Pret­ty much every­one with a pass­ing famil­iar­i­ty with Fleet­wood Mac knows at least a lit­tle some­thing about the per­son­al tumult behind their land­mark 1977 album Rumours: it’s one of rock’s most famous soap operas,” writes Jor­dan Run­tagh at Rolling Stone. Chris­tine McVie put it even more suc­cinct­ly— “Dra­ma. Dra-ma.”

But isn’t this how great songs get writ­ten, as we find out when we read the auto­bi­ogra­phies and inter­views of great song­writ­ers, who sub­li­mate their per­son­al ups and downs in lyrics that touch the emo­tion­al lives of mil­lions? The saga of Fleet­wood Mac just hap­pens to be a par­tic­u­lar­ly juicy exam­ple, giv­en that the band mem­bers’ roman­tic anguish most­ly came from failed rela­tion­ships with each oth­er.

The tale will for­ev­er be a cau­tion­ary one for musi­cians, though it’s hard­ly much of a deter­rent. Just lis­ten to those songs! But as Evan Puschak—otherwise known as video essay­ist the Nerdwriter—shows above, it takes a lot more than a bad breakup with the gui­tar play­er to make time­less pop art. Rumours “feels alive, months and years and decades after its cre­ation.” It’s so much more than the sum of its parts, even if those parts are rare and indis­pens­able: the con­sid­er­able musi­cian­ship on dis­play, the song­writ­ing expe­ri­ence, and espe­cial­ly the “vir­tu­al­ly unlim­it­ed bud­get and time” Warn­er Broth­ers allot­ted the band.

Such extrav­a­gance is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for any­one else to come by. Still, noodling indef­i­nite­ly with fan­cy instru­ments and equip­ment does not a great album make. Puschak takes Ste­vie Nicks’ “Dreams” as an exam­ple of how the band excelled in the stu­dio. Writ­ten “in about 10 min­utes,” as Nicks tells it, while she sat in a “big black-vel­vet bed with Vic­to­ri­an drapes” in a stu­dio belong­ing to Sly Stone, the song’s stu­dio ver­sion shows off the lush, lay­ered pro­duc­tion the band spent the bet­ter part of a year bring­ing to her two-chord demo.

“Dreams”—one of the most mes­mer­iz­ing songs in the band’s canon—acquired its hyp­not­ic qual­i­ties through the use of a looped drum pat­tern, puls­ing, repet­i­tive bassline, and the sub­tle col­oration of gui­tar tex­tures that give the decep­tive­ly sim­ple song its ebb and flow.

The sto­ry of Rumours is as much about fan­tas­tic songcraft, musi­cian­ship, arrang­ing, and pro­duc­tion as it is about tri­umph over the human resources night­mare behind the scenes. The per­son­al inspi­ra­tion for these songs makes for good gos­sip, but these are not life events any­one needs to emu­late to make art. Fleet­wood Mac’s col­lec­tive inven­tive­ness, emo­tion­al hon­esty, and skill are what ulti­mate­ly make them such an inspi­ra­tion to musi­cians, and cre­ative types in gen­er­al. For anoth­er exam­ple of how they built the archi­tec­tur­al mar­vels on Rumours, see the short take above from Poly­phon­ic about the album’s mood­i­est song, “The Chain.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ste­vie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Man­u­al

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Inside the Mak­ing of The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Heart’s Club Band, Rock’s Great Con­cept Album

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

There’s a war on Christ­mas, don’t you know. The attacks are relentless—at every shop­ping mall, drug­store, gro­cery, fam­i­ly din­ner, bad­ly-lit office par­ty. It is the scourge of bland Christ­mas music, and it can absolute­ly ruin your hol­i­day. There you are, mer­ri­ly shop­ping for the per­fect gift or the per­fect ham, and, wham! The most dispir­it­ing ver­sion of “Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy” you’ve ever heard in your life. You feel sick, depressed, deranged. Is this some kind of son­ic weapon? Or do you respect the sea­son too much to let it be demeaned by medi­oc­rity?

Fight back, my friend, with the playlist below. Keep your Christ­mas cheer—if that’s your bag. The dis­crim­i­nat­ing Yule­tide cel­e­brant must guard their ears zeal­ous­ly, lest some undead zom­bie trav­es­ty of a “White Christ­mas” (or worse yet, “Blue Christ­mas”) does them in. Opt instead for the sim­ple cel­e­bra­tion of the Ramones’ “Mer­ry Christ­mas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight).” Lis­ten to the Damned. You don’t have to believe in San­ta Claus, but you know “There Ain’t No San­i­ty Clause.”

The Van­dals keep it mov­ing with “My First X‑Mas (As A Woman),” a straight-ahead burst of pos­i­tiv­i­ty, empow­er­ment, and com­ing out as trans to the fam­i­ly. They return lat­er with “Grandpa’s Last X‑Mas,” an hon­est reck­on­ing with mor­tal­i­ty dur­ing the sea­son. Check out the earnest ren­di­tion of “O Come All Ye Faith­ful” from Bad Reli­gion, who clear­ly adore the song enough to real­ly do it jus­tice, even if many of their usu­al lyrics can be summed up by swap­ping the words in their name. (They put out a whole album of respect­ful Christ­mas tunes. “Any­one expect­ing some sort of sub­ver­sion of the hol­i­day clas­sics,” notes Apple Music, “will be dis­ap­point­ed.”)

As this playlist shows, punk rock has always had a spe­cial rela­tion­ship with Christ­mas. But if you think about it, so have many indie, fringe, and avant-garde move­ments. John Waters believes the “whole pur­pose of life is Christ­mas.” Andy Warhol “real­ly, real­ly loved Christ­mas,” and made sev­er­al Christ­mas-themed art­works. And in 1977, the Sex Pis­tols played their last UK gig, a Christ­mas ben­e­fit for an audi­ence of sev­en and eight year olds. John­ny Rot­ten remem­bered it lat­er as “one of the high­lights of mine and Sid’s career.”

Fan­tas­tic. The ulti­mate reward. One of my all-time favourite gigs. Young kids, and we’re doing Bod­ies and they’re burst­ing out with laugh­ter on the ‘f*ck this f*ck that’ verse. The cor­rect response: not the shock hor­ror ‘How dare you?’

The kids get it, why can’t we? Christ­mas is a fine time for irrev­er­ence, camp, crude humor, booze, and can­dor. It is also a time for the heart­felt appre­ci­a­tion most punks seem to feel for the hol­i­day of light shows and inflat­able rein­deer, of a crack­ling fire on TV and a place that does deliv­ery. San­ta Claus, the Holy Baby, and Grem­lins. Stuck with rel­a­tives who can’t get the spir­it of giv­ing? Put on “Bloody Unholy Christ­mas,” “I’ve Got a Bon­er for Christ­mas,” and “Cred­it Crunch Christ­mas,” and turn them all the way up. And have a very Mer­ry Christ­mas and Hap­py Hol­i­days.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

David Bowie & Bing Cros­by Sing “The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy”: A Won­der­ful Christ­mas Chest­nut from 1977

John Waters Makes Hand­made Christ­mas Cards, Says the “Whole Pur­pose of Life is Christ­mas”

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

We like to bring this chest­nut back from time to time. Watch it, and you’ll know why.

In 1977, just a short month before Bing Cros­by died of a heart attack, the 40s croon­er host­ed David Bowie, the glam rock­er, on his Christ­mas show. The awk­ward­ness of the meet­ing is pal­pa­ble. An old­er, crusty Cros­by had no real famil­iar­i­ty with the younger, androg­y­nous Bowie, and Bowie was­n’t crazy about singing The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy. So, short­ly before the show’s tap­ing, a team of writ­ers had to fran­ti­cal­ly retool the song, blend­ing the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas song with a new­ly-writ­ten tune called Peace on Earth. (You can watch the writ­ers tell the sto­ry, years lat­er, below.)

After one hour of rehearsal, the two singers record­ed The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy/Peace on Earth and made a lit­tle clas­sic. The Wash­ing­ton Post has the back­sto­ry on the strange Bing-Bowie meet­ing. Also find a Will Fer­rell par­o­dy of the meet­ing here. We hope you enjoy revis­it­ing this clip with us. Hap­py hol­i­days to you all.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie’s Fash­ion­able Mug Shot From His 1976 Mar­i­jua­na Bust

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

Sev­er­al years ago, we fea­tured a list Kurt Cobain made of his top 50 albums, which appeared in his jour­nals, pub­lished in 2002. It’s most­ly a typ­i­cal list of stan­dards one would find in any young punk’s record col­lec­tion in the late 80s/90s. As we wrote then, his “‘Top 50 by Nir­vana’… seems like the ide­al code for pro­duc­ing a 90s alter­na­tive star.” But these sources were not wide­ly acces­si­ble at the time. Cobain’s influ­ence was such that he turned mil­lions of peo­ple on to music they’d nev­er heard before. That influ­ence con­tin­ues, of course, and you can par­take of it your­self in the playlist below.

Amid the clas­sic rock and clas­sic punk—the Bea­t­les, the Clash, the Sex Pistols—are a few slabs of clas­sic DC hard­core, then and now pret­ty obscure. Dave Grohl—stalwart of the DC scene before Cobain recruit­ed him to move across the coun­try and join Nirvana—may have added these albums to the list, or Cobain might have done so him­self. In any case, his men­tions of them, and their posthu­mous appear­ance in his let­ters and notes, brought bands like long-defunct Faith and Void new recog­ni­tion, as well as post-hard­core pio­neers Rites of Spring, who helped inspire the emo and screamo to come, for bet­ter or worse.

Along­side Iggy Pop, Black Flag, and Bad Brains are less­er-known punk bands like the Rain­coats, the Vase­lines, and the Saints, play­ful lo-fi weirdos like Daniel John­son, the Shag­gs, and Half Japan­ese; the coun­try blues of Lead Bel­ly, caus­tic noise of But­t­hole Surfers, thun­der­ous, pun­ish­ing nihilism of Swans…. Cobain may have helped them all sell a few records, and he def­i­nite­ly inspired new bands that sound like them by turn­ing peo­ple on to their music for the first time. (When Cobain cov­ered David Bowie, how­ev­er, fans start­ed to mis­take “The Man Who Sold the World” for a Nir­vana song, to Bowie’s under­stand­able con­ster­na­tion.)

Cobain’s list is lim­it­ed to a fair­ly nar­row range of styles, with some rare excep­tions: Lead Bel­ly, Pub­lic Ene­my, Aero­smith (!)—it’s an almost purist punk and punk-derived palate, the DNA of Nir­vana. In the age of the inter­net, one can cob­ble togeth­er a list like this—with no real pri­or knowledge—in an hour or so, sim­ply by googling around and doing a bit of research. Dur­ing Cobain’s for­ma­tive years on the out­skirts of Seat­tle, when a lot of this music cir­cu­lat­ed only on lim­it­ed cas­sette runs and poor­ly record­ed mix­tapes and copies, on record labels financed by veg­an bake sales and loans from the ‘rents—it could be very hard to come by.

While Cobain’s list may look, in hind­sight, like stan­dard fare to many long­time fans, what it rep­re­sents for those who came of age musi­cal­ly in the years just before the Web is a phys­i­cal jour­ney through all of the rela­tion­ships, con­certs, and record shops one had to move through to dis­cov­er the bands that spoke direct­ly to you and your friends.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Cobain’s Home Demos: Ear­ly Ver­sions of Nir­vana Hits, and Nev­er-Released Songs

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Two Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (Sep­tem­ber 26, 1991)

Watch The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain on the 20th Anniver­sary of the Musician’s Sui­cide

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

The Bea­t­les have seem­ing­ly nev­er been just a band; they’ve been a brand, a his­to­ry, an insti­tu­tion, a genre, a gen­er­a­tional sound­track, a mer­chan­dis­ing empire, and so much more—possessed of the kind of cul­tur­al impor­tance that makes it impos­si­ble to think of them as only musi­cians. Their “nar­ra­tive arc,” Tom Ewing writes at Pitch­fork, from Beat­le­ma­nia to their cur­rent enshrine­ment and every­thing in-between, “is irre­sistible.” But the sto­ry of the Bea­t­les as we typ­i­cal­ly under­stand it, Ewing writes, does their music a dis­ser­vice, set­ting it apart from “the rest of the pop world” and “mak­ing new­com­ers as resent­ful as curi­ous.”

For all the deifi­ca­tion (which John Lennon scan­dalous­ly summed up in his “big­ger than Jesus” quip), the band began as noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly out of the ordi­nary. “Britain in the ear­ly 1960s swarmed with rock’n’roll bands,” and though the Bea­t­les excelled ear­ly on, they most­ly fol­lowed trends, they didn’t invent them.

Their sound was so of the time that Decca’s A&R exec­u­tive Dick Rowe passed on them in 1962, telling Bri­an Epstein, “gui­tar groups are on their way out.” Lit­tle could he have known, how­ev­er: “gui­tar groups” came roar­ing back because of the band’s first album, Please, Please Me, and the espe­cial­ly savvy mar­ket­ing skills of Epstein, who helped land them that fate­ful Ed Sul­li­van Show appear­ance.

Mil­lions of peo­ple saw them play their sin­gle “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and the world changed for­ev­er, so the sto­ry goes. In so many ways that’s so. The Ed Sul­li­van gig launched a thou­sand bands, and remains at top of the list of near­ly every baby boomer musician’s most influ­en­tial moments. But as the six­ties wore on, and Beat­le­ma­nia assumed the var­i­ous forms of lunch­box­es, fan clubs, and a wacky car­toon series with bad­ly imper­son­at­ed voic­es, their act seemed like it might run its course as a pass­ing pop-cul­ture fad. They were, in effect, a very tal­ent­ed boy band, sub­ject to the fate of boy bands every­where. Their ascent into Olym­pus wasn’t inevitable, and “every record they made was born out of a new set of chal­lenges.”

Rub­ber Soul, the band’s 1965 farewell to the care­free, boy­ish pop band they had been, per­fect­ly met the chal­lenge they faced—how to grow up. It was “the most out-there music they’d ever made, but also their warmest, friend­liest and most emo­tion­al­ly direct,” Rob Sheffield writes at Rolling Stone. They were “smok­ing loads of weed, so all through these songs, wild humor and deep emo­tion go hand in hand.” These threads of play­ful, drug-fueled exper­i­men­ta­tion, screw­ball com­e­dy, and earnest sen­ti­ment changed not only the band’s career tra­jec­to­ry, but “cut the sto­ry of pop music in half,” Sheffield opines.

Such procla­ma­tions can and have been made of the ground­break­ing Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. Each Bea­t­les mile­stone cements our impres­sion of them as a mes­sian­ic force, des­tined to steer the course of pop music history—a sto­ry that gloss­es over their nov­el­ty records, less­er works, many out­takes and half thoughts, cov­er songs, and flops, like their 1967 Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour film. Some of these less­er works deserve the label. The mel­lotron-heavy “Only a North­ern Song” on Yel­low Sub­ma­rine, for exam­ple, sounds far too much like an infe­ri­or “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.”

Oth­ers, like the Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour sound­track album, give us gems like McCartney’s “Pen­ny Lane” (a song orig­i­nal­ly record­ed dur­ing the Sgt. Pepper’s ses­sions), as well as “I Am the Wal­rus,” “Hel­lo Good­bye,” “Baby, You’re a Rich Man,” “All You Need is Love” … the film may have dis­ap­point­ed, but the record, I’d say, is essen­tial.

In the chrono­log­i­cal Spo­ti­fy playlist fur­ther up of 338 songs, you can fol­low the quirky, upbeat, down­beat, some­times uneven, some­times breath­tak­ing­ly bril­liant musi­cal jour­ney of the band every­one thinks they know and see why they are so much more inter­est­ing than a muse­um exhib­it or rock and roll mythol­o­gy. They were, after all, only human, but their will­ing­ness to indulge in weird exper­i­ments and to mas­ter genre exer­cis­es gave them the dis­ci­pline and expe­ri­ence they need­ed to make their mas­ter­pieces.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

Watch HD Ver­sions of The Bea­t­les’ Pio­neer­ing Music Videos: “Hey Jude,” “Pen­ny Lane,” “Rev­o­lu­tion” & More

Hear the 1962 Bea­t­les Demo that Dec­ca Reject­ed: “Gui­tar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

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

Sto­ries of idio­syn­crat­ic and demand­ing com­posers and band­lead­ers abound in mid-cen­tu­ry jazz—of pio­neers who pushed their musi­cians to new heights and in entire­ly new direc­tions through seem­ing sheer force of will. Miles Davis’ name inevitably comes up in such dis­cus­sions. Davis was “not a patient man,” jazz his­to­ri­an Dan Mor­gen­stern remarks, “and I think he got impa­tient with him­self just as he did with oth­er peo­ple.” Jazz and oth­er forms of music have been immea­sur­ably enriched by that impa­tience.

Oth­er bop eccentrics—like John Coltrane—brought their own per­son­al­i­ty quirks and per­son­al strug­gles to bear on their styles, push­ing toward new insights and exper­i­ments that shaped the future of the music. Their peer Thelo­nious Monk, writes Can­dace Allen at The Guardian, “the job­bing musi­cian who couldn’t, more than wouldn’t, con­form to the con­ven­tions of the job,” seemed the odd man out. He “spent most of his pro­fes­sion­al life strug­gling to sup­port his fam­i­ly.” Monk’s “mis­di­ag­nosed and igno­rant­ly med­icat­ed bipo­lar con­di­tion” and his stub­born refusal to fol­low trends made it dif­fi­cult for him to achieve the suc­cess he deserved.

But it was Monk’s inabil­i­ty to do things any way but his way that made up the essence of his greatness—his insis­tence on “play­ing angu­lar, spa­cious and ‘slow,’” his “daunt­ing and mys­te­ri­ous” silences. A musi­cal prodi­gy, Monk honed his piano chops in Bap­tist church­es and New York rent par­ties before his res­i­den­cy as house pianist for Ted­dy Hill’s band at the famed Minton’s Play­house in Harlem, where he helped ush­er in the “bebop rev­o­lu­tion.” While he “chart­ed a new course for mod­ern music few were will­ing to fol­low,” notes All About Jazz, those who did learned a new way of play­ing, Monk’s way.

What does that mean? The list above, as tran­scribed by sax­o­phon­ist Steve Lacy, lays it all out. “T. Monk’s Advice,” as it’s called, offers guide­lines, point­ers, and point­ed com­mands. Some of these instruc­tions relate direct­ly to live per­for­mance (“don’t sound any­body for a gig, just be on the scene,” “avoid the heck­lers”). Oth­ers get at the heart of Monk’s genius—his tal­ent for cre­at­ing space, both inside the arrange­ments and between the notes. Monk makes sure he’s the only one play­ing “weird notes,” demand­ing that musi­cians “play the melody!” “Don’t play the piano part,” he says, “I am play­ing that.” And he pep­pers the list with cryp­tic philo­soph­i­cal and social obser­va­tions (“dis­crim­i­na­tion is impor­tant,” “always know,” “a genius is the one most like him­self”).

In the last item on the list (cut off in the image above), Monk veers sharply away from music with some humor­ous social com­men­tary. It’s a move that’s typ­i­cal Monk—both deeply seri­ous and play­ful, entire­ly unex­pect­ed, and leav­ing us, as he instructs his musi­cians, “want­i­ng more.” See a tran­scrip­tion of Monk’s list of advice for musi­cians below.

Just because you’re not a drum­mer, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to keep time.

Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head when you play.

Stop play­ing all that bull­shit, those weird notes, play the melody!

Make the drum­mer sound good.

Dis­crim­i­na­tion is impor­tant.

You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?

All reet!

Always know

It must be always night, oth­er­wise they wouldn’t need the lights.

Let’s lift the band stand!!

I want to avoid the heck­lers.

Don’t play the piano part, I am play­ing that. Don’t lis­ten to me, I am sup­posed to be accom­pa­ny­ing you!

The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the out­side sound good.

Don’t play every­thing (or every­time); let some things go by. Some music just imag­ined.

What you don’t play can be more impor­tant than what you do play.

A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imag­i­na­tion.

Stay in shape! Some­times a musi­cian waits for a gig & when it comes, he’s out of shape & can’t make it.

When you are swing­ing, swing some more!

(What should we wear tonight?) Sharp as pos­si­ble!

Always leave them want­i­ng more.

Don’t sound any­body for a gig, just be on the scene.

Those pieces were writ­ten so as to have some­thing to play & to get cats inter­est­ed enough to come to rehearsal!

You’ve got it! If you don’t want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case, you got it! (to a drum­mer who didn’t want to solo).

What­ev­er you think can’t be done, some­body will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like him­self.

They tried to get me to hate white peo­ple, but some­one would always come along & spoil it.

via Lists of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wyn­ton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Prac­tice: For Musi­cians, Ath­letes, or Any­one Who Wants to Learn Some­thing New

Cap­tain Beef­heart Issues His “Ten Com­mand­ments of Gui­tar Play­ing”

John Coltrane Draws a Mys­te­ri­ous Dia­gram Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal & Mys­ti­cal Qual­i­ties of Music

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme (1964)

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