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Jim Jacobs
Jim Jacobs (born October 7, 1942) is an American actor, composer, lyricist, and writer for the theatre, long associated with the Chicago theater scene.
Jacobs is best known for creating the book, storyline, characters, and lyrics for the 1971 musical Grease with Warren Casey. Grease was adapted into the film Grease in 1978, which would become one of the most successful film adaptations of a musical in history in terms of gross revenue adjusted for inflation.
Jacobs was born on October 7, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, to Harold, a factory foreman, and Norma (Mathison) Jacobs. Jacobs attended Taft High School, during which time he played guitar and sang with a band called DDT & the Dynamiters. When he was 11, his idol was Bill Haley, but when he was fourteen it was Elvis Presley. He also cites Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis as influences, while noting he despised later rock bands such as The Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin.
When he was a teenager, he would imitate playing a guitar with a broomstick. He eventually convinced his parents to pay for guitar lessons. After four lessons, he quit and decided to buy a guitar book and teach himself. From this, he found a simple chord structure: C, A minor, F, G7—this would later be used in "Those Magic Changes" featured in Grease. While continuing to learn guitar he also was in a band, with guitarist Terry Kath in his late teenage years. As a teenager, he found himself surrounded by Polish-American and Italian-American gangs, though Tom Meyer, the inspiration for Danny Zuko, noted that Jacobs was not involved in most of the illegal activity that those gangs committed. When he was 19, his parents convinced him that he shouldn't go to college, and instead ended up working at a factory packing ink. After a year working at the factory, he decided to quit.[citation needed]
In 1963, he became involved with a local theatre group that included Warren Casey, The Chicago Playwrights Center (at that time it was called Hull House Playwrights Center) run by artistic director Robert Sickinger.
For the next five years he appeared in more than fifty theatrical productions in the Chicago area, working with such people as The Second City founder Paul Sills, while earning a living as an advertising copywriter. He also landed a small role in the 1969 film Medium Cool.[citation needed]
Jacobs' Broadway acting debut was in a 1970 revival of the play No Place to be Somebody, followed by the national tour.
In the second half of the 1960s, Jacobs found himself at a party surrounded by stoners, disgusted by the state of rock music at the time and longing for the sounds of 1950s rock and roll, and was inspired to write a production based upon life in the early rock and roll era. He began working with Warren Casey on the musical; entitled Grease, it was based largely on Jacobs's high school experiences and even used the names of some of Jacobs's acquaintances, with Jacobs inserting himself into the musical as two of the characters, the innocent Doody and the more confident Roger. In its original form, it premiered in 1971 at the Kingston Mines Theater in the Old Town section of Chicago. Compared to the version that later became famous, many of the songs were more Chicago-centred, and there was extensive use of profanity. Jacobs remembered: "When we went to New York... we were told it was necessary to make the characters lovable, instead of scaring everybody. The show went from about three-quarters book and one-quarter music to one-quarter book and three-quarters music."
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Jim Jacobs
Jim Jacobs (born October 7, 1942) is an American actor, composer, lyricist, and writer for the theatre, long associated with the Chicago theater scene.
Jacobs is best known for creating the book, storyline, characters, and lyrics for the 1971 musical Grease with Warren Casey. Grease was adapted into the film Grease in 1978, which would become one of the most successful film adaptations of a musical in history in terms of gross revenue adjusted for inflation.
Jacobs was born on October 7, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, to Harold, a factory foreman, and Norma (Mathison) Jacobs. Jacobs attended Taft High School, during which time he played guitar and sang with a band called DDT & the Dynamiters. When he was 11, his idol was Bill Haley, but when he was fourteen it was Elvis Presley. He also cites Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis as influences, while noting he despised later rock bands such as The Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin.
When he was a teenager, he would imitate playing a guitar with a broomstick. He eventually convinced his parents to pay for guitar lessons. After four lessons, he quit and decided to buy a guitar book and teach himself. From this, he found a simple chord structure: C, A minor, F, G7—this would later be used in "Those Magic Changes" featured in Grease. While continuing to learn guitar he also was in a band, with guitarist Terry Kath in his late teenage years. As a teenager, he found himself surrounded by Polish-American and Italian-American gangs, though Tom Meyer, the inspiration for Danny Zuko, noted that Jacobs was not involved in most of the illegal activity that those gangs committed. When he was 19, his parents convinced him that he shouldn't go to college, and instead ended up working at a factory packing ink. After a year working at the factory, he decided to quit.[citation needed]
In 1963, he became involved with a local theatre group that included Warren Casey, The Chicago Playwrights Center (at that time it was called Hull House Playwrights Center) run by artistic director Robert Sickinger.
For the next five years he appeared in more than fifty theatrical productions in the Chicago area, working with such people as The Second City founder Paul Sills, while earning a living as an advertising copywriter. He also landed a small role in the 1969 film Medium Cool.[citation needed]
Jacobs' Broadway acting debut was in a 1970 revival of the play No Place to be Somebody, followed by the national tour.
In the second half of the 1960s, Jacobs found himself at a party surrounded by stoners, disgusted by the state of rock music at the time and longing for the sounds of 1950s rock and roll, and was inspired to write a production based upon life in the early rock and roll era. He began working with Warren Casey on the musical; entitled Grease, it was based largely on Jacobs's high school experiences and even used the names of some of Jacobs's acquaintances, with Jacobs inserting himself into the musical as two of the characters, the innocent Doody and the more confident Roger. In its original form, it premiered in 1971 at the Kingston Mines Theater in the Old Town section of Chicago. Compared to the version that later became famous, many of the songs were more Chicago-centred, and there was extensive use of profanity. Jacobs remembered: "When we went to New York... we were told it was necessary to make the characters lovable, instead of scaring everybody. The show went from about three-quarters book and one-quarter music to one-quarter book and three-quarters music."