Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today November 22
1968
The White Album is released: the Beatles fit every genre at once
The Beatles release “The Beatles”, the white-covered double album that contains multitudes: from the proto-metal of “Helter Skelter” to the lullaby “Good Night”, by way of “Blackbird” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. Recorded amid tensions foreshadowing the end, it is the band fragmenting into four simultaneous geniuses. Chaos rarely sounded so good.
The Beatles
1899
Hoagy Carmichael is born, author of one of the most recorded songs in history
On November 22, 1899, Hoagy Carmichael was born in Indiana. He qualified as a lawyer and practised for a while before surrendering to music. In 1927 he wrote "Stardust", a melody so flexible it has been recorded more than fifteen hundred times across every imaginable genre. "Georgia on My Mind" is also his, which Ray Charles turned into the state anthem thirty years later.
Hoagy Carmichael
Ray Charles
1901
Joaquín Rodrigo is born, who wrote the most famous guitar concerto without playing the guitar
On November 22, 1901, Joaquín Rodrigo was born in Valencia. At three he was blinded by a diphtheria epidemic. He wrote his entire body of work in Braille and dictated it note by note to a copyist. In 1939 he composed the "Concierto de Aranjuez", the most performed piece for guitar and orchestra in the world, without ever having played the instrument: he was a pianist and imagined all of it from memory.
Joaquín Rodrigo
1913
Benjamin Britten is born on music's patron saint day, and wrote the requiem against war
On November 22, 1913, Benjamin Britten was born in England, on St Cecilia's day, patron saint of musicians. He registered as a conscientious objector during the Second World War and had to defend it before a tribunal. In 1962, for the reconsecration of a cathedral destroyed by bombing, he composed the "War Requiem", which interleaves the Latin mass with poems written in the trenches.
Benjamin Britten
Peter Pears
1997
Michael Hutchence dies, stadium rock's last great sex symbol
Michael Hutchence, INXS vocalist, is found dead in a Sydney hotel at 37, on the eve of an anniversary tour. With “Kick”, the Australian band had conquered the planet, and he embodied a stage magnetism compared to Jagger and Morrison. His abrupt end closed the era of the feline frontmen of the eighties.
Michael Hutchence
INXS
1900
Arthur Sullivan dies, irritated to the end at being remembered for comedies
On November 22, 1900, Arthur Sullivan died in London, composer of the fourteen operettas he wrote with the librettist W. S. Gilbert, which dominated British musical theatre for decades. It irritated him all his life to be remembered for them: he wanted to be taken seriously as a symphonic composer. His most performed work today, outside the operettas, is the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers".
Arthur Sullivan
W. S. Gilbert
1925
Gunther Schuller is born, who played on "Birth of the Cool" and resurrected Scott Joplin
On November 22, 1925, Gunther Schuller was born in New York, a symphony orchestra horn player who also played on Miles Davis's "Birth of the Cool". He coined the term Third Stream for music crossing jazz with the classical tradition. In the 1970s he dug out Scott Joplin's scores, recorded his rags with an orchestra and set off the revival of a composer forgotten for half a century.
Gunther Schuller
Miles Davis
Scott Joplin
1943
Lorenz Hart dies: the lyricist who wrote Broadway's saddest songs
On November 22, 1943, Lorenz Hart died in New York at 48, of pneumonia contracted after disappearing for several days on a drinking binge. With Richard Rodgers he wrote "My Funny Valentine", "Blue Moon" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered": ironic, bitter lyrics about love that does not work, a long way from the usual optimism of the musicals of his day.
Lorenz Hart
Richard Rodgers
1950
Steven Van Zandt is born, who gathered fifty musicians against apartheid
On November 22, 1950, Steven Van Zandt was born in Massachusetts, guitarist with the E Street Band. In 1985 he assembled "Sun City", a collective record against apartheid featuring Miles Davis, Run-DMC, Lou Reed, Bono and Bob Dylan among fifty others: the pledge was never to play the South African resort the project was named after. Decades later he became a television actor.
Steven Van Zandt
Bruce Springsteen
1950
Tina Weymouth is born, who learned bass because her band needed one
On November 22, 1950, Tina Weymouth was born in California, an art student who set about learning the bass because the group her schoolmates were forming could not find a bassist. That is how Talking Heads began. In 1981, with her husband, she started the side project Tom Tom Club and recorded "Genius of Love", a song hip-hop has been sampling relentlessly for forty years.
Tina Weymouth
Talking Heads
Tom Tom Club
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