Kevin Shields

Shields' parents had emigrated from Ireland to the United States in the 1950s, when the couple were teenagers.

Shields attended Christ the King, a Roman Catholic primary school which he described as "a really horrible school run by psychopathic nuns".

They lived in Flushing, a neighbourhood in north-central Queens, relocating to Commack, Long Island, when Shields was four, where he lived until the age of ten.

Kevin Patrick Shields (born 21 May 1963) is an American-born Irish musician, singer-songwriter, composer, and producer, best known as the vocalist and guitarist of the band My Bloody Valentine.

Kevin Patrick Shields was born on 21 May 1963 in Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York City, United States.

He is the eldest of five siblings born to Irish parents; his mother was a nurse and his father was an executive in the food industry.

Shields later said that The Complex had formed out of "what all the nerds and weirdos actually do as opposed to the cool people with the leather jackets," who were forming fictional groups around Dublin in the late 1970s.

According to Shields, the band played "a handful of gigs" during their short-lived career, the first of which included covers of songs by the Sex Pistols and Ramones.

The Complex disbanded when Ó Maonlaí left to form Hothouse Flowers, and Shields and Ó Cíosóig began rehearsing with another bassist.

In 1973, Shields moved to Dublin, Ireland, with his parents and siblings due to financial conditions and in order to remain close to their extended family.

Shields was raised in Cabinteely, a suburb in Dublin's Southside.

He has described the experience of moving to Ireland as a culture shock, "going from, as far as I was concerned, the modern world to some distant past."

According to Shields, the main difference between the US and Ireland that affected him was the attitude towards music culture: "[in the US] there was no Top of the Pops, there was nothing like that, there was no MTV; and over in [Ireland], everything was completely catered to for teenagers."

He said that the change was "what got [him] into music in a really big way."

Shields befriended drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig in south Dublin during the summer of 1978, and together they answered an advertisement placed by a 12-year-old musician to form punk rock band The Complex.

Ó Cíosóig's schoolfriend Liam Ó Maonlaí from Coláiste Eoin in Booterstown was recruited as lead vocalist, and the band began rehearsing.

Shields received his first electric guitar, a Hondo SG, as a Christmas present from his parents in 1979.

In 1981, the trio formed A Life in the Day, a band that focused on a more post-punk sound influenced by Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division.

The band recorded a demo tape, which features Shields' first experimentation with pitch bending, and performed at local venues to crowds of no more than a hundred people.

A Life in the Day disbanded in 1981, and Shields and Ó Cíosóig went on to form My Bloody Valentine in early 1983 with lead vocalist David Conway.

Conway suggested a number of potential band names (including The Burning Peacocks) before the trio settled for My Bloody Valentine.

Shields has since claimed that he was unaware at the time that My Bloody Valentine was the title of a 1981 Canadian slasher film.

On Shields's suggestion, Conway contacted Gavin Friday, lead vocalist of the Dublin post-punk band, the Virgin Prunes.

Friday's contacts secured them a show in Tilburg, Netherlands, in early 1984, and the band relocated to the Netherlands.

They lived there for a further nine months, squatting in Amsterdam and later in a more rural area, where Shields worked on a farm.

Due to a lack of opportunities and correct documentation, the band relocated to West Berlin, Germany, in late 1984 and recorded their debut mini album, This Is Your Bloody Valentine (1985).

The album, which features Shields on bass, failed to receive much attention, and the band returned temporarily to the Netherlands before settling in London in 1985.

The band recruited bassist Debbie Googe and released their debut extended play Geek! in December 1985.

The EP received little attention, and due to the band's slow progress Shields contemplated relocating to New York, where members of his family were living.

The band's two successive releases, The New Record by My Bloody Valentine (1986) and "Sunny Sundae Smile" (1987), brought minor success, peaking at number 22 and number 6 respectively on the UK Independent Albums Chart and Singles Chart.

They became influential on the evolution of alternative rock with two of their studio albums Isn't Anything (1988) and Loveless (1991), pioneering a subgenre known as shoegaze.

Shields's texturised guitar sound and his experimentation with his guitars' tremolo systems resulted in the creation of the "glide guitar" technique, which became a recognisable aspect of My Bloody Valentine's sound, along with his meticulous production techniques.

Following My Bloody Valentine's dissolution in the late 1990s, Shields became a frequent guest musician, producer, engineer, and remixer with various bands and artists, including Experimental Audio Research, Yo La Tengo, Dinosaur Jr, and Mogwai.

The album was composed entirely by Shields and had been in production since the late 1990s, when Shields was rumoured to have been suffering from writer's block.

Shields has since been featured in several publications' best-of-lists, including Rolling Stone 100 Greatest Guitarists and Spin's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Multiple musicians have also cited him as an influence, including Billy Corgan and J Mascis.

In 1998 he became a touring member of Primal Scream.

Shields contributed several original compositions to the soundtrack of Sofia Coppola's 2003 film Lost in Translation, which earned him nominations for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) awards.

My Bloody Valentine reunited in 2007, and released their third studio album m b v in February 2013.

In 2008, Shields released a collaborative live album together with Patti Smith entitled The Coral Sea.