Stanard "Stan" Ridgway (born April 5, 1954) is an American singer-songwriter, and film and television composer known for his distinctive voice, dramatic lyrical narratives, and eclectic solo albums. He was the original lead singer and a founding member of the band Wall of Voodoo.
Early life
Stan Ridgway was born in Barstow, California, in the "high desert", and raised in Los Angeles. He claims to have been a budding ventriloquist who spent his first night in jail at the age of 12 for stealing street signs. Ridgway also had a childhood fascination with folk music, pestering his parents until they bought him a banjo at the age of 14.
Wall of Voodoo
The band was named by Ridgway before their first show, in reference to a comment made by a friend, while recording and overdubbing a Kalamazoo Rhythm Ace drum machine, which was a gift from voice actor Daws Butler. While listening to some of the music created in the studio, Ridgway jokingly compared the multiple-drum-machine and Farfisa-organ-laden recordings to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, whereupon the friend commented it sounded more like a "wall of voodoo" and the name stuck.
Wall of Voodoo's music was a mix of new wave and Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western soundtracks of the 1960s. Adding to the music's distinctiveness was percussive and textural experimentation, i.e. mixing drum machines with unconventional instruments such as pots, pans and various kitchen utensils, raw electronics with interlocking melodic figures as well as twangy spaghetti-western guitar. On top of the mix was Ridgway's unusual vocal style and highly stylized, cinematic narratives heavily influenced by science fiction and film noir, sung from the perspective of ordinary people and characters wrestling with ironies inside the American Dream.
Solo career
Ridgway embarked on a solo career in 1983, shortly after Wall of Voodoo's appearance at the US Festival. He collaborated on the song "Don't Box Me In" with Stewart Copeland for the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film Rumble Fish. In 1986 he released his first proper solo album, The Big Heat, which included the top 5 European (including UK) hit "Camouflage".