Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 27
1947
Meat Loaf is born, rock opera made flesh
Marvin Lee Aday, the future Meat Loaf, is born in Dallas. His “Bat Out of Hell” (1977), written with Jim Steinman, was rejected by multiple labels for being excessive and ended up selling over 40 million copies. He sang every ballad like Wagnerian opera and proved that in rock, excess done well is a virtue.
Meat Loaf
1966
Jovanotti is born: the Italian who started as a clown and ended as a poet
On September 27, 1966, Lorenzo Cherubini was born in Rome. He appeared in the late eighties as a youth DJ with a backwards cap and songs Italian critics dismissed entirely. He spent the next three decades proving them wrong: he was among the first to rap in Italian and his work drifted toward songwriting, funk and African music. Few started worse and travelled further.
Jovanotti
1980
Don't Stand So Close to Me tops Britain and sells eight hundred thousand copies
The single hit number one in Britain on 27 September 1980, nine days after release, and held for four weeks: nobody outsold it that year, 808,000 copies. Sting had taught English before he made a living at this, and wrote about a teacher and a pupil while name-checking Nabokov, in case anyone was unsure what it was about.
The Police
Sting
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1980
Scary Monsters puts Bowie back at number one in Britain after six years
On the chart for the week ending 27 September 1980 the album went straight in at the top: his first British number one since Diamond Dogs. Ashes to Ashes had already settled accounts with the Major Tom of 1969, and Robert Fripp filled the songs with splinters of guitar. It was Bowie's last album for RCA.
David Bowie
Robert Fripp
Tony Visconti
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1982
Lil Wayne is born: the New Orleans kid who recorded a thousand songs in a row
On September 27, 1982, Dwayne Carter was born in New Orleans. He signed to Cash Money at eleven and had an album out at fifteen. Between 2005 and 2008 he released an absurd volume of free mixtapes, turning up on everybody's songs, until he had convinced the industry he was the best rapper alive. 'Tha Carter III' sold a million copies in its first week.
Lil Wayne
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1984
Avril Lavigne is born, the teenager who took pop punk to the mall
Avril Lavigne is born in Belleville, Canada; at 17 she turned “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi” into generational anthems. With a loose tie and a skateboard under her arm, she translated punk attitude into mass language and opened the door for a wave of young artists writing their own songs. Her influence resurfaces in every Y2K revival.
Avril Lavigne
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1986
A bus rolls over on a Swedish road and Metallica lose Cliff Burton
Early on 27 September 1986, near Dörarp, the tour bus left the E4 and turned over onto Cliff Burton, who had won that bunk hours earlier drawing cards with Kirk Hammett. He was twenty-four. The driver blamed black ice; the police found none, and nobody was ever charged with anything.
Cliff Burton
Metallica
Kirk Hammett
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1994
R.E.M. swap velvet for tremolo and go straight to number one in America
Monster reached American shops on 27 September 1994 and went in at number one with 344,000 copies in a week. Bill Berry had spent two acoustic albums asking to make a noise and got his way: dirty guitars, tremolo everywhere, lyrics sung by characters who lie. The tour that followed nearly finished them; Berry's aneurysm burst on stage.
R.E.M.
Bill Berry
Michael Stipe
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1997
Bob Dylan plays for John Paul II and the future Benedict XVI tries to stop it
On 27 September 1997, in Bologna and as part of the Eucharistic Congress, Dylan played A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, Forever Young and Knockin' on Heaven's Door to three hundred thousand people. The Pope then improvised on the roads a person must walk. Years later Ratzinger revealed he had opposed the booking and lost the argument.
Bob Dylan
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1997
INXS play Pennsylvania not knowing it is Michael Hutchence's last night
On 27 September 1997, at the Star Lake amphitheatre in Burgettstown, INXS closed a twenty-song set with Suicide Blonde. It was another date on the twentieth-anniversary tour, sharing a bill with Amy Grant and Savage Garden in front of seven thousand people. Hutchence died in a Sydney hotel on 22 November. He never sang in public again.
INXS
Michael Hutchence
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2004
Interpol dodge the second-album curse and learn to finish a chorus
Antics came out on 27 September 2004 on Matador: number fifteen in America, twenty-one in Britain and four singles that still play. Where Turn On the Bright Lights was fog, this one tightens. Paul Banks still calls it the best thing they made, and he is right: it is the exact moment they stopped resembling anyone else.
Interpol
Paul Banks
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2013
Lorde releases at sixteen an album that laughs at what the radio sells
Pure Heroine came out on 27 September 2013, written with Joel Little in an Auckland studio. Royals had already gone to number one in America: a song about having none of the things pop celebrates, sung by a teenager from a New Zealand suburb. Five million copies and a template the following decade copied without pause.
Lorde
Joel Little
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2018
Marty Balin dies, the man who opened the club where San Francisco started
He died on 27 September 2018 in Tampa, aged seventy-six. Before founding Jefferson Airplane he had opened the Matrix, the room where the band made its debut and where half the San Francisco scene passed through. He sang the tender songs of a band that was not tender, and in the seventies came back to give Jefferson Starship its biggest hits.
Marty Balin
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Starship
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1898
Vincent Youmans is born: the man who wrote 'Tea for Two' in five minutes and hated it
On September 27, 1898, Vincent Youmans was born in New York. He composed 'Tea for Two' as a placeholder melody to fill a gap in a musical, and it became one of the most recorded standards in history: Art Tatum's version, Doris Day's, among hundreds. Youmans despised it. Tuberculosis retired him at thirty-seven, with barely ninety songs written.
Vincent Youmans
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1964
The Beach Boys open the season on Ed Sullivan surrounded by hot rods
On 27 September 1964 they opened the new season of Ed Sullivan's show with I Get Around, their first number one, and a row of hot rods parked on the set in case anyone missed the point. They came back later, without the cars, to sing Wendy. Seven months after the Beatles, the Californian answer walked into America's living rooms.
The Beach Boys
Brian Wilson
Ed Sullivan
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1968
Status Quo debut as psychedelics and will take years to find their riff
Picturesque Matchstickable Messages from the Status Quo came out on 27 September 1968 on Pye, with Pictures of Matchstick Men on it: number seven in Britain and, oddly, the only big hit the band ever had in America. The album itself failed to chart. The long hair and the three-chord boogie were still years away.
Status Quo
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1975
'I'm Sorry' hits number one and John Denver rules half the decade
On September 27, 1975, John Denver's 'I'm Sorry' was number one in the United States. Denver was among the best-selling artists of the seventies with songs about mountains and country roads, at a moment when rock was turning cynical and urban. Ten years later he would testify against censorship before the Senate alongside Frank Zappa: American music's friendly neighbour turned out less docile than expected.
John Denver
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1982
Depeche Mode survive Vince Clarke's exit with a peasant on the sleeve
A Broken Frame came out on 27 September 1982, nine months after Vince Clarke left to start Yazoo, taking almost all the songs with him. Martin Gore took the job and dug into material he had written as a teenager. Number eight in Britain. Brian Griffin's cover, a woman scything under a storm sky, looked like Soviet propaganda and was pure English anxiety.
Depeche Mode
Martin Gore
Brian Griffin
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1984
Forever Young leaves Berlin and outlives the band that signed it
Alphaville's debut appeared on 27 September 1984, recorded in Berlin with Big in Japan already a hit. Number one in Norway and Sweden, invisible in America. The title track is a synthetic waltz about the fear of dying in a nuclear war; it has spent forty years playing at graduation parties that never listen to it.
Alphaville
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1986
Lionel Richie hits number one with the album he held back for almost a year
Dancing on the Ceiling topped the American albums chart for the week dated 27 September 1986. It was to be called Say You, Say Me and released in December 1985, but Richie rewrote part of it because he disliked where the world was heading. Four million copies, and gold, platinum, double and triple certifications on the same day.
Lionel Richie
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1993
James send their rehearsals to Brian Eno expecting a no, and out comes Laid
The album appeared on 27 September 1993 and reached number three in Britain. Eno was busy until he heard a rough take and changed his mind; he recorded the band almost bare, vocals tumbling over each other, acoustic guitars up front. The title track, about a relationship spinning out of control, moved into American college radio and never left.
James
Brian Eno
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2000
U2 climb onto the roof of their own hotel and stop one bank of the Liffey
On 27 September 2000, in wind and rain, the band filmed Beautiful Day and Elevation on the roof of the Clarence, the Dublin hotel Bono and the Edge had bought. Four thousand people crowded the quay to look up. It was footage for Top of the Pops and the live debut of All That You Can't Leave Behind.
U2
Bono
The Edge
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2004
Leaving New York is the last British top ten R.E.M. ever had
The single came out on 27 September 2004 ahead of Around the Sun and reached number five in Britain: the band's eleventh and final top ten there. In America it did not even make the singles chart. Two countries hearing the same farewell song and drawing exactly opposite conclusions.
R.E.M.
Michael Stipe
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2008
Death Magnetic gives Metallica a fifth straight number one and a loudness war
On the American chart dated 27 September 2008 the album went straight in at the top: 490,000 copies in three days and the band's fifth consecutive studio album to reach number one, which nobody had managed before. Rick Rubin produced. And it was squashed so hard that many preferred to listen to the Guitar Hero stems.
Metallica
Rick Rubin
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