Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today October 4
1970
Janis Joplin dies at 27, sixteen days after Hendrix
Janis Joplin is found dead in a Hollywood hotel of an overdose, aged 27. The rejected girl from Port Arthur had become the most harrowing white blues voice of her time, and was recording “Pearl”, released posthumously with “Me and Bobby McGee”. Her death, so close to Hendrix's, cemented the tragic myth of the 27 Club.
Janis Joplin
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1917
Violeta Parra is born, who travelled Chile recording what nobody had written down
On October 4, 1917, Violeta Parra was born in San Carlos, Chile. She spent the 1950s travelling the countryside with a tape recorder, collecting peasant songs that were about to be lost, and rescued more than three thousand pieces. Then she wrote her own: "Gracias a la vida", "Volver a los diecisiete", "Run Run se fue pa'l norte". In 1964 she became the first Latin American to hold a solo exhibition at the Louvre.
Violeta Parra
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1959
Chris Lowe is born, the silent half of Pet Shop Boys
Chris Lowe is born in Blackpool: the sonic architect of Pet Shop Boys, famous for his onstage stillness and dark glasses. With Neil Tennant he created an ironic, melancholy electronic pop that ruled the eighties with “West End Girls” and “It's a Sin”. His refusal to perform was, at heart, a statement: let the music speak.
Chris Lowe
Pet Shop Boys
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1962
Telstar tops the UK chart, recorded above a leather goods shop
On the UK chart week beginning 4 October 1962, the Tornados' “Telstar” went to number one and stayed five weeks. Joe Meek cut it in his home studio on Holloway Road, above a leather goods shop, chasing the sound a satellite might make. A plagiarism suit withheld his royalties until after his suicide in 1967.
The Tornados
Joe Meek
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1965
Johnny Cash is arrested in El Paso with a thousand pills in his guitar case
On 4 October 1965 narcotics officers arrested Johnny Cash at the El Paso border. They expected heroin brought up from Mexico; what they found was 688 Dexedrine capsules and 475 Equanil tablets stuffed inside his guitar case. Since these were prescription drugs he got a suspended sentence and posted 1,500 dollars bail. The amphetamines were eating him alive anyway.
Johnny Cash
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1968
Cream open their farewell tour before even making three years together
On 4 October 1968, in Oakland, Cream opened the tour that would end them: twenty-two American shows in a month and two final nights at the Royal Albert Hall in November. Rock's first supergroup lasted under three years, burned out by the war between Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, with Clapton sick of having to play ever louder.
Cream
Eric Clapton
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1969
Green River gives Creedence a first number one mid-marathon
On the Billboard chart dated 4 October 1969, Green River hit number one, the first Creedence Clearwater Revival album to manage it. It was the second of three they released that same year, a factory pace no major band has sustained since. It held the top for four weeks, until Abbey Road pushed it off.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
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1975
Wish You Were Here tops the US chart in only its second week
On the Billboard chart dated 4 October 1975, Wish You Were Here reached number one in only its second week out. Pink Floyd had taken 900,000 advance orders in the United States alone; it was the fastest-selling record of their career. That an album about absence and the grind of the music business sold like that carries its own built-in irony.
Pink Floyd
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1980
Another One Bites the Dust hits number one on Michael Jackson's advice
On 4 October 1980 “Another One Bites the Dust” reached number one in the United States and stayed three weeks. John Deacon, the quiet bassist, wrote it, and Queen had no plans to issue it as a single until Michael Jackson suggested it to Freddie Mercury backstage in Los Angeles. A British rock band ended up all over soul radio.
Queen
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1937
Lloyd Green is born: the pedal steel on records nobody associates with Nashville
On October 4, 1937, Lloyd Green was born in Mississippi, one of the most recorded session musicians in history: he is reckoned to have played on more than thirty thousand songs. His speciality was the pedal steel, the horizontal guitar that weeps. He is on records by Tammy Wynette and Charley Pride, but also on the Byrds' "Sweetheart of the Rodeo", the album with which rock discovered country in 1968.
Lloyd Green
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1945
Clifton Davis is born, who wrote an enormous hit and became a minister
On October 4, 1945, Clifton Davis was born in Chicago — an actor and songwriter who in 1971 handed the Jackson 5 "Never Can Say Goodbye". The song reached number two, Gloria Gaynor's disco version put it back on dancefloors three years later, and it has been recorded hundreds of times since. Davis alternated television with music until he was ordained as an Adventist minister, and carried on acting anyway.
Clifton Davis
The Jackson 5
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1947
Julien Clerc is born: the pianist who broke through in the hippie musical
On October 4, 1947, Julien Clerc was born near Paris, son of a Unesco official and a Guadeloupean mother. He was studying law when he was cast in the French version of "Hair", the musical that scandalised half of Europe in 1969. Out of that came a career of more than fifty years in which he worked with almost every major French lyricist and stayed clear of fashions without ever stopping selling records.
Julien Clerc
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1953
Andreas Vollenweider is born, who electrified the harp and sold millions with it
On October 4, 1953, Andreas Vollenweider was born in Zurich, the son of an organist. He took the harp — an instrument tied to orchestras and drawing rooms — and fitted it with pickups and effects until it became something else. In the 1980s his instrumental albums sold millions and won a Grammy, in a category the industry did not quite know how to name and ended up calling new age.
Andreas Vollenweider
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1961
Jon Secada is born: the Cuban who recorded every album twice
On October 4, 1961, Juan Secada was born in Havana and arrived in Miami at nine when his family went into exile. He studied jazz, ended up singing backing vocals for Gloria Estefan and co-writing her songs before going solo in 1992. His method was to record each album complete in English and in Spanish, never treating the Latin version as an appendix, and with it he sold more than twenty million records and won two Grammys.
Jon Secada
Gloria Estefan
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1968
The Beatles record Martha My Dear, which is really McCartney alone
On 4 October 1968, at Trident Studios, work began on “Martha My Dear”. Only one Beatle is on it: McCartney cut piano, drums and vocals that day, adding bass, guitar and handclaps the next; everything else is session players under George Martin's arrangements. He was told to let Martin take the difficult piano solo and refused. The White Album was already four records running in parallel.
The Beatles
Paul McCartney
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1970
All of San Francisco was onstage at Winterland when the news went round
On 4 October 1970 the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service shared a bill at San Francisco's Winterland, in the first live quadraphonic television broadcast. While the Dead played, word of Janis Joplin's death began moving through the wings; the promoter tried to keep it from the musicians who had not yet gone on.
Grateful Dead
Jefferson Airplane
Quicksilver Messenger Service
1991
Leigh-Anne Pinnock is born, of the first group to win a TV contest and survive it
On October 4, 1991, Leigh-Anne Pinnock was born in Buckinghamshire, a member of Little Mix, the first group ever to win Britain's "The X Factor", in 2011. Almost every previous winner had dissolved within two years; they lasted a decade, sold millions and left when they chose to. Pinnock spoke publicly about the different treatment she received as the group's only Black woman.
Leigh-Anne Pinnock
Little Mix
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1993
Teenage Fanclub release Thirteen, the album that nearly undid them
On 4 October 1993 Thirteen appeared, Teenage Fanclub's attempt to answer Bandwagonesque. They started with forty song fragments and spent half a year between Glasgow and Manchester revising, re-recording and losing heart. Drummer Brendan O'Hare left once the tour was over. The most generous band in Scottish pop learned that overthinking ruins a melody.
Teenage Fanclub
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1994
Smashing Pumpkins put out their leftovers and sell a million copies
On 4 October 1994 Pisces Iscariot arrived, a collection of Smashing Pumpkins B-sides and outtakes that reached number four and sold a million copies in under two months with almost no promotion. Billy Corgan recalled, wearily, being congratulated on his third album. Their cover of “Landslide” ended up bigger than half their official singles.
The Smashing Pumpkins
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1999
McCartney releases Run Devil Run, grief made out of old rock and roll
On 4 October 1999 Run Devil Run appeared in Britain, the first album Paul McCartney made after Linda's death. It is almost entirely covers of fifties rock and roll, the songs he listened to as a teenager in Liverpool. Producer Chris Thomas called it, plainly, the album for Linda. In December he played it whole at the Cavern Club.
Paul McCartney
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1999
Hours reaches the shops, two weeks after Bowie put it on the internet
On 4 October 1999 Hours reached the shops, David Bowie's twenty-first studio album. By then it had been downloadable on BowieNet for two weeks: the first complete album by a major artist sold online before it existed on disc. The record chains were furious. The iTunes Store was still four years away.
David Bowie
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2000
Muse release Random 1-8 in Japan only, made of Showbiz leftovers
On 4 October 2000 Muse issued Random 1-8 in Japan, and only in Japan: six B-sides from the Showbiz era plus two live tracks, put out to accompany their tour there. The band was still a secret outside Europe, and the EP became an import curio for obsessive fans long before they were filling stadiums.
Muse
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2003
Springsteen closes The Rising Tour at Shea Stadium after fourteen months
On 4 October 2003 Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band closed The Rising Tour at Shea Stadium in New York: 120 shows in 82 cities across fourteen months. The tour had grown out of an album written about 11 September, and it ended in a Queens ballpark a few miles from where the towers had stood.
Bruce Springsteen
The E Street Band
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2010
Beth Hart releases My California, the record of a singer Europe adopted
On 4 October 2010 My California was released in Europe, Beth Hart's fifth album. The Los Angeles singer had spent a decade living off the European circuit while her own country ignored her, and this is the record where she sings about it: the addiction, the bipolar diagnosis, the city she keeps returning to. Europe had been listening for years; America took considerably longer.
Beth Hart
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