A year and a half after Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ self-titled debut album fooled some music fans into thinking that the Los Angeles-based classic rockers were maybe a New Wave act, the quintet doubled down. ‘You’re Gonna Get It!,’ which was released on May 2, 1978, loaded up on Byrdsian jingle-jangle, classic-rock guitar crunch and a few meathead riff-based songs that made it clear that Petty and his band had little in common with the skinny-tie kids and their synthesizers.
The last time Fleetwood Mac made an album together, they were minus Christine McVie and enough good songs to fill its 75-minute running length. They’re still without McVie on their new four-song EP, but they fixed ‘Say You Will’’s biggest problem by keeping ‘Extended Play’ at an economical 17 minutes. And if it sounds more like a Lindsey Buckingham record than an actual band one at times, at least ‘Extended Play’ is the best thing released under the Fleetwood Mac moniker since 1987’s ‘Tango in the Night.’
Doors drummer John Densmore has been making the publicity rounds for his new tell-all memoir, 'The Doors: Unhinged -- Jim Morrison's Legacy Goes on Trial.'
From the looks of the photos leaked from the set of David Bowie's latest video, it appears that the former Ziggy Stardust has found religion. Or maybe he's playing one of the apostles. We wouldn't put it past him. After all, he did star as Pontius Pilate in 'The Last Temptation of Christ' and played a Christ-like alien in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth.'
Freed from the confines of Creedence Clearwater Revival, which had become a stifling presence in the final years, John Fogerty took the opportunity of his debut solo album to revisit, pay tribute to and replicate the country music he occasionally played with his old band. But instead of going about it the traditional country-music way – with a bunch of musicians sitting together in a room and performing the music live as the tapes roll – Fogerty played every single instrument on ‘The Blue Ridge Rangers’ himself.
Tom Petty, John Fogerty and Jackson Browne joined Randy Newman onstage last night at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The four veteran rockers, who all live in Los Angeles, opened the show at the city's Nokia Theater with a version of Newman's 1983 song 'I Love L.A.'
For a band that was never particularly narrative, linear or even all that ambitious with their songwriting, the Eagles’ decision to make their second album a concept record always seemed a bit odd. Their self-titled 1972 debut was filled with peaceful, easy and likable L.A.-style country-rock that rarely grabbed at more than it could handle. At this stage in their career, there was nothing cynical or pretentious about the Eagles.
Heading into 1983, David Bowie hadn’t placed an album in the Top 10 since 1976’s ‘Station to Station.’ His ‘Berlin Trilogy’ (made up of 1977’s ‘Low’ and ‘Heroes’ and 1979’s ‘Lodger’) and 1980’s ‘Scary Monsters’ were critical hits, but they didn’t sell all that well. With his artsy experimental records behind him, Bowie once again got serious about his commercial career, tapping Nile Rodgers -- the mastermind behind the bestselling disco group Chic -- to co-produce 1983’s ‘Let’s Dance.’
Neil Young was already having a pretty lousy decade when ‘This Note’s for You’ was released on April 11, 1988. It didn’t start out that awful, with the folksy ‘Hawks & Doves’ and the Crazy Horse album ‘Re-ac-tor’ in 1980 and 1981, respectively.
In a way, Talking Heads’ eighth and final album, ‘Naked,’ was a reaction to Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland,’ which introduced world music to mainstream audiences in 1986. Then again, Talking Heads got there before Simon, incorporating African rhythms into their songs way back in 1980’s landmark ‘Remain in Light.’ But after 1983’s ‘Speaking in Tongues,’ which featured similar world-music junctures, and the massive world tour that followed, the group began scaling back.
The Beatles were broken up for a little more than three years when the ‘1962-1966’ and ‘1967-1970’ compilations were released in April 1973. The two-disc sets – known as the ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ albums, respectively – were neither supplements to nor replacements for the band’s other records. They were merely what they appeared to be: collections of great songs by the greatest band that ever walked the earth.
