The night pressed down like a living thing. It was the kind of darkness that lived in the spaces between the sodium lights of the Marathon station off Highway 41, the kind that swallowed the edges of the parking lot and made the pine trees on the far side look like they were leaning in … Read more
The waitress at Denny’s refused to serve my 72-year-old father-in-law because he walked in wearing his motorcycle jacket, saying “We don’t serve gang members here.” I sat in the corner booth, watching Harold stand there with his helmet in one hand, while this twenty-something server loudly announced that “bikers make other customers uncomfortable.” I’m ashamed … Read more
David Bowie’s relationship with his own work was one of the most complex and least sentimental in the history of popular music. He was not a man who clung to what he had made. The famous persona changes — Ziggy Stardust to Aladdin Sane to the Thin White Duke to the Berlin period and beyond … Read more
Neil Young has a complicated relationship with his own catalog. He is famously inconsistent about what gets released and what gets withheld, about what he considers finished and what he considers private, about the difference between music that belongs to the world and music that belongs to specific people or specific moments that the world … Read more
Tom Waits has always operated by a different set of rules than the music industry around him. Not as a pose — not as the calculated eccentricity of someone who has determined that unconventionality is a marketable position. But as the genuine expression of a man who has a specific relationship with music that has … Read more
Creative fear is a specific and unusual emotion. It is not the fear of failure — most artists know that fear well and have developed relationships with it that are functional if not comfortable. Creative fear is the fear that arrives when something has succeeded beyond the limits of your own comprehension. When you have … Read more
There are conversations that exist outside the official record of a life. That happen in the margins of the documented story — in the hours between midnight and dawn, in rooms without cameras or journalists or the particular self-consciousness that comes from knowing that what you say will be quoted and attributed and analyzed. The … Read more
There are moments that arrive in a life with such force that the ordinary responses — the phone calls, the grief, the practical management of shock — feel completely inadequate to what has actually happened. Moments where the only thing that makes any sense at all is to go somewhere alone and do the thing … Read more
When P!nk and John Legend joined forces to perform “Someday We’ll Be Free,” they created a powerful and emotional musical moment that touched many listeners. Originally recorded by legendary soul singer Donny Hathaway in 1973, “Someday We’ll Be Free” is a song about hope, strength, and believing in a better future. Over the years, it … Read more
Taylor Swift has surprised fans many times throughout her career, but one of the most unexpected stories involving the pop superstar came from rock musician Dave Grohl. During an interview, Grohl shared a funny memory about a special event attended by legendary musician Paul McCartney. According to Grohl, he had planned to perform at the … Read more