They only met once in person. August 1965. The Beatles were at the absolute peak of their first wave of fame — freshly arrived in America, still slightly disbelieving that any of this was real — and Elvis Presley invited them to his house in Bel Air. It was the meeting of two worlds, two … Read more
Paul Simon is one of the greatest lyricists the twentieth century produced. That is not a controversial statement. It is simply what the evidence shows — album after album of writing so precise, so emotionally intelligent, so perfectly calibrated between the specific and the universal, that generations of listeners have heard his songs and felt … Read more
David Bowie and Freddie Mercury occupied the same cultural space for years without ever quite occupying the same room. They were aware of each other — deeply, professionally, with the specific alertness that major artists have toward other major artists who are working in adjacent territory — but they maintained a careful distance for most … Read more
There is a version of Jim Morrison that the mythology has constructed — the leather-pants poet, the Dionysian shaman, the beautiful self-destructive face of a generation’s excess — and it is not entirely false. But it is incomplete in the specific way that mythologies are always incomplete: it sacrifices the complexity of the actual person … Read more
Eric Clapton has spoken about grief more honestly than almost any major rock musician of his generation. Not always in words — words were sometimes too direct, too exposed, too much — but in the specific choices he made about what to play and what not to play and what to step away from entirely … Read more
History needed a simple story and Yoko Ono was available to be the simple story. She was present. She was visible. She was different from everything the Beatles had been — Japanese, avant-garde, older, a serious conceptual artist who made demands on Lennon’s attention and time that the band resented openly. She sat in on … Read more
The shop door burst open with a violent bang, the bell above it shattering off its hook. A tall, muscular young man in his early twenties stormed in, baseball bat still gripped in his right hand. His face was twisted with rage, eyes scanning the garage like a predator. “Lily! You little bitch, I knew … Read more
The heavy wooden doors at the back of the university auditorium slammed open with a sound like thunder. Seven leather-clad bikers strode in, their massive frames cutting through the hushed elegance of my daughter’s nursing graduation like a blade through silk. Every head in the room snapped toward them. Gasps rippled through the rows of … Read more
I yanked my five-year-old son Ethan’s hand so hard he stumbled when he pointed at the old biker in the gas station parking lot and loudly announced, “Mommy, I want a picture with that man!” The biker looked exactly like trouble – leather vest covered in patches, wild gray hair past his shoulders, thick beard, … Read more
For decades, Sir Paul McCartney has stood among the most celebrated musicians in history. As a founding member of The Beatles and one of the most successful songwriters of all time, his legacy is beyond dispute. Yet, despite his legendary status, McCartney has not escaped criticism in recent years. Over the last decade, a growing … Read more