How the Song Came to Be
The Scene: How the Song Came to Be

Those Soul-Tastic James Brown Song Titles

Over 4 decades between his first and last chart entries, the “Godfather of Soul” helped define the times during the ’60s and ’70s

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The Scene: How the Song Came to Be

The Inspiration For Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’

Every rock fan knows the classic riff but what exactly is Deep Purple’s best known song about? We take you behind the scenes in 1971.

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The Scene: How the Song Came to Be

The Kinks’ ‘Celluloid Heroes’: Everybody’s a Star…

“Everybody’s a dreamer, and everybody’s a star,” Ray Davies sang. But it was never quite that simple. Watch a stellar performance of this Kinks Klassik.

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The Scene: 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 Scene: How the Song Came to Be

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 Scene: How the Song Came to Be

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 Scene: How the Song Came to Be

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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The Scene: How the Song Came to Be

‘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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The Scene: How the Song Came to Be

Sonny & Cher: ‘The Beat Goes On’ (& On & On)…

A breakdown of the way things used to be vs. the inevitable winds of change, it gave them their third major hit. But some things, it seemed, never changed.

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The Scene: How the Song Came to Be

‘Yellow Submarine’ Before It Was ‘Yellow Submarine’— A Naked Submersible, Sung By John Lennon

Most fans had no idea that these early compositional demos of the song existed. Now that we do, we can never think of it the same way again.

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