Gillian Harvey Popular Books

Gillian Harvey Biography & Facts

Polly Jean Harvey (born 9 October 1969) is an English singer-songwriter. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments. Harvey began her career in 1988 when she joined local band Automatic Dlamini as a vocalist, guitarist and saxophonist. The band's frontman, John Parish, became her long-term collaborator. In 1991, she formed an eponymous trio called PJ Harvey and subsequently began her career as PJ Harvey. The trio released two acclaimed studio albums called Dry (1992) and Rid of Me (1993) before disbanding, after which Harvey continued as a solo artist. Since 1995, she has released a further ten studio albums with collaborations from various musicians including Parish, former bandmate Rob Ellis, Mick Harvey, and Eric Drew Feldman, and has also worked extensively with record producer Flood. Among the accolades Harvey has received are both the 2001 and 2011 Mercury Prize for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000) and Let England Shake (2011), respectively, making her the only artist to have been awarded the prize twice. She has also garnered eight Brit Award nominations, eight Grammy Award nominations and two further Mercury Prize nominations. Rolling Stone awarded her three accolades: 1992's Best New Artist and Best Singer Songwriter, and 1995's Artist of the Year. Rolling Stone also listed Rid of Me, To Bring You My Love, and Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea on its list of their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2011, she was awarded for Outstanding Contribution to Music at the NME Awards. In the 2013 Birthday Honours, she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to music. Early life Polly Jean Harvey was born on 9 October 1969 in Bridport, Dorset, the second child of Ray and Eva Harvey. Her parents owned a quarrying business on Ham Hill, the site of a large Iron Age hillfort, and she grew up on the family farm in Corscombe. During her childhood, she attended Beaminster School in nearby Beaminster, where she received guitar lessons from folk singer-songwriter Steve Knightley. Her parents introduced her to music that would later influence her work, including blues, Captain Beefheart and Bob Dylan. Her parents were avid music fans and regularly arranged get-togethers and small gigs, counting Ian Stewart among their oldest friends. As a teenager, Harvey began learning saxophone and joined an eight-piece instrumental group, Bologne, run by composer Andrew Dickson. She was also a guitarist with folk duo the Polekats, with whom she wrote some of her earliest material. After finishing school, she joined Yeovil College and attended a visual arts foundation course. Career Automatic Dlamini: 1988–1991 In July 1988, Harvey became a member of Automatic Dlamini, a band based in Bristol with whom she gained extensive ensemble-playing experience. Formed by John Parish in 1983, the band consisted of a rotating line-up that at various times included Rob Ellis and Ian Oliver. Harvey had met Parish in 1987 through mutual friend Jeremy Hogg, the band's slide guitarist. Providing saxophone, guitars and backing vocals, she travelled extensively during the band's early days, including performances in East and West Germany, Spain and Poland to support the band's debut studio album, The D is for Drum. A second European tour took place throughout June and July 1989. Following the tour, the band recorded Here Catch, Shouted His Father, their second studio album, between late 1989 and early 1990. This is the only Automatic Dlamini material to feature Harvey, but remains unreleased, although bootleg versions of the album are in circulation. In January 1991, Harvey left to form her own band with former bandmates Ellis and Oliver, though she had also formed lasting personal and professional relationships with other members, especially Parish, to whom she has referred as her "musical soulmate". Parish would subsequently contribute to, and sometimes co-produce, Harvey's solo studio albums and has toured with her a number of times. As a duo, Parish and Harvey have recorded two collaborative albums where Parish composed the music and Harvey wrote the lyrics. Additionally, Parish's girlfriend in the late 1980s was photographer Maria Mochnacz. She and Harvey became close friends and Mochnacz went on to shoot and design most of Harvey's album artwork and music videos, contributing significantly to her public image. Harvey said of her time with Automatic Dlamini: "I ended up not singing very much but I was just happy to learn how to play the guitar. I wrote a lot during the time I was with them but my first songs were crap. I was listening to a lot of Irish folk music at the time, so the songs were folky and full of penny whistles and stuff. It was ages before I felt ready to perform my own songs in front of other people." She also credits Parish for teaching her how to perform in front of audiences, saying "after the experience with John's band and seeing him perform I found it was enormously helpful to me as a performer to engage with people in the audience, and I probably did learn that from him, amongst other things." Harvey wrote to the American rock band Slint after they printed a request for female singers on the sleeve of their 1991 album Spiderland. However, Slint broke up before the album was released. PJ Harvey Trio; Dry and Rid of Me: 1991–1994 Harvey decided to name her new band the PJ Harvey Trio, rejecting other names as "nothing felt right at all or just suggested the wrong type of sound", and also to allow her to continue music as a solo artist. The trio consisted of Harvey on vocals and guitar, Ellis on drums and backing vocals, and Oliver on bass. Oliver later departed to rejoin the still-active Automatic Dlamini. He was subsequently replaced with Steve Vaughan. The trio's "disastrous" debut performance was held at a skittle alley in Charmouth Village Hall in April 1991. Harvey later recounted the event saying: "we started playing and I suppose there was about fifty people there, and during the first song we cleared the hall. There was only about two people left. And a woman came up to us, came up to my drummer, it was only a three piece, while we were playing and shouted at him 'Don't you realise nobody likes you! We'll pay you, you can stop playing, we'll still pay you!'" The group relocated to London in June 1991 when Harvey applied to study sculpture, still undecided as to her future career. During this time, the group recorded a set of demo songs and distributed them to record labels. Independent label Too Pure agreed to release the band's debut single "Dress" in October 1991, and later signed PJ Harvey. "Dress" received mass critical acclaim upon its release and was voted Single of the Week in Melody Maker by guest reviewer John Peel, who admired "the way Polly Jean seems crushed by the weight of her own songs and arrangements, as if the air is literally b.... Discover the Gillian Harvey popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Gillian Harvey books.