Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today October 27
2013
Lou Reed dies, the poet who taught rock to look the street in the eye
Lou Reed dies on Long Island at 71, from complications of a liver transplant. With the Velvet Underground he sold little and changed everything: each of their few listeners, legend says, started a band. From “Heroin” to “Walk on the Wild Side”, he wrote about what pop dared not name, with a reporter's coldness and a poet's ear.
Lou Reed
1958
Simon Le Bon is born, the face of music-video pop
Simon Le Bon is born in Bushey, England: Duran Duran's vocalist and the visible face of MTV's golden era. With “Rio” and “Hungry Like the Wolf”, the band understood before almost anyone that the video mattered as much as the song. Decades of reinvention later, they still fill stadiums: new romantic aged better than its critics predicted.
Simon Le Bon
Duran Duran
1967
Scott Weiland is born, accused by critics of imitating Seattle from California
On October 27, 1967, Scott Weiland was born in San Jose, singer of Stone Temple Pilots. The press called them grunge imitators for years, although they came from southern California and sounded like something else; audiences ignored the critics and they sold eighteen million records. Weiland spent two decades in and out of rehab. He died in 2015, aged 48, in a tour bus bunk.
Scott Weiland
Stone Temple Pilots
1990
Xavier Cugat dies, the man who taught the United States to dance the rumba
On October 27, 1990, Xavier Cugat died in Barcelona at ninety. Born in Girona and raised in Havana, he arrived in New York as a violinist and ended up leading the Waldorf Astoria hotel orchestra for decades. He was the man who introduced rumba, mambo and cha-cha-chá into American ballrooms and cinema, in smoothed-down versions he himself admitted adapting to the public's ear.
Xavier Cugat
1928
Gilles Vigneault is born, whose song about winter became Quebec's anthem
On October 27, 1928, Gilles Vigneault was born in a fishing village on the Gulf of St Lawrence, a poet and songwriter. In 1964 he wrote "Mon pays", which opens by saying his country is not a country but winter; the song became the unofficial anthem of Quebec's sovereignty movement. Another of his, "Gens du pays", replaced "Happy Birthday" across the whole province.
Gilles Vigneault
1933
Floyd Cramer is born, whose piano trick defines the Nashville sound
On October 27, 1933, Floyd Cramer was born in Louisiana, a session pianist who invented a way of playing that became a whole city's signature: striking a neighbouring note and sliding straight to the right one, imitating the cry of a steel guitar. It is on Elvis's "Heartbreak Hotel", on Patsy Cline's records and on thousands more sessions. His own "Last Date" reached number two in 1960.
Floyd Cramer
Patsy Cline
Elvis Presley
1949
Garry Tallent is born: the only E Street Band member on every album
On October 27, 1949, Garry Tallent was born in Detroit, bassist and the quietest member of Bruce Springsteen's group. He is the only one who has played on absolutely every album the band has made since 1973, including those recorded during the years when Springsteen had disbanded it. His job is not to draw attention: simple, firm lines for everything else to rest on.
Garry Tallent
Bruce Springsteen
1951
K. K. Downing is born, the other half of Judas Priest's twin guitars
On October 27, 1951, Kenneth Downing was born in Birmingham. He ran away from home at fifteen and founded Judas Priest with a friend from the neighbourhood. With Glenn Tipton he built the model of two lead guitars harmonising in parallel that defined heavy metal. The leather-and-studs uniform the whole genre adopted was his idea too. He left the group without warning in 2011, in the middle of a farewell tour announcement.
K. K. Downing
Judas Priest
1972
Elissa is born: the Lebanese singer who announced her cancer in a music video
On October 27, 1972, Elissar Khoury was born in a Lebanese village. She came third in a television contest before becoming one of the best-selling voices in the Arab world. In 2018 she did something almost nobody in her region does: she used a song's video to announce publicly that she had breast cancer and to urge women to get themselves screened.
Elissa
1978
Vanessa-Mae is born: the violinist who also competed at the Winter Olympics
On October 27, 1978, Vanessa-Mae was born in Singapore, to a Thai father and a Chinese mother, and raised in London. At thirteen she recorded Beethoven and Tchaikovsky concertos, and at fifteen she changed course: she plugged in the violin and mixed it with dance music, which the classical world considered a betrayal and the public bought by the million. In 2014 she skied for Thailand at the Winter Olympics.
Vanessa-Mae
One ephemeris a day, one editorial a week. Zero spam, pure archive.