Guides
Rock and roll is often told through a familiar gallery of male stars: Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Yet the sound was shaped…
Some live records preserve a performance. Others preserve the room around it: the feedback, the shouted requests, the loose cables and the sense that something…
A failed car engine usually means an expensive tow, a weekend lost to repairs and a trip to the mechanic. In a recording studio, however, the same lump of…
Before the arenas, festival slots and gold records, many rock artists learned their trade in rooms with sticky floors, unreliable monitors and barely enough…
A great one-take rock recording feels less like a polished product than a room suddenly catching fire. The musicians commit to the tempo, the singer risks the…
In 1969, rock music discovered that the bass drum could be more than a timekeeper. It could arrive like machinery, thunder, or a physical blow to the chest.…
The 1970s were the decade when rock music decided it could carry an entire drama. A song no longer had to stand alone; it could become a scene, a character, or…
The British Invasion is often reduced to a handful of giant singles: “She Loves You,” “Satisfaction,” “You Really Got Me,” and “My Generation.” Those records…
A motorcycle coughing to a halt on the side of the road sounds like the perfect beginning for a rock song. The rider is stranded, the engine is silent, and the…
A great record sleeve can become part of an album’s mythology, but the most provocative designs have sometimes distracted from the music entirely. From nudity…