Mark Knopfler is the most literate songwriter in rock — not in the sense of writing about books, though he has done that too, but in the sense of understanding that a lyric is a compressed narrative, that what is not said in a song is as important as what is said, and that the … Read more
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 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
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
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 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
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
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
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
There are specific moments in the history of music when someone walks into a professional environment — a room full of experienced musicians, seasoned engineers, producers who have heard everything — and within minutes changes the atmosphere of that room from professional to reverent. Not through any deliberate performance of greatness, not through any conscious … Read more