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Handle With Care
The Traveling Wilburys formed spontaneously one day at Bob Dylan’s house in Malibu, California, where George Harrison had invited his pals Tom Petty and Roy Orbison to help him and producer Jeff Lynne record a B side for his just-released Cloud Nine. “Jeff and George roughed out the music in the afternoon, and Bob actually […]
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Don’t Dream It’s Over
Early in the sessions for Crowded House's debut album, the band and producer Mitchell Froom were still feeling each other out, and at one point Froom substituted session musicians for the band's Paul Hester and Nick Seymour. "At the time it was a quite threatening thing," Neil Finn told Rolling Stone. "The next day we […]
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The Great Pretender
Heirs to the smooth crooning style of the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers, the Platters were kings of the 1950s ballad. Tony Williams had tonsillitis when he sang the lead vocal to this smash, bringing additional rawness to his delivery of the forlorn lyric. After battling Dean Martin's "Memories Are Made of This" and […]
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Girlfriend
According to producer Fred Maher, the swelling, multi-channel guitar intro to "Girlfriend" was an accident. "[Robert] Quine was holding a note when the tape machine started, and then he did it again on the subsequent takes, not necessarily on the same note, and when we pushed the faders up on all three or four takes, […]
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Will the Wolf Survive?
Los Lobos' David Hidalgo and Louie Perez got the idea for the band's self-defining anthem when they spotted a photo of a wolf running across a frozen lake in National Geographic and realized it was a perfect metaphor for their underdog status. "We just tried to tell a story," Hidalgo explained. Said sax player/co-producer Steve […]
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Shaky Town
Running on Empty was a different sort of live album: Although all the tracks were laid down on tour, not all of them were recorded on concert stages. This song, written by touring guitarist Danny Kortchmar, was cut in a motel room — specifically, Room 124 of the Holiday Inn in Edwardsville, Illinois. "We were […]
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Werewolves of London
After producing Warren Zevon's debut album, Jackson Browne started playing the Zevon-penned but as yet unreleased "Werewolves" in his own shows, so Browne's label assumed he planned to cut it for his next album. "When I told them it was for Zevon's second record, they thought I was crazy, because they believed I could have […]
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Take It Easy
During a break in the recording his first album, Jackson Browne took a road trip across the Southwest, getting a start on "Take It Easy" along the way. When he got back to L.A., Browne played it for Glenn Frey, who asked if his new band the Eagles could record it when it was done. […]
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Out of Left Field
After Percy Sledge helped put Muscle Shoals, Alabama, on the map with "When a Man Loves a Woman," local songwriters Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham got in on the action, writing songs for Sledge in hopes of getting them cut and released as singles. One of their tunes, "Out of Left Field," was only a […]
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The Rain Song
Thought to have been written in response to George Harrison's alleged challenge to John Bonham that Led Zeppelin didn't do any slow songs, this mellow change of pace from Houses of the Holy is a prime example of "the ethereal Page and Plant," as the singer put it to Rolling Stone. "Sometimes we have backing […]
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