- For other uses see Kingmaker
"Kingmaker" is a term originally applied to the activities of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, during the Wars of the Roses in England. The term has come to be applied more generally to a person or group that has great influence in a royal or political succession, without being a viable...
.
Kingmaker was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
indie rock group, founded in
Kingston upon HullKingston upon Hull , almost invariably referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is located 25 miles from the North Sea on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary...
in 1990.
TeenageAdolescence Adolescence Adolescence (lat adolescere, (to grow) is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development that occurs between childhood and adulthood. This transition involves biological (i.e. pubertal), social, and psychological changes, though the biological or...
schoolmates Loz Hardy and Myles Howell formed the group during their year off after school. They placed an advertisement for a
drummerA drummer is a person who plays drums, particularly a drum kit , marching percussion or hand drums. The term percussionist applies to a musician performing on any percussion instrument, but usually refers to one who plays classical or Latin percussion. Most bands for Rock, Pop, Jazz, R&B etc...
, and eventually recruited the significantly older John Andrew. Andrew was an ex-travelling
puppeteerA puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object—a puppet—in real time to create the illusion of life. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from the audience. A puppeteer can operate a puppet indirectly by the use of strings, rods, wires, electronics or directly by his or her own...
.
The band began playing and touring, before making their
recordingSound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...
debut with "The Celebrated Working Man"
EPA gramophone record, commonly known as phonograph record, vinyl record, or simply record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove usually starting near the periphery and ending near the centre of the disc...
.
- For other uses see Kingmaker
"Kingmaker" is a term originally applied to the activities of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, during the Wars of the Roses in England. The term has come to be applied more generally to a person or group that has great influence in a royal or political succession, without being a viable...
.
Kingmaker was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
indie rock group, founded in
Kingston upon HullKingston upon Hull , almost invariably referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is located 25 miles from the North Sea on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary...
in 1990.
Formation
TeenageAdolescence Adolescence Adolescence (lat adolescere, (to grow) is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development that occurs between childhood and adulthood. This transition involves biological (i.e. pubertal), social, and psychological changes, though the biological or...
schoolmates Loz Hardy and Myles Howell formed the group during their year off after school. They placed an advertisement for a
drummerA drummer is a person who plays drums, particularly a drum kit , marching percussion or hand drums. The term percussionist applies to a musician performing on any percussion instrument, but usually refers to one who plays classical or Latin percussion. Most bands for Rock, Pop, Jazz, R&B etc...
, and eventually recruited the significantly older John Andrew. Andrew was an ex-travelling
puppeteerA puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object—a puppet—in real time to create the illusion of life. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from the audience. A puppeteer can operate a puppet indirectly by the use of strings, rods, wires, electronics or directly by his or her own...
.
Early recording career
The band began playing and touring, before making their
recordingSound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...
debut with "The Celebrated Working Man"
EPA gramophone record, commonly known as phonograph record, vinyl record, or simply record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove usually starting near the periphery and ending near the centre of the disc...
. After this they signed up to
Chrysalis RecordsChrysalis Records was a British record label that was created in 1969. The name was both a reference to the pupal stage of a butterfly and an amalgam of its founders names, Chris Wright and Terry Ellis...
and released a second EP, entitled "Waterproof" in 1991. They were also immediately courted by the
music pressMusic journalism is criticism and reportage about music. It began in the eighteenth century as comment on what is now thought of as 'classical music'. This aspect of music journalism, today generally classified as music criticism, comprises the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of...
, who invented a niche category for the band, which they dubbed "New Cool Rock".
With a
fanA fan, aficionado, or supporter is someone who has an intense, occasionally overwhelming liking and enthusiasm for a sporting club, person , group of persons, company, product, activity, work of art, idea, or trend. Fans of a particular thing or person constitute its fanbase or fandom...
following building up, and
lyricalLyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...
austerity in their melodic music, they were tipped by some as the "next big thing". Their debut
albumAn album or record album is a collection of related audio or music tracks distributed to the public. The most common way is through commercial distribution, although smaller artists will often distribute directly to the public by selling their albums at live concerts or on their websites.-...
Eat Yourself Whole
was well received, and spent three weeks in the UK Albums ChartThe UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled by The Official UK Charts Company and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website ; the full Top 200 is published exclusively in ChartsPlus.To qualify for the UK albums...
, reaching a high of number twenty nine in October 1991. In addition, the singleIn music, a single is a short recording of one or more separate tracks. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats.-History:...
release of the album's title track, "Eat Yourself Whole", reached the Top Twenty of the UK Singles ChartThe UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record industry. The full chart contains the top 200 singles based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 of this list...
.
During 1992 they were supported on tour by a pre-Pablo HoneyPablo Honey, released in early 1993, is the first album by the English alternative rock band Radiohead. The cover features the baby Tim Coates, the son of close friends of the band. The title comes from a Jerky Boys prank call skit in which the prank caller says, "Pablo, honey? Please come to...
, RadioheadRadiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their first single, "Creep", in 1992...
. On 29 August that year they appeared on the bill alongside Babes in ToylandBabes in Toyland may refer to:* Babes in Toyland , an American punk band* Babes in Toyland , a 1903 operetta by Victor Herbert* Babes in Toyland , a musical comedy starring Laurel and Hardy...
, Beastie BoysBeastie Boys is an American hip hop group from New York City. The group comprises Michael "Mike D" Diamond, Adam "MCA" Yauch, and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz...
, Nick Cave and the Bad SeedsNick Cave and the Bad Seeds are an Australian alternative rock band with multinational personnel, fronted by Nick Cave.-1980s:Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was originally formed in late 1983 by two former members of the Australian band The Birthday Party: Nick Cave and Mick Harvey...
etc., at the PukkelpopPukkelpop is an annual music festival which currently takes place in Kiewit, Belgium, located near the city of Hasselt. It is one of the largest music festivals in the country, with an attendance of approximately 180,000 in 2009....
festivalA music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality or locality of musicians, or holiday. They are commonly held outdoors, and are often inclusive of other attractions such as food and merchandise vending machines,...
near Hasselt||-||-||}Hasselt is a Belgian city and municipality, and capital of the Flemish province of Limburg. The Hasselt municipality includes the city of Hasselt and the old communes of Sint-Lambrechts-Herk, Wimmertingen, Kermt, Spalbeek, Kuringen, Stokrooie, Stevoort and Runkst.On 31 December, 2007...
, BelgiumThe Kingdom of Belgium is a country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters, as well as those of other major international organizations, including NATO...
.
They then landed an AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
recording contractA recording contract is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist , where the artist makes a record for the label to sell and promote...
with Chrysalis. Kingmaker's second album, Sleepwalking, was released in 1993. Although the album was well received, frontman Hardy felt that it signalled the end of the band's creative independence and consequently was the death knell for Kingmaker.
Animosity with record label
Speaking to Hybrid Magazine in 2000, Hardy explained that when the album's first single "Armchair Anarchist" failed to break into the Top 40, executives at the
record labelIn the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
made several changes that Hardy felt were to the detriment of the band. These changes included re-writing Sleepwalking, to include more commercial sounding tunes and moving all the publicity in-house. One more aspect that Hardy felt destroyed the band as a creative unit was the record label's decision to introduce formatting of their singles.
"I dunno if you have that over Stateside but [formatting] basically means there would be different b-sides on the 12 inch(2), cassette(1), CD 1 and CD 2 (3 on each). So if the album has, say, 13 songs on it and with three singles that means you're gonna need 40 songs. 40 fucking songs! So the workload is near impossible and plus the fans get ripped left, right and centre to boot. What was also happening was that you did songs for the album and then b-sides but really fucking excellent songs were ending up tucked away third song on CD 2 and no one heard them."
The band's split
The band rapidly fell out of favour.
Paul HeatonPaul Heaton is an English singer-songwriter. He was a member of The Beautiful South, who disbanded in 2007, and a member of The Housemartins, who disbanded in 1988...
of Hull's more well known band
The Beautiful SouthThe Beautiful South were an English alternative rock group formed at the end of the 1980s by former members of Hull group The Housemartins - Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway. The duo were initially joined by Sean Welch , Dave Stead and Dave Rotheray , all of whom stayed with the group throughout...
heavily criticised them as being middle class pretenders, and the rot set in thereafter. Their third album To Hell with Humdrum
had only a few new songs and mostly featured BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation, usually referred to by its abbreviation as the "BBC", is the longest established and largest broadcaster in the world...
sessions of tracks from Sleepwalking
.
Hardy believed the failure of the fourth and final album In the Best Possible Taste was as much a result of the formatting method as it was the changing tides of musical culture.
"By the time we got to our last album we decided that we wanted to do all 40 songs up front and pick the best for the album, but this meant we needed to take a long timeout to write and record. A year and a half it took us. In that time
BritpopBritpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom. Britpop emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s...
really happened and blew us out of the water. By the time we got to releasing In The Best Possible Taste
we knew we were well past our sell-by date, and I didn't want to keep playing and playing scaling down to smaller and smaller clubs, I found it a depressing notion."
In the Best Possible Taste emerged in 1995 to silence from the music media. Whilst tracks such as "One False Move" revealed a subtle shift towards urban
rockabillyRockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music, and emerged in the early 1950s.The term rockabilly is a portmanteau of rock and hillbilly, the latter a reference to the country music that contributed strongly to the style's development...
, the band called it quits after touring later the same year.
Band members
- Loz Hardy (born Lawrence Paul Hardy, 14 September 1970, Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. In 2007, the population of the city was estimated to be 458,100...
) — vocals, guitarThe guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that adapts readily to a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six strings, but four-, seven-, eight-, ten-, eleven-, twelve-, thirteen- and eighteen-string guitars also exist. The size and shape of the neck and the base of the guitar...
- Myles Howell (born 23 January 1971, Rugby
Rugby is a market town in Warwickshire, in the West Midlands of England, on the River Avon. The town has a population of 61,988 making it the second largest town in the county...
, WarwickshireWarwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton in the far north of the county. The shape of the administrative area Warwickshire differs considerably from that of the historic county...
) — bass guitarThe electric bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a plectrum....
- John Andrew (born John Richard Andrew, 27 May 1963, Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , almost invariably referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is located 25 miles from the North Sea on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary...
) — drumThe drum is a member of the percussion group of music instruments, technically classified as a membranophone.. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with parts of a player's body, or with some sort of...
s.
Albums
- Eat Yourself Whole (1991) - UK
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled by The Official UK Charts Company and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website ; the full Top 200 is published exclusively in ChartsPlus.To qualify for the UK albums...
Number 29
- Sleepwalking (1993) - UK Number 15
- To Hell with Humdrum (1993)
- In the Best Possible Taste (1995)
Singles & EPs
- "The Celebrated Working Man" (1991) EP
- "Waterproof EP" (1991) EP
- "Two Headed EP" (1991) EP
- "Idiots at the Wheel" (1992) EP § - UK
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record industry. The full chart contains the top 200 singles based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 of this list...
Number 30
- "Eat Yourself Whole" (1992) - UK Number 15
- "Armchair Anarchist" (1992) - UK Number 37
- "10 Years Asleep" (1993) - UK Number 15
- "Queen Jane" (1993) - UK Number 29
- "Saturday's Not What It Used to Be" (1993) - UK Number 63
- "You and I Will Never See Things Eye to Eye" (1995) - UK Number 33
- "In the Best Possible Taste (Part 2)" (1995) - UK Number 41
§ - Tracks included "Really Scrape The Sky" / "Reveleation" / "Every Teenage Suicide" / "Strip Away"
External links