The dissolution of the classic Guns N’ Roses lineup — the five musicians who made Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion and who constituted, by the assessment of their commercial peak, the most dangerous and most exciting band in the world — happened not in a single dramatic confrontation but in the specific way … Read more
The specific window of creative output that Stevie Wonder produced between 1972 and 1976 — the four years that yielded Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, and Songs in the Key of Life — is the most concentrated period of musical achievement in the history of popular music, and the statement … Read more
There are moments of grief that arrive not at the expected times — not at the funeral, not in the first hours after the news, not in the formal contexts that society constructs for the purpose of containing loss — but in ordinary situations, ambushed by something specific and small that the general fact of … Read more
On July 3, 1973, David Bowie did something almost unheard of in rock music: he killed off one of the most successful characters in music history, live on stage, with no advance warning to anyone — including his own backing band, the Spiders from Mars. By 1973, Bowie’s alter ego Ziggy Stardust, the androgynous alien … Read more
Few albums in rock history carry as much behind-the-scenes drama as Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” released in February 1977. The album’s success is often discussed alongside the extraordinary personal turmoil the band was experiencing during its creation, turmoil that arguably fueled some of the album’s most powerful songwriting. By the time recording began, the band was … Read more
Pink Floyd’s 1975 album “Wish You Were Here” stands as one of the band’s most emotionally resonant works, largely because of its central focus: founding member Syd Barrett, who had left the band years earlier due to worsening mental health struggles widely attributed to heavy drug use during the band’s early psychedelic years. Barrett had … Read more
Janis Joplin’s version of “Me and Bobby McGee” stands as one of the most poignant recordings in rock history, not just because of its raw, emotive performance, but because of the tragic timing surrounding its release. Joplin recorded the song shortly before her death in October 1970, and it wasn’t released until early 1971, months … Read more
Few origin stories in rock music are as understated as the one behind Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid.” Despite becoming the title track of the band’s breakthrough 1970 album and one of the most recognizable riffs in heavy metal history, the song was reportedly written almost as an afterthought, cobbled together in a matter of minutes to … Read more
A 9-year-old with a swollen face ran to the most feared man in town and begged for protection. What the biker did next exposed secrets the whole town had been hiding. The neon sign outside Rusty’s bar flickered red and blue. 900 p. m. on a Thursday in Milbrook, population 3 to 200. Outside, two … Read more
By the summer of 1968, The Beatles were no longer the tight-knit unit that had conquered the world just a few years earlier. Recording sessions for what would become “The Beatles” (better known as the White Album) had grown tense, with all four members increasingly working on separate tracks, often without the others in the … Read more