening act for Dylan and Tom Petty and he performed at Farm Aid.

In 1991 he took part in the Guitar Legends concerts in Seville, Spain as part of the Expo '92 Seville.

After a decade without a recording contract, he released his comeback solo album, Back from Rio in 1991. It included the hit single "King of the Hill", written together with, and featuring, Petty. He returned with a live band featuring John Jorgenson, George Hawkins and Stan Lynch. In 1992 McGuinn performed at the 30th Anniversary Concert for Bob Dylan with George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Tom Petty, G.E.Smith, and others. On July 11, 2000, McGuinn testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that downloading music from the Internet causes artists to not always receive the royalties that (non-Internet based) record companies state in contracts and that, to date, the Byrds had not received any royalties for their greatest successes, "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn, Turn, Turn"; they only received advances, which were split five ways and were just "a few thousand dollars" per band member. He also stated that he was receiving 50 percent royalties from MP3.com.

He was also part of an author/musician band, Rock Bottom Remainders, a group of published writers doubling as musicians to raise proceeds for literacy charities. In July 2013, McGuinn co-authored an interactive ebook, Hard Listening, with the rest of the group.

Folk Den
Roger McGuinn has used the Internet to continue the folk music tradition since November 1995 by recording a different folk song each month on his Folk Den site. The songs are made available from his Web site, and a selection (with guest vocalists) was released on CD as Treasures from the Folk Den, which was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2002 for Best Traditional Folk Album. In November 2005, McGuinn released a four-CD box set containing one hundred of his favorite songs from the Folk Den.

Personal life
When McGuinn started with the Byrds, he used the name Jim, which he thought to be too plain. He became involved in the Subud spiritual association in 1965 and began to practice the latihan, an exercise in quieting the mind. He changed his name in 1967 upon advice from Subud's founder Bapak. Telling McGuinn that it would better "vibrate with the universe", Bapak sent the letter "R" to Jim and asked him to send back ten names starting with that letter. Owing to a fascination with airplanes, gadgets and science fiction, he sent names like "Rocket", "Retro", "Ramjet", and "Roger", the last a term used in signalling protocol over two-way radios, military and civil aviation. Roger was the only "real" name in the bunch, and Bapak chose it. McGuinn officially changed his middle name from Joseph to Roger and has used the name Roger professionally from that time on.

McGuinn married Susan Bedrick in 1963; however, the marriage was subsequently annulled. From December 1966 to November 1971, he was married to Dolores DeLeon. A fellow adherent of Subud, DeLeon changed her name to Ianthe in 1967 but reverted to her original name after the dissolution of their marriage. With DeLeon, McGuinn fathered two sons, filmmaker Patrick McGuinn and Henry McGuinn. Immediately following their divorce, McGuinn married a third time, to Linda Gilbert in November 1971; this marriage also ended in divorce in June 1975.

McGuinn left Subud in 1977, the same year that he met his fourth and current wife and business manager, Camilla; they married in April 1978. Since that time, the McGuinns have practiced evangelical Christianity.

A registered member of the Republican Party, McGuinn donated $2,000 to the Ben Carson presidential campaign in 2015 and refused to endorse Donald Trump, noting "I don't like Trump." He also opposed Florida Amendment 1 (2016) (an initiative pertaining to the solar energy industry, of which McGuinn is a longtime advocate) and endorsed Florida Amendment 2 (2016) (a medical marijuana legalization initiative).

Studio albums

 * Roger McGuinn (1973) US #137
 * Peace on You (1974) US #92
 * Roger McGuinn & Band (1975) US#165
 * Cardiff Rose (1976)
 * Thunderbyrd (1977)
 * Back from Rio (1991) US #44
 * Limited Edition (2004)
 * CCD (2011)
 * Sweet Memories (2018)
 * Merry Christmas (2020)

With Folk Den Project

 * McGuinn's Folk Den, Volume 1 (MP3.com download and CD) (1999)
 * McGuinn's Folk Den, Volume 2 (MP3.com download and CD) (1999)
 * McGuinn's Folk Den, Volume 3 (MP3.com download and CD) (1999)
 * McGuinn's Folk Den, Volume 4 (MP3.com download and CD) (2000)
 * Treasures from the Folk Den (2001)
 * In the Spirit of Love (MP3.com download and CD) (2002)
 * The Sea: Songs by Roger McGuinn (MP3.com download and CD) (2003)
 * The Folk Den Project, 1995 - 2005 (4-CD set, 2005)
 * 22 Timeless Tracks from the Folk Den Project (2008)
 * The Folk Den Project: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (4-CD set, 2016)

Live albums and compilations

 * Born to Rock and Roll (1991)
 * From The Rock'N Roll Palace Live (McGuinn and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) (1994)
 * Live from Mars (1996)
 * 3 Byrds Land in London (with Gene Clark and Chris Hillman, recorded 1977) (1997)
 * Live at the XM Studios May 27, 2004 (download only) (2004)
 * Live from Spain (2007)
 * Stories, Songs, & Friends (2014)
 * Live at the Boarding House (with Clark, Hillman, and David Crosby, recorded 1978) (2014)
 * Live in New York: Eight Miles High (recorded 1974) (2015)
 * Turn Turn Turn (with Hillman, recorded 1980) (2015)
 * Bottom Line Archive Series: In Their Own Words (McGuinn and Pete Seeger, recorded 1994) (2015)
 * The Living Room Concert '76 (with Thunderbyrd, recorded 1976) (2015)
 * Electric Ladyland 1991 (recorded 1991) (2016)
 * Backstage Pass (with Clark and Hillman, recorded 1978) (2016)
 * Armadillo World Headquarters (with Clark and Hillman, recorded 1979) (2016)

Collaborations

 * McGuinn, Clark & Hillman (1979) (with Gene Clark and Chris Hillman)
 * City (1980) (with Chris Hillman, featuring Gene Clark)
 * McGuinn – Hillman (1981) (with Chris Hillman)

McGuinn contributes electric 12-string to one track ("Captain Video") on Skip Battin's 1972 self-titled solo album. McGuinn appears on Willie Nile's 1991 Places I Have Never Been album. McGuinn also appears on the 1994 Arthur Alexander tribute album Adios Amigo: A Tribute to Arthur Alexander, performing a cover version of "Anna (Go to Him)". He contributed two tracks, "Banjo Cantata" and "Ramblin' On", to a compilation of banjo pieces released by Davon as Banjo Greats (Volumes 1 & 2), re-issued on CD by Tradition in 1996 as Banjo Jamboree. He has also performed the songs "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and "Ballad of Easy Rider" which were included on the soundtrack of the film Easy Rider. Another soundtrack that features McGuinn is the 1977 film Ransom. McGuinn performed "Shoot 'Em" which appears on the anthology album Byrd Parts 2, released on Australia's Raven Records label in 2003. McGuinn also appears with Bruce Springsteen on the live download "Magic Tour Highlights (Live)" singing "Turn! Turn! Turn!" He also did guitar work in The Beach Boys' version of "California Dreaming" video. McGuinn contributed 12 string electric and harmonies to Will Dailey's track "Peace of Mind" from Torrent, Volume 1: Fashion of Distraction.

title: Roger McGuinn


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Tjorven

The name "Tjorven" is a fictional character created by Astrid Lindgren. It comes from a popular Swedish family show on television in the early 1960s. Based on a script by the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, the story is about a number of characters living in the archipelago outside Stockholm. A central character is a plump and sunny little girl nicknamed Tjorven.

In the movies of Saltkråkan the character was portrayed by Swedish actress Maria Johansson.

Miscellaneous
In Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 'Tjorven' appears also as the name for a cat character Mikael Blomkvist finds during his stay at a guest house.

Tjorven was also one of many nicknames for a woman who was accused of eating children in Romania.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Tjorven


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Communes of the Loiret department

The following is the list of the 325 communes of the Loiret department of France.

The communes cooperate in the following intercommunalities (as of 2020):
 * Orléans Métropole
 * Communauté d'agglomération Montargoise et Rives du Loing
 * Communauté de communes de la Beauce Loirétaine
 * Communauté de communes Berry Loire Puisaye
 * Communauté de communes Canaux et Forêts en Gâtinais
 * Communauté de communes de la Cléry, du Betz et de l'Ouanne (partly)
 * Communauté de communes de la Forêt
 * Communauté de communes Giennoises
 * Communauté de communes des Loges
 * Communauté de communes du Pithiverais
 * Communauté de communes du Pithiverais-Gâtinais
 * Communauté de communes de la Plaine du Nord Loiret
 * Communauté de communes des Portes de Sologne
 * Communauté de communes des Quatre Vallées
 * Communauté de communes des Terres du Val de Loire (partly)
 * Communauté de communes du Val de Sully

title: Communes of the Loiret department


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Communes of the Vienne department

The following is a list of the 265 communes of the Vienne department of France.

The communes cooperate in the following intercommunalities (as of 2020):
 * Communauté urbaine Grand Poitiers
 * Communauté d'agglomération Grand Châtellerault
 * Communauté de communes du Civraisien en Poitou
 * Communauté de communes du Haut-Poitou
 * Communauté de communes du Pays Loudunais
 * Communauté de communes des Vallées du Clain
 * Communauté de communes Vienne et Gartempe

title: Communes of the Vienne department


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Van Dyke Parks

Van Dyke Parks (born January 3, 1943) is an American musician, songwriter, arranger, and record producer who has composed various film and television soundtracks. He is best known for his 1967 album Song Cycle and for his collaborations with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys (particularly the album Smile). In addition to producing or arranging albums by Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, Phil Ochs, Little Feat, Happy End, Ry Cooder and Joanna Newsom, Parks has worked with performers such as Syd Straw, Ringo Starr, U2, Grizzly Bear, Inara George, Kimbra, Suzy Williams, Bob Dylan and Silverchair.

Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Parks spent his childhood studying clarinet, piano, and singing at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey. He started his professional career as a child actor. During the 1950s, he worked steadily in movies and television, and in the early 1960s, he majored in music at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. After dropping out of university in 1963, he relocated to Los Angeles, where his first paid gig was arranging "The Bare Necessities" for the 1967 Disney film The Jungle Book. Following this, he involved himself with the growing West Coast music scene, subsequently playing with—or appearing on records by—acts like the Mothers of Invention, the Byrds, Judy Collins, Paul Revere & the Raiders, and Harpers Bizarre. His LP Song Cycle mixed a number of genres (including bluegrass, ragtime, and show tunes) and framed classical styles in the context of 1960s pop music. It was released to underwhelming sales, but attracted a cult following in later years.

Starting in the 1970s, Parks made repeated excursions into Afro-Caribbean music, notably on his 1972 album Discover America and on records he produced for the Esso Trinidad Steel Band and Mighty Sparrow. At the same time, he managed the audio/visual department of Warner Bros. Records, which was the earliest of its kind to produce music videos for artists. Since then, he established himself in motion pictures and over the years has directed, arranged, produced, and composed soundtracks for theatrical films and television shows such as Popeye (1980), Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird (1985), and The Brave Little Toaster (1987). Much of his later work has been in commissioned orchestral arrangements for lesser-known indie acts.

Early life
Born in 1943 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, as the youngest of four children, Parks spent time in Lake Charles, Louisiana, during his childhood. His older brothers played brass instruments. His father, Richard Hill Parks, was a doctor who served as chief psychiatric officer in the Dachau liberation reprisals. Having studied with Karl Menninger, Richard's specific medical specialties were neurology and psychiatry, and he was the first doctor to admit African-American patients to a white southern hospital. Richard was also a part-time clarinetist and had a dance band to get through medical school, Dick Parks and His White Swan Serenaders. Parks's mother was a Hebraic scholar.

As Parks was growing up, there were two grand pianos in the family living room, and at age 4 he began studying the clarinet. He attended the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey, studying voice and piano, and would sing "Gershwin, Schoenberg, atonal music, everything". Parks also was a street urchin in La bohème at the Metropolitan Opera and sang the title role in Amahl and the Night Visitors at New York City Opera. During his childhood, Parks became extremely fond of old-style American music, most notably the sounds of Tin Pan Alley. This interest in Depression-era songwriting correlated heavily with his artistic goals and interests during the 1960s and beyond. He was also deeply affected by musicians Spike Jones and Les Paul, which led him to develop an interest with studio experimentation in the form of pop music. Parks has said that the first record he ever purchased may have been Dean Martin's "Memories Are Made of This."

He began his professional career as a child actor. Between 1953 and 1958, he worked steadily in films and television, including the 1956 movie The Swan, starring Grace Kelly. He appeared as Ezio Pinza's son Andrew Bonino on the NBC television show Bonino. One of his co-stars on Bonino was 14-year-old Chet Allen, who appeared as Jerry Bonino. Parks and Allen were roommates at the Boychoir School. Parks also had a recurring role as Little Tommy Manicotti (the kid from upstairs) on Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners.

After graduating from McKeesport High School, Parks majored in music at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he studied with Aaron Copland from 1960 to 1963, and developed an interest in Mexican music. In 1962, Parks began studying acoustic guitar. According to Parks, he learned 50 requinto solos of Mexican boleros but gave up the prospect when he realized playing guitar had become too commonplace.

1960s
Upon dropping out of Carnegie Tech in early 1963, Parks relocated to Los Angeles with the intent of being involved with the growing West Coast beatnik subculture and to play with his older brother Carson Parks as the Steeltown Two (later enlarged to three), which eventually became the folk group the Greenwood County Singers. The group included future RCA Records producer and recording artist Rick Jarrard. Parks later said of this decision, "Going to California meant I escaped John Cage. I escaped the abstractions, the music you can't remember, the highbrow angst." The two Parks brothers performed together at various coffeehouses around San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco. One of the people in attendance at a Santa Barbara performance turned out to be future Byrds member David Crosby, who at the time remarked to friend David Lindley, "If they can get away with it, so can we." While in California, Parks attempted to land a job performing on the television show Art Linkletter's House Party but was not accepted. Parks took a short hiatus from this group, briefly moving to New England to be part of the Brandywine Singers, earning up to $3,000 a week.

In 1963, his older brother Benjamin Parks, a French horn player, was killed in an auto accident in Frankfurt while working for the US State Department in Germany, one day before his 24th birthday. Terry Gilkyson informed Parks of the news and, to help make up for it, hired Parks as an arranger for his song "The Bare Necessities", which was later featured in the Disney animated feature The Jungle Book.

Parks reacted strongly to Beatlemania. Of it, he claimed, "I lived under a billboard that said 'The Beatles is coming,' and I got the sense that it was a plague, and that it was going to have cultural implication throughout the world. ... It's almost like the vestigial functions, the appendixes of the musical life that I had just begun to have a scant association with were being excised from the body of music with the advent of folk music gone electric. So I started to learn piano." He has repeatedly stated his annoyance with contemporary pop music during the mid-1960s and the culture's increasing anglophilia, going so far as to say, "apart from Pet Sounds I didn't find anything striking coming out of the United States." However, he had a favorable opinion of Bob Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and Parks has said to have been impressed with Dylan's "speaking-voice" style. Accordingly, "I also looked at his written lyrics and realized that he didn't capitalize his letters. He was trying to copy e.e. cummings and, while it was transparently imitative, I thought it was a good position."

By 1964, Parks was growing more and more interested in songwriting. Parks has said that while bass player Hal Brown of the Brandywine Singers took him sightseeing around a decrepit "almost-ghost town", the two had a chance encounter with the San Francisco group the Charlatans in an old saloon. The group derided the 21-year-old Parks for his "preppy" and "square" appearance, and Parks responded by showing off a song he had recently written named "High Coin", which impressed the group so much that they asked if they could record it. Parks agreed, and the Charlatans' version of "High Coin" received much airplay in San Francisco, which established Parks within the hippie counterculture. Soon after, Parks quit the Brandywine Singers and signed an artist contract with MGM Records, for which he recorded the singles "Number Nine" (based on "Ode to Joy") and "Come to the Sunshine", which did not succeed commercially. They were both produced by Tom Wilson. Two years later, Parks's compositions written for other artists were becoming known for their lyrical wordplay and sharp imagery. Producers Lenny Waronker and Terry Melcher were reportedly obsessed with the song "High Coin" in particular, and Waronker contacted Parks to persuade him to switch to Warner Bros. Records. The two then turned their attention to a relatively unknown group, the Tikis, and transformed them into the novelty act Harpers Bizarre, which became a success for the label. Harpers Bizarre performed a few of Parks' compositions on their albums, and Parks himself appears on the recordings alongside other uncredited musician friends. During this period, Parks worked frequently as a session musician, arranger, and songwriter and became acquainted with future close friends Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, and Beach Boys bandleader Brian Wilson. Parks also performed on the Byrds' album Fifth Dimension and declined an offer by David Crosby to join the band.

In 1965, Parks briefly joined Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention on stage, where he was referred to as "Pinocchio." Asked why he left, Parks said, "because I didn't want to be screamed at", although he attended sessions for the Mothers' 1966 album Freak Out!. At some point, he performed at least one solo date with guitarists Steve Young and Stephen Stills as the opening act for the Lovin' Spoonful. They performed as "The Van Dyke Parks." Parks soon wrote a song for Young entitled "The All Golden." He was also later asked to join Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young but declined.

Meeting Brian Wilson
Parks initially became aware of the Beach Boys during their early popularity in the early 1960s. Speaking of them in 1995, he said, "I knew they didn't surf.…I felt some resentment about [them], and I had been a fan of Four Freshmen and 5 Trombones.…Instinctively, I was not a Beach Boy fan. 'Something really dumb about it.'" He added that, "I loved Pet Sounds, you see. I came back to love them, and thought they had done a great job. It seemed to me that they would be fine in fighting spirit to take on this challenge of wresting that trophy out of the hands of those interlopers." Parks went on to call Wilson "the biggest event of that era" but was hesitant to label him a "genius", believing Wilson to be more "a lucky guy with a tremendous amount of talent and a lot of people collaborating beautifully around him."

According to most accounts, in 1966, Parks was introduced to Wilson while attending a party held at Terry Melcher's home. Wilson biographer Peter Ames Carlin dates their meeting to mid-July, whereas music historian Keith Badman cites February. However, Parks had already met Wilson at least once before, in December 1965, when David Crosby, a mutual friend, invited him to Wilson's home in Beverly Hills.

Wilson's (since-discredited) 1991 memoir, Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story, suggested that he had met Parks, or had heard of him, through an unnamed mutual friend in December 1964. Author David McGowan suggests that the friend may have been Loren Schwartz, who had supervised Wilson's first LSD trip. According to Parks, Wilson "sought me out" after he had heard about him through mutual friends, "a neighborly couple" that experimented with psychedelic drugs. "People who experimented with psychedelics—no matter who they were—were viewed as 'enlightened people,' and Brian sought out the enlightened people."

In Wilson's 1991 memoir, it was written that his first impressions of Parks was "a skinny kid with a unique perspective" and that he "had a fondness for amphetamines" at the time. Parks hesitantly confirmed this, but added, "Those were his amphetamines. They were in his medicine cabinet. I'd never had amphetamines. I was working for Brian Wilson at 3:30 AM when he wanted to have his amphetamines." It was also Parks who introduced Wilson to Beatles publicist Derek Taylor, who later became the Beach Boys' publicist for some time during the 1960s.

Smile and collapse
Unsatisfied with Pet Sounds collaborator Tony Asher's lyrics for "Good Vibrations", Wilson first asked Parks to help him rewrite the lyrics to the song; Parks declined, stating that he didn't think he could improve on them. During the recording of "Good Vibrations" in 1966, Parks claims to have suggested to Wilson while attending a session to have the cellist play triplet notes. Impressed by the results, Brian Wilson soon convinced Parks to write lyrics for the Beach Boys' next LP, the ambitious but ill-fated Smile. In preparation for the writing and recording of the album, Wilson purchased several thousand dollars' worth of marijuana and hashish for himself and his friends, including Parks.

In light of Wilson's increasingly fragile mental state, the group tensions, and his signing to Warner Bros., Parks's involvement in Smile effectively ceased after early 1967, when he left to begin work on his solo career. Giving his reasons, he said, "I walked away from the situation as soon as I realized that I was causing friction between him and his other group members, and I didn't want to be the person to do that. I thought that was Brian's responsibility to bring definition to his own life. I stepped in, perhaps, I 'took a leap before I looked'. I don't know, but that's the way I feel about it.…As soon as I found out I was entering an eat or be eaten situation... I was raised differently. I didn't want to be part of that game." Recording sessions ground to a halt soon after, as Wilson became increasingly withdrawn, and the album was shelved a few months later.

Song Cycle and aftermath
Sometime in the mid-1960s, Parks visited Frank Sinatra while working at Warner Bros. Sinatra was dispirited by the rise of rock, and was considering retirement. To help alleviate this, Parks pitched his brother Carson's song "Somethin' Stupid" as a duet for Sinatra and his daughter Nancy. Purportedly on Lee Hazlewood's advice, Sinatra recorded "Somethin' Stupid", and it became his first million-selling single. This bought credit for Parks at Warner Bros, and they proceeded to fund Parks's one single: a cover of Donovan's "Colours", from his 1965 album Fairytale. It was credited to "George Washington Brown"—a fictitious pianist from South America—purportedly to protect his family from the potential infamy of his "musical criminology". "Donovan's Colours" received an ecstatic two-page review by Richard Goldstein, which convinced the label of Parks's ability.

In 1967, Parks completed his first solo album, Song Cycle, produced by Lenny Waronker. Besides original compositions by Parks, Song Cycle includes interpretations of Randy Newman's "Vine Street", Donovan's "Colours", and the traditional "Nearer, My God, to Thee". The album's production reportedly cost more than US$35,000 (equal to US$0 today), making it one of the most expensive pop albums ever recorded up to that time. It sold very poorly despite rave critical reviews but gained status as a cult album in later years. Shortly after Song Cycle, Parks released a standalone 7" single: the A-side "The Eagle and Me" backed with "On The Rolling Sea When Jesus Speak To Me", which also sold poorly.

Parks has been critical of the flower power movement, which occurred toward the end of the decade, saying "Rock became a corporate classification, just like the blues. They took off its sexual organs. Some people got paid a lot of money to bottle the rebellion of the '60s, and that's when it started to mean zero to me." He added, "To me, 1969 really suggested the death knell of the counter-culture revolution. The terrible event of Charles Manson showed the cultism of the period; I was always wary of crowds. I didn't go to Woodstock. I didn't want to be in a mudflat waiting to get into a portable toilet. I thought it was a terrible idea. So I stayed at my office at Warner Bros.…I don't even know what happened around then, for many reasons. One is I was working so hard and was too busy to really get totally turned around by what other people were doing."

The aftermath of his work on Smile and Song Cycle left Parks wanting to focus more behind-the-scenes and with lesser-known artists, such as Randy Newman and Ry Cooder, and expressed discontent with being "typecast" by his songs. The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill was also life-altering for Parks and changed his "very reason for being". Sometime after, he met the Esso Trinidad Steel Band, a Trinidadian calypso band who had been performing with Liberace in Las Vegas. According to Parks, "I saw them as enslaved in their relationship to Liberace; I thought it was a vulgarity. I wanted to save them from their trivialization." What had begun as Parks's desire to popularize calypso at that point became his focal point, and he worked with the steel band for the next several years. Speaking about his life then, Parks stated, "My favorite group was the Esso Trinidad Steel Band, whom I worked with. I loved calypso all my life. I knew every Trinidadian in Hermosa Beach back then, there were probably about 20 families. Now there's a huge population."

During the late 1960s, Parks became one of the first owners of a prototype Moog synthesizer and recorded a number of experimental advertising jingles for various companies such as Datsun and the Ice Capades. Parks plays the Moog on the Biff Rose song "Ain't No Great Day", from Rose's second LP, Children of Light. Parks was also instrumental in the genesis of the 1970 album In a Wild Sanctuary, by the electronic outfit Beaver & Krause. While having lunch with the duo, Parks suggested that they record an ecological concept album through the use of field recordings and synthesizers. Parks and Randy Newman helped the duo get signed to the Warner Bros. label.

1970s
In 1972, Parks's travels to the West Indies inspired his second solo album, Discover America, a tribute to the islands of Trinidad and Tobago and to calypso music. Parks re-arranged and re-produced obscure songs and calypso classics. Parks also produced the album Esso for the Esso Trinidad Steel Band in 1971. It was cultivated as a tribute to Prince Bernhard, the head of the World Wildlife Fund at the time. According to Parks, "Everything was directed to making it a proper, political, green album." This direction was continued in the 1975 release Clang of the Yankee Reaper.

In the early 1970s, Parks was brought in to produce the third album by seminal Japanese folk rock band Happy End while working on Discover America at Sunset Sound Recorders. He also helped with the writing for the closing track, "Goodbye America, Goodbye Japan" ("さよならアメリカ　さよならニッポン"). Sometime after, Parks became acquainted with member Haruomi Hosono, who went on to be one of the founding members of the electronic band Yellow Magic Orchestra. Parks went on to participate in a number of Hosono-related projects.

Although Smile had dissolved in mid-1967, Parks's collaborations with Wilson had not, for the time being. He was instrumental in getting the Beach Boys signed to Reprise and contributed vocally to "A Day in the Life of a Tree" and the writing of "Sail On, Sailor." Several songs with his lyrics, written during the Smile sessions, appeared on later Beach Boys albums, including "Surf's Up," "Heroes and Villains," and "Cabinessence.'

In September 1970, Parks became head of the audio/visual department of Warner Bros. records. This department was the earliest of its kind to record videos to promote records. Parks made the department up by himself and had few employees at Warner Bros. Together they made more than a dozen promotional films documenting artists including Ry Cooder, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Captain Beefheart. They were by nature documentary films, which could be rented or bought by any accredited music school. Parks later described the department as "promotional—but they could create an income stream for musicians who were hard-pushed into tours that required drugs to sustain them." Although each production ran for about ten minutes and required at least $18,500 to create, one exception was a video for the Esso Trinidad Steel Band, which ran about forty minutes. It also happens to be one of two films known by Parks to have survived since then, the other being a promotional video for Ry Cooder.

Parks recorded only two albums during the 1970s, but he had performed on numerous albums recorded by friends who were working in or around the Los Angeles music scene—notably Harry Nilsson, whom Parks considered the "smartest guy" he had ever met in the music business. During the early 1970s, Parks dealt with prescription drug abuse. He later spoke of himself as being "dead for five years", and he spent the first half of the decade "trying to regain an interest in living." Parks later stated, "When I was head of audio-visual services and on the A&R staff at Warner Bros., a man came into my office and he had a snake and his name was Alice. Right then, I knew that my days were numbered as a person really interested in the record business." About his department during this time Parks stated, "I provided that each artist would get 25% of the net profits of the rentals or sales. It was going to be a very promising market for the artist. Warners soon grew tired of what I thought was a fair equation of participation in creative profits, and basically isolated me."

After Clang of the Yankee Reaper, Parks quit his day job at Warner Bros. and "retreated from further record interests, seeking the more gregarious plain-speaking of the film community…with no less satisfaction." He spent the next several years, and most of the 1980s, focusing more on motion picture and television projects, writing scores for high-profile films, such as Popeye, and serving as musical director for television programs such as The Billy Crystal Comedy Hour, taking on as much work as he could to stay out of unemployment.

1980s
Parks made a slight comeback in 1984 with the album Jump!, which featured songs adapted from the stories of Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit. The album exhibits a Broadway-style reduced orchestra with Americana additions, such as banjo, mandolin, and steel drums. Parks composed the album but did not arrange or produce it. Martin Kibbee contributed to the lyrics. Following up on the album, Parks wrote a series of children's books—Jump (with Malcolm Jones), Jump Again, and Jump On Over—based on the Br'er Rabbit tales, illustrated by Barry Moser, and loosely accompanied by Parks's own album Jump!. The books contain sheet music for selected songs from the album. Parks also published a book called Fisherman & His Wife in 1991, which came packaged with a cassette.

By 1984, Parks was refused future collaborations with Wilson, instead being informed by an unnamed representative that "Mike Love is Brian Wilson's exclusive collaborator." Though Parks worked with the other Beach Boys on songs such as on "Kokomo" and the album Summer in Paradise, he did not work together with Wilson until a few years later, during the aborted album Sweet Insanity.

He wrote "City of Light", "It's a B-Movie", "Cutting Edge", and "Worthless", all of which were used in the film The Brave Little Toaster, directed by Jerry Rees. During the 1980s and 1990s, Parks grew considerably more active in arranging and producing albums by independent artists, which inspired him to return more fully to the music business.

Following Jump!, in 1989 Warner Brothers released Tokyo Rose. This concept album focuses on the history of Japanese-U.S. relations from the 19th century to the "trade war" at the time of its release. The songs are pop tunes with an orchestral treatment including Japanese instruments and old Parks Caribbean favorites like steel drums. The album did not sell well and was not widely noticed by critics. To promote the album, he performed some shows in Japan with musicians such as Haruomi Hosono, Syd Straw, harmonicist Tommy Morgan, and steelpan player Yann Tomita.

1990s
Between 1992 and 1995, Parks teamed up again with a then-reclusive Brian Wilson to create the album Orange Crate Art. Parks wrote all of the songs on the album, except "This Town Goes Down at Sunset" and George Gershwin's instrumental "Lullaby", with vocals by Wilson. Orange Crate Art is a tribute to the Southern California of the early 1900s and a lyrical tribute to the beauty of Northern California. It was recorded during a stressful period for Wilson, after being involved in court orders relating to years of psychiatric misconduct to which he had been subject. According to Parks, "When I found him, he was alone in a room staring at a television. It was off." The album was met with poor commercial reception, much to the disappointment of Parks.

1998 saw the release of Parks's first live album, Moonlighting: Live at the Ash Grove, which shows a love of the work of 19th-century American pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk, as well as performances of several of Parks' better-known and lesser-known songs. The live ensemble includes Sid Page as concertmaster.

2000s

Parks's association with Australian rock band Silverchair began with his work on their fourth studio album Diorama in 2002. Parks was attracted to the music of lead singer and guitarist Daniel Johns and has stated that what most attracted him to the band was Johns' courage. He composed orchestral arrangements for Silverchair's fifth album Young Modern album in 2007. Johns traveled to Prague with Parks to have the arrangements recorded by the Czech Philharmonic. The album's title is a nickname Parks uses for Johns.

Parks was contacted by Wilson in 2003 to help with preparing a live performance of Smile. He agreed, and the duo re-recorded the album and then presented it on a world tour, beginning with the world premiere performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London, which Parks attended. Parks later provided some lyrics to That Lucky Old Sun, released in 2008. The album once again featured almost completely new compositions written by Brian Wilson, but with minimum input from Parks compared to the previous Smile collaboration.

Parks worked with Inara George on a record released in 2008, An Invitation, and they performed two songs together on January 8, 2008, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, as part of the program Concrete Frequency: Songs of the City.

In 2009, Parks performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Parks performed with Bob Dylan and Ry Cooder on the documentary broadcast on December 13, 2009, on the History Channel. They played "Do Re Mi" and reportedly a couple of other Guthrie songs that were excluded from the final edit.

2010s
In 2010, Parks stated "At this point, I don't have an album in me. But I have some songs, so I'm putting them out as 45 rpm stereo records this summer." Between 2011 and 2012, Parks issued six double-sided singles, which featured new original songs, collaborations, unreleased archival recordings, re-recordings of older tracks, and covers. The singles also featured guest spots from singers Gaby Moreno and Inara George of The Bird and the Bee. Parks has also stressed the importance of the singles' artwork, contributed by visual artists such as Klaus Voormann, Ed Ruscha, and Art Spiegelman. Artist Charles Ray also sculpted two life-size statues of Parks.

In August 2011, Parks was contacted by electronic musician Skrillex, who requested that he supply orchestral arrangements. His arranging work was released in December 2011 as the iTunes-exclusive bonus track "Skrillex Orchestral Suite by Varien" on the Bangarang EP. Parks admitted in 2013:

"When Skrillex called me up, I'd never heard of him. I pretended I knew who he was.... I said, 'Well, send me the piece, and if I feel able, I'll do it.' I don't have any hobbies, you know. I love music; I do it everyday [sic]. And he said, 'Oh, thank you, Mr. Parks. We will destroy the world.' I said, 'Okay...' I Google him and there he is, on YouTube, in front of 30,000 people, pouring beer onto a laptop computer, at which point the crowd jumps into the mosh pit and has an erection. I think, 'My, God. Who are these people?'... I have two things I can do: Run away from all this in horror because I'm so superior, or dig in and serve and try to bring hope to the hopeless. That can be done behind the curtain, and that's where I'm very comfortable working... I treat every job as if it were the very thing that will define me. Nothing is beneath me. I think that is evident to people who ask my best'"

In November 2011, after 44 years, a compilation box set of the Beach Boys' Smile sessions was finally released by Capitol Records. Parks was personally absent from The Smile Sessions' advertising campaign and liner notes, and refused to comment on the box set, despite initially giving his approval. In promotional interviews for The Smile Sessions and the Beach Boys' 50th Reunion Tour, Mike Love suggested that Smile collapsed due to substance abuse, and that the project was heavily influenced by Parks' drug use. One interview included an off-the-cuff comment by Brian Wilson saying that it was Parks who introduced him to LSD and amphetamines, something Parks has previously denied. Later in 2011, Parks formally responded to these claims via his web site in a post that accused Love of Mammon and historical revisionism. In February 2013, The Smile Sessions went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album.

While in Tokyo in January 2013, Parks performed with Haruomi Hosono for the first time in years. In March 2013, Parks announced the release of Songs Cycled, which compiled his six 2011–12 singles into one LP. It was Parks' first full album of relatively new material since 1995's Orange Crate Art. The album was released on May 6, 2013 through Bella Union. Also in March, Parks performed at the 2013 Adelaide Festival with Daniel Johns and Kimbra. In September 2013, Parks curated a "Best-of" CD by New Orleans pianist/composer Tom McDermott entitled Bamboula. Parks memorialized the 50th anniversary of the 1963 Kennedy assassination by releasing a new original composition entitled "I'm History" on November 22.

Parks underwent unsuccessful hand surgery in 2014, causing his hands to freeze after about forty minutes of playing piano. On May 9, 2015, Parks performed what he called his "final piano performance" at the Largo in Los Angeles. Guest performers included singer Gaby Moreno; songwriter-producer Joe Henry; Grizzly Bear's Edward Droste; New Zealand singer-songwriter Kimbra; and jazz guitarist-composer Grant Geissman. Of upcoming projects Parks said: "[It will] set poetry to music, to underscore poems. So I will still be performing once I get that done. I will be looking to find a celebrated string quartet to take things to an irreducible minimum. I can pick up a quartet in Peoria, or in Europe, to perform something like this. I also hope to find a film project that interests me."

Film and television work
Parks has also scored much music for feature-length motion pictures and television series, including Sesame Street's Follow That Bird, Jack Nicholson's The Two Jakes and Goin' South, Casual Sex?, Private Parts, Popeye (with Harry Nilsson), and The Company, and for the Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special.

Parks had four songs featured in the animated film The Brave Little Toaster (1987). He worked closely with David Newman on the film's score as well. He composed the theme song for Rudy Maxa's Savvy Traveler radio program on NPR.

Parks composed the faux-psychedelic song "Black Sheep" (a parody of Smile and Brian Wilson's style in general) for Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, sung by John C. Reilly, who portrays the titular character.

Parks has taken small television and film roles including appearances in Popeye, The Two Jakes, and as Leo Johnson's defense attorney Jack Racine in episode #2005 of Twin Peaks. The HBO Family series Harold and the Purple Crayon, is narrated by Sharon Stone with music and lyrics written and sung by Parks. He and David Mansfield are co-credited with the music for the 2006 miniseries Broken Trail (2006).

Discography

 * Studio albums
 * Song Cycle (1967)
 * Discover America (1972)
 * Clang of the Yankee Reaper (1975)
 * Jump! (1984)
 * Tokyo Rose (1989)
 * Orange Crate Art (1995) (with Brian Wilson)
 * Songs Cycled (2013)

 * Live album
 * Moonlighting: Live at the Ash Grove (1998)

 * Compilations
 * Idiosyncratic Path: Best Of Van Dyke Parks (1996)
 * Arrangements: Volume 1 (2011)
 * Super Chief: Music For The Silver Screen (2013)

Film

 * {{legend|#CCFFFF|Also composer}}

title: Van Dyke Parks


text:
Talk:Château d'Ussé

Untitled
What is meant by "a compatriot of Joan of Arc"? S.

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This article needs a photo of Château d'Ussé so that readers can appreciate similarities to the Disney versions. In the meantime, a Google Image search will have to do. Quicksilver 04:38, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Château d'Ussé


text:
The Plimsouls

The Plimsouls were an American rock band known for their hit 1982 single "A Million Miles Away", which was featured in the movie Valley Girl.

History
The band was formed in Paramount, California in 1978. They recorded two full-length albums and an EP and then split up in 1984. Different configurations of the original members have reunited intermittently since.

Formed by singer, songwriter and guitarist Peter Case (who had previously fronted the power pop band the Nerves), the Plimsouls began as a trio in 1978, initially named the Tone Dogs, which included Case, bassist Dave Pahoa, and drummer Lou Ramírez. From inception, the band quickly became a crowd favorite in the Los Angeles club scene. Long Beach promoter Stephen Zepeda signed the group to his Beat Records label for a five-song EP called Zero Hour which was released in 1980. Guitarist Eddie Muñoz joined the group during the recording of the EP. but did not play on it. (The band's name came from a tweaking of "plimsoll", a type of shoe popular in the UK and favoured by The Beatles.)

Danny Holloway produced the Zero Hour EP and managed the group. The song "Zero Hour" received heavy airplay on KROQ-FM, and the Plimsouls grew to be one of the top club draws in the city. Case received critical praise for his songwriting. In 1980, Planet Records signed the group and in February 1981 released their self-titled debut album which Holloway also produced. The single "Now" received strong local airplay in Los Angeles and was also covered by Phil Seymour, appearing on the 2011 CD edition of his second album. Seymour also appeared live with the Plimsouls during the late 1970s, both as a guest vocalist and as an artist on the same bill.

Second album/Valley Girl
The band received some national attention in 1982 when the single "A Million Miles Away" was released on their own Shaky City record label, distributed by Bomp! Records. The song reached No. 11 on the Billboard Top Tracks chart and was featured in the 1983 film Valley Girl. The band appeared in the film performing the song and parts of two others. The song was also included on the band's second album, Everywhere at Once, released May 18, 1983 by Geffen Records. "A Million Miles Away" was re-released as a single in 1983 and peaked at No. 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The band broke up 1984. Several years later, in 1990, a then up and-coming band named the Goo Goo Dolls covered "A Million Miles Away" on their Hold Me Up album. A re-recorded version of the song is also included on the Speed soundtrack album.

Reunion
Case has continued with a solo career since the band's mid-1980s breakup. In 1996, The Plimsouls, without Ramirez, reunited for a few shows and some recording sessions, resulting in a little-heard reunion album called Kool Trash. This album featured drumming by new band member Clem Burke, who was also simultaneously a member of Blondie.

The Plimsouls have continued to reunite occasionally since that time, with Burke being replaced by Bryan Head.

In 2016 Muñoz registered a trademark for the band's name, and began touring as the Plimsouls, without the involvement of Case, Pahoa, or Ramirez. The Plimsouls brought legal action, which was decided in their favor; the name is owned by The Plimsouls, and "further use by Muñoz of the name would only cause confusion".

Studio albums

 * The Plimsouls (1981), Planet Records - U.S. No. 153
 * Everywhere at Once (1983), Geffen Records - U.S. No. 186
 * Kool Trash (1998), Fuel 2000/Shaky City Records

Live albums

 * One Night in America (1988)
 * Live! Beg, Borrow & Steal, Oct. 1981 (2010)
 * Beach Town Confidential (live 1983) (2012)

Singles and EPs

 * Zero Hour (1980), Beat Records
 * "Now" / "When You Find Out" (1981), Planet
 * "A Million Miles Away" / "I'll Get Lucky" (1982), Shaky City
 * "A Million Miles Away" / "Play the Breaks" (1983), Geffen - US No. 82

Compilation appearances

 * "He Put the Bomp in the Bomp" - Tribute to Greg Shaw CD (2007)

title: The Plimsouls


text:
Miracleman (character)

Miracleman (originally known as Marvelman), whose civilian name is Michael "Mike" Moran, is a British Golden Age comic book superhero appearing in comic books first published by L. Miller & Son, Ltd. Created by Mick Anglo, the character first appeared in Marvelman #25 (February 1954). The character was subsequently revived in 1982 by Alan Moore and Garry Leach as the lead of Marvelman in the pages of Warrior. After that publication was cancelled, the revival was continued as Miracleman by Eclipse Comics in 1985, with the character renamed accordingly, but went out of print following the company's demise in 1994.

After a 15-year hiatus brought on by a confused legal situation, the character was successfully brought back into print by Marvel Comics in 2010, initially reverting to the Marvelman name. From 2014 onwards Marvel began reprinting the revival material, once again using the Miracleman name, and in 2022 began continuing the story.

Concept and creation
Following Fawcett Publications' cessation of their superhero titles in 1953, British publisher L. Miller & Son were left with the prospect of having to cancel their popular Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. weeklies due to a lack of material. Len Miller contacted Mick Anglo, whose Gower Street Studio had provided cover artwork and other material for Miller's titles, to create a replacement. Anglo modified Captain Marvel, changing his human identity from newsboy Billy Batson to copyboy Micky Moran. The character's superhuman form was changed from Captain Marvel to Marvelman, after consideration was given to naming the new character Captain Miracle and Miracleman - both names that would later be used by Anglo for further derivatives of Captain Marvel. Anglo took the opportunity to simplify the character's costume, eliminating Captain Marvel's cape and switching his lightning bolt to a simpler "MM" chest logo. To provide greater contrast Marvelman was given close-cropped blond hair and a predominantly blue colour scheme. Anglo considered giving the character a gravity belt but eventually decided to retain flight as an inherent ability of the superhero.

While Marvelman and (less frequently, despite debuting concurrently) Young Marvelman are occasionally called the first British superheroes this is not the case as the short-lived DC Thomson Dandy character The Amazing Mr. X debuted some ten years previously.

1954–1963
Due to the backlog of Fawcett material Miller already had the company was able to prepare readers for the upcoming change. Captain Marvel #19, dated 19 December 1953, featured an in-character letter from 'Batson' to readers, telling them he planned to lead an ordinary life and would be handing over his duties to Marvelman; #24 featured the modified title Captain Marvel - the Marvelman and from #25 the title was renamed Marvelman, with the new character taking over. A similar process would take place on sister title Captain Marvel Jr., which would become Young Marvelman. The result was well-received by readers, and sales of Marvelman were actually larger than those of its predecessor. Anglo initially wrote and drew the strips himself; later other Gower Studio artists would work on the character, including James Bleach, Norman Light and Don Lawrence. Marvelman would also occasionally appear in the pages of Young Marvelman and later starred the additional monthly title Marvelman Family, which also featured Kid Marvelman. However by 1961 sales were declining as imported American comics began to arrive on the British market, featuring full-colour strips rather than the black-and-white adventures of Marvelman. Miller switched Marvelman to a monthly reprint title, causing Anglo to unsuccessfully attempt to set up his own Anglo Features label after turning down an offer to work for Miller's son Arnold on his own venture. Marvelman finally ended in 1963, and the character went into obscurity.

1982–1985
In 1981 Dez Skinn opted to revive the character for anthology Warrior. After his preferred choices turned him down, he became aware of Alan Moore's similar interest in reviving the character and requested a proposal. Impressed by the writer's ideas, Skinn commissioned Moore as writer for the strip, which debuted in the first issue of Warrior in March 1982. Moore would later relate that he was drawn to the character's resemblance of the concept of the Übermensch from the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, a concept that would be frequently drawn on in this revival. After others had demurred, Garry Leach was assigned to draw the strip. He modelled the revised Marvelman on actor Paul Newman and redesigned the chest insignia into a more modern style. Leach and Moore opted for a graceful look for the character in contrast to the more common musclebound superhero archetype.

The strip was a critical success, winning Favourite Comic Character (UK) at the 1984 Eagle Awards, and continued to be a success when Alan Davis took over as artist. Vintage Gower Street material would also be reprinted in the one-off Marvelman Special, with the conceit it presented imaginary adventures of the character. However, creative differences between Moore and Davis would lead to the strip stalling in 1985; while Grant Morrison was eager to take over Marvelman the dispute would prevent the strip from returning before Warrior was cancelled in 1985 after its losses became unsustainable for Skinn.

1985–1993
The story was eventually picked up by American publisher Eclipse Comics in 1985. To avoid legal attention from Marvel Comics the series and its leads were renamed Miracleman; Moore had previously suggested this as an alternate title in his original proposal as a substitute name should the editor decide against reviving Marvelman, and had also used it in print for the name of a proxy version of the character that had featured briefly in his parallel work on Marvel UK's Captain Britain strip. Those involved do not appear to have been aware of the name being previously considered by Anglo, or its use as the name given to a series of British reprints of the artist's Spanish-market Superhombre. Moore was initially resistant to the name change due to Marvelman having predated the establishment of Marvel Comics but eventually agreed, though he would air his dissatisfaction with the issue in an essay printed in the second issue of the title. Eclipse began by printing coloured, relettered versions of the Warrior material before Miracleman #7 (cover dated April 1986) saw the story continue with new material. The series continued its critical success, and was by Eclipse's standards a sizeable commercial success. Initially Chuck Austen (then using his birthname Chuck Beckum) drew the new adventures before Rick Veitch continued the work. From Miracleman #11, John Totleben became regular artist until #16, which was also the final issue of Moore's run.

Moore then passed over the title to Neil Gaiman, having completed the stories he had planned for the character. Gaiman and new artist Mark Buckingham planned three six-issue storylines for the character, and opted for an anthology approach for the initial arc. As such "The Golden Age" focused more on Miracleman's impact on Earth than the character himself, who was more felt than seen across Miracleman #17-22, largely featuring in cameos by various literary devices such as flashbacks, imaginary sequences and fictions-within-fictions. Meanwhile Gaiman found that numerous other creators were interested in working on the character; to harness this and expand their revenue, Eclipse produced the three-issue limited series Miracleman: Apocrypha, featuring contributions by the likes of Alex Ross, Kurt Busiek, Matt Wagner, James Robinson and Darick Robertson. Gaiman and Buckingham provided a framing story for the series which established it as a collection of imaginary stories. Miracleman returned to being more central in the creative team's second arc, "The Silver Age". However, after only two issues of the storyline had been published Eclipse went bankrupt; this also prevented the publication of another spin-off mini-series called Miracleman Triumphant, written by Fred Burke and drawn by Mike Deodato and taking place between Gaiman's first two arcs.

1995–2008
Gaiman mistakenly believed at the time he owned a one-third share of the rights to the Miracleman characters, with the other two-thirds residing with Eclipse. As such he reached an arrangement with Roger Broughton to continue the series once the Canadian publisher purchased Eclipse's rights. However at the 1996 liquidation auction Broughton was outbid by Todd McFarlane, who had collaborated with Gaiman on various Spawn spinoffs. Gaiman began legal action while McFarlane remained sure he owned the character, and produced Miracleman merchandise. A reimagined Mike Moran, now a principled journalist at the New York Daily Times, was added to the supporting cast of Hellspawn, a dark spin-off title of Spawn, in February 2001. Artist Ashley Wood released teaser images of Miracleman ahead of his planned debut in Hellspawn #12. However, Wood left the book after Hellspawn #11 and the storyline was abandoned when Gaiman sued McFarlane in 2002. In-universe, the appearances were subsequently ascribed to the character Man of Miracles, whose aspect is shaped by the perceptions of others.

2009–present
Since 2001, Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada had been among the major industry figures to support Gaiman in the dispute. Marvel eventually discovered in 2009 that the rights to the Marvelman characters had resided with Anglo all along, having never been officially purchased by Skinn (who believed the character was in the public domain, and reached a private agreement with Anglo) in 1981. They licensed the characters from Anglo directly and in 2010 began a series of reprints of classic material under the Marvelman name. In 2014 after further legal rights were secured they began to reprint the revival material, now named Miracleman once again. Marvel published new material with the character in 2015, and Miracleman's logo was featured in the one-shot Timeless in 2021, foreshadowing his introduction to the Marvel Universe.

In October 2022, Gaiman and Buckingham continued The Silver Age storyline after a hiatus of nearly 30 years.

Original
Having discovered the keyword to the universe through his experiments, Mississippi-based astro-scientist Guntag Barghelt travels the world searching for a worthy recipient of this power. After young Micky Moran first attempts to return a dime Barghelt dropped and then defends the scientist from a trio of hoodlums, the scientist takes the youth to his laboratory. There further tests reveal Micky has absolute integrity and a well-defined discernment of good and evil, and treats him in his atomic machine. Micky is granted the power to turn into the superpowered Marvelman whenever he speaks the keyword "Kimota". After Marvelman thwarts an attempt by the villainous Herman Schwein to capture Barghelt's notes, the scientist withdraws to an asteroid in outer space, knowing Marvelman will protect good on Earth. Micky works for the Daily Bugle newspaper as a copyboy and keeps his superhero identity secret from the world while using his power to protect the innocent. To help him fight evil, Marvelman would later call on the scientist again when impressed by the courage of messenger boy Dicky Dauntless, and calls up Barghelt once again. The scientist gives Dicky an elixir that allows him to transform into Young Marvelman, who would become Marvelman's ally in the fight against evil. Marvelman later selected another youth, Johnny Bates, who was granted the ability to become Kid Marvelman.

Among his many victories, Marvelman prevented Boromanian spy Balco from using the experimental XB999 atomic bomber aircraft against Washington, prevented crooks from poisoning Oklabama's water supply with radium, and foiled an attempt by Professor Zargunza to use memory-loss gas on the world. Marvelman also crossed paths with mad scientist Dr. Gargzuna, thwarting his plan to use animated skeletons to intimidate a judge. Gargunza would however return with numerous other amoral plans, which Marvelman again defeated.

Other escapades Marvelman was involved in included preventing Boromanian attempts to sabotage Professor Jowik's new megabathysphere; stopping the ice cream-crazed Abominable Snowman and his Snowman minions; defeating super-computer the Electronic Brain,; foiling a Boromanian plot to use scientist Doctor Ramado's miniaturised hydrogen bomb to blow up a table tennis tournament; saving oblivious astronaut Professor Swivelhead from his own oblivious behaviour; clearing his name after circus strongman the Great Anvello framed him as a criminal; defeating scientist Cuprini's evil mirror image version of himself; preventing destruction of a United States Navy squadron by a two-headed kraken; dealing with an epidemic of insomnia brought on by the King of the Land of Nod sulking; using a demonstration of his formidable powers to cause Martian War Lords to abort a planned invasion of Earth; stopping jealous electrical genius Austin Amps and his attempts to sabotage rival Oswald Ohms' all-electric town Wattingham; travelling back to 1588 and helping Royal Navy Captain Farnaby warn England about the Spanish Armada; ending the crime spree of Professor Coisson's Marvelman II, a robot double of the hero; foiling the attempt of unlicensed dentist Mr. Nook to use misery gas in revenge for being exposed as a quack by Moran; putting an end to Nazi Otto Gruber's attempt to create a Fourth Reich; beating wizard Wizzo the Wizard and his mirror-henchman namlevraM; capturing embezzler Charles Crank despite his attempts to hide out on the Moon }; thwarting the attempts of Menzari driver Heinz Vifter to beat rival Nevady driver Micky Desmond to the Golden Wheel via sabotage; exposing pickpocketing clowns from a travelling circus; forestalling an invasion from underground hat-wearing giant ants; undoing disgruntled prop manager Eddie Gay's attempts to sabotage a documentary made by Peakpoint Films; uncovering cargo cult-leading machine Klashna; and halting elderly bad-luck projecting nuisance Irwin M. Trouble

He would also team up with Young Marvelman and Kid Marvelman as the Marvelman Family to face threats such as Garrer and his army of time-travelling renegades; a combined alliance of Marvelman's arch-enemy Doctor Gargunza and his nephew, Young Marvelman rogue Young Gargunza; the King of Vegetableland; invaders from the planet Vardica; would-be dictator Professor Batts and his speech-scramber; a crime boss intent on sinking Pacific City below the ocean; the cruel, slave-driving King Snop of Atlantis (which the story revealed would eventually become Australia); an attempt by Gargunza to declare himself King of the Universe; cruel 14th century knight Simon de Carton (clearing the name of Amadis of Gaul in the process); a monster accidentally collected from the planet Droon; and Professor Wosmine's shrinking ray

Book One: 'A Dream Of Flying' - written by Alan Moore
Two decades later, Mike Moran is a middle-aged man working as a freelance journalist and happily married to Liz, but he is suffering from mid-life crisis and is plagued by headaches. He remembers nothing of his adventures as Miracleman, but has recurring dreams of flying and of the terrible fate that apparently befell the Miracleman family when they were caught in a nuclear explosion.

When a peaceful protest at an atomic power station is overtaken by terrorists, Moran is present and is taken hostage. In the throes of a migraine - he sees the ‘magic word’ (that has eluded him for decades but haunts his dreams) written on a glass door: ‘Kimota’. When he speaks this aloud he transforms into Miracleman, incapacitates the terrorists and flies away.

Miracleman returns home to a startled Liz and attempts to explain his newly-remembered backstory. Liz is initially skeptical but eventually convinced, and they spend the night together.

Miracleman’s appearance is noticed by Johnny Bates, who has become a very successful international businessman in the intervening decades. Bates invites Mike and Liz to his offices, and though they are initially convinced by his story Mike confronts Bates with his suspicions that he has become corrupted by his powers. These suspicions are confirmed when Kid Miracleman attacks. Transforming into Miracleman, Moran attempts to fight Kid Miracleman but is overpowered and only spared by Bates mistakenly speaking his ‘magic word’ and transforming back into a young boy. Miracleman and Liz escape, leaving the young Johnny Bates in the hands of the authorities.

As a result of their single night together, Liz becomes pregnant with Miracleman’s child, an event that fuels Mike Moran’s feelings of inadequacy in comparison to his superhuman alter-ego.

The ‘Spookshow’, a government agency, recruits Evelyn Cream to kill Moran. Cream instead kidnaps Moran and they agree to work together to discover Miracleman’s real origins. This leads them to a hidden bunker in the countryside where Miracleman encounters various ineffectual traps and a deranged superhuman called Big Ben, who he subdues effortlessly.

Once inside the bunker, Miracleman is confronted with the true nature of his past: he is the result of an experimental program by the British government to create superhumans as an escalation of the Cold War arms race. The program is derived from alien technology discovered in the 1950s and adapted and overseen by Dr Emil Gargunza, an ex-Nazi scientist given shelter by the British government. It is revealed that his entire past has been a virtual reality fiction created to subdue him and the rest of the Miracleman Family and make them pliable as super-weapons. Enraged by this, Miracleman destroys much of the bunker and, once calmed by Cream, returns home.

Book Two: 'The Red King Syndrome' - Written By Alan Moore
As the birth of her and Miracleman’s child grows near Liz is kidnapped by Gargunza, now living in Paraguay, where Liz is taken. Whilst she is held captive Gargunza relates to her his life story, telling of how he worked on the Zarathustra Project, adapting the technology of a crashed spaceship and creating the Miracleman Family. He hopes to transfer his consciousness into the body of Miracleman’s child, thus achieving immortality.

Miracleman and Cream travel to Paraguay and confront Gargunza. However, Gargunza has implanted another ‘magic word’ which changes Miracleman back into a defenceless Mike Moran for an hour. He then sets his ‘Miracledog’ - a monstrous, genetically altered super-animal - on Moran and Cream. Cream is killed and Moran is maimed but he remembers the ‘magic word’ Gargunza used on the dog and it reverts back to its harmless original form, whereupon Moran kills it and evades Gargunza’s mercenaries until such time as he can change back to Miracleman. When he does, he slaughters Gargunza’s guards, kills Gargunza and rescues Liz who then gives birth to a daughter, Winter - who can already speak.

Back in England, domestic tensions between Mike and Liz are exacerbated by Liz’s mood swings - which she suspects are caused by Winter, who is developing at an unusually accelerated rate. Meanwhile two alien agents are tracking Moran, but are themselves being followed by a mystery woman.

Book Three: 'Olympus' - Written By Alan Moore
The aliens - of the race The Qys - attack Moran, who becomes Miracleman and attempts to fight them off, but the aliens are able to change bodies in a manner similar to Moran / Miracleman himself and easily defeat him. Upon learning of Winter’s existence, they turn their attention to Liz but are thwarted by the mystery woman, who reveals herself to be Avril Lear - Miraclewoman - and tells the story of her past as another of Gargunza’s experiments.

The Qys take Miracleman and Miraclewoman to their homeworld where the future of the Miracleman Family - and Earth itself - is discussed by the ambassadors of the Qys and their mortal enemies the Warpsmiths. Miraclewoman convinces the assembly that Earth should be a neutral world wherein the two cultures can work together and hopefully achieve some form of understanding.

After returning to Earth Miracleman finds himself growing apart from his human ties as Liz leaves him and Winter [who is physically a small child but already beyond even Miracleman himself in terms of mental development] leaves Earth to find and learn from The Qys.

Mike Moran, his life turned upside down, commits a form of suicide by trekking into the wilderness and leaving a small memorial for himself to find when he transforms for a last time into Miracleman. Miracleman understands this gesture and never returns to his human form again.

With the help of Qys and Warpsmith agents including Aza Chorn, the initial alien/superhuman project is to gather together all the remaining superhumans on Earth and work in secret to begin to nudge Earth towards a more enlightened path. This is cut short, however, by the sudden re-emergence of Kid Miracleman.

Johnny Bates, who has been kept at a children’s home in England, has been attempting to keep his alter-ego at bay; but the brutal abuse he suffers at the hands of fellow inmates forces him to transform into a vengeful Kid Miracleman, who then destroys half of London in Miracleman’s temporary absence and kills forty thousand people. When he is discovered, a battle ensues where Miracleman and his cohorts - with apparently little regard for human life - attempt to subdue him.

Kid Miracleman is only eventually defeated by a dying Aza Chorn and, mortally wounded, transforms back to Johnny Bates. Miracleman then kills Bates to prevent him ever becoming Kid Miracleman again. In the ruins of London, surrounded by thousands of dead and dying, Miracleman now realises the world can never be the same.

He and Miraclewoman reshape the world into a utopia. All the practical ills of human society are cured, and the offer of superhuman powers and children is gradually taken up by a humanity who regard the Miracleman Family as gods. The pantheon of new gods build Olympus, a huge temple in the ruins of Central London where they are worshipped by human acolytes. Despite having created a utopia, Miracleman is haunted by Liz’s accusation that he has lost touch with his humanity.

Books Four and Five: 'The Golden Age' & 'The Silver Age' - Written By Neil Gaiman with Mark Buckingham
After a series of short stories detailing the effects of this new society on ordinary humans and supporting characters from the series ['The Golden Age'], the main story picks up again in the year 2001 ['The Silver Age'], where Young Miracleman - Dickie Dauntless - is revived but has a great deal of trouble adjusting to the new world he finds himself in.

Miraclewoman convinces Miracleman that Dauntless is infatuated with him, and Miracleman attempts to kiss him to assuage his frustrations. This shocks and enrages Dauntless, whose attitudes towards sexuality and the world in general are still very much those of the 1950s. He leaves Olympus to discover himself in the changed world of 2001. Landing in the Himalaya mountains, a bewildered Dauntless ends up meeting Bill Caxton (Mister Master), the first superhuman created by Miracleman and also the only to ever give up his powers. Inspired by this experience, and accompanied by the somewhat directionless but enhanced Meta-Maid, Dauntless finds the orphanage where he grew up prior to being abducted by Gargunza. In an extended flashback, Dauntless remembers the physical and mental abuse he experienced before changing back to his Young Miracleman form and vowing to confront Miracleman.

In the finale of this series, Miracleman meets Young Miracleman who after rebuking his options and criticising this present world states "I'm going to be your adversary. Not now. But One Day. I'm going to be the opposition. If this is Eden, I'm going to be the Serpent.". Ultimately agreeing to these terms, Miracleman lets Young Miracleman leave where he starts meditating for prolonged periods and begins a social movement. Under Miraclewoman's encouragement, Miracleman unofficially cedes Australia for Young Miracleman. In the final panels of the series, Young Miracleman hears the voice from Kid Miracleman from infra-space asking to be let out.

The series is to be concluded in Book 6, The Dark Age.

Powers and abilities
Miracleman can fly, has super-strength and is invulnerable. The source of his strength and durability is a forcefield, derived from Qys technology. He is able to tear open a bunker door without apparent effort, push his finger through a human chest without any sort of run-up, and clapping his hands together causes a concussive blast that deafens those within range. Miracleman survives being in the range of the Operation Dragonslayer nuclear bomb unscathed, only being forced into dormancy by the physical and mental damage done to Mike Moran, and is impervious to bullets, blades, rocket launchers and conventional explosives. He can survive without oxygen, and is able to singlehandedly carve Silence from subsea rock. Liz finds his speed cannot be measured by a stopwatch, estimating it as well over Mach 2. In the original, the character could fly around Earth fast enough to move backwards        or forwards   in time, an ability that has yet to be featured in the revival.

Critical reception
Timothy Adams of ComicBook.com called Miracleman a "classic superhero." Michael Doran of Newsarama included Miracleman in their "Best Marvel characters left to adapt to the MCU" list. Danilo Raul of MovieWeb ranked Miracleman 7th in their "Obscure Marvel Characters That Deserve Their Own Films" list.

Other versions
An alternate version of Miracleman is one of the heroes of Earth-238 that appears in the Captain Britain stories written by Moore and Alan Davis around the time of their work together on Marvelman for Warrior. A grave bearing the name is seen by Captain Britain shortly before he is killed by the Fury on the alternate world; the character's death at the hands of the symbiote was then shown in flashback during a nightmare experienced by Linda McQuillan (the superhero Captain UK). Moore would later recall that they came up for the name for the Marvel appearances but it features in his original proposal for the Warrior strip as an alternate title, but it was the first use of the name in print. When asked, Moore could not recall if he remembered using it when settling on renaming Marvelman for Eclipse Comics.

title: Miracleman (character)


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Ruud Lubbers

Rudolphus Franciscus Marie "Ruud" Lubbers (7 May 1939 – 14 February 2018) was a Dutch politician, diplomat and businessman who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1982 to 1994, and as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 2001 to 2005. He was a member of the Catholic People's Party (KVP), which later merged to become the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party.

Lubbers studied Economics at the Erasmus School of Economics obtaining a Master of Science degree and worked as a corporate director for the manufacturing company Hollandia in Rotterdam from April 1963 until May 1973 and as trade association executive for the Christian Employers' Association (NCW) from January 1965 until May 1973. After the election of 1972 Lubbers was appointed as Minister of Economic Affairs in the Cabinet Den Uyl taking office on 11 May 1973. Lubbers was elected as a Member of the House of Representatives after the election of 1977 serving from 8 June 1977 until 8 September 1977. Following the cabinet formation of 1977 Lubbers was asked to become Minister of Housing and Spatial Planning in the new cabinet but declined and returned as a Member of the House of Representatives on 22 December 1977, serving as a frontbencher and spokesperson for Economic Affairs. Following the resignation of Parliamentary leader Willem Aantjes Lubbers was selected as his successor taking office on 7 November 1978.

Shortly after the election of 1982 incumbent prime minister and Leader Dries van Agt unexpectedly announced he was stepping down and Lubbers was unanimously selected as his successor as Leader and the de facto next prime minister. Following cabinet formation of 1982 Lubbers formed the Cabinet Lubbers I and became Prime Minister of the Netherlands taking office on 4 November 1982. For the election of 1986 Lubbers served as Lijsttrekker (top candidate) and after a cabinet formation formed the Cabinet Lubbers II and continued as prime minister for a second term. For the election of 1989 Lubbers again served as Lijsttrekker and following another successful cabinet formation formed the Cabinet Lubbers III and continued as prime minister for a third term. In October 1993 Lubbers announced he was stepping down as Leader, and that he would not stand at the election of 1994 or serve another term as prime minister. He left office at the installation of the Cabinet Kok I on 22 August 1994.

Lubbers semi-retired from active politics and became active in the public sector as a non-profit director and served on several state commissions and councils on behalf of the government, he also served as a distinguished visiting professor of international relations and globalization at the Tilburg University and the John F. Kennedy School of Government of the Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts from February 1995 until December 2000. In November 2000 Lubbers was nominated as the next United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees serving from 1 January 2001 until 20 February 2005. Following his retirement Lubbers continued to be active in the public sector and worked as an advocate, lobbyist and activist for humanitarian, conservation, environmentalism, sustainable development and climate change issues. He was subject to some scrutiny, such as a sexual harassment scandal in 2004 which led to his resignation from the United Nations.

Lubbers was known for his abilities as a team leader and consensus builder. During his premiership, his cabinets were responsible for major reforms to social security, stimulating privatization and sustainable development, revitalizing the economy following the recession in the 1980s and reducing the deficit. Lubbers was granted the honorary title of Minister of State on 31 January 1995 and continued to comment on political affairs as a statesman until his death at the age of 78. At 43 years, he is the youngest Prime Minister of the Netherlands. He was the longest-serving Prime Minister with 11 years, 293 days until Mark Rutte overtook this record on 2 August 2022. He is consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as one of the best prime ministers after World War II.

Early life
Rudolphus Franciscus Marie Lubbers was born on 7 May 1939 in Rotterdam in the Province of South Holland. He studied economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and was a student of the first Nobel Prize in Economics laureate Jan Tinbergen. As suggested by the title of his 1962 thesis – "The influence of differing productivity trends in various countries on the current account of the balance of payments" – his main interest was in monetary affairs. He originally planned an academic career, but was compelled by family circumstances to join the management of Lubbers' Construction Workshops and Machinery Fabricators Hollandia B.V.

Politics

From 11 May 1973 to 19 December 1977, Ruud Lubbers was Minister of Economic Affairs in the Den Uyl-government and a member of the Catholic People's Party (KVP). He was an effective, if sometimes somewhat bad-tempered minister. He chose to return to Parliament on the formation of the Van Agt-government in 1977, becoming senior deputy parliamentary leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), the alliance between the KVP and the other two main Christian parties. His career got an unexpected boost when the leader of the parliamentary faction of the CDA, Willem Aantjes, had to resign in 1978 because of accusations that he had served in the Germanic-SS during the Second World War. Lubbers succeeded him and suddenly found himself in a powerful political position.

In 1982, after the general election won by Prime Minister Dries van Agt, a similar thing happened when Van Agt suddenly announced he would not serve for a third term. Lubbers took over the post. He was the youngest prime minister in Dutch history; he had turned 43 only six months earlier. Major aspects of his time in office included extensive cutbacks in public spending, the launch of far-reaching deregulation and privatisation programs, and a massive demonstration in The Hague (1983) against the planned installation in the Netherlands of nuclear-armed U.S. cruise missiles (which was cancelled after all due to arms reduction talks between the US and the Soviet Union).

After leaving office in 1994, Lubbers was put forward as a candidate for the head of NATO, but the U.S. vetoed his appointment. He was on the advisory board of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), where he was regularly involved in meetings regarding the financial and monetary system.

Lubbers was regarded by many during his time in office as an ideological heir to Margaret Thatcher. One of his campaign slogans was: "Meer markt, minder overheid" (more market, less government).

Ecological activities
In the follow-up of the Earth Summit in 1992, Lubbers engaged with the Earth Charter Initiative in cooperation with Mikhail Gorbachev and Maurice Strong. The Earth Charter document was launched in the Peace Palace in The Hague in June 2000. Lubbers was an active member of the international Earth Charter Commission and reached out, especially to youth in the Netherland, with the message of the Earth Charter for a sustainable and peaceful world.

Academic
From 1995 to 2000, he taught Globalization Studies at Tilburg University in the Netherlands and at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in the United States. He was also vice-chairman of the Independent World Commission on the Oceans and chair of Globus, the Institute for Globalization and Development based in Tilburg.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees
At the end of the year 2000, Lubbers was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan to succeed Sadako Ogata as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

From 1 January 2001, Lubbers headed the UNHCR, which comprised over 5,000 employees who work across the globe, and which was concerned with an estimated 21 million refugees and internally displaced in over 120 countries worldwide. During his tenure, the number of refugees worldwide decreased by almost 22%, from 21.8 million in 2001 to close to 17.1 million at the beginning of 2004.

Lubbers also favoured a generous refugee policy for the Netherlands, and he was critical of the Foreign Citizens Law (Vreemdelingenwet). He also stabilised the UNHCR's financial situation and greatly increased the financial means for the sheltering of refugees.

He annually donated some $300,000 to the refugee agency since he assumed his post in 2001, thereby covering his own $167,000 annual salary and travel expenses.

Sexual harassment complaint
In May 2004, Lubbers was accused by Cynthia Brzak, an American UNHCR employee, of sexual harassment following a meeting in his office that was attended by two other UNHCR staff members. The complaint was reported in the media, prompting Lubbers to inform UNHCR staff about the accusation. On this occasion, he denied any wrongdoing and rejected the allegation against him. On 2 June 2004, the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), which was tasked with investigating the accusation, sent its report to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In its public annual report to the UN Secretary-General (presented to the UN General Assembly), the OIOS reported concerning the case that it had "submitted a report to the Secretary-General supporting the allegations and recommended that appropriate actions be taken accordingly."

Lubbers responded to the OIOS report in a letter setting out to (a) deny acts of sexual harassment or abuse took place; (b) establish that such evidence of the alleged misconduct as is said to exist is insufficient and flawed; and (c) conclude that the report itself would appear to be based on an irregular statutory basis and also flawed by errors of law and reasoning."

Lubbers asked Max van der Stoel, former High Commissioner on National Minorities, to comment on the confidential report. He concluded that "the OIOS report is deficient in objectivity and impartiality." He added "that the only two other persons in the room did not provide evidence confirming the version given by the complainant." Furthermore, he accused UN officials of leaking information to the press and recommended that an investigation of the leaks be undertaken.

The Secretary-General reviewed the report and the responses of the High Commissioner and the senior manager to the report, and decided that the complaint could not be substantiated by the evidence and therefore closed the matter." He is also reported to have consulted with Stephen Schwebel, an American judge and former President of the International Court of Justice. The Secretary-General failed to order an investigation of the deliberate leaking by OIOS itself to the media as recommended by Max van der Stoel.

Resignation
In February 2005, the case was in the news again when the British daily newspaper The Independent obtained a copy of the OIOS report and, accompanied by an article by Kate Holt, published its contents.

Lubbers met with the Secretary-General on 18 February 2005, and resigned as High Commissioner on Sunday, 20 February 2005, stating to the press: "For more than four years I gave all my energy to UNHCR. To be frank, despite all my loyalty, insult has now been added to injury and therefore I resign as High Commissioner." The Secretary-General's office issued a statement the same day which stated that the High Commissioner's resignation was in the best interests of the UNHCR. In his letter of resignation, Lubbers stated that his resignation constituted no expression of guilt, but that he had become the victim of smearing, adding that he had resigned "in the interest of the organisation". In October 2005, Annan reiterated that he had come to the conclusion that "the evidence did not support the accusation" but that, because of ongoing media-pressure, Lubbers' resignation was in the best interests of the UNHCR.

During a farewell meeting for Lubbers as High Commissioner for Refugees, he received from Acting High Commissioner Wendy Chamberlin the first annual UNHCR Achievement Award for exceptional services to UNHCR and for the world's refugees.

In a formal statement, Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende called the departure of Lubbers "bitter", since the complaint against him had been dismissed as unsustainable.

Handling of the UNHCR/SC-UK 2002 report on sexual exploitation in the aid sector in West Africa

Three years prior to the controversy over the sexual harassment case, Lubbers was criticised for his handling of the UNHCR/SC-UK 2002 which uncovered the widespread sexual exploitation of refugee children by aid workers and peacekeepers in three West African countries (Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone). The study team which had encountered these findings unexpectedly whilst conducting a broader assessment documented 67 allegations implicating 40 aid agencies and several peacekeeping battalions, and often involving humanitarian workers and peacekeepers exchanging meagre aid supplies for sex with children. Lubbers' response was to deny these findings, discredit the authors and excuse these behaviours; for example in a CNN interview on 8 May 2002, Lubbers was heard to deny the problem in the face of CNN's own research which confirmed the problem existed and was taken to task by the interviewer for dismissing these exploitative relationships inter alia as 'romances'. The UN General Assembly passed resolution A/RES/57/306, 'Investigation into sexual exploitation of refugees by aid workers in West Africa' in May 2003, requiring the UN to take action at the highest level to tackle such abuses. This led to the UN Secretary-General's Bulletin, 'Special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse' in October 2003, and an endorsement of the Inter-agency standing Committee's working group on sexual abuse and exploitation which had already been set up a year earlier in June 2002 in response to the report.

Informateur
After the fall of the Second Balkenende cabinet, Lubbers became the informateur for the formation of the demissionary interim Third Balkenende cabinet.

For the 2010 Dutch cabinet formation, after coalition meetings between People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, Labour Party, Democrats 66, and GreenLeft failed to form a new Purple government, Lubbers was asked again to become Informateur to seek possibilities for a new coalition.

Personal life and death
On 10 October 1962, Lubbers married Ria Hoogeweegen (12 November 1940 – 4 June 2024)  and had two sons and one daughter, Paul, Bart and Heleen.

Lubbers died in Rotterdam on 14 February 2018, at the age of 78, of natural causes. Among the world leaders who offered condolences were former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, Prime Minister of Russia and former President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel, Secretary-General of the United Nations and former Prime Minister of Portugal and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi and President of the European Commission and former Prime Minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker. His ceremonial funeral was held in Rotterdam on 20 February 2018 and was attended by Prime Minister Mark Rutte and all living former Prime Ministers Dries van Agt, Wim Kok and Jan Peter Balkenende and other high-profile (former) politicians. This was also the last public appearance of his successor as Prime Minister Wim Kok, who himself died eight months later at the age of 80.

title: Ruud Lubbers