Ron Nagle (b. San Francisco, California, February 21, 1939) is an American ceramic sculptor, musician and songwriter.
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Ron Nagle grew up in San Francisco’s Mission District. He graduated from San Francisco State College with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1961.
Between 1961 and 1978, he taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of California at Berkeley, and the California College of Arts and Crafts before becoming a professor of art at Mills College. He started making his first cup when he was in Capuchino High School at San bruno Nagle is considered part of the Abstract Expressionist Ceramics group that developed around Peter Voulkos. Ken Price and Michael Frimkess were major influences in his early career. Having seen an exhibition of paintings by Giorgio Morandi, Nagle decided to focus on making cups, and has worked almost exclusively on variations of cups, often pushing the form to the point of abstraction. Nagle lives and works in San Francisco, California.
Nagle also was a musician and singer, performing in the band The Mystery Trend in San Francisco from 1965 - 1968. In 1970, he issued a solo album on Warner Bros. Records called Bad Rice, most of which was produced by Jack Nitzsche. Nagle plays keyboards and sings. He wrote or co-wrote all of the songs. Ry Cooder plays guitar on two of the tracks. The album received some favorable reviews and has become a cult favorite.
Nagle teamed up with songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist, Scott Mathews in 1975 and wrote songs for Barbra Streisand, The Tubes, Michelle Phillips and many other major recording artists. This partnership turned into a band project called The Dūrocs (named after a breed of pig with extremely big ears and testicles). The Dūrocs were signed to Capitol Records in 1979 and released an album that received five stars in Rolling Stone Magazine and spawned some European hits. Nagle and Mathews broke into a Capitol Records sales meeting being held by the president of the company and disrupted the proceedings with midgets blasting fanfare trumpets and squealing pigs running lose through the legs of the executives. The Dūrocs were unceremoniously dropped from the label shortly after the incident.
Not wanting to be recording artists that toured, Nagle and Mathews built their own studio (The Pig Pen) and continued producing projects for others including John Hiatt's breakthrough album, Riding With the King, Paul Kantner's Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra, and a host of others. In 1999, the Dūrocs contributed to the tribute album for Moby Grape co-founder, Skip Spence, who was terminally ill with cancer. The album, More Oar: A Tribute to the Skip Spence Album (Birdman, 1999), contained cover versions of the songs from Spence's only solo album, Oar (Columbia, 1969).[1]
While his work in ceramics remain Nagle's main career, he is still writing and recording music with Mathews. A new album entitled She Lied was initially scheduled for 2009 release, but has been rescheduled.
Ron Nagle is mentioned in Leo Kottke's "Tilt Billings and the Student Prince." Unfortunately for Tilt, it was at one of Ron's parties "where a drunk stumbled by and sat down where he laid it(the most incredible guitar, 'The Student Prince.') ...and he's never sounded quite the same since."