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

She’s worked with Stan­ley Kubrick *and* “Weird Al” Yankovic, and helped Robert Moog in the devel­op­ment of his epony­mous syn­the­siz­er. Wendy Car­los is also one of the first high pro­file trans­gen­der artists–credited as Wal­ter Car­los for Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange but hav­ing tran­si­tioned to Wendy by the time of The Shin­ing, in which only a few of her pieces were used.

In this brief clip from a 1989 BBC episode of Hori­zon, Car­los, accom­pa­nied by her two cats, explains how she uses ana­log synths to cre­ate elec­tron­ic fac­sim­i­les of real instruments–in this case cre­at­ing an approx­i­ma­tion of a xylo­phone, sculpt­ing a sine wave until it sounds like a mal­let on wood.

The seg­ment also shows Car­los oper­at­ing one of the orig­i­nal Moog synths, about the size of a fridge and look­ing like an old tele­phone switch­board with a key­board attached. By plug­ging and unplug­ging a series of cables, she demon­strates, the sine wave is decon­struct­ed from its orig­i­nal “pure” but harsh sound. Lat­er ana­log synths were addi­tive, not sub­trac­tive, she explains. (It’s one of the few times I’ve seen old tech explained so well and so quick­ly.)

Along with work­ing with Bob Moog, Car­los stud­ied at Colum­bia-Prince­ton Elec­tron­ic Music Cen­ter along­side two pio­neers of ear­ly elec­tron­ic music: Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luen­ing, both of whom would make very chal­leng­ing com­po­si­tions and musique con­crete.

But Wendy chose both the clas­si­cal and pop­u­lar path, cre­at­ing the Switched on Bach series that fea­tured 18th cen­tu­ry music played on the Moog synth and oth­ers. It would lead her to Kubrick and A Clock­work Orange’s idio­syn­crat­ic score and even more suc­cess. Apart from her score for Disney’s Tron, now very much beloved by fans, Car­los turned to more per­son­al, sound­scape work lat­er. And in 2005, if you can find a copy, she put out a mul­ti­ple-CD set of all her sound­track work that Kubrick nev­er used for The Shin­ing and oth­ers.

The descrip­tion of the entire Hori­zon episode has a tech­nofear theme: “In Paris, Xavier Rodet has taught a com­put­er to sing Mozart; in Green­wich Vil­lage, Wendy Car­los syn­the­sis­es a clas­si­cal con­cer­to from elec­tron­ic tones…In Aus­tralia, Man­fred Clynes reck­ons he has dis­cov­ered a uni­ver­sal human lan­guage of emo­tion. To prove it he cre­ates feel­ings on tape. What’s left for human per­form­ers to con­tribute?”

This pro­gram was at least a decade after the first sam­pling key­board, so the anx­i­ety is either late or over­hyped. But it also sounds famil­iar to our cur­rent con­cerns over AI (as seen in these very web pages!). Synths nev­er replaced human instru­ments, but it did cre­ate more synth play­ers. AI won’t replace human deci­sion mak­ing (prob­a­bly), but it will cer­tain­ly cre­ate more AI pro­gram­mers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Glenn Gould Sing the Praise of the Moog Syn­the­siz­er and Wendy Car­los’ Switched-On Bach, the “Record of the Decade” (1968)

Wendy Car­los’ Switched on Bach Turns 50 This Month: Learn How the Clas­si­cal Synth Record Intro­duced the World to the Moog

The Scores That Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Wendy Car­los Com­posed for Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

What the Future Sound­ed Like: Doc­u­men­tary Tells the For­got­ten 1960s His­to­ry of Britain’s Avant-Garde Elec­tron­ic Musi­cians

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 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