Nirvana rose to prominence at a time when various fringe genres were finally starting to break through. The band spent years honing their brand of melodic no-wave in dingy clubs around Washington State before Subpop came along, and even then, it was years before 1991’s Nevermind earned Kurt Cobain and the band international recognition. Like […]
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There aren’t many missed opportunities in the world of Paul McCartney. He is one of the most celebrated songwriters of all time, having seemingly completed everything there was to achieve in music before he reached his third decade on the planet, as the rest of The Beatles dominated the pop landscape and pushed their sound […]
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Anyone would have given their left arm to see any of The Beatles get together again back in the 1970s. The early months of 1970 cast a dark shadow over the Fab Four once Paul McCartney announced that the band was done, but even when they were at their nastiest towards each other, everyone was […]
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When they emerged in 1969, they were like nothing the world had ever heard before, but at the same time, they borrowed so much from bygone blues musicians that on more than one occasion, they ended up in court on plagiarism charges. The same duality applies to their lore when you play it forward into […]
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George Harrison wasn’t considered the ‘Quiet One’ in The Beatles by accident. As much as he was a phenomenal player, every time he got a guitar in his hands, a lot of the greatest moments of his career were always a lot more subtle than just throwing any old guitar solo on top of whatever […]
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There was never any reference point for where someone like Robert Plant came from when he first started singing for Led Zeppelin. Everyone had tried their hand at delivering the most bluesy songs that they could ever muster when they first got started in the British hard rock scene, but Plant seemed to have a […]
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As the hippie era dawned in the mid-1960s, the world became aware of the mind-exploding benefits of the hallucinogenic drug. The Beatles were introduced to the wonders of LSD, courtesy of London dentist John Riley, halfway through the decade and, whether they liked it or not, became the narcotic’s poster boys for the mainstream. While […]
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For a long time, it was hard for Beatles fans to look back on Let It Be without a little bit of a sour taste in their mouths. The band were fracturing as far as everyone could tell, and seeing them stitch together the remnants of an album as their swansong made it look like […]
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There is a myth that goes around that Ringo Starr wasn’t a great drummer, and that is no small tragedy. The true cost of this falsehood is that it perpetuates a massive fallacy about the art of drumming in general. This malignant misunderstanding has underpinned a great deal of sticksmith folly in subsequent generations, as […]
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While Liverpool holds a totemic presence in Fab Four lore, Los Angeles glows with an Emerald City allure during the peaks of Beatlemania. Naturally, it’s their hometown’s suburban features and streets that form essential alleys and landmarks among the John Lennon and Paul McCartney songbook. The Strawberry Field Salvation Army’s surrealist retreat, ‘Penny Lane’s kaleidoscopic […]
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