Rufus Wainwright, Bette Midler, et Patti Smith

Born to parents Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwirght III, Rufus’ parents divorced when he was three and the toddler lived with his mother in Montreal, Canada for most of his childhood. Rufus began playing piano at age six and started touring with the family band The McGarrigle Sisters and Family” aged 13 which included his mother Kate, his sister Martha and aunt Anna.

At age 14 Wainwright earned a 1989 Genie Nomination for his performance of “I’m a-Runnin” in the film “Tommy Ticker and the Stamp Traveller, and a year later nominated for the 1990 Juno Award for Most Promising Male Vocalist. After this time Rufus began his life-long adoration for the opera which would strongly influence his future musical excursions.

Through weekly shows on Montreal’s club circuit, Rufus created a series of demo tapes, which eventually secured him record deal with DreamWorks. 1998’s self-titled debut took the best part of 1996 and 1997 to record a total of 56 songs, using 62 rolls of tape, costing an estimate of $700,000. The album received huge critical acclaim, topped many best-of lists, and won a series of awards, however the commercial success was limited.

Wainwright’s follow-up album “Poses” released June 5, 2001, continued the same vein of critical acclaim without commercial success for Rufus. After a stint of using crystal meth where the singer temporarily lost his eye sight, and a surreal week which included a cameo appearance on the BBC program “Absolutely Fabulous”, partying with George W. Bush’s daughter Barbara and singing with Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons, Rufus decided he needed a change.

In 2003 Wainwirght released the full-length “Want One” and a year later “Want Two”. Both albums would be combined and released under the name “Want” in 2005, the same year Rufus made vocal contributions to Mercury Prize winning album Antony and the Johnsons’ “I am a Bird Now" and Burt Bacharach’s “At This Time”.

In 2006 Wainwright performed a pair of sold-out shows at New York's, U.S., Carnegie Hall where he performed the entire Judy Garland concert album, and did the same at the London, UK’s Palladium.

Rufus’ follow album “Release the Stars” achieved much greater commercial success peaking at No. 2 in the UK Albums chart and No. 23 on the Billboard 200, and featured mother Kate, sister Martha, Neil Tennant and Joan Wasser.

Wainwright’s subsequent albums, 2010’s “All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu” and 2012’s “Out of the Game” both performed well in the charts and received much the same acclaim Rufus has come to expect.

Born to a Jewish family in the distinctly non-Jewish city of Honolulu, Bette Midler was the quintessential shy child who came into her own on stage. She started performing in high school and came out of her shell in the process, to the extent where she was voted “most Talkative” when she was a junior in High School, and then “Most Dramatic” when she was a senior. Arguably, she discovered herself on stage, because she studied drama at the University of Hawaii for three semesters, and then decided to move to New York City after three semesters to pursue an actual career in it.

One doesn’t do that without knowing if it’s what you want to do, especially if one was as poor as Midler’s family was. Fortunately, in 1965 Midler appeared as an extra in the film “Hawaii”, and moved to New York full time with the money she earned from it. The move almost immediately paid off, with Midler securing a role in Tom Eyen’s Off-Off-Broadway plays the very same year and then spending four years in the cast of the Broadway run Fiddler On The Roof. However, after leaving Fiddler, her roles dried up and she found herself, like more actors than can possibly be counted, out of work. Unlike most actors that can possibly be counted, this might have been the best thing to happen to her at the time.

This is because she took a job singing at the Continental Baths, a bathhouse in the Ansonia Hotel that was a famed hangout in the New York City gay and lesbian scene. While she was there, she developed a riotously popular nightclub act starring herself as The Divine Miss M, a chanteuse and comedian known for outrageous stage patter and rich, powerful singing voice. A voice so enchanting that when Atlantic Records president Ahmet Ertugun heard it, he immediately signed her to his label. 1972 saw the release of her debut album, fittingly named “The Divine Miss M”, which went platinum and netted Midler a Grammy award for Best New Artist (showing that the recipients of that award don’t always crash and burn spectacularly).

She spent the rest of the seventies as a singing sensation, periodically taking time out to perform in her first love, musical theatre, which earned her a Tony Award for contributions to theatre in 1974. It wasn’t until 1979 that she appeared on the silver screen, starring in the rock and roll tragedy picture The Rose, which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. After that Midler focused on producing and appearing in some less that stellar films for a couple of years, before bouncing back in 1986 with Down And Out In Beverly Hills, a film which jumpstarted her acting career again. She then capitalised two years later with the film Beaches, whose soundtrack became Midler’s biggest selling album, and contained her signature song “Wind Beneath My Wings”.

Ever since then, she’s been something of a national treasure working on film and television projects while releasing albums and touring a live show that sees her utterly in her element. Even today she remains a world-wide attraction, her “It’s The Girls” arena tour selling out and the accompanying album going gold in the U.K. It’s as good as fact that she’s a legend, and even in her fifth decade of showbusiness, she’s still in her prime. Highly recommended.

Patti Smith was coined the ‘Godmother of Punk’, a hugely prestigious title, due to her original and unique fusion of genres, combining rock and poetry to create her music. As well as an incredibly fruitful solo career, Smith’s collaboration with Bruce Springsteen on her most widely praised song Because The Night, and gave her huge amounts of exposure and following.

Additionally, Smith has several awards under her belt, as well as being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, and winning the National Book Award in 2010 for her memoir Just Kids. Smith has also been nominated for Grammy Awards throughout her career. Influential for her musical style and poetic abilities, Smith’s lyrics and performances explore controversial topics from AIDS to Green Party ideologies, which has given her much attention. Patti’s band currently consists of Lenny Kaye on guitar, Jay Dee Daugherty playing Drums, and Tony Shanahan on bass and keys, adding great depth to her performances.

With 11 studio albums recorded by Smith over the years, her debut record, Horses, remains the most popular over the years, although Smith is still creating critically acclaimed music today. Several huge artists today such as Courtney Love and Candy Slice claim that their creative inspirations are due to Smith’s musical creations.