Benjamin Jackson Burnley IV

Hello my name is Andrew Mortimer and today I am going to talk about my hero Benjamin Jackson Burnley IV. Who is a musician, singer, rhythm guitarist and the primary songwriter of the band Breaking Benjamin. He inspired me to become a musician because when I was 10 years old he touched my heart by writing a song in which it explain my life and also what I have been through throughout the years. And then it hit me saying I could become a musician if I write songs that are based on my life and other things. But mostly I enjoyed doing it. He's the reason I play the guitar and I always believed that I could change the world with music. I wanted to be an inspiration to the world and when I was inspired it was hard to tell and to describe why I was inspired. Is it to tell people how I feel or to fit in? That was part of the challenge and not many people would agree to this artist because I think his writing is complicated to understand. He said in an interview that his writing is vague for people to draw conclusions. So you can guess what is it about. If I put a song here you can have many guesses on what is it about.

Ben was born in Atlantic City in New Jersey but was raised in the town called Selinsgrove in Pennsylvania. He learned to the play piano at the age of 5 and at 16 he began being home-schooled and acquired his GED. At the age of 21 he moved to Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania with his former bass player of the band Breaking Benjamin name Jonathan Price. But before he formed his own band he used to play in local venues to earn money and various coffees houses. At that time he got the name Breaking Benjamin for breaking a microphone. During his teenage years he taught himself to play the guitar by listening to Nirvana second album Never Mind. He met Aaron Finke and Mark Klepski while they played for the band Lifer and then they become a four piece with Jeremy Hummel later replaced by Chad Szeilga. In 2011 Ben filed a lawsuit against Aaron and Mark for releasing a song, a remix Blow Me Away without his consent and over the years he been fighting the rights over the band name Breaking Benjamin. In 2014 he won the rights over it and it has new members Aaron Bunch, Shaun Foist, Keith Wallen and Jason Rauch.

What I am going to do to continue his legacy is listen to the bands that he was influence and create my own songwriting style as I plan to use this technique to get people inspired to never give up and to keep doing what you love and making people happy and entertain. This man is the reason I wanted to become a musician so I plan to use that inspiration and share it with all the people and I want to change the world because all I want to do is to have fun and write songs for a living.

This is Ben performing live