John Lurie

John Lurie (born December 14, 1952) is an American musician, painter, actor, director, and producer.

He co-founded the Lounge Lizards jazz ensemble; has acted in 19 films, including Stranger than Paradise and Down by Law; has composed and performed music for 20 television and film works; and he produced, directed, and starred in the Fishing with John television series.

In high school, he played basketball and harmonica and jammed with Mississippi Fred McDowell and Canned Heat in 1968.

He briefly played the harmonica in a band from Boston, but soon switched to the guitar and eventually the saxophone.

After high school, he hitchhiked across the United States to Berkeley, California.

He moved to New York City in 1974, then briefly visited London, where he performed his first saxophone solo at the Acme Gallery.

In 1978 John formed the Lounge Lizards with his brother Evan Lurie on piano; they were the only constant members in the band through numerous lineup changes.

Robert Palmer of The New York Times described the band as "staking out new territory west of Mingus, east of Bernard Herrman."

While originally a somewhat satirical "fake jazz" combo spawned by the noisy No Wave music scene, the Lounge Lizards gradually became a showcase for Lurie's increasingly sophisticated compositions.

The band had five to eight members.

Musicians included, at different times, guitarists Arto Lindsay, Marc Ribot, David Tronzo, Michele Navazio and Danny Blumenthal; cellist Jane Scarpantoni; vibraphonist Bryan Carrott; keyboardist John Medeski; drummers Anton Fier, Grant Calvin Weston and Dougie Bowne; percussionists Billy Martin, E.J. Rodriguez and Ben Perowsky; bassists Erik Sanko, Tony Scherr, Oren Bloedow and Tony Garnier; trumpeter Steven Bernstein; trombonist Curtis Fowlkes and saxophonists Roy Nathanson and Michael Blake.

They made music for 20 years.

Lurie's 1980s NYC memoir, The History of Bones, was published by Penguin Random House in August 2021.

Lurie was born in Minneapolis and raised with his brother Evan and sister Liz in New Orleans, Louisiana and Worcester, Massachusetts.

His mother, an artist, was Welsh, and his father was half Russian Jewish and half Sicilian.

In the 1980s, Lurie starred in the Jim Jarmusch films Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law, and made cameos in the films Permanent Vacation and Downtown 81.

Parallel to the final version of the Lounge Lizards in the early 1990s, Lurie formed a smaller group, the John Lurie National Orchestra.

Lurie played alto and soprano saxes, Grant Calvin Weston played drums, and Billy Martin performed on congas, timbales, Kalimba, and other small percussion.

Unlike the tightly-arranged music of the Lounge Lizards, the Orchestra's music was heavily improvised and compositions were credited to all three musicians.

They released the album Men With Sticks (Crammed Discs 1993) and recorded music for the Fishing With John TV series.

In 1993 Lurie composed the theme to Late Night with Conan O'Brien with Howard Shore.

In 1996 his soundtrack for Get Shorty was nominated for a Grammy Award, and his album The Legendary Marvin Pontiac: Greatest Hits has been praised by critics and fellow musicians.

The theme was also used when O'Brien hosted on The Tonight Show. Lurie formed his own record label in 1998, Strange & Beautiful Music, and released the Lounge Lizards album Queen of All Ears and a Fishing with John soundtrack.

Lurie has written scores for over 20 movies, including Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, Mystery Train, Clay Pigeons, Animal Factory, and Get Shorty, for which he received a Grammy Award nomination.

In 1999 Lurie released the album The Legendary Marvin Pontiac: Greatest Hits, a posthumous collection of the work of an African-Jewish musician named Marvin Pontiac, a fictional character Lurie created.

It includes a biographical profile describing the troubled genius's hard life, and the cover shows a photograph purported to be one of the few ever taken of him.

Lurie wrote the music and performed with John Medeski, Billy Martin, G. Calvin Weston, Marc Ribot, and Tony Scherr.

The album received praise from David Bowie, Angelique Kidjo, Iggy Pop, Leonard Cohen and others.

Since 2000, he has suffered from symptoms attributed to chronic Lyme disease and has focused his attention on painting.

His art has been shown in galleries and museums around the world.

His primitivist painting Bear Surprise became an internet meme in Russia in 2006.

His television series, Painting with John, debuted on HBO in January 2021 and ran for three seasons before being cancelled.

On choosing to create a character to whom the album would be fictionally credited, Lurie said in a 2008 interview, "For a long time, I was threatening to do a vocal record. But the idea of me putting out a record where I sang seemed ostentatious or pretentious. Like the music of Telly Savalas . . . I don't sing very well, I was shy about it. As a character, it made it easier."

In February 2014 the Orchestra released The Invention of Animals, a collection of out-of-print studio tracks and unreleased live recordings from the '90s.

Columnist Mel Minter wrote:

This new release may require a reassessment of Lurie the saxophonist because the playing is engagingly fluid, inventive, and visceral—and well worth revisiting.

. . . The emotional immediacy of Lurie's playing – and that of his partners – makes for riveting stuff.

Think of his sax not so much as a musical instrument, but instead, as a window with a clear view of his soul.

Jeff Jackson of Jazziz added, "The resulting music is delicate, primal and utterly gorgeous."

In 2017, John Lurie released his first music album in 17 years, Marvin Pontiac: The Asylum Tapes.