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The Untold Story of Al Green: The Reverend of Soul
They call him the Reverend, and it is not a nickname. Al Green really is an ordained minister who preaches every Sunday at his own church in Memphis. He is also the man who made the most seductive soul music of the 1970s, a singer whose falsetto could make a love song sound like a…
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The Untold Story of Eurythmics: The Broken-Up Couple Who Invented the Eighties
Some of the greatest pop partnerships in history were couples. Some of the most combustible were ex-couples. Eurythmics were both, in that order. Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart fell in love as struggling musicians, broke up as a band flopped around them, and then, with the romance over, sat down in an Australian hotel room…
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The Untold Story of Genesis: The Band That Was Really Two Bands
There is a running joke among Genesis fans that the band’s career is really two careers stapled together under one name. And the joke exists because it is true. For the first act, they were Britain’s grandest, most theatrical progressive rock band, fronted by a singer who dressed like a flower and a bat to…
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The Untold Story of Bon Jovi: How a Bunch of Jersey Kids Conquered the World’s Arenas
They were just kids from the Jersey Shore with big hair, bigger choruses, and an even bigger dream. When Bon Jovi formed in Sayreville, New Jersey, in 1983, nobody could have predicted that this bar-band crew would become one of the most enduring rock acts of all time — selling over 100 million records, filling…
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The Untold Story of Janet Jackson: How She Took Control and Changed Pop Forever
It is hard to imagine a tougher act to follow than the Jackson family. By the time Janet Damita Jo Jackson was born on May 16, 1966, in Gary, Indiana — the youngest of ten children — her older brothers were already becoming the Jackson 5, one of the most famous groups on earth. She…
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The Untold Story of Gloria Gaynor: The B-Side Nobody Wanted That Became the World’s Anthem
Some songs sell millions of records. A rare few outlive their era, their genre, and even the singers who made them famous. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” belongs to that rare second category — an anthem that has comforted heartbroken teenagers, emboldened survivors of illness and violence, and filled dance floors in roughly twenty languages…
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The Untold Story of Waylon Jennings: The Outlaw Who Stole Country Music Back
If country music in the 1970s had a rebel flag, it would have been flying from Waylon Jennings’ guitar. With a baritone growl, a Telecaster twang, and a stare that could melt a record executive, Jennings helped tear down Nashville’s polished studio system and built outlaw country in its place — music made by the…
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The Untold Story of Johnny Cash: The Man in Black Who Sang for the Forgotten
Johnny Cash was never just a singer. He was a witness — to poverty, to addiction, to redemption — and he turned everything he saw into songs that sounded like they were carved out of stone. Born J.R. Cash on February 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas, he grew up picking cotton on a Roosevelt-era farm…
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The Untold Story of Van Morrison: The Belfast Poet Who Refused to Be a Pop Star
Some artists chase fame. Van Morrison never did — he ran from it, in fact, and somehow became one of the most beloved singers of the last sixty years anyway. Born George Ivan Morrison on August 31, 1945, in Bloomfield, a working-class corner of Belfast, Northern Ireland, he grew up in a house where American…
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The Untold Story of Neil Young: The Restless Spirit Who Ran From Success and Found Immortality
Most rock stars spend their careers chasing a hit. Neil Young spent his running away from one. He found massive success in 1972 with the best-selling album of the year and a number-one single — and his response was to deliberately head in the opposite direction, making some of the darkest, strangest, most uncommercial records…