Rock
This section gathers album stories, birthdays, and anniversaries tied to the artists and bands who shaped rock, along with notes on new vinyl reissues as they surface. Rock grew up alongside the LP: gatefold sleeves and a running order built around two sides of a record were part of how the genre presented itself from the start, and a large share of its catalog keeps coming back through official reissue programs. Expect the human side of the records here: the sessions, the lineup changes, the decisions that turned into landmark albums, and why particular pressings matter to collectors.
521 STORIES
How Dire Straits Rebuilt Making Movies Mid-Session
Dire Straits released Making Movies on 17 October 1980. The album was recorded at New York's Power Station with co-producer Jimmy Iovine after David Knopfler left the band mid-session.
· 4 min read
How Bruce Springsteen's The River Became His First No. 1
Bruce Springsteen's The River arrived on 17 October 1980 as a double album with 20 tracks. He had shelved an earlier single record called The Ties That Bind.
· 4 min read
Why Did Billy Joel Fire His Band for Storm Front?
Billy Joel fired most of his longtime backing group before Storm Front, the 1989 album he made with Foreigner's Mick Jones co-producing.
· 4 min read
Why Did Mylène Farmer Reinvent Herself with Anamorphosée?
Mylène Farmer left Paris for Los Angeles and returned with Anamorphosée, a rock-driven album that followed the failure of her film Giorgino.
· 3 min read
Little Feat's The Last Record Album Turns 51
Little Feat's fifth studio album, The Last Record Album, arrived on October 17, 1975, with a Neon Park cover that turned Hollywood Boulevard into a desert.
· 3 min read
How Lynyrd Skynyrd's Street Survivors Became a Farewell
Lynyrd Skynyrd released Street Survivors on 17 October 1977, and three days later a plane crash in Mississippi killed Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines.
· 3 min read
Handle with Care: The Throwaway That Built Traveling Wilburys
George Harrison turned a box label reading 'Handle with Care' into a song on April 5, 1988, and Warner Bros. Records turned that song into the debut single of Traveling Wilburys.
· 3 min read
Tony Iommi's Iommi: The Album That Tried Everything
Tony Iommi's first solo album Iommi arrived on 17 October 2000, four years after sessions began, with a different vocalist on each of its ten tracks.
· 3 min read
How Johnny Cash Answered Illness on American III: Solitary Man
Johnny Cash released American III: Solitary Man on October 17, 2000, after pneumonia and illness forced him to scale back touring.
· 3 min read
Why Did Creedence Clearwater Revival Implode After Mardi Gras?
Mardi Gras sold well and charted, yet Creedence Clearwater Revival broke up within months of its April 1972 release. The album that ended the band was not a commercial failure.
· 4 min read
How John Mayer Bet Everything on His Own Pop Sound
John Mayer left Atlanta duo LoFi Masters after a split over pop music, then built a solo career that led to Columbia Records and a first Grammy in 2003.
· 4 min read
How ZZ Top's Recycler Almost Never Found Its Grit
ZZ Top's tenth album Recycler began as a sequel to Eliminator and Afterburner. A Memphis studio accident pushed the Texas trio back toward a rougher, more human sound.
· 4 min read
Why Did Thin Lizzy's Johnny the Fox Almost Fall Apart?
Thin Lizzy abandoned their Munich sessions in August 1976 and rebuilt Johnny the Fox in London, with Phil Lynott writing much of it from a hospital bed.
· 4 min read
Kate Bush and the Words She Couldn't Use
Kate Bush wanted James Joyce's Molly Bloom monologue for the title track of The Sensual World. The Joyce estate refused, so she wrote her own words instead.
· 3 min read
How Jimi Hendrix Took Control on Electric Ladyland
Electric Ladyland, the third and final Jimi Hendrix Experience album, arrived on Reprise Records in October 1968. It became the only Hendrix album to top the Billboard chart.
· 4 min read
How Did Bob Weir Survive Being Kicked Out of Grateful Dead?
Bob Weir was sidelined by Grateful Dead in 1968 when Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh played shows without him. He returned and stayed for nearly six decades.
· 3 min read
Three Dog Night's Debut Album Started With a Blank Cover
Three Dog Night's debut album arrived on Dunhill Records in October 1968 with a cover that showed only the band's name, designed by Gary Burden.
· 3 min read
How Did Nico End Up Singing for The Velvet Underground?
Nico, born Christa Päffgen, joined The Velvet Underground in the mid-1960s after Andy Warhol pushed for her. She sang lead on just three songs of the band's debut album.
· 3 min read
How Grateful Dead Rebuilt After Loss
The Grateful Dead recorded Wake of the Flood in Sausalito in August 1973 without founding keyboardist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. It arrived that October on the band's own label.
· 4 min read
Led Zeppelin Remasters: The 1990 CD Cash-In
Atlantic Records rushed Led Zeppelin's catalogue onto compact disc with Remasters. The three-vinyl set arrived on 15 October 1990, drawn from eight of the band's nine studio albums.
· 3 min read
Tito Jackson, the Guitarist Motown Wouldn't Let Play
Tito Jackson, the third of ten Jackson children, was the guitarist whose secret practice on his father's guitar set the family on its path to Motown fame.
· 4 min read
How Coldplay Built a Solar System for Their Ninth Album
Coldplay's ninth album Music of the Spheres, released on 15 October 2021, unfolds inside a fictional planetary system. Every track corresponds to a different celestial body.
· 4 min read
Why Did Pat Benatar Add a Studio Hit to a Live Album?
Pat Benatar released Live from Earth on October 15, 1983, a concert album that also carried two new studio tracks, including Love Is a Battlefield.
· 4 min read
Why Did The Beatles Ballads Get a Cover Nobody Wanted?
In 1980, The Beatles Ballads compiled the group's softer songs for a single LP released outside the US. Its cover by artist Patrick was often mistaken for a rejected White Album design.
· 3 min read