Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today July 18
1988
Nico dies, the ice priestess who sang with the Velvet
On July 18, 1988, Nico died in Ibiza at 49, after a bicycle accident. The German model Warhol inserted into the Velvet Underground sang three eternal jewels on the banana album, then built a solo body of work of radical darkness, with 'The Marble Index' as its frozen cathedral. Involuntary godmother of goth and of all the pop avant-garde that followed.
Nico
The Velvet Underground
1929
Screamin' Jay Hawkins is born, the sorcerer who invented rock's horror show
On July 18, 1929, Screamin' Jay Hawkins was born in Cleveland; he recorded 'I Put a Spell on You' in a drunken 1956 session and accidentally created an eternal classic. He took the stage rising from a coffin, with bones, capes and his smoking skull 'Henry': the horror theater later exploited by Alice Cooper and company was born with him. An absolute original.
Screamin' Jay Hawkins
1941
Martha Reeves is born: the Motown secretary who slipped into the studio
On July 18, 1941, Martha Reeves was born in Alabama. She joined Motown as a secretary in the artists and repertoire department. One day a singer failed to show for a session, she volunteered, and never went back to the desk. With the Vandellas she recorded "Dancing in the Street", a party song the summer of 1964 turned into a protest anthem without anybody's permission. Decades later she was elected to Detroit's city council.
Martha Reeves
Martha and the Vandellas
1966
The Bobby Fuller mystery: rock's never-solved death
On July 18, 1966, Bobby Fuller was found dead inside his car in Hollywood, his body soaked in gasoline. He was 23 and had just turned 'I Fought the Law' into a national hit with his Bobby Fuller Four. Police filed it as suicide or accident, but the circumstances never added up and the case still feeds theories to this day. His death made him one of the great enigmas in the history of rock and roll.
Bobby Fuller
1981
"Double Dutch Bus" hits number one and plants an invented language
On July 18, 1981, "Double Dutch Bus" topped the rhythm and blues chart. Frankie Smith, a Philadelphia musician with no other hits to his name, had written a song about girls skipping rope in the street and sang part of the lyric in an invented slang that pushed extra syllables inside words. Twenty years later that way of deforming the language resurfaced as a trademark of Snoop Dogg's vocabulary.
Frankie Smith
1917
Henri Salvador is born: the comedian Jobim credited with bossa nova
On July 18, 1917, Henri Salvador was born in Cayenne, French Guiana — a guitarist who became famous in France by making people laugh. He recorded rock and roll parodies when the genre was only just reaching Europe, and sweet songs that sounded like nothing else. Antônio Carlos Jobim said more than once that "Dans mon île", from 1957, was one of the seeds of bossa nova. Salvador kept recording into his nineties and died in 2008.
Henri Salvador
Antônio Carlos Jobim
1938
Ian Stewart is born: the 'sixth Stone' the photos never showed
On July 18, 1938, Ian Stewart was born in Pittenweem, Scotland. A co-founder of the Rolling Stones, he was dropped from the official lineup in 1963 because his image did not fit manager Andrew Loog Oldham's plan. Far from leaving, he agreed to stay as pianist and road manager, and his boogie-woogie underpinned the band's records for more than two decades. When he died in 1985, Keith Richards summed up his place: 'the Rolling Stones are his band'.
Ian Stewart
The Rolling Stones
1941
Frank Farian is born: the producer who invented two groups and sang for both
On July 18, 1941, Frank Farian was born in Germany — a cook turned producer who assembled Boney M. by recording the male vocals himself and then hiring dancers for the sleeve and the stage. The formula worked and sold a hundred million records. He repeated it with Milli Vanilli in 1989, but this time it blew up: the duo had to hand back their Grammy, and the scandal permanently changed what audiences demand to know.
Frank Farian
Boney M.
Milli Vanilli
1968
27 minutes of 'Helter Skelter': the night the Beatles invented noise
On July 18, 1968, the Beatles recorded at Abbey Road a 27-minute take of 'Helter Skelter', the longest of their entire career. Paul McCartney wanted the wildest, dirtiest song ever put on tape, and that marathon session was the experiment's laboratory. The definitive version would be recorded in September for the White Album, but that night stands as an acknowledged seed of hard rock and heavy metal. Even the most melodic band in the world wanted, for once, to make the walls shake.
The Beatles
1975
M.I.A. is born: the Tamil refugee who put gunshots in a global hit
On July 18, 1975, Mathangi Arulpragasam was born in London, daughter of a Tamil militant who took the family back to Sri Lanka in the middle of the civil war; she returned to England as a refugee at eleven. She studied art before music and made her first record on a cheap drum machine. "Paper Planes", built on a Clash sample and four shotgun blasts, became a worldwide hit while sounding like nothing else on the radio.
M.I.A.
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