How the Song Came to Be
Once Upon a Time: Mark Lindsay on the Raiders’ ‘Good Thing’
The group’s lead vocalist talks about writing the hit single with producer Terry Melcher, the wild story of the Los Angeles home they lived in and the Tarantino movie
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Dr. Hook ‘Cover of the Rolling Stone’: Backstory
A band records a song about its burning desire to make it to the cover of the leading music magazine. We’ve got the backstory. Do you know who wrote it?
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The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s Incendiary “Fire”
He took the title of his one hit seriously, even putting flaming items on his head while he performed. But he never made the charts again after his 1968 smash.
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John Fogerty Talks About Writing ‘Proud Mary’
50 years after he began writing one of his most-beloved songs, the musician shared how he first started writing it and how the title came to be
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Barry McGuire vs. Barry Sadler: When the News Hit #1
One chart-topper listed complaints about the inequities and horrors of the day, while the other was a patriotic paean to the Army’s elite special forces.
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New ‘Wichita Lineman’ Book: Exclusive Excerpt
The Jimmy Webb favorite, as sung by Glen Campbell, is the subject of a new book by author Dylan Jones, who has written books on David Bowie and Jim Morrison
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Friend & Lover’s ‘Reach Out of the Darkness’: So Groovy Now
The song begins with a lyric that could only have been written in the late ’60s: “I think it’s so groovy now that people are finally getting together.” And the record was attributed to artists whose name could only have
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ELO’s ‘Don’t Bring Me Down… Bruce!’
Most classic rock acts have a misheard lyric. It goes with the territory. So what did Jeff Lynne do when concert audiences started singing along to his big hit?
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The Beatles’ Forgotten Top 20 Hit: A ‘Sweet’ Story
A top 20 hit in the U.S., yet it has received virtually no radio airplay in decades and is almost never mentioned in accounts of the band’s early days.
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Deliverance’s ‘Dueling Banjos’: An Unlikely Hit
The song, featured prominently in the 1972 thriller, was used without the permission of its composer. There’s actually only one banjo used
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