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Film icon Robert Redford died on Sept. 16 at the age of 89, according to a statement from his publicist. Redford was not only one of the most beloved movie stars of all time, but one of the few titans of Hollywood who used his fame and accolades for the force of good…
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Liam Gaughan
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Tomas Lindberg, the lead singer of the Swedish death metal band At the Gates, died “this morning following complications related to his ongoing cancer treatment,” his bandmates wrote on social media. “You were an inspiration to us all,” they added. “A true friend, both compassionate and sympathetic. You will always be remembered for your generosity and your creative spirit.” Lindberg was 52 years old.
Born in Gothenburg, Sweden, Lindberg came up in the city’s metal scene, trading tapes with fellow teenagers and designing the logo for Norwegian band Darkthrone. He adopted the pseudonym Goatspell upon joining his first band, Grotesque, who helped spearhead Gothenberg’s emerging death metal scene in the late 1980s. He co-founded At the Gates in 1990, and the band’s 1992 debut, The Red in the Sky Is Ours, became a death metal landmark, twisting wiry melodies into the genre’s backbone of piston riffs and bludgeoning rhythms.
In 1995, the band’s fourth album in as many years, Slaughter of the Soul, elevated At the Gates’ status both at home—alongside Stockholm compatriots like Entombed and Dismember—and internationally, where fans were drawn in by Lindberg’s surrealist, scream-along lyrics and the band’s labyrinthine songwriting. Adulation and influence ensued, but At the Gates’ whirlwind first phase was coming to an end. The band parted ways in 1996, primarily citing burnout, and Lindberg side-quested with an array of extreme-music voyagers including Lock Up, Disfear, Skitsystem, and the Great Deceiver.
At the Gates reunited for a tour in 2007 and embarked upon a second era as a studio band in 2014. They have since released three albums: At War With Reality, To Drink From the Night Itself, and The Nightmare of Being. Lindberg remained a friendly presence in the heavy-music world and taught social studies in a Gothenberg middle school during respites from touring.
Last month, At the Gates and Lindberg told fans that the singer was diagnosed, in December 2023, with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare cancer that was detected in his mouth. Lindberg said he underwent surgery to remove “a big part of the roof of the mouth” and also had two months of radiation therapy, but remains of the cancer were found early this year. A day before going in for surgery, he recorded all the vocals for a new At the Gates album, the statement noted.
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Jazz Monroe
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Academy Award-winning actor and director Robert Redford, one of the biggest movie stars to ever grace the screen and whose startlingly magnetic charisma in such films as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Way We Were” and “The Sting” made him an icon, has died. He was 89.
Cindi Berger, CEO of the publicity firm Rogers & Cowan PMK, confirmed Redford’s death to CBS News in a statement. Berger said he died Tuesday at his home in Utah surrounded by those he loved.
Redford burst into the Hollywood stratosphere in the late 1960s, when he was paired with Paul Newman in the Western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Their charm playing lovable outlaws was undeniable, but it would be Redford’s nonchalance about his striking good looks that helped sell his characters — in comedies, dramas and adventures — making him one of the leading box office draws of the 1970s and ’80s.
Then, as founder of the Sundance Institute, he used his celebrity to help nurture independent films while promoting generations of young filmmakers, as well as environmental and social justice issues. Since 1985, the institute has hosted the internationally famous Sundance Film Festival, which has been the launching pad for innumerable talents, from Quentin Tarantino, John Sayles and Christopher Nolan to the Coen brothers. In 1989, the New York Times called Redford “a godfather to the American independent film movement.”
Yet, according to Redford, his fame was hardly predictable.
“I was so much the last choice” for the role of the Sundance Kid, he told CBS’ “Sunday Morning” in 2006. “They tried everything to keep me out of the picture because I wasn’t known, compared to Paul [Newman].”
His performance changed all that. The comedy-drama, directed by George Roy Hill, topped the box office chart for 1969.
Four years later, Redford and Newman teamed up again in Hill’s caper “The Sting,” which won seven Academy Awards, including best picture. Redford was also nominated for best actor for his performance as a small-time con artist out for revenge against a big-city gambler (played by Robert Shaw).
Redford would star in 16 features between 1969 and 1980, many of them hits that traded on his remarkable screen presence: “Downhill Racer,” “The Hot Rock,” “Jeremiah Johnson,” “The Candidate,” “The Way We Were” with Barbra Streisand, “The Great Gatsby” with Mia Farrow, “The Great Waldo Pepper,” “Three Days of the Condor” with Faye Dunaway, “The Electric Horseman” with Jane Fonda and “Brubaker.” So bright was his star power that he reportedly earned a $2 million paycheck for what was barely a walk-on in the World War II epic “A Bridge Too Far.”
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But his most surprising film was one which he produced and fought for: the acclaimed 1976 drama “All the President’s Men,” the story of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who uncovered the Watergate scandal.
“It took four years, and the studio, they said, ‘Politics? I don’t think so,’” Redford said in 2006. “You know, ‘Watergate is a dead issue.’ And I said, ‘It’s not. It’s a detective story about investigative journalism and about the American trait of hard work, and hard work led to something that spared us the loss of our First Amendment. That, to me, is worth making.’”
The film was nominated for eight Oscars and won four, including for its screenplay by William Goldman, and for Jason Robards‘ performance as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.
Redford starred in hit after hit, but he told “Sunday Morning ” in 2018 many of those films he’s never watched. Really? “I don’t know. I haven’t ever counted ’em, but a lot,” Redford said. “‘Cause I thought if I look at myself too much, I’m gonna be too aware of myself and that means when I go to do something new, I won’t be able to do it without being slightly aware of what I’m doing rather than just being free.”
He moved on to a job where he wouldn’t have to look at himself — behind the camera, as director of “Ordinary People.” Based on the novel by Judith Guest, it tells of an affluent family whose veneer of stability is shattered after one son dies in a boating accident and another attempts suicide. It starred Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore in a rare dramatic role, Judd Hirsch and Timothy Hutton, who won a best supporting actor Academy Award for his feature film debut. The film also won best picture, and for Redford a best director Oscar.
In the decade following “Ordinary People,” he appeared on screen only a few times — in the baseball tale “The Natural,” the Oscar-winning “Out of Africa” opposite Meryl Streep, and the romantic comedy “Legal Eagles.”
He would also return to the director’s chair eight times, with an eclectic mix of stories and genres: “The Milagro Beanfield War,” about a land war pitting a Hispanic farmer against real estate interests; “A River Runs Though It,” a period drama of family and fly-fishing, with Brad Pitt; “Quiz Show,” about TV’s quiz show scandal in the 1950s; “The Horse Whisperer,” about a horse trainer with a remarkable gift; “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” a golf fable with Will Smith and Matt Damon; “Lions for Lambs,” a political drama of wartime co-starring Tom Cruise and Streep; “The Conspirator,” about the Confederate plot surrounding Lincoln’s assassination; and the political thriller “The Company You Keep.”
But he made perhaps his biggest contribution to movies by founding the Sundance Institute, which developed and fostered the work of young and diverse independent filmmakers outside of mainstream Hollywood. Begun in 1981, Sundance encompassed workshops with writers, directors and actors, and later hosted the internationally-recognized film festival.
Asked by Collider in 2019 his reasons for founding the institute, Redford said, “The goal for me was very simple: to celebrate people who don’t get celebrated, who are ignored or undiscovered and who deserve to be discovered.”
Charles Robert Redford Jr. was born on Aug. 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California. Raised in Van Nuys, Redford described his neighborhood as “lower working class.” Though he lived in the shadow of Hollywood, he had no interest in a career in the movies.
“I grew up in kind of a rough neighborhood,” he said. “We’d go to matinees, any time there was a love scene on the screen, we’d go, ‘Oh boo, you tell ’em lover,’ you know, and make fun of the scene. The idea that I would be that guy is just too much for me to take!”
He attended the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he had an athletic scholarship, but was kicked out after his freshman year for drinking, shortly after the death of his mother, Martha, in 1955.
He ventured to Europe, studying art in France, Italy and Spain, before settling in New York City, where he took art classes at the Pratt Institute while also studying acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He described being self-conscious in his early experiences onstage, but soon recognized “something unfamiliar was clicking inside.” He performed in school productions of “The Seagull” and “Antigone,” attracting an agent, and was soon on Broadway in “Tall Story” and “The Highest Tree,” before starring with Julie Harris in “Little Moon of Alban,” in 1960.
He also made guest appearances on TV shows such as “Maverick,” “Playhouse 90,” “Perry Mason,” “Naked City,” “Route 66” and “The Twilight Zone.” He co-starred with Jason Robards in a 1960 TV version of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” directed by Sidney Lumet.
In 1961 he starred on Broadway in “Sunday in New York,” and two years later in the Neil Simon comedy “Barefoot in the Park,” directed by Mike Nichols. It was a role he repeated in the 1967 film, opposite Jane Fonda.
“I held some fantasy out in my head that I would return to art, and I carried that maybe five years into my acting career,” Redford said, “and then finally one day just looked at myself in the mirror, and I said, ‘Who are we kidding? This is what you do. This is what you do well and like it. Give up the idea that you’re going to maintain this career in art.’”
His film appearances grew following a big screen debut in the 1962 World War II drama “War Hunt” (co-starring future director Sydney Pollack).
But Redford wasn’t considered a big enough name to co-star with Paul Newman in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” — the studio wanted anyone but him, even after the film’s director and screenwriter went to bat for him. It wasn’t until Newman, 11 years his senior and already a big name, met with Redford and told the studio he wanted Redford to co-star, that he got the part.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images 
It was a generosity that Redford returned some years later, when he went to bat for Newman to co-star in “The Sting.”
While on a press tour for “The Candidate,” his 1972 satire about a California lawyer’s run for Senate against a popular incumbent, Redford sought out Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward after reading some of the reports he and Carl Bernstein had written on the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The movie star was rebuffed. [Bernstein feared Republican backlash to their reporting if it were found out they were talking with Hollywood.] They finally met up in 1973, along with screenwriter William Goldman, and in 1974 Redford bought the film rights to the pair’s yet-to-be-published book, “All the President’s Men,” for $450,000.
Starring Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, and directed by Alan J. Pakula, the film captured the intensity of the reporters’ hunt for answers as they sought to “follow the money” and unravel the Watergate scandal.
Never mind that audiences knew how the story ended (Nixon resigned); the film was a critical and commercial hit, and became an inspiration for generations of young journalists.
Once Redford had gotten the taste of directing with “Ordinary People,” his appearances in front of the camera grew fewer: “Havana,” “Sneakers,” “Indecent Proposal,” “Up Close & Personal,” “The Last Castle,” “Spy Game,” and “An Unfinished Life” filled out his acting resume for the years between 1990 and 2005. He also narrated the 1992 documentary “Incident at Oglala,” about Native American activist Leonard Peltier. Redford’s companies, Wildwood Enterprises and Sundance Productions, produced at least two dozen feature films.
Meanwhile, much of his energy was devoted to the success of the Sundance Institute and its film festival, held in the mountains of Utah each January.
In 1978 the Utah Film Commission established the United States Film Festival as a means to draw visitors to the Wasatch Mountains for something other than skiing. The festival was co-created by Sterling van Wagenen, who was a cousin of Redford’s then-wife, Lola van Wagenen. Advocating to include independent features in the program, Redford agreed to show up at the festival and participate in a panel. Afterwards, he formed the Sundance Institute, to aid filmmakers wishing to make stories that could not find a home among Hollywood studios that were chasing hugely commercial pictures.
In 1985 the U.S. Film & Video Festival was struggling financially, and so Sundance took it over, eventually replacing the name with its own. Moved to Park City, the festival drew ever-increasing numbers of filmmakers, buyers, agents, publicists, journalists and fans to the tiny town. Beyond the festival, industry professionals would mentor young filmmakers in workshops and screenwriting labs. Wes Anderson’s “Bottle Rocket,” Kimberly Peirce’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Hard Eight,” and Miranda July’s “Me and You and Everyone We Know” were all developed in the Sundance Labs.
In 1989 the festival blew up with the success of Stephen Soderbergh’s “sex, lies, and videotape,” which won the Audience Award and was picked up by Miramax. Its subsequent theatrical release earned the low-budget dramedy a cool $25 million and an Oscar nomination.
Since then, films and filmmakers who have broken out at the festival have included Quentin Tarantino (“Reservoir Dogs”), Robert Rodriguez (“El Mariachi”), Kevin Smith (“Clerks”), Christopher Nolan (“Memento”), Todd Solandz (“Welcome to the Dollhouse”), Ryan Coogler (“Fruitvale Station”), Damien Chazelle (“Whiplash”), Jordan Peele (“Get Out”), and the audience favorites “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “The Blair Witch Project.”
Sundance also started a program to develop theatrical works, which has resulted in such productions as “The Laramie Project,” “Light in the Piazza,” and “Angels in America.”
George Pimentel/Getty Images for Sundance 
In 2012 Redford was executive producer and narrator of the documentary “Watershed,” about the politics surrounding the Colorado River — the environmental and cultural damage from misuse of a vital natural resource. Asked by ThinkProgress whether his films can make a difference, Redford said, “I’ve given up the idea that I can really change anything, and I just do the best I can. It’s either that or do nothing, and we know that nothing doesn’t work.”
The following year Redford starred in “All Is Lost,” playing a solo sailor facing disaster at sea when his small craft is crippled in an accident. He did much of the stunt work himself, in a “storm-tossed” water tank (the spray from fire hoses cost him partial hearing in one ear). He was hailed for his remarkable performance in which he uttered virtually no dialogue.
“All in all, it was worth it,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune. “I’m proud of the work. I felt it was a chance to do something at this point that was different and bold.”
Redford also added his name to the roster of Hollywood stars recruited for the Marvel Universe, appearing in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “Avengers: Endgame” as (spoiler alert) the leader of a plot against S.H.I.E.L.D. He also starred opposite Nick Nolte in “A Walk in the Woods,” played Dan Rather in “Truth,” and appeared opposite an animated creature in the Disney film “Pete’s Dragon.” He also reteamed with Jane Fonda in the romance “Our Souls at Night,” their fourth film together.
In 2018 he starred in “The Old Man & the Gun,” as an aging bank robber on the run. Redford told “Sunday Morning” that he connected very easily with the protagonist as an outlaw: “I think probably I must’ve been born with an outlaw sensibility, in terms of my nature, yeah. Because from the time I was just a little kid, I was always wanting to go away from the rules. I wanted to — I didn’t want to break any, I just didn’t want to be held by them. In kindergarten, I ran away three times!”
With the film’s release he announced he would be retiring from acting — but he remained active with voice work and producing documentaries.
In addition to his Oscar win for “Ordinary People,” Redford was nominated for directing and producing “Quiz Show,” and in 2002 he received an honorary Academy Award for his impact on the industry. Three years later he was named a Kennedy Center honoree. At the Washington ceremony, Paul Newman ribbed Redford, referring to his reputation for lateness: “Backstage they think the only reason he’s even in the vicinity was because they told him this whole thing was yesterday.”
In 2016 Redford received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The citation read; “His art and activism continue to shape our nation’s cultural heritage, inspiring millions to laugh, cry, think, and change.” At the presentation ceremony, President Barack Obama remarked, “As an actor, director, producer, and as an advocate, he has not stopped — and apparently drives so fast that he had breakfast in Napa and dinner in Salt Lake.”
Redford was married to Lola Van Wagenen in 1958; they divorced in 1995. They had four children: Scott, who died at age 2 months from sudden infant death syndrome; Shauna, an artist; James (Jamie), a filmmaker and environmental activist, who died of cancer in 2020; and Amy, a director.
In 2009, Redford married artist and environmental activist Sibylle Szaggars.
In 2018, the private Redford reflected to “Sunday Morning” on a favorite saying by T.S. Eliot: “‘There’s only the trying. The rest is not our business.’ It’s one of my favorite phrases. Because you can’t guarantee where the trying is going to get you. So, you can’t guarantee the result. The only thing there is in its place is the trying. That’s where the action is.”
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Thomas Hagan Bailey, founder of Janus Capital and an ardent land conservationist, died peacefully at his home on the Iron Rose Ranch in Carbondale on Aug. 31, according to an obituary provided by his family. He was 88.
Bailey, who grew up in Michigan and Ontario, Canada, established a reputation as a growth-style money manager, demonstrating a knack for using bottom-up research to uncover rapidly growing companies that would outperform. He moved to Denver in 1969, seeking the freedom to invest more independently and aggressively than he could on Wall Street.
He named his firm the Janus Capital Corp. after the Roman god of doors, gateways and beginnings, and launched the Janus Fund. Like the companies he sought out for investment, he favored an entrepreneurial style of management, giving him an edge in a field dominated by stodgy institutions.
The secret to Bailey’s success, however, wasn’t in picking stocks but rather in picking talented money managers and training them in the Janus way. Jim Craig, Helen Young Hayes, Tom Marsico, Ron Sachs, Scott Shoelzel, Blaine Rollins, Claire Young and Sandy Rufenacht were some of the portfolio managers he fostered.
The strong team Bailey built generated market-beating returns throughout the 1990s and the money poured in, with assets under management peaking at around $330 billion in March 2020. Bailey, along with his Cherry Creek rival Bill Berger, put Denver on the map for growth-style investing, making the city a must-stop for corporate executives looking to win institutional support.
Janus portfolio managers became celebrities featured in financial magazines and sought after for interviews on cable business news shows.
Bailey preferred to remain behind the scenes.
“I go to the office every day and we try to do the best thing we can for our 6 or 7 million shareholders. Good long-term performance is a bunch of good short-term performance,” Bailey said in an interview he did as part of a video for his induction into the Colorado Business Hall of Fame in 2001.
Janus, alongside the high-flying growth stocks that many of its funds invested in, saw fortune turn a darker face after the market peaked in March 2000. Bailey sold his 12% stake in Janus Capital in 2001 and 2002 to Stillwell Financial, earning him $1.2 billion. He stayed on as chairman into 2003 and then left 33 years of running Janus behind for a quieter life in the Roaring Fork Valley with his family.
By early 2004, Janus Capital had shrunk to $145 billion in assets. Several high-profile managers, who chafed at a more structured environment under the new owners, departed. Janus eventually became a more diversified fund group with more middle-of-the-road performance. In 2017, it merged with London-based Henderson Global Investors, although it maintains a large presence in Cherry Creek.
Bailey turned his focus to the Iron Rose Ranch and bred and trained competitive cutting horses in Carbondale. He became a competitive rider himself, winning numerous national amateur titles throughout the West, according to his family. He endowed two tenured chairs at Colorado State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital.
Land preservation represented another passion he focused on later in life. He acquired and preserved 1,600 acres in the Roaring Fork Valley, Crystal Valley and along the West Muddy in Delta County, something his time at Janus provided him with the resources to do.
Forbes magazine estimates Bailey’s net worth this year was at $1.3 billion, ranking him as Colorado’s 10th wealthiest person and the 2,479th wealthiest person in the world. But Bailey, in his later years, was more comfortable fly-fishing or breeding horses than he was attending galas and rubbing elbows with fellow billionaires.
“Tom Bailey will be dearly missed by all who knew him, remembered as a fierce competitor, a cultural evangelist, and an enduring steward of the West,” according to a statement from his family.
Bailey is survived by his wife Lisa Bernhoft Bailey; his former wife, Jeanne Bailey; their children, Miranda, Ryan, and three grandchildren — Golden Rose and Wilder Bailey Lebovich and Clare Enid Bailey. Tanner Bailey, one of his children, died earlier.
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Aldo Svaldi
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Ricky Hatton, the former world boxing champion who rose to become one of the most popular fighters in the sport, has died. He was 46.
Hatton was found dead at his home in Greater Manchester, CBS News partner BBC News and Britain’s Press Association reported Sunday.
The World Boxing Association mourned Hatton’s death on social media Sunday.
“With deep sadness, the WBA mourns the passing of Ricky ‘The Hitman’ Hatton,” the WBA wrote. “A true champion, an indomitable spirit, and a legend of the sport. Your legacy will live on in every fight and in the hearts of boxing fans around the world.”
Police said they were not treating the death as suspicious.
“Officers were called by a member of the public to attend Bowlacre Road, Hyde, Tameside, at 6:45am today where they found the body of a 46-year-old man,” Greater Manchester Police said in a statement to BBC News. “There are not currently believed to be any suspicious circumstances.”
Police would not reveal the identity of the man, but said they were working with his family to provide a statement for the media.
Friends of Hatton were quick to pay tribute Sunday morning.
Jon Super / AP
“Today we lost not only one of Britain’s greatest boxers, but a friend, a mentor, a warrior, Ricky Hatton,” former world champion Amir Khan posted on X.
“Rip to the legend Ricky Hatton may he rip,” former heavyweight champion Tyson Fury said in an Instagram post, with photos of the pair together. “There will only ever be 1 Ricky Hatton. can’t believe this so young.”
News of Hatton’s death comes two months after he announced he would make a return to boxing in December in a professional bout against Eisa Al Dah in Dubai.
Hatton won world titles at light-welterweight and welterweight.
He rose through amateur and domestic levels and at the height of his career shared the ring with the best boxers of his generation, including Kostya Tszyu, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
Junior Action Images via Reuters/Andrew Couldridge/File Photo 
Hatton’s down-to-earth demeanour also endeared him to fans across the world, and he was open about the mental health issues he endured upon his retirement from the ring.
“As fighters, we tell ourselves we’re strong – we train, we sweat, we take hits, we get up. But sometimes the hardest fight happens in silence, in the mind,” Khan added on X. “Mental health isn’t weakness. It’s part of being human. And we must talk about it. We must reach out. We must lean on each other.”
Hatton’s all-action style added to his popularity. He built up a passionate following in the UK before truly announcing himself on the world stage with his epic victory against Tszyu for the IBF world super lightweight title in 2005.
Pound for pound, great Tszyu had only lost twice before, but was forced to retire on his stool in front of 22,000 fans in Manchester.
Hatton later described it as his greatest win but it was just the start of a period when he fought at the top of the sport, with thousands of fans following him to America for huge fights.
In a post on X, his former manager, Frank Warren, described him as a “superbly talented fighter who inspired a generation of young boxers and fans in a way very few had done before,” adding he will “rightly go down as one of the modern greats of this sport.”
Hatton lost for the first time in his career against Mayweather at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 2007.
After a sold-out homecoming at Manchester City’s stadium a year later, he worked his way back to the top of the sport to take on Manny Pacquiao in 2009, losing inside two rounds.
Hatton retired after that defeat, but made a remarkable comeback four years later after piling on weight and enduring issues with depression and drinking, as well as allegations of drug use.
While he lost to Vyacheslav Senchenko, the very fact that he managed to return to the ring was seen as a personal triumph.
Speaking to the BBC in 2022, Ricky Hatton discussed his struggles with his mental health over the years. After his knockout in 2009 he knew his career was over, despite a short-lived comeback in 2012.
“I had no boxing. My career was over. I’d fallen out with my parents. I’d fallen out with my trainer Billy Graham. That’s when it got to rock bottom,” he said. “I just went out on the warpath. It was horrible for people to see.”
He became an ambassador for the mental health charity Campaign Against Living Miserably in 2023, according to the BBC.
“If a boxer can come out and say they’re struggling and crying every day, it’s going to make a huge difference,” he explained to the BBC in 2020.
“Having gone through it, I now see it as my job to help those suffering with mental health.”
Outside of the ring, Hatton was a lifelong fan of Manchester City.
The club said there would be a minute of appreciation for Hatton at Sunday’s derby against Manchester United.
“Ricky was one of City’s most loved and revered supporters, who will always be remembered for a glittering boxing career that saw him win world titles at welterweight and light-welterweight,” City said in a statement. “Everyone at the Club would like to send our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends at this difficult time.”
The announcement of Hatton’s return to the ring later this year came after he had enjoyed success as a trainer, coaching Zhanat Zhakiyanov to a world bantamweight title win in 2017.
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or a suicidal crisis, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. You can also chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline here.
For more information about mental health care resources and support, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m. ET, at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264).
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Polly Holliday, a Tony Award-nominated screen and stage actor who turned the catchphrase “Kiss my grits!” into a national retort as the gum-chewing, beehive-wearing waitress aboard the long-running CBS sitcom “Alice,” has died. She was 88.
Holliday died Tuesday at her home in New York, said her theatrical agent, Dennis Aspland. She was the last surviving member of the principal cast of “Alice;” Linda Lavin, who played the title character, died last year.
Peter Kramer / Getty Images
“Alice” ran from 1976 to 1985, but Holliday had turned into such a star that the network gave her her own short-lived spin-off called “Flo” in 1980. It lasted a year.
Holliday earned four Golden Globe nominations and won one in 1980 for “Alice,” as well as four Emmy Award nominations, three for “Alice” and one for “Flo.”
As for the “Kiss my grits!” line, the Alabama-born Holliday was quick to distance herself from it, telling interviewers that the line was “pure Hollywood” and not a regional saying. But she identified with Flo.
CBS via Getty Images 
“She was a Southern woman you see in a lot of places,” she told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2003. “Not well educated, but very sharp, with a sense of humor and a resolve not to let life get her down.”
Holliday’s career included stints on Broadway – including a Tony nod opposite Kathleen Turner in a 1990 revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – and lots of TV, including playing the blind sister to Betty White’s character in “Golden Girls.” On the big screen, her credits included John Grisham 1995 legal thriller series “The Client” and portraying a protective secretary in “All the President’s Men.”
Her Broadway credits include “All Over Town” in 1974 directed by Dustin Hoffman, “Arsenic and Old Lace” in 1986 with Jean Stapleton and Abe Vigoda, and a revival of “Picnic” with Kyle Chandler in 1994.
Some of her more memorable credits include the wicked Mrs. Deagle in “Gremlins,” Tim Allen’s sassy mother-in-law on “Home Improvement” and off-Broadway in “A Quarrel of Sparrows,” in which The New York Times said she radiated “a refreshingly touching air of willed, cheerful imperturbability.”
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London — Rick Davies, the lead singer and co-founder of British band Supertramp, has died after a long battle with cancer, the band said Monday. He was 81.
Davies, who co-wrote the band’s music with Roger Hodgson, was “the voice and pianist behind Supertramp’s most iconic songs, leaving an indelible mark on rock music history,” the band said in a tribute on its website.
He died Saturday after battling multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, for more than a decade, the band said.
Davies and Hodgson formed Supertramp in 1969 and produced hits including “Goodbye Stranger” and “The Logical Song.” The band’s 1979 album “Breakfast in America” topped charts in the United States and Canada, won two Grammys and sold over 18 million copies.
Heino Kalis / REUTERS
Davies’ “soulful vocals and unmistakable touch on the Wurlitzer became the heartbeat of the bands’ sound,” the statement said.
Born in Swindon, England, in 1944, Davies had a passion for jazz, blues and rock ‘n’ roll from a young age, the band said.
Hodgson left the band in 1983 and released solo albums. Supertramp disbanded in 1988, though Davies revived it in 1996. The group performed for the last time in Madrid in 2012.
“Beyond the stage, Rick was known for his warmth, resilience, and devotion to his wife Sue, with whom he shared over five decades,” the ban said. “After facing serious health challenges, which kept him unable to continue touring as Supertramp, he enjoyed performing with his hometown buds as Ricky and the Rockets.”
The band’s tribute concluded with a statement it emphasized: “Rick’s music and legacy continue to inspire many and bears testament to the fact that great songs never die, they live on.”
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Bruce Loose, the vocalist and bassist of the influential San Francisco punk rock and hardcore band Flipper, has died, the band’s drummer Stephen DePace confirmed in an email to Pitchfork. Loose had previously suffered a stroke and was recovering at home in Humboldt, California, where he is believed to have died from a heart attack on September 5. He was 66 years old.
Bruce Richard Calderwood was born in California to beatnik parents who would sometimes take him to local shows. He joined Flipper after the founders—Russell Wilkerson, better known as Will Shatter, and Ted Falconi and DePace—kicked out original singer Ricky Williams for missing shows. At first, Calderwood adopted the name Bruce Lose before eventually adding another “o” to his stage surname.
Shatter and Falconi had formed Flipper in the late 1970s Bay Area at the dawn of hardcore, the tougher and sterner punk variant that had a stronghold in California. Their sensibility aligned with the scene’s—they shared stages with Black Flag, Bad Brains, and the Dead Kennedys—but Flipper liked to groove as well as thrash. They were a band of Grateful Dead enthusiasts who happened to have a penchant for blistering, noisy heaviness that bordered the psychedelic.
A year after earning plaudits and notoriety for the sludgy, saxophone-spangled, nearly-eight-minute single “Sex Bomb” in 1981, the band released its debut LP, Album – Generic Flipper, via Subterranean. It was a nihilistic, hardcore punk curio that became a classic, influencing legion outre rock bands with its preternaturally grumpy approach to life and conventional song forms. (“We’re just trying to show the absurdity of whatever it is we’re trying to show the absurdity of,” Calderwood once half-explained, in typically circular fashion.) He and Shatter traded vocals, both similarly life-sick, and the band amassed a devout following of the similarly pessimistic. One such devotee was Kurt Cobain, who wore a homemade Flipper T-shirt on Saturday Night Live and in Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” music video.
A 1984 album, Gone Fishin’, and some live records followed, but Shatter’s death of a drug overdose in 1987 cut the band short. They reformed in the 1990s to play a handful of shows and release the 1992 album American Grafishy on Def American (label head Rick Rubin had once been in a Flipper tribute band), but again ran into misfortune when Calderwood broke his back in a reported car accident in 1994. He continued to perform at their occasional concerts—and on the dual 2009 albums Love and Fight, featuring Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic—until 2015, when the band announced that he could no longer tour and would be replaced by the Jesus Lizard’s David Yow.
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Giorgio Armani leaves a legacy not only as a seminal figure in the history of fashion, but also as a visionary business leader who built a globally recognized brand and multibillion-dollar business empire, industry experts said after his death Thursday at age 91.
“Armani made certain that his vision was consistent and that it was always classy, even down to presentation in the Armani Exchange stores,” Shawn Grain Carter, an associate professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, told CBS MoneyWatch.
Re Giorgio, or “King George,” as the Italians call him, Armani famously created luxury looks for Hollywood starlets on the red carpet while also producing stylish accessories and clothing for everyday consumers at casual price points.
GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP via Getty Images
While meticulously tailored clothing made from quality fabrics has always been at the heart of the Armani brand, the designer expanded his business over the years to include not just perfumes and accessories but home furnishings, cosmetics, books, flowers — and even chocolates. Connecting them all was sophisticated design, which Armani wove into all things he put his name on.
“He was masterful in sticking to his vision, but executing it in a way that would be accessible luxury, a quiet luxury, but still tasteful and elegantly crafted,” said Grain Carter.
Among Armani’s most celebrated contributions and successful business maneuvers was the power suit, a softly tailored, ready-to-wear take on office attire that quickly rose in popularity among the American business class.
Introduced in the ’70s, the Armani suit was a bold deviation from the rigid, restrictive suits businessmen were accustomed to wearing. Armani’s elegantly tailored suits quickly became a must in every well-heeled man’s closet. Beth Dincuff, an associate professor at Parsons School of Design, said Armani manifested the idea of a “sophisticated man who cared about how he looked, who was aware of his physique and who wanted to show it off in a new way.”
Armani soon brought that masculine sensibility to women’s fashion with the pantsuit, a shoulder-padded jacket and tailored trousers. This gave women a refined and sophisticated option for the office that projected confidence and power.
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“That’s attributed to Giorgio Armani — making it okay for a woman to wear a pantsuit but still look like a woman in terms of a power aesthetic,” said Grain Carter.
Armani’s design decisions also tapped into the cultural moment. The designer told CBS News in 2006 that his new line of women’s clothes was in response to the feminist movement. Women needed their own version of the traditional men’s suit jacket, he thought.
Using celebrities to elevate the Armani brand was another decision that cemented the Italian designer’s business success. He began by outfitting Richard Gere in the 1980 neo-noir crime drama “American Gigolo.” The Italian designer went on to design clothes for more than 150 films throughout his career.
“His idea to reach out to celebrities was very, very important,” Dincuff said .
Armani pivoted to dressing celebrities on the red carpet in the 1990s, where his black tie outfits and glittering evening gowns often stole the show. The use of celebrities to showcase his fashion was novel at the time, said Dincuff.
Some early looks that captured popular attention included the oversized Armani suit worn by Julia Roberts at the 1990s Golden Globes and a champagne-colored Armani suit that Jodie Foster wore at the 1992 Academy Awards.
Doug Pizac / AP 
The list of celebrities that have worn Armani on the red carpet is long and includes Beyoncé, Selena Gomez, Anne Hathaway, Michelle Pfeiffer, Margot Robbie and Winona Ryder.
Central to Armani’s success was the fact that he never relinquished control of the multibillion company he created. Having never agreed to a merger or sale, the Italian fashion designer was always his own boss.
This allowed Armani to maintain creative control and consistency over his expanding business empire, distinguishing him from other designers.
While he did strike several licensing deals over his career with companies like EssilorLuxottica and L’Oréal, he kept the majority of his business portfolio in-house. That included everything from Armani Privé, his haute couture fashion collection and fragrance line, to Armani Exchange — a more affordable fashion line geared toward younger generations, said Grain Carter. Armani also kept the collections Giorgio Armani and Emporio Armani under his purview.
“All of this was in-house and he controlled it from concept to production to distribution to marketing to how it is finance,” Grain Carter said. “He was active at every level, at every step.”
Angelo Deligio/Mondadori via Getty Images 
Today the Armani empire has more than 9,000 employees along with seven industrial hubs and over 600 stores worldwide, according to figures released in 2023.
As for potential succession plans, the Giorgio Armani company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I cannot really contemplate the next person, because there will be no other Giorgio Armani,” Grain Carter said.
contributed to this report.
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Longtime CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller has died at the age of 73.
He died in Washington, D.C., according to a close friend. The cause of death was not disclosed, but he suffered from diabetes and had been in ill health.
Knoller was, to put it simply, a legend. For decades, everyone in the White House press corps knew him as the unofficial presidential historian and statistician.
His frustration over the lack of a central database of daily presidential actions inspired him to take upon himself the enormous burden of keeping meticulous records of every presidential act, movement, and utterance, single-handedly filling an immense void in American history.
As he once put it: “I keep a daily log of everything the president does. I keep a list of speeches. I keep a list of travel – foreign travel, domestic travel. A list of outings. A list of golf. A list of pardons, vetoes, states that he’s visited, states that he hasn’t visited. Every time he goes on vacation, every visit to Camp David.”
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“Mark Knoller was the hardest-working and most prolific White House correspondent of a generation,” Tom Cibrowski, president and executive editor of CBS News, said. “Everyone in America knew his distinctive voice and his up-to-the-minute reporting across eight Presidential administrations.”
As a CBS Radio correspondent, Knoller worked extremely long hours, even without this self-imposed hardship. To keep his encyclopedic records up to date, he worked late into the evening nearly every day, departing the White House long after most of his colleagues had gone home.
And what did Knoller do with this hard-earned gold mine of statistics and numbers? In the extremely competitive world of journalism, you might think he would hoard it for his own use. But no. This remarkably generous man shared it with anyone who asked – reporters on deadline, historians, even White House aides filling gaps in their own administration’s records. He believed the public had a right to know.
Born Feb. 20, 1952, in Brooklyn, New York, he knew from a young age that he wanted to be a reporter. After graduating from New York University, he started his career as an intern and copy boy at WNEW Radio in New York, working his way up to weekend reporter. In 1975, he became a reporter at the Associated Press Radio Network, where he remained for 13 years.
In 1988, Knoller’s career took an unexpected turn. While covering a trip to Helsinki and Moscow with then-Secretary of State George Schultz, he and CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky chatted about his career. She told him the CBS News Washington Bureau was looking for a new assignment editor.
“Why not take the plunge?” she asked him. So he did.
But after a few years, “alas, he was miserable,” Zirinsky recalls. He didn’t enjoy sending other people out to cover the news. He wanted to cover the news. So CBS News offered Knoller the position of White House correspondent for CBS Radio – his dream job, and a position in which he went on to win numerous prestigious journalism awards.
In his role, Knoller covered the last year of President George H.W. Bush’s term, both terms of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and the first term of President Trump. He left CBS in 2020.
Over the last decade of Knoller’s time at CBS News, his career took another surprising turn. His voice had begun to fail, making it impossible for him to be a full-time radio correspondent. So Knoller reinvented himself. Twitter was in its early years and was quickly becoming a sensation, so Knoller jumped on the Twitter (now X) train. He began posting numerous times daily, sharing White House news, his famous facts and figures, and his entertaining witticisms with an audience that grew to 300,000 followers.
Former CBS News White House correspondents who worked closely with Knoller also offered their heartfelt admiration:
“Mark Knoller was simply the best, a legendary White House journalist who was a delight to be around,” said CBS News senior correspondent Norah O’Donnell. “His work was his life. He was kind, funny and always gracious in sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of the presidency. His CBS family adored him, and we will miss our friend.”
“Mark Knoller defined what it means to chronicle and cover the White House,” said chief White House correspondent Major Garrett. “Mark added value where others never could – myself included. Mark was the most devoted, tenacious and clear-eyed journalist I have ever had the honor of knowing. For as long as I live, I will count among my life’s greatest blessings that I was able to work alongside him.”
“As impressive as Mark Knoller’s sweep of knowledge about the White House and the presidency was – it was surpassed only by his generosity toward his many friends and colleagues…And he always answered with kindness, class, and a sincere desire to help,” said Jim Axelrod, chief correspondent and executive editor for CBS News’ “Eye on America” franchise.
Mark wasn’t just a respected colleague, he was a dear friend. He helped me enormously with his knowledge of the White House, but the Mark I will always remember is the kind, witty, funny, friend with whom I spent many hours debating about one of his favorite topics: which James Bond movies, and actors, were the best and the worst.
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Brent Hinds, the former lead guitarist and co-vocalist of Mastodon, died in a motorcycle crash in Atlanta Wednesday night (August 21), local news outlets report. Hinds was riding a Harley Davidson when an SUV failed to yield at a turning, causing a fatal collision, according to Atlanta News First and an Atlanta police memo. Hinds was 51 years old.
William Brent Hinds grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, where he learned the banjo as a teenager and picked up the fret-tapping technique he would later bring to bear on the electric guitar. He was “a total hellion, straight outta hell, with red eyes and everythin’,” he told The Guardian’s Stevie Chick in 2009. “I was very dysfunctional at school, just a jackass. I’d take LSD and come to class still tripping. I was too creative, never doing my homework, just filling my notepad up with drawings of skulls.”
Despite his aversion to the school system, he spent a year studying classical guitar at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, before moving to Atlanta, in the mid 1990s, after seeing his future Mastodon bandmate Troy Sanders play with his Four Hour Fogger outfit in Birmingham, and invitating himself to join the band. After that group’s dissolution, the duo sought to form another, eventually picking up drummer Brann Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher to form Mastodon at the dawn of the 2000s.
Their 2002 debut album, Remission, on which Hinds and Sanders traded lead vocals and songwriting duties over virtuosic, hardcore-infused metal, caused a sensation in heavy music circles. But it was the 2004 successor, the Moby Dick concept LP Leviathan, that elevated them to the top echelons of metal, among both fans and critics. The studio follow-up, 2007’s Blood Mountain, earned them a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance. The band also picked up a nomination at an ill-fated MTV VMAs that left Hinds comatose for three days following an altercation. He eventually recovered from brain hemorrhaging, a broken nose, and pair of black eyes.
Mastodon’s inventive, progressive tendencies came to the fore on subsequent LPs, starting with 2009’s Crack the Skye—which introduced Dailor to the band’s suite of lead vocalists—and 2011’s The Hunter, which was dedicated to Hinds’ late brother. Their final studio albums with Hinds were 2014’s relatively radio-friendly Once More ’Round the Sun, the course-correcting Emperor of Sand in 2017 (which won their first Grammy, for Best Metal Performance), and the 2021 double-album Hushed and Grim.
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Judge Frank Caprio, renowned for his compassion in Rhode Island courts, has died at the age of 88, his son, David Caprio, said in a social media post Wednesday.
Caprio, a former judge for the Providence Municipal Court, died following a bout with pancreatic cancer, according to a statement posted to social media.
“Beloved for his compassion, humility, and unwavering belief in the goodness of people, Judge Caprio touched the lives of millions through his work in the courtroom and beyond,” the statement reads. “His warmth, humor, and kindness left an indelible mark on all who knew him.”
“It was the love and support he received from all of you that lifted his spirits and boosted his soul to find the strength to fight on and outlive his diagnosis by a year and a half,” David Caprio said in the video.
Caprio went viral on social media for hearing cases on traffic and parking violations and arraignments for criminal offenses. It was Caprio’s empathy and humor in how he handled the cases that would touch audiences on social media.
Caprio grew up on Federal Hill in Providence, Rhode Island, and was the second of three sons. Before becoming a judge, Caprio shined shoes, delivered newspapers and worked on a milk truck.
He graduated from Providence College in 1958 and began teaching American government at a local high school in Providence. While teaching, he also attended night school at the Suffolk University School of Law in Boston.
Caprio served as a Providence Municipal Court judge from 1985 to 2023.
“Caught in Providence,” an Emmy-nominated TV show which ran from 2018 to 2020, highlighted Caprio’s day-to-day life reviewing traffic cases and misdemeanors in Rhode Island. It skyrocketed him to fame on social media.
In December 2023, Caprio announced he had pancreatic cancer, and he decided to go public with his diagnosis to motivate others, hoping his survival would be an inspiration.
The former judge told “CBS Mornings” in 2024 that his deep empathy for others stems from hardships he faced growing up in poverty in Providence without hot running water, just blocks from the courthouse now named after him.
“I’m just a small-town municipal court judge, just trying to do good. That’s how I am, who tries to take into consideration the circumstances surrounding the people before me. And remember what my dad told me, when someone appears before you, put yourself in their shoes, imagine it’s you before them. How do you want to be treated?” Caprio said.
“It’s not a pleasant experience to go to bed at night, say your prayers. And suddenly you have one extra thing you have to ask for. And that is, please help the treatment be successful for the pancreatic cancer. And I think we’re on the way,” Caprio told CBS News in an interview.
Caprio is survived by his wife of almost six decades, Joyce Caprio, and his five children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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John Reardon, also known as Jack, passed away peacefully at the age of 88 after years of various health struggles and heart failure.
Born December 9, 1936, he grew up in Chicago, IL, where he loved telling stories of his times getting into mischief as a kid and spending time with his dad. He began working at Pittsburgh Plate Glass and found quick success as a salesman. As much as he loved the bustling city of Chicago, he had dreams of escaping the bitter winters and headed to sunny Southern California.
By way of recommendation of some of his PPG Chicago contacts, he sought and was hired by North Hollywood Glass as a salesman. It was there that he met who became his wife, Patricia.
They were married September 21, 1968, at the North Hollywood First United Methodist Church and not long after, bought their house in Burbank, John started his own glass company, Clearview Glass of Canoga Park, CA.
He was a very active member of the Burbank community. He was a member of the Elks Lodge, an usher for the Burbank First United Methodist Church, an active committee member and volunteer for Burbank on Parade, he was on the founding board of the Burbank Boys and Girls Club and twice held the position of President of the Burbank Sunrise Kiwanis Club. He was a dedicated father and friend.
Although he sold his glass business, he remained a salesman in the glazing field until 2015 when his health issues prevented him from returning to work.
Studying genealogy and traveling with his family were his passions. He and Patricia worked hard to be able to take the family on many vacations. They were able to visit more than half of the United States, Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean, and Ireland. Several cruises to Alaska and multiple trips to Hawaii with his grandchildren were among his favorite trips.
He was always quick to impress upon people that you must live every day as if it’s your last, and that family is everything. He was the eldest of four children, two girls and two boys, one of his sisters had predeceased him.
John is survived by his wife, Patricia, and their two daughters, Julie (Jesus) and Kerri. He is also survived by his five grandchildren, twins John and Tommy, their younger sister Patricia, Will, and Ruby.
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Teri Garr, the quirky comedy actor who rose from being a background dancer in Elvis Presley movies to co-star in such favorites as “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” has died, CBS News confirmed. She was 79.
Garr died Tuesday of multiple sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” publicist Heidi Schaeffer said in a statement. Garr battled other health problems in recent years and underwent an operation in January 2007 to repair an aneurysm.
Garr, who was sometimes credited as Terri, Terry or Terry Ann during her long career, grew up in Los Angeles with two older brothers in a show business family.
Her mother, Phyllis, was a former dancer. Her dad, Eddie, was a traveling comedian and a gambler, who died when Garr was 11.
Their daughter began dance lessons at 6 and by 14 was dancing with the San Francisco and Los Angeles ballet companies.
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She was 16 when she joined the road company of “West Side Story” in Los Angeles, and as early as 1963 she began appearing in bit parts in films. She recalled in a 1988 interview how she won the “West Side Story” role. After being dropped from her first audition, she returned a day later in different clothes and was accepted.
From there, the blonde, statuesque Garr found steady work dancing in movies, and she appeared in the chorus of nine Presley films, including “Viva Las Vegas,” “Roustabout” and “Clambake.”
She also appeared on numerous television shows, including “Star Trek,” “Dr. Kildare” and “Batman,” and was a featured dancer on the rock ‘n’ roll music show “Shindig,” the rock concert performance T.A.M.I. and a cast member of “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.”
Her big film break came as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in 1974’s Francis Ford Coppola thriller “The Conversation.” That led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who said he would hire her for the role of Gene Wilder’s German lab assistant in 1974’s “Young Frankenstein” — if she could speak with a German accent.
“Cher had this German woman, Renata, making wigs, so I got the accent from her,” Garr once recalled.
The film established her as a talented comedy performer, with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael proclaiming her “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen.”
Her big smile and off-center appeal helped land her roles in “Oh God!” opposite George Burns and John Denver, “Mr. Mom” (as Michael Keaton’s wife) and “Tootsie” in which she played the girlfriend who loses Dustin Hoffman to Jessica Lange and learns that he has dressed up as a woman to revive his career. (She also lost the supporting actress Oscar at that year’s Academy Awards to Lange.)
Although best known for comedy, Garr showed in such films as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “The Black Stallion” and “The Escape Artist” that she could handle drama equally well.
“I would like to play ‘Norma Rae’ and ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ but I never got the chance,” she once said, adding she had become typecast as a comic actor.
She had a flair for spontaneous humor, often playing David Letterman’s foil during guest appearances on NBC’s “Late Night With David Letterman” early in its run.
Her appearances became so frequent, and the pair’s good-natured bickering so convincing, that for a time rumors cropped up that they were romantically involved. Years later, Letterman credited those early appearances with helping make the show a hit.
Admirers took to social media Tuesday in her honor, with writer-director Paul Feig calling her “truly one of my comedy heroes. I couldn’t have loved her more” and screenwriter Cinco Paul saying: “Never the star, but always shining. She made everything she was in better.”
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DJ Clark Kent, the rap producer and hip-hop elder statesman known as “God’s Favorite DJ,” has died. According to a statement posted to his official Instagram account, Kent had “quietly and valiantly fought a three year battle with Colon Cancer,” before dying yesterday evening (October 24) “surrounded by his devoted wife Kesha, daughter Kabriah and son Antonio.” He was 58 years old.
Born Rodolfo Franklin, in Panama, DJ Clark Kent first found notoriety in late 1980s New York as a DJ for the Brooklyn rapper Dana Dane. In 1989, he remixed “Spread My Wings,” by the new jack swing group Troop, but his big break would not come until six years later, when he produced “Player’s Anthem,” by Junior M.A.F.I.A., from their 1995 album Conspiracy. The track featured both the Notorious B.I.G. and, in her first ever appearance on record, Lil’ Kim, then a member of the group.
The following year, Kent produced three songs on Jay-Z’s landmark debut album, Reasonable Doubt: “Cashmere Thoughts,” “Coming of Age,” and “Brooklyn’s Finest,” the latter featuring the Notorious B.I.G. (It’s also said that it was Kent who introduced Jay-Z to Roc-A-Fella co-founder Dame Dash.) Kent continued his production work with the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Sky’s the Limit,” and he scored the biggest hit of his career with Mariah Carey’s “Loverboy,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. His most recent, as a producer, came in 2018, when he worked on Kanye West and Lil Pump’s “I Love It.”
Kent is the subject of a forthcoming documentary directed by New York radio personality Angie Martinez. Following the news of his death, DJ Clark Kent has been memorialized by the likes of Tyler, the Creator, Raekwon, DJ Premier, Meek Mill, Swizz Beatz, and Questlove, who wrote, “Clark will forever be the culture.”
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Phil Lesh, bassist for the Grateful Dead, died this morning (October 25), according to a statement on his official social media accounts. A cause of death was not shared, just that he “passed peacefully” and that he “was surrounded by his family and full of love.” Lesh was 84 years old.
Philip Chapman Lesh was born and raised in Berkeley, California. He enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1961, where he studied music and composition under the Italian composer Luciano Berio. He was also a classmate of Steve Reich at the university.
In 1965, Lesh, a bassist-in-training, joined Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and Bill Kreutzmann in a band called the Warlocks. On Saturday, December 4, 1965, they adopted a new name for one of Ken Kesey’s Acid Test parties, in San Jose: They were the Grateful Dead.
Grateful Dead released their first album, also called Grateful Dead, in March 1967, but they were just as well-known across the Bay Area for their long, free-form concerts. More albums followed as the band’s acclaim and notoriety grew. Lesh did not take the lead, as a writer or a singer, on many songs, but he did co-write the opening and closing songs on 1970’s American Beauty, “Box of Rain” and “Truckin’.” He also sang the lead vocals on “Box of Rain.” And, regarding “Truckin’,” Lesh once said, “We took our experiences on the road and made it poetry… the last chorus defines the band itself.”
Lesh was a fixture with the Grateful Dead until the band’s dissolution, in 1995, following the death of Jerry Garcia. He soon began performing with a rotating lineup of members as Phil Lesh and Friends. He did not, however, join his former bandmates in the revival act Dead & Company.
In the mid-2000s, Lesh wrote about his years with the Grateful Dead in the book Searching for the Sound. Around that time, the musician also revealed that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, ultimately having surgery to treat it. Nearly a decade later, he had bladder cancer surgery.
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Paul Di’Anno, the first singer to record with British metal icons Iron Maiden, has died. Conquest Music shared the news, on behalf of Di’Anno’s family, but did not disclose a cause of death, noting only that the musician had been “troubled by severe health issues in recent years.” Di’Anno was 66 years old.
Di’Anno was born Paul Andrews, in England, in 1958. He was invited by Iron Maiden’s founder and bassist, Steve Harris, to audition for the band in the late 1970s. “I more or less realised that Maiden had the potential to become a successful international act, provided that they found the right line-up and mostly the right frontman,” Di’Anno recalled. “Maiden had had other singers before, but none of them had either the voice or the personality required to make the band a world-class success. That’s when I auditioned that I realised that my voice fitted Metal perfectly and that, although I’d never sung this kind of music before, I was the one Maiden needed to become huge. And also Steve’s incredible confidence in his music and in his band convinced me to accept the job right away, without asking myself any questions.”
Di’Anno—with Harris, guitarists Dave Murray and Dennis Stratton, and drummer Clive Burr—released the first Iron Maiden studio album in April 1980. Di’Anno made just one more album with Iron Maiden, 1981’s Killers, before he was replaced by Bruce Dickinson, who still serves as the group’s lead vocalist.
After leaving Iron Maiden, Di’Anno launched or joined numerous groups, including Di’Anno, Gogmagog, Battlezone, Killers, and Praying Mantis. He also made several solo albums and recorded often with his former Iron Maiden bandmate Dennis Stratton. Di’Anno released his memoir, The Beast, in 2010.
“We are all deeply saddened to learn about the passing of Paul Di’Anno earlier today,” Iron Maiden wrote in a group statement. “Paul’s contribution to Iron Maiden was immense and helped set us on the path we have been travelling as a band for almost five decades. His pioneering presence as a frontman and vocalist, both on stage and on our first two albums, will be very fondly remembered not just by us, but by fans around the world.”
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Former One Direction singer Liam Payne has died after falling from a third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, The Associated Press reports. Payne was in Argentina after attending his former bandmate Niall Horan’s concert at the capital’s Movistar Arena. Liam Payne was 31 years old.
“We are heartbroken. Liam will forever live in our hearts and we’ll remember him for his kind, funny and brave soul,” Payne’s family said in a statement. “We are supporting each other the best we can as a family and ask for privacy and space at this awful time.”
Liam James Payne was born in Wolverhampton, England. In 2008, at age 14, he auditioned for the British reality show The X Factor. He famously returned to the show in 2010 and was put together with Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik to form One Direction. The band did not win the competition, but it did not stop the quintet from becoming a global sensation.
After The X Factor, Simon Cowell signed One Direction to his Syco label, and the group debuted, in September 2011, with the single “What Makes You Beautiful.” Discussing the song, Payne said, “We always wanted it to be something that people didn’t expect and then when we heard it, it wasn’t what we expected either so it kind of fitted perfectly.”
“What Makes You Beautiful” was included on One Direction’s chart-topping debut album, Up All Night, which was released in the United States via Columbia Records. Payne was credited as a co-writer on three of the album’s tracks, “Taken,” “Everything About You,” and “Same Mistakes.”
After Up All Night came the 2012 album Take Me Home, whose biggest song was “Little Things,” co-written by Ed Sheeran. One Direction released three more studio albums—Midnight Memories, Four, and Made in the A.M.—before disbanding in 2016 as the members pursued solo projects.
Payne released his debut solo single, “Strip That Down,” in May 2017. The track, featuring Migos rapper Quavo, was included on the lone solo studio album of Payne’s lifetime, December 2019’s LP1. Payne’s output slowed after LP1, but he returned, in March, with the Capitol Records single “Teardrops.” Payne wrote the song with Jamie Scott and *NSync’s JC Chasez, and he said, upon its release, “‘Teardrops’ is about the vulnerability of heartbreak and the challenge of overcoming those moments. This song marks the start of a new beginning, there’s lots more to come in 2024.”
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In 2010, Jackmaster merged his record labels Dress 2 Sweat and Wireblock, the latter of which was co-run with brothers Calum and Neil Morton, with Stuff to form the new label Numbers. It naturally took its name from the club night that they all ran together in Glasgow, which still hosts dance nights there and in other cities. Under the joint Numbers label, they went on to release records by Sophie, Jamie xx, Hudson Mohawke, Jessie Ware, Rustie, and others digitally and on vinyl.
Jackmaster won the Breakthrough DJ honor at DJ Magazine’s Best of British Awards in 2010. It marked the first of many accolades in his career, which went on to include future DJ Magazine rankings, scaling Resident Advisor’s Top 100 DJs polls, and landing a residency slot on BBC Radio 1. He was also the inaugural winner of the Sub Club Electronic Music Award at the 2016 Scottish Music Awards, and was honored with the Tennents Golden Can Award for Contributions to Scottish Culture in 2017.
Although Jackmaster released a number of original singles throughout his career, including “Nitro” and “Let’s Go,” arguably his most well-known releases are FabricLive.57, which he was directly invited to curate by Fabric in 2011, and the 2016 mix DJ-Kicks Jackmaster. His most recent releases were 2023’s Party Going On EP and the Avision collaborations “Bumpin’” and “Just Get Up.”
In 2018, Jackmaster publicly apologized for “attempting to kiss and grab people against their will” at the festival Loves Saves the Day. “I was abusive and acted lewdly and inappropriately towards numerous members of staff at the festival—both female and male—during a drug-induced blackout,” he wrote, “which I had put myself into after my performance by drinking a substance called GHB.”
Dozens of artists have posted tributes in Jackmaster’s honor after hearing the news of his death, including Diplo, Honey Dijon, Modeselektor, Black Coffee, Dillon Francis, and Peggy Gou. “Inspiration. Pure talent. Pioneering DJ. Friend,” Disclosure wrote on Instagram. “The music scene will never be the same without you. Thank you for all the amazing memories, shows & laughs we had together. 🙏🏻 Rest in peace Jack.”
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Nina Corcoran
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Cissy Houston, the mother of the late Whitney Houston and a two-time Grammy winner who performed alongside superstar musicians like Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin, has died, CBS News confirmed. She was 91.
Houston died Monday morning in her New Jersey home while under hospice care for Alzheimer’s disease, her daughter-in-law Pat Houston said in a statement. The acclaimed gospel singer was surrounded by her family.
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
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