Who is placebo band

Placebo are an alternative rock band formed in London in , and currently consists of Brian Molko , Stefan Olsdal , and Steve Forrest. To date, they have released six studio albums , six EPs and twenty-seven singles. The band have gained a considerable amount of international recognition, and have sold over one million albums in the UK and over ten million worldwide.

Their style has varied greatly. The band's first album featured a raw sound and a fairly minimalistic instrumental lineup, but proceeding albums have had a slower, more melancholy, tone and they started experimenting with synthesisers and other, less traditional, forms of sound production particularly after Black Market Music.

The band have gained some measure of notoriety for the sexualities of its members Olsdal is not gay and Molko is not bisexual as well as for their excessive lifestyles and Molko's androgynous image, which are often referred to in their songs. In recent years, however, the band has become less sexually charged. Placebo was formed by Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal in Earlier, both had attended the American International School of Luxembourg, but didn't cross paths properly until in London, England.

At the time, Olsdal had dance class and was on his way home, when he met Molko at the South Kensington tube station , invited Olsdal to watch him perform at a local bar. On the strength of Molko's performance, Olsdal decided that they should start a band. Originally, the two were unable to decide on a drummer. Molko had some experience playing with Steve Hewitt , making Hewitt the ideal choice for drummer the two were introduced by Hewitt's ex-girlfriend in outside of Burger King.

But because Hewitt had prior commitments to the London band Breed, he only had time to play on occasional demos with Molko and Olsdal. This led Robert Schultzberg to assume the position of drummer when the band signed its contract with Caroline Records. Schultzberg had known Olsdal from boarding school in Sigtuna, Sweden as well as from an earlier Swedish band Elevating Addiction which they had both been members of.

Frequently in interviews, Molko has stated that the name is loosely a satirical reflection of the s cliche of naming one's band after a drug. As musicians you try to find a name for your band that represents you and you never really do, because, basically, names for bands lose their meaning after a while. They become a series of sounds that you associate with people in music.

The most important thing for a name is that you can imagine forty-thousand people screaming it in unison. Placebo's self titled debut album was released 17 July and was a major success, peaking at five on the UK Albums Charts at the height of the Britpop era. Placebo featured ten tracks eleven including the hidden bonus track " Hong Kong Farewell " , their most popular being Nancy Boy. In , Q Magazine readers voted it as the 87th greatest album of all time. The band remastered and reissued the album on 18 September for its tenth anniversary.

Tension with Schultzberg began to rise. The band initially let him go in September , but he was rehired to record the first seven inch single " Bruise Pristine ".

After an argument in August , right before doing their first TV show, Molko decided that it would be best for the band if Schultzberg left.

He came out publicly in an interview in Melody Maker in Olsdal met Molko by chance outside South Kensington tube station. The two of them formed Ashtray Heart, a lo-fi duo, playing mostly on toy instruments. They wrote four songs, but decided to try out as a serious band, so they invited Steve Hewitt who could not be in the band because he was already signed to another record company.

After that, Olsdal invited old schoolmate Robert Schultzberg who was at the time studying in UK to join as Placebo's drummer Hewitt would later replace him as the full-time drummer.

Together with Molko, he is credited as co-author on every Placebo song to date except "Ashtray Heart" from Battle for the Sun which was credited solely to Molko and co-produced Black Market Music and some b-sides.

Hotel Persona began when Olsdal and David Amen started providing dance tunes to friends' house parties; Javier Solo was recruited to sing Spanish vocals, and Olsdal sang the English versions. In live versions of "Teenage Angst", "Centerfolds" and most acoustic performances he uses a Technics keyboard.

During the Meds era, he also used an Epiphone Flying V Bass for live performances of "Nancy Boy", "Come Home" and other occasional songs mostly rarely played songs from the first album , which appeared on the Infra-red video, although this guitar was smashed by Olsdal at the end of their Reading Festival set. Recently, he is seen playing an olympic white Fender Jaguar Bass, in the "For What It's Worth" video, and is seen playing a white Rickenbacker bass in live performance on television programs.

His amplification is a mixture of Ampeg for basses and Marshall for guitars amplifiers. This current tour, titled A Place for Us to Dream — 20 Years of Placebo, marks two decades since the release of the self-titled debut album for fans of pedantry, the tour began in and enables the band to look back on their career thus far, an uncharacteristic move for the band.

I was struggling to make an emotional connection to those old songs, which is kind of why we stopped playing them in the first place. If we were less contrary and more career-driven, then we would just play what people want to hear but performing is an act that fills our souls and that means that we need to get something out of it too.

We're not interested in stepping out on stage and simply trying to make everybody happy, because that would be a mistruth. What we are interested in is telling our truth and in order to do that, we need to have an emotional connection to the music and the audience, otherwise it's merely a mechanical act and personally, I'm not interested in engaging in a mechanical act in front of thousands of people.

All of which makes the idea of a retrospective tour seem less a place for us to dream and more a place for Molko to re-live a monotonous nightmare night after night for the best part of a year; so what changed? I realised that making people happy is actually an extremely rewarding experience and that became the fuel in the tank for us.

What is it exactly about these two songs in particular that causes such anguish for the author? It was never intended to be a single, but the record company heard it and went 'there's your single'. And we said 'really?

As was his wont, Bowie took the band under his wing, making regular live appearances with them, inviting them out on tour and providing sound counsel and mentorship. Recorded in front of a live audience in London, it featured drastic reworkings of past hits and deep cuts including the first-ever live performance of "Bosco" , as well as guest appearances by Majke Voss Romme Broken Twin and Joan as Police Woman.

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