How the Song Came to Be
Donovan on ‘Season of the Witch’: ‘The Spookiness Was Real’
“The darkness was coming down. The darkness was the freedoms that I spoke of, that opened the doors. That spookiness in the record was real.”
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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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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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Gotta Bludgeon: The Delightfully Punishing, Hell-for-Leather Second Take of The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’
Close your eyes and it’s not hard to picture George Martin in the control booth, thinking, “What on earth are we doing tonight?”
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The Important Half: John Lennon, ‘Julia’ and Singing to Reach
“The song, inspired by John’s late mother, “is brave, because in the delivery we hear a singer willing to be transported.”
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Ray Charles: ‘What’d I Say’—An Accidental Classic
A consummate, road-tested professional, he sat down at his Wurlitzer electric piano and improvised a blues-based boogie-woogie riff.
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Shining a Light on the Origin and Impact of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’
“I said to Leonard, ‘This is the one. This is what we’ve been waiting for. This might be your best record.'”–Producer/songwriter/performer John Lissauer
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Remember Nelson? Twin Brothers Now Well Into Their 50s
Less than 5 years after the untimely death of their father, Ricky Nelson, Gunnar and Matthew were on top of the music world themselves
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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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‘Paradise By the Dashboard Light’: Was Phil Rizzuto In On the Joke?
In interviews 30 years apart, with radio legend Dennis Elsas, Meat Loaf tells the inside story of the recording session with the beloved Yankees broadcaster
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