Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 7
1978
Keith Moon dies, the drummer who played like the world was ending
Keith Moon, drummer of The Who, dies in London at 32 from an overdose of the medication meant to help him quit drinking. No one played like him: no fixed patterns, pure orchestrated chaos that turned every song into an avalanche. With his passing, rock lost its wildest percussionist and one of its most tragic characters.
Keith Moon
The Who
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1936
Buddy Holly is born, architect of the modern rock band
Buddy Holly is born in Lubbock, Texas; in just 22 years of life he left behind the rock band manual: two guitars, bass and drums, self-written songs and unapologetic glasses. The Beatles even took inspiration from his band's name for their own. His early death in 1959 made him a myth, but his real legacy is the format everyone copied.
Buddy Holly
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1943
Gloria Gaynor is born: the woman who recorded the anthem of everyone who survives
On September 7, 1943, Gloria Gaynor was born in New Jersey. She recorded 'I Will Survive' in 1978 wearing an orthopaedic brace, just out of spinal surgery after falling on stage, and the label put it on the B-side because they didn't believe in it. The song became the only disco record to win a Grammy in its category and the anthem of whatever cause needed one. Sometimes the B-side is the record.
Gloria Gaynor
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1968
Led Zeppelin play their first gig at a Danish youth club under a borrowed name
On 7 September 1968, at the youth club in Gladsaxe outside Copenhagen, four musicians walked on billed as the New Yardbirds. Page still held the right to use that name to fulfil some inherited Scandinavian dates; beside him were John Paul Jones, John Bonham and a twenty-year-old singer freshly plucked from the Midlands. That contractual obligation was Led Zeppelin's first show.
Led Zeppelin
Jimmy Page
Robert Plant
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1968
Waiting for the Sun is America's best-selling album and the Doors' only number one
On the Billboard chart dated 7 September 1968, the Doors' third album topped the United States. It was the only one that ever did, and it had come out awkwardly: the long piece Morrison wanted was left off, and the record was pulled along by a single, Hello, I Love You, with far more radio pop in it than menace. The band that frightened people had become comfortable.
The Doors
Jim Morrison
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1985
Whitney Houston's debut tops the chart and doesn't move for months
On September 7, 1985, Whitney Houston's first album topped the R&B albums chart, where it stayed through September and much of the rest of the year. Clive Davis had spent two years picking her songs one by one before letting her record. It became the best-selling debut by a woman in history to that point. Industrial patience can be a form of talent too.
Whitney Houston
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1987
Pink Floyd release their first album without Waters while he sues over the name
A Momentary Lapse of Reason came out in Britain on 7 September 1987, with Roger Waters asking the High Court to stop the Pink Floyd name being used at all. Gilmour built it with session players, brought Richard Wright back on wages because he could not legally be a partner, and left Nick Mason playing very little. Number three and full stadiums: the case was won by selling tickets.
Pink Floyd
David Gilmour
Roger Waters
Richard Wright
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1994
Weezer release Buddy Holly on the day Holly would have turned fifty-eight
The single came out on 7 September 1994, the date chosen deliberately. Rivers Cuomo did not want it on the album: he thought it was silly and had to be talked round. Spike Jonze shot the video in a single day, dropping the band into Happy Days footage, and Geffen sold it to Microsoft without telling them: it ended up on the Windows 95 installation disc.
Weezer
Rivers Cuomo
Spike Jonze
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1996
Four bullets hit Tupac Shakur at a Las Vegas traffic light
On 7 September 1996, at a quarter past eleven at night, a car pulled up alongside Suge Knight's BMW at Flamingo and Koval and opened fire. Hours earlier Shakur had watched Tyson win and punched a gang member in the MGM Grand lobby, all of it caught on the hotel's security cameras. He died on the 13th, aged twenty-five, and the case is still unresolved.
Tupac Shakur
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2003
Warren Zevon dies, having refused treatment so he could finish a record
He died in Los Angeles on 7 September 2003, aged fifty-six, of mesothelioma his family traced to asbestos breathed as a child in his father's carpet shop. On hearing the diagnosis he chose not to be treated: he wanted to be lucid enough to record. The Wind came out twelve days before his death, with Springsteen and Jackson Browne on it. He had been writing jokes about this for thirty years.
Warren Zevon
Bruce Springsteen
Jackson Browne
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2018
McCartney returns to number one in America thirty-six years later
Egypt Station came out on 7 September 2018 and went straight to the top of the American chart: his first number one there since Tug of War in 1982, and the first of his entire career to debut at the top. He was seventy-six. Greg Kurstin produced it and the title comes from one of his own paintings: each song a different stop on the same journey.
Paul McCartney
Greg Kurstin
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1951
Morris Albert is born: the Brazilian behind 'Feelings' who ended up in court
On September 7, 1951, Maurício Alberto Kaisermann was born in São Paulo. In 1974 he recorded 'Feelings', a ballad that became a planetary hit and, over the years, a byword for elevator schmaltz. Then came the lawsuit: a French composer proved the melody came from a song of his from 1957, and Albert lost the rights. Few songs have been so heard, so despised and so litigated all at once.
Morris Albert
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1953
Benmont Tench is born, the keyboard player holding up Tom Petty's songs from underneath
Gainesville, Florida, 7 September 1953. He had played with Tom Petty since they were teenagers and ended up founding the Heartbreakers with him, where his organ and piano are the part of the sound nobody hums and without which the whole thing collapses. His other career is session work: Dylan, Johnny Cash, Stevie Nicks. When an American record sounds like home, he is usually on it.
Benmont Tench
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
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1957
Jermaine Stewart is born: the man who asked not to take his clothes off
On September 7, 1957, Jermaine Stewart was born in Ohio. He started as a dancer on 'Soul Train' and a backing singer for Culture Club before recording, in 1986, 'We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off', a worldwide hit whose lyric proposed exactly the opposite of what the rest of that decade's pop was proposing. He died of AIDS in 1997, aged thirty-nine, in the same year as so many others.
Jermaine Stewart
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1982
The Clash play an 1852 theatre in Boston and someone leaves the tapes running
On 7 September 1982 the Clash filled Boston's Orpheum, a mid-nineteenth-century hall rescheduled after three August nights were cancelled. Epic recorded the whole show without anyone seeming to care much. Seventeen years later, with the band long broken up, six songs from that night made up the bulk of From Here to Eternity, the only official live album they have.
The Clash
Joe Strummer
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1985
Jagger and Bowie rule Britain with a song they cut in an afternoon
On the UK chart for the week ending 7 September 1985, Dancing in the Street went straight in at number one and stayed a month. They had recorded it on 29 June at the end of a studio day and shot the video that same night, because the original plan — singing it by satellite between London and Philadelphia during Live Aid — was technically impossible. The haste shows, and that is why it works.
Mick Jagger
David Bowie
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1988
MTV crowns INXS with five awards for the album their label did not want
On 7 September 1988, at the Universal Amphitheatre, INXS collected five of the channel's awards, including Video of the Year for Need You Tonight/Mediate. Atlantic had flatly rejected Kick — there was no way to get it onto rock radio, they said — and the label president offered a million dollars for the band to go back to Australia and make something else. Their manager turned it down.
INXS
Michael Hutchence
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1992
Roger Waters devotes a whole album to television and puts an ape on the remote
Amused to Death came out on Columbia on 7 September 1992, with an ape flipping channels as its narrative thread, the Gulf War seen from the sofa and Jeff Beck supplying the solos. Waters mixed it in QSound so the sound seemed to come from everywhere in the room. It was his first solo UK top ten: seven years out of Pink Floyd, and finally someone listening.
Roger Waters
Jeff Beck
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1998
Perfect comes off an album that sold a fraction of what was expected
The single arrived on 7 September 1998, by which point it was clear Adore would not repeat Mellon Collie. Corgan had fired his drummer and swapped guitars for synthesisers and drum machines, and here he proved he could do it without losing the tune. The Dayton and Faris video revisits the teenagers from 1979 three years on, older and noticeably less happy.
The Smashing Pumpkins
Billy Corgan
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1999
Muse's first album comes out in France before it does at home
Showbiz reached French shops on 7 September 1999, on a French label; in Britain it was not released until 4 October. They were three lads from a seaside town in Devon with a falsetto singer and a devotion to excess that the British press dismissed as Radiohead imitation. France gave them a month's head start and was not wrong to.
Muse
Matt Bellamy
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2000
Rage lose an award to Limp Bizkit and their bassist climbs the set
On 7 September 2000, at Radio City Music Hall, Best Rock Video went to Limp Bizkit and Tim Commerford climbed the stage scaffolding and refused to come down. MTV cut to a commercial break while security prised him off; he was arrested for disorderly conduct. Six weeks later Zack de la Rocha walked out and Rage Against the Machine ceased to exist.
Rage Against the Machine
Tim Commerford
Limp Bizkit
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2001
Ryan Adams shoots a video with the Twin Towers behind him and has four days left
On 7 September 2001, under the Brooklyn Bridge, Ryan Adams filmed the video for New York, New York: a breakup song with the city behind it. The closing shot leaves him staring across at lower Manhattan. Four days later that was no longer scenery. The single, due on the 11th, was pushed to November and arrived as something else entirely.
Ryan Adams
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2008
A drunk in the crowd shoves Noel Gallagher into the monitors in Toronto
On 7 September 2008, at Toronto's Virgin Festival and halfway through Morning Glory, a man climbed on stage and pushed Noel Gallagher from behind. He went face first into the monitors with three broken ribs and Oasis cancelled Paris and New York. Footage shot by the audience went round the world on YouTube before the band had said anything at all.
Oasis
Noel Gallagher
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2010
Jerry Lee Lewis reaches forty albums surrounded by the people who learned from him
Mean Old Man came out on 7 September 2010, when its author was seventy-four and had spent half a century outliving his own legend. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson and Ringo Starr sing with him. Number thirty in America, the country that in 1958 erased him from radio for marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin. He came back through the country door and stayed.
Jerry Lee Lewis
Keith Richards
Mick Jagger
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2018
Spiritualized return with a vast record made without the money to make it vast
And Nothing Hurt came out on 7 September 2018, six years after its predecessor and largely assembled by Jason Pierce at home, simulating on a computer the orchestras and choirs he could no longer afford. It sounds enormous and is not. The title, added to that of the next album, completes a line from Vonnegut: everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. Number eleven in Britain.
Spiritualized
Jason Pierce
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