Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 12
2003
Johnny Cash dies, the man in black who sang for the fallen
Johnny Cash dies in Nashville at 71, barely four months after his wife June Carter. The man in black closed his life in full late-career glory: his American Recordings with Rick Rubin and the devastating cover of “Hurt” had returned him to the center of the culture. Few artists have embodied guilt, faith and redemption so truthfully.
Johnny Cash
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1944
Barry White is born: soul's deepest voice and its finest arranger
On September 12, 1944, Barry White was born in Texas. At sixteen he was jailed for stealing tyres and said that hearing Elvis's 'It's Now or Never' in prison changed his life. His extreme baritone became a running joke, but the genuinely remarkable thing was something else: he led the Love Unlimited Orchestra and wrote string arrangements of a sophistication almost nobody in pop attempted.
Barry White
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1963
She Loves You goes to number one and installs a yeah nobody wanted
On the British chart dated 12 September 1963, She Loves You jumped from third place to the top and stayed there four weeks; in November it led again. It was the best-selling single of the year in the country and remains the Beatles' biggest there, on close to two million copies. McCartney's father had suggested swapping the yeah for a more presentable yes.
The Beatles
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1966
The Monkees debut on TV: the first band manufactured for the screen
NBC premieres The Monkees, starring a band assembled by casting call to compete with the Beatles. The experiment worked too well: songs like “I'm a Believer” sold millions and the group ended up fighting for the right to play their own instruments. It was the dress rehearsal for the entire manufactured-pop industry that followed.
The Monkees
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1970
A 1967 song nobody wanted as a single arrives three years late at the top
The Tears of a Clown led the British chart for the week ending 12 September 1970. It had spent three years buried on a Miracles album: Stevie Wonder had built it on a fairground melody and nobody at Motown thought it single material until a British executive pushed. Smokey Robinson was on the point of leaving the group; the hit delayed his exit.
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
Stevie Wonder
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1975
Pink Floyd release an album about the absent one and the absent one walks into the studio
Wish You Were Here came out in Britain on 12 September 1975 on Harvest. It is a record about Syd Barrett and the hole he left, and while they were recording it at Abbey Road he turned up in person: overweight, head and eyebrows shaved, carrying a plastic bag. It took them a while to recognise him. Several of them cried. It was the last time they saw him.
Pink Floyd
Syd Barrett
Roger Waters
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1980
Bowie closes his hardest decade with Scary Monsters and then goes off to make money
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) came out on 12 September 1980 on RCA and went to number one in Britain, with Robert Fripp abusing the guitars and Pete Townshend guesting. Ashes to Ashes went back to the astronaut of 1969 and left him a wreck. It was his last album for the label and the last with Tony Visconti for twenty years; then came Let's Dance and the stadiums.
David Bowie
Tony Visconti
Robert Fripp
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1981
Jennifer Hudson is born: the woman who lost the contest and won everything else
On September 12, 1981, Jennifer Hudson was born in Chicago. She finished seventh on 'American Idol' in 2004 and her elimination caused a national scandal; two years later she won an Oscar for 'Dreamgirls'. She went on to complete the EGOT, American entertainment's four major awards, something fewer than twenty people have done. Talent contests get it wrong often, but at least they put people on screen.
Jennifer Hudson
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1987
Michael Jackson opens his tour in Tokyo as Bad closes its first week on top
On 12 September 1987 Michael Jackson launched the Bad World Tour at Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo, his first performance in Japan since the Jackson 5. That same day closed the week in which Bad had entered the British chart straight at number one on three hundred and fifty thousand copies. The tour ran sixteen months, one hundred and twenty-three shows and four and a half million people.
Michael Jackson
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1987
A soundtrack sung in Spanish tops the American chart
On 12 September 1987 the La Bamba soundtrack reached number one in the United States and held for two weeks. The first half is Los Lobos remaking Ritchie Valens songs; in the other, Marshall Crenshaw plays Buddy Holly and Brian Setzer plays Eddie Cochran. That the title track was in Spanish bothered nobody any more, thirty years after it had.
Los Lobos
Ritchie Valens
Brian Setzer
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1987
'Bigger and Deffer' tops the chart and rap discovers the ballad
On September 12, 1987, LL Cool J's 'Bigger and Deffer' topped the R&B and hip-hop albums chart. It carried 'I Need Love', probably rap's first romantic ballad: a slow song about being in love, in a genre that until then only competed over who was hardest. His peers called him soft. It sold millions and opened a door half of commercial hip-hop walked through afterwards.
LL Cool J
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1989
Aerosmith record genuinely clean and sell seven million copies
Pump came out on 12 September 1989 with Bruce Fairbairn producing: number five in America and seven million copies there alone. Brad Whitford explained the title bluntly, saying that now they were off drugs the band was pumped up. It produced Janie's Got a Gun, a song about child sexual abuse that played on every rock station without many people listening to the words.
Aerosmith
Bruce Fairbairn
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1995
The Chili Peppers swap Frusciante for Navarro and the funk turns metallic
One Hot Minute came out on 12 September 1995, four years after Blood Sugar Sex Magik and with Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction filling the gap left when John Frusciante walked out mid-tour. Number four in America, number two in Britain and two million copies: less than half the previous record. They were heavier and sounded less like themselves.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Dave Navarro
John Frusciante
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2000
Rage Against the Machine play their last shows and do not yet know it
On 12 September 2000 Rage Against the Machine began two consecutive nights at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, a faded old boxing hall. They were the last concerts of that era: a month later Zack de la Rocha announced he was leaving and the other three ended up forming Audioslave. They did not play together again until 2007.
Rage Against the Machine
Zack de la Rocha
Tom Morello
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2000
At the Drive-In release the album that breaks them, with Iggy Pop inside it
Relationship of Command came out on 12 September 2000, cut in seven weeks in Malibu with Ross Robinson and with Iggy Pop singing on one track and speaking on another. It was the record that lifted the band out of El Paso's small rooms and also the one that blew them apart: less than a year later they had stopped, split into The Mars Volta and Sparta.
At the Drive-In
Iggy Pop
Ross Robinson
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2008
Death Magnetic sells half a million in three days and sounds better in a video game
On 12 September 2008 Metallica released their first album with Rick Rubin: four hundred and ninety thousand copies in three days and a fifth consecutive number one in America, something no other band had managed. It arrived compressed to the point of distortion, a casualty of the race to sound louder than everyone else. Fans found the tracks used for Guitar Hero, without that squeeze, sounded better.
Metallica
Rick Rubin
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1942
Maria Muldaur is born: the camel song nobody remembers was blues
On September 12, 1942, Maria Grazia Rosa Domenica D'Amato was born in Greenwich Village. She came up in the folk and blues jam sessions of the sixties Village, alongside Dylan and the rest, and in 1974 had an enormous hit with 'Midnight at the Oasis'. The song stuck as a light curiosity, and she spent the following five decades making serious blues records almost nobody heard.
Maria Muldaur
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1952
Neil Peart is born: the drummer who also wrote all the lyrics
On September 12, 1952, Neil Peart was born in Canada. He joined Rush two weeks before their first tour and became the finest technical drummer of his generation and, at the same time, the band's lyricist: he wrote about science fiction, individual liberty and philosophy while executing impossible time signatures. After losing his daughter and his wife within a year, he got on a motorcycle and rode ninety thousand kilometres.
Neil Peart
Rush
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1961
Mylène Farmer is born: France’s best-selling artist and its most discreet
On September 12, 1961, Mylène Farmer was born in Canada and raised in France. She built a thirty-year career on videos that played like short films, lyrics about death and desire, and one strict rule: she almost never gives interviews. She is the best-selling female artist in French history, and outside the francophone world almost nobody knows her. Pop has invisible linguistic borders too.
Mylène Farmer
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1966
Ben Folds is born, the man who called his own music punk rock for sissies
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 12 September 1966. At the height of grunge he put together a trio with no electric guitar — piano, bass and drums — and described the result as punk rock for sissies. Ben Folds Five sounded like a barroom song played with the spite of a hardcore band. Decades later he ended up working with symphony orchestras, which is where that joke usually lands.
Ben Folds
Ben Folds Five
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1969
The Kinks release one of their best songs and absolutely nobody buys it
Shangri-La came out as a single on Pye on 12 September 1969 and failed to chart in Britain or America. Ray Davies had written it after visiting his sister in a planned suburb outside Adelaide: a portrait at once tender and cruel of middle-class aspiration, the paid-off house and the armchair. It sat inside Arthur, which did not sell either.
The Kinks
Ray Davies
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1970
Creedence enter straight at the top in Britain with an album named after their drummer
Cosmo's Factory led the British albums chart for the week ending 12 September 1970, on entry. The title comes from the Berkeley warehouse where John Fogerty made them rehearse endlessly: drummer Doug Clifford, nicknamed Cosmo, started calling it the factory. That same year they had put out three double A-sided singles and all three reached the American top five.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
John Fogerty
Doug Clifford
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1975
Thin Lizzy finally make the British chart, at number sixty
Fighting came out on 12 September 1975 on Vertigo, produced by Phil Lynott himself, and reached number sixty: on their fifth album, the band appeared on the British chart for the first time. The formula was fixed there, with Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson's twin guitars answering each other line by line. The following year Jailbreak turned it into money.
Thin Lizzy
Phil Lynott
Scott Gorham
Brian Robertson
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1981
Journey spend one single week at number one and the album ends up selling ten million
Escape topped the American albums chart on 12 September 1981 and the following week it did not. One week at the top, and yet a diamond certification: ten million copies in the country. It contained Don't Stop Believin', which stalled at number nine at the time and decades later became the best-selling twentieth-century song in digital downloads.
Journey
Jonathan Cain
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1992
Mike Oldfield re-records his 1973 album and goes back to number one
Tubular Bells II entered the British chart straight at number one for the week ending 12 September 1992, nineteen years after the original had funded the birth of Virgin. Oldfield had just left that label after two decades and took the idea with him, with Trevor Horn producing. Remaking your own masterpiece sounds like surrender; on the chart it worked exactly the same.
Mike Oldfield
Trevor Horn
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1995
Lenny Kravitz finally cracks the American top ten, and does it in a foul mood
Circus came out on 12 September 1995 on Virgin, written, produced and almost entirely played by him across a French chateau, the Bahamas and Hoboken. It was his first American top ten and he made it in a bad year: sick of the industry and with his mother seriously ill. Critics accused him of imitating the seventies, which was precisely what he had been doing all along.
Lenny Kravitz
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2006
Mastodon debut on a major label with an album about getting lost on a mountain
Blood Mountain came out on 12 September 2006 and was their major-label debut. Troy Sanders summed it up as everything that can happen to you when you are stranded on a mountain, lost in the woods. It entered at number thirty-two on twenty-four thousand copies, a laughable figure for a major and enough to let them carry on. Josh Homme and Cedric Bixler-Zavala guest on vocals.
Mastodon
Josh Homme
Cedric Bixler-Zavala
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