The experience Paul McCartney describes about the composition of “Let It Be” is one of the most extraordinary accounts of musical creativity in the documented history of songwriting. It is also, depending on how you receive it, either the most humbling or the most inspiring thing a songwriter has ever reported about their own work. … Read more
The voice is the instrument and the instrument is the body and the body is not permanent. This is the truth that every singer eventually confronts — that the thing they have built their life upon, the specific biological gift that everything else depends on, is subject to time and to damage and to the … Read more
Keith Richards has made a career of performing indifference to things that should produce awe. It is part of the persona — the weathered, seen-everything cool of someone who has been at the center of one of the most extraordinary rock careers in history and has developed the specific equanimity of someone for whom extraordinary … Read more
The Million Dollar Quartet session of December 4th, 1956 at Sun Studio is famous. Elvis, Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis — an accidental convergence that Sam Phillips was smart enough to record. The photographs exist. The tape exists. The cultural mythology of that afternoon has been enormous and well-documented. What is less documented is … Read more
There is a phenomenon that musicians describe with remarkable consistency when they talk about encountering greatness at close range. A physical response. Something that happens in the body before the mind has processed what the ears are receiving. A shift in the relationship between the person listening and the space they are occupying. The music … Read more
Rush continued their triumphant Fifty Something Tour with a second sold-out performance at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum on Tuesday, June 9, treating fans to one of the most remarkable setlists of their modern era. After launching the tour in spectacular fashion on Sunday, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson—joined by touring drummer Anika Nilles and keyboardist … Read more
The public version of John Lennon and Yoko Ono is one of the most contested narratives in popular culture. Contested by people who blamed her for the Beatles’ breakup — a blame that was never fully fair and has become less fair with each passing decade of historical reassessment. Contested by people who found the … Read more
Jimi Hendrix is remembered as the most visually extraordinary performer in rock history. The guitar played with his teeth. The guitar played behind his back. The guitar set on fire at Monterey in 1967 — a moment so perfectly theatrical that it has been discussed for fifty years as the ultimate act of rock showmanship. … Read more
John Lennon was a man who enjoyed the gap between what was visible and what was actually happening. This was true of his personality — the famous humor as armor, the wit as deflection, the public persona as a carefully maintained distance between the world and wherever the real John Lennon actually lived. It was … Read more
There is a specific kind of creative frustration that has no adequate outlet. The frustration of having things to say and being systematically denied the platform to say them — not because what you have is insufficient but because the people controlling the platform have a vested interest in prioritizing what they have over what … Read more