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How AC/DC Made “Highway to Hell”: The Toilet Riff, the Perfectionist, and Bon’s Last Ride
In 1979, AC/DC were the hardest-working band in rock and the hungriest — broke, exhausted, and still unable to crack America after five albums. Their record label was losing patience. Their first attempt at a breakthrough had collapsed in a Miami studio, a humiliation that could have finished them. What happened next — three months…
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Talking Heads: The Tender Hearts Behind the Avant-Garde
Talking Heads made some of the strangest, smartest music of the rock era — songs about buildings and food, Dada poetry and urban paranoia, delivered by a frontman who performed like a man possessed by geometry. It would be easy to mistake them for cold intellectuals, all art-school irony and detachment. But behind the avant-garde…
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How Talking Heads Made “Fear of Music”: Dada Poetry, a Queens Loft, and Robert Fripp
In the spring of 1979, Talking Heads did something no major-label band was supposed to do: they recorded the basic tracks of their third album in two days, in a rented loft in Queens, with a mobile recording truck parked outside and cables running through the windows. No producers’ polish, no studio gloss — just…
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Mark Knopfler: The Quiet Genius Behind the Guitar
He is one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived, the voice behind “Sultans of Swing” and “Brothers in Arms,” a songwriter of rare literary grace whose fingerpicked lines are instantly recognizable from the first note. And yet Mark Knopfler has spent his entire career avoiding the spotlight — a reluctant star who would rather…
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How Dire Straits Made “Love Over Gold”: The 14-Minute Epic That Defied the Eighties
In 1982, the music industry had a simple formula: short songs, big videos, synthesizers, hair. Dire Straits responded with an album of five songs, one of them over fourteen minutes long, full of fingerpicked guitar, marimbas, and literary references. “Love Over Gold” should have been commercial suicide. Instead it became the band’s first British number…
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Sting, Copeland & Summers: The Heart Behind the Hits of The Police
The Police burned bright and brief — five studio albums, one decade, and some of the most enduring songs ever recorded. From 1977 to 1986, Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers were the biggest band on the planet, blending reggae, punk, pop, and jazz into something entirely new. But the three men behind the music…
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How The Police Made “Zenyatta Mondatta” in Four Weeks Flat: Tax Exiles, Schoolgirl Crushes, and a Grammy-Winning Grudge
By the summer of 1980, The Police were the biggest new band in the world — and they were broke, exhausted, and not allowed to record in their own country. Britain’s tax laws had driven them into exile, their schedule was a meat grinder of tours and television, and they had exactly four weeks to…
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Barry Gibb: The Heart Behind the Harmony
He is the last Bee Gee — the eldest brother, the falsetto, the songwriter behind some of the biggest records ever made. Barry Gibb has survived disco, backlash, and the unbearable loss of all three of his brothers. Ask him what saved him, and he won’t talk about the music. He’ll talk about Linda. Linda…
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How the Bee Gees Made “Spirits Having Flown” — and Gave a #1 Hit to the World’s Children
In January 1979, the Bee Gees were the biggest band on earth. “Saturday Night Fever” had sold tens of millions of copies. They had three brothers, one falsetto, and the entire planet dancing. Every record company on earth would have advised them to do the obvious thing: make “Saturday Night Fever II,” cash the check,…
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Paul Simon: The Heart Behind the Hits
Paul Simon is pop’s most meticulous craftsman — the perfectionist who chased a placeholder syllable through “The Boxer,” who spliced South African township grooves into “Graceland,” who has won sixteen Grammys including three for Album of the Year. But behind the precision is a man of surprising warmth: a Queens kid who never left his…