American rock songwriters

Timothy Charles Buckley III (February 14, 1947 – June 29, 1975) was an American musician. He began his career based in folk rock, but subsequently experimented with genres such as psychedelia, jazz, the avant-garde, and funk as well as unconventional vocal stylings. His commercial peak came with the 1969 album Happy Sad, reaching No. 81 on the charts, while his experimental 1970 album Starsailor went on to become a cult favorite. The latter contained his best known song, "Song to the Siren." Buckley died at the age of 28 from a heroin and morphine overdose, leaving behind sons Taylor and Jeff.

Mark Lindsay (born March 9, 1942) is an American musician, best known as the lead singer of the rock band Paul Revere & the Raiders.

David Eric Grohl (born January 14, 1969) is an American musician. He is the founder of the rock band Foo Fighters, for which he is the lead singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter. Prior to forming Foo Fighters, he was the drummer of the rock band Nirvana from 1990 to 1994.
At 17, Grohl joined the punk rock band Scream after the departure of their drummer Kent Stax. Grohl became the drummer for Nirvana after Scream broke up in 1990. Nirvana's second album, Nevermind (1991), was the first to feature Grohl on drums and became a worldwide success. After Nirvana disbanded following the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994, Grohl formed Foo Fighters as a one-man project. The first Foo Fighters album was released in 1995, and a full band was assembled to tour and record under the Foo Fighters name; they have released 11 studio albums.
Grohl is the drummer and co-founder of the rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, and has recorded and toured with Queens of the Stone Age and Tenacious D. He has also participated in the side projects Late! and Probot. Grohl began directing Foo Fighters music videos in 1997 and released his debut documentary, Sound City, in 2013. It was followed by the documentary miniseries Sonic Highways (2014) and the documentary film What Drives Us (2021). In 2021, Grohl released an autobiography, The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music. In 2022, he and the Foo Fighters starred as themselves in the comedy horror film Studio 666.
In 2010, Grohl was described by the Classic Rock Drummers co-author Ken Micallef as one of the most influential rock musicians of the previous 20 years. Grohl was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of Nirvana in 2014 and as a member of Foo Fighters in 2021.

Michael Edward Mills (born December 17, 1958) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer who was a founding member of the alternative rock band R.E.M. Though known primarily as the bass guitarist and backing vocalist of R.E.M., his musical repertoire also includes keyboards and occasional lead vocals. He contributed to a majority of the band's musical compositions and is the only member to have had formal musical training.

Lewis Wayne Williams (January 12, 1934 – September 1, 2019, born Chillicothe, Texas) was an American rockabilly singer and songwriter, known as the "Cab Calloway of rockabilly".
Williams began singing at age four, and moved with his family to Dallas at age eleven. He played in local clubs after graduating Adamson High School and entered Midwestern State University in 1952. However, a few months later he secured a job as a headliner for a radio program on Frederick, Oklahoma station KTAT.
The following year, Williams recorded demos at Jim Beck's recording studio and managed to get a single released on Flair Records in June 1953, but "I've Been Doin' Some Slippin' Too" was not a hit, and he did not release further material from these sessions. He sent some of the demos to Imperial Records, who offered him a publishing contract; Williams attempted to secure a recording contract as well but was unsuccessful initially. Imperial finally signed him as a recording artist in 1955, and his first releases came out in 1956. A few singles were issued in 1956 and 1957, with Jimmie Haskell producing and Barney Kessell on guitar; they did not sell and Williams was dropped early in 1957.
He graduated from the university in 1957 and devoted himself to songwriting full-time. He wrote material for Jimmy Hughes (with Mae Axton), Ferlin Husky, Floyd Cramer, Porter Wagoner, and Hoyt Johnson. After serving time in the Army, Williams took the pseudonym Vik Wayne for one final release on Dot Records, "The Girl I Saw on Bandstand"; when it did not sell, he opened a recording studio and started a talent agency. He left music for good in the early 1960s, moving into the publishing and mail order businesses.
After Bear Family Records released some of his material in the 1990s, fed by the burgeoning interest in rockabilly in Europe and Japan, he made a comeback, appearing in Las Vegas in 2000 and touring widely thereafter.
Lew Williams died at age 85 on September 1, 2019 at an assisted living facility in Winnsboro, Texas.

Charlotte Irene Caffey (born October 21, 1953) is an American guitarist, best known for her work in the rock band the Go-Go's in the 1980s, including writing "We Got the Beat".