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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” fifty years ago 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.
Thirty-five years ago ZZ Top’s”Afterburner” came out. But don’t go looking for it in the 2019 ZZ Top rockumentary film “That Little Ol’ Band from Texas” .That otherwise well-done pastiche of just some of the chapters in this colorful trio’s fifty year telenovella implied that all meaningful recording by ZZ Top wrapped at the conclusion of “Eliminator” way back in 1983. Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard join me here In the Studio on the thirty-fifth anniversary of “Sleeping Bag”,”Stages”,”Woke Up with Wood”, and “Planet of Women”.
Grand Funk “Closer to Home” interview with Mark Farner and Don Brewer In the Studio.
Driving halfway across America not long after the June 1975 release of “One of These Nights” by The Eagles is when I truly realized just how massively popular this band had become. Original Eagles singer/ bass player Randy Meisner and the late Eagles co-founder singer/ guitarist Glenn Frey joined me here In the Studio in a classic rock interview,precious now with Frey’s passing, about the album which single-handedly took country and western music from the bunkhouse to Broadway.
“It’s like someone pulling at a thread, unraveling your sweater, except the sweater is you, ” former Dire Straits bandleader Mark Knopfler tries to explain the phenomenon of “Brothers in Arms” and modern super-celebrity here In the Studio in this classic rock interview. “I recommend success to anybody. I can’t think of anything good about fame. If you can, let me know.”