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How the Doobie Brothers Made “Takin’ It to the Streets”: The Album That Reinvented a Band
In the summer of 1975, the Doobie Brothers were in serious trouble. Their leader, Tom Johnston — the voice behind “Listen to the Music,” “China Grove,” and “Long Train Runnin’” — was in the hospital with a bleeding ulcer and couldn’t tour. The band, one of the biggest concert draws in America, was suddenly without…
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Toto: The Family Behind the Band
Toto has always been described as a band of session musicians — hired guns who happened to form a group. But that description misses the deeper truth. Toto was a family business. Behind the Grammys and the billion streams stood two great musical dynasties: the Porcaros, three generations of drummers stretching back to a village…
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How Toto Created “Hold the Line”: The Riff That Turned Session Wizards Into Stars
It started with a piano — a new Yamaha upright in a young man’s first apartment — and a riff he couldn’t stop playing. His neighbors banged on the walls. They told him to shut up. He kept playing. Three days later, David Paich had the foundation of the song that would turn six anonymous…
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Foreigner: The Lives Behind the Arena Anthems
The songs are precision-engineered for arenas: “Cold as Ice,” “Hot Blooded,” “Urgent,” “Juke Box Hero.” But the men who made them lived lives far messier and more moving than any power chord could capture. Behind Foreigner’s gleaming hits stand two very different human stories — a singer whose faith carried him through a brain tumor…
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How Foreigner Created “Juke Box Hero”: A Kid in the Rain and a Dream in the Wings
Every rock anthem has an origin story. Most of them are embellished in the retelling. But the true story of Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero” is better than any embellishment — because it happened twice: once to a kid standing in the rain in Cincinnati, and once, years earlier, to Mick Jones himself, standing in the…
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Dionne Warwick: The Heart Behind the Voice
The voice is cool, precise, almost regal — the sound of a woman who never had to raise it to be heard. But behind Dionne Warwick’s immaculate public image lies a life of extraordinary emotional depth: a twice-married, twice-divorced love story with the same man, a family dynasty of gospel singers, a cousin she shepherded…
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How Dionne Warwick Created “Alfie”: The Ballad Nobody Wanted Until She Sang It
By late 1966, “Alfie” had been recorded by more than forty artists. Cilla Black had taken it into the British charts. Cher had sung it over the American prints of the film. Sonny Rollins had played it as a jazz instrumental. And Dionne Warwick — the singer Burt Bacharach and Hal David had wanted all…
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Bette Midler: The Heart Behind the Divine Miss M
The Divine Miss M is a character — brassy, bawdy, unstoppable. But behind the character there has always been a woman of surprising tenderness: a wife of forty years, a devoted mother, and the unlikely savior of New York City’s parks. While the world was laughing at her jokes, Bette Midler was quietly building a…
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How Bette Midler Created the Miracle of “Hello, Dolly!”: The Broadway Comeback 50 Years in the Making
In the spring of 2017, a 71-year-old woman walked onto the stage of the Shubert Theatre in New York, climbed into a horse-drawn cart, hid behind a newspaper, and brought Broadway to a standstill. The audience erupted in a standing ovation so long and so loud that the actors on stage — seasoned professionals, every…
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Cher: The Fighter’s Heart Behind the Goddess
For six decades, Cher has been the Goddess of Pop — untouchable, unbreakable, forever reinventing herself. But behind the Bob Mackie gowns and the chart records is a woman who has survived almost everything life can throw at a person: a turbulent childhood, two divorces, a devastating illness that stole two years of her career,…