Michael Penn

Born into a show-business family on August 1, 1958, in New York City's Greenwich Village, Michael Penn grew up as the eldest child of director Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan. The household moved to Los Angeles within twelve months, where his younger brothers Sean, later hailed as one of his generation's leading actors, and Chris, a respected character performer notably featured in Reservoir Dogs, joined the family. While his siblings gravitated toward acting, Penn developed an early fixation on the Beatles that prompted him to pick up the guitar; by the time he reached high school he was already performing in a band that interpreted material by the Rolling Stones and David Bowie, and he soon began crafting original material.

During the first half of the 1980s he assembled the group Doll Congress, which built an ardent regional audience yet remained confined to Southern California. Discouraged, he stepped away from music and briefly followed the family path into on-screen work, logging extra appearances on series such as the long-running St. Elsewhere. A 1987 invitation from Sean, who was hosting Saturday Night Live, placed Penn on the program as musical guest and rekindled his creative drive. He promptly reconnected with former Doll Congress keyboardist Patrick Warren, and together they shaped the songs that became his 1989 debut album, March.

Critics embraced the record for its luminous Beatlesque folk-pop and incisive, Elvis Costello-inflected lyrics; the lead track “No Myth” unexpectedly reached the charts and carried the album into the Top 40, while a second single, “This and That,” registered a modest hit the following year. Commercial momentum proved fleeting, however. After an extended absence, Penn returned in 1992 with Free for All, which encountered far stiffer sales resistance and slipped from the charts within weeks. Five more years of reflection preceded the 1997 release of Resigned; reviewers once again commended his craftsmanship, yet the album stayed within the bounds of his dedicated cult audience.

Around that period he began scoring films for writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, supplying music for the 1997 feature Hard Eight and later for the widely admired Boogie Nights, in which he also appeared briefly as an 1980s record producer. Late in 1997 he married fellow songwriter Aimee Mann. Mp4: Days Since a Lost Time Accident arrived in early 2000. In 2005, following a protracted dispute with Epic Records, he issued Mr. Hollywood, Jr. 1947 on his own Mimeograph imprint; the song cycle, centered on post-World War II Los Angeles, includes contributions from Mann, Buddy Judge, and Patrick Warren.