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British playwright Tom Stoppard, a playful, probing dramatist who won an Academy Award for the screenplay for 1998’s Shakespeare in Love, has died. He was 88.
In a statement Saturday (Nov. 29), United Agents said the Czech-born Stoppard — often hailed as the greatest British playwright of his generation — died “peacefully” at his home in Dorset in southwest England, surrounded by his family.
“He will be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language,” they said. “It was an honor to work with Tom and to know him.”
Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger was among those paying tribute, calling Stoppard “a giant of the English theater, both highly intellectual and very funny in all his plays and scripts.
“He had a dazzling wit and loved classical and popular music alike which often featured in his huge body of work,” said Jagger, who produced the 2001 film Enigma, with a screenplay by Stoppard. “He was amusing and quietly sardonic. A friend and companion and I will always miss him.”
Theaters in London’s West End will dim their lights for two minutes on Tuesday (Dec. 2) in tribute.
Brain-teasing plays
Over a six-decade career, Stoppard’s brain-teasing plays for theater, radio and screen ranged from Shakespeare and science to philosophy and the historic tragedies of the 20th century.
Five of them won Tony Awards for best play: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1968; Travesties in 1976; The Real Thing in 1984; The Coast of Utopia in 2007 and Leopoldstadt in 2023.
Stoppard biographer Hermione Lee said the secret of his plays was their “mixture of language, knowledge and feeling. … It’s those three things in gear together which make him so remarkable.”
The writer was born Tomás Sträussler in 1937 to a Jewish family in Zlín in what was then Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. His father was a doctor for the Bata shoe company, and when Nazi Germany invaded in 1939 the family fled to Singapore, where Bata had a factory.
In late 1941, as Japanese forces closed in on the city state, Tomas, his brother and their mother fled again, this time to India. His father stayed behind and later died when his ship was attacked as he tried to leave Singapore.
In 1946 his mother married an English officer, Kenneth Stoppard, and the family moved to threadbare, postwar Britain. The 8-year-old Tom “put on Englishness like a coat,” he later said, growing up to be a quintessential Englishman who loved cricket and Shakespeare.
He did not go to university but began his career, aged 17, as a journalist for newspapers in Bristol, southwest England, and then as a theater critic for Scene magazine in London.
Tragedy and humor
He wrote plays for radio and television including A Walk on the Water, televised in 1963, and made his stage breakthrough with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which reimagined Shakespeare’s Hamlet from the viewpoint of two hapless minor characters. A mix of tragedy and absurdist humor, it premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966 and was staged at Britain’s National Theatre, then run by Laurence Olivier, before moving to Broadway.
A stream of exuberant, innovative plays followed, including meta-whodunnit The Real Inspector Hound (first staged in 1968); Jumpers (1972), a blend of physical and philosophical gymnastics, and Travesties (1974), which set intellectuals including James Joyce and Vladimir Lenin colliding in Zurich during World War I.
Musical drama Every Good Boy Deserves Favor (1977) was a collaboration with composer Andre Previn about a Soviet dissident confined to a mental institution — part of Stoppard’s long involvement with groups advocating for human rights groups in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
He often played with time and structure. The Real Thing (1982) was a poignant romantic comedy about love and deception that featured plays within a play, while Arcadia (1993) moved between the modern era and the early 19th century, where characters at an English country house debated poetry, gardening and chaos theory as fate had its way with them.
The Invention of Love (1997) explored classical literature and the mysteries of the human heart through the life of the English poet A.E. Housman.
Stoppard began the 21st century with The Coast of Utopia (2002), an epic trilogy about pre-revolutionary Russian intellectuals, and drew on his own background for Rock ’n’ Roll (2006), which contrasted the fates of the 1960s counterculture in Britain and in Communist Czechoslovakia.
The Hard Problem (2015) explored the mysteries of consciousness through the lenses of science and religion.
Free-speech champion
Stoppard was a strong champion of free speech who worked with organizations including PEN and Index on Censorship. He claimed not to have strong political views otherwise, writing in 1968: “I burn with no causes. I cannot say that I write with any social objective. One writes because one loves writing, really.”
Some critics found his plays more clever than emotionally engaging. But biographer Lee said his “very funny, witty plays” contained a “sense of underlying grief.”
“People in his plays … history comes at them,” Lee said at a British Library event in 2021. “They turn up, they don’t know why they’re there, they don’t know whether they can get home again.”
That was especially true of his late play Leopoldstadt, which drew on his own family’s story for the tale of a Jewish Viennese family over the first half of the 20th century. Stoppard said he began thinking of his personal link to the Holocaust quite late in life, only discovering after his mother’s death in 1996 that many members of his family, including all four grandparents, had died in concentration camps.
“It would be misleading to see me as somebody who blithely and innocently, at the age of 40-something, thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, I had no idea I was a member of a Jewish family,’” he told The New Yorker in 2022. “Of course I knew, but I didn’t know who they were. And I didn’t feel I had to find out in order to live my own life. But that wasn’t really true.”
Leopoldstadt premiered in London at the start of 2020 to rave reviews; weeks later all theaters were shut by the COVID-19 pandemic. It eventually opened in Broadway in late 2022, going on to win four Tonys.
Dizzyingly prolific, Stoppard also wrote many radio plays, a novel, television series including Parade’s End (2013) and many film screenplays. These included the dystopian Terry Gilliam comedy Brazil (1985), the Steven Spielberg-directed war drama Empire of the Sun (1987), the Elizabethan rom-com Shakespeare in Love (1998) — for which he and Marc Norman shared a best adapted screenplay Oscar — the code breaking thriller Enigma and the Russian epic Anna Karenina (2012).
He also wrote and directed a 1990 film adaptation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and translated numerous works into English, including plays by dissident Czech writer Václav Havel, who became the country’s first post-Communist president.
Stoppard also had a sideline as a Hollywood script doctor, lending sparkle to the dialogue of movies including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and the Star Wars film Revenge of the Sith.
He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997 for his services to literature.
He was married three times: to Jose Ingle, Miriam Stern — better known as the health journalist Dr. Miriam Stoppard — and TV producer Sabrina Guinness. The first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by four children, including the actor Ed Stoppard, and several grandchildren.
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Richard Branson has remembered his late wife Joan Templeman as the “shining star” around which the Branson “family’s universe has always orbited.”
In a pair of posts on Instagram, Branson, the British businessman who founded the Virgin Group and launched scores of recording careers through his labels Virgin Records and V2, said he was “devastated” at the death of Templeman, aged 80.
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“Heartbroken to share that Joan, my wife and partner for 50 years, has passed away,” he writes. “She was the most wonderful mum and grandmum our kids and grandkids could have ever wished for. She was my best friend, my rock, my guiding light, my world. Love you forever, Joan.”
The pair married on Necker island in 1989, owned by Branson, and had three children three children — Holly, Sam, and Clare Sarah, who died after four days — and five grandchildren.
In a followup post, Branson writes of her “radiant smile,” her joyfulness, kindness and her nurturing instincts. “Life will never be the same without her. But we have fifty incredible years of memories – years filled with tears and laughter, kindness, and a love that shaped our family more than words could ever capture. It was a relationship that worked. We just had lots of laughs. We were very lucky.”
Branson met his wife back in 1976 at the Manor, Virgin Records’ live-in recording studio. He fell for her “almost from the moment I saw her,” he wrote on his blog in 2020. “Joan was a down-to-earth Scottish lady and I quickly realized she wouldn’t be impressed by my usual antics.”
Templeman was, in his mind, Branson’s better half. “Joan has always been a steady source of wisdom and has played no small part in some of my better life decisions.” It was Templeman who convinced Branson to buy Necker island, for a knockdown price, which he went on to describe as “one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
Although the cause of death has yet to be announced, Branson confirms he was by Templeman’s side when she passed “quickly and painlessly”.
Joan’s “light is not gone,” he continues. “It’s just taken on a new shape. It will guide us forward. And we will carry her with us, always.”
Branson is considered one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs. He founded the Virgin brand with Nik Powell in the early 1970s, initially with Virgin Records, before expanding into other industries including air travel, record stores, hotels, wines, space tourism and more. He sold Virgin Records to Thorn EMI in 1992 for £560 million ($804 million), and continued to own the Virgin Megastores music retail chain until 2007, when the market for CDs was in a state of collapse.
Branson and Virgin Group returned to the record business in November 1996 with the launch of the indie label V2. Virgin Group sold a chunk in V2 Records to Morgan Stanley in 2002, and disposed its remaining stake to the U.S. investment bank in May 2006. UMG reached an agreement to buy V2 from Morgan Stanley later that year.
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Claire Rothman, a pioneering woman in the live entertainment industry whose positions included president and general manager of The Forum in Inglewood, Calif., died Saturday (Nov. 22) in Las Vegas. She was 97.
Rothman began her facilities career at the Spectrum in Philadelphia in 1967, when she was 39. In a 2018 Billboard roundtable with other women who broke barriers in live entertainment, she said, “It was the time when the National Hockey League expanded from six to 12 teams and a lot of new venues came up. The Spectrum was one. Two weeks after I took the job, it filed for bankruptcy. I was newly divorced, with one kid in college and one in high school. I thought, ‘Oh, God, what did I do?’ But in five years, we brought the Spectrum out of bankruptcy. We paid 100 cents on the dollar, and I wrote out every check. We formed one of the first partnerships with Electric Factory Concerts. We provided the building, they provided the acts.”
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Rothman was hired by then-Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke to come to the Forum seven years later, in 1975, after stints at Wild Kingdom in Orlando, Fla., and the Cleveland Coliseum. She’s credited with introducing Cooke to Jerry Buss, who at that time owned a tennis franchise, the Los Angeles Strings, which she hoped to bring to the Forum, according to Men’s Health. In 1979, Buss bought the Lakers, which played at the Forum until 1999.
Buss’ daughter Jeanie, who is the controlling owner of the Lakers, paid tribute to Rothman Sunday night (Nov. 23), telling the Los Angeles Times, “Claire paved the way for women working in live entertainment. She was tenacious, creative and indomitable. My father always described her as the MVP who championed the Fabulous Forum as the West Coast concert rival to the legendary Madison Square Garden.”
Earlier today, the Lakers posted a photo of Rothman and Jeanie Buss on its Instagram with the caption, “Remembering an icon: Claire Rothman, the pioneering President of the Forum during the Showtime era.” The photo was taken in 2018, and Buss subsequently posted it on her social media, writing, “I was blessed with this amazing woman as my mentor, Claire Rothman. She has been there for me at every crossroads and hurdle placed before me. I don’t tell her enough of how grateful I am. Thank you Claire! I love you.”
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During her early tenure at the Forum, Rothman was the only woman managing a venue that included an NBA (the Los Angeles Lakers) and NHL (Los Angeles Kings) franchise while also juggling concerts, circuses and other entertainment.
“So I was a curiosity. Everybody remembered my name because I was the only one,” she told Billboard. “I was very fortunate to work for men who had good relationships with their mothers and their wives. They were sure of their masculinity. Every man I ever worked for pushed me [to succeed]. A psychologist friend of mine said the reason they were supportive was I never gave them the feeling that I wanted their jobs — because I didn’t. I had ambition, but I wanted to do it myself.”
Rothman helped oversee a golden time for the Lakers, known as the Showtime era, that started in 1979 as players like Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar helped the team dominate and win five championships over 10 years. That period was captured in the 2022-2023 HBO drama Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. Rothman was portrayed by Gaby Hoffman in the series.
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Rothman also heightened the Forum’s appeal as a must-stop for concerts, including by bringing Prince to the venue for a six-night run in 1985, and was bold and unrelenting when it came to pursuing talent. A 1985 Los Angeles Times profile on Rothman recounted her asking Barry Manilow to play the arena in front of rival promoters, the Nederlanders, who were also pursuing the singer. “When Manilow half-jokingly asked why she would make a pitch in front of the competition, Rothman replied, ‘I’m cuter,’” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Rothman left the Forum in 1995, moving to Ticketmaster, where she was executive vp until 1999. She also served on a number of boards, including City of Hope, the Music Center of Los Angeles County and the Reprise Theater Company, according to her LinkedIn page.
Survivors include a son, daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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Beloved reggae singer and Jamaican musical icon Jimmy Cliff has died at 81. The “Many Rivers to Cross” singer’s wife, Latifah Chambers, announced the news in an Instagram post on Monday morning (Nov. 24) that read, “It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia. I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him. To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career. He really appreciated each and every fan for their love.”
Cliff, known for his high, clear vocals and lifelong focus on positvity, peace and unity, was known for such indelible reggae hits as “Many Rivers to Cross,” You Can Get It If You Really Want” and the title track to his beloved 1972 musical crime film The Harder They Come, in which he starred as lead character Ivanhoe “Ivan” Martin in a role that is credited with helping to bring the sound of reggae to the world.
One of the last living global ambassadors from the generation of reggae greats who brought the island’s music to the world — alongside late contemporaries Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Toots Hibbert and Bunny Wailer — before his death Cliff was the only living reggae artist to have earned Jamaica’s Order of Merit, the highest honor the nation’s government gives for achievements in the arts and sciences.
Born James Chambers on April 1, 1948 in the St. James parish of Jamaica near Montego Bay, Cliff’s talent was spotted early on at the Somerton All Age School in the 1950. The eighth of nine children, Cliff’s signature vocal tone, a high and mellifluous croon, immediately set him apart when he moved to Kingston at 14, adopted his more famous stage name and began cutting songs with an American R&B influence before making the connection that would change his life.
Cliff managed to convince Leslie Kong — who owned a combo restaurant/ice cream parlor/cosmetics shop in Kingston called Beverley’s — to get into the music business. The label they formed, Beverley’s Records, released Cliff’s ska-tinged debut single, “Hurricane Hattie,” which ran to the top of the Jamaican charts and was followed by a string of hits sung and written by the artist including “Miss Jamaica,” “One-Eyed Jacks” and “King of Kings.”
He also befriended a 16-year-old Marley at that time and helped the soon-to-be-reggae icon score a recording deal with Kong to release his debut single, 1962’s “Judge Not.” Already a rising star in the first wave of ska music, Cliff was tapped to represent Jamaica at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City alongside Millie Small, Prince Buster and others.
Impressed with their performances, soul giant Curtis Mayfield and producer Carl Davis compiled the 1964 album titled The Real Jamaica Ska, featuring two of Cliff’s compositions, “Ska All Over the World” and “Trust No Man.” More importantly, the World’s Fair is where Cliff met Jamaican expat and rising U.K. record mogul Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records. After struggling to find his sound while recording in London, Cliff returned to Jamaica in 1969 to work on a series of originals and covers that would help kick-start his eventual global fame.
He hit No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” in 1969, followed by the more urgent “Vietnam,” a track about a friend who was drafted into the U.S. army and never recovered from his war-time PTSD that Bob Dylan has called the best protest song he ever heard. In the summer of 1970 Cliff had another hit with a cover of Cat Stevens’ “Wild World,” compiled on his 1969 Wonderful World, Beautiful People LP. The next year, director Perry Henzell asked Cliff, who had no acting experience, to star in The Harder They Come, a slow-burn hit that mixed the joy of the nation’s music with clear-eyed depictions of social and economic conditions in what is still considered one of the greatest and most influential music films ever.
Cliff is credited with almost single-handedly introducing the sound of reggae to the world via his masterful turn as country musician Ivan in The Harder They Come, in which the singer tries to break into Jamaica’s corrupt music industry as an avatar for the aspiration of being uplifted by music. He also contributed four indelible songs to the movie’s soundtrack: the ebullient “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” meditative “Sitting in Limbo,” the beloved title track and the quasi-religious meditation “Many Rivers to Cross.”
Just months before the Wailers, led by a young Bob Marley, would drop their debut on Island Records, Catch a Fire, The Harder They Come introduced Western, and most importantly American, audiences to the sounds and vibe of reggae music. The impact would reverberate for decades and generations, with everyone from Keith Richards to Rancid, Cher and Willie Nelson covering the movie’s title track and “Many Rivers to Cross” getting the same treatment from Annie Lennox, UB40, Lenny Kravitz, Linda Ronstadt and many more.
Following the movie’s success, Cliff signed to Warner Bros. Records and appeared as a musical guest during the first season of Saturday Night Live in 1976, but following his early rush of success, Cliff’s music career remained steady, though his global impact was less pronounced than that of Marley, who would quickly rise as the global avatar of reggae. Cliff continued to release albums throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, earning praise and respect from his musical peers, including Bruce Springsteen, who regularly added the little-known Cliff song “Trapped” to his band’s legendarily lengthy live sets; a live version of the song was included on the star-studded 1985 famine relief album We Are the World.
A joyful ambassador of reggae, Cliff won a best reggae album Grammy in 1985 for Cliff Hanger, the same year he appeared alongside E Street Band guitarist “Little” Steven Van Zandt on the anti-apartheid song “Sun City.” After providing backing vocals on the Rolling Stones’ 1986 album Dirty Work, Cliff was back on the big screen in the Robin Williams comedy Club Paradise, whose soundtrack featured his duet with Elvis Costello on “Seven Day Weekend.”
Following a long chart drought, Cliff’s 1993 cover of Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” from the soundtrack to the Jamaican bobsled team sports comedy Cool Runnings reached No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100. He later teamed with South African producer/composer Lebo M on the single “Hakuna Matata,” for the soundtrack to Disney’s 1994 mega-hit The Lion King.
Cliff was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010 by the Fugees’ Wyclef Jean and the next year his generational impact on music came full circle when he entered the studio with Tim Armstrong, lead singer of ska-influenced Bay Area punk legends Rancid to record the album Rebirth. The joyous collection of originals (“World Upside Down,” “Reggae Music,” “One More”) and covers including takes on the Clash’s “Guns of Brixton” and Rancid’s “Ruby Soho” earned Cliff a Grammy for best reggae album and reintroduced the legend to a whole new generation. Cliff released his final studio album, Refugees, in August 2022.
Listen to some classic Cliff hits below.
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Jellybean Johnson, the Minneapolis musician and producer who was the drummer for the Prince-affiliated funk-rock group The Time, has died. He was 69.
His cause of death is unknown. TMZ first reported Johnson’s passing, noting that he died Friday night (Nov. 21) according to a statement obtained by his family.
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Prince recruited Johnson (real name Garry George Johnson), who was self-taught on drums and guitar, in 1981 for The Time, an act born out of the city’s Flyte Tyme. They’d known each other since their high school years in Minneapolis.
“The drums are physical and violent for me while the guitar is spiritual and emotional,” Johnson said in a 2018 interview with Australian Musician. He also quipped to the publication, “When you live here in the cold, you stay in [in] the winter time and you learn how to play.”
As a member of The Time — and later, Prince’s The Family — Johnson helped establish the funk-rock, new wave and synth-pop hybrid that became known as the Minneapolis Sound. He appeared as a fictionalized version of himself in 1984’s Academy Award-winning Purple Rain and as himself in 1990’s Graffiti Bridge.
The Time had five top 10 hits on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in the ’80s and early ’90s (when the chart was called Hot Black Singles), including “777-9311,” “Jungle Love” and “Jerk-Out,” which reached No. 1 in 1990.
Johnson is also known for his work as a producer, with Janet Jackson‘s 1990 Hot 100 No. 1 “Black Cat” among his credits — and he was an in-demand session musician.
Sheila E., a longtime friend and a frequent collaborator with Prince, remembered Johnson in an emotional post on Facebook Saturday morning, which she shared “with a heavy heart.”
“My dear friend Jellybean passed away a couple of hours ago,” Sheila E. wrote. “We are devastated by this news. I’m praying for his family and all the kids. He was a kind human being, extremely talented and funny. He had a great sense of humor and [was] an awesome guitar player.”
Directing her words toward her late friend, she added, “Yesterday was your birthday, I forgot to call you and I’m so sorry. I love u bean. Rest in peace and power.”
“I’m absolutely heartbroken!” The Family vocalist Susannah Melvoin wrote on Instagram. “My beautiful brother Jellybean Johnson has passed. This band was and is the kind of Family that believed we all rightfully belonged together in love, music and kindness. Jellybean was the master of loving you like no brother could! My big brother, who watched over me and anyone who he loved!”Melvoin’s note continued: “I met him when I was 19 years old and he was already a seasoned musical savant at 28. He’d been in the Time and was masterfully put into a band that became what we lovingly and rightfully call the family. He went from being behind the drums to playing guitar in this band because he was a guitar player first and drummer second. Oxygen for him was the inhale and exhale of playing his guitar. I can barely get this out….his children and family members need our support and love. Please send it their way.”“May you rest in all that is light and graceful,” she said to Johnson.
Johnson performed with The Time and Rihanna at the Grammy Awards in 2008, a performance that had him playing the drums to a click track. After being a career musician with his “own click track for 30, 40 years,” Johnson said it was difficult to pivot — “If you go back and watch that performance, it came off flawless, but, man, that week of practice was hell,” he said with a laugh, in a 2024 interview with Dancing to the Drum Machine author Dan Leroy.
“The guys in The Time always trusted me, as far as tempos and all that kind of stuff,” explained Johnson. “But there were a few times, like when I played the Grammys … I remember one time back in ’08, man, I played the Grammys, and Rihanna was on there with [The Time]. And she was just getting huge, and she had that ‘Umbrella’ song … And she had dancers, and she was doing this thing with us, and it was gonna be part Minneapolis, part her. She’s gonna be integrated with us — which means with me being the only drummer, I had to play to a click track. I struggled. I’m not gonna lie. I called every hotshot drummer, young drummers that I know, all my top drum friends. I mean, how do y’all do this? Because some guys, especially studio guys, they learn how to do that. Just deal with click tracks and all that kind of stuff. And I didn’t. I never had to really do that.”
He returned to the Grammys stage in 2017 and 2020 as part of tributes to Prince.
Johnson co-founded the non-profit Minneapolis Sound Museum in 2021, with the goal of preserving the history, culture and legacy of the Minneapolis Sound.
In 2022, he was awarded a Soul Train Lifetime Achievement Award with The Time.
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Ornella Vanoni, a beloved performer who had a seven decade-long singing career with such international hits as “Senza Fine” and “L’appuntamento,” has died. She was 91.
In a post on X Saturday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her deep sorrow for the loss of Vanoni, whose “unmistakable voice” left an imprint on Italian culture for generations. “Italy loses a unique artist who leaves us with an unrepeatable artistic heritage,” Meloni said.
Vanoni died of cardiac arrest at her Milan home, Italian newspaper La Stampa reported.
Vanoni recorded more than 100 albums with sales of over 55 million copies, vaulting her to iconic status among generations of fans and earning her the moniker “The Lady of Italian Song,” according to LaPresse newspaper.
Born in Milan in 1937, Vanoni’s first love was the theater, which culminated with performances on the Broadway stage in 1964. But her passion for music combined with what LaPresse described as a “highly personal and sophisticated performing style” and vast repertoire from jazz to pop led her to collaborate with some of the most important songwriters in Italy and abroad.
Vanoni’s partnership — and love affair — with famed Genovese singer-songwriter Gino Paoli produced the hit “Senza Fine” (Without End), which shot her onto the international stage in 1961.Her later collaborations spanned a range of artistic talent including Gil Evans, Herbie Hancock and George Benson, according to Italy’s ANSA news agency.Vanoni excelled in numerous prestigious music festival awards in Italy, including the country’s most popular Sanremo Music Festival in which she participated eight times, earning second place in 1968 with the song “Casa Bianca.”Her talent extended into songwriting which was recognized when she twice won the prestigious Tenco Award — the only Italian singer to be awarded the prize as a songwriter and the only woman to have won it twice.ANSA said Vanoni was much sought-after as a guest on television programs in her later years because of her unpredictable nature, the vast wealth of anecdotes she shared and her “complete indifference to political correctness.”
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The Stone Roses bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield has died at age 63.
His death was first reported by the Manchester Evening News, and confirmed by Mani’s brother Greg on Facebook Thursday (Nov. 20). “IT IS WITH THE HEAVIEST OF HEARTS THAT I HAVE TO ANNOUNCE THE SAD PASSING OF MY BROTHER GARY MANI MOUNFIELD,” he wrote. “RIP RKID.”
Ian Brown, the band’s singer, also confirmed the news writing on his X profile: “REST IN PEACE MANi X.”
Mani was born in Crumpsall, Manchester, on Nov. 16, 1962. A cause of death has not yet been revealed.
The Stone Roses was formed in Manchester in 1983 by Brown and guitarist John Squire. Drummer Alan “Reni” Wren joined the group the following year, and Mani completed the lineup in 1987. The band fused the city’s burgeoning dance scene with a “baggy” psychedelic rock sound and earned widespread acclaim from the British press.
In 1989, the group released its seminal self-titled debut album, which peaked at No. 5 on the U.K. Official Albums Chart, and went on to inspire a number of bands from the local area such as Oasis. Liam Gallagher said in 2011 that seeing the Roses perform live made him “obsessed with music” and was what made him want to join a band.
Following the release of The Stone Roses’ debut album, the band was embroiled in a lengthy legal dispute with its label, Silvertone. The group eventually signed with Geffen in 1991, and three years later, released The Second Coming to mixed reviews. The LP’s labored production put tensions on the group, and Reni left in 1995. A year later, Squire announced he was also departing, leaving Brown and Mani as the sole two members of the group. After a disastrous performance at Reading Festival in 1996, the band called it quits.
Mani then joined Scottish band Primal Scream as its bassist in 1996, and performed with the band until 2011. He also formed the group Freebass with fellow Manchester bass players Andy Rourke (formerly of the Smiths) and Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order) and released one studio LP in 2010.
In April 2011, Brown and Squire reconciled at the funeral of Mani’s mother. Several months later, The Stone Roses announced its reformation for a number of shows at Manchester’s Heaton Park for June and July 2012. In May 2016 the group released its first single in 20 years, “All for One,” though relations soon broke down again and sessions for a comeback album were eventually scrapped. Despite tensions, the group toured steadily until 2017, including shows at London’s Wembley Stadium. In 2023, Mani’s wife, Imelda, died following a bowel cancer diagnosis.
On Nov. 14, Mani announced a U.K. speaking tour for the U.K. titled The Stone Roses, Primal Scream and Me – An Intimate Evening With Gary “Mani” Mounfield. The tour was set to begin in September 2026 and run until June 2027.
Tributes have been pouring in from a number of Manchester artists. Liam Gallagher said on his X account: “IN TOTAL SHOCK AND ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATED ON HEARING THE NEWS ABOUT MANI MY HERO RIP RKID LG”
The Charlatans’ singer Tim Burgess wrote on X, “I shared this photo a week or so ago on Mani’s birthday – It never failed to bring a smile to my face – and that was exactly the same for the man himself. One of the absolute best in every way – such a beautiful friend.”
Mani and Imelda are survived by twin sons Gene Clark and George Christopher.
Todd Snider, a singer whose thoughtfully freewheeling tunes and cosmic-stoner songwriting made him a beloved figure in American roots music, has died. He was 59.
His record label said Saturday (Nov. 15) in a statement posted to his social media accounts that Snider died Friday.
“Where do we find the words for the one who always had the right words, who knew how to distill everything down to its essence with words and song while delivering the most devastating, hilarious, and impactful turn of phrases?” the statement read. “Always creating rhyme and meter that immediately felt like an old friend or a favorite blanket. Someone who could almost always find the humor in this crazy ride on Planet Earth.”
Snider’s family and friends had said in a Friday statement that he had been diagnosed with pneumonia at a hospital in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and that his situation had since grown more complicated and he was transferred elsewhere. The diagnosis came on the heels of the cancellation of a tour after Snider had been the victim of a violent assault in the Salt Lake City area, according to a Nov. 3 statement from his management team.
But Salt Lake City police later arrested Snider himself when he at first refused to leave a hospital and later returned and threatened staffers, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
The scrapped tour was in support of his most recent album, High, Lonesome and Then Some, which released in October. Snider combined elements of folk, rock and country in a three-decade career. In reviews of his recent albums, The Associated Press called him a “singer-songwriter with the persona of a fried folkie” and a “stoner troubadour and cosmic comic.”
He modeled himself on — and at times met and was mentored by — artists like Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark and John Prine. His songs were recorded by artists including Jerry Jeff Walker, Billy Joe Shaver and Tom Jones. And he co-wrote a song with Loretta Lynn that appeared on her 2016 album, Full Circle.
“He relayed so much tenderness and sensitivity through his songs, and showed many of us how to look at the world through a different lens,” the Saturday statement from his label read. “He got up every morning and started writing, always working towards finding his place among the songwriting giants that sat on his record shelves, those same giants who let him into their lives and took him under their wings, who he studied relentlessly.”
Snider would do his best-known and most acclaimed work for Prine’s independent label Oh Boy in the early 2000s. It included the albums New Connection, Near Truths and Hotel Rooms and East Nashville Skyline, a 2004 collection that’s considered by many to be his best.
Those albums yielded his best known songs, “I Can’t Complain,” “Beer Run” and “Alright Guy.”
Snider was born and raised in Oregon before settling and making his musical chops in San Marcos, Texas. He eventually made his way to Nashville, and was dubbed by some the unofficial “mayor of East Nashville,” assuming the title from a friend memorialized thusly in his “Train Song.” In 2021, Snider said a tornado that ripped through the neighborhood home to a vibrant arts scene severely damaged his house.
Snider had an early fan in Jimmy Buffett, who signed the young artist to his record label, Margaritaville, which released his first two albums, 1994’s Songs for the Daily Planet and 1996’s Step Right Up.
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Former Grateful Dead vocalist Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, 78, died in a hospice facility in Nashville on Sunday (Nov. 2) following a long battle with cancer according to Rolling Stone. After a successful stint as a session singer at the famed Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama where she sang backup on Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 songs by Percy Sledge (“When a Man Loves a Woman”) and Elvis Presley (“Suspicious Minds”), Godchaux-MacKay joined the Grateful Dead in San Francisco along with then-husband keyboardist Keith Godchaux, touring and performing with the band from 1971-1979.
“She was a sweet and warmly beautiful spirit, and all those who knew her are united in loss,” read the statement about her death shared with RS. “The family requests privacy at this time of grieving. In the words of Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, ‘May the four winds blow her safely home.’”
Donna Jean Thatcher was born in Florence, Ala. on Aug. 22, 1947 and began her decades-long music career as a member of the band Southern Comfort before moving on to session work, appearing on No. 1 songs by Sledge and Presley, as well as singing backup on sessions with Cher, Joe Tex, Duane Allman, Neil Diamond, Boz Scaggs and others before moving to the Bay Area and meeting Godchaux.
The couple got married in 1970 and both joined the Dead a year later, with Godchaux singing lead and backing vocals and Keith slipping into the spot formerly held by late band co-founder keyboardist/singer Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. The couple appeared on a string of the group’s classic 1970s albums, including 1973’s Wake of the Flood, 1974’s From the Mars Hotel and 1975’s Blues For Allah, on which Godchaux stepped up from the background to provide a co-lead vocal on “The Music Never Stopped” and the LP’s title suite.
She also appeared on 1976’s Steal Your Face and 1977’s Terrapin Station, where her powerful mezzo-soprano soared on the band’s disco-jam cover of Martha & the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street,” on which she shared the mic with guitarist/singer Bob Weir. She also took lead vocal duties and is credited with co-writing several songs on that album, including the gauzy ballad “Sunrise.” She took lead and composed the loose folky jam “From the Heart of Me” from the Dead’s beloved 1978 Shakedown Street LP, where she also shared vocals on “France” with Weir.
It would be the last Dead LP the Godchaux’s would appear on, though they were also key members of the legendarily road dog band’s 1970s touring ensemble before their departure in 1979, appearing on such beloved bootlegs as the 1977 Cornell University gig and the band’s 1978 shows at the Giza Pyramid in Egypt.
In addition to playing with the band, Donna also released music with husband Keith during their tenure, including 1975’s Keith & Donna duo effort, which in addition to their singing and playing features contributions from late Grateful Dead singer/guitarist Jerry Garcia on almost all the tracks. The couple also performed as part of Garcia’s side project, the Jerry Garcia Band, from 1976-1978 and formed their own side project, The Ghosts (later the Heart of Gold Band); Keith Godchaux, 32, died from injuries in a car accident in July 1980 shortly after the couple’s first concert together.
Donna Godchaux continued releasing solo music under the names The Donna Jean Band and Donna Jean and the Tricksters and issued her final studio album in 2014, Back Around, credited to the Donna Jean Godchaux Band with contributions from Zen Tricksters guitarist Jeff Mattson.
Godchaux was not a part of more recent tours and special anniversary concerts by the Grateful Dead’s various lineups under the names The Other Ones, The Dead, Furthur and Dead & Company. She did, however, make what would be one of her final appearances with the group at the Bonnaroo Festival on June 12, 2016, performing on the songs “Fire on the Mountain,” “Berth,” “Bird Song,” “Playing in the Band,” “Terrapin Station” and “Touch of Grey.” She also sat in for two other shows that summer, at Citi Field in New York in late June and Fenway Park in Boston in July.
Check out some of Godchuax’s performances below.
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Freestyle Fellowship rapper P.E.A.C.E. has died. The West Coast hip-hop group confirmed the rapper’s death in a post to Instagram over the weekend.
“Rest well brother P.E.A.C.E You had a great heart and you were authentic,” the post reads. “One of West coast Hiphop royal treasures. You will be surely missed my friend.”
His age and cause of death are unknown.
P.E.A.C.E. (real name: Mtulazaji Davis) was born in Dallas but raised in Los Angeles. He met Myka 9, Aceyalone and Self Jupiter at the Good Life Café in L.A. and formed the pioneering alternative rap group Freestyle Fellowship in the late ’80s.
The group broke through, showcasing an underground conscious side of West Coast rap with its 1991 debut To Whom It May Concern…
They followed up with Innercity Griots in 1993. Delayed due to Self Jupiter’s incarceration, the group released Temptations in 2001 and 2002’s Shockadoom EP. They returned nearly a decade later with The Promise in 2011, which serves as Freestyle Fellowship’s final release.
There were no details revealed surrounding the cause of P.E.A.C.E.’s death. Fans and plenty of peers paid their condolences with heartfelt messages on social media.
“The heavenly cypher just elevated rest in P.E.A.C.E all love,” rapper Saul Williams commented.
Dilated Peoples member Rakaa added: “This is heavy. RIP P.E.A.C.E. You will always be remembered and celebrated as one of the best to ever touch a mic, an architect of style(s), and a creative force of nature. Thank you for the inspiration, motivation, and laughter, my brother. Love. Strength and guidance to your family, friends, and @freestylefellowship.”
Myka 9 paid tribute to his Fellowship group member. “P.E.A.C.E. is the illest emcee from the most infamous Freestyle Fellowship,” he wrote. “There will never be another. Peace P.E.A.C.E., rest in power & paradise.”
P.E.A.C.E. released a pair of solo albums in the early 2000s with Southern Fry’d Chicken (2000) and Megabite (2004).
He notched collaborations over the years, ranging from Diplo to Abstract Rude and Orko, and he made an appearance in Ava Duvernay’s This Is the Life documentary about Good Life Café.
