The Song Muddy Waters Wrote That Changed the History of Rock and Roll — And the White Musicians Who Never Thanked Him Properly

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Muddy Waters is the man from whom the most important music of the twentieth century flows — not metaphorically, but in the specific documented sense of a traceable line from his recordings at Stovall’s Plantation in Mississippi in 1941 and his Chicago recordings of the late 1940s and early 1950s to the Rolling Stones, Led … Read more

The Night The Allman Brothers Band Played for Seven Hours Straight — And Duane Allman Said It Was the Night He Understood What Music Was For

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The Allman Brothers Band’s relationship with extended live performance was not a commercial calculation or a theatrical choice — it was an expression of a specific philosophy about what music was for and what a concert was supposed to do, a philosophy that Duane Allman articulated in interviews with the precision of a man who … Read more

Five Songs Aerosmith Recorded That Steven Tyler Said He Has No Memory of Making — And They Are Some of the Greatest in the Catalog

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The period of Aerosmith’s history that the band’s own members have described most consistently as the least fully documented in their own memories is not a period of creative decline — it is the period of their greatest commercial achievement and some of their most significant musical output. The years between approximately 1975 and 1980, … Read more

The Song Creedence Clearwater Revival Recorded in One Day That Became the Most Played Song on American Radio in 1969

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In 1969, American radio played Proud Mary more times than any other song. This is a statement about commercial success that is unremarkable — what is remarkable is the context of its creation, the speed at which it went from nothing to the most played song in the country, and what that speed reveals about … Read more

The Night Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young Performed Together for the First Time — And David Crosby Said It Was the Most Beautiful Sound He Had Ever Heard

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The story of how Crosby, Stills and Nash first sang together has been told many times — at Joni Mitchell’s house in Laurel Canyon in 1968, the three of them harmonizing for the first time and producing a sound that has been described by all three participants and by the people who were present with … Read more

Five Songs Van Halen Recorded That Eddie Van Halen Said Changed His Life — And Nobody Knew He Was Dying When He Made Them

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Eddie Van Halen is the guitarist who most completely changed what rock guitar was understood to be between 1978 and 1984 — not by discovering something new about the instrument, because the techniques he used had existed in various forms before him, but by combining those techniques with a melodic sensibility, a sense of humor, … Read more

The Betrayal That Destroyed Lynyrd Skynyrd — And the Crash That Made Three Surviving Members Never Speak to Each Other Again

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On October 20, 1977, a chartered Convair CV-240 aircraft carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd from Greenville, South Carolina to Baton Rouge, Louisiana ran out of fuel over the Mississippi forest and crashed into a swamp near Gillsburg, Mississippi. The crash killed lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, his sister and backing vocalist Cassie Gaines, the … Read more

Five Songs Ted Nugent Recorded That Even His Harshest Critics Admitted Were Impossible to Argue With

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Ted Nugent has spent fifty years being one of the most controversial figures in American rock — not primarily because of his music, which is the thing that controversies about musicians are usually about, but because of his political positions, his hunting advocacy, his public persona of aggressive confrontation with anyone who disagrees with him … Read more