James Brown was the hardest working man in show business. He was also, by the consistent testimony of musicians who performed alongside him, worked for him, or simply encountered him professionally, the most terrifying. Not in the way that genuinely menacing people are terrifying — Brown was not a violent man in any public sense. … Read more
Max Weinberg has been the drummer for the E Street Band since 1974. He is not the most famous member — that is Springsteen, by a margin that requires no argument. He is not the most mythologized — that is Clarence Clemons, whose saxophone became the sound of Springsteen’s hope and whose death in 2011 … Read more
Noel Gallagher is the greatest quote machine in the history of British rock and roll. This is not simply a matter of wit, though the wit is real and consistent. It is a matter of philosophical commitment — Gallagher has decided, as a foundational operating principle, that honesty about other people’s music is a form … Read more
“These bikers think they own the roads, terrorizing decent citizens with their noise and intimidation tactics.” Judge Harrison sneered at me from the bench, holding my traffic ticket for a broken taillight like it was evidence of murder. I stood there in my leather vest, hands behind my back, staying silent while he went on … Read more
More than six decades after The Beatles changed music forever, Sir Paul McCartney has finally revealed which bandmate he considers his favorite. The surprising confession came during a recent appearance on Chicken Shop Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg. While the interview featured plenty of humorous moments—including stories from the band’s early days in Hamburg and some … Read more
My son spat in my face when I offered him food under the highway overpass, not recognizing the father he’d been taught to hate for choosing motorcycles over “family responsibility.” Twenty years since his mother took him away, poisoned his mind against me, and here he was – homeless, skeletal, shaking from withdrawal, still wearing … Read more
When Queen’s producer Roy Thomas Baker first heard Freddie Mercury sing in a proper recording studio, he stopped the session and asked him to do it again. Not because something had gone wrong. Because he needed to confirm with his own ears that what he had just heard was real. That a human being — … Read more
There is a specific kind of courage in continuing. Not the courage of the grand gesture — not the dramatic last stand or the farewell tour with confetti and speeches. The quieter, harder courage of simply showing up one more time. Of walking onto a stage when your body is failing and your grief is … Read more
Led Zeppelin recorded with a specific philosophy that most bands of their era couldn’t comprehend and most bands since have never successfully imitated: they trusted the accident. They understood — in the way that only genuinely great musicians understand — that the moment before a song fully exists, the moment when everyone in the room … Read more
There is a version of greatness that needs an audience. That requires applause, recognition, the roar of a crowd to feel real. And then there is the other kind — the rarer kind — the kind that Stevie Wonder has carried his entire life. The kind that plays music because the music itself is the … Read more