Update: After mak­ing the videos avail­able for a cou­ple of weeks, PBS has now tak­en them down. If you’re real­ly inter­est­ed in watch­ing Sound­break­ing, you can pur­chase it in DVD for­mat. It’s worth it.

From Novem­ber 14 through Novem­ber 23, PBS is air­ing an eight-part series, Sound­break­ing, which explores the art of record­ing music and the moments when new sounds were born. The series fea­tures “more than 160 orig­i­nal inter­views with some of the most cel­e­brat­ed record­ing artists of all time,” high­light­ing the “cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy” that trans­formed the way we make music. You can now stream 3 of the first 8 episodes online, with the rest soon to come. If there are any geo-restric­tions, we apol­o­gize in advance.

Watch the first episode, “The Art of Record­ing,” up top. Leg­endary pro­duc­ers like Bri­an Eno, Daniel Lanois, Quin­cy Jones, Tony Vis­con­ti, Rick Rubin and George Mar­tin all make appear­ances.

• Episode 2: Paint­ing With Sound (right above)
• Episode 3: The Human Instru­ment

A new episode should appear each day. To find them, click here and then scroll down.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

265 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

The Only Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong in a Record­ing Stu­dio: Watch the Recent­ly-Dis­cov­ered Film (1959)

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Abbey Road Stu­dios, Cour­tesy of the New Google Site “Inside Abbey Road”

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

Things get­ting too seri­ous around here? You want it lighter? Here’s Metal­li­ca play­ing “Enter Sand­man” on class­room toy instru­ments. It fea­tures James Het­field on the toy clar­inet, Lars Ulrich on the Fish­er Price Drum and toy cym­bals, Kirk Ham­mett on the Melod­i­ca, and Robert Tru­jil­lo on the Baby Elec­tric Axe. They’re joined by Jim­my Fal­lon on the kazoo. Next up, stun­ning, breath­tak­ing time­lapse films of boats sail­ing through Venet­ian canals.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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

Metallica’s Bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo Plays Metal­li­ca Songs Fla­men­co-Style, Joined by Rodri­go y Gabriela

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

We say good­bye to musi­cal icons in many dif­fer­ent ways, from flash­mobs, SNL intros, and long ret­ro­spec­tives to live con­cert trib­utes fea­tur­ing the biggest cov­er band on earth. No mat­ter how out­sized the ges­ture, it nev­er quite seems out of place when it comes to artists of a cer­tain stature. In the case of Frank Zap­pa, we’ve recent­ly seen jazz orches­tra trib­utes, a “mon­u­men­tal live per­for­mance” of one of his own orches­tral works, and sev­er­al Zap­pa trib­ute con­certs by his son Dweezil.

For all their heart and sta­mi­na, how­ev­er, no trib­ute can com­pete with the pow­er of those artists’ farewells to us. Both David Bowie and Leonard Cohen, too frag­ile to per­form in their last years, left phe­nom­e­nal albums we’ll pore over for decades to come. South­ern rock great Leon Rus­sell, who just passed away this week at 74, put on rol­lick­ing live shows into his final years, and had con­certs booked into 2017 when he died. Prince’s final per­for­mance was, like all of his per­for­mances, stun­ning.

And Zap­pa? Well see for your­self. Zap­pa played his way out of the world as he’d played his way into it, with sar­don­ic humor and blis­ter­ing vir­tu­os­i­ty.

As you can see at the top and above, Zap­pa and band deliv­ered on every promise in their last con­certs in Prague and Budapest in 1991. In the 10-minute clip at the top, Zappa’s impro­visato­ry prog gui­tar runs soar and dive over the band’s slink­ing jazz-reg­gae, then get more tech­ni­cal as he trades licks with anoth­er vir­tu­oso gui­tarist. In the low­er-qual­i­ty video above, with clips from both con­certs, Zap­pa and band dis­play their mas­tery of an East­ern Euro­pean-sound­ing march with their guest musi­cian “gyp­sy friends” in Hun­gary (at 9:00).

In the fol­low­ing two years, until his death in 1993, Zap­pa would become too weak to play as he suc­cumbed to prostate can­cer. In his final inter­views, he pro­nounced him­self “total­ly unre­pen­tant” for his life and career and insist­ed he had only ever been an “enter­tain­er.” And it’s true, what­ev­er else Zap­pa was—incredibly skilled gui­tarist, com­pos­er, and indus­try innovator—he was always, to the last cou­ple years of his life, an incred­i­ble show­man.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In One of his Final Inter­views, Frank Zap­pa Pro­nounces Him­self “Total­ly Unre­pen­tant”

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

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

Image by Rama, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve heard very few details about Leonard Cohen’s death this week, and that is by design. The Cohen fam­i­ly request­ed pri­va­cy for his funer­al and received it. While most out­lets report­ed that he passed away on Thurs­day night, he actu­al­ly died on Wednes­day and was buried on Thurs­day. This col­lec­tive gra­cious­ness on the part of the press comes, I’d say, at a time when lit­tle grace abounds. Grace is a word that I par­tic­u­lar­ly asso­ciate with Cohen. He was a grace­ful man, always impec­ca­bly coiffed and dressed (his father was a tai­lor), his hand­some, hang­dog face nev­er any­thing but per­fect­ly direct.

For sev­er­al days before his death, New York­er edi­tor David Rem­nick sat down with Cohen for the first inter­view he’d giv­en in sev­er­al years. The poet and folk singer/songwriter leg­end had ter­mi­nal can­cer, we learn, and was con­fined to a med­ical chair. Nonethe­less, says Rem­nick, intro­duc­ing the edit­ed audio inter­view below, Cohen was “in an ebul­lient mood for a man… who knew exact­ly where he was going, and he was head­ed there in a hur­ry. And at the same time, he was incred­i­bly gra­cious. The most gra­cious host this side of my moth­er.” Cut to Cohen offer­ing him a few slices of cheese, and Rem­i­nick declin­ing.

Cohen kept his ill­ness secret (though he made allu­sions to it in a let­ter to his dying girl­friend Mar­i­anne this past sum­mer). Rem­nick reveals that he record­ed almost the entire­ty of his incred­i­ble final album You Want It Dark­er while con­fined to that chair. His voice rubbed raw with age, like John­ny Cash’s in his Amer­i­can Record­ings ses­sions, Cohen’s last songs car­ry all the spir­i­tu­al urgency and ragged vig­or of the best work of his career. Where did it come from? Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the first sub­ject in Rem­nick­’s inter­view is death. Cohen has been writ­ing about death since his first album in 1967.

He begins with his father’s death when he was nine, “a kind of ori­gin sto­ry for his career as a writer.”

The funer­al was held in our house. When we came down the stairs, the cof­fin was in the liv­ing room. And it was open. It was win­ter, you know. And I was think­ing, like, it must be hard to dig.

Remem­ber­ing this scene, Cohen’s Mon­tre­al accent strength­ens, then relax­es as he describes how, after the funer­al, he went to his father’s clos­et, cut a bow tie in half, wrote “some kind of farewell to my father” on the wing of the tie, and buried it in the back­yard. “It was just some attrac­tion to a rit­u­al response,” he says, “to an impos­si­ble event.”

This trag­ic vignette, and Cohen’s reflec­tion on it, is, as Rem­nick says, like a super­hero ori­gin sto­ry. With the same mea­sured, rhyth­mic voice and clear expres­sions as his songs, Cohen con­nects the mor­tal to the mys­te­ri­ous­ly divine act of writ­ing, which accom­plish­es “some kind of farewell” whose effects are unknown to us. What pos­si­ble sig­nif­i­cance the act had for Cohen, he can­not say, but it was sim­ply the appro­pri­ate response. Cohen’s final album seemed to be the right response to his own death.

This dwelling on mor­tal­i­ty is of course huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant and in the fore­ground of this inter­view-slash-trib­ute from Rem­nick, but it isn’t a mor­bid piece at all. In a ret­ro­spec­tive of Cohen’s career, we learn how he went from an acclaimed but strug­gling poet and nov­el­ist to folk singer in 1967, and how crip­pling stage fright led to him drink­ing three bot­tles of wine before he per­formed. At a 1972 con­cert in Israel, Cohen apol­o­gized, left the stage part­way through a song, and dropped two hits of acid in his dress­ing room. The audi­ence began singing loud­ly, and he returned to sing “So Long, Mar­i­anne” while hal­lu­ci­nat­ing wild­ly.

The sto­ry is hilar­i­ous, told with the same dry wit that under­cuts all of Cohen’s obser­va­tions about sex, death, and God. For all the deep­ness we asso­ciate with Leonard Cohen, says Rem­nick, he seemed reluc­tant to ana­lyze his work in reli­gious terms. But when he does open up about it, he gives us a back­drop against which to under­stand much of his spir­i­tu­al phi­los­o­phy: prayers, he says, “are to remind God, it was once a har­mo­nious uni­ty.… “ as well as his writ­ing phi­los­o­phy: “I only know,” says Cohen, “that if I write enough vers­es, and keep dis­card­ing the slo­gans, even the hip ones, even the sub­tle ones, that some­thing will emerge that rep­re­sents.”

You can also lis­ten to Remnick’s New York­er Radio Hour pod­cast at the WNYC site (and above) and read Remnick’s arti­cle on his last meet­ings with Cohen at The New York­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Cohen Has Passed at Age 82: His New and Now Final Album Is Stream­ing Free Online

Leonard Cohen Plays a Spell­bind­ing Set at the 1970 Isle of Wight Fes­ti­val

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

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

Anoth­er epi­taph for anoth­er fall­en star, anoth­er beloved icon, anoth­er bril­liant musi­cian who was also a bril­liant human being. I do not want to tell you what you already know, that Leonard Cohen died last night at age 82. Cohen, it seems, accept­ed it, just as David Bowie accept­ed his death, and both poured their accep­tance into one final record. Will we talk about You Want It Dark­er in the same awed tones as David Bowie’s Black­star—as a know­ing last let­ter of mixed hope and despair, a cryp­tic time cap­sule that opens a lit­tle bit more as the months ahead wear on?

If you are the deal­er, I’m out of the game

If you are the heal­er, it means I’m bro­ken and lame

If thine is the glo­ry then mine must be the shame

You want it dark­er

We kill the flame

.… I’m ready, my lord

No mat­ter what he had in mind, we can­not but see these lines now as a last tes­ta­ment. Cohen not only faced his own mor­tal­i­ty, but this year lost his long­time lover and muse Mar­i­anne Ihlen to can­cer. “I think I will fol­low you soon,” he wrote to her just before her death. “You Want It Dark­er” ties togeth­er the per­son­al, the polit­i­cal, the spir­i­tu­al, and the lit­er­ary in a prophet­ic lament, weav­ing his strug­gle into all of ours. There are no answers, but “There’s a lul­la­by for suf­fer­ing,” Cohen writes, then warns, “And a para­dox to blame.” The com­pres­sion of these lines belies a tremen­dous depth of reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal sen­ti­ment, the weight—it feels in Cohen’s last album—of the world.

But then this describes the music he made 30 years ago. And 50 years ago. “Cohen’s songs are death-haunt­ed,” writes David Rem­nick, “but then they have been since his ear­li­est vers­es.” He released his first album in 1967, fol­lowed two years lat­er by Songs from a Room, the hal­lowed doc­u­ment of some of his best-loved songs: “Bird on the Wire,” “Sto­ry of Isaac,” “Tonight Will Be Fine,” and “The Par­ti­san.” Cohen did not write that last one, and yet, though he “is often incor­rect­ly cred­it­ed as the com­pos­er of the song,” writes Alex Young at Con­se­quence of Sound, “he is cer­tain­ly respon­si­ble for its sur­vival.”

Cohen uni­ver­sal­izes the orig­i­nal French ver­sion; “the Eng­lish lyrics con­tain no ref­er­ences to France or the Nazi occu­pa­tion.” It spoke direct­ly to the bro­ken par­ti­sans in both France and the U.S. post-1968, a year very much like this one, wracked with vio­lence, upheaval, tragedy, and resis­tance. Few song­writ­ers have been able to con­sis­tent­ly address the irra­tional pas­sion, vio­lence, and almost crush­ing deter­mi­na­tion of so much human expe­ri­ence with as much wis­dom as Cohen, even if he down­played what Rem­nick calls “the mys­ter­ies of cre­ation” in his work, telling the New York­er edi­tor in one of his final inter­views last month, “I have no idea what I am doing.”

Yet, almost no song­writer has inspired so much vol­u­bil­i­ty from Bob Dylan, who spoke to Rem­nick at length about the fine intri­ca­cies of Cohen’s “coun­ter­point lines.” “His gift or genius,” said Dylan, “is in his con­nec­tion to the music of the spheres.” Cohen’s lyri­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion chart­ed his het­ero­dox embrace of Judaism and Zen Bud­dhism, and his fas­ci­na­tion with Chris­tian­i­ty. But before he arrived in New York as a “musi­cal novice” at thir­ty-two and became a mys­ti­cal folk trou­ba­dour, he was a high­ly-regard­ed and con­tro­ver­sial poet and nov­el­ist, a “bohemi­an with a cush­ion” from a Mon­tre­al Jew­ish fam­i­ly “both promi­nent and cul­ti­vat­ed.” He even had a doc­u­men­tary about him made in 1965.

Cohen began pub­lish­ing poet­ry in col­lege and put out his first col­lec­tion at 22, then moved to the Greek island of Hydra, where he met Mar­i­anne and pub­lished sev­er­al more col­lec­tions and two nov­els. Lat­er while liv­ing in Lon­don, he wrote to his pub­lish­er about his desire to write for “inner-direct­ed ado­les­cents, lovers in all degree of anguish, dis­ap­point­ed Pla­ton­ists, pornog­ra­phy-peep­ers, hair-hand­ed monks and Popists.” (His one­time lover Joni Mitchell dis­missed him as a “boudoir poet.”) Cohen more than achieved this aim as a song­writer, doing as much, per­haps, as Nico—whom he once pined for and maybe part­ly imitated—to inspire 80s Goths and New Roman­tics.

The dark eroti­cism in his work did not recede when, “frus­trat­ed by poor book sales,” writes Rolling Stone, “Cohen vis­it­ed New York in 1966 to inves­ti­gate the city’s robust folk-rock scene.” There, under the encour­age­ment of Judy Collins, he “quick­ly became the songwriter’s song­writer of choice for artists like Collins, James Tay­lor, Willie Nel­son and many oth­ers.” His first hit, “Suzanne,” above, vivid­ly imag­ines Renais­sance love scenes and echoes with the refrain “her per­fect body,” while also imbu­ing its fleet­ing moments with the depth of sad­ness Cohen’s spa­cious bari­tone con­tained. Lat­er albums like the Phil Spec­tor-pro­duced (and unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly loud) Death of a Ladies’ Man treat with sneer­ing irony his “unbri­dled sex­u­al­i­ty and bru­tal voyeurism.”

Cohen looked unflinch­ing­ly and with monk­ish inten­si­ty at his own excess­es and weak­ness, and at ours, and saw them, trag­ic and beau­ti­ful, as our only strengths. “There is a crack in every­thing,” he sang in 1992’s “Anthem”—live in Lon­don below—“that’s how the light gets in.” No trib­ute can leave out his most beloved and most cov­ered song—one of the most cov­ered and beloved songs ever writ­ten— “Hal­lelu­jah.” From its best-known Jeff Buck­ley ver­sion in 1994 to Rufus Wain­wright’s and count­less oth­ers, the song instant­ly con­jures grav­i­tas and stirs deep wells of emo­tion in the sec­u­lar and reli­gious alike. First released in 1984 on Cohen’s album Var­i­ous Posi­tions, it attract­ed lit­tle atten­tion at first.

His ver­sion lacks the high gospel dra­ma of many inter­pre­ta­tions, despite the back­ing gospel choir, but his lop­ing bar­room deliv­ery and lounge-pop back­ing music work in hyp­not­ic dis­so­nance. It’s a song that took him five years to write. (Mal­colm Glad­well has a whole pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to the writ­ing of the song.) “He draft­ed dozens of vers­es,” writes Rem­nick, around 80, “and then it was years before he set­tled on a final ver­sion.” Dylan per­formed the song in the late eight­ies, “as a roughshod blues.” In con­ver­sa­tion with Rem­nick, Dylan paused his very detached eval­u­a­tion of Cohen’s tech­ni­cal genius to remark it’s “the point-blank I‑know-you-bet­ter-than-you-know-your­self aspect of the song [that] has plen­ty of res­o­nance for me.” I think we’ll find that to be true of Leonard Cohen the more we unpack his aus­tere, sen­su­al, pro­found­ly lyri­cal-in-the-most-ancient-of-ways body of work.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mal­colm Glad­well on Why Genius Takes Time: A Look at the Mak­ing of Elvis Costello’s “Depor­tee” & Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Leonard Cohen Recounts “How I Got My Song,” or When His Love Affair with Music Began

The Poet­ry of Leonard Cohen Illus­trat­ed by Two Short Films

Rufus Wain­wright and 1,500 Singers Sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Leonard Cohen Reads The Great World War I Poem, “In Flan­ders Fields”

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

Artists in tur­bu­lent times often must resort to extreme mea­sures to com­pen­sate for the gen­er­al state of cul­tur­al dis­or­der. How can one be heard over the sounds of civ­il unrest? Dada and sur­re­al­ist artists adopt­ed an arch­ly gib­ber­ish music hall idiom dur­ing World War I. Amidst the tumult of the 60s, some avant-gardists like Frank Zap­pa used more pop­ulist means, an osten­si­bly rock and roll for­mat and image, as a vehi­cle for his influ­en­tial clas­si­cal-prog-jazz.

Like the first Dadaists, how­ev­er, Zap­pa was a phys­i­cal artist. He start­ed small in the ear­ly six­ties, if you can call an appear­ance on the Steve Allen Show small. The act cer­tain­ly seems so at first. A young Zap­pa, clean-shaven with a well-tai­lored suit and dap­per hair­cut, appears solo on Allen’s show. He’s tac­i­turn at first dur­ing the inter­view, admit­ting that he can play gui­tar, vibes, bass, and drums. He has cho­sen, how­ev­er, to help the audi­ence recov­er what he sug­gests is a child­hood delight, play­ing the bicy­cle. “How long have you been play­ing bike, Frank?” Allen asks. “About two weeks,” says Zap­pa, get­ting his first big laugh.

Zap­pa also talks about an ear­ly, pre-Moth­ers of Inven­tion project, scor­ing the 1962 film The World’s Great­est Sin­ner, which he calls “the world’s worst movie.” The film, it turned out, didn’t air until 50 years lat­er (Mar­tin Scors­ese names it as a favorite). But the men­tion gives Zap­pa a chance to show off how much he knows about com­pos­ing for a 55-piece orches­tra. Allen seems unim­pressed, and remains so when Zap­pa begins his per­for­mance art. Then the gag strays into a Sal­vador Dali spoof via a John Cage per­for­mance, with Zap­pa as the weird, debonair straight man to Allen’s mouthy com­ic.

Zap­pa plays both the right-side-up and the upside-down bike, which involve dif­fer­ent tech­niques. Though it all, he keeps up the pat­ter of a sea­soned show­man, the direct­ness of a deter­mined band­leader, and a straight face. And per­haps that’s real­ly what’s on dis­play here—not the bicy­cle as a musi­cal instru­ment, but the phys­i­cal act of play­ing and con­duct­ing, using pre­cise move­ments and sequences to elic­it spe­cif­ic effects. For all the humor, there’s no rea­son not to think Zap­pa isn’t com­plete­ly seri­ous about all of this, as it expands into the kind of orga­nized chaos only he could so mas­ter­ly orches­trate.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zappa’s Exper­i­men­tal Adver­tise­ments For Luden’s Cough Drops, Rem­ing­ton Razors & Port­land Gen­er­al Elec­tric

The Bizarre Time When Frank Zappa’s Entire­ly Instru­men­tal Album Received an “Explic­it Lyrics” Stick­er

Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of Frank Zap­pa in 401 Songs

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