Five Doors Songs Jim Morrison Recorded That Ray Manzarek Said Came From a Place None of Them Could Explain

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

The Night Elton John Played a Concert With a Broken Voice — And Received the Only Standing Ovation That Made Him Cry

There are nights in a performer’s life when everything that can go wrong does go wrong and the performance happens anyway — not despite the circumstances but somehow because of them, the limitation stripping away everything that is practiced and polished and leaving only what is real. Elton John has performed over four thousand concerts … Read more

Three Songs Leonard Cohen Wrote That Bob Dylan Said He Could Never Have Written — And Meant It as the Highest Compliment

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen maintained across their parallel careers a relationship of mutual assessment that was expressed rarely, carefully, and with the precision of two people who understood each other’s craft at a level that most critics can only approximate from the outside. They occupied adjacent territories — poetry-adjacent songwriting, the tradition of the … Read more

The Biker We Chased Saved the Veteran We Forgot

The old man was lying against the cold concrete foundation of the building, wedged between a industrial HVAC unit and the locked emergency exit door. He was wearing a faded grey suit that was now completely waterlogged, clinging heavily to his frail, ninety-year-old frame. His hands—gnarled by time and shaking uncontrollably from the onset of … Read more

Five Metallica Songs James Hetfield Wrote at the Lowest Point of His Life — That Became the Band’s Greatest Work

James Hetfield has spent his public life presenting an image of invulnerability — the metal frontman as fortress, physically imposing, vocally aggressive, a man whose relationship with weakness appeared to be one of sustained contempt. This image is not false exactly. It is incomplete in the way that all performed identities are incomplete, and the … Read more

The Rivalry Between Blur and Oasis That Divided Britain in 1995 — And What Both Bands Really Said About Each Other in Private

On August 14, 1995, two singles were released simultaneously in Britain: Country House by Blur and Roll With It by Oasis. The music press had manufactured the release date collision into a national event — Britpop’s Battle of the Bands, North versus South, art school versus council estate, Damon Albarn’s Chelsea sophistication against Noel Gallagher’s … Read more

Five Songs Eric Clapton Recorded After the Death of His Son — That Changed Everything He Thought About Music

On March 20, 1991, Conor Clapton — Eric Clapton’s four-year-old son — fell from an open window on the 53rd floor of a New York City apartment building. He died instantly. Clapton was not present at the moment of the accident. He arrived at the hospital afterward. He has described, in interviews and in his … Read more

P!nk Credits Madonna for Inspiring Her to Stand Strong in the Music Industry

P!nk has built a career on being fearless, outspoken, and unapologetically herself. Over the years, the Grammy-winning singer has become known for speaking her mind and refusing to conform to industry expectations. According to P!nk, much of that confidence was inspired by one music icon she admired as a child—Madonna. The singer has openly credited … Read more