Eels

Alternative rock band Eels has landed four albums in the UK Top 10, beginning with 1996’s Beautiful Freak. ∙ A Beatles fan since early childhood, Eels leader Mark Oliver Everett—who goes by the stage name E—was inspired by Ringo Starr to start playing drums at age six. ∙ Eels’ 1998 album, Electro-Shock Blues, includes instrumental contributions from Jon Brion, T-Bone Burnett, Lisa Germano, and Grant-Lee Phillips. ∙ Legendary German filmmaker Wim Wenders directed the video for their single “Souljacker, Pt. 1.” ∙ “Going Fetal,” from 2005’s Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, features a guest vocal from Tom Waits, one of Everett’s all-time heroes. ∙ In 2007, Everett hosted Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, a documentary about his father, Dr. Hugh Everett III, who first proposed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. ∙ Pete Townshend called Everett’s autobiography, Things the Grandchildren Should Know, “one of the best books ever written by a contemporary artist.”