Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 18
1970
Jimi Hendrix dies at 27: the electric guitar loses its modern inventor
Jimi Hendrix is found dead in a London hotel at 27, barely four years after bursting onto the British scene. In that brief span he completely reinvented what an electric guitar could do: feedback, distortion and lyricism in a single gesture. Half a century later, no one has pushed that frontier as far again.
Jimi Hendrix
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1945
Blind Willie Johnson dies, and his guitar is now travelling beyond the solar system
He died on 18 September 1945 in Beaumont, Texas. The account left by his widow says the house had burned down, that he went on sleeping in the soaked ruins and that no hospital would admit him. Thirty-two years later NASA put Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground on the Voyager golden record: a hum and a bottleneck slide.
Blind Willie Johnson
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1945
P. F. Sloan is born: the twenty-year-old who wrote 'Eve of Destruction'
On September 18, 1945, Philip Sloan was born in New York. At twenty he wrote 'Eve of Destruction', a protest song so furious that dozens of American stations banned it; Barry McGuire took it to number one in 1965. Sloan wrote hundreds of songs for other people and then disappeared for years. Dylan and Jimmy Webb both dedicated songs to him, trying to explain what had happened.
P. F. Sloan
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1951
Dee Dee Ramone is born, the broken heart that wrote punk's anthems
Douglas Colvin, the future Dee Dee Ramone, is born in Fort Lee, Virginia. He was the Ramones' most prolific songwriter, and his opening “1-2-3-4!” became punk's war cry. Behind the fast songs was a life marked by addiction and the street, raw material for classics like “53rd & 3rd”. He died in 2002, faithful to his legend.
Dee Dee Ramone
Ramones
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1955
Keith Morris is born: Black Flag's first singer
On September 18, 1955, Keith Morris was born in California. He was Black Flag's first vocalist and recorded 'Nervous Breakdown' with them, the record that founded West Coast hardcore; he left in 1979 and formed the Circle Jerks. Black Flag would go through four different singers. Morris kept playing for forty years in new bands: few scenes aged with such stubbornness as Californian hardcore.
Keith Morris
Black Flag
Circle Jerks
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1970
Paranoid is released, an album meant to be called War Pigs until the label saw the single's numbers
On 18 September 1970, barely seven months after the first album, Vertigo released Black Sabbath's second record in Britain. It was going to be called War Pigs, after the opening track, but the Paranoid single — written in a hurry to fill out the running time — had reached number four, and the label decided naming the album after it was better business.
Black Sabbath
Ozzy Osbourne
Tony Iommi
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1971
Who's Next hits number one in Britain, the only chart-topper the Who ever had at home
On the albums chart for the week ending 18 September 1971, the record moved from number two to number one. It is the Who's only chart-topper in their own country, and it came out of the wreckage of Lifehouse, the impossible rock opera Pete Townshend could never explain to anyone. The synthesisers meant to carry a concept ended up carrying songs.
The Who
Pete Townshend
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1981
Genesis release Abacab and stop pretending they are still a progressive band
It came out on 18 September 1981 on Charisma: number one in Britain and number seven in America, their first US top ten. The title comes from an early ordering of the sections of the opening track, a pattern the finished version no longer follows. The progressive label outlived the method that justified it.
Genesis
Phil Collins
Mike Rutherford
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1985
The Replacements sign to a major and an ex-Ramone produces the record
Tim came out on 18 September 1985 on Sire, their first album for a major label, produced by Tommy Erdelyi, once the Ramones' drummer. Number one hundred and eighty-three in America, which is to say nothing, and at the same time the best songs Paul Westerberg would ever write. It was the last with Bob Stinson, thrown out the following year.
The Replacements
Paul Westerberg
Bob Stinson
Tommy Ramone
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1993
'Music Box' tops the chart and Mariah Carey becomes a global phenomenon
On September 18, 1993, Mariah Carey's 'Music Box' topped the R&B albums chart. It was her best-selling album: more than twenty-eight million copies worldwide. Against her own label's judgement she had insisted on softening the production to reach pop radio, and it worked. It was also the year the conflict with Tommy Mottola, her husband and boss, began to show.
Mariah Carey
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1933
Jimmie Rodgers is born — the Honeycomb one, not the other Jimmie Rodgers
Camas, Washington, 18 September 1933. Sharing a name with the father of country music followed him through his whole career. Honeycomb went to number one in 1957 and passed a million copies. In December 1967 he turned up with a fractured skull after police stopped him near Los Angeles; what happened was never established and the matter ended in a settlement.
Jimmie Rodgers
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1940
Frankie Avalon is born, the teenage trumpeter the industry turned into a heart-throb
Philadelphia, 18 September 1940. He made his television debut at twelve playing trumpet and ended up a cover-star idol: thirty-one charting singles between 1958 and 1962, with Venus and Why at number one. Then came the beach films with Annette Funicello. He was the industry's perfect product, right before the Beatles arrived.
Frankie Avalon
Annette Funicello
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1949
Kerry Livgren is born: the man who wrote 'Dust in the Wind' in five minutes
On September 18, 1949, Kerry Livgren was born in Kansas. He was the main writer for the band Kansas, specialists in long, complicated progressive rock pieces, and his biggest hit came by accident: 'Dust in the Wind' emerged from a guitar exercise he practised to warm up his fingers. His wife heard it and told him that was a song. It sold millions and he considered it minor.
Kerry Livgren
Kansas
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1961
Mark Olson is born, of the duo that reinvented country rock harmony
On September 18, 1961, Mark Olson was born in Minneapolis. With Gary Louris in the Jayhawks he built a two-part singing style that came straight from the Everly Brothers and Gram Parsons, and that in the nineties got called americana. The Minneapolis scene also produced Hüsker Dü, the Replacements and Prince: no city that size produced so many different things at once.
Mark Olson
The Jayhawks
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1962
Joanne Catherall is born: the schoolgirl a singer recruited in a nightclub
On September 18, 1962, Joanne Catherall was born in Sheffield. In 1980, aged seventeen and with no musical experience, Philip Oakey saw her dancing in a nightclub with her friend Susan Ann Sulley and invited them onto the tour of The Human League, which had just lost half the band. The following year they recorded 'Don't You Want Me', number one across half the world. Sometimes the band is assembled on the dancefloor.
Joanne Catherall
The Human League
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1971
Anna Netrebko is born: the soprano who cleaned the theatre she later sang in
On September 18, 1971, Anna Netrebko was born in Krasnodar. While studying voice in St Petersburg she worked mopping the floors of the Mariinsky Theatre, the same stage where she would later be the leading name. She was among the last opera singers to reach mass fame outside the genre. Her Western career collapsed in 2022 over her proximity to Russian power.
Anna Netrebko
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1995
Garbage release a single that laughs at the misery everyone else was selling
Only Happy When It Rains came out on 18 September 1995, recorded at Butch Vig's studio in Madison. It was a joke at the market's expense: at the height of miserable rock, the chorus celebrates misery entirely on purpose. Samuel Bayer's video went into heavy MTV rotation and a record made by producers ended up in the upper half of the charts.
Garbage
Shirley Manson
Butch Vig
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1995
Skunk Anansie debut with a record Britpop had nowhere to file
Paranoid & Sunburnt came out on 18 September 1995 on One Little Indian and reached number eight in Britain. Skin sang about racism, class and politics while the rest of the country's magazine covers were Union Jacks and sixties nostalgia. A black woman, shaven-headed and furious, fronting a hard rock band: there was no box, and they did not look for one.
Skunk Anansie
Skin
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1995
Echobelly reach number four in Britain and Britpop forgets them anyway
On came out on 18 September 1995 and was their best-selling record: number four in the UK, with Great Things and King of the Kerb among the singles. Sonya Madan sang about being Indian and British at once, at precisely the moment when the country's scene wanted only flags and brothers fighting on magazine covers.
Echobelly
Sonya Madan
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1995
Morning Glory comes out as a single in three countries, none of them England
On 18 September 1995, two weeks before the album that carries its name, Oasis released Morning Glory in shops in Australia, New Zealand and Japan. It was never issued in Britain, and in the United States and Canada it was the first track from the record to get real rock radio play. Singles were no longer decided by the song but by the map.
Oasis
Noel Gallagher
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2000
Foo Fighters put out a single in Britain and Grohl multiplies himself in the video
Breakout was released on 18 September 2000 on Roswell and RCA for the British market, where it reached number twenty-nine. The song came from There Is Nothing Left to Lose and ended up tied to a Farrelly brothers comedy about a man with two personalities; the video, directed by the Malloys, set about imitating the plot.
Foo Fighters
Dave Grohl
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2001
Live release V in the week America did not want to hear about anything
V came out on 18 September 2001 on Radioactive, seven days after the attacks. Number twenty-two at home and number one in Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway: the Pennsylvania band was always bigger abroad. It is the record on which they began stepping outside the formula that had made them enormous, just as nobody was looking.
Live
Ed Kowalczyk
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2002
The Hellacopters trade noise for harmonies and Scandinavia copies the idea
By the Grace of God came out on 18 September 2002 on Universal, the Stockholm band's fifth album. They had started as a filthy garage outfit put together by a drummer who came from death metal, and had spent three records cleaning up until they landed on something close to seventies rock: pianos, harmonies, choruses. Half of Scandinavia spent the next decade following them.
The Hellacopters
Nicke Andersson
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2007
The Donnas set up their own label and release the hardest record of their career
Bitchin' came out on 18 September 2007 on Purple Feather, the label they founded themselves after leaving a major. Four friends from Palo Alto who started out imitating the Ramones in high school and ended up playing seventies hard rock with more command than almost anyone, while the reviews went on discussing everything except the music.
The Donnas
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2012
Dinosaur Jr are three albums into a reunion without hating each other again
I Bet on Sky came out on 18 September 2012 on Jagjaguwar, the third album since J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph started playing together again in 2005. By then the original line-up had been back together longer than its entire first run, and without the tension that ended in slammed doors in the eighties. Few reunions last that long without turning into nostalgia.
Dinosaur Jr.
J Mascis
Lou Barlow
Murph
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2013
Pearl Jam trail Lightning Bolt with a ballad about knowing it ends
Sirens was released as a single on 18 September 2013, the first substantial preview of their tenth album. The music is Mike McCready's and the words are Eddie Vedder's, and it is about the awareness of an ending: the same band that was screaming with rage in 1991, twenty-two years on, singing to mortality without wrapping it in metaphor.
Pearl Jam
Mike McCready
Eddie Vedder
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2015
Chris Cornell releases an acoustic album and leaves nothing behind the voice
Higher Truth came out on 18 September 2015 on UMe, produced by Brendan O'Brien, with acoustic guitars, mandolin and barely any percussion. It was his fourth solo album and the last he would release in his lifetime. Heard today it is uncomfortable for how bare it is: that enormous voice with no wall of amplifiers to lean on.
Chris Cornell
Brendan O'Brien
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