Jeff Russo (born August 31, 1969) is a composer, songwriter, guitarist, vocalist and producer, best known as a founding member of American rock band Tonic. He is also a founding member of acoustic rock band Low Stars.
Recently he has scored films, TV programs and commercials, including the ABC dramas The Unusuals and My Generation, the NBC drama Crossing Jordan, the USA network show Necessary Roughness, the CBS network show Hostages and currently scores the FX drama Fargo and the Starz drama Power. He is currently scoring the second season of Extant, replacing Marcelo Zarvos and is about to begin his second season scoring CSI: Cyber. He has also worked with fellow composers Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman.
Reb Beach (born Richard Earl Beach, Jr. on August 31, 1963) is an American rock guitarist. He is a member of the bands Winger and Whitesnake.
Beach is best known for his work in the melodic rock band Winger in the late 1980s to mid 1990s.
After graduating from Fox Chapel Area High School and attending Berklee College of Music in the early 1980s, he played in Fiona's backing band and became an accomplished studio musician, working with the likes of Howard Jones, Chaka Khan, The Bee Gees, Twisted Sister, and Roger Daltrey, among others, showcasing Beach's ability to adapt to various musical styles.
While working with Fiona, he was introduced to Kip Winger who was touring with Alice Cooper at the time. Eventually they formed the band Sahara along with Rod Morgenstein and Paul Taylor, which was later renamed to Winger.
Winger recorded and toured in support of three albums, Winger (1988), In the Heart of the Young (1990) and Pull (1993). The band also released a number of hit singles, including "Seventeen", "Madalaine", "Headed for a Heartbreak" and "Miles Away".
After Winger disbanded in the mid 1990s, Beach first joined Alice Cooper's band and later replaced George Lynch in the heavy metal band Dokken. With Dokken he recorded one studio album titled Erase The Slate and a live DVD titled Live From The Sun.
He was also involved with Sega, as he recorded the soundtrack for the video game Daytona USA 2.
Since leaving Dokken, Beach has been a part of several different recording and touring projects. In addition to sporadic touring with Winger, he released a solo effort entitled Masquerade in 2002. Since 2002 has been a member David Coverdale's current incarnation of Whitesnake and has been longest-serving guitarist/member of the band to this day.
A "supergroup" project called The Mob with King's X frontman Doug Pinnick and Night Ranger drummer Kelly Keagy, resulted in a single self-titled album, released in 2005.
A reformed Winger released their first studio recording in over a decade, IV in 2006.
He replaced Jeff Watson in Night Ranger for a series of dates in Japan and the US, but announced his departure in January 2008.
He currently splits his time between Winger and Whitesnake, recording Better Days Comin' in 2014 with the former band, and The Purple Album with the latter in 2015. He continues to tour with both acts.
According to band mate Kip Winger, Reb is quite adept at coming up with multiple rock riffs at a time, though he is often unable to remember them later.
Ibanez guitars produced his signature RBM models (stands for Reb Beach Model) in the early 1990s. On the 2005 Whitesnake reunion tour, he primarily used custom models by luthier Suhr Guitars.
Rudolf Schenker (born 31 August 1948 in Hildesheim, Lower Saxony) is a German guitarist and founding member of the hard rock band Scorpions, being the rhythm/lead guitarist and one of the main songwriters of the band.
Schenker founded the Scorpions in 1964 when he was only 16 years old. He has become one of the major driving forces in the band's song-writing and musical direction for 40-plus years. In 2014, Scorpions announced that their newest album, Return to Forever, the 2015 release,would be their last. The tour that supported the previous album"Sting in the tail",with the tour Get Your Sting And Blackout World Tour, was thought to be their last, however they had their farewell tour called "The Final Sting Tour" that concluded in Munich on 17 December 2012. Surprisingly, a new world tour was just launched in June this year, lasting until March 2016, ending in a long tour of the USA. Schenker has been the Scorpion's most consistent member, appearing on every album and at every tour. His younger brother Michael Schenker was a member of Scorpions in the band's earliest inception, before joining the band UFO. In the year 2000 Schenker was awarded the city of Hanover plaque. and the Cross of Merit First Class (Verdienstkreuz 1. Klasse) of the Lower Saxony Order of Merit.
Michael Joseph "Micky" Moody (born 30 August 1950) is an English guitarist and a former member of the rock bands Juicy Lucy and Whitesnake. He was also a founder-member of Snafu. Together with his former Whitesnake colleague Bernie Marsden he founded the Moody Marsden Band, and later, The Snakes, having previously collaborated with unofficial 5th Status Quo member Bob Young in Young & Moody. Along with Marsden and ex-Whitesnake bassist, Neil Murray, he formed Company of Snakes and M3 Classic Whitesnake with which they mainly performed early Whitesnake songs. From 2010 he has been working with Murray, guitarist Laurie Wisefield, drummer Harry James, singer Chris Ousey and keyboard player Michael Bramwell in Monsters of British Rock which has morphed into Snakecharmer with Adam Wakeman on keyboards.
Besides this, Moody has also toured with Roger Chapman, Frankie Miller and Chris Farlowe. He has also performed live alongside the likes of Eric Clapton, Alvin Lee, Mick Taylor, Bruce Dickinson, Sam Brown, Gary Brooker, Suggs, Dennis Locorriere, Paul Jones, P. P. Arnold, James Hunter, Rick Wakeman, Jon Lord, Newton Faulkner, Uriah Heep, Alice Cooper, Mark King, Alfie Boe, Sandi Thom, Brian Auger, Paul Weller, Eric Bibb, Meat Loaf, Boy George, Elkie Brooks, Nona Hendryx, Mud Morganfield and one of his early guitar heroes, Duane Eddy. Since 2000 he has released several solo albums: I Eat Them For Breakfast (2000), Don't Blame Me (2006), Acoustic Journeyman (2007) and Electric Journeyman (2009). A versatile guitarist, Moody has been an active session musician and his own website lists over 100 albums to which he has contributed musically. 2006 saw the release of the autobiographical Playing With Trumpets – A Rock 'n' Roll Apprenticeship, a memoir about his early days on the music scene. His library music has been featured on such TV programmes as Waking the Dead, Bo' Selecta!, America's Next Top Model, How to Look Good Naked, Top Gear, Horizon, Jersey Shore, Mad Men, Wife Swap and Paul Hollywood's Bread.
Tony MacAlpine (born August 29, 1960) is an American musician and composer. In a career spanning three decades and eleven studio albums, he is best known as an instrumental rock solo guitarist, although he has worked with many different bands and musicians in guest appearances and collaborations.
Having started playing piano at the age of five and guitar at twelve, MacAlpine studied classical music for a number of years at the Springfield Conservatory of Music in Massachusetts, as well as various music programs at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. One of his musical influences is Frédéric Chopin, to whom he pays homage in his interpretations of the latter's études, which are featured on the majority of his studio albums.
Together with his first studio releases, Edge of Insanity (1986) and Maximum Security (1987), he had a prominent role on other works during the popular shred era, including keyboard performances on the debut albums of fellow guitarists Vinnie Moore (Mind's Eye, 1986) and Joey Tafolla (Out of the Sun, 1987). Soon after his own debut, he played guitar in a heavy metal supergroup named M.A.R.S. (an acronym for MacAlpine/Aldridge/Rock/Sarzo), which resulted in the 1986 album Project: Driver.
As part of a band effort named 'MacAlpine', Eyes of the World was released in 1990 as a more commercially-oriented attempt to emulate other hard rock acts at the time. The venture was short-lived, and his subsequent album Freedom to Fly (1992) was a return to his instrumental-based work. A further consecutive string of instrumental albums followed throughout the 1990s, most of them through the renowned Shrapnel Records label: Madness (1993), Premonition (1994), Evolution (1995) and Violent Machine (1996). For his last album of the decade, Master of Paradise (1999), MacAlpine briefly assumed singing duties in an effort to experiment with different styles. After the release of Chromaticity in August 2001, he took an extended hiatus from recording solo albums and worked with a variety of other musicians and bands, most notably with supergroups CAB and Ring of Fire. Nearly a decade later, in June 2011, he released his self-titled eleventh studio album through guitarist Steve Vai's Favored Nations label.
In the early to mid-2000s, MacAlpine took on a dual role playing both guitar and keyboards in Vai's touring band The Breed. He is featured on the band's DVD release Live at the Astoria London (2003), along with two DVDs of the G3 tour: G3: Live in Denver (2004) and G3: Live in Tokyo (2005). During that time, he was the guitarist for progressive metal supergroup Planet X, alongside keyboardist Derek Sherinian and drummer Virgil Donati. He played with them for three albums in the first part of the decade—Universe (2000), Live from Oz (2002) and MoonBabies (2002)—and rejoined them in 2009 for a string of live performances, and at that time a possible new album. His most recent collaborations have included Seven the Hardway, a progressive metal group with whom he released their self-titled album in 2010, and a guest appearance on Sherinian's seventh studio album Oceana (2011). In the second half of 2012, MacAlpine toured Europe and Asia as part of PSMS (Portnoy/Sheehan/MacAlpine/Sherinian), an instrumental supergroup. Instrumental Inspirations, a DVD of their live material, was released October 21, 2012. Additionally, in an October 2012 interview, he stated that he was working on new studio material (one of them being a "strictly classical record" recorded solely on piano), as well as a new album with Ring of Fire. Battle of Leningrad, Ring of Fire's fourth studio album, was released on January 28, 2014.
On October 5, 2013 an announcement regarding a new solo album was made by MacAlpine on his official website: it will be named Concrete Gardens, with an expected release in 2014. Aquiles Priester will be featured on drums, Pete Griffin on bass and a guest solo by guitarist Jeff Loomis.
Thomas Jacob "Jack" Black (born August 28, 1969) is an American actor, producer, comedian, voice artist, writer, and musician. His acting career has been extensive, starring primarily as bumbling and cocky but internally self-conscious outsiders in comedy films, though he has played some serious roles. He is best known for his roles in High Fidelity, Shallow Hal, School of Rock, King Kong (2005), Nacho Libre, Tropic Thunder, Bernie and the Kung Fu Panda films. Black is considered a member of the so-called Frat Pack, a loose grouping of comic actors who have appeared together in various Hollywood films, and has been nominated for two Golden Globe Awards. He is the lead vocalist of the comedic rock group Tenacious D, which he formed in 1994 with friend Kyle Gass.
Björn Gelotte (born August 27, 1975) is a songwriter and guitarist for the Swedish band, In Flames. He joined the band as the drummer in 1995, and continued his position as drummer during The Jester Race (1995) and Whoracle (1997). Gelotte switched to his current position on guitars after Glenn Ljungström left the band, sharing lead/rhythm guitar work with now former In Flames guitarist Jesper Strömblad.
In March 2004, Björn (along with Jesper Strömblad) were both ranked #70 out of 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Guitarists of all time by Guitar World.
Aleksandar Živojinović (born August 27, 1953) better known by his stage name Alex Lifeson, is a Canadian musician, best known as the guitarist of the Canadian rock band Rush. In the summer of 1968, Lifeson co-founded the band that would become Rush. Other co-founders are friend and drummer John Rutsey, bassist and lead vocalist Jeff Jones, and Jones's successor, current front man Geddy Lee a month later. Lifeson has been an integral member of the band ever since.
For Rush, Lifeson plays electric and acoustic guitars as well as other stringed instruments such as mandola, mandolin, and bouzouki. He also performs backing vocals in live performances, and occasionally plays keyboards and bass pedal synthesizers. Like the other members of Rush, Lifeson performs real-time on-stage triggering of sampled instruments, concurrently with his guitar playing.
The bulk of Lifeson's work in music has been with Rush, although Lifeson has contributed to a body of work outside of the band as well. Aside from music, Lifeson is part-owner of The Orbit Room, a bar and restaurant located in Toronto, Canada, and is a licensed aircraft pilot.
Along with his bandmates Geddy Lee and Neil Peart, Lifeson was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on May 9, 1996. The trio was the first rock band to be so honored, as a group.
He currently ranks 3rd in the Guitar World Readers poll of 100 greatest guitarists.
Phil Shulman (born Philip Arthur Shulman, 27 August 1937, The Gorbals, Glasgow, Scotland), was a member of the progressive rock group Gentle Giant from 1970 to 1972 and performed on their albums Gentle Giant, Acquiring the Taste, Three Friends, and Octopus.
He is a Scottish musician and eldest brother of Derek Shulman and Ray Shulman. All three were members of seminal Prog Rock group Gentle Giant. A multi-instrumentalist, he has played alto and tenor saxophone, flute, clarinet, trumpet, mellophone, piano, plus occasional percussion and vocals.
Michael David Cummings, better known by his stage name Spider One, (born August 25, 1968) is a musician; the lead singer, founding and only consistent member of the Boston-based metal band Powerman 5000, host of FEARnet.com's "on the fly", and owner of Megatronic Records. His most notable hit to-date has been "When Worlds Collide", featured on Tonight the Stars Revolt!. Spider One is the brother of singer/filmmaker Rob Zombie. He hopes to enter the field of filmmaking as well. Spider's television series Death Valley aired on MTV in 2011. Rob and Spider's styles have often been a source for comparison.
Derek Sherinian (born August 25, 1966) is an American keyboardist who has toured and recorded for Alice Cooper, Billy Idol, Yngwie Malmsteen, Kiss, and Black Label Society. He was also a member of Dream Theater from 1994–1999, is the founder of Planet X and also one of the founding members of Black Country Communion. His solo albums often feature a variety of prominent guest musicians, including guitarists Slash, Yngwie Malmsteen, Allan Holdsworth, Steve Lukather, Joe Bonamassa, Billy Sheehan, Zakk Wylde and Al Di Meola.
Sherinian has distinguished himself by his aggressive "guitaristic" approach to his keyboard style. He has appeared on the cover of numerous keyboard magazines around the world, including the November 2011 issue of Keyboard Magazine, which declared Sherinian a "Keyboard hero for a new generation". He has also been called the "King of the Keys" by Guitar World magazine and the "Caligula of Keyboards" by Alice Cooper. His main musical influences include Elton John, Van Halen and Jeff Beck.
Vivian Patrick Campbell (born 25 August 1962) is a Northern Irish rock guitarist who is a member of Def Leppard and was a member of Thin Lizzy from May 2010 to November 2011. Prior to joining Def Leppard in April 1992, he had been a member of Whitesnake, Sweet Savage, Trinity, Riverdogs, and Shadow King. He first rose to prominence in 1982 as the original guitarist of the band Dio.
Geoffrey Downes (born 25 August 1952) is an English rock keyboard player and songwriter for the bands Yes and Asia, and formerly of The Buggles, during which he played multiple keyboards to achieve a New Wave technopop sound. He was once entered for the Guinness Book of Records for performing with the most keyboards (28) on stage in one performance.
While currently active with the original Asia, he has also finished three albums with John Wetton on their side project 'Icon', and recorded a live DVD in February 2009 to promote the release of their third studio album. The project included guitarist Dave Kilminster (Roger Waters, Keith Emerson), Pete Riley (Keith Emerson, Ken Hensley), and Hugh McDowell (Electric Light Orchestra). In addition, Downes is also working on television, film and production music for a London West End film production company, Original Production Music Ltd.
Robert John Arthur "Rob" Halford (born 25 August 1951) is an English singer-songwriter, who is best known as the lead vocalist for the Grammy Award-winning heavy metal band Judas Priest. He is considered one of the most consistently powerful singers in rock, possessing a wide vocal range, and is particularly known for his trademark high-pitched, operatic, soaring screams. His vocal range currently spans nearly four octaves. In addition to his work with Judas Priest, he has been involved with several side projects, including Fight, 2wo and Halford. He is credited as the first openly gay heavy metal musician, having come out in 1998.
Gene Simmons (born Chaim Witz, August 25, 1949) is an Israeli-born American rock bass guitarist, singer-songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, and actor. Known by his stage persona The Demon, he is the bass guitarist/co-lead vocalist of Kiss, a hard rock band he co-founded in the early 1970s. With Kiss, Simmons has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide.
