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“Who’s Next” by The Who, ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as the #28 rock album of all time, this August 1971 absolute musical masterpiece is mated with an incredibly illuminating classic rock interview with its composer, Pete Townshend, here In the Studio including the songs “Baba O’Riley”,”Bargain”,”Going Mobile”,”Behind Blue Eyes”,”Getting in Tune”, and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”…
“Every Good Boy Deserves Favour” was the Moody Blues’ seventh album in a string of commercially and critically popular efforts including “Days of Future Passed”, “On the Threshold of a Dream”, and “A Question of Balance”. Singer/ lead guitarist Justin Hayward, singer/ bass player John Lodge, and drummer Graeme Edge take “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour” to share here In the Studio insights into some of the Moody Blues’ best of those early years.
In July 1981, Stevie Nicks already was in arguably America’s most popular band, Fleetwood Mac, but her first solo album then, “Bella Donna”, took her career to another level entirely, a fact that was by no means guaranteed and which came at some cost. Stevie spells it all out quite candidly In the Studio while revealing the stories and characters behind “Edge of Seventeen”, “Leather and Lace” with Don Henley, and the timeless duet with Tom Petty on his “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”.
Al Stewart joins me In the Studio in a rare interview on the 45th anniversary of his breakout 1976 album “Year of the Cat”. Stewart might seem to be name-dropping big time, except it’s all true: sneaking backstage during a 1963 Beatles concert and talking with John Lennon; rooming in London next to Paul Simon; befriended by an unknown Cat Stevens; mc’ing at a London nightclub when another unknown, an American named Jimi Hendrix, decided to play his guitar with his teeth. But being witness repeatedly to rock history apparently accounted for nothing when Al Stewart’s seventh album, “Year of the Cat”, was unceremoniously turned down by every major UK record label.
My interview with the late Tom Petty . Two significant events informed the songwriting on 1991’s “Into the Great Wide Open” , Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ first post-Traveling Wilburys/ “Full Moon Fever” effort with his own band.
When “Nick of Time” rose steadily, eventually becoming the #1-selling album in the US a year after release it’s Spring 1989 release, no one was more surprised than Bonnie Raitt. When it also won three Grammy Awards including the coveted Album of the Year Grammy in 1990, no one was more appreciative. Then in May 1991, she released “Luck of the Draw”, her biggest album ever. Bonnie Raiitt is my guest In the Studio.
(cont)…It was not until stumbling into the broadcast media/entertainment business that I got to witness, up close and personally, individual musicians who have been given enormous powers of influence through the modern phenomenon of celebrity, by the very people who they entertain. Case in point is this week’s classic rock interview subject: ex-Genesis lead singer Peter Gabriel had a cult following after four studio solo albums, with his most significant creation being the ground-breaking “Shock the Monkey” video. But with the May 1986 release of So (#1 UK,#2 U.S., over 5 million sold; 4 Grammy nominations including Album and Record of the Year for the #1 hit “Sledgehammer”), Peter Gabriel was vaulted into international pop stardom with all of its attendant door-opening , barrier-eliminating amenities…(more)
On a maximum scale of five stars, the 1977 debut by Cheap Trick receives AllMusic.com’s highest rating, and the even more melodic, better sounding sophomore effort “In Color” in the same year earns 4 1/2 stars. Then Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, Robin Zander, Tom Petersson, and Bun E. Carlos wrote and recorded the masterpiece “Heaven Tonight” in May 1978, yet again scoring a critics’ perfect five star rating. So in hindsight it would appear that recording the Rockford IL quartet’s set while performing the strongest material from these three killer studio albums, in front of an adoring audience in one of the world’s premiere venues, would be as obvious as a sumo wrestler in your shower stall.
Five years ago Bryan Adams released a strong album, “Get Up! ” Bryan was so happy to rekindle his famous songwriting partnership with Jim Vallance that he needed ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne to collaborate on Bryan’s strongest new songs in years. Bryan Adams returned In the Studio exhorting us all to Get Up!
The surprise success from “Black Water” afforded the Doobie Brothers some creative license on their next album, “Stampede”, released in April 1975. But as you will hear from Patrick Simmons, Tom Johnston, and the late Doobie drummer Mike Hossack, the non-stop grind of five years of one-nighters, stopping only long enough to record the next album, was starting to create stress fractures in the foundation of the band which would sideline Tom Johnston with a bleeding ulcer and, ultimately, alter the sound of the Doobie Brothers for the next decade.