Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 28
1991
Miles Davis dies, the man who changed music five times
Miles Davis dies in Santa Monica at 65. From bebop to cool jazz, from the modal quintet of “Kind of Blue” to the electricity of “Bitches Brew”, he reinvented music every time it bored him, dragging jazz toward rock and funk. His rule was simple and still stands: don't play what's there, play what's not there.
Miles Davis
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1932
Víctor Jara is born: the man they killed for singing
On September 28, 1932, Víctor Jara was born in Lonquén, Chile. He was a theatre director and one of the central voices of the nueva canción chilena, a movement that gathered up peasant music and put it at the service of a political idea. Days after the 1973 coup he was detained at the Technical University, tortured and shot dead in the stadium that now bears his name. He was forty.
Víctor Jara
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1938
Ben E. King is born, the eternal voice of “Stand by Me”
Ben E. King is born in Henderson, North Carolina: voice of the Drifters on “There Goes My Baby” and later an immortal solo artist with “Stand by Me”. That song, co-written with Leiber and Stoller from a gospel source, returned to the top 10 twenty-five years later thanks to film. Few melodies prove so well that the simple and true never ages.
Ben E. King
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1976
'Songs in the Key of Life': two years of work and thirteen weeks on top
On September 28, 1976, 'Songs in the Key of Life' was released, the triple album that closed the most extraordinary decade any popular musician has had. Stevie Wonder took two years to record it and it debuted straight at number one, something only two albums had managed before and none by an American. It stayed there thirteen weeks and took four Grammys, including Album of the Year.
Stevie Wonder
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1985
Hounds of Love goes to number one and Kate Bush wins the argument with her label
On the British chart for the week ending 28 September 1985 the album went straight to the top, ahead of Madonna. She had recorded it in a studio built at her own house, after EMI had grown wary of the previous record and of the way she worked. The whole of side two is a suite about someone drowning at sea in the dark.
Kate Bush
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1987
The Pixies debut with twenty minutes salvaged from a purple tape
Come On Pilgrim came out on 28 September 1987 on 4AD: eight tracks picked from a seventeen-song demo Gary Smith recorded for them in Boston on almost no money. Ivo Watts-Russell dropped the rest, including Here Comes Your Man, for sounding too commercial. Twenty minutes and it is all there: the scream, the silence and what comes after.
Pixies
Black Francis
Kim Deal
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1987
Depeche Mode name an album as a joke and end up filling the Rose Bowl
Music for the Masses came out on 28 September 1987, with David Bascombe producing instead of Daniel Miller. The title was a joke: everyone was asking them for more commercial songs, so they made the darkest record they had. Number ten in Britain, thirty-five in America, and at the end of the tour eighty thousand people in Pasadena disproving the joke.
Depeche Mode
Martin Gore
Andy Fletcher
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1987
The Smiths release their best album once they no longer exist
Strangeways, Here We Come arrived on 28 September 1987. Johnny Marr had left in the spring, between recording and release, so the album reached the world with no band behind it. Number two in Britain. All four members have separately called it the best thing they made: the only matter they ever agreed on again.
The Smiths
Morrissey
Johnny Marr
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2018
Tom Petty's first posthumous record is chosen by his daughter and his guitarist
An American Treasure came out on 28 September 2018, eleven months after his death. Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, his daughter Adria and his widow Dana assembled it under one rule: rescue what he himself would have defended. Outtakes, alternate mixes and live takes across forty years; sixty songs in the deluxe edition and not one concession to a hits package.
Tom Petty
Mike Campbell
Benmont Tench
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1968
'Hey Jude' begins nine weeks at number one at seven minutes long
On September 28, 1968, 'Hey Jude' reached number one in the United States and stayed nine weeks, the Beatles' longest reign and a record for the decade. It ran seven minutes, more than twice what radio accepted then, and the second half is nothing but a repeated chorus. Paul McCartney had written it for Julian Lennon, John's son, during his parents' divorce.
The Beatles
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1974
Bad Company reach number one in America with their first album
On the albums chart dated 28 September 1974, the self-titled debut went to the top in America. They were a supergroup assembled from pieces of Free, Mott the Hoople and King Crimson, and the first signing to the label Led Zeppelin had just set up. Can't Get Enough sounded like almost no effort, and exactly what was needed.
Bad Company
Paul Rodgers
Mick Ralphs
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1991
Use Your Illusion II beats Use Your Illusion I by a single place
On the British chart for the week ending 28 September 1991, the two Guns N' Roses albums held the top two places: the second volume above, the first right behind it. Releasing thirty songs on the same day across two separate albums was an enormous piece of swagger, and in half the world it worked.
Guns N' Roses
Axl Rose
Slash
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1992
Peter Gabriel takes six years to return and does it with the therapy up front
Us came out on 28 September 1992, after nearly three years of recording. It deals with his divorce, his relationship with Rosanna Arquette and the distance from his eldest daughter, with no alibis and no characters standing in. Number two in Britain and America. Digging in the Dirt made it plain from the first single: nobody hides here.
Peter Gabriel
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1992
Brian May finally releases what he had been swallowing for four years
Back to the Light came out on 28 September 1992, ten months after Freddie Mercury's death, with grief for his father and a broken marriage inside it too. Number six in Britain. He had been recording it in snatches at his home studio since 1988, while Queen was fading and nobody said anything in public.
Brian May
Queen
Freddie Mercury
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1996
'Home Again' tops the chart and all six of New Edition come back together
On September 28, 1996, New Edition's 'Home Again' topped the R&B albums chart. It was the reunion of all six line-up members at once, Bobby Brown and Johnny Gill included, after years of solo careers and public feuds. It sold over two million copies. The tour that followed was cancelled after they came to blows on stage.
New Edition
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1999
ZZ Top mark thirty years with an album half recorded on stage
XXX came out on 28 September 1999 and the title is a count: three decades with the same line-up, something almost no band can claim. Five tracks came from live shows, one with Jeff Beck guesting. Number one hundred in America. They sold little and kept playing, which is exactly what they had been doing since 1969.
ZZ Top
Billy Gibbons
Jeff Beck
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2004
Nancy Sinatra returns at sixty-four with songs other people wrote for her
The self-titled album came out on 28 September 2004 with new material written for her by Morrissey, Bono, Jarvis Cocker and Calexico. Number ninety-four in Britain, which is to say almost nobody bought it. But the idea was good: a whole generation of musicians returning the favour to the voice of These Boots Are Made for Walkin'.
Nancy Sinatra
Morrissey
Jarvis Cocker
Calexico
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2004
Marilyn Manson compiles eleven years and adds a Depeche Mode cover
Lest We Forget: The Best Of came out on 28 September 2004 and entered at number nine in America with 78,715 copies in a week, well above the label's forecast. The only new thing was Personal Jesus, which he picked for being hypnotic. A greatest hits at thirty-five is usually the polite way to close a chapter.
Marilyn Manson
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2008
Kings of Leon top Britain before their own country finds them
On the chart dated 28 September 2008, Only by the Night went straight to the top in Britain. Three brothers and a cousin, sons and nephew of a Tennessee Pentecostal preacher, had spent years being enormous in Europe and a curiosity at home. Sex on Fire and Use Somebody finished the job, for better and for worse.
Kings of Leon
Caleb Followill
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2009
Tina Turner releases the live record of her last tour at sixty-nine
Tina Live came out in Europe on 28 September 2009, filmed on 21 March at the GelreDome in Arnhem during the fiftieth-anniversary tour. Two hours of video and a good hour of album from a woman who had spent half a century on stage and was still working the catwalk in heels. She retired after it, and this time she meant it.
Tina Turner
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2010
Soundgarden's reunion compilation goes platinum on the day it appears
Telephantasm arrived on 28 September 2010, after thirteen years without a band, and the RIAA certified it platinum immediately: a million copies were bundled inside the game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. It carried Black Rain, an outtake from the Badmotorfinger sessions. Kim Thayil explained the title as a ghost seen from very far away.
Soundgarden
Kim Thayil
Chris Cornell
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2010
Bad Religion turn thirty and put out their longest album
The Dissent of Man came out on 28 September 2010 on Epitaph, the label Brett Gurewitz founded so he could release himself. Forty-three minutes, the longest they had recorded, and number thirty-five in America. Three decades singing the same thing in three-part harmony with the vocabulary of a university lecturer, which is what Greg Graffin is.
Bad Religion
Greg Graffin
Brett Gurewitz
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2012
Muse dedicate an album to the second law of thermodynamics, and they mean it
The 2nd Law came out in Europe on 28 September 2012 with dubstep, orchestra and a song that ends with a newsreader reading out the statement about entropy. It included Survival, the official song of that summer's London Olympics. Number one in thirteen countries. Nobody has ever made stadium rock this convinced the whole thing is ending.
Muse
Matt Bellamy
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