If you are not happy with the results below please do another search
With back-to-back quadruple platinum albums “Leftoverture” in 1976 and “Point of Know Return” barely eighteen months later, the band Kansas was assured of permanent statehood in rock history.
Billy Joel is certainly not “The Stranger” to spectacular popularity, or the record books documenting same. And it’s not as if Billy Joel had not been a prolific recording singer/songwriter or an infrequent touring musician prior to his fifth album, “The Stranger”, in Fall 1977. But strangely his album sales were in a decidedly negative trend after “Piano Man”. “The Stranger” changed all that, permanently. Billy Joel joins me In the Studio on the album’s 45th anniversary.
A half century ago, YES’s Close to the Edge was stunningly popular, with Top Five sales in both the U.S. and UK. In these thoughtful, detailed classic rock interviews, YES lead singer/lyricist Jon Anderson, guitarist Steve Howe, extraordinary drummer Bill Bruford, and keyboard innovator Rick Wakeman provide a surprisingly candid recounting of the undisputed peak of the Progressive Rock era.
“Document” was the mainstream breakthrough for R.E.M. in a five album stubbornly eclectic alternate route to the top of the US album sales chart in September 1987. Guitarist Peter Buck and singer Michael Stipe are my guests In the Studio for the “Document” 35th anniversary..
R.E.M. packaged the September 1987 Utrecht Holland full concert as a bonus disc on the ” Document” anniversary deluxe edition. Here’s a careening live version of “These Days” from those days.
Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and Tom Hamilton join me In the Studio in this classic rock interview for the back story on “Permanent Vacation” & “Magic Touch”,”Dude Looks Like a Lady”,”Rag Doll”, and the #3 power ballad “Angel” which erased all doubts…to the tune of over 5,000,000 sold beginning in August 1987…
He had already influenced the sound of Pop music earlier in the Eighties by moving drummer Kenny Aronoff up front in the mix on the #1 hit “Jack and Diane” and “Hurt So Good”, and with his ninth album “The Lonesome Jubilee” in August 1987, John Mellencamp not only influenced Pop and Rock but infiltrated the citadel sound of Nashville as well. Almost instantly, acts as diverse as Paul Simon and The Talking Heads took notice. John Mellencamp is my guest In the Studio.
Def Leppard lifers Joe Elliott and Ric Savage join Redbeard In the Studio for the mega-hit “Hysteria”.
When Major League Baseball presents their mid-summer classic the All Star Game, they have a treasure trove of more than a century of legendary sportswriting, reporting, play-by-play radio and television recordings, Hollywood movies, books, and the sublime Ken Burns episodic tv documentary from which to draw. While Ken Burns had Negro League player/coach Buck McWilliams, sportswriter Studs Terkel, and George Plimpton, here In the Studio we have former minor league ( one season, “A” League) player George Thorogood to talk about baseball.
This fabulous “Rock of Ages” medley by Def Leppard from the In the Studio archive was unavailable in the U.S. for about twenty years.