You’ve just ended the most productive creative partnership in the history of popular music. Now who do you call? If you’re Paul McCartney in 1970, the answer is Denny Laine. Though never as famous as the music he made, the guitarist and songwriter whose birth name was Brian Hines, was a mainstay of the British rock universe from the early sixties when he founded The Moody Blues with a couple of mates from Birmingham.
You’ve lost that loving feeling. On Broadway. Here you come again. We’ve got to out of this place. He’s so shy. The names of the songs she wrote are more familiar to most of us than the name of the woman who wrote them.
Although just five feet eight inches in height, Burt Bacharach towered over the field in songwriting stature for more than half a century. Working in a style that was decidedly out of style by the late 1960s, Bacharach and his lyricist partner Hal David transcended musical fashion, combining unconventional song structures and complex orchestral touches
He made his first record in 1952 and his last in 2021. In the six decades in-between, Tony Bennett became the foremost interpreter of the Great American Songbook and maybe the most beloved entertainer of all time, earning 20 Grammy Awards, a Gershwin Prize and Kennedy Center Honors.
Jesse Gress was an extraordinary American rock guitarist. Over the years, he toured and recorded extensively with Todd Rundgren and the Tony Levin Band. A performer, music educator, and former music editor of Guitar Player Magazine, Gress has hundreds of transcription folios and magazine articles to his credit
When an eagle flies, it might be the flash of feathers that catches your eye, but it’s the mighty muscle underneath that keeps it aloft. For the musical Eagles, that muscle was provided by Randy Meisner.
Robin Bachman was a Canadian drummer and the youngest brother of guitarist, singer and songwriter Randy Bachman. He was the original drummer for the Bachman-Turner Overdrive band.
When it comes to sidemen, David Lindley was always way out in front. A multi-instrumentalist who could play anything with strings from an Apache Fiddle to a Zither, Lindley was the accompanist of choice for the top tier artists of LA in the 70s and beyond.
David Crosby was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He first found fame as a member of The Byrds, and later as part of the supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash, who helped popularize the California sound of the 1970s. After the release of their debut album, CSN won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1969.
If electric guitars could talk, they’d probably have a lot to say about Jeff Beck. Of course, in Beck’s hands, guitars did talk. And cry. And Laugh. And, most of all, they sang. Over a career that spanned seven decades, Beck was both the consummate master and the ultimate student of his instrument, chasing new sounds and zagging where other players zigged.