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Rod Temperton
Rodney Lynn Temperton (9 October 1949 – 25 September 2016) was an English musician, songwriter, and record producer.
Temperton was the keyboardist and principal songwriter for the 1970s funk band Heatwave, writing songs including "Star of a Story", "Always and Forever", "Boogie Nights", and "The Groove Line". After he was recruited by record producer Quincy Jones, Temperton wrote three hit songs for Jones' protégé Michael Jackson: "Thriller", "Off the Wall", and "Rock with You". He also wrote songs for George Benson, including "Give Me the Night" and "Love X Love", along with Patti Austin and James Ingram's US number-one single "Baby, Come to Me", among others.
Temperton wrote the soundtrack for the 1986 film Running Scared. In 1991 he won a Grammy Award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella for Birdland.
Rodney Lynn Temperton was born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, on 9 October 1949. Interviewed for the BBC Radio 2 documentary The Invisible Man: the Rod Temperton Story, he said that he was a musician from an early age: "My father wasn't the kind of person who would read you a story before you went off to sleep. He used to put a transistor radio in the crib, right on the pillow, and I'd go to sleep listening to Radio Luxembourg, and I think that had an influence."
Temperton attended De Aston Grammar School, Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, and he formed a group for the school's music competitions. He was a drummer at this time. "I'd get in the living room with my snare drum and my cymbal and play along to the BBC test card, which was all kinds of music they'd be playing continuously." On leaving school, he started working as a fish filleter for Ross Frozen Foods in Grimsby, Lincolnshire.
Temperton soon became a full-time musician as a keyboard player, and played in several dance bands. This took him to Worms in Germany. In 1974, he answered an advert in Melody Maker for a keyboardist, placed by Johnnie Wilder Jr., and as a result, became a member of the pop, disco, and funk band: Heatwave, which Wilder was putting together at the time. "He was the first British guy that I had ever met personally. He spoke kind of funny but he had a good sense of humour and he was a very friendly guy. After meeting him and then seeing him play I kind of determined he was a good enough player and entertainer and I just knew he would fit in the group", said Wilder.
Temperton played Wilder tunes he had been composing: "I was very interested because we were doing a lot of cover tunes—we weren't doing a lot of original material." The songs provided material for 1976's Too Hot to Handle, including "Boogie Nights", which broke the band in the United Kingdom and the United States, and the ballad "Always and Forever"; both tracks were million-sellers in the USA.
Despite the slick American sound, Temperton's working surroundings were still far from glamorous. Alan Kirk, a Yorkshire musician with Jimmy James and the Vagabonds who toured with Heatwave in the mid 1970s, remembered: "Always and Forever was written on a Wurlitzer piano at the side of a pile of pungent washing. Sorry to disappoint all the romantics." Producer Barry Blue recalled: "He had a very small flat, so everything had to be done within one room and he had piles of washing, and had the TV on top of the organ. It was a nightmare [...] he had trams running outside [...] but he made it: he just absorbed himself in the music and Rod seemed to come up with these amazing songs."
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Rod Temperton
Rodney Lynn Temperton (9 October 1949 – 25 September 2016) was an English musician, songwriter, and record producer.
Temperton was the keyboardist and principal songwriter for the 1970s funk band Heatwave, writing songs including "Star of a Story", "Always and Forever", "Boogie Nights", and "The Groove Line". After he was recruited by record producer Quincy Jones, Temperton wrote three hit songs for Jones' protégé Michael Jackson: "Thriller", "Off the Wall", and "Rock with You". He also wrote songs for George Benson, including "Give Me the Night" and "Love X Love", along with Patti Austin and James Ingram's US number-one single "Baby, Come to Me", among others.
Temperton wrote the soundtrack for the 1986 film Running Scared. In 1991 he won a Grammy Award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella for Birdland.
Rodney Lynn Temperton was born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, on 9 October 1949. Interviewed for the BBC Radio 2 documentary The Invisible Man: the Rod Temperton Story, he said that he was a musician from an early age: "My father wasn't the kind of person who would read you a story before you went off to sleep. He used to put a transistor radio in the crib, right on the pillow, and I'd go to sleep listening to Radio Luxembourg, and I think that had an influence."
Temperton attended De Aston Grammar School, Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, and he formed a group for the school's music competitions. He was a drummer at this time. "I'd get in the living room with my snare drum and my cymbal and play along to the BBC test card, which was all kinds of music they'd be playing continuously." On leaving school, he started working as a fish filleter for Ross Frozen Foods in Grimsby, Lincolnshire.
Temperton soon became a full-time musician as a keyboard player, and played in several dance bands. This took him to Worms in Germany. In 1974, he answered an advert in Melody Maker for a keyboardist, placed by Johnnie Wilder Jr., and as a result, became a member of the pop, disco, and funk band: Heatwave, which Wilder was putting together at the time. "He was the first British guy that I had ever met personally. He spoke kind of funny but he had a good sense of humour and he was a very friendly guy. After meeting him and then seeing him play I kind of determined he was a good enough player and entertainer and I just knew he would fit in the group", said Wilder.
Temperton played Wilder tunes he had been composing: "I was very interested because we were doing a lot of cover tunes—we weren't doing a lot of original material." The songs provided material for 1976's Too Hot to Handle, including "Boogie Nights", which broke the band in the United Kingdom and the United States, and the ballad "Always and Forever"; both tracks were million-sellers in the USA.
Despite the slick American sound, Temperton's working surroundings were still far from glamorous. Alan Kirk, a Yorkshire musician with Jimmy James and the Vagabonds who toured with Heatwave in the mid 1970s, remembered: "Always and Forever was written on a Wurlitzer piano at the side of a pile of pungent washing. Sorry to disappoint all the romantics." Producer Barry Blue recalled: "He had a very small flat, so everything had to be done within one room and he had piles of washing, and had the TV on top of the organ. It was a nightmare [...] he had trams running outside [...] but he made it: he just absorbed himself in the music and Rod seemed to come up with these amazing songs."