Five For Fighting is a Los Angeles, California, USA based band. Actually the band is really a stage alias for multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter John Ondrasik. John was encouraged to adopt a stage name by his first record label because at the time singer/songwriters were not a very popular selling item. So the name Five for Fighting, a hockey penalty, was created as a marketing ploy, which incidentally John suggested naming the "band".
John Ondrasik has been compared to artists such as Elton John, Dave Matthews and Ben Folds Five. His songwriting style covers quite a range of interests from political commentary on world wide social issues to gentle lovelorn compositions.
John was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles, California. At the age of two his mother taught him to play piano. When he was thirteen he picked up guitar from his older sister so he could learn the guitar parts on Peter Frampton's "Come Alive" album. John has even experimented with opera singing.
John wanted a career in music, but as a backup he attended UCLA where he initially majored in Computer Science. However the long hours in front of a computer screen did not agree with John's goals so he changed his major to mathematics so that he could spend more time developing his music playing and song writing skills. He eventually earned a Bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics.
His break in music came when John met a girl who worked at EMI Publishing. She liked his music and forwarded his demo to an EMI A&R guy. Shortly thereafter Ondrasik found himself signed. His first album, "Message for Albert" was two-years-in-the-making and was released in 1997. Somewhere during this period of album development John's
original label folded and he signed with Capitol, a relationship which only lasted a short while. But the girl who helped him get signed stuck by him and they were married.
For a while after parting with his label John actually quit the music business. He cut his hair and got a 9 to 5 job. But he kept getting emails from people who bought the first album. This support kept him going with his song writing and playing.
In 2000 Ondrasik signed a recording contract with Sony Records. In short order he was able to release Five For Fighting's second album. This album, named "America Town", had fantastic reviews and tremendous sales and quickly reached platinum status. The success of the track "Superman (It's Not Easy)" launched John Ondrasik into the career he always wanted. Five for Fighting has become a real group of musicians and has toured with Dave Matthews, David Gray, Evan and Jaron, and Train.
John used the success of "America Town" to take some time off from the day to day routine and work on a third album. He and is family, his wife and daughter, rented a house near his producer's studio in Northern California and spent 10 months composing and recording his new album "The Battle For Everything". The album features the songs "100 Years," "The Devil in the Wishing Well" and "If God Made You."
Bio written by: GrayBeard |
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