The rain came down in cold, needling sheets that night, turning the cracked sidewalks of the old industrial district into slick black mirrors. Sam hunched his shoulders against it, the thin gray hoodie already plastered to his back. At thirteen, he had learned how to move through the dark without drawing attention—quick steps, eyes down, … Read more
The trucks rolled into the railyard exactly at midnight. Their headlights swept across the rusted tracks and broken freight cars before cutting off. For a moment, the entire yard went dark. Then four men stepped out. Not one of them looked surprised to be there. That bothered Bear. People doing honest business didn’t meet in … Read more
Janis Joplin performed at Woodstock on the night of August 16, 1969, in circumstances that were chaotic even by Woodstock’s considerable standards of chaos. She went on at approximately two in the morning, hours behind schedule, in front of an audience whose size was impossible to accurately assess in the darkness and whose condition ranged … Read more
Dolly Parton wrote I Will Always Love You in 1973 as a farewell to Porter Wagoner — the country music star who had given her her first major exposure, who had fought against her decision to pursue a solo career, and with whom she had a professional and personal relationship complicated enough that it required … Read more
OK Computer was recorded between 1996 and 1997 in a series of locations that included a rented mansion in Bath called St. Catherine’s Court, where the band set up equipment in rooms that were not designed for recording and that produced accidental acoustic properties that became features rather than problems. The album that emerged from … Read more
I smiled back, confused as hell. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t the first time one of them had seen her. The bearded biker must have noticed the look on my face. His smile faded slightly. “I guess that sounded strange,” he said. “You think?” I replied. The other two bikers exchanged … Read more
Mick Jagger has been imitated by more performers than almost any other rock musician alive — the strut, the lip, the way he occupies a stage as though it was designed specifically for him and could not fully function without him. What is less discussed, and what Jagger himself has addressed in interviews with more … Read more
There are songs that function as entertainment and songs that function as life support — pieces of music that arrive at a specific moment in a specific person’s circumstances and perform a function that the people who wrote them did not intend and could not have predicted. James Taylor has spent fifty years acknowledging his … Read more
The consistent pattern in accounts of encountering Jimi Hendrix — in concert, in a recording studio, in a rehearsal room, in a small club in the mid-1960s before anyone outside a specific London circle knew who he was — is the response of people who have dedicated their lives to an instrument encountering someone for … Read more
Ray Manzarek spent fifty years as the keeper and interpreter of the Doors’ legacy — the surviving member most willing to examine, in specific detail, what the band had actually attempted and what Morrison had actually been doing in the moments when the music exceeded anything that rehearsal or intention could account for. His interviews, … Read more