Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 22
1958
Joan Jett is born, the woman who never asked permission to love rock and roll
Joan Jett is born in Philadelphia: teenage founder of The Runaways and later owner of an eternal anthem, “I Love Rock 'n' Roll”. When 23 labels rejected her record, she created her own, Blackheart Records, becoming a pioneer of independence. Her leather jacket remains the uniform of every woman who came after.
Joan Jett
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1951
David Coverdale is born: from clothes salesman to voice of Deep Purple
David Coverdale is born in Saltburn, England; he went from working in a clothes shop to replacing Ian Gillan in Deep Purple in 1973 after answering an ad. He later founded Whitesnake and conquered the eighties with “Here I Go Again”. His story is the fulfilled fantasy of every anonymous singer with a great voice in reserve.
David Coverdale
Whitesnake
Deep Purple
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1957
Nick Cave is born: the Australian who turned the Bible into rock material
On September 22, 1957, Nick Cave was born in Warracknabeal, Australia. He started with The Birthday Party making violent post-punk and transformed, album by album, into something stranger: a narrator of songs about murder, god and grief, with the Old Testament as his toolbox. After losing a son in 2015 he wrote the barest records of his career.
Nick Cave
The Birthday Party
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1958
Elvis ships out for Germany and walks the gangplank eight times for the cameras
On 22 September 1958 Private Presley boarded the USS General Randall at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, bound for Bremerhaven with one thousand one hundred and seventy other men of the Third Armored Division. Colonel Parker staged a press conference first and had him walk up the plank again and again until every camera had its picture. He came back in 1960 as something else.
Elvis Presley
1962
Dylan plays Carnegie Hall with three songs and premieres A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
On 22 September 1962 he appeared at Carnegie Hall for the first time, in a collective hootenanny organised by Pete Seeger. He was given ten minutes and replied that one of his songs ran exactly that long. It was A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall, which nobody had yet heard: a catalogue of the end of the world written at twenty-one.
Bob Dylan
Pete Seeger
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1969
The Band record in a pool house the album that invented American nostalgia
The self-titled album came out on 22 September 1969, recorded in the pool house of a home in the Hollywood Hills once owned by Sammy Davis Jr. and finished in New York, with John Simon producing. Number nine in America. Five musicians, four of them Canadian, singing a country that no longer existed and perhaps never existed quite like that.
The Band
Robbie Robertson
John Simon
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1979
'My Sharona' spends a month on top and sets off a backlash
On September 22, 1979, The Knack's 'My Sharona' topped the Hot 100 for a fourth consecutive week of the six it would total. It was the best-selling single of that year in the United States. The speed of the success provoked an unusual rejection: 'Knuke the Knack' badges appeared, along with a boycott campaign the band never recovered from. Few groups went so fast from total enthusiasm to contempt.
The Knack
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1980
Lennon signs with Geffen because the label boss called Yoko Ono first
On 22 September 1980 John Lennon and Yoko Ono signed with Geffen Records, a label barely off the ground. David Geffen won them over by doing two things nobody else did: addressing her before him, and taking the album without hearing a single tape. Double Fantasy came out in November. Lennon was murdered three weeks after its release.
John Lennon
Yoko Ono
David Geffen
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1990
Nirvana fill a Seattle garage with the drummer who lasted one show
On 22 September 1990, at the Motor Sports International Garage, a converted car park on the corner of Stewart and Yale, Nirvana played the biggest show of their career to that point, with the Melvins and the Dwarves on the bill. On drums, Mudhoney's Dan Peters, in his only appearance with the band. It was the first time they played In Bloom. Dave Grohl joined days later.
Nirvana
Melvins
Dan Peters
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1997
Björk takes her album to Spain and sets Icelandic strings against electronics
Homogenic came out on 22 September 1997 in Britain. She began it in London and finished it in a house in San Pedro de Alcántara, escaping the press noise left by the stalker who had threatened her. With Mark Bell she built a record out of one material: an Icelandic string octet against beats that sound like volcanic rock. Number four in Britain and her most cited work.
Björk
Mark Bell
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1957
Johnette Napolitano is born: the bassist and singer who called herself Concrete Blonde
On September 22, 1957, Johnette Napolitano was born in Los Angeles. She led Concrete Blonde playing bass and singing at once, with a low voice like nothing else in the alternative scene. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. gave the band its name when they couldn't find one. 'Joey', their biggest hit, is a song about alcoholism written to a lover who was destroying himself.
Johnette Napolitano
Concrete Blonde
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1973
Goats Head Soup tops Britain and evicts a Rod Stewart compilation
On the UK chart for the week of 16 to 22 September 1973, the album the Stones had recorded in Kingston reached number one. They chose Jamaica because it was one of the few countries that would let all of them in at once while they were tax exiles. Out of it came Angie, and the certainty that Exile on Main St. was not going to happen twice.
The Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger
Keith Richards
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1979
Cars goes to number one and its author calls it a fairly average song
On the UK chart for the week of 16 to 22 September 1979, Gary Numan reached the top with his first single outside Tubeway Army. A Polymoog, an insistent bass line and the idea that a car is armour where nobody can touch you: half of eighties electronic music comes out of that. Numan has since described it as pretty average.
Gary Numan
Tubeway Army
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1991
Bryan Adams enters his twelfth week on top and topples a record from 1955
On the UK chart dated 22 September 1991, (Everything I Do) I Do It for You completed twelve consecutive weeks at number one, passing the eleven held by Slim Whitman's Rose Marie since 1955. It would end on sixteen. It was a song from a Robin Hood film, and it stayed up there so long that in Britain it came to be discussed like weather.
Bryan Adams
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1992
Blind Melon debut and end up known for the drummer's little sister
The band's first album came out on 22 September 1992, recorded in Seattle with Rick Parashar on deliberately outdated amplifiers. For the sleeve they used a photograph of drummer Glen Graham's sister in a bee costume from a school play. That image swallowed the whole record, though the record reached number three and sold four million.
Blind Melon
Shannon Hoon
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1992
Springsteen turns up for MTV Unplugged, plays one acoustic song and plugs in
On 22 September 1992 he taped his session at Warner Hollywood Studios in Los Angeles. The acoustic rehearsals had not convinced him, so he played Red Headed Woman alone on guitar and from there plugged the whole band in. MTV had to rename the programme Plugged. It aired in November and came out on record in April 1993.
Bruce Springsteen
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1992
Trent Reznor records behind his label's back the album that got him out of it
Broken came out on 22 September 1992. Reznor cut it under pseudonyms, across six studios and without telling TVT, the label demanding he repeat the synth pop of the first record and which he could not contractually escape. Number seven and platinum without a single tour date. It also won two Grammys for best metal performance, which he found extremely funny.
Nine Inch Nails
Trent Reznor
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1997
Oasis fall one place short of number one because of a dead princess
Stand by Me came out on 22 September 1997, the second single from Be Here Now. It reached number two in Britain and got no further: above it sat Candle in the Wind 1997, Elton John's charity record for the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, which outsold everything. It was the first clear sign that the Oasis empire had peaked.
Oasis
Noel Gallagher
Liam Gallagher
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1998
Cat Power writes half an album in one nightmare night in South Carolina
Moon Pix came out on 22 September 1998, recorded in Melbourne with Mick Turner and Jim White of Dirty Three. Chan Marshall has said much of it came out of a single night in an isolated farmhouse, awake and terrified, taping herself with a guitar so she would stop thinking. Metal Heart and Cross Bones Style came from that. Then she went to Australia to finish it.
Cat Power
Chan Marshall
Dirty Three
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1998
Chris Isaak keeps making rockabilly ten years after it stopped being fashionable
Speak of the Devil came out on 22 September 1998 on Reprise: fourteen songs, forty-five minutes and the same formula as ever, echoed guitar and the voice of a roadside motel singer. Forty-one in America, eleven in Australia and gold. Isaak has never wanted to modernise, and that is exactly why you still recognise him within two bars.
Chris Isaak
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1999
Diana Ross is arrested at Heathrow for returning a security guard's gesture
On 22 September 1999 she was arrested at the London airport. The metal detector had gone off, she was searched, and she maintained the officer had touched her breast; she then went back, asked her how she would feel in that position, and touched her in turn. The guard reported an assault. Ross spent hours in custody and left with a caution, no charges.
Diana Ross
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2001
Toxicity goes number one in the strangest week America has had
On the Billboard chart dated 22 September 2001, System of a Down's second album was the biggest-selling record in the country, on two hundred and twenty thousand copies. It had come out on the 4th. In between came 11 September, and Chop Suey! vanished from radio on a list of inconvenient songs. The country bought an Armenian political metal album anyway.
System of a Down
Rick Rubin
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2002
Paul Weller goes to number one at forty-four with his sixth solo album
Illumination topped the UK albums chart for the week beginning 22 September 2002, six days after its release. He made it with Simon Dine at his own Surrey studio and called in Kelly Jones and Noel Gallagher, who turns up playing bass and drums on One X One. Weller has not needed anyone's permission since 1977.
Paul Weller
Noel Gallagher
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2003
Placebo hide on a bonus disc the cover that would give them a second life
Covers came out on 22 September 2003 as the second CD of the special edition of Sleeping with Ghosts: ten covers, most of them old B-sides. The exception was Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill, recorded specifically for it. Three years later it turned up in an American teen drama and entered the UK singles chart. Bonus discs occasionally return the favour.
Placebo
Brian Molko
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2008
The Gdańsk live album arrives a week after Richard Wright's death
Live in Gdańsk appeared on 22 September 2008 in Europe. It captures the concert of 26 August 2006 at the Gdańsk shipyard, fifty thousand people and the Baltic Philharmonic, marking the anniversary of Solidarity. It is the last recording tied to Pink Floyd to feature Richard Wright: he died on 15 September, seven days before the record reached the shops.
David Gilmour
Richard Wright
Pink Floyd
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2017
Juliette Lewis returns to music after eight years, and does it on her own
Future Deep came out on 22 September 2017, seven self-released songs and her first long-form work since Terra Incognita in 2009. She made it with three members of Cage the Elephant and with Isabella Summers of Florence and the Machine. Lewis has been alternating film and stage since the nineties, and half the time collecting the condescension reserved for actors who sing.
Juliette Lewis
Cage the Elephant
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2017
The Killers take thirteen years to go number one in their own country
Wonderful Wonderful came out on 22 September 2017 and entered at number one in America, which they had never managed, on one hundred and eighteen thousand units. In Britain it was their fifth consecutive chart-topper: no international act had put its first five albums at number one there. Jacknife Lee produced. Flowers called it the closest thing to Sam's Town they had made.
The Killers
Brandon Flowers
Jacknife Lee
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