Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 21
1947
Don Felder is born: the man who taped the 'Hotel California' demo at home
On September 21, 1947, Don Felder was born in Florida. As a teenager he gave guitar lessons to Tom Petty and worked in an instrument shop. In the Eagles he recorded at his beach house an instrumental demo that Don Henley picked out of several and turned into 'Hotel California'. The twin solo at the end, with Joe Walsh, tops most lists of the greatest guitar solos ever.
Don Felder
Eagles
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1968
'Harper Valley PTA' hits number one and a secretary becomes a star
On September 21, 1968, Jeannie C. Riley's 'Harper Valley PTA' was number one in the United States. Riley worked as a secretary in Nashville and recorded this Tom T. Hall song about a mother who publicly humiliates the hypocrites of her town's parent-teacher association. She was the first woman to top the country and pop charts at the same time. It sold over six million copies.
Jeannie C. Riley
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1972
Liam Gallagher is born: the singer who didn't write and was indispensable anyway
On September 21, 1972, Liam Gallagher was born in Manchester. He didn't write the songs — that was his brother Noel's territory — and yet Oasis didn't work without him: that way of singing with his chin up and his hands behind his back, dragging the vowels, is half of what the band meant. The brothers' fighting ended the group in 2009, in a Paris dressing room.
Liam Gallagher
Oasis
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1980
Bob Marley collapses jogging in Central Park and carries on with the tour anyway
On 21 September 1980, the day after the second of his two nights at Madison Square Garden, he went running in Central Park and his body seized up. The melanoma diagnosed in 1977 had already reached his brain. A neurologist gave him weeks to live and told him to cancel everything; on the 23rd he played Pittsburgh. It was his last concert.
Bob Marley
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1985
Money for Nothing goes number one with Sting's voice hidden in the intro
On 21 September 1985 the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and held for three weeks: Dire Straits' only American number one. Knopfler wrote it by copying down what he heard an appliance-store worker rant in front of a wall of switched-on televisions. The falsetto at the start is Sting, and since the melody came from Don't Stand So Close to Me he ended up with a credit.
Dire Straits
Mark Knopfler
Sting
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1987
Jaco Pastorius dies ten days after a fight outside a club
On 21 September 1987, aged thirty-five, he died in Fort Lauderdale of a brain haemorrhage. On the 11th he had been beaten at the door of a club in Wilton Manors and never woke up. He had reinvented the electric bass by pulling the frets out of a Fender and playing it as though singing. Weather Report never got back what he put underneath them.
Jaco Pastorius
Weather Report
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1992
Creep comes out, sells six thousand copies and the BBC calls it too depressing
EMI released the single on 21 September 1992. It reached number seventy-eight in Britain and died there: Radio 1 refused to play it. An Israeli DJ picked it up, then a San Francisco station, then one in Los Angeles, and when it was reissued in 1993 it went to seven. Radiohead have spent three decades trying to stop that scraping guitar from defining them.
Radiohead
Thom Yorke
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1993
Nirvana releases “In Utero”, the album that refused to repeat the formula
“In Utero”, Nirvana's third and final studio album, goes on sale in the United States. Recorded with Steve Albini to sound raw and hostile, it was Kurt Cobain's answer to the polished success of “Nevermind”. Between “Heart-Shaped Box” and “All Apologies”, the record now sounds like a farewell written seven months in advance.
Nirvana
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1999
Trent Reznor delivers an hour and three quarters and falls off number one in seven days
The Fragile came out on 21 September 1999: a triple album, one hundred and three minutes, two and a half years shut in a New Orleans studio and two hundred and twenty-nine thousand copies in its first week. It was his first American number one, and by the next week it was at sixteen, the biggest drop recorded to that point. He made it while sinking, with Alan Moulder beside him.
Nine Inch Nails
Trent Reznor
Alan Moulder
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2004
Green Day take ten months and well over half a million dollars to save themselves
American Idiot came out on 21 September 2004: punk opera, two nine-minute suites and a country at war in the background. They recorded it in order, song by song, something they had never done, with Rob Cavallo producing and seventy-five different snare drums piled up for Tré Cool. Their first American number one, and more than a year straight in the top ten.
Green Day
Billie Joe Armstrong
Rob Cavallo
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2011
R.E.M. break up with a note on their website and no farewell tour
On 21 September 2011 they announced on their site that they were done. Thirty-one years, fifteen studio albums and no feud to report: Stipe wrote that all things end and they wanted to do it right, their own way. No final tour, no later reunion, no nostalgia auction. For a band that started playing college parties in Athens, leaving without cashing in twice is a position.
R.E.M.
Michael Stipe
Peter Buck
Mike Mills
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1954
Philthy Animal Taylor is born, the drummer who gave Motörhead its speed
Chesterfield, England, 21 September 1954. He joined Motörhead in 1975, mid-way through the first album, replacing Lucas Fox, and lasted nine years. With Lemmy and Fast Eddie Clarke he made up the line-up that cut Overkill and Ace of Spades: that runaway double kick drum is the exact point where heavy metal and punk stopped arguing. He died in 2015.
Phil Taylor
Motörhead
Lemmy
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1963
Blue Velvet tops the chart and takes twenty-three years to turn sinister
On 21 September 1963 Bobby Vinton's version reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and held for three weeks. It was a velvet ballad for slow dancing, written in the early fifties and already recorded by Tony Bennett. Then David Lynch put it in a film about what rots under the neighbour's lawn, and it never sounded innocent again.
Bobby Vinton
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1967
Faith Hill is born: the woman who sold T-shirts at Reba McEntire's merch stand
On September 21, 1967, Audrey Faith Perry was born in Mississippi. She arrived in Nashville at nineteen and her first job in the industry was selling T-shirts at Reba McEntire's concerts; then she was a receptionist at a music publisher, where a songwriter heard her singing and spoke up. She sold over forty million records. Nashville is a small town where everybody starts out doing something else.
Faith Hill
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1974
Barry White reaches the top with a song that took all summer to climb
On the Billboard chart dated 21 September 1974, Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe was number one in America, and it held for a single week. It had come out in June and needed seven weeks of climbing, pushed by the oversized orchestrations White arranged himself. It displaced Eric Clapton's I Shot the Sheriff, which is an elegant way to change the subject.
Barry White
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1985
Like a Virgin takes forty-four weeks to rule Britain
On the UK chart for the week of 15 to 21 September 1985, Madonna's second album finally reached the top: forty-four weeks on the chart and the previous one spent at number two. Kate Bush displaced it seven days later and it came back in October. A 1984 record governing a country almost a year on, which is what television does when it decides to help.
Madonna
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1996
R.E.M. rule Britain with an album recorded at soundchecks
New Adventures in Hi-Fi topped the UK chart for the week of 15 to 21 September 1996. They had built it from eight-track tapes made during the 1995 tour, the same one on which Bill Berry collapsed from a brain aneurysm mid-show. It was the last album with him. It sounds like an American highway because that is literally where it was made.
R.E.M.
Bill Berry
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1998
Sheryl Crow produces her own record and takes the Grammy for best rock album
The Globe Sessions appeared on 21 September 1998 in Britain and eight days later in America. She produced it herself at the Globe studio in New York, which lends the record its name. Number two in Britain, five in America and two Grammys, including best rock album. My Favorite Mistake points at someone specific she has never been willing to name.
Sheryl Crow
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1999
Chris Cornell goes solo and corrects the title sixteen years later
Euphoria Morning came out on 21 September 1999, with Soundgarden already dissolved and Audioslave not yet in existence. He made it with Natasha Shneider and Alain Johannes, in a psychedelic folk register a long way from the Seattle roar. Number eighteen and a Grammy nomination for Can't Change Me. In 2015 he reissued it as Euphoria Mourning and said that had always been the real title.
Chris Cornell
Soundgarden
Alain Johannes
Natasha Shneider
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2010
Santana covers half the rock canon and the critics take it apart
Guitar Heaven came out on 21 September 2010: other people's classics handed round a cast of hired guests, Chris Cornell, Scott Weiland, Chester Bennington, Joe Cocker, Rob Thomas and Nas among them. Number five in America, sixty-six thousand copies in the first week, number one in Poland and 45 out of 100 on Metacritic. The Supernatural formula was audibly worn through.
Santana
Carlos Santana
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2012
Green Day launch in Australia the first of three albums in three months
¡Uno! reached Australian shops on 21 September 2012, three days before Britain and four before America. It was the first part of a trilogy Armstrong justified by saying the songs would not stop coming. Number two in America on one hundred and thirty-nine thousand copies. ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! arrived in November and December, by which point almost nobody was counting.
Green Day
Billie Joe Armstrong
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2012
No Doubt come back after eleven years and there has been no album since
Push and Shove came out on 21 September 2012 in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands, and across the rest of the world over the following days. It was the band's first album since Rock Steady in 2001: eleven years in which Gwen Stefani had become something considerably larger. Number three in America on one hundred and fifteen thousand copies. It remains their last.
No Doubt
Gwen Stefani
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2018
Slash releases Living the Dream and points out the title is sarcastic
It came out on 21 September 2018: the third album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, and the first with Frank Sidoris on rhythm guitar. Number twenty-seven in America, twenty thousand copies in a week and number one on the British rock charts. Slash explained the title is sarcastic and refers to the state of the world, not his own: he was two years into a stadium tour with Guns N' Roses.
Slash
Myles Kennedy
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