50 years after the Summer of Love, Been Fong-Torres discusses the “San Francisco Sound” and the revolutionary attitude that propelled artists like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane to fame.
Ray Manzarek told me that he was dying. He had an incurable disease, he said in an email dated April 2nd. “I’m hoping that was a belated April Fools joke,” I replied.
It’s not a sexy, round-number anniversary, but I bet Deadheads know that July 9 was the date of the last Grateful Dead concert with Jerry Garcia. That was in 1995, at Soldier Field in Chicago. With the surviving Dead having celebrated a 50th anniversary with a farewell tour—and then a return of most of them, as Dead & Company—they continue to be in the news.
Call it a Maccathon.
Whenever Paul McCartney does a concert these days, he’s in for the long haul, and the haul includes five decades of iconic hits, discoveries of other worthy tunes, and massive doses of charm.
McCartney likes to perform, and he aims to please.
Think Paul McCartney’s a medical and musical phenomenon, performing at full-tilt, these days and nights, at age 71?
To play the Hollywood Bowl. For any musician, that has to be a career highlight. The Doors performed in that revered venue in 1968, and Ray Manzarek, in his interview for Qello Concerts, articulated the import of such an occasion.
There are rockers, and there are rock ‘n’ rollers. John Fogerty is one of the few major musicians who can claim to be both, bridging the guitar-driven, band-based rock of the late ‘60s and ‘70s with the R&B and country-rooted rock and roll—think Little Richard and Elvis—of the ‘50s into the ‘60s.
Dad-bod, dad jeans, dad rock.
These are most definitely not flattering terms. They signify the opposite of cool. Or even worse, the idea of an unhip man past his prime trying embarrassingly hard to be cool.