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The Untold Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival
Some bands sound like a place. Creedence Clearwater Revival sounded like a humid Louisiana night, all swamp mist, river water and guitar twang, even though the four young men who made that sound grew up in California. For a few astonishing years at the end of the 1960s and the start of the 1970s, they…
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How ZZ Top Made ‘Tush’: The Three-Minute Soundcheck Boogie That Became Their First Hit
Most bands labor over their first hit. ZZ Top wrote theirs in about the time it takes to boil an egg, on a dirt floor, in the middle of an afternoon soundcheck — and half a century later, it was still the song they closed their shows with. “Tush” is a twelve-bar blues in G…
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How Willie Nelson Made ‘Pancho and Lefty’: The Song His Daughter Found, Cut in One Take in the Middle of the Night
The greatest duet Willie Nelson ever recorded nearly didn’t happen, and the man who wrote the song swore he couldn’t explain it. “Pancho and Lefty” — the tale of a Mexican bandit betrayed by his friend, who ends his days in a cheap Cleveland hotel room with the dust in his mouth — was written…
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How Whitney Houston Made ‘How Will I Know’: The Song Janet Jackson Passed On That Put Her on MTV
Every great debut needs the song that opens the door the ballads can’t. Clive Davis had built Whitney Houston’s first album around her voice as an instrument of grandeur — “You Give Good Love,” “Saving All My Love for You,” the great soaring ballads. What the album did not have, as Davis’s A&R man Gerry…
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How Waylon Jennings Made ‘Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way’: The Envelope That Became Outlaw Country’s Mission Statement
It is the most famous rhetorical question in country music, and Waylon Jennings wrote it on the back of an envelope. By the summer of 1975, Jennings had spent a decade inside the Nashville machine — ten years of producers choosing his songs, session men playing his records, and executives sanding down every rough edge…
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How Van Morrison Made ‘Moondance’: The Saxophone Melody He Turned Into a Standard
Some songs are written at a desk. “Moondance” was written on a saxophone. In the summer of 1969, Van Morrison was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, picking up his soprano sax the way other men pick up a newspaper, and one melody kept coming back every time he played. It swung. It smiled. It sounded, as…
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How U2 Made ‘Pride (In the Name of Love)’: The Mistake, the Castle and the Dream
It began with a mistake. At a soundcheck in November 1983, on the final leg of the War Tour, the Edge led U2 through a series of chord changes and somebody played a wrong one. Instead of stopping, the others followed the error, and the detour opened a new piece of music. That happy accident,…
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How Van Halen Made ‘Dance the Night Away’: The Rejected Riff That Became Their First Top 20 Hit
In December 1978, Van Halen walked back into Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood with almost no new songs and almost no time. They had finished their first world tour barely a week earlier, and Warner Bros. wanted a second album. Nearly everything they recorded that week was old — songs that had been kicking around…
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How Toto Made ‘I’ll Be Over You’: The Promise That Was Built Never to Come True
It is the most dishonest promise in soft rock, and it is dishonest on purpose. The singer of I’ll Be Over You swears he will get over the woman he lost — but read the conditions he attaches and the promise dissolves in your hands. He will be over her, he sings, as soon as…
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How Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Made ‘Refugee’: The Hit That Took a Hundred Takes
Tom Petty wrote Refugee in about ten minutes. Recording it nearly broke his band. The song began as a home demo by guitarist Mike Campbell, flowered instantly under Petty’s pen, and then consumed take after take at Sound City Studios while the Heartbreakers’ career hung on a lawsuit — their singer bankrupt, their contract fought…