Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 13
1996
Tupac Shakur dies: hip-hop loses its most contradictory poet
Tupac Shakur dies in Las Vegas at 25, six days after being shot following a boxing match. Son of a Black Panther, he embodied every contradiction of nineties hip-hop: social conscience and provocation, tenderness and violence. His death, still shrouded in theories, sealed the bloodiest era of the coastal rivalry.
Tupac Shakur
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1911
Bill Monroe is born: the man who gave bluegrass its name
On September 13, 1911, Bill Monroe was born in Kentucky. He learned mandolin because his older brothers had already taken the fiddle and the guitar, and learned rhythm from a Black guitarist in town, Arnold Shultz. His band was called the Blue Grass Boys and ended up naming an entire genre. Elvis recorded his waltz 'Blue Moon of Kentucky' on the B-side of his first single.
Bill Monroe
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1944
Peter Cetera is born, the voice of the ballads Chicago didn't want to make
Peter Cetera is born in Chicago: bassist and unmistakable high voice of the band of the same name. Though the group began as a horn-driven jazz-rock collective, it was Cetera's ballads like “If You Leave Me Now” that conquered radio. That tension between artistic ambition and commercial success defined his career, in and out of the band.
Peter Cetera
Chicago
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1965
Capitol puts Yesterday out as a US single because the Beatles could not stop them
On 13 September 1965 it appeared as an American single: McCartney alone with an acoustic guitar and the string quartet George Martin arranged. In Britain the band refused to release it, because it did not sound like the Beatles and might damage the image. Capitol had less to lose and took four weeks at number one.
The Beatles
Paul McCartney
George Martin
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1972
Close to the Edge reaches American shops, and Bill Bruford had already had enough
On 13 September 1972 Yes's fifth album came out in the United States, five days after Britain. One whole side for a single eighteen-minute piece in four movements; number three on the American chart. Bill Bruford compared the sessions to climbing Everest, left for King Crimson before it was released, and had to share royalties with Alan White.
Yes
Bill Bruford
Alan White
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1976
Lynyrd Skynyrd release three Atlanta nights, the only live album they had time for
One More from the Road came out on 13 September 1976, taken from 7, 8 and 9 July at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta: number nine and three times platinum. Thirteen months later the band's plane came down in Mississippi with Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines aboard. It is the only live document of that line-up, and they made it without knowing.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Ronnie Van Zant
Steve Gaines
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1980
Elton John plays free for four hundred thousand people and comes back for the encores as Donald Duck
On 13 September 1980, on Central Park's Great Lawn, he played a free concert to some four hundred thousand people and returned for the encores in a Donald Duck costume designed by Bob Mackie. He was coming off a weak run of years and had stopped writing with Bernie Taupin. That afternoon, dressed as a cartoon, he reminded New York what he could do.
Elton John
Bob Mackie
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1982
Kate Bush produces herself and delivers the record nobody knew how to hear
On 13 September 1982 The Dreaming appeared, the first album she produced entirely on her own. She pushed the Fairlight to overload, changed voice on every song and lost half her audience on the way: number three, ten weeks on the chart, her worst-selling record to that point. Neil Tennant called it very weird. It is the one people cite now.
Kate Bush
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1997
The Verve go straight to number one with a song written about a dying father
On 13 September 1997 The Drugs Don't Work entered the UK chart at number one. Richard Ashcroft had written it in 1995 about his father's illness, but it went on sale the day after Diana's death and the whole country decided it was about something else. Urban Hymns arrived two weeks later and confirmed the most profitable misunderstanding of their career.
The Verve
Richard Ashcroft
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1925
Mel Tormé is born: the Velvet Fog who wrote everybody’s Christmas carol
On September 13, 1925, Mel Tormé was born in Chicago. They called him the Velvet Fog for the softness of his tone, a nickname he loathed. Besides singing he was an arranger, drummer and composer: he wrote 'The Christmas Song' — the one with chestnuts roasting on an open fire — in forty minutes, during a heatwave, trying to think about cold things. It is among the most recorded songs in history.
Mel Tormé
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1961
Dave Mustaine is born: the guitarist Metallica threw out
On September 13, 1961, Dave Mustaine was born in California. He was a founding guitarist of Metallica and was expelled in 1983, four days before recording the first album, over his alcoholism; they put him on a bus back to Los Angeles without another word. He built Megadeth with the declared purpose of beating them, and spent forty years competing with a band that no longer thought about him.
Dave Mustaine
Megadeth
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1967
Stephen Perkins is born, the drummer who put jazz and African drums into Jane's Addiction
Los Angeles, 13 September 1967. He joined Jane's Addiction at seventeen and brought the band something alternative rock did not then have: swing, African percussion, Latin patterns, a way of playing learned from Gene Krupa and Billy Cobham. When the group blew up in 1991 he carried on with Perry Farrell in Porno for Pyros, and never stopped playing in three places at once.
Stephen Perkins
Jane's Addiction
Porno for Pyros
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1976
Dylan releases the harshest Rolling Thunder record and NBC airs it the same month
Hard Rain came out on 13 September 1976, drawn from Fort Worth and Fort Collins, the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue. NBC turned the Colorado show into an hour-long special and the ratings were poor despite a TV Guide cover. Critics said the tour had run out of fuel; what you hear is a man singing in anger.
Bob Dylan
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1977
Fiona Apple is born: the woman who used an award to insult the industry
On September 13, 1977, Fiona Apple was born in New York. She released her first album at eighteen and in 1997, accepting an MTV award, took the stage and said that world was a sham and nobody should model themselves on it. It cost her dearly. She then spent years fighting her label to release albums it considered unsellable and that critics ended up hailing as major works.
Fiona Apple
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1986
Berlin top the American chart with the one song of theirs that sounds nothing like Berlin
The Billboard chart dated 13 September 1986 crowned Take My Breath Away, written by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock for Top Gun. Berlin were a Los Angeles synth pop band with songs about sex and no interest in slow ballads. They took the Oscar and the Golden Globe, and the guarantee that nobody would remember anything else of theirs.
Berlin
Giorgio Moroder
Terri Nunn
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1988
Suicidal Tendencies sign to a major and trade hardcore for thrash
How Will I Laugh Tomorrow When I Can't Even Smile Today came out on 13 September 1988, the band's first album for Epic. Mike Clark had joined on second guitar, wrote most of the music and pushed them towards metal, with more room for Rocky George's solos. Number one hundred and eleven in America. The following year the bass job went to Robert Trujillo.
Suicidal Tendencies
Mike Clark
Rocky George
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1993
The Cure release two Detroit nights and close their arena chapter
Show came out on 13 September 1993, taken from two 1992 nights at the Palace of Auburn Hills outside Detroit, on the Wish tour. Twenty-nine in Britain, forty-two in America. What matters is what it documents: a band built for small clubs filling twenty-thousand-seat American arenas without ever having asked for it.
The Cure
Robert Smith
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1999
Ocean Colour Scene slow down and the British press invents dad rock for them
One from the Modern came out on 13 September 1999 on Island, produced by Brendan Lynch and recorded at Moseley Shoals, the Birmingham studio that had already given their best album its title. Number four in Britain, and a label that never came off: dad rock. They had gone from half the scene's favourite band to the one nobody defended out loud.
Ocean Colour Scene
Brendan Lynch
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2005
The Dandy Warhols make an album for the stated purpose of getting dropped
Odditorium or Warlords of Mars came out on 13 September 2005 and was their last for Capitol. Courtney Taylor-Taylor later described it in exactly those terms: a record made so the label would let them go. Pitchfork gave it 1.2 out of 10 and The Guardian called it their best. It lasted one week on each chart and vanished. It worked.
The Dandy Warhols
Courtney Taylor-Taylor
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2019
The Pixies record in a converted church and let the building do half the work
Beneath the Eyrie came out on 13 September 2019, made with Tom Dalgety at Dreamland, a nineteenth-century church turned studio in Hurley, New York. The title comes from the bald eagle's nest they found there. Number seven in Britain. Black Francis wanted a record about death and the mystical, and this time he only had to pick the right place to plug in.
Pixies
Black Francis
Tom Dalgety
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