Biography
Growing up in Oklahoma, singer/songwriter/guitarist Michael Been later enrolled at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He moved to Los Angeles seeking a career in music, where he founded and fronted the Call and oversaw a run of albums in the 1980s that drew strong critical notice. On screen, Been played the Apostle John in the 1987 film The Last Temptation of Christ. In 1993 he joined Quincy Jones’s Qwest Records as a solo artist and delivered his first album under that banner, On the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough, on April 12, 1994. Three years afterward he resumed work with the Call on To Heaven and Back, then issued the 2000 live set Live Under the Red Moon. While touring Europe in 2010 as sound engineer for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club—the band led by his son Robert Levon Been—Been suffered a fatal heart attack.