Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 15
1928
Cannonball Adderley is born, the joyful sax that brought jazz to the street
Julian “Cannonball” Adderley is born in Tampa: a key saxophonist of hard bop and soul jazz. He played on Miles Davis' “Kind of Blue”, the best-selling jazz album in history, and with “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” proved jazz could be popular without getting dumb. His communicative spirit remains an antidote to the genre's elitism.
Cannonball Adderley
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1941
Signe Anderson is born, Jefferson Airplane's first voice
Signe Toly Anderson is born in Seattle: Jefferson Airplane's original singer, present on the 1966 debut “Takes Off”. She left the band to raise her daughter and her place was taken by Grace Slick, who would carry it into the history books. Anderson is a reminder that every legendary band contains human decisions the legend tends to erase.
Signe Toly Anderson
Jefferson Airplane
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1965
Otis Blue is cut over a weekend and defines Southern soul for good
Volt released it on 15 September 1965. Redding and Booker T. & the M.G.'s built almost all of it across two July sessions: twenty-four hours on the clock, with more covers than originals and one of his own called Respect that would stop belonging to him two years later. Number one on the R&B albums chart and the definition of Memphis soul.
Otis Redding
Booker T. & the M.G.'s
Steve Cropper
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1967
The Kinks release their best album yet and the country parks it at number thirty-five
It came out on 15 September 1967 with Waterloo Sunset inside and reached number thirty-five in Britain, their worst showing to that point. Ray Davies had eased Shel Talmy out midway through the sessions to produce it himself, and swapped riffs for portraits: neighbours, hangovers, people watching a river. It took thirty years for anyone to agree with him.
The Kinks
Ray Davies
Dave Davies
Shel Talmy
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1973
'Deliver the Word' tops the chart and funk starts preaching
On September 15, 1973, War's 'Deliver the Word' topped the R&B albums chart. The band came from Long Beach, mixed Black and Chicano members, and on that record crossed funk with gospel and lyrics about the street and survival. 'The World Is a Ghetto', from the year before, had been the best-selling album of 1973 in the United States. Few groups made such joyful music about such heavy subjects.
War
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1979
Led Zeppelin top America for seven weeks with the keyboard player's album
On the Billboard chart dated 15 September 1979, In Through the Out Door went to number one and stayed for seven weeks. It is the record where John Paul Jones has a hand in six of the seven songs, because Page and Bonham were in no state to argue. It came wrapped in a brown paper bag, with six different sleeves nobody could choose between in the shop.
Led Zeppelin
John Paul Jones
John Bonham
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1982
Queen play North America for the last time and nobody announces it
On 15 September 1982, at the Forum in Inglewood, Queen closed the Hot Space tour and with it their history in North America: they never went back. The four nights planned in Los Angeles had shrunk to two. Billy Squier, support act for the whole run, came out with them for Jailhouse Rock. They still had four years of full stadiums everywhere else.
Queen
Freddie Mercury
Billy Squier
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1990
George Michael goes to number one while refusing to appear in his own videos
Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 entered the British chart straight at number one for the week ending 15 September 1990. Its author had decided not to appear in the videos or give interviews: he wanted to be heard without his face attached. Sony treated it as sabotage, the two ended up in court, and volume two never came to exist.
George Michael
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1998
Manson dresses as an androgynous alien and Walmart refuses to put it on the shelf
Mechanical Animals came out on 15 September 1998 and entered the American chart at number one with two hundred and twenty-three thousand copies. Manson had traded industrial for the glam of Bowie and T. Rex and posed for the sleeve as an extraterrestrial with no settled sex. Walmart, Target and Kmart refused to stock it. The sales figure suggests it made little difference.
Marilyn Manson
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2004
Johnny Ramone dies, the man who played downstrokes for two decades
He died in Los Angeles on 15 September 2004, aged fifty-five, after five years of prostate cancer. His contribution fits into one gesture: the pick always going down, never coming back up, for whole songs and whole concerts. Nobody keeps that up for an hour without wrecking a wrist. He did it for twenty years and invented a language.
Johnny Ramone
Ramones
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2008
Richard Wright dies, the man behind the chords everyone hums without knowing
He died in London on 15 September 2008, aged sixty-five, of lung cancer. The chords of The Great Gig in the Sky and Us and Them are his, which is to say a good part of why The Dark Side of the Moon sounds the way it does. Roger Waters forced him out of Pink Floyd during The Wall; in 2005 the four of them played together again at Live 8.
Richard Wright
Pink Floyd
Roger Waters
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2019
Ric Ocasek dies, the man who wrote the hooks and produced those who had none
He died in New York on 15 September 2019, aged seventy-five, while recovering from lung surgery. With the Cars he turned new wave into radio formula without losing the chill, and as a producer he did the opposite: he shaped Weezer's first album, Bad Brains' Rock for Light and several Suicide records. Two opposite trades, one head.
Ric Ocasek
The Cars
Weezer
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1956
Maggie Reilly is born: the voice of 'Moonlight Shadow' almost nobody can name
On September 15, 1956, Maggie Reilly was born in Glasgow. She sang on several Mike Oldfield albums in the eighties, including 'Moonlight Shadow', one of the decade's biggest European hits. Her name wasn't on the sleeve: the record was Oldfield's. It is the classic fate of session vocalists, who supply the one thing audiences remember and stay off the credits.
Maggie Reilly
Mike Oldfield
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1966
The Small Faces' only number one lasts a week and a dead man takes it away
On 15 September 1966 All or Nothing topped the British chart: the Small Faces' only number one, seven days exactly. It was pushed off by Distant Drums, by Jim Reeves, who had been dead for two years and held on for five weeks. Marriott and Lane had cut it in July in barely an afternoon, with a voice that sounded twenty years older than its owner.
Small Faces
Steve Marriott
Ronnie Lane
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1969
America discovers the first song Hendrix ever wrote, three years late
Reprise put it out as an A-side on 15 September 1969, with If 6 Was 9 on the back. Stone Free had been hiding since December 1966 on the flip of Hey Joe in Britain: it was the first thing Hendrix wrote after moving to London, a hymn to not being tied down by anyone. His own country took nearly three years to turn the record over.
Jimi Hendrix
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
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1978
The Stones put out Respectable and answer punk by speeding up Chuck Berry
Released as a single on 15 September 1978, with When the Whip Comes Down on the other side, it stalled at number twenty-three in Britain. Jagger had written it slow; Keith Richards pushed the tempo up until it became what its author called Chuck Berry meeting punk. They were thirty-five and had no plans to make room for anyone.
The Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger
Keith Richards
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1987
The Ramones release an album their drummer had already walked out on
Halfway to Sanity came out on Sire on 15 September 1987, a month after Richie Ramone walked off mid-tour over a split of T-shirt money. The producer, Daniel Rey, remembered impatient sessions and Joey and Johnny not speaking. Number one hundred and seventy-two in America and, even so, the last time they sounded like it mattered.
Ramones
Joey Ramone
Johnny Ramone
Richie Ramone
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1990
A jeans advert takes a 1973 song to number one in Britain
On the British chart for the week ending 15 September 1990, The Joker went to number one and held for two weeks. The song was seventeen years old and had barely made a mark in the country at the time; it got there because Levi's used it in a commercial. Steve Miller had to do precisely nothing, and his back catalogue had its best decade.
Steve Miller Band
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1997
Ocean Colour Scene knock Oasis off the top and get a consolation plaque
Marchin' Already came out on 15 September 1997 and shifted Be Here Now off the British summit. Noel Gallagher sent them a plaque dedicated to the second best band in Britain; Steve Cradock replied that it was an honour to be ahead of Oasis and behind the Beatles. Pure Britpop: the argument mattered as much as the records.
Ocean Colour Scene
Oasis
Noel Gallagher
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2003
Starsailor hire Phil Spector and only two songs survive
Silence Is Easy came out on 15 September 2003 and went to number two in Britain on fifty-four thousand copies in seven days. Of the sessions with Phil Spector, who was to produce the whole thing, two tracks survived; John Leckie and Danton Supple finished the rest. That February Spector had been arrested for murder, and the record kept the shadow.
Starsailor
Phil Spector
James Walsh
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2009
Living Colour chart again sixteen years later on 2,800 copies
The Chair in the Doorway came out on Megaforce on 15 September 2009 and entered at number one hundred and sixty-one on two thousand eight hundred copies: their first American chart appearance since Stain in 1993. Vernon Reid was still crossing metal, funk and free jazz as if the market did not exist. By 2009 it barely did.
Living Colour
Vernon Reid
Corey Glover
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2017
Foo Fighters hire Adele's producer and put McCartney behind the drums
Concrete and Gold came out on 15 September 2017 and went to number one in America on a hundred and twenty-seven thousand units. Grohl handed the record to Greg Kurstin, fresh from making hits for Adele and Sia, and put Paul McCartney on drums for Sunday Rain. The joke tells itself: the most famous drummer alive giving up the stool to a bass player.
Foo Fighters
Greg Kurstin
Paul McCartney
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