Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 25
1980
John Bonham dies and Led Zeppelin decides there is no band without him
John Bonham, rock's most powerful drummer, dies at 32 after a night of excess at Jimmy Page's house. His groove made Led Zeppelin sound heavy and danceable at once, something no one has replicated. The band understood it best: in December they announced their dissolution, because replacing him was simply impossible.
John Bonham
Led Zeppelin
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1942
Dee Dee Warwick is born: the sister who cut first the songs others made famous
On September 25, 1942, Delia Warwick was born in Newark. She was Dionne's sister and Cissy Houston's niece, in one of the most voice-laden families in soul history. She recorded 'You're No Good' and 'I'm Gonna Make You Love Me' first, both later enormous hits in other hands. She spent her whole career in her sister's shadow. She earned two Grammy nominations and no awards.
Dee Dee Warwick
Dionne Warwick
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1964
My Girl goes on tape and Motown works out what David Ruffin was for
On 25 September 1964 the first of three sessions for My Girl began in Detroit; the other two came in November. Smokey Robinson wrote it with Ronald White after hearing Ruffin take a solo spot on a label package tour: he wanted something that rough voice could open out without losing its sweetness. It became the Temptations' first number one, and the bass line needs no translation.
The Temptations
Smokey Robinson
David Ruffin
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1965
The Beatles' cartoon series premieres on US television
ABC premieres “The Beatles”, the Saturday-morning animated series starring cartoon versions of the quartet. The band disliked it and did not lend their voices, but the show was a ratings hit for years. It was the first time living musicians became cartoons: modern music merchandising was born there.
The Beatles
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1967
The Doors release Strange Days and hide the band behind a troupe of acrobats
The second album appeared on 25 September 1967, barely eight months after the debut, and reached number three in America without matching the noise of its predecessor. The band is nowhere on the sleeve: a handful of street performers posing in a New York alley, an odd call for a group with a singer half the country wanted to look at. Inside: People Are Strange and Love Me Two Times.
The Doors
Jim Morrison
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1992
Rosalía is born: the Catalan who studied flamenco for eight years before breaking it
On September 25, 1992, Rosalía Vila was born near Barcelona. She trained for eight years at Catalonia's Higher School of Music studying flamenco seriously, and only then took it apart: on 'El mal querer' she crossed cante with trap and electronic production. Purists accused her of appropriation for being Catalan rather than Roma. The album changed the idea of what music in Spanish can be.
Rosalía
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1993
The album the label was afraid to release enters straight at number one in Britain
In Utero appeared on the UK chart for the week ending 25 September 1993 at the top, in one move. Nirvana had hired Steve Albini looking for something abrasive and unwelcoming, and for weeks the rumour ran that the label would not put it out. It did, the country that had made a phenomenon of Nevermind bought it anyway, and Cobain gained nothing from it.
Nirvana
Kurt Cobain
Steve Albini
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1995
Bowie and Eno meet again and build a detective novel nobody can follow
Outside came out on 25 September 1995 and put Bowie back in Brian Eno's orbit almost twenty years after Berlin. It is a story about crimes committed in the name of art, with a detective called Nathan Adler and characters Bowie improvised by taking on their voices in the studio. Labels looked at it in commercial panic. They were right, and it does not matter at all.
David Bowie
Brian Eno
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2007
Springsteen gets the E Street Band back and calls the record Magic without any innocence
Magic appeared on vinyl on 25 September 2007 and on CD a week later. It was the first with the E Street Band since The Rising and it sounds like seventies radio records, except the songs are about a country taught not to believe what it sees. Number one in six countries and two tracks that took three Grammys between them.
Bruce Springsteen
E Street Band
Brendan O'Brien
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1930
Shel Silverstein is born: the cartoonist who wrote 'A Boy Named Sue'
On September 25, 1930, Shel Silverstein was born in Chicago. He is known above all as a children's author and a Playboy cartoonist, but he also wrote songs: 'A Boy Named Sue', which Johnny Cash recorded live at San Quentin prison and turned into his biggest hit, and 'The Cover of the Rolling Stone'. He won a Grammy. Few authors spread their talent across such different trades.
Shel Silverstein
Johnny Cash
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1947
Cecil Womack is born, of the family Sam Cooke pulled out of the church
On September 25, 1947, Cecil Womack was born in Cleveland. He was one of five brothers Sam Cooke signed when they were a children's gospel group; his brother Bobby would become a soul legend. Cecil married Linda, Cooke's daughter, and together they formed Womack & Womack, a duo that wrote for Teddy Pendergrass and recorded 'Teardrops'. They ended up moving to Africa and changing their names.
Cecil Womack
Sam Cooke
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1967
McCartney brings EMI the song about the man everyone takes for a fool
Sessions for The Fool on the Hill began on 25 September 1967 at EMI's studios and ran for two more days, with a return in October. McCartney wrote it about a solitary figure nobody listens to who in fact understands everything, then went off to film his own sequence near Nice without telling the others. It ended up on Magical Mystery Tour.
The Beatles
Paul McCartney
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1971
Deep Purple finally top the British chart with the album they like least
In the week of 19 to 25 September 1971, Fireball shifted Who's Next off the top and gave Deep Purple their first number-one album in Britain. They had recorded it in fragments between September 1970 and June 1971, squeezed between tours, and several members later rated it the weakest of the era. It sold over a million copies there anyway.
Deep Purple
Ian Gillan
Ritchie Blackmore
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1976
Wings play St Mark's Square to help pay for repairing Venice
On 25 September 1976 Paul McCartney and Wings became the first rock band to perform in St Mark's Square, in a benefit tied to UNESCO's campaign against the city's decay. Venice had been sinking slowly for a decade and the answer the organisation landed on was to put a stage in front of the basilica. It worked just well enough that nobody repeated the experiment.
Wings
Paul McCartney
Linda McCartney
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1989
The KLF charge half price for an album of rip-offs of their own song
On 25 September 1989 The "What Time Is Love?" Story appeared, an album collecting unauthorised versions of that track made by European producers who had simply helped themselves. Alex Paterson assembled it at the band's request and it sold for half the price of a normal record. Nobody has ever proved how many of those imitations were actually somebody else's, which was precisely the joke.
The KLF
Alex Paterson
Jimmy Cauty
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1990
INXS title their album with a Roman numeral in case anyone had lost count
X came out on 25 September 1990: the seventh album and the number ten, marking the years since their debut. It followed Kick, which had sold enormously, and arrived with Chris Thomas producing again and Charlie Musselwhite blowing harmonica on Suicide Blonde. Hutchence already sounded like someone determined not to repeat the trick that had worked.
INXS
Michael Hutchence
Chris Thomas
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1995
Courtney Love pleads guilty to hitting Kathleen Hanna and leaves with anger classes
On 25 September 1995, in a courthouse in Ephrata, Washington, Love admitted striking the Bikini Kill singer during Lollapalooza on 4 July. The judge imposed a 365-day jail term and suspended it: a hundred and fifty dollars in fines, two hundred and eighty-five in costs and an anger management course. Two central figures of rock made by women, settling it with fists.
Courtney Love
Hole
Kathleen Hanna
Bikini Kill
2001
The Drive-By Truckers borrow from their friends and put out a double album about the South
Southern Rock Opera came out on 25 September 2001 on their own, financed with promissory notes the band issued in exchange for loans from family, friends and fans. Two records that use the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd to talk about racism, pride and the contradiction of being Southern. A label picked it up the following year, once the point had been proved.
Drive-By Truckers
Patterson Hood
Lynyrd Skynyrd
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2001
Days of the New sign off with a record the label made them redo
The third self-titled album, the one everybody calls Red for the colour of its case, came out on 25 September 2001 after more than a year of delays: it had been due in late 2000 and the label brought in Ron Aniello to re-record and remix half of it. It was the last. Travis Meeks had built three albums almost alone, and that was where he ran out.
Days of the New
Travis Meeks
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2007
Tesla reach the shops with twelve covers cut to tape as if it were 1972
Real to Reel, Vol. 2 arrived in shops on 25 September 2007. These are the leftovers from sessions in which the Sacramento band played their favourite sixties and seventies records using analogue tape and period gear, with no digital tricks. The first volume had been given away at that summer's shows; this one came later, for anyone who had not gone.
Tesla
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2007
The Foo Fighters call Gil Norton back and thread acoustics through the noise
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace came out on 25 September 2007, ten years after Norton produced The Colour and the Shape. Grohl brought him back precisely for that: to be pushed, and to make sure the record did not resemble the ones before it. It alternates guitars at full volume with bare songs, and the lyrics were written with his newborn daughter in mind.
Foo Fighters
Dave Grohl
Gil Norton
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2011
Kasabian go straight in at number one with an album named after a dinosaur
Velociraptor! entered the UK albums chart at the top for the week of 25 September 2011, their third consecutive number one. Serge Pizzorno recorded it in Leicester, stretching the previous album's psychedelia into stranger shapes, and the country still bought it like a stadium record. In England that was somehow still possible.
Kasabian
Serge Pizzorno
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