John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong
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John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong is the best known band of Australian musician John Kennedy, a Sydney-based singer songwriter with a penchant for strong melodies and "heart on your sleeve" pop songs often with country and western influences. This and his other band names are essentially stage names for Kennedy himself.[who?]
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[edit] Early life
Kennedy was born John Francis Kennedy in Liverpool, England on 1 July 1958. His family later moved to Australia.[citation needed]
[edit] JFK and the Cuban Crisis
He formed his first band, JFK & The Cuban Crisis, with former school friend James Paterson in Brisbane in 1980. They quickly established themselves on the small Brisbane scene with their smart Squeeze influenced pop. After releasing two cassette albums and playing support spots with the Pretenders and Ian Dury and the Blockheads, the band moved to Sydney in 1982. Despite this independent success, JFK broke up in 1984 when Kennedy embarked on a solo career, with which he made his mark with his indie rock, pop and suburban country band John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong.
[edit] Sydney
John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong recorded some of the great pop songs about Sydney; two immortal classics which deserve particular mention are "Miracle (in Marrickville)" and "King Street" (ie: King Street in Newtown).[who?] Those songs, released on the influential Waterfront Records and Red Eye Records labels, performed well on the independent charts[citation needed] but deserved mainstream chart action and the band itself clearly deserved major label attention. Their songs remain absolute classics of the Australian city pop genre.[who?]
John's 7" singles were often distinguished by the unusual covers. The single for "Miracle (in Marrickville)" featured an actual printed photograph of John standing in front of an auto electrician garage, and for "Big County" a plastic map of Australia was affixed to every cover.[who?]
[edit] With The Mexican Spitfires
In 1989 John Kennedy teamed with another band that wrote often about living in Sydney, The Mexican Spitfires, for one or two of his solo shows, where he performed a few of his own numbers with The Spitfires acting as his backing band.
[edit] Sydney 2000
Surprisingly only "King Street" made it onto the SONY Music compilation of songs about Sydney Somewhere in Sydney, which was released in the Olympic year 2000 but with no fanfare and seemed to sink without a trace.[who?]
[edit] Appreciation
For more detail and a full discography up until 1989 see "Who's Who Of Australian Rock" (2nd ed) Compiled by Chris Spencer The Five Mile Press.
[edit] External Links
- King Street - John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong - YouTube
- Miracle in Marrickville - John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong - YouTube
