John Lilley (born March 3, 1954) is an American

guitarist A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselve ...

singer Singing is the art of creating music with the voice. It is the oldest form of musical expression, and the human voice can be considered the first musical instrument. The definition of singing varies across sources. Some sources define singi ...

, and

songwriter A songwriter is a person who creates musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music genre and film scoring. ...

best known for being a member of rock band

the Hooters The Hooters is an American rock music, rock band, which was founded in Philadelphia in 1980. They combine elements of rock, reggae, ska, and folk music. The Hooters first gained major commercial success in the United States in the mid-1980s du ...

Early life

John Lilley learned to play the guitar at nine years old after he saw

the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...

perform on ''

The Ed Sullivan Show ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' is an American television variety show that ran on CBS from June 20, 1948, to March 28, 1971, and was hosted by New York City, New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in September 1971 by the ''CB ...

'' on February 9, 1964. He initially learned to play

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

and

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

, with his first teacher being folk and bluegrass expert

Jerry Ricks Gerald Lawrence "Jerry" Ricks (May 22, 1940December 10, 2007), often billed as "Philadelphia" Jerry Ricks, was an American country blues guitarist and singer. Life and career Ricks was born and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, playing trump ...

. He eventually studied jazz improvisation with Dennis Sandole and then jazz, theory, orchestration, composition and arranging with Calvin Harris. Lilley also participated in visual arts, drawing voraciously while in school and mostly painting as an adult.

Music career

In his twenties during the mid-1970s, Lilley got involved in the local

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

rock music Rock is a Music genre, genre of popular music that originated in the United States as "rock and roll" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of styles from the mid-1960s, primarily in the United States and the United Kingdo ...

scene, as the manager and guitarist of the Get Right Band and later became the guitarist for

Robert Hazard Robert Hazard (''né'' Rimato; August 21, 1948 – August 5, 2008) was an American rock musician from Philadelphia. He wrote, composed, and recorded (as a demo) the song " Girls Just Want to Have Fun" in 1979, which was recorded in 198 ...

and the Heroes, who went on to write

Cyndi Lauper Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper ( ; born June 22, 1953) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. Known for her distinctive image, featuring a variety of hair colors and eccentric clothing, and for her powerful four-octave vocal range;Jerome, ...

's hit "

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" is a single made famous in 1983 by the American singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper, written by Robert Hazard in 1979, with some of the lyrics changed by Lauper. It was released by Portrait Records as Lauper's debut sin ...

The Hooters

After a sudden and unexpected departure from the Heroes, Lilley joined another local Philadelphia band, the Hooters, in 1983. He is a guitarist for the band. The Hooters first gained major commercial success in the United States in the mid-1980s due to heavy radio airplay and

MTV MTV (an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable television television channel, channel and the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on ...

rotation of several songs, including "

All You Zombies All or ALL may refer to: عرص Biology and medicine * Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer * Anterolateral ligament, a ligament in the knee * ''All.'', taxonomic author abbreviation for Carlo Allioni (1728–1804), Italian physician and prof ...

", "Day by Day", " And We Danced" and "Where Do the Children Go". The band played at three major musical events of the late 20th century:

Live Aid Live Aid was a two-venue benefit concert and music-based fundraising initiative held on Saturday, 13 July 1985. The event was organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise further funds for relief of the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia, a m ...

in 1985,

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

concert at

Giants Stadium Giants Stadium (sometimes referred to as Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands) was a stadium located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The venue was open from 1976 to 2010, and primarily hosted sporting events and ...

in 1986, and

Roger Waters George Roger Waters (born 6 September 1943) is an English musician and singer-songwriter. In 1965, he co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd as the bassist. Following the departure of the group's main songwriter Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became ...

The Wall Concert in Berlin ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...

in 1990.

The Hooters went on hiatus in 1995. Lilley reunited with the Hooters on successful headlining European summer tours in 2003, 2004 and 2005. The year 2007 saw the release of ''

Time Stand Still ''Time Stand Still'' is the sixth studio album by American rock band the Hooters, released in Europe on September 14, 2007, and released in the US on February 5, 2008. Background The Hooters gathered in October 2006 at keyboard player Rob Hy ...

'', their first album of new material since 1993. The Hooters released ''Rocking and Swing'' in 2023, supported by a tour of the United States with

Rick Springfield Richard Lewis Springthorpe (born 23 August 1949), known professionally as Rick Springfield, is an Australian-American musician and actor. He was a member of the pop rock group Zoot from 1969 to 1971, then started his solo career with his debut ...

Other musical projects

In addition to his work with the Hooters, Lilley has composed and performed several

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a Stage (theatre), stage. The performe ...

and

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

scores. Lilley contributed music to ''Sister Carrie'', a play that was adapted by Louis Lippa from Theodore Dreiser's 1900 novel of the same name and performed at the People's Light and Theatre Company in Malvern in 1991. Lilley also contributed to ''Collecting Gravity'', which was performed in 1992 by the Terry Beck Dance Troupe at the

Edinburgh Festival Fringe The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as the Edinburgh Fringe, the Fringe or the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2024 spanned 25 days, sold more than 2.6 million tickets and featur ...

. Lilley has played with a band known as the John Lilley Band. His solo debut CD ''Lucky Kinda Guy'', which has been described as "a country-tinged, roots-rock journey into Lilley's mind, his life and, most importantly, into his heart", was released in 2009.

Avantgardeners

Lilley founded a

landscape gardening A landscape is the visible features of an area of Terrestrial ecoregion, land, its landforms, and how they integrate with Nature, natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Diction ...

company in the

area, Avantgardeners.

Personal life

Lilley is openly gay.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lilley, John 1954 births Living people 20th-century American guitarists 20th-century American male musicians American male guitarists American male singers American rock guitarists American rock singers Guitarists from Philadelphia The Hooters members