Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905^{[dubious – discuss]} – April 5, 1976) was at times an aviator, an engineer, an industrialist, a movie producer, a playboy, an eccentric and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He is famous for building the Hercules airplane, commonly known as the Spruce Goose, and for his debilitating eccentric behavior later in life.

Birth

Hughes was born in Houston, Texas, USA, on December 24, 1905, although the precise date of his birth is doubted by some biographers. His parents were Allene Gano Hughes and Howard R. Hughes Sr., who invented the dual cone roller bit, which allowed rotary drilling for oil in previously inaccessible places. He founded Hughes Tool Company to commercialize this invention. His parents died while he was still in his teens, and he inherited a substantial part of his father's fortune.[1]

Education

As a teenager, Hughes declared that his goals in life were to become the world's best golfer, the world's best pilot, and the world's best movie producer. Despite attending many good schools, he never earned a diploma. He attended the Fessenden School in West Newton, Massachusetts (near Boston), and the Thacher School in Ojai, California. His father subsequently arranged for him to audit math and engineering classes at the California Institute of Technology. He then enrolled at the Rice Institute (later known as Rice University).

Hollywood

Hughes used his fortune to become a movie producer. He was at first dismissed by Hollywood insiders as a rich man's son. However, his first two films released in 1927, Everybody's Acting and Two Arabian Knights were financial successes, the latter winning an Academy Award for Best Director of a Comedy Picture. The Racket in 1928 and The Front Page in 1931 were nominated for Academy Awards. He spent a then-unheard-of $4 million of his own money to make Hell's Angels, which he wrote and directed and which became a smash hit, along with his 1932 film Scarface (which he produced). Hughes's best-known film may be The Outlaw starring Jane Russell, for whom Hughes designed a special brassière. Scarface and The Outlaw received attention from industry censors; Scarface for its violence, The Outlaw for Russell's physical charms. He signed an unknown actor David Bacon in 1942 to play Billy The Kid. He later replaced Bacon with Jack Buetel, whom he had turned to sexually according to Cubby Broccoli and Lucien Ballard, both of whom worked on The Outlaw. Bacon's murder the following year sparked an investigation which brought to light allegations of a sexual affair between Bacon and Hughes which may have indirectly led to Bacon's death. Greta Keller, Vienna-born cabaret singer and actress and Bacon's widow, claimed later that Bacon wanted to get out of his contract with Hughes and had been prepared to reveal intimate details about their relationship in order to secure a release from the studio.

Hughes was a notorious ladies' man, and allegedly had affairs with many famous women including Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Gene Tierney, and Ava Gardner. Bessie Love was a mistress during his first marriage. Jean Harlow accompanied him to the premiere of Hell's Angels, although it's uncertain if they were an item. Less-significant affairs are rumored to have occurred between Hughes and a long list of celebrities.

Aviator and engineer

Hughes was a lifelong aircraft enthusiast, pilot, and self-taught aircraft engineer. He set many world records, and designed and built several aircraft himself while heading Hughes Aircraft. The most important aircraft he designed was the Hughes H-1 Racer. On September 13, 1935, Hughes, flying the H-1, set the world speed record of 352 mph (566 km/h) over his test course near Santa Ana, California. (The previous record was 314 mph (505 km/h). A year and a half later (January 19, 1937), flying a somewhat re-designed H-1 Racer, Hughes set a new trans-continental speed record by flying non-stop from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds (beating his own previous record of 9 hours, 27 minutes). His average speed over the flight was 322 mph (518 km/h). [2]

The H-1 Racer featured a number of design innovations: It had retractable landing gear and all rivets and joints set flush into the body of the plane, to reduce drag. The H-1 Racer influenced the design of a number of World War II fighter airplanes such as the Mitsubishi Zero, the Focke-Wulf FW190, and the F6F Hellcat.(see Wright Tools web site.) The H-1 Racer was donated to the Smithsonian in 1975 and is on display at the National Air and Space Museum.

On July 10, 1938 Hughes set another record by completing a flight around the world in just 91 hours (3 days, 19 hours), beating the previous record by more than four days. For this flight he did not fly a plane of his own design but a Lockheed Super Electra (a twin engine plane with a four man crew).

In 1938, the William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas, known at the time as Houston Municipal Airport, was re-named "Howard Hughes Airport," but the name was changed back after people objected to naming the airport after a living person.

Hughes received many awards as an aviator, including the Harmon Trophy in 1936 and 1938, the Collier Trophy in 1939, the Octave Chanute Award in 1940, and a special Congressional medal for his round-the-world flight. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he never bothered to come to Washington to pick up the medal, and it was eventually mailed to him by President Harry S. Truman.

In 1938, William John Frye, a former Hollywood stunt flier and the first director of operations of Transcontinental and Western Air (T&WA), put in an order for the new 33-passenger Boeing 307 Stratoliner, the first commercial plane with a pressurized passenger cabin. He convinced Hughes, also enamored of avant-garde aircraft technology, to finance this purchase. By doing so, Hughes became the principal stockholder of T&WA in April 1939. Throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, T&WA (which became Trans World Airlines) continued to bet on the most advanced planes available, largely due to Hughes' own interest in aircraft development. In particular, Hughes helped specify the design of the Lockheed Constellation, with its pressurized cabin and distinctive tail, buying several planes for TWA in order to be able to fly high altitude (20,000 ft/6600 m) long distance routes above the turbulence of low altitude weather. The airline would grow significantly under his leadership.

Air crash

Hughes was involved in a near-fatal aircraft accident on July 7, 1946, while piloting the experimental U.S. Army spy plane XF-11 over Los Angeles. An oil leak caused one of the counter-rotating propellers to reverse its pitch, making the plane yaw sharply. Hughes tried to save the craft by landing it on the Los Angeles Country Club golf course, but seconds before he reached his attempted destination the plane started dropping dramatically and crashed in the Beverly Hills neighborhood surrounding the country club. When the plane finally skidded to a halt after mowing down three houses, the fuel tanks exploded, setting fire to the plane and a nearby home. Hughes lay wounded beside the burning airplane until he was rescued by Marine master sergeant William L. Durkin who happened to be in the area visiting nearby friends. The injuries Hughes sustained in the crash — including a crushed collar bone, six broken ribs and numerous third-degree burns — affected him for the rest of his life. Many attribute his long-term addiction to opiates to his use of morphine as a painkiller during his convalescence, during which he developed refinements to his hospital bed. The trademark mustache he wore afterwards was meant to cover a scar on his upper lip resulting from the accident.

Spruce Goose

One of his greatest endeavors was the H-4 Hercules, nicknamed the Spruce Goose (although its frame was built predominantly of birch, not spruce), a massive flying boat completed just after the end of World War II. The Hercules flew only once (with Hughes at the controls) on November 2, 1947. The plane was originally commissioned by the U.S. government for use in World War II, but was not completed until after the war. Hughes was called to testify before the Senate War Investigating Committee to explain why the plane had not been delivered to the United States Army Air Forces during the war, but the committee disbanded without releasing a final report. Because the U.S. government denied him the use of aircraft aluminum, which had been rationed, Hughes built the plane largely from birch in his Westchester, California facility to fulfill his contract. The plane was on display alongside RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California for many years before being moved to McMinnville, Oregon, where it is now part of the Evergreen Aviation Museum.

RKO

Hughes acquired RKO in 1948, a struggling major Hollywood studio. He interfered with production and even shut down shooting for weeks or months. RKO was sold in 1955 to Desilu Productions.

After the war, Hughes fashioned his company Hughes Aircraft into a major defense contractor. Portions of the company wound up with McDonnell Douglas, and eventually Boeing when those two companies merged. The remainder of Hughes Aircraft was sold to Raytheon in 1998.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

In 1953, Hughes launched the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Delaware, formed with the express goal of basic biomedical research including trying to understand, in Hughes' words, the "genesis of life itself." It was viewed by many as a tax haven for his wealth: Hughes gave all his stock of the Hughes Aircraft Company to the institute, thereby turning the defense contractor into a tax-exempt charity. The deal was the topic of a protracted legal battle between Hughes and the Internal Revenue Service which Hughes ultimately won. After his death in 1976, many thought that the balance of Hughes' estate would go to the institute, although it ultimately was divided among his cousins and other heirs, given the lack of a will to the contrary. It is America's second largest private foundation and the largest devoted to biological and medical research with a 2004 endowment of $12.4 billion.

On January 12, 1957, Hughes married actress Jean Peters; they divorced in 1971.

Shortly before the 1960 Presidential election, Richard Nixon was harmed by revelations of a $205,000 loan from Hughes to Nixon's brother that was never repaid.

Hughes Space and Communications was founded in 1961. In the same year, TWA's management sued its chairman Hughes because of differences in running the company; he was forced to sell his stock in TWA in 1966 for more than $500 million. During the 1970s, Hughes went back into the airline business, buying airline Air West and renaming it Hughes Airwest.

Glomar Explorer

In 1972, Hughes was approached by the CIA to help secretly recover a Soviet submarine which had sunk near Hawaii four years before. He agreed. Thus the Glomar Explorer, a special-purpose salvage vessel, was born. Hughes' involvement provided the CIA with a plausible cover story, having to do with civilian marine research at extreme depths, and the mining of undersea manganese nodules.

In the summer of 1974 Glomar Explorer attempted to raise the Soviet vessel. But during the recovery a mechanical failure in the ship's grapple caused half of the submarine to break off and fall to the ocean floor. This section is believed to have held many of the most sought after items, including its code book and nuclear missiles. Two nuclear-tipped torpedoes and some cryptographic machines were recovered, along with the bodies of six Soviet submariners who were subsequently given formal burial at sea in a filmed ceremony. The operation, known as Project Jennifer, became public in February 1975 because burglars had obtained secret documents from Hughes' headquarters in June 1974.

Recluse

By the late 1950s, if not earlier, Hughes developed debilitating symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Once one of the most visible men in America, he ultimately vanished from public view altogether, although the tabloids continued to follow rumors regarding his behavior and whereabouts. He was reported at different times to be terminally ill, mentally unstable, or possibly dead.

Hughes had displayed symptoms consistent with OCD his entire life: In the 1930s, close friends reported he was obsessed with the size of peas — one of his favorite foods — and used a special fork to sort them by size before he ate. While producing The Outlaw, Hughes became absorbed by a minor flaw in one of Jane Russell's blouses, claiming that the fabric bunched up along a seam and gave the appearance of two nipples on each of Russell's breasts. He was reportedly so concerned by the matter as to write a detailed memorandum to the film crew on how to fix the problem.

Hughes eventually became a complete recluse, locking himself away in darkened rooms in a drug-induced daze. Though he always kept a barber on call, Hughes only had his hair cut and nails trimmed about once a year. Several doctors were kept in the house on a substantial salary, though Hughes rarely saw them and usually refused to follow their advice. Toward the end of his life, his inner circle was largely composed of Mormons because he considered them trustworthy — even though he was not a member of the Latter Day Saint movement.[3]

Hughes by this time had become severely addicted to codeine, Valium, and a number of other drugs and was becoming increasingly frail. Many biographies and fictionalized works state that he stored his urine in jars and wore Kleenex boxes as shoes, although he reportedly did the latter only once, as "protection" when a toilet flooded. He insisted on using paper towels to pick up objects, so that he could insulate himself from germs. Hughes had contracted syphilis as a young man, and much of the strange behavior at the end of his life — his well-documented aversion to handshaking, for example — has been attributed by modern biographers to the tertiary stage of that disease. The condition first manifested itself in the form of tiny blisters that erupted on his hands. After receiving medical treatment for his symptoms, Hughes was warned by his doctor not to shake hands for some time, and he avoided doing so for the rest of his life. His syphilis was also indirectly responsible for a bizarre episode in which Hughes burned all his clothes. (In the film The Aviator (2004), this incident is depicted as his response to his breakup with Katharine Hepburn. In reality, it was an overreaction by Hughes to the syphilis diagnosis; fearful of the germs which might be lingering on his clothing, he torched his entire wardrobe as well as every piece of linen in his house.)

Later years

File:Time-magazine-cover-1976-howard-hughes.jpg

Hughes' eccentricities have fascinated the public for years. Time, 1976

The aging Howard Hughes moved with his entourage from hotel to hotel and from Beverly Hills to Boston before deciding to move to Las Vegas and become a casino baron. Less than a month after his November 27, 1966 arrival in a railroad car, Hughes made a public offer to buy the Desert Inn. The hotel's eighth floor became the nerve center of his empire, and the ninth floor penthouse became Hughes's personal residence.

Between 1966 and 1968, he also purchased several other hotels/casinos (Castaways, New Frontier, The Landmark Hotel and Casino, Sands and Silver Slipper) from the Mafia, transactions which ultimately ended mob control of the city's hotels and casinos. Hughes wanted to change the image of Las Vegas from its mobsters in gaudy silk suits and thousand-dollar-a-night callgirls to a more glamourous image. As Hughes wrote in a memo to an aide: "I like to think of Las Vegas in terms of a well-dressed man in a dinner jacket and a beautifully jeweled and furred female getting out of an expensive car". A chronic insomniac, Hughes bought several local television stations (including KLAS-TV) so that there would always be something for him to watch in the early hours of the morning.

Hughes' considerable business holdings were overseen by a small panel unofficially dubbed "The Mormon Mafia" on account of the many Latter-day Saints on the committee. In addition to supervising day-to-day business operations and Hughes' health, they also went to great pains to satisfy Hughes' every bizarre whim. Hughes once became fond of Baskin Robbins' banana-nut ice cream, and his aides sought to secure a bulk shipment for him – only to discover that Baskin-Robbins had discontinued the flavor. They put in a request for the smallest amount the company could provide for a special order, 350 gallons, and had it shipped from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. A few days after the order arrived, Hughes announced he was tired of banana-nut and wanted only vanilla ice cream. The Desert Inn ended up distributing free banana-nut ice cream to casino customers for a year, until the 350 gallons were gone.

As an owner of several major businesses in Las Vegas, Hughes wielded enormous political and economic power in Nevada and was often able to influence the outcome of elections. Once he even ordered his aides to offer $1 million each to presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon to stop underground nuclear testing in Nevada (Hughes was afraid of the risk posed by the residual nuclear radiation). His aides never offered the bribes, reporting to Hughes that Johnson declined the offer and they were unable to contact Nixon.

As his health deteriorated due to untreated OCD and abuse of prescription drugs, Hughes moved around to the Bahamas, Vancouver, London, and several other locations, always taking up residence in the top floor penthouse of his hotel. On the pretext of possible assassination attempts and intrusive press photographers, his aides insisted the windows be blacked out. Many hotels in which he stayed were forced to undergo major renovations to repair the damage Hughes caused to the premises.

In 1971, Jean Peters filed for divorce, as the two had not lived together in many years. Peters requested a lifetime alimony payment of $70,000 a year, adjusted for inflation, and waived all claims to Hughes' estate. The surprised Hughes offered her a settlement of over a million dollars, but she declined it. Hughes did not insist upon a confidentiality agreement from Peters as a condition of the divorce; aides reported that Hughes never spoke ill of Peters. She refused to discuss her life with Hughes and declined several lucrative offers from big-name publishers and biographers. Peters would state only that she had not seen Hughes for several years before their divorce, as his psychological problems forced him to stay in a separate room, talking with her only by phone.

In 1972, author Clifford Irving created a media sensation when he claimed to have co-written an authorized autobiography of Howard Hughes. Hughes was such a reclusive figure that he did not immediately publicly refute Irving's statement, leading many people to believe Irving's book was a genuine autobiography. Prior to the book's publication, however, Hughes finally denounced Irving in a teleconference, and the entire project was eventually exposed as a hoax. Irving later spent fourteen months in jail.

Death and burial

Hughes died on April 5, 1976, at the age of 70 while en route on an airplane from his penthouse in Mexico to Methodist Hospital in Houston. Years of severe neglect had made him practically unrecognizable, and the FBI had to resort to fingerprint identification to identify the body.

A subsequent autopsy noted kidney failure as the cause of death even though Hughes bloodstream showed 1.9 micrograms of codeine (a dose more than fatal) and significant amount of Valium. Hughes was in extremely poor physical condition at the time of his death; X-rays revealed broken-off hypodermic needles still embedded in his arms and severe malnutrition. Howard Hughes is interred in the Glenwood Cemetery in Houston.

Estate

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Time cover depicting a late-life Hughes, on the occasion of his death in 1976

After Hughes' death, an intensive search began for his will, but one could not be found. Speculation became rampant that he may have written a holographic will. A holographic will was soon found on the desk of an official of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. The "Mormon Will" gave a gas-station owner named Melvin Dummar a 1/16th share of Hughes's $2 billion estate. Dummar, who had appeared on Let's Make a Deal, among other game shows, claimed to reporters that late one evening in December 1967, he found a disheveled and dirty man lying along U.S. Highway 95, 150 miles (250 kilometers) north of Las Vegas. The man asked for a ride to Las Vegas. Dropping him off at the Sands Hotel, Dummar said the man told him he was Hughes. In a trial presided over by District Court Judge Keith C. Hayes, the Mormon Will was rejected by the Nevada court in June 1978 as a forgery. The court also declared Hughes died intestate.

After saying he knew nothing about the Mormon Will, mounting evidence forced Dummar to admit that he lied. He claimed a "mysterious man" gave him a document with instructions to deposit it at the LDS office. The Mormon Will was one of 40 "wills" filed by 400 people claiming to be Hughes's heirs. The estate was eventually split between 22 cousins in 1983. Melvin and Howard starring Jason Robards and Paul Le Mat is based on Dummar's tale.

A 2005 book titled "The Investigation", written by retired F.B.I. Agent Gary Magnesen, supports Dummar's claims and brings to light three new witnesses. John Meier, a former Hughes employee entrusted with the purchase of various mining properties, stated that Hughes left the Desert Inn Hotel on different occasions to visit mine sites in the same general area where Dummar claims to have picked up Hughes.

Guido Roberto Deiro, a former pilot for Hughes Tool Company, stated that between Christmas and New Years during 1967 he flew Hughes in a Cessna 206 to a brothel called the Cottontail Ranch located in the same general area where Dummar claims to have picked up Hughes. While waiting for Hughes, Deiro fell asleep and later awoke only to learn that Hughes had left the Cottontail Ranch a few hours earlier. Unable to locate Hughes, Deiro eventually flew back to Las Vegas alone, and learned later that Hughes somehow had made it back to the Desert Inn.

The third witness is Howard Harrell, the widower of Madam Beverly Harrell, who ran the Cottontail Ranch in 1967. Howard Harrell stated that his wife had told him of Hughes' visits to the Cottontail Ranch. Beverly Harrell had wanted to come forward during the "Mormon Will" trial, and testify that Howard Hughes had been in the same general area and same time that Dummar claimed to have picked him up in the desert. Howard Harrell stated that he convinced his wife not to come forward during the trial since it might bring unwanted publicity. The location where Dummar claimed to have picked up Hughes is 6 miles south of the Cottontail Ranch.

Although the possibility remains that the "Mormon Will" might have been authentic, the verdict in the original trial will stand since the statute of limitations has long since expired. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Hughes Aircraft was owned by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who sold it to General Motors in 1985 for $5 billion. Suits brought by the states of California and Texas claiming they were owed inheritance tax were both rejected by the court.

In 1984, Hughes' estate paid an undisclosed amount to Terry Moore, who claimed to have been secretly married to Hughes on a yacht in international waters off Mexico in 1949 and never divorced. Although Moore never produced proof of a marriage (and married five more times, while Hughes married Jean Peters), her book, The Beauty and the Billionaire, became a best-seller.

The original childhood home of Hughes currently serves as a landmark building at the University of St. Thomas, where it currently houses the Theology offices for the University.

Factual media portrayals

Books

George J. Marrett - Howard Hughes: Aviator (2004) ISBN 1591145104, Naval Institute Press
Richard Hack - Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters : The Definitive Biography of the First American Billionaire (2002) ISBN 1893224643
Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske - Howard Hughes: The untold story (1996) ISBN 0525937854, Penguin Books
Robert Maheu and Richard Hack - Next to Hughes: Behind the power and tragic downfall of Howard Hughes by his closest adviser, HarperCollins (1992)
Michael Drosnin - Citizen Hughes: In his own words, how Howard Hughes tried to buy America, Broadway Books
Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele - Empire: The Life, Legend and Madness of Howard Hughes (1979) ISBN 0393075133 Republished in 2003 as Howard Hughes: His life and madness
Terry Moore - The Beauty and the Billionaire, New York (1984).
Terry Moore and Jerry Rivers - The Passions of Howard Hughes. General Publishing Group (1996)
James Phelan - "Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years". Random House (1976)
Jack Real - "The Asylum of Howard Hughes", Xlibris Corporation (2003), ISBN 1413408753
Ron Kistler - "I caught flies for Howard Hughes", Playboy Press (1976), ISBN 0872234479

Movies

The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977), directed by William A. Graham and starring Tommy Lee Jones as Howard Hughes.
The Aviator (2004), directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and winning five, the film takes the usual bio-pic liberties (Ella Rice is not seen or mentioned although Hughes was married to her during the making of "Hell's Angels"). The film focuses primarily on Hughes's achievements in aviation and in the movies and on the increasing handicap his obsessive-compulsive behavior represented in his 30s and onwards.

Fictional media inspirations

The following fictional characters appear to have been, at least in part, patterned after Hughes:

"Willard Whyte" of the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever
Tony Stark, a wealthy inventor and industrialist who becomes Marvel Comics's Iron Man.
"Charles Foster Kane" of the Orson Welles film Citizen Kane is widely believed to be patterned after William Randolph Hearst, but some have suggested that Welles drew inspiration from Hughes' life as well.
The Simpsons episode "$pringfield" in which Montgomery Burns exhibits Hughes's OCD, including wearing tissue boxes on his feet, moving into a hotel penthouse,Storing urine in jars, allowing his hair and nails to grow untrimmed, and creating a model aircraft called the "Spruce Moose."
In The Disney Afternoon's TaleSpin, the characters join a group of businessmen for a dinner on the main deck of the moosehead-shaped seaplane, the "Spruce Moose", built by a reclusive hippopotamus with Hughes's characteristic mannerisms.
"S.R. Hadden" of the Carl Sagan novel Contact, and the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film of the same name.
"Jonas Cord" in Harold Robbins' novel The Carpetbaggers
"Howard Lockwood" in the Lupin III film Mystery of Mamo
Portrayed by Terry O'Quinn in Disney's The Rocketeer (1991), substituting for the "mystery inventor" (Doc Savage) in the original comic book version.
Hughes appears in an episode of the TV Series Dark Skies
Saturday Night Live presented a comedy sketch portraying Hughes and his eccentric activities.
Hughes appears in James Ellroy's political crime novel American Tabloid, and sequel The Cold Six Thousand.
Steven Carter's novel I was Howard Hughes is a "picture of a Hughes who might have been."
Dean Stockwell plays Hughes in the Francis Ford Coppola's biopic of automaker Preston Tucker, Tucker: The Man and His Dream. The film introduces Hughes as a potential investor of Tucker's automobile line, although such claims are unsubstantiated.
Melvin and Howard was spoofed on the sketch comedy series SCTV.
The Sam Shepard play Seduced features a character named Harry Hackamore, modeled after Hughes. Incidentally, a 1982 production of this play in London landed actor Ian McDiarmid the role of Palpatine in the Star Wars films, as it showed that the then 37-year old actor could convincingly play much older characters.
In William Gibson's seminal science fiction novel Count Zero the key villain, industrialist Josef Virek, is identified with Hughes with respect to his wealth and reclusive nature. One character (Andrea) likens Hughes to 'a proto-Virek'.
The character of Horace Derwent in Stephen King's The Shining is partially based on Hughes. The fictional Derwent was a millionaire aviator and producer during the 1930's and 40's, and even takes credit for the design of a strapless bra worn in one of his movies.

Music

Leadbelly composed a folksong, "Howard Hughes", which accompanies the final credits of the film The Aviator.
The Boomtown Rats released the song "Me And Howard Hughes" on their record Tonic For The Troops in 1978.
The band Kansas did a song about Howard Hughes, which they named "Closet Chronicles". It was originally on their album Point of Know Return.
Rick Nelson alludes to Hughes in his 1972 hit "Garden Party": "Mr. Hughes hid in Dylan's shoes wearing his disguise".
The British progressive rock band Genesis mentioned "Howard Hughes in blue suede shoes" in their song "Broadway Melody of 1974", part of the album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
The British shoegazer band Ride mentioned Howard Hughes in their song "Castle on the Hill"[4] In addition, they have a song titled "Howard Hughes" on their 1992 CD single Twisterella.
The song "Reward" by British band The Teardrop Explodes includes the line "Live in solitude like Howard Hughes".
Jerry Cantrell, on the album Degradation Trip, wrote a song titled "Bargain Basement Howard Hughes". However, the song is actually about his former Alice in Chains bandmate Layne Staley. The final verse mentioned, "Often heard, seldom seen, Bargain Basement Howard Hughes, Hermit phase, a woodshed rage, these days headlines are few." Cantrell also made another Hughes/Staley reference on the Degradation Trip song "Pig Charmer" particuarly with the line: "Come on in, get high / Don't mind piss-filled bottles."
John Hartford's 1972 album Morning Bugle includes the song "Howard Hughes Blues" which describes his solitary life of "poor old Howard Hughes and all of his blues".
10cc namecheck Hughes in the hit song "Wall Street Shuffle", with the line "Oh, Howard Hughes, did your money make you better?"
Sole, a notoriously anti-capitalist rapper, had a song titled "MC Howard Hughes" on his album Bottle of Humans.
1970s Christian rocker Larry Norman's song "Without Love" contains a reference to Howard Hughes.
Jim Croce's song "Workin' at the Carwash Blues" contains a Howard Hughes reference. Jim claims he is an undiscovered Howard Hughes.
Stan Ridgway's 1991 song "I Wanna Be a Boss" contains a reference to Howard Hughes as a role model for those who aspire to be eccentric, reclusive billionaires.
Industrial outfit 70 Gwen Party released a 1994 single called "Howard Hughes" on Snape records (cat no SR011). An alternative recording was made for the John Peel show and released in 1995 on their "John Peel Sessions" album.
Gary Numan said the suited visage he used for the "Dance" and "I,Assassin" albums were patterned in part after Howard Hughes, whom he identified as one of his heroes.
"My shoes, they once were worn by Howard Hughes" from My Place a song by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics on his album Sly-Fi.
"Aint No Fun (Waiting Round To Be A Millionare)" by AC/DC contains lyrics at the end "Hey Howard, get your fuckin' jumbo jet off my airport!"
The British punk rock band The Tights wrote a song "Howard Hughes" which was the title track of their "Howard Hughes" single.
The cello trio Rasputina wrote a song "Howard Hughes" which was included in their CD Thanks For The Ether; lead singer Melora Creager has an ongoing preoccupation with Hughes (see [5]).
Australian art-rock band This Is Serious Mum include a short, untitled piece of doggerel mentioning Howard Hughes on their Great Truckin' Songs of the Renaissance LP (1998, Musicland/Elvis Records). The piece appears at the end of the song "40 Years Then Death."

External links