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The Legend Lives On: How Gordon Lightfoot Turned a Lake Superior Tragedy Into ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’
The Legend Lives On: How Gordon Lightfoot Turned a Lake Superior Tragedy Into “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” On the evening of November 10, 1975, one of the largest ships ever to sail the Great Lakes vanished into Lake Superior. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald — 729 feet of steel, the pride of the lakes,…
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The Broadway Anthem That Became a Dance-Floor Declaration: How Gloria Gaynor Found ‘I Am What I Am’
The Broadway Anthem That Became a Dance-Floor Declaration: How Gloria Gaynor Found “I Am What I Am” In the spring of 1983, a middle-aged man in a gown stood in a pool of light at New York’s Palace Theatre and sang a song that would not stay in the theater. The show was “La Cage…
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The Greatest Unfinished Song: Glen Campbell, Jimmy Webb, and ‘Wichita Lineman’
The Greatest Unfinished Song: Glen Campbell, Jimmy Webb, and “Wichita Lineman” He was driving through Oklahoma — flat, remote, heat-shimmered Oklahoma, the state where he was born — when he saw him. A utility worker, alone, perched high atop a telephone pole in the middle of nowhere, one small human figure against an enormous sky,…
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Midnight Train to Georgia: The Phone Call With Farrah Fawcett That Became a Soul Masterpiece
Midnight Train to Georgia: The Phone Call With Farrah Fawcett That Became a Soul Masterpiece In 1970, a failed quarterback called his football buddy’s house in Los Angeles. The buddy’s new girlfriend answered the phone. She mentioned, in passing, that she was packing to take the midnight plane to Houston. The quarterback hung up, grabbed…
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Careless Whisper: The Bus-Ride Melody, the Scrapped Muscle Shoals Session, and the Saxophone Solo That Took Eleven Men to Get Right
Careless Whisper: The Melody a Teenager Heard on a Bus, and the Years It Took to Put It on Tape Listen to the first eight notes of “Careless Whisper” and something ancient happens in the listener’s body. A breath catches. A memory surfaces. In 1984, that saxophone line — mournful, sensual, perfectly phrased — floated…
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‘Even Though Subconsciously Accomplished’: How George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’ Became Music’s Most Famous Lawsuit
“Even Though Subconsciously Accomplished”: How George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” Became Music’s Most Famous Lawsuit In December 1969, George Harrison slipped away from a press conference in Copenhagen, went upstairs to a quiet room, and picked up a guitar. He was on tour as a guest artist with Delaney & Bonnie, still officially a Beatle,…
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The Pop Song That Fell Out of a Jam: How Genesis Accidentally Wrote ‘Invisible Touch’
The Pop Song That Fell Out of a Jam: How Genesis Accidentally Wrote “Invisible Touch” On the morning of July 19, 1986, the three members of Genesis woke up as something they had never been before: the owners of the number one single in America. After nearly two decades of twenty-minute suites, mythology, costumes, and…
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Three in the Morning: How Mick Jones’s Sleepless Night Gave Foreigner Its Only Number One
Three in the Morning: How Mick Jones’s Sleepless Night Gave Foreigner Its Only Number One It was three in the morning, sometime in 1984, in the studio of Mick Jones’s Kensington apartment. The rest of London was asleep. The phone had finally stopped ringing. And the guitarist of Foreigner — one of the biggest rock…
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Players Only Love You When They’re Playing: How Stevie Nicks Wrote ‘Dreams’ in Ten Minutes on Sly Stone’s Bed
Players Only Love You When They’re Playing: How Stevie Nicks Wrote “Dreams” in Ten Minutes on Sly Stone’s Bed Early in 1976, in a recording studio in Sausalito, California, Stevie Nicks was not needed. The band was working in the main room, and she had nothing to do — which, in the middle of the…
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She Was Lying on the Floor When the Riff Started: How \”Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)\” Saved Eurythmics
She Was Lying on the Floor When the Riff Started: How “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” Saved Eurythmics The room was a dingy wedge of an attic above a picture-framing shop in Chalk Farm, North London, and it smelled of sawdust and damp. Annie Lennox was lying on the floor, too depressed to sit…