Crafting a hit song sometimes happens immediately. “The lyrics, the strings, the chords, everything comes at the moment like a gift that is put right into your head and that’s how I hear it,” Michael Jackson explained in 1994 while defending himself against a copyright lawsuit. Sometimes it takes a while longer. John Oates made several attempts at […]
The thought of Aerosmith operating with any singer besides Steven Tyler may seem unfathomable, but the Boston rockers famously considered replacing the Demon of Screamin’ during a highly publicized rough patch in the late ’00s. The band reportedly considered a host of high-profile singers including Lenny Kravitz, Paul Rodgers, Chris Cornell, Sammy Hagar — and, apparently, Chris Daughtry. The namesake Daughtry […]
Two monster albums ruled 1983, but the singles chart told a different story – particularly over the summer. The Police‘s Synchronicity was No. 1 for 17 weeks that year, while Michael Jackson‘s Thriller topped the charts for 22. They were so dominant that there were only four other No. 1 albums in all of 1983. […]
The Cult’s Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy will honor their post-punk roots with a one-off tour this fall under their pre-fame moniker Death Cult. The brief run will comprise one Los Angeles show on Oct. 23, with support from darkwave group Cold Cave, as well as a dozen shows in the United Kingdom in November. […]
Things nearly turned tragic for Johnny Ramone on Aug. 14, 1983, when a post-concert brawl left him fighting for his life. The Ramones had spent the early part of the year on the road in support of their seventh studio album, Subterranean Jungle. They returned for a performance on Aug. 13, in their hometown of […]
Metallica‘s debut album Kill ‘Em All is a stone-cold classic, a touchstone of thrash metal with clearly traceable influences, including Motorhead, Venom and Mercyful Fate. But what if the Bay Area quartet had taken influence from a band on their side of the pond? A band like ZZ Top? Musician and content creator Denis Pauna has brought that hypothetical scenario to […]
You could see the end of an era in 1988 – the ’90s were visible on the horizon; the Reagan presidency was winding down; retirement was looming for Dirty Harry; Bruce Springsteen’s marriage ended; the great Louis L’Amour went to the big second-hand bookstore in the sky. Accepted norms were falling. MTV put a hip-hop […]
Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham played together for the very first time on Aug. 12, 1968 in a small space on Gerrard Street in the West End of London. The first song that the band – which would later be named Led Zeppelin – tore into was “The Train Kept A-Rollin’,” a setlist fixture […]
Sometimes real life makes the best art, as you’ll see in the below list of 50 Rock Album Covers You Can Visit in Real Life. While some artists may opt for a commissioned painting or a carefully planned photograph of the band in the studio, others have used very real – and often very public — locations to grace […]
Former Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor said he’s begun taking a new prostate cancer drug that he expects will extend his life “for five years.” Taylor went public with his stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis last year when Duran Duran was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Singer Simon Le Bon read a […]