Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today October 3
1954
Stevie Ray Vaughan is born, the Texan who revived the blues in the MTV era
Stevie Ray Vaughan is born in Dallas: the guitarist who, amid eighties synthesizers and music videos, put electric blues back at the center. His debut “Texas Flood” and his playing on Bowie's “Let's Dance” revealed a uniquely volcanic tone. He died in 1990 in a helicopter crash, newly sober and at his very peak.
Stevie Ray Vaughan
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1938
Eddie Cochran is born, who wrote the perfect teenage complaint and died at 21
On October 3, 1938, Eddie Cochran was born in Minnesota, author of "Summertime Blues" and "C'mon Everybody", two songs that invented the portrait of the teenager with no money, no car and no permission to go out. He played nearly all the instruments himself, unheard of in 1958. He died in April 1960 in England when the taxi taking him to the airport crashed; Gene Vincent, travelling with him, survived.
Eddie Cochran
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1941
Chubby Checker is born, owner of the only record to reach number one twice
On October 3, 1941, Ernest Evans was born in South Carolina. He was plucking chickens in a Philadelphia market when he recorded a cover of "The Twist", a song almost nobody had heard in the original. It went to number one in 1960, fell off the chart and returned to number one in 1962: the only single in history to manage it. The dance he taught let couples dance without touching, and scandalised half the press.
Chubby Checker
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1949
Lindsey Buckingham is born, and will join Fleetwood Mac on one condition
On 3 October 1949 Lindsey Buckingham was born in Palo Alto, a self-taught guitarist who plays with his fingers because he never learned to use a pick. When Mick Fleetwood came for him after Bob Welch quit, he set one condition: Stevie Nicks came too, or he stayed away. That ultimatum produced Rumours, which turned a British blues band into the pop phenomenon of the decade.
Lindsey Buckingham
Fleetwood Mac
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1967
Woody Guthrie dies, the guitar that killed fascists
Woody Guthrie dies in New York at 55, after a long battle with Huntington's disease. The author of “This Land Is Your Land” wrote thousands of songs about migrants, workers and the dispossessed, on a guitar labeled “this machine kills fascists”. Without him there would be no Dylan, no Springsteen, no modern protest song.
Woody Guthrie
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1969
Gwen Stefani is born, who inherited the No Doubt microphone by default
On 3 October 1969 Gwen Stefani was born in Fullerton. Her brother Eric brought her in as a backing singer for the ska band he was assembling in 1986; when frontman John Spence took his own life a year later, she was left out front without asking for it. It took a decade to reach Tragic Kingdom, and another to prove the voice worked without the band.
Gwen Stefani
No Doubt
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1975
India.Arie is born, who lost seven Grammys in one night and later won four
On October 3, 1975, India Arie Simpson was born in Denver, daughter of a professional basketball player and a singer. In 2001 she debuted with "Acoustic Soul" and "Video", a song openly rejecting the industry's beauty standards. The following year she arrived at the Grammys with seven nominations and left with none, in one of the most discussed shutouts in the award's history. She won four afterwards.
India.Arie
1975
Talib Kweli is born, the rapper Jay-Z cited as the measure of excellence
On October 3, 1975, Talib Kweli was born in Brooklyn, son of a university literature professor and an education administrator. With Mos Def he formed Black Star and in 1998 released an album that became a reference point for all of conscious hip-hop. His standing among peers was summed up by Jay-Z in a famous line: he said Kweli was so good he barely sold, and that he himself preferred to sell. Kweli took it as praise.
Talib Kweli
Mos Def
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1975
The Who by Numbers arrives, written by Townshend crying in his living room
On 3 October 1975 The Who released The Who by Numbers in Britain, recorded while Pete Townshend turned thirty convinced he was too old for rock and roll. He described the sessions himself: writing stoned in his living room, crying, detached from his own work. After the rock operas and the windmill arm, this is where the band stops posing and admits the emptiness.
The Who
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1977
L.A.M.F. is released, the great punk record ruined by its own mix
On 3 October 1977 Johnny Thunders' Heartbreakers released L.A.M.F. The songs were among the best New York punk produced and the playing was unusually assured, but the mix came out muddy and blunt. Drummer Jerry Nolan had warned he would leave if it shipped like that, and he left. Only in 2021 did better master tapes surface.
The Heartbreakers
Johnny Thunders
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1980
Zenyatta Mondatta lands, finished at 4 a.m. on the day the tour began
On 3 October 1980 The Police released Zenyatta Mondatta, cut in four weeks in the Netherlands because British tax rules kept them from recording at home. Stewart Copeland recalled finishing at four in the morning on the day their world tour began. Out of that race against the clock came “Don't Stand So Close to Me”, a UK number one, and the album that made them huge outside Europe.
The Police
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1992
Sinéad O'Connor tears up the Pope's photo live, and the industry makes her pay
On 3 October 1992, on Saturday Night Live, Sinéad O'Connor sang Bob Marley's “War” a cappella, rewrote the lyric to be about child abuse, held up a photograph of John Paul II and tore it in half, telling viewers to fight the real enemy. Complaints, boos and blacklists followed for years. A decade later the Boston Globe uncovered exactly what she had named.
Sinéad O'Connor
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1992
Abba Gold hits number one in Britain and never really leaves the chart
On the UK chart for the week ending 3 October 1992, Abba Gold entered straight at number one. Nobody expected much from a compilation by a band that had split a decade earlier and was widely written off as a joke. It ended up the second best-selling album in British history and the first ever to log a thousand weeks on the chart.
ABBA
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1994
No Need to Argue arrives, where The Cranberries stop whispering
On 3 October 1994 The Cranberries released No Need to Argue. Dolores O'Riordan wrote “Zombie” after the IRA bombing in Warrington that killed two children, and sang it with a distortion and a fury absent from the debut. Seventeen million copies later, the most delicate band in Irish rock had sold far more by shouting.
The Cranberries
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1917
The author of "'O sole mio", the most sung Neapolitan song in the world, dies destitute
On October 3, 1917, Eduardo Di Capua died penniless in Naples. In 1898 he had composed "'O sole mio" while travelling through Ukraine, homesick for his city's sunlight. He sold the rights for a few lire. The melody became the unofficial anthem of all Italy, and in 1960 Elvis Presley rewrote it in English as "It's Now or Never" and sold twenty million copies.
Eduardo Di Capua
Elvis Presley
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1947
Ben Cauley is born: the only man to come out of Otis Redding's plane alive
On October 3, 1947, Ben Cauley was born in Memphis, trumpeter with the Bar-Kays, the teenage band backing Otis Redding. On December 10, 1967, the small plane they were travelling in crashed into a frozen Wisconsin lake. Redding and five of the six Bar-Kays died. Cauley woke up in the water, grabbed a seat cushion and was the sole survivor. He rebuilt the band and kept playing for forty years.
Ben Cauley
The Bar-Kays
Otis Redding
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1962
Tommy Lee is born, the Greek who turned the drum solo into a fairground ride
On 3 October 1962 Thomas Lee Bass was born in Athens, son of an American army sergeant and a Miss Greece finalist. With Mötley Crüe he turned the drum solo into a theme-park attraction: the spinning cage, the kit hung above the crowd, the rollercoaster. Behind the circus was a drummer whose brutal pulse propped up much of eighties hard rock.
Tommy Lee
Mötley Crüe
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1969
Skip James dies, his treatment paid for by a Cream song
On October 3, 1969, Skip James died — the strangest bluesman of the Mississippi Delta: he sang in falsetto and tuned his guitar to D minor, which gave his 1931 records a funereal air nobody else achieved. Nobody bought them and he vanished for thirty years. He was found in 1964 in a hospital bed. The royalties from Cream's version of "I'm So Glad" paid for his cancer treatment.
Skip James
Cream
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1978
Aerosmith bail out their own fans after a pot bust at the show
On 3 October 1978, at the War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, police arrested dozens of people at an Aerosmith concert for marijuana possession. Steven Tyler called the officers Gestapo from the stage, and once the set was over the band offered to post bail: roughly 4,200 dollars out of the tour accounts. In Indiana they are still called the Fort Wayne 44.
Aerosmith
1983
Genesis arrives, written with nobody bringing a finished song
On 3 October 1983 Genesis released the album that carries their name, written and recorded in one go at their studio The Farm: nobody turned up with finished songs, everything grew out of jamming with the tape rolling. The method paid off — a UK number one, four million copies in America — and confirmed that Collins' trio was now a stadium pop band.
Genesis
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1988
A$AP Rocky is born: the New Yorker who rapped as though he were from Houston
On October 3, 1988, Rakim Mayers was born in Harlem, named after the rapper Rakim. He broke an unwritten rule of New York hip-hop: instead of defending his city's sound, he adopted the dragging rhythm of the South and the aesthetics of luxury fashion. In 2011 he signed a three-million-dollar deal on the strength of a single free mixtape. He turned the rapper into a runway figure before almost anyone else.
ASAP Rocky
ASAP Mob
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1988
Keith Richards releases Talk Is Cheap, his answer to Jagger refusing to tour
On 3 October 1988 Talk Is Cheap arrived, Keith Richards' first solo album, made after Mick Jagger chose his own career over touring with the Stones. Richards built the X-Pensive Winos around Steve Jordan and Waddy Wachtel, called in Bootsy Collins and Mick Taylor, and proved without raising his voice whose groove the band had been running on.
Keith Richards
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1994
The Kinks release To the Bone, cut in their own studio with an audience inside
On 3 October 1994 To the Bone appeared in Britain, half live album and half living-room session: The Kinks gathered a small audience inside their own Konk studio and worked through the catalogue almost unplugged. It was their last release before the 1996 split, and it sounds like what it was: two brothers reviewing thirty years without turning up.
The Kinks
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1995
Candlebox release Lucy and find out how long a wave lasts
On 3 October 1995 Candlebox released Lucy, their second album. The debut had sold millions on the back of the Seattle boom; this one reached number eleven and went gold, respectable figures that in context read as a collapse. Lucy is darker and less radio-friendly than its predecessor, and that was precisely its problem.
Candlebox
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1995
Meat Puppets release No Joke! and fall apart right after
On 3 October 1995 the Meat Puppets released No Joke!, a year after Kurt Cobain had put them on the map by inviting them onto Nirvana's Unplugged. The record is harder and far less playful than its predecessor, and it was the last with Cris Kirkwood and Derrick Bostrom for over a decade: the bassist's addiction broke the band in two.
Meat Puppets
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2000
Green Day release Warning with accordion and mariachi, and pay for it
On 3 October 2000 Green Day released Warning, trading distortion for acoustic guitars, harmonica, accordion and even mariachi brass. Leaked on Napster three weeks early, it became their first major-label album to miss multi-platinum. Going back to Dookie was no longer enough: it took American Idiot to get them forgiven.
Green Day
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2011
The Answer release Revival, Northern Irish hard rock born out of its time
On 3 October 2011 Northern Ireland's The Answer released Revival, their third album. They had just opened for AC/DC across an entire world tour, a credential almost no young band gets, and played seventies hard rock with no irony and no retro wink. Classic Rock gave it five stars; the rest of the world was listening to something else.
The Answer
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