Rod McKuen
b. Rodney Marvin McKuen, 29 April 1933, Oakland, California, USA. One of the revered poets of the late '60s love generation, Rod McKuen took a slow route to the top. He performed various manual jobs as a young man and embarked on both a pop career (Happy Is A Boy Named Me was released in the UK in 1957) and an attempted acting career, combining both by appearing as a musician in the rock ‘n’ roll exploitation movie ROCK PRETTY BABY in 1957. He also spent a spell as a disc jockey before heading to Paris in the '60s. It was here, in the company of Jacques Brel and Charles Aznavour, that he began writing poetry in a free verse form very typical of the times. Described by NEWSWEEK as ‘the king of kitsch’, McKuen became one of the few poets able to sell his work in large volumes, and he became a wealthy man. His '60s books included LONESOME CITIES, STANYAN STREET AND OTHER SORROWS and LISTEN TO THE WARM. His musical career continued when he wrote the score for the movie THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE including the title song Jean and contributed six songs to the soundtrack of A BOY NAMED CHARLIE BROWN. The most interesting of his albums is MCKUEN COUNTRY, on which he enlists the aid of Glenn Campbell, Big Jim Sullivan and Barry McGuire in a perfectly acceptable stab at country rock. Among his best remembered compositions are Seasons In The Sun (music by Brel and a hit for Terry Jacks), If You Go Away, Love's Been Good To Me (recorded by Frank Sinatra on an album of McKuen songs, A MAN ALONE), ‘I Think Of You (music by Francis Lai and a hit for Perry Como), Soldiers Who Want To Be Heros, Doesn't Anybody Know My Name, and The Importance Of The Rose.