Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today July 25
1965
Dylan plugs in at Newport and splits folk history in two
On July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the Newport Folk Festival stage with a Stratocaster and an electric band, and the temple of folk erupted in boos and cheers. He played just three electric songs and walked off. Acoustic purity died as dogma that night, and the modern idea was born of an artist who owes allegiance to his evolution, not his audience.
Bob Dylan
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1906
Johnny Hodges is born: the alto sax Ellington used like a human voice
On July 25, 1906, Johnny Hodges was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He spent almost forty years in Duke Ellington's orchestra with a single interruption. His tone was so personal that Ellington wrote whole pieces for him alone, and one note was enough to identify him. John Coltrane played in his band in the early fifties and said that was where he learned to build a phrase. He died in 1970, in a dentist's chair.
Johnny Hodges
Duke Ellington
1951
Verdine White is born: the bassist who levitated while playing
On July 25, 1951, Verdine White was born in Chicago, Maurice's younger brother and Earth, Wind & Fire's bassist from the start. His bass line holds up "September" and "Shining Star", but his other speciality was spectacle: on stage he was made to appear floating above the audience on hidden harnesses, an idea the band developed with a magic consultant. In his seventies he was still touring in the same glittering suit.
Verdine White
Earth, Wind & Fire
1966
"You Can't Hurry Love" is released, with a bassline people are still copying
On July 25, 1966, The Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" was released, written and produced by Holland, Dozier and Holland. The lyric relays a mother's advice about patience over a bassline so recognisable that sixteen years later Phil Collins copied it almost note for note for his own version, and took it back to number one. It was the seventh of the group's twelve chart-toppers.
The Supremes
Holland-Dozier-Holland
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2020
Peter Green dies: the guitarist who founded Fleetwood Mac and walked away from the business
On July 25, 2020, Peter Green died at 73. He had replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and in 1967 founded Fleetwood Mac as a blues band. "Albatross" and "Black Magic Woman" are his. In 1970 he left it all behind: LSD and an undiagnosed schizophrenia kept him away for decades, and he went as far as asking to stop receiving royalties because the sums struck him as too much money.
Peter Green
Fleetwood Mac
John Mayall
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1975
"Fame": Bowie steps into Philadelphia soul and takes his first American number one
On July 25, 1975, "Fame" was released, the single with which David Bowie reached number one in the United States for the first time. The song grew out of a riff by guitarist Carlos Alomar, to which John Lennon, visiting the studio, added the high vocal line and the title. Bowie called that album plastic soul: a white Englishman imitating Black American music and admitting it in the name.
David Bowie
John Lennon
Carlos Alomar
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1980
'Back in Black': AC/DC turn mourning into the best-selling rock album ever
On July 25, 1980, five months after Bon Scott's death, AC/DC released 'Back in Black' with Brian Johnson at the microphone. The black cover was the mourning; the content, a ferocious celebration of being alive. It became the best-selling rock album in history — definitive proof that the best way to honor a beloved dead man is not to die with him.
AC/DC
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1983
"Kill 'Em All": four broke teenagers invent thrash metal
On July 25, 1983, "Kill 'Em All" was released, Metallica's debut, put out by a newly founded independent label because no major would touch them. They recorded it in two weeks on a minimal budget, months after throwing out Dave Mustaine, who left to form Megadeth. The record crossed punk's speed with the technique of British heavy metal and founded an entire genre.
Metallica
Cliff Burton
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1984
Farewell to Big Mama Thornton, the voice that roared before Elvis
On July 25, 1984, Willie Mae 'Big Mama' Thornton died in Los Angeles at age 57. She was the first to record 'Hound Dog', three years before Elvis turned it into a worldwide phenomenon, and 'Ball and Chain', which Janis Joplin carried to glory, was hers too. She died poor and nearly forgotten, in a boarding house, while her songs kept making millionaires of others. Few stories capture rock's debt to the blues, and to the Black women who invented it, quite like hers.
Big Mama Thornton
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1925
Benny Benjamin is born: the invisible drummer who set Motown's pulse
On July 25, 1925, William Benjamin was born in Alabama, nicknamed Papa Zita — the first drummer of the Funk Brothers, the session band that played on practically every Motown hit of the sixties without ever appearing on a sleeve. Berry Gordy said the way he pushed slightly ahead of the beat was irreplaceable. Heroin and alcohol pulled him out of the studio and he died in 1969, aged 43, before anyone knew his name.
Benny Benjamin
The Funk Brothers
1943
Jim McCarty is born, the drummer who watched three guitar heroes pass through
On July 25, 1943, Jim McCarty, founding drummer of The Yardbirds, was born in Liverpool. From behind his kit he watched Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page — the holy trinity of British guitar — parade through, as the band moved from purist blues to psychedelic experimentation. His rhythms of crescendos and sudden brakes, the famous 'rave-ups', anticipated the energy of hard rock. He entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and kept touring with the band decades later.
Jim McCarty
The Yardbirds
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1948
Steve Goodman is born, who wrote "City of New Orleans" and lived sixteen years with leukaemia
On July 25, 1948, Steve Goodman was born in Chicago — a songwriter diagnosed with leukaemia at twenty who decided to tell almost nobody. He wrote "City of New Orleans", the song about a declining train that Arlo Guthrie and later Willie Nelson turned into a standard. He lived sixteen years with the illness, playing constantly, and died in 1984 aged 36, four days before his baseball team finally won its division.
Steve Goodman
Arlo Guthrie
1958
Thurston Moore is born, the guitarist who tuned the noise
On July 25, 1958, Thurston Moore, future guitarist and voice of Sonic Youth, was born in Coral Gables, Florida. With impossible tunings and screwdrivers jammed under the strings, he turned noise into a musical language of its own from the New York underground of the eighties. His band bridged the avant-garde and alternative rock, opening the door Nirvana would later walk through. Few musicians expanded what an electric guitar could say quite so much.
Thurston Moore
Sonic Youth
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1969
Yes release their first album, with two covers and no hint of what was coming
On July 25, 1969, "Yes" appeared, the self-titled debut of the band Jon Anderson and Chris Squire had formed the year before after meeting in a London bar. The record does not yet contain the twenty-minute suites they are remembered for: there are vocal harmonies, two covers — of the Beatles and the Byrds — and a sophisticated pop. The monumental pieces would arrive only when Steve Howe joined.
Yes
Jon Anderson
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1973
Dani Filth is born, who sold more controversial T-shirts than records
On July 25, 1973, Daniel Davey was born in England — the voice of Cradle of Filth and the reason extreme metal reached shopping-centre shops. His band mixed black metal with gothic orchestration and lyrics lifted from Victorian novels. In 1993 they issued a T-shirt showing a masturbating nun with an insult to Jesus on the back, which led to arrests in several countries and became the most famous piece of merchandise in the genre.
Dani Filth
Cradle of Filth
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