He sold more than 14 million records in the United States alone. For one stretch around 1980, he practically owned the radio. Soft, slow, unkillable songs that played in every kitchen, every car, every grocery store in America. He wrote a song that the entire country still sings on New Year’s Eve. He…
New York, 2017. That evening, in the dining room of the Aurelia, hundreds of people laughed at a young waitress. 15 minutes later, that same girl was singing shoulderto-shoulder with one of the most famous rock voices in the world. What happened in those 15 minutes became a story that everyone in that restaurant would…
Dustin shocked me because we were shooting a scene. >> This look, you’re going to have to do what you’re going to have to do and I’m going to have to do it. >> I’m very sorry about this. My wine glass was sitting there and he >> just with his hand,…
There was a conversation that almost nobody knows happened. It did not take place in a recording studio or on a stage or in one of the Motown conference rooms where the business of making Marvin Gaye into a star was conducted. It took place in a church in the specific charged silence of a…
On the set of The Return of the King, there was a day when an 81-year-old actor stopped Peter Jackson midirection and said something that made the entire crew go quiet. It had to do with the war, the real one. And standing a few feet away, saying nothing, absorbing every word,…
In the summer of 1970, Janice Joplain went back to Port Arthur, Texas. She had not been back in years, not properly, not for the town itself, not for the people in it. She had driven through. She had passed through on the way to somewhere else, but going back, walking into rooms where people…
1970, Los Angeles. A recording studio near a rehabilitation center. Etta James was in the middle of a session, closed session. No visitors, no guests, just the musicians and the work. She looked over at a corner of the room. There was a woman sitting there she didn’t recognize. Big puffy coat, funny looking hat,…
September 1968. Beverly Hills, the Estes Zipper Motor Company on Wilshire Boulevard. Cheap Thrills had just gone to number one. Janis Joplin had money for the first time in her life. Real money. The kind of money where you could walk into a car dealership and buy something without checking your account first. She walked…
One word, always. That’s the line that broke a generation of Harry Potter fans. The moment audiences finally understood why Snape had looked at Harry that way for eight films. Alan Rickman knew the truth the entire time. J.K. Rowling had told him years before anyone else. On January 14th, 2016, Emma…
In the summer of 1967, Albert Grossman came to see Janis Joplin perform. He had already made Bob Dylan. He had managed Peter, Paul, and Mary. He had taken unknown folk singers and turned them into cultural institutions. He was the most powerful manager in American music and he sat in the audience at the…
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