Like bud­ding ten-year-old pale­on­tol­o­gists with their dinosaur guides, music nerds who came of age in the 80s and 90s might spend whole days read­ing about obscure one-off bands and indie, punk, and alter­na­tive giants from all over the Eng­lish-speak­ing world in Ira Rob­bins’ ency­clo­pe­dic Trouser Press Record Guide ref­er­ence books. Their crit­i­cal entries were notable espe­cial­ly for what they were not: fan trib­utes.

Just the oth­er day, for exam­ple, I was brows­ing through the Trouser Press Guide to ‘90s Rock and was star­tled to read that Depeche Mode’s 101, a live album I lis­tened to repeat­ed­ly in my moody mid­dle school years, offered “per­ma­nent evi­dence of the band’s—a pitch-impaired singer cru­ci­fied on racks of keyboards—concert inad­e­qua­cy.”

This, I protest­ed, is too much.

But, I admit, that album, played at full vol­ume in head­phones, once car­ried me as an ado­les­cent through a grim three-day trek across the coun­try, in a van with my frac­tious fam­i­ly, dri­ving the entire length of Arkansas in sub-zero late Decem­ber and spend­ing New Years’ Eve in a motel room in a des­o­late nowheresville out­side Pine Bluff, AR.

My sense that there might be a roman­ti­cal­ly gloomy, weird­ly seduc­tive world beyond the frost­ed win­dows of our shab­by Ford Club Wag­on is what I will always asso­ciate with the album, its musi­cal mer­its aside. (That and a seri­ous crush on some­one who real­ly loved Depeche Mode.) I can’t remem­ber if I’ve lis­tened to it since.

It’s true Depeche Mode got a lot of mileage out of a lim­it­ed range of skills and musi­cal ideas, but that seems to be no valid crit­i­cism in pop music. The best pop songs are those peo­ple expe­ri­ence as oper­at­ic state­ments of their own emo­tion­al lives. As we see in the open­ing scenes of the Depeche Mode doc­u­men­tary above, Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode, their most fer­vent Eng­lish fans believe that they too might be Depeche Mode.

U.S., Mex­i­can, and Russ­ian fans roman­ti­ciz­ing Basil­don, Depeche Mode’s home­town, as a placid Eng­lish vil­lage say more about their own long­ings than about the band’s sound. Depeche Mode may have looked like a New Wave boy band in the 80s, but that was also the decade in which they were at their nois­i­est and most exper­i­men­tal, “seam­less­ly blend­ing con­crète sounds—factory din, clank­ing chains and so forth—into the music,” writes Trouser Press.

The sound—says one Eng­lish fan of “Depeche” from its beginnings—“came from the bricks” of Basil­don, a grit­ty place with fre­quent fight­ing in the streets. The bulk of the dense­ly crowd­ed town’s con­crete blocks, and fac­to­ries sprang up after WWII, a work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ty cre­at­ed to house the Lon­don pop­u­la­tion dis­placed by the bomb­ings. What set Depeche Mode apart from their syn­th­pop peers and inspi­ra­tions (aside from Siouxsie Sioux and Damned-inspired fetish cos­play) was the indus­tri­al noise that pop­u­lat­ed their sac­cha­rine off-key bal­lads and naughty S&M tracks.

The sound of work­ing-class streets embed­ded in their music drew fans from Moscow—where singer Dave Gahan’s birth­day has become an unof­fi­cial hol­i­day. Their music is “tech­nol­o­gy, the sounds of life, of real­i­ty,” says one Mus­covite fan above. Depeche Mode bootlegs, which spread over the Sovi­et world, get par­tial cred­it for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Fans in Tehran risk severe pun­ish­ment from the Islam­ic author­i­ties for lis­ten­ing to illic­it copies of their albums.

They became gloomi­er, more navel-gaz­ing and “dis­mal,” our Trouser Press crit­ic writes, and the quirky sounds of Basil­don seemed to fade away, replaced by the cav­ernous reverb and goth-blues gui­tar riffs of their 90s apoth­e­o­sis. Their appeal to sen­si­tive and trou­bled kids every­where remained as pow­er­ful, if not more so. Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode doc­u­ments the band’s spread around the world in ded­i­cat­ed fan com­mu­ni­ties. Made in 2007, the film mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared and has only just resur­faced recent­ly, as Dan­ger­ous Minds reports. “No one’s quite sure what hap­pened there.”

It will be inter­est­ing to com­pare this redis­cov­ered doc­u­ment with a new Depeche Mode movie, Spir­its in the For­est, get­ting a the­atri­cal release Novem­ber 21st. Shot by Anton Cor­bi­jn, the film, as you can see from trail­er (above), also keeps its focus on the fans, mix­ing six sto­ries, writes Rolling Stone, “shot in each of their home­towns, with footage of the con­cert” in Berlin pro­mot­ing the band’s newest album Spir­it.

They may nev­er have been the great­est live band or most accom­plished of musi­cians, but Depeche Mode has always known how to work a crowd, and how to speak to the pri­vate long­ings of every indi­vid­ual fan. What more can one ask of inter­na­tion­al pop stars? Gahan says in a state­ment about the new con­cert film, a tra­di­tion that reached its apex with the 101 doc­u­men­tary com­pan­ion to the album, “It’s amaz­ing to see the very real ways that music has impact­ed the lives of our fans.” He’s talk­ing about an evi­dent con­nec­tion that spans gen­er­a­tions and cross­es many unlike­ly cul­tur­al, lin­guis­tic, and nation­al bound­aries.

Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries.

The film by  Jere­my Deller & Nicholas Abra­hams is host­ed on Abra­hams’ Vimeo chan­nel.

via The Qui­etus

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Depeche Mode Releas­es a Goose­bump-Induc­ing Cov­er of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

The Cure Per­formed the Entire “Dis­in­te­gra­tion” Album on the 30th Anniver­sary of Its Release: Watch The Com­plete Con­cert Online

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Goth

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When talk of clas­sic rock drum­mers turns to Kei­th Moon and John Bon­ham, I smile and nod. What’s the point in argu­ing? They were both, in their dis­tinc­tive ways, incredible—and in their ear­ly deaths, immor­tal leg­ends. Who knows what their careers would have looked like had either lived past 32? But tru­ly, for the all-around breadth of his influ­ence, for the amount of respect he gained in musi­cal cir­cles around the world, no greater clas­sic rock drum­mer ever lived, in my opin­ion, than Gin­ger Bak­er, may he final­ly rest in peace.

The famous­ly rest­less, vio­lent­ly can­tan­ker­ous drum­mer died yes­ter­day at age 80, out­liv­ing most of his peers, despite liv­ing twice as hard for well over twice as long as many of them—a feat of strength we might impute to his ath­let­ic phys­i­cal sta­mi­na and fright­en­ing will.

Like Moon and Bon­ham, he com­bined raw pow­er with seri­ous jazz chops. (Bak­er insist­ed he nev­er played rock drums at all.) After his polyrhyth­mic pum­mel­ing defined the sound of super­groups Cream and Blind Faith, he burned out and moved to Africa to find sobri­ety and new sounds.

Bak­er trav­eled the con­ti­nent with Fela Kuti to learn its rhythms, record­ing live with Kuti’s band in ’71. Afrobeat drum­mer Tony Allen remarked that he under­stood “the African beat more than any oth­er West­ern­er.” (See him jam­ming in Lagos fur­ther down.) Baker’s discog­ra­phy includes clas­sic records with Eric Clap­ton and Jack Bruce, Kuti, Hawk­wind, and oth­er leg­ends. He trav­eled the world play­ing drums for over fifty years. Why, then, did he have such a low pro­file for much of his lat­er life? A 2012 doc­u­men­tary, Beware of Mr. Bak­er, based on a 2009 Rolling Stone arti­cle, offers some answers.

Baker’s seri­ous drug addic­tion and ter­ri­fy­ing per­son­al­i­ty alien­at­ed near­ly every­one around him. The doc­u­men­tary opens with an endorse­ment from anoth­er prick­ly and unlik­able red-haired char­ac­ter, John Lydon (for­mer­ly John­ny Rot­ten), whose Pub­lic Image Lim­it­ed is yet anoth­er project Bak­er ele­vat­ed with his play­ing. “He helped me rise,” says Lydon, and Bak­er would no doubt agree. He was not a mod­est man. He was, by most accounts, a right bas­tard, through and through, all of his life.

But he was too con­trar­i­an to be dis­missed as a mere nar­cis­sist. As a musi­cian, for exam­ple, he always thought of him­self as a sup­port­ing play­er. “I nev­er had a style,” he said in 2013. “I play to what I hear, so who­ev­er I’m play­ing with, what they play has a great influ­ence on what I play, because I lis­ten to what peo­ple are play­ing.” His skill at destroy­ing per­son­al rela­tion­ships was matched by his abil­i­ty for form­ing deep, awe-inspir­ing, if short-lived, musi­cal con­nec­tions. It’s a dichoto­my many drum­mers inspired by him have strug­gled to reconcile—taking lessons from Bak­er the drum­mer but not from Bak­er the man.

How do we sep­a­rate the man from his art? Why try? His mad pirate life makes for an epic saga, and Bak­er is a wild­ly excit­ing main char­ac­ter. He had ear­ly ambi­tions of becom­ing a pro­fes­sion­al cyclist. Though they didn’t pan out, he always retained the char­ac­ter­is­tics: he was both fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive and fierce­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive. Lat­er he picked up an even more rar­i­fied team sport—polo—keeping a sta­ble of hors­es on his gat­ed South African ranch, where he lived in his old age like a colo­nial ex-baron in a Nadine Gordimer nov­el. (He even­tu­al­ly had to sell the spread and move back to Lon­don.)

Bak­er was nev­er one to make apolo­gies, so his fans need not make any on his behalf. See him in some clas­sic per­for­mances above—at the top, solo­ing after an inter­view, at Cream’s Roy­al Albert Hall farewell con­cert; then play­ing a solo in a Cream reunion in that same venue almost forty years lat­er. After footage of him jam­ming in Lagos in 1971, we see what the inter­net calls the “BEST DRUM SOLO EVER,” fur­ther up. In the video linked below, meet the man him­self, in all his unre­pen­tant glo­ry, and hear from those who knew him best, in the full doc­u­men­tary, Beware of Mr. Bak­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

Who Are the Best Drum Soloists in Rock? See Leg­endary Per­for­mances by John Bon­ham, Kei­th Moon, Neil Peart, Ter­ry Bozzio & More

Kei­th Moon Plays Drums Onstage with Led Zep­pelin in What Would Be His Last Live Per­for­mance (1977)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Two years ago we post­ed about a music lover’s life’s work–Stephen Mali­nows­ki aka sma­lin on YouTube–and how he has pro­duced ani­mat­ed, side-scrolling scores to clas­si­cal music. Old­er folks will liken them to neon piano rolls. Youngun’s will see a bit of Gui­tar Hero or Rock Band game design in their march of col­or­ful shapes danc­ing to every­thing from Bach to Debussy.

Mali­nows­ki let us know that he just recent­ly com­plet­ed a major work: adapt­ing all of Beethoven’s String Quar­tets into his par­tic­u­lar, always evolv­ing style. And for this he turned to San Francisco’s Alexan­der String Quar­tet for their record­ings. Says the ani­ma­tor:

I made my first graph­i­cal scores in the 1970s, my first ani­mat­ed graph­i­cal score in 1985, and the first of these for a move­ment of a Beethoven string quar­tet in 2010. In 2014 I began col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Alexan­der String Quar­tet on select­ed move­ments of Beethoven string quar­tets, and in the ear­ly months of 2019 we decid­ed to hon­or the 250th anniver­sary of Beethoven’s birth by extend­ing our col­lab­o­ra­tion to the full set. [Note: that anniver­sary will offi­cial­ly take place next year.]

One impor­tant point: Mali­nows­ki does not choose col­ors ran­dom­ly or because they are pret­ty. Instead, he uses “Har­mon­ic Col­or­ing”:

I’ve assigned blue to be the “home pitch” (the ton­ic, notataed Roman numer­al “I”) because that seemed the most “set­tled,” and cho­sen the blue-toward-red direc­tion as the I‑toward‑V direc­tion because motion toward the dom­i­nant (“V”) seems more “active” com­pared with motion toward the sub­dom­i­nant (“IV”).

This might not make sense just by read­ing it, but head to this page to see how the col­or wheel looks. There you can see how clas­si­cal music has evolved from the Renais­sance (most­ly stay­ing with the sev­en pitch­es in an octave) to the rad­i­cal changes of Brahms and then through Debussy to Stravin­sky, where it is a riot of col­or.

Beethoven wrote 16 string quar­tets between 1798 and 1826, as well as a Große Fuge includ­ed here that only had one move­ment, and gained a noto­ri­ety in its day as being a chaot­ic, inac­ces­si­ble mess. (They were wrong). The last five, known at the Late Quar­tets, were writ­ten in the last three years of his life. He was com­plete­ly deaf by this time, suf­fer­ing from all sorts of med­ical issues, recov­er­ing from brush­es with death, and yet… the Late Quar­tets are con­sid­ered by many to be his mas­ter­pieces, even more notable giv­en that he had come to the quar­tet form lat­er than oth­er com­posers and wracked with doubt about his tal­ents.

The final move­ment of his final string quar­tet (No. 16) was the last com­plete work Beethoven would ever write. At the top of the score he wrote “Must it be? It must be!” Death was at the door.

For those ready to learn or ready to revis­it these chal­leng­ing works, Mali­nows­ki has made it a treat for the eyes as well as the ears. See the com­plete playlist of ani­mat­ed string quar­tets here. Or stream them all, from start to fin­ish, below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did Beethoven Com­pose His 9th Sym­pho­ny After He Went Com­plete­ly Deaf?

The Sto­ry of How Beethoven Helped Make It So That CDs Could Play 74 Min­utes of Music

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

It seems no small irony that lean, late-sev­en­ties and eight­ies New Wave bands like U2, Depeche Mode, and the Cure, who made lega­cy sta­di­um rock acts like Queen seem out­mod­ed, went on to become mas­sive-sell­ing sta­di­um lega­cy acts them­selves. The musi­cal cri­tique of 70’s rock excess­es found its most pop­u­lar expres­sion in bands that took a lot from Fred­die Mer­cury and com­pa­ny: flam­boy­ant sex­u­al flu­id­i­ty, spec­tac­u­lar light shows, raw emo­tion­al con­fes­sion­al­ism, stri­dent­ly sen­ti­men­tal, fist-pump­ing anthems…

Yet in the eight­ies, a “wide-sweep­ing change in musi­cal tastes” dis­placed Queen’s reign on the charts, writes Les­ley-Ann Jones in Mer­cury: An Inti­mate Biog­ra­phy of Fred­die Mer­cury. They were “con­found­ing­ly on the wane” and “were begin­ning to feel that they’d had their day. A per­ma­nent split was in the cards. They’d talked about it.” But it was not to be, thanks to Live Aid, the near-mytho­log­i­cal July 13, 1985 per­for­mance at Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um. After that gig, remem­bers Queen key­boardist Spike Edney, “Queen found that their whole world had changed.”

Sud­den­ly, after their short, 20-minute day­light set (see the video at the bot­tom), they were again the biggest band on the plan­et. “Queen smoked ‘em,” as Dave Grohl puts it. “They walked away being the great­est band you’d ever seen in your life, and it was unbe­liev­able.” The sen­ti­ment was uni­ver­sal­ly echoed by every­one from Elton John to Bowie to Bono to Paul McCart­ney, all of them upstaged that day. “It has been repeat­ed ad nau­se­am,” writes Jones, “that Queen’s per­for­mance was the most thrilling, the most mov­ing, the most mem­o­rable, the most enduring—surpassing as it did the efforts of their great­est rivals.”

The band, how­ev­er, was “sur­prised that every­one was sur­prised,” says Edney. “They were vet­er­ans at sta­di­um gigs… this was their nat­ur­al habi­tat.” Queen “could prac­ti­cal­ly do this stuff in their sleep.” Mix­ing his metaphors, Edney also reveals just how hard the band worked to remain the con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­als they were: “to them, it was anoth­er day at the office.” As such, they put in their time to make absolute­ly cer­tain that they would be in top form. “They booked out the 400-seat Shaw The­atre, near King’s Cross train sta­tion in Lon­don,” notes Mar­tin Chilton at Udis­cov­er­mu­sic, “and spent a week hon­ing their five-song set,” plan­ning every sin­gle part of it to per­fec­tion.

Live Aid orga­niz­er Bob Geld­of had asked bands not to debut new mate­r­i­al but play fan favorites. Edney was “stunned to hear cer­tain artists belt­ing out their lat­est sin­gle.” But Queen took Geldof’s “mes­sage to heart,” putting togeth­er a care­ful­ly curat­ed med­ley of their biggest hits. In the video at the top of the post, see the band dis­cuss this behind-the-scenes process with an inter­view­er before going onstage in front of a crowd of “the 72,000 fans who would be at Wembley—and the esti­mat­ed 1.9 bil­lion peo­ple watch­ing on tele­vi­sion from 130 coun­tries around the world.”

In answer to a ques­tion about going onstage with­out their usu­al spec­tac­u­lar stage and light show, or even time for a sound check before their set, Bri­an May replies, “it all comes down to whether you can play or not, real­ly, which is nice, in a way, because I think there’s prob­a­bly an ele­ment who think that groups like us can’t do it with­out the extrav­a­gant back­drop.” Who­ev­er he might have been refer­ring to, his “We’ll see” sounds supreme­ly con­fi­dent.

The band was metic­u­lous­ly pre­pared. After the inter­view, we see rehearsal footage of near­ly their full set, begin­ning with “Radio Ga Ga,” a song whose cho­rus dur­ing the live event pro­duced what was described as “the note heard around the world.” (See it above.) After their incred­i­ble per­for­mance May sound­ed much more mod­est, even self-effac­ing. “The rest of us played OK, but Fred­die went out there and took it to anoth­er lev­el. It wasn’t just Queen fans. He con­nect­ed with every­one. I’d nev­er seen any­thing like that in my life.”

The per­for­mance is all the more remark­able for the fact that Queen had been shunned just the pre­vi­ous year for break­ing the boy­cott and play­ing in South Africa, for noble but mis­un­der­stood rea­sons at the time. They were con­sid­er­ing call­ing it qui­ets, but the pres­sures they were under seemed only to gal­va­nize them into what every­one remem­bers as their great­est show ever—”Queen’s ulti­mate moment,” writes Jones, “towards which they had been build­ing their entire career.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen’s Stun­ning Live Aid Per­for­mance: 20 Min­utes Guar­an­teed to Give You Goose Bumps (July 13, 1985)

A Stun­ning Live Con­cert Film of Queen Per­form­ing in Mon­tre­al, Dig­i­tal­ly Restored to Per­fec­tion (1981)

Watch Queen’s Drag­tas­tic “I Want to Break Free” Video: It Was More Than Amer­i­ca & MTV Could Han­dle (1984)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Whether you see it as a good faith effort to cor­rect past mis­takes or a bid to dis­tract from more recent fumbles—the New York Times’ “Over­looked” obit­u­ary series has done its read­ers a ser­vice by recov­er­ing the bios of “remark­able peo­ple whose deaths… went unre­port­ed in The Times.” Most of the pro­files are of peo­ple who were pub­lic fig­ures at the time of their death. Some had achieved inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion, like Alan Tur­ing, and oth­ers were roy­al­ty, like Rani, queen of the king­dom of Jhan­si in North­ern India and one of the lead­ers of a revolt against the British in 1857.

The lat­est “Over­looked” is an odd­i­ty. Its sub­ject may be the most famous per­son of all to get the belat­ed Times obit since the series began. Robert Johnson’s alleged deal with the dev­il at the cross­roads has become as foun­da­tion­al to U.S. mythol­o­gy as John Henry’s ham­mer or George Washington’s cher­ry tree.

At the very same time, John­son may be the most obscure fig­ure to appear in “Over­looked.” And the per­son about whom the least is known. “What is known” about him, writes the Times, “can be sum­ma­rized on a post­card.”

He is thought to have been born out of wed­lock in May 1911 in Mis­sis­sip­pi and raised there. School and cen­sus records indi­cat­ed he lived for stretch­es in Ten­nessee and Arkansas. He took up gui­tar at a young age and became a trav­el­ing musi­cian, even­tu­al­ly glimps­ing the bus­tle of New York City. But he died in Mis­sis­sip­pi [in 1938], with just over two dozen lit­tle-noticed record­ed songs to his name.

There’s more to the sto­ry, but it gets hard to tell where the his­tor­i­cal record ends and the mythol­o­gy begins. Still, the paper of record can be for­giv­en for over­look­ing John­son the first time around. Aside from a small num­ber of Delta blues fans, most of whom actu­al­ly lived in the Delta, hard­ly any­one knew who Robert John­son was in life. By the time news of his mojo start­ed to spread out­side Mis­sis­sip­pi, it was too late. John Ham­mond sought to bring him Carnegie Hall in 1938, the year of his death. Alan Lomax looked to record him 1941, only to find out he was gone.

His fame spread in the 1960s when British Blues inva­sion­ists picked up on his genius, cit­ed him as a pri­ma­ry influ­ence, and cov­ered and adapt­ed his songs. Bob Dylan wrote in his mem­oir Chron­i­cles: Vol­ume One that “hun­dreds of lines” of his derive from Johnson’s influ­ence. The “advent of rock ’n’ roll would turn John­son into a fig­ure of leg­end,” among blues and rock and roll fans in the know. The leg­end, and recog­ni­tion of John­son’s great­ness, explod­ed in sub­se­quent decades.

John­son was induct­ed into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its first cer­e­mo­ny in 1986. His posthu­mous Com­plete Record­ings won a Gram­my in 1991. Many more hon­ors fol­lowed, includ­ing a Gram­my life­time achieve­ment award. By 2003, Rolling Stone could call John­son “the undis­put­ed king of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta blues” and place him at #5 on their list of 100 great­est gui­tarists of all time. How is it pos­si­ble that an obscure­ly minor fig­ure in blues his­to­ry became a found­ing grand­fa­ther of rock and roll?

“The chasm between the man John­son was and the myth he became,” the Times admits “has marooned his­to­ri­ans and con­sci­en­tious lis­ten­ers for more than a half-cen­tu­ry.” John­son’s sto­ry “is no more or less than the hand­i­work of the coun­try in which it was writ­ten; a coun­try where the lega­cy of African-Amer­i­cans has often been shaped by oth­ers.” But those oth­ers have had good rea­son for appro­pri­at­ing John­son’s infer­nal sto­ry and unique musi­cal sig­na­tures.

A new Net­flix doc­u­men­tary ReMas­tered: Dev­il at the Cross­roads (see the trail­er above) explores in inter­views with rock and blues greats how John­son became for­ev­er linked to a myth that stood in for the real cir­cum­stances of his short, dif­fi­cult life. (He can be thought of as the found­ing mem­ber of rock­’s trag­i­cal­ly elite “27 club.”) Actu­al deal with the dev­il or no, “there was cer­tain­ly a lot of dare­dev­il­ry in his flout­ing of stan­dard tem­pos and har­mon­ics,” writes Rolling Stone. “His records are breath­tak­ing dis­plays of melod­ic devel­op­ment and acute brawn.”

While the Times, and most every­one else, passed over him in life, in death, he has more than received his due from musi­cians and fans. John­son has not been over­looked so much as maybe over­rep­re­sent­ed in the his­to­ry of the blues. Find out why in his belat­ed Times obit­u­ary, in the hun­dreds of trib­utes to him writ­ten and record­ed since his death 81 years ago, and by immers­ing your­self in his own haunt­ing record­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Blues­man Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Dev­il Retold in Three Ani­ma­tions

The His­to­ry of the Blues in 50 Riffs: From Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son (1928) to Joe Bona­mas­sa (2009)

The Leg­end of Blues­man Robert John­son Ani­mat­ed

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

It took a half cen­tu­ry. But bet­ter late than nev­er. Exact­ly 50 years after the release of Abbey Road, the Bea­t­les have released the first offi­cial video of “Here Comes the Sun.” The clip, writes NME, “set to a new stereo mix of the George Har­ri­son com­po­si­tion, cap­tures a gor­geous sun­rise illu­mi­nat­ing Abbey Road Stu­dios’ Stu­dio Two, where the Fab Four record­ed most of the leg­endary album.” Lat­er today, the Bea­t­les will release the 50th anniver­sary reis­sue of Abbey Road. It comes in CD and CD/Blu Ray ver­sions.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lost Gui­tar Solo for “Here Comes the Sun” by George Har­ri­son, Dis­cov­ered by George Mar­tin

Flash­mob Per­forms The Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unem­ploy­ment Office

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er