Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits turns 71 today his song "Money for Nothing" was inspired by something he saw at an appliance store. Add a cool guitar and Sting and you had a number 1 hit...3 weeks at the top. Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits talks about how the idea for "Money for Nothing" fell into his lap.
"Sometimes, some songs have like a situation. You walk into a situation and you see it. 'Money for Nothing,' I was out with my wife and we were buying some kitchen stuff in New York. And it had all these microwave ovens and cookers and kitchen display unit in the front window and it had a wall of TV sets at the back of the store -- it was a big appliance store. They were all tuned to MTV and the guy, the protagonist in 'Money for Nothing', he was there and he was just talking about all these videos that were on. I just started spying on him and...bang, there's the situation."
Roger Daltrey took a break from fixing a bulldozer on Friday to answer questions from Who fans ahead of Saturday's launch of Join Together @ Home -- a six-week series on the band's YouTube channel featuring some of their most memorable performances, including previously unseen footage.
Among the topics discussed was Pete Townshend allegedly working on songs for a new Who album.
"We did have a conversation about something -- I don't want to talk about it because it might never happen. But it sounded very promising and the only person who could do it will be Pete and if he writes it let's see where we are. But I mean I don't know what the point of a new Who album would be. But equally, with what we talked about, that would have a purpose. But I can't talk about it at the moment. The last Who album cost me money to make, and I can't go on paying to make music. That's a fool's game, you know. What's happened to the music business is one of the biggest robberies in history. It really is."
Their last album was 2019’s WHO.
Daltrey also talked about whether or not he would ever consider touring with his good friend Robert Plant, which he says he”d love to. He adds that they even discussed a one-off show, joking that hey could call it No Solos.
He also said his favorite guitars players outside of Townshend are Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix.
His long-awaited movie on Keith Moon is finally in the script-writing phase and he is looking for a director.
And, when asked about why The Who don't perform any of the late John Entwistle songs in concert, Daltrey was brutally honest.
"I don't think he was a great craftsman. We used to put them on there to try and keep the taxman away from him -- to give him some publishing money. I know a lot of fans like them. I think 'Trick of the Light' kind of had his humor, and 'Boris the Spider' indeed. But, the others, I don't like."
Heart's first single, "Magic Man," is 45 years old. Singer Ann Wilson asks, "Can you believe it's been 45 years since our first 45 record was released?!
"It seems like only yesterday I was writing 'Magic Man' in Vancouver BC. It was the third song written for Dreamboat Annie. (‘Here Song' and ‘How Deep it Goes’ were the first two.)
"The first time I heard 'Magic Man' on the radio I was coming back from the grocery store with my dog, Moffa, and I had to pull over and listen ... it was so surreal. I remember Moffa growled a little because she recognized my voice and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.
"The way Heart performed 'Magic Man' in 2019 on the Love Alive tour was the most out of the box to date. It’s my favorite version so far."
With that, Ann is asking you to send her "YOUR renditions of 'Magic Man,' even if it is just a verse or two. The submission does not even need to be in English -- feel free to submit all languages and interpretations of the song. Simply visit AnnWilson.com/MagicMan to enter!
"Thank you each for 45 truly magical years."
Ann Wilson of Heart on who the “Magic Man” is:
“There are so many magic men all over the country, it’s really amazing. Like, onstage, whenever we do that song, this line of guys pushes up to the very front and points at themselves like, ‘Me, me, I’m the magic man! Me!’ So there probably are about 30,000 of them across the country. But the original magic man was the man I was with at the time the song was written, who was indeed a magical person.”
Peter Frampton's song: "Do You Feel Like We Do" is his most famous. As a solo artist, Peter Frampton had released four studio albums before his career blew up with Frampton Comes Alive in 1976. He says that "Do You Feel Like We Do," one of three hits from the double-live album, came into being three years earlier. Peter Frampton on when and how “Do You Feel Like We Do” came about:
“It was, in fact, written in between Wind of Change and recording Frampton’s Camel. I had just the chorus and went to rehearsal and so we needed a stage number and that was how that came about, as a jam from a rehearsal, really. We all wrote that together.”
Rick Derringer turns 73 today. His big hit: "Rock 'n Roll Hoochie Koo" was written for somebody else. Written with the idea of giving a blues rocker Johnny Winter a shot at a pop hit, it didn't become a hit until its writer recorded it on his own. (Hit version on Derringer's All American Boy, original Johnny Winter recording on Johnny Winter And.) Peaked at number-23 on the Billboard Hot 100, Derringer's biggest hit as a songwriter and as a solo artist.
In 1970, he and his band The McCoys combined forces with blues rocker Johnny Winter. It was going to be Johnny Winter and The McCoys, but that band had a bubblegum reputation they wanted to shake and felt it better to leave The McCoys' name out of it entirely. Derringer explains the idea behind writing "Rock 'n Roll Hoochie Koo."
“The first thing I wanted to do was bring more of a rock ‘n roll way of thinking to Johnny, but Johnny didn’t want to change and become in any way bubblegum. So I wanted to write a song specifically for Johnny that he would be able to speak the lyrics in his vernacular and feel comfortable about saying the words he was saying, but I also wanted to bring a little more of a pop kind of sensibility to the whole thing. So I wrote ‘Rock ‘n Roll Hoochie Koo’ trying to follow those guidelines and it came out like it is.”
50 years ago today Phil Collins joined Genesis replacing John Mayhew on drums. It took him 10 years to contribute any songs. "Misunderstanding" was the first they recorded. Marriage woes motivated Phil Collins to write it. It was on the album "Duke" and made it to number-14 on the Billboard Hot 100. Here is Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks on how the song “Misunderstanding” marked the emergence of Phil Collins as a songwriter:
“’Misunderstanding’ was the first song we recorded that Phil wrote. Phil didn’t used to write all that much of Genesis’ material in the early days, up to and including Duke, really. He just didn’t rate himself as a writer that much, I don’t think, and he’d never really tried it before. But after his problems with his marriage in that year, he started to write songs. And he played us a load of the songs he’d written and we picked out of them two songs. One of them was ‘Misunderstanding.’”
James Hetfield turns 57 today. When Metallica first came out they could do no wrong with their fans but then came "Fade to Black"on 1984's "Ride the Lightening". It was a ballad and even though it had one of the best guitar solos ever fans were mad. They even accused the band of selling out. James Hetfield says that was a first for the band:
“‘Fade to Black’ was the first time we got some guff from fans. ‘Ooh, you sold out. You did a ballad.’ Wow. Okay. ‘What’s sell out mean to you, my friend?’ You know. And you have to sit and explain to everyone that ‘sell out’ means you’ve done something you don’t want to do, or you’ve compromised for someone else. And everything we write is for us.”
Courtney Love took to Twitter to deny that she knew the late Jeffrey Epstein, despite her name coming up on a list of contacts in his address book.
The news that Love's name was found in Epstein's book initially came out in 2012, but the story was rekindled with the recent airing of the docu-series Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich on Netflix. Love tweeted,
"Hey. About my name in Epstein’s address book, it’s creepy as [eff] that I’m in that thing I agree. I didn’t know him, never met him, didn’t know who he was. Apparently he collected celebrity phone numbers. The end. Hope he burns in Avīci hell."
Avici hell is a Buddhist term for "the lowest level of the 'hell' realm, with the most suffering, into which the dead who have committed grave misdeeds may be reborn," according to Wikipedia.
In a 2006 TV interview, Love told about a "surreal" visit she received from Britain's Prince Andrew, who has since been accused of being an Epstein client. She claimed he had come to a home she was staying at in Wales "looking for chicks." A photo of the two also appears in her 2006 memoir, Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love
Carl Palmer has once again proved why he was the drummer in Emerson, Lake & Palmer and not the singer and guitarist.
As a tribute to the late Keith Emerson and Greg Lake, he posted a video of him playing acoustic guitar while singing their first single, "Lucky Man," off their 1970 self-titled debut album.
While some of his fans were complimentary of the performance, others weren't so enthusiastic.
In May, Palmer posted a video of himself attempting to play the guitar and sing Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” as a birthday present to his better half, Katie. He says she is a Dylan fan and “likes this song in particular.”
One could only hope she did.
Palmer will honor the 50th anniversary of ELP next year on a tour that will have him and his band, Carl Palmer's ELP Legacy, performing with Emerson and Lake on film
Paul McCartney's expanded reissue of his 1997 album, Flaming Pie -- set for release this coming Friday -- contains previously unreleased demos, outtakes, and rehearsal tapes. But Rolling Stone got hold of a version of one rarity that will not be included.
The sessions for Flaming Pie were not the first time that McCartney and Miller worked together. That came in 1969 when Miller, working in Olympic Studios at the same time as The Beatles, had Paul play drums, guitar and bass on his song, "My Dark Hour." Paul was credited as Paul Ramon.
Talking exclusively to us in 1997 at the time of Flaming Pie's release, Miller told us working with Paul is like "being around Mozart."
Steve Miller on Paul McCartney.
"Paul is so talented. He plays drums, he plays bass, he plays guitar and he was in The Beatles, a great band. And, he writes classical music and he's just an amazingly creative person to be around. Absolutely pleasant, very polite, really fun to work with and we have nothing but a good time every time we get together."
