Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today October 10
1963
Her doctor certified that she had died in Paris, and the ambulance drove overnight to make it fit
She died on 10 October 1963 at her house in Plascassier, a hamlet of Grasse, of liver cancer, at forty-seven. So that it would look as though she had gone in her own city, the body travelled overnight by ambulance to her Paris flat and the doctor signed the certificate dated the 11th. Jean Cocteau died that 11th, hours after hearing the news.
Édith Piaf
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1966
Good Vibrations arrives, the most expensive and most laboured single of the sixties
It came out on 10 October 1966 after some twenty sessions spread across four Hollywood studios and more than ninety hours of tape, at a cost that runs from ten thousand to fifty thousand dollars depending who is telling it. Brian Wilson assembled it in pieces, the way a film is cut. They called it a pocket symphony, and by December it was number one on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Beach Boys
Brian Wilson
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1970
Paranoid tops the UK chart and metal stops being a curiosity
The chart that closed on 10 October 1970 crowned Black Sabbath's second album, out barely three weeks earlier and cut in the same year as their debut. The title track began as last-minute filler to pad out the running time: it was written in minutes and it is still the first thing that plays when somebody says metal.
Black Sabbath
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1972
James Brown backs Nixon in the Oval Office and his audience never forgives him
On 10 October 1972 the man who had recorded Say It Loud walked into the White House to endorse Richard Nixon's re-election, and used the meeting to press for a national holiday honouring Martin Luther King. The president's own tapes show how little he wanted the visit. Outside there were sellout placards, and Brown's sales began to slide.
James Brown
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1994
Dog Man Star arrives, finished by a band whose guitarist had walked out
It came out on 10 October 1994, three months after Bernard Butler left the sessions having demanded the producer's head and not got it. Session players had to finish the job. It entered at number three in Britain and was down to twelve a week later, while britpop was busy celebrating cheerier things. Today it is the essential Suede record.
Suede
Brett Anderson
Bernard Butler
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1995
Tragic Kingdom arrives after two and a half years and eleven studios
On 10 October 1995 No Doubt released an album begun in 1993, and without their keyboard player and main writer: Eric Stefani, Gwen's brother, had walked out rather than share control. It took over a year to take off, but by December 1996 it was number one in the United States and it ended up selling sixteen million copies.
No Doubt
Gwen Stefani
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2007
Radiohead release In Rainbows and let every listener set the price
On 10 October 2007, ten days after announcing it on their blog, the band put the album up to download for whatever each buyer felt like paying, zero included. Sixty-two per cent paid nothing and the rest left about six dollars on average. The industry took years to digest the gesture; the songs, meanwhile, outlasted the headline.
Radiohead
Thom Yorke
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1914
Ivory Joe Hunter is born, who wrote seven hundred songs and was paid for few
On October 10, 1914, Ivory Joe Hunter was born in Texas — a pianist and a songwriter prolific to the point of absurdity: more than seven hundred songs are credited to him. "Since I Met You Baby", from 1956, was his big hit and one of the first rhythm and blues ballads to cross over to white audiences. Elvis Presley recorded several of his pieces and received him at Graceland. He died in 1974 nearly broke, with a benefit concert organised by his peers.
Ivory Joe Hunter
Elvis Presley
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1926
Oscar Brown Jr. is born, who put words to instrumental jazz and turned it into theatre
On October 10, 1926, Oscar Brown Jr. was born in Chicago — a singer, playwright and activist who ran for Congress before devoting himself to music. His speciality was taking instrumental jazz themes and writing lyrics that told a complete story: he did it with Nat Adderley's "Work Song" and with pieces by Mongo Santamaría. His 1960 album "Sin & Soul" is an unjustly under-remembered classic.
Oscar Brown Jr.
Nat Adderley
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1948
Cyril Neville is born: the youngest brother who gave New Orleans funk a political conscience
On October 10, 1948, Cyril Neville was born in New Orleans, youngest of the four Neville brothers. A percussionist and singer, he played with the Meters before the family formed its own group in 1977. He was always the most combative of the four: he wrote about racial inequality and, after Hurricane Katrina, refused for years to live in the city again because of how his neighbours had been treated.
Cyril Neville
The Neville Brothers
The Meters
1958
C'mon Everybody is cut in the same month it was already in the shops
On 10 October 1958 Eddie Cochran recorded one of rock and roll's founding songs, and the single was on sale before the month was out. It went out as the B-side of Don't Ever Let Me Go, a detail nobody remembers now: it reached number six in Britain and charted all over again thirty years later.
Eddie Cochran
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1959
Kirsty MacColl is born: the female voice of the saddest Christmas song there is
On October 10, 1959, Kirsty MacColl was born in London, daughter of the folk songwriter Ewan MacColl. She wrote sharp songs and sang backing vocals on other people's records, but she is remembered above all for "Fairytale of New York", the duet with the Pogues' Shane MacGowan that plays every December. She died in 2000 in Mexico, struck by a speedboat while diving, after pushing her son out of its path.
Kirsty MacColl
The Pogues
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1960
Eric Martin is born, having written as a teenager the ballad that took him to number one
He was born on 10 October 1960, son of a serviceman who dragged the family through Germany and Italy before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area. After seven years with his own band he joined Mr. Big in 1988, and in 1991 To Be With You — written when he was still a kid — went to number one in fifteen countries. Two acoustics and no distortion.
Eric Martin
Mr. Big
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1961
Crystal Waters is born, whose wordless hook was house music's biggest hit
On October 10, 1961, Crystal Waters was born in New Jersey, great-niece of the singer Ethel Waters. She was working in an office when she recorded "Gypsy Woman", a song about a homeless woman singing in the street whose chorus consists of a "la da di la da da" that got into the whole planet's head in 1991. It was among the first house tracks to reach the mainstream charts.
Crystal Waters
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1969
Arthur arrives, the soundtrack to a television play that was never filmed
On 10 October 1969 the Kinks released simultaneously in Britain and the United States a concept album Ray Davies had written with the novelist Julian Mitchell for a Granada Television play. The production collapsed for lack of money and only the record was left: a carpet-layer, a family emigrating and an empire going out. American critics called it a masterpiece.
The Kinks
Ray Davies
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1978
The Cars launch the UK picture disc with My Best Friend's Girl
The single came out on 10 October 1978 and, besides giving the band their best British placing — a number three — it earned a footnote in format history: it was the first picture disc sold commercially in the UK. In the States it only got to thirty-five. Selling the object first and the song second turned out to be reasonable business.
The Cars
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1981
Ghost in the Machine goes straight in at number one and fills the Police with saxophones
The chart that closed on 10 October 1981 debuted the trio's fourth album at the top. The title came from a book by Arthur Koestler and the music came from somewhere else: layers of synthesizer and horns Sting recorded himself, filling the space where the white reggae used to be. There was only one album left before the split.
The Police
Sting
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1987
Here I Go Again hits number one five years after flopping
On 10 October 1987 Whitesnake topped the Hot 100 with a 1982 song that had not even charted in America first time round. Coverdale re-cut it with stadium lacquer and changed one word in the chorus, hobo to drifter, so nobody would hear what it wasn't. One week at the summit and a whole career restarted.
Whitesnake
David Coverdale
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1988
The Imagine double album arrives and the Lennon estate answers a biographer
Released on 10 October 1988 as the soundtrack to the documentary of the same name, it ran through twenty-one tracks of Lennon's work with and without the Beatles. The timing was not innocent: that autumn Albert Goldman's biography was circulating, a demolition job of much-disputed reliability. Film and record worked as an orderly reply. It reached thirty-one in the States.
John Lennon
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1994
Oasis release Cigarettes & Alcohol with a riff that belonged to Marc Bolan
The single came out on 10 October 1994 and reached number seven in Britain. The riff resembles Get It On so closely that the press flagged it on release day, and Noel Gallagher never seemed troubled: to him glam was building material, not someone else's property. It is the song on Definitely Maybe that best explains what the whole thing was about.
Oasis
Noel Gallagher
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1995
Green Day release Insomniac and answer the sellout charge with noise
It came out on 10 October 1995, with Dookie approaching ten million and Billie Joe Armstrong unable to convince himself that what he was doing was any good. The result was faster, dirtier and a good deal less friendly. It debuted at number two and sold two million: a failure only by comparison. Winston Smith did the sleeve; he said he never slept.
Green Day
Billie Joe Armstrong
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1995
Rocket from the Crypt sign to a major and put trumpets in punk
Scream, Dracula, Scream! came out on 10 October 1995: the San Diego band's first record for a big label, with budget enough for guests, strings and engineers to spare. On a Rope reached number twelve in Britain and got onto MTV Europe, so they ended up more famous abroad than at home. Punk in matching uniforms.
Rocket from the Crypt
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2000
Slash releases Ain't Life Grand and finds out it costs double outside Guns
The second and final Slash's Snakepit album came out on 10 October 2000, produced by Jack Douglas with Rod Jackson singing. Competent, unsurprising hard rock that barely grazed a few European charts and vanished without a sound. The guitarist folded the project soon after: it would take a few more years and a whole other band before he mattered again.
Slash
Slash's Snakepit
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2000
The Wallflowers release Breach and learn that critics don't buy records
It came out on 10 October 2000, four years after the album that had made them huge. The reviews were the best they ever got and the sales were considerably worse: number thirteen, a gold record and a single that stalled at seventy-three. Jakob Dylan was writing sharper and for fewer people. Act two of a career rarely resembles act one.
The Wallflowers
Jakob Dylan
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2004
Around the Sun enters at number one in Britain and R.E.M. hit bottom
The chart dated 10 October 2004 debuted it at the top in Britain, where the band remained untouchable whatever they did. The record is another story: slow, muted, stitched together between tours by a group that had been down to a trio for three years. In time they wrote it off themselves. A number one is not always good news.
R.E.M.
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2009
Backspacer returns Pearl Jam to number one thirteen years on
The chart dated 10 October 2009 gave them their first American number one since No Code in 1996: 189,000 copies and a short, fast, unepic record, produced again by Brendan O'Brien after more than a decade away. Following thirteen years of deliberate commercial awkwardness, Pearl Jam were back on top without having gone looking for it.
Pearl Jam
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