Music

In 1965, at the absolute height of the British Invasion, the Kinks were banned from touring America for four years, a punishment that gutted the band’s commercial momentum at the exact moment it mattered most. The reason traced back to a single violent outburst onstage in Cardiff, Wales, born out of the band’s notoriously combustible … Read more

On January 23, 1978, Terry Kath, founding guitarist and lead singer of the rock band Chicago, died from a single gunshot wound at a roadie’s home in Los Angeles. He was eight days away from his 32nd birthday. Jimi Hendrix had once called him one of his favorite guitarists alive, and his bandmates considered his … Read more

In July 1974, “Mama” Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas died of a heart attack in a London apartment owned by singer Harry Nilsson. Four years later, almost to the month, the Who’s drummer Keith Moon died in that same apartment, in the very same bedroom, at the exact same age Elliot had … Read more

n October 29, 1971, Duane Allman, the guitarist and founding force behind the Allman Brothers Band, died in a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia, after swerving to avoid a truck. He was only 24 years old. A little over a year later, the band’s bassist, Berry Oakley, died in a motorcycle crash just three blocks … Read more

On the afternoon of December 31, 1984, 21-year-old Rick Allen, drummer for the British rock band Def Leppard, lost control of his Corvette on a country road near Sheffield, England. The car flipped, his seatbelt came undone, and he was thrown through the sunroof, severing his left arm in the process. What followed became one … Read more

In 1977, sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, the founders and frontwomen of the rock band Heart, were riding a wave of success when a sleazy publicity stunt nearly derailed everything they’d built. The fallout from that stunt produced one of the most recognizable rock anthems of the decade. The trouble started with Heart’s own record … Read more

In the early hours of August 27, 1990, blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan climbed aboard a helicopter leaving Wisconsin’s Alpine Valley Music Theatre after one of the best performances of his career. Minutes later, the helicopter slammed into a hillside in thick fog, killing Vaughan and everyone else aboard. He had only secured his place … Read more

On October 1, 1970, Janis Joplin walked into a Los Angeles recording studio and laid down vocals for a song that wasn’t even originally written for her, a tender, road-worn tune called “Me and Bobby McGee.” Three days later, she was found dead in her hotel room, and the recording she’d just finished would become … Read more

**The Little Girl Who Grabbed My Tattooed Arm** I was sixty-three years old, every inch of me a walking roadmap of hard miles. Vietnam still lived in my bones on rainy nights. The club had buried too many brothers on blacktop. My knuckles carried forty years of scars from bar fights I didn’t start but … Read more

In December 1974, Mick Taylor, the guitarist many critics still consider the most technically gifted player ever to join the Rolling Stones, walked up to Mick Jagger at a party in London and quietly told him he was done. After five years and three of the band’s most celebrated albums, Taylor was leaving the biggest … Read more