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The Night James Brown Saved Boston: April 5, 1968
On the evening of April 5, 1968, America was coming apart. Twenty-four hours earlier, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot dead on a motel balcony in Memphis, and the country’s cities were burning — Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, more than a hundred cities convulsed with grief and rage. In Boston, the night before…
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The Gentle Giant: Barry White’s Devotion to Family Behind the Walrus of Love
The world knew the persona: the Walrus of Love, the Maestro, the man whose whispered spoken-word intros could melt a room. On stage, Barry White was larger than life in every sense — a towering figure in flowing silk, conducting a forty-piece orchestra through symphonies of seduction. But the people who knew him best describe…
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Jane Fonda: Hanoi Jane, Fitness Queen, Survivor — A Life of Reinvention
How many lives can one woman live? Jane Fonda has been a Hollywood princess, a French sex symbol, the most hated woman in America, the most beloved fitness guru on the planet, a three-time wife of famous men, a two-time Oscar winner, and — in her eighties — a repeat arrestee on the steps of…
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From a Country Demo to a Disco Crown: How Barry White Created “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything”
It is one of the most opulent love songs ever recorded — sweeping strings, a thundering rhythm section, and that voice, dropping from a whispered spoken intro into one of the great baritone performances in pop history. “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” sounds like it could only have been born in Barry White’s…
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The Reverend of Memphis: Faith, Family, and Forgiveness in Al Green’s Second Life
On Sunday mornings in Memphis, just down the road from Graceland, the most seductive voice in soul music history puts on a black robe, steps behind a pulpit, and goes to work. The congregation at the Full Gospel Tabernacle is a cross-section of the city itself — Black and white, old and young, dressed in…
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How Jane Fonda Made Klute: The Role That Won Her the Oscar
There is a moment, about halfway through Klute, when Bree Daniels sits alone in her psychiatrist’s waiting room, talking into a tape recorder about the one thing she cannot buy, borrow, or fake: control over her own life. Jane Fonda plays the scene with her voice half-breaking and her famous shag haircut falling across her…
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How Al Green and Questlove Created “Lay It Down”: The Story Behind the 2008 Comeback Masterpiece
By 2006, Al Green had nothing left to prove and every reason to stay comfortable. He was the Reverend now, a pastor in Memphis, a Kennedy Center Honor waiting in his future, his place in the pantheon of soul secure since the day “Let’s Stay Together” first slid across the radio. He had already made…
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Eurythmics: The Hearts Behind the Ice-Cool Image
On stage, Eurythmics were the coolest thing in eighties pop: Annie Lennox with her cropped orange hair and tailored suits, staring down the camera like an android with a soul voice, and Dave Stewart beside her, the quiet architect with a guitar. The image was all control, all ice. Off stage, the reality was far…
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Jack Nicholson: The Man Behind the Grin
The Grin Hides a Ghost Nobody in Hollywood history has worn rebellion quite like Jack Nicholson. The arched eyebrows, the wolfish grin, the laugh that could sound like delight or menace depending on the lighting — for five decades he was the movies’ patron saint of beautiful troublemakers, the man who played every outsider and…
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How Eurythmics Ended Up Scoring “1984”: The Soundtrack Nobody Wanted
In 1984, at the peak of their powers, Eurythmics were handed one of the most prestigious assignments in film music: scoring the big-screen adaptation of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” released in the very year of its title, a once-in-a-century alignment of art and calendar. What should have been a triumph became one of the messiest…