Arthur Brown (born Arthur Wilton Brown on 24 June 1942) is an English rock musician best known for his flamboyant theatrical performances, powerful wide-ranging operatic voice and his number-one hit in the UK Singles Chart and Canada, "Fire", in 1968.Brown has been lead singer of various groups, most notably The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Kingdom Come, followed by a varied solo career as well as associations with Hawkwind, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa.Though Brown has had limited commercial success and has never released another recording as commercially successful as "Fire", he has been a significant influence on Alice Cooper, Peter Gabriel, Marilyn Manson, George Clinton, Kiss, King Diamond and Bruce Dickinson among others, and his songs have been covered or sampled by a range of artists including Ozzy Osbourne, The Prodigy and The Who.Brown's voice, and in particular his high banshee screams, are a precursor to the banshee screaming of many later heavy metal singers, and his theatrical concepts and stage presence such as the face makeup, voodoo dancing and flaming helmet pioneered a lot of what was to become Shock Rock and Progressive Rock. The third and final Kingdom Come album, Journey (1973), is noteworthy for being one of the first (if not the first) rock albums to feature a drum machine, especially on the track "Time Captives".Following the success of the single "Fire", the press would often refer to Brown as "The God of Hellfire" in reference to the opening shouted line of the song, a moniker that exists to this day.
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