The Music News

04/10/2025

Remembering Janis Joplin today (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970). (Photo © Elliott Landy)

04/10/2025

03/10/2025

Also on October 3: On this day in 1978, the Rockestra session took place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyWzsDm5D_8

As part of the Back to the Egg project, Paul staged this all-star recording session, building the rock equivalent of a big band by calling in his friends. Dubbed the Rockestra, the ensemble featured platoons of guitarists, drummers, bassists and keyboardists atop the Wings foundation, who then proceeded to lay down two songs, “So Glad To See You Here” and “Rockestra Theme.”

Guests included Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, Hank Marvin, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, Gary Brooker, Ronnie Lane and Kenney Jones (replacing the recently deceased Keith Moon). The latter of the two songs ended up winning a Grammy; it was also performed live (with a similar line-up) at Wings’ final show for the Kampuchea benefit.

03/10/2025

On October 3, 1980, Paul Simon's semi-autobiographical movie One-Trick Pony, in which he stars, is released in the US. It gets mixed reviews and does poorly at the box office, but does include a hit song: "Late in the Evening."

03/10/2025

Chris Dreja, a co-founding member of The Yardbirds and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, has died at the age of 79. The cause of death has not been publicly disclosed.

The news was broken on social media by his sister-in-law, Muriel Levy.

"It is with a deep sadness that I have to announce that my brother-in-law Chris Dreja, former member of legendary band The Yardbirds, rhythm guitarist and also bass player, has passed away after years of health problems," Levy writes. "I share the pain with my sister Kate, who took care of him during all those years, and his daughter Jackie. May he RIP."

Jimmy Page paid tribute to Dreja online, writing on Instagram: “I heard today of the passing of musician Chris Dreja, who passionately played with the iconic Yardbirds, on rhythm guitar and then the bass. I hadn’t seen him in a while, and I wish I had. RIP Chris.”

Born Christopher Walenty Dreja on November 11, 1945, in Kingston upon Thames, England, to Polish immigrant parents, Dreja grew up immersed in the emerging rock 'n' roll scene as a teenager. He connected with future Yardbirds lead guitarist Anthony “Top” Topham through his brother, who attended art classes with Topham, and the pair jammed in early rock outfits. In 1963, Dreja joined forces with Topham, singer Keith Relf, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, and drummer Jim McCarty to form the Metropolitan Blues Quartet, which quickly evolved into the Yardbirds—a band that would become a launchpad for guitar legends Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page.

Initially serving as the band's rhythm guitarist, Dreja helped propel the Yardbirds from London's underground blues circuit to international stardom. They seized the Rolling Stones' residency at the Crawdaddy Club and released their debut live album, Five Live Yardbirds, in 1964, capturing their raw energy at the Marquee Club. As the group's sound shifted from blues-rock to psychedelic pop, hits like "For Your Love" (1965) topped charts, prompting Clapton's exit to join John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Beck took over lead guitar, delivering smashes such as "Heart Full of Soul" and "Shapes of Things," while Dreja contributed to the iconic 1966 album Roger the Engineer—famously illustrated by his own hand on the cover.

In 1966, amid lineup flux, Dreja switched to bass after Samwell-Smith departed, allowing Page to join as a second guitarist. This era produced experimental tracks like "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" and the film Blow-Up soundtrack contribution "Stroll On," featuring a rare dual-lead lineup of Beck and Page. Beck soon exited during a U.S. tour, leaving Page and Dreja to helm the band through their final album, Little Games (1968), amid the psychedelic wave. The Yardbirds disbanded in mid-1968; when Dreja declined Page's invitation to join the reconfigured group for a Scandinavian tour, it paved the way for the birth of Led Zeppelin.

Beyond music, Dreja was a talented photographer who documented the Yardbirds' 1960s U.S. tours and later captured portraits of icons including Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, and Led Zeppelin. He returned to performing in the 1980s with the Box of Frogs supergroup (featuring Page, Beck, and others) and revived the Yardbirds in the 1990s, contributing to the 2002 reunion album Birdland with guests like Brian May and Slash. Health setbacks, including strokes in 2012, forced his retirement from the stage, leaving original members Jim McCarty and Paul Samwell-Smith as the band's sole survivors.

Tributes poured in from the rock community, honoring Dreja's pivotal role in shaping an era. As one outlet noted, he was "the great musician" whose understated contributions helped define a generation, even if often overshadowed by his more famous bandmates.

26/09/2025

ON THIS DATE (60 YEARS AGO)
September 25, 1965 - The Rolling Stones: "Get Off Of My Cloud" b/w "I'm Free" (London 45 LON 9792) 45 single is released in the US.

"Get Off of My Cloud" is a song by The Rolling Stones. It was written as a follow-up single to the successful "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". The song topped the charts in the United States and the United Kingdom in the weeks following its release in November 1965.

Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Get Off of My Cloud" was recorded in early September 1965. It is noted for its drum intro by Charlie Watts and twin guitars by Brian Jones and Keith Richards. The lyrics are defiant and rebellious, which was common practice for the Rolling Stones around that time; they were beginning to cultivate their infamous "bad boy" image. The Stones have said that the song is written as a reaction to their sudden popularity after the success of "Satisfaction".

The song deals with their aversion to people's expectations of them:
“I was sick and tired, fed up with this and decided to take a drive downtown; It was so very quiet and peaceful, there was nobody, not a soul around; I laid myself out, I was so tired and I started to dream; In the morning the parking tickets were just like flags stuck on my windscreen ”

On the song, Richards said in 1971, "I never dug it as a record. The chorus was a nice idea, but we rushed it as the follow-up. We were in L.A., and it was time for another single. But how do you follow-up "Satisfaction"? Actually, what I wanted was to do it slow like a Lee Dorsey thing. We rocked it up. I thought it was one of Andrew Loog Oldham's worst productions."

In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, Jagger said, "That was Keith's melody and my lyrics... It's a stop-bugging-me, post-teenage-alienation song. The grown-up world was a very ordered society in the early '60s, and I was coming out of it. America was even more ordered than anywhere else. I found it was a very restrictive society in thought and behavior and dress."

In the 2003 book According to... The Rolling Stones, Richards says: "'Get off of My Cloud' was basically a response to people knocking on our door asking us for the follow-up to 'Satisfaction'... We thought, 'At last. We can sit back and maybe think about events.' Suddenly there's the knock at the door and of course what came out of that was 'Get off of My Cloud'."

REVIEW
Richie Unterberger, allmusic
As has been noted by other critics, with "Get off of My Cloud," the Rolling Stones achieved a rare feat among pop groups: a follow-up to a huge hit ("[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction") that was both reminiscent of that hit, but almost equally good and memorable on its own terms. Like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," "Get off of My Cloud" has a compelling basic blues-rock riff, crunchy mid-tempo percussion, a leering Mick Jagger vocal that sounded like a catalog of social observation and complaint, and an ultra-catchy chorus. The songs were not exactly similar, though, and it's doubtful anyone asked for their money back due to confusing the two. The semi-surreal march of images probably owed something to the songs Bob Dylan was churning out in his early electric phase. It might have been songs like these that led Dylan to make his famous remark that he could have written "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," but that the Stones could not have written "Mr. Tambourine Man." As is so often the case with such vain, mean-spirited proclamations, Dylan failed to add that the Stones could also do things he couldn't do: namely, craft backing tracks that were more insistent funky and bluesy than those of any other rock acts, Dylan included. "Get off of My Cloud" is one of those sort of tracks, even if it doesn't quite match the magnificence of its cousin "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." No doubt its ace in the hole is its chorus, with its back-and-forth heys and yous (which actually sound rather more like heys and hees) that were ready-made for responsive crowd singalongs when performed live.

26/09/2025

Von St. Vincent bis Jimi Hendrix: Hier ist unser Ranking der 100 größten Gitarren-Legenden.

26/09/2025

ON THIS DATE (46 YEARS AGO)
September 25, 1979 - The Cars: "It's All I Can Do" b/w "Got A Lot On My Head" (Elektra E-46546) 45 single is released in the US.

"It's All I Can Do" is a song by The Cars, from their 1979 album Candy-O. It was written by the band's lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Ric Ocasek, and features the bassist, Benjamin Orr, on vocals. It was released as a single on September 25, 1979 and it peaked at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100.