James Taylor was on the cover of "Time" and from there it was downhill. Each album thereafter less lauded and less commercially successful. Although it had the hit "Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight", "One Man Dog" was unjustly ignored. The second side is the closest anyone’s gotten to the "Abbey Road" suite since. But […]

"Hey, Cher, where’s Sonny? "He’s home, fucking your mother." It’s that kind of book. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry…and it settles scores. I couldn’t put it down. I read it from start to finish. But you can keep it in your bathroom, to thumb through and entertain yourself in short spurts. None […]

So George Harrison shows up with his song for "Sgt. Pepper" and George Martin is disappointed. We live in a culture where everybody gets a trophy, praise is heaped upon unworthy citizens except when they’re excoriated, when the assembled multitude says what they’ve done is shite. It’s hard to be popular. With notoriety comes hate. […]

I’m reading an oral history of MTV. I find these off-putting, good for bathroom reading but disappointing as books, but maybe the hit and run nature of "I Want My MTV" works because that’s just like the station, it lacked depth, it was in your face, it was the opposite of classic rock. MTV changed […]