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Bette Midler and the Continental Baths: How a Basement Stage in New York Made the Divine Miss M
A star who started downstairs Every great singing career has a room where it first makes sense. For Bette Midler, that room was not a grand concert hall. It was a basement cabaret stage in the Ansonia Hotel on Broadway, in a gay bathhouse called the Continental Baths, where the audience might be wearing little…
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Sade and Diamond Life: How a London Club Band Made One of 1984’s Most Enduring Debuts
A quiet record in a loud year In 1984, British pop was often bright, fast and deliberately theatrical. Synthesisers glittered, videos competed for attention, and many of the biggest records of the year sounded as if they had been designed to fill a stadium or a dancefloor at full volume. Sade’s debut album, Diamond Life,…
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Heart and Dreamboat Annie: From Seattle to Vancouver, a Debut That Learned to Sail
A band with two home towns Every great debut album has a geography as well as a sound. For Heart, that geography is unusually clear, and unusually complicated. The band is remembered as a Seattle band, and it is also remembered as a Vancouver band, and both descriptions are true at different moments in the…
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The Temptations and the David Ruffin Years: How “My Girl” Changed Everything in 1964
A song that still arrives before its singer does Some records need an introduction. “My Girl” does not. Its opening is so familiar, so immediately settled in the ear, that many listeners recognise the song before a single voice enters. That recognition is part of its story. It did not begin as a famous song.…
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The Beach Boys — Pet Sounds (1966) and Brian Wilson’s Studio Retreat
There is a particular kind of silence that follows a very loud success. By the middle of the 1960s, The Beach Boys were one of the most recognisable sounds in American pop music. Their harmonies could make a car radio feel like summer, and their early records had turned surfing, cars, and teenage freedom into…
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Tom Petty’s Solo Turn: How Full Moon Fever Found Freedom in a Garage
A familiar voice, a different name on the sleeve When Tom Petty released Full Moon Fever on April 24, 1989, on MCA Records, the name on the sleeve was the first surprise. After more than a decade as the leader of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, here was a record billed simply to Tom Petty.…
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U2 — The Joshua Tree (1987) and the American Desert Imagery
An Irish band looks west There are albums that arrive as collections of songs, and there are albums that arrive as places. The Joshua Tree, released by U2 on 9 March 1987, belongs firmly to the second kind. Before a listener hears a note, the record offers an image: a wide, hard landscape, a sky…
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The Who’s Tommy: The Rock-Opera Gamble That Changed What an Album Could Do
A double album that should not have worked In May 1969, The Who released an album that asked a popular rock band to do something no popular rock band had quite been asked to do before. The record was a double album. It told one continuous story. It opened with an overture, returned to the…
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Pink Floyd — The Dark Side of the Moon: The Album That Refused to Leave the Charts
Most hit albums arrive, climb, and fade. A few stay for a season. Almost none stay for a generation. Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon belongs in that rarest category, not simply because it sold in enormous numbers, but because it kept being found, kept being played, and kept returning to the charts…
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Led Zeppelin: Three Nights at Madison Square Garden — How the 1973 Shows Became The Song Remains the Same
A film shoot disguised as a homecoming Most concert films pretend that the camera simply happened to be there. The Song Remains the Same does not quite manage that pretence, and that is part of its fascination. When Led Zeppelin walked onto the stage at Madison Square Garden in New York on 27 July 1973,…