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The Untold Story of America: The Band Named After a Country They Barely Knew
They were three teenagers living in England, children of American airmen, so homesick for a country most of them barely remembered that they named their band after it. Then a 19-year-old among them wrote a song on a cheap guitar about a desert he’d mostly imagined — a song he thought was a throwaway novelty…
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The Untold Story of Christopher Cross: The Grammy King Who Conquered the World, Then Vanished
In February 1981, a soft-spoken Texan with the look of a high school chemistry teacher walked onto the Grammy stage and did something no artist in history had ever done. He beat Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”. He beat Frank Sinatra. He swept the four biggest awards in music in a single night — and then…
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The Untold Story of Leo Sayer: The Clown Prince of Pop Who Danced His Way Back to Number One
Picture this: it is 1973, and a young singer steps onto the stage of Britain’s most-watched music show dressed as a sad Pierrot clown — white face paint, baggy white costume, ruffles at the neck. He looks like he has wandered in from a French mime troupe. Then he opens his mouth, and out comes…
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The Untold Story of Paul McCartney: The Beatle Who Had to Prove It All Over Again
Imagine being Paul McCartney in the spring of 1970. You have co-written the most beloved songbook in history. You are twenty-seven years old, world-famous beyond comprehension — and your band, the biggest the world has ever seen, is falling apart around you. Most people would have crumbled, cashed in, or disappeared. McCartney did something stranger:…
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The Untold Story of Electric Light Orchestra: Spaceships, Secret Messages, and the Genius Who Never Stopped
They arrived from Birmingham with cellos and a flying saucer, determined to do what no rock band had dared: pick up where the Beatles left off and bolt a full orchestra onto pop music. Electric Light Orchestra sold fifty million records, filled stadiums beneath a giant glowing spaceship, hid jokes in their grooves, and survived…
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The Untold Story of Air Supply: The Duo Who Tied the Beatles and Outlasted Everyone
For a few shimmering years in the early eighties, no sound on American radio was more inescapable — or more romantic — than the soaring harmonies of Air Supply. “Lost in Love,” “All Out of Love,” “The One That You Love”: ballad after ballad, they piled up a chart run so remarkable it equalled a…
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The Untold Story of Cat Stevens: The Pop Star Who Walked Away From Everything
He was one of the biggest singer-songwriters on the planet, the gentle voice behind “Wild World,” “Peace Train,” and “Father and Son.” Then, at the height of his fame, Cat Stevens simply vanished. He gave away his fortune, abandoned his name, and disappeared into a life of faith and quiet for nearly thirty years. This…
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The Untold Story of Boston: The MIT Engineer Who Outsmarted Rock ‘n’ Roll
Every rock band has an origin story. Boston’s doesn’t sound like one. There’s no Sunset Strip, no CBGB, no garage in the suburbs. There’s a basement in Watertown, Massachusetts, a soldering iron, a carpeted wall, and a Polaroid engineer with a master’s degree from MIT who spent six years building a hit record the way…
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The Untold Story of the Cars: Cold Machines, Warm Hearts, and the Deadpan Voice of the Eighties
They looked like robots and sounded like the future. Five oddly-matched Bostonians in matching skinny ties, fronted by a six-foot scarecrow with jet-black hair and a voice like a bored telegram — and for a decade, nobody on earth made smarter, stranger, more perfect pop singles. The Cars sold millions, defined MTV’s first golden age,…
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The Untold Story of Kim Carnes: The Raspiest Voice in Pop and the Ten-Year Overnight Hit
In the spring of 1981, a strange, smoky voice started pouring out of every radio in America, riding a pulsing synthesizer riff and singing about a long-dead Hollywood star’s eyes. Disc jockeys did double-takes. Callers swore it was Rod Stewart. It wasn’t. It was Kim Carnes — a 35-year-old Los Angeles songwriter who had been…