Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today October 7
1968
Thom Yorke is born, the restless conscience of end-of-century rock
Thom Yorke, leader of Radiohead, is born in Wellingborough, England. From the teenage anguish of “Creep” he leapt to reinventing rock with “OK Computer” and detonating it with “Kid A”, when nobody asked him to. His distrust of fame and technology became the most lucid soundtrack of the digital age.
Thom Yorke
Radiohead
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1951
John Mellencamp is born, rebel chronicler of America's heartland
John Mellencamp is born in Seymour, Indiana; he fought for years against the stage name “Johnny Cougar” the industry forced on him. With “Jack & Diane” and “Small Town” he portrayed deep America without postcard or condescension, and co-founded Farm Aid to defend farmers. His rock is pure heartland: simple outside, stubborn inside.
John Mellencamp
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1963
Lennon and McCartney finish a song in the corner of the studio and hand it to the Stones
On 7 October 1963, at De Lane Lea in London, the Rolling Stones recorded "I Wanna Be Your Man". Andrew Loog Oldham had run into Lennon and McCartney on the street, on their way back from an awards lunch; hearing the band had no single, the pair went to the session and finished the song in a corner of the room. It came out in November and became their first top 20 hit.
The Rolling Stones
John Lennon
Paul McCartney
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1967
Toni Braxton is born, who sold seventy million records and filed for bankruptcy twice
On October 7, 1967, Toni Braxton was born in Maryland, eldest of five sisters raised by a minister who forbade them secular music. Her contralto, a rarity in nineties pop, turned "Un-Break My Heart" into one of the decade's biggest sellers. Despite moving more than seventy million records, two exploitative contracts drove her to declare bankruptcy in 1998 and again in 2010.
Toni Braxton
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1975
A court halts John Lennon's deportation two days before Sean was born
On 7 October 1975 a federal appeals court in New York overturned the deportation order hanging over John Lennon since 1972, built on an old British cannabis conviction and pushed along from Nixon's White House. The ruling held that nobody is expelled on covert political grounds. Two days later, on his thirty-fifth birthday, Sean was born.
John Lennon
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1995
Jagged Little Pill hits number one four months after release and stays twelve weeks
The Billboard chart dated 7 October 1995 put Jagged Little Pill on top for the first time, almost four months after release and following a debut at number one hundred and seventeen. No campaign pushed it: it was word of mouth and the precise spite of "You Oughta Know". Alanis Morissette would rack up twelve weeks at number one and over thirty million copies.
Alanis Morissette
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2000
Music returns Madonna to number one eleven years after Like a Prayer
The Billboard chart dated 7 October 2000 crowned Music with 419,600 copies in a week. It was her first US number-one album since Like a Prayer, eleven years earlier, and she got there by letting the Frenchman Mirwais mangle acoustic guitars through a vocoder. At forty-two, Madonna again sounded stranger than her imitators.
Madonna
Mirwais
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2016
Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones open the festival everyone ended up calling Oldchella
On 7 October 2016 the first Desert Trip began at the Empire Polo Club in Indio: Dylan playing first and the Rolling Stones after, on the same field that hosts Coachella. Two weekends with six names — Neil Young, McCartney, the Who, Roger Waters — and an average spend of a thousand dollars a head. The press called it Oldchella and it sold out anyway.
The Rolling Stones
Bob Dylan
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2020
AC/DC reappear with Shot in the Dark and a line-up that had fallen to pieces
On 7 October 2020 AC/DC released "Shot in the Dark", their first single in five years. Behind it lay a wreck: Malcolm Young dead, Brian Johnson sidelined by deafness, Phil Rudd tangled with the courts and Cliff Williams retired. The last three came back to record Power Up over riffs Angus and Malcolm had left in the archive. Nothing had changed, and that was the point.
AC/DC
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1870
Uncle Dave Macon is born, who turned professional musician at fifty
On October 7, 1870, David Macon was born in Tennessee. He spent half his life hauling freight with mule-drawn wagons. When the motor truck made his business obsolete, at fifty, he started playing banjo for money. He ended up as the Grand Ole Opry's first great star and the direct link between nineteenth-century rural music and the country industry born on radio.
Uncle Dave Macon
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1911
Vaughn Monroe is born: the baritone who sang the West's most famous ghost story
On October 7, 1911, Vaughn Monroe was born in Ohio — a trumpeter and bandleader with a baritone so deep his own musicians joked about it. In 1949 he recorded "Riders in the Sky", the ballad about cowboys condemned to chase a herd of ghost cattle across the heavens forever. It was number one for eleven weeks and has since been covered by everyone from Johnny Cash to the Ventures.
Vaughn Monroe
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1927
Al Martino is born, owner of the first number one in British chart history
On October 7, 1927, Alfred Cini was born in Philadelphia, son of Italian bricklayers, working with his father until his friend Mario Lanza urged him to sing. In November 1952 "Here in My Heart" topped the very first singles chart the United Kingdom published: the opening number one of a series that continues today. Twenty years later he played the singer Johnny Fontane in "The Godfather".
Al Martino
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1953
Tico Torres is born, the steel pulse behind thirty years of Bon Jovi
New York, 7 October 1953. Hector Samuel Juan Torres grew up in New Jersey and in 1983 became the founding drummer of Bon Jovi: the oldest man in the band and the most seasoned, with years of session work and other people's groups behind him. They called him The Hitman for the dry precision that holds up those choruses. He entered the Hall of Fame in 2018.
Tico Torres
Bon Jovi
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1963
The Beach Boys put out a whole album about cars three weeks after the last one
On 7 October 1963 Capitol released Little Deuce Coupe, the Beach Boys' fourth album in little more than a year and barely three weeks after Surfer Girl. Twelve songs about cars, a hot rod on the sleeve and an idea that still sounds modern: a rock record organised entirely around a single subject. Brian Wilson's factory was running flat out.
The Beach Boys
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1964
Sam Brown is born, the backing voice who one day stepped forward
Stratford, Essex, 7 October 1964. Daughter of guitarist Joe Brown and session singer Vicki Brown, she grew up around other people's sessions and made a living singing behind them. In 1988 came "Stop!", with an album that passed two and a half million copies worldwide and a broken ballad other singers have spent decades trying to take from her.
Sam Brown
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1978
Alesha Dixon is born: from British garage to judging television contests
On October 7, 1978, Alesha Dixon was born in Hertfordshire. In the early 2000s she was the rapper in Mis-Teeq, one of the groups that carried London garage — the genre grime would later grow out of — into the pop charts. When the trio dissolved and her solo career stalled, she reinvented herself by winning a dance contest and ended up as one of the best-known presenters on British television.
Alesha Dixon
Mis-Teeq
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1991
Joe Cocker releases Night Calls and still sings other people's songs better than they do
On 7 October 1991 Night Calls, Joe Cocker's thirteenth studio album, was released across Europe. The same old trade: songs by Lennon and McCartney, by Elton John, by Steve Winwood, run through a throat that leaves them unrecognisable and better. Jeff Lynne wrote the title track. In his own country the record didn't appear until March the following year.
Joe Cocker
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1991
The Levellers release Levelling the Land and punk hits the road in a caravan
On 7 October 1991 out came Levelling the Land, the Levellers' second album: fiddle, mandolin and fast bass lines in the service of travellers' convoys, evictions and a rural England that Thatcherism had left behind. It reached number fourteen in Britain without a single major radio playlist, and turned the band into home for an entire tribe.
Levellers
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1996
Lewis Capaldi is born, who made Tourette syndrome part of the show
On October 7, 1996, Lewis Capaldi was born near Glasgow. He started playing pubs at eleven. In 2019 "Someone You Loved" spent seven weeks at number one in Britain and became that year's biggest-selling single. He was later diagnosed with Tourette syndrome and, rather than hide it, explained it on stage and in documentaries, until he decided to stop altogether to look after his mental health.
Lewis Capaldi
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1997
Fu Manchu hire the drummer from Kyuss and cut the fastest record of their career
On 7 October 1997 Mammoth released The Action Is Go with half the band new: Brant Bjork, fresh out of Kyuss, on drums and Bob Balch on guitar, after Eddie Glass and Ruben Romano left to form Nebula. The result is the album where Californian stoner rock sounds closer to hardcore than to the desert.
Fu Manchu
Brant Bjork
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1997
Everclear turn an absent father into the most-sung chorus on the radio
On 7 October 1997 So Much for the Afterglow came out, the record that took Everclear from a Portland band to permanent rotation. It debuted at thirty-three and ended up past two million copies in the United States, driven by "Father of Mine", where Art Alexakis says his father left and half a generation sings it back in the car.
Everclear
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2002
The Datsuns arrive from a New Zealand small town to shout down the garage revival
On 7 October 2002 the Datsuns' first album came out: four men from Cambridge, New Zealand, who all took the same fake surname and played seventies hard rock at indecent speed. It landed in the middle of the White Stripes and Hives frenzy: number one at home, seventeen in Britain, and a British press that adopted them for a solid year.
The Datsuns
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2003
Living Colour come back after ten years of silence and nobody answers
On 7 October 2003 Living Colour released Collideøscope, their first studio album since Stain, ten years earlier. Vernon Reid and company returned with a record about post-9/11 New York and a guitar as sharp as in 1988. It was the first Living Colour album that failed to enter any Billboard chart.
Living Colour
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2003
Cracker dress up as a country band and write exactly one song of their own
On 7 October 2003 Cracker released Countrysides: eight country covers — Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam, an unexpected Springsteen — and a single original with a title no radio station would print. David Lowery had spent a decade flirting with the genre from alternative rock; here he surrendered entirely and cut the record like someone calling out requests in a bar.
Cracker
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2007
Magic gives Springsteen his seventh British number one at fifty-eight
The British chart dated 7 October 2007 put Magic on top with 77,692 copies, Bruce Springsteen's fastest start of the century so far. The whole E Street Band was back, and so was the old trick: sixties radio melodies loaded with songs about a war and a country he no longer recognised.
Bruce Springsteen
E Street Band
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2008
Tesla release Forever More and prove they survived grunge without changing clothes
On 7 October 2008 the Sacramento band released Forever More, cut in their own city with Terry Thomas. It reached number thirty-three on the Billboard 200, a striking figure for a group the nineties had written off. Tesla were never quite hair metal: they sounded like electric blues and acoustics, which is why they aged better than their Sunset Strip neighbours.
Tesla
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2012
Muse take the British number one with the album of dubstep and an Olympic Games
The British chart of 7 October 2012 crowned The 2nd Law with 108,536 copies: a fourth number-one debut for Muse. The album included "Survival", the official song of the London Games, and a couple of tracks with dubstep bass that split their audience into two camps still arguing about it online.
Muse
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2014
Weezer call Ric Ocasek again and finally make a record nobody hates
On 7 October 2014 Everything Will Be Alright in the End was released, Weezer's ninth album and the third produced by Ric Ocasek, the man behind the Blue Album. After a decade of records their own fans defended through gritted teeth, the critics came back: it was their best-received work since Pinkerton. Ocasek died five years later.
Weezer
Ric Ocasek
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2016
Green Day produce themselves for the first time and take two number ones
On 7 October 2016 Revolution Radio came out, the first Green Day record made without Rob Cavallo, the producer behind every album of theirs since Dookie. The three of them cut it alone in an Oakland studio, after the 2012 trilogy and Billie Joe Armstrong's public collapse. It debuted at number one in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
Green Day
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2017
The Foo Fighters land their second number one in twenty-two years of work
The Billboard chart dated 7 October 2017 put Concrete and Gold on top with 127,000 units. It was only the Foo Fighters' second US number one, twenty-two years after their first record, and it arrived with Greg Kurstin — producer of Adele and Sia — turning Dave Grohl's hard rock into something dense and heavily layered.
Foo Fighters
Greg Kurstin
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