Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 16
1925
B.B. King is born, the king who taught the world to make a guitar cry
On a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, Riley B. King is born, the future B.B. King. With his guitar Lucille and an unmistakable vibrato, he took the blues out of the segregated circuit and onto the world's stages. Clapton, Hendrix and every rock guitarist since plays, knowingly or not, phrases he invented.
B.B. King
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1963
Surfer Girl arrives with Brian Wilson credited as producer for the first time
Capitol released it on 16 September 1963 and it reached number seven in America. It is the first Beach Boys album where the production credit carries Brian Wilson's name, at twenty-one; also the first with strings and with session players from outside the band. From here to Pet Sounds is three years and a straight line.
The Beach Boys
Brian Wilson
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1968
Marc Anthony is born: the New Yorker who gave salsa back to New York
On September 16, 1968, Marco Antonio Muñiz was born in New York to Puerto Rican parents. He started singing house music in English and came late and by accident to salsa, a genre considered spent by the nineties. He became the best-selling salsa artist in history. His case shows that the diaspora doesn't preserve a tradition: it rewrites it when it needs to.
Marc Anthony
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1973
Víctor Jara is killed in a stadium and justice takes forty-five years to arrive
He was arrested on 12 September 1973 at the Universidad Técnica del Estado and taken to the Estadio Chile. He was beaten there for four days. On 16 September he was shot dead and his body left in the street with forty-four bullets in it. In 2018 eight retired officers were sentenced to fifteen years. The stadium has carried his name since 2003.
Víctor Jara
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1977
Talking Heads debut with no leather, no noise and no resemblance to anyone at CBGB
Their first album came out on Sire on 16 September 1977, at the height of punk and at the opposite end of it: buttoned shirts, nervous guitars and a Scot raised in Maryland singing as though about to come apart. Number ninety-seven in America. Psycho Killer was inside, and it was not a joke about murderers but one about anxiety.
Talking Heads
David Byrne
Tina Weymouth
Chris Frantz
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1977
Marc Bolan dies, glam rock's shooting star
Marc Bolan, leader of T. Rex, dies in a car crash in London two weeks before turning 30. With glitter, boas and elemental riffs, he had invented glam rock and anticipated Bowie's theatricality. His death abruptly ended a career on the rebound, just as punk was claiming him as a godfather.
Marc Bolan
T. Rex
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1979
'Rapper's Delight' comes out and hip-hop stops being a block party
On September 16, 1979, the Sugarhill Gang's 'Rapper's Delight' was released, cut in a single take with a live band on Sylvia Robinson's orders. Nile Rodgers recognised the 'Good Times' bassline hearing it in a New York club and sued; the settlement gave him and Bernard Edwards songwriting credit. It only reached number 36 in the United States, but it was the first rap record the world bought.
The Sugarhill Gang
Sylvia Robinson
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2003
A Perfect Circle make a whole album about addiction and judge nobody
Thirteenth Step came out on 16 September 2003 and reached number two in America on two hundred and thirty-one thousand copies. The title points at the twelve-step programme and every song is sung from a different position: the addict, the one in denial, the substance itself. Maynard James Keenan wrote it after watching Layne Staley die.
A Perfect Circle
Maynard James Keenan
Billy Howerdel
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2006
Dylan returns to number one in America thirty years after Desire
Modern Times topped the Billboard chart dated 16 September 2006 on a hundred and ninety-two thousand copies. It was his first American number one since Desire in 1976, and at sixty-five it made him the oldest living artist to enter straight at the top. The record was about love, apocalypse and blues eighty years old.
Bob Dylan
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1921
Jon Hendricks is born: the man who put lyrics to saxophone solos
On September 16, 1921, Jon Hendricks was born in Ohio. He perfected vocalese: taking an improvised instrumental solo, transcribing it note for note and writing a lyric that can be sung at that speed. With Lambert, Hendricks & Ross he turned entire big band arrangements into vocal music. He is among rap's most direct antecedents, though almost nobody mentions him in that genealogy.
Jon Hendricks
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1925
Charlie Byrd is born: the guitarist who brought bossa nova to America
On September 16, 1925, Charlie Byrd was born in Virginia. He played classical guitar, fingerstyle and without a pick, and in 1961 travelled to Brazil on a State Department-sponsored tour. He came back with bossa nova records under his arm and convinced Stan Getz to record 'Jazz Samba': the album set off the Brazilian craze in the United States. A diplomatic tour ended up changing the sound of a decade.
Charlie Byrd
Stan Getz
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1946
Camilo Sesto is born: the Spaniard who sold more records in Mexico than in Spain
On September 16, 1946, Camilo Blanes was born in Alcoy, Alicante. He was among the first Spanish artists to genuinely conquer Latin America: his seventies ballads were heard more in Mexico and Argentina than at home. He also produced and starred in the Spanish version of 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. When he died in 2019, the largest farewell was not in Madrid but across the Atlantic.
Camilo Sesto
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1948
Kenney Jones is born, the drummer who had to replace Keith Moon
Whitechapel, London, 16 September 1948. He founded the Small Faces at sixteen, carried on in the Faces with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, and in 1978 accepted the impossible job: taking Keith Moon's stool in the Who. He played four years and was blamed forever for not being a walking disaster. Nobody could have been.
Kenney Jones
Small Faces
Faces
The Who
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1964
Dave Sabo is born, the guitarist Bon Jovi dropped and later rescued
Perth Amboy, New Jersey, 16 September 1964. He grew up in the same neighbourhood as Jon Bon Jovi and was his first guitarist: three weeks of touring before Richie Sambora arrived. Years later that same neighbour got Skid Row their deal with Atlantic. In 1989 they sold millions singing about kids with no future at all.
Dave Sabo
Skid Row
Jon Bon Jovi
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1972
Rod Stewart goes to number one solo while still fronting somebody else's band
On the British albums chart for the week ending 16 September 1972, Never a Dull Moment was on top. It was played by more or less the same musicians as the Faces, the band he was still singing for and which was heading for a split over exactly this: one of them sold records under his own name and the other four carried the amps.
Rod Stewart
Faces
Ronnie Wood
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1978
Boston hit number one with an album its author considers half-finished
Don't Look Back topped the American chart for the week dated 16 September 1978, two years after a debut that had sold millions. Tom Scholz, an MIT engineer and incurable perfectionist, always maintained the label made him hand it in early. He took eight years to release the next one. Nobody hurried him again.
Boston
Tom Scholz
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1994
dEUS debut out of Antwerp and the British press has no idea where to file them
Worst Case Scenario came out on 16 September 1994 on a Belgian independent and then on Island. It mixed Zappa, Beefheart, out-of-tune violins and guitars falling apart mid-song, and England decided to call it art rock, a label Tom Barman hated. It was the record that pulled Belgian rock out of European anonymity.
dEUS
Tom Barman
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1995
A folk-punk band with a van goes to number one in Britain at the height of Britpop
Zeitgeist topped the UK albums chart for the week ending 16 September 1995, on its second attempt: it had entered at number two and climbed once the label agreed to pay for television advertising. The Levellers came out of free festivals and traveller culture. They won the year when nobody talked about anything but Blur and Oasis.
Levellers
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1996
Kula Shaker sell a hundred thousand albums in seven days singing in Sanskrit
K came out on 16 September 1996, went to number one in Britain on a hundred and five thousand copies in its first week and became the fastest-selling debut since Elastica. Crispian Mills, son of an actress and grandson of a knight, dropped tablas, sarod and Sanskrit choruses into the middle of flag-waving Britpop. They lasted exactly two albums.
Kula Shaker
Crispian Mills
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1996
Pearl Jam come back after a year off and the whole rig falls apart
On 16 September 1996 they opened the No Code tour at Key Arena in Seattle, in front of thirteen and a half thousand people with the Fastbacks supporting. It was their first show in a year: the war with Ticketmaster had left them almost nowhere to play. Microphones, guitars and lights all failed. A technical disaster, and a homecoming.
Pearl Jam
Eddie Vedder
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1999
Tom Jones turns fifty-nine and reinvents himself on other people's duets
Reload came out on 16 September 1999 and went to number one in Britain: fifteen duets with the Cardigans, Stereophonics, Portishead, Robbie Williams and Cerys Matthews, among others. The move was shameless and it worked: four million copies and, in Sex Bomb, the biggest hit of his late career. Nobody had asked him to come back.
Tom Jones
Mousse T.
Cerys Matthews
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2002
Weller goes to number one with Noel Gallagher playing drums on his record
Illumination came out on 16 September 2002 and topped the British chart. On One X One, Noel Gallagher handled bass, drums and percussion, which is to say everything except the singing; Kelly Jones turned up on another track. The godfather of Britpop had been working for twenty-five years and was still collecting favours from his own disciples.
Paul Weller
Noel Gallagher
Kelly Jones
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2006
Scissor Sisters rule Britain with a song that refuses to dance
I Don't Feel Like Dancin' reached number one in Britain on the chart for the week ending 16 September 2006, pushing Justin Timberlake aside, and ended the year as the country's biggest-selling single. Elton John co-wrote it and played the piano. A disco track about not wanting to go out: the contradiction is the whole joke.
Scissor Sisters
Elton John
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2013
Placebo drop out of the British top ten for the first time in a decade
Loud Like Love came out on 16 September 2013 and stopped at thirteen in Britain, their first album outside the top ten in ten years. Recorded at RAK Studios with Adam Noble, it was also the last with Steve Forrest on drums. Switzerland, which has loved them more than their own country for twenty years, made it number one.
Placebo
Brian Molko
Steve Forrest
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2013
The Manics record two albums at once and release the one with no guitars first
Rewind the Film came out on 16 September 2013 and reached number four in Britain. James Dean Bradfield summed up the plan by saying there is one electric guitar on the entire record: acoustics, Wales, melancholy and borrowed voices from Richard Hawley, Cate Le Bon and Lucy Rose. The other one, Futurology, arrived a year later and was exactly the opposite.
Manic Street Preachers
James Dean Bradfield
Richard Hawley
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