With a career that spanned five decades and influenced generations of future artists, Tina Turner will always hold a place among music’s true icons. Turner’s singing career had humble beginnings, as she first began performing as part of her church choir when she was just a child. At 18, she linked up with Ike Turner, […]
Van Halen has always worshipped at two altars. From their earliest days on the backyard beer-bash circuit, the Pasadena party-rockers toed the line between coolness and credibility. At first, this tightrope act seemed effortless, with David Lee Roth‘s inimitable swagger playing counterpoint to Eddie Van Halen‘s mind-bending guitar sorcery. But after Sammy Hagar replaced Roth in 1985, […]
Singer-songwriter Paul Simon has revealed that he’s lost most of the hearing in his left ear. In an interview with The Times, the famed rocker confessed that the ailment came on “quite suddenly.” “Nobody has an explanation for it,” Simon explained. “So everything became more difficult. My reaction to that was frustration and annoyance; not […]
The first single from Bruce Springsteen‘s Darkness on the Edge of Town became a tale of two versions shortly after its release. “Prove It All Night,” which preceded his fourth LP by 10 days in May 1978, was a straightforward, four-minute rock anthem in its studio form dubbed by Rolling Stone as “the lightest item” […]
It seems redundant to say this about grown men who got famous by dressing up like cats, demons and spacemen, but Kiss has made some pretty weird songs. To be clear, weird doesn’t always mean bad. However, the famously face-painted band’s never-ending quest for world domination has led them to wander far from their musical […]
Tom Johnston will not tour with the Doobie Brothers on the upcoming leg of their 50th-anniversary tour due to a back injury. According to a press release, Johnston is scheduled to undergo surgery and, as advised by doctors, “should not be performing at this time.” The tour will proceed with Pat Simmons, Michael McDonald and John […]
Rush‘s first side-long epic was 1975’s “The Fountain of Lamneth,” a 20-minute fantasy-adventure piece with a rambling narrative, choppy musical structure and randomly inserted drum solo. It was undoubtedly a bold move at the time — before Caress of Steel, Canada’s prog kings had largely trafficked in virtuoso hard rock. But in retrospect, it was […]
“Sober” marked the Tool’s breakthrough to mainstream audiences, but its origin could be traced back several years earlier. In the late ‘80s Maynard James Keenan was fronting a band called Children of the Anachronistic Dynasty, an industrial-rock group from Grand Rapids, Mich. The band built a small local following and self-released two cassette EPs, but […]
Garth Brooks recently revealed that he once shared a shower with Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler. Speaking on The Kelly Clarkson Show, the country singer-songwriter recalled the time he and Tyler both played the very last concert at Shea Stadium in New York City in 2008, spearheaded by Billy Joel. (Other guests included John Mayer, Roger Daltrey, John […]
In the second act of the Cheers finale, “One for the Road,” Sam Malone lashes out. Addressing the ever-present gaggle of barflies, employees and collected denizens of the former Red Sox pitcher’s sports bar landing pad, Sam, defiant in the face of his friends’ understandable skepticism of his six-year-later reunion with former on-and-off love interest […]