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Revision as of 18:15, 4 June 2005 by 216.175.116.151 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Biff Rose is an American singer/songwriter who was mainly active during the 1960s and 1970s.
Rose is a fringe figure from the sixties and seventies folk music scene, though he was not in any way truly ever a "folkie". Paul 'Biff' Rose first came to notice, in Hollywood, as a writer with George Carlin for various television sketch shows. Eventually, he moved back to the songwriting he had developed during his youth growing up in New Orleans. A song written with Paul Williams, Fill Your Heart, found its way on to a Tiny Tim record, and eventually, onto David Bowie's breakout record, Hunky Dory. In the meantime, Rose began writing his own lyrics and marrying them to the carnival-esque sounds he produced on the piano. His tendency was comedic diatribes addressing the political climate of the time. Then, at that special juncture every good performer wishes for, luck and talent united, and Biff Rose began a series of twelve intriguing performances on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. His albums began to sell more regularly, though his live performances often were more comedic rant than they were recitations of his "songs". He recorded sporadically as the seventies wore on, eventually vanishing from the scene completely. He said in interviews he lived out of his VW bus, then said he hoped to get a new one in exchange for the plugs.
Rose popped up again in the mid nineties, again in New Orleans, with a vanity disc, and began assembling new pastiches of his past style, ghosting the regularlity he had recorded with in the late 60's and early 70's. But these recordings were doused with 'in jokes' the audience of old was not privy to, and the wordplay relied heavily on angry sentiments of a man the world had passed by. Finally, in the year 2000, he was arrested in Florida for sexual misconduct with a minor, a boy under the age of eleven. He fled the state to avoid prosecution.
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