Episodes
Music icon Paul Anka and business visionary Skip Bronson are dear friends, and together they boast two of the greatest Rolodexes in Hollywood. Now they're inviting their famous friends to sit down for intimate chats about their lives and work. You'll get to know icons of film, music, television, sports and technology in a whole new way. Listen to Our way with Paul Anka and Skip Bronson on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen here and subscribe to Our Way with Paul...
Published 02/07/24
In the summer of 1972, the Rolling Stones swept across an America still smoldering from the tumult of the ‘60s, bringing their gritty masterpiece Exile on Main St. to the masses. Rolling Stone magazine journalist Robert Greenfield was along for the ride, writing the seminal rock book STP (Stones Touring Party) — culled from weeks on the road and more than 60 hours of interviews with the band and their entourage. Now, for the first time, Greenfield and fellow STP vet Gary Stromberg share that...
Published 08/02/23
'Too Much Information' is a new iHeartRadio podcast that gives you the secret history, behind-the-scenes details and little-known fascinating facts about your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. The series is brought to you by two trivia titans with too much free time. Jordan Runtagh and Alex Heigl are big-time pop culture nerds and longtime listicle writers who've worked at Rolling Stone, People, Entertainment Weekly, VH1, and Page Six. Now they're let off the leash and ready to dive...
Published 04/26/22
The series premiere of 'Off the Record' explores the life — or, rather, lives — of David Bowie by examining each of his iconic personas. Major Tom. Ziggy Stardust. Aladdin Sane. The Thin White Duke. Taken collectively, these faces form a portrait of a one-of-a-kind rock legend. Follow his transformation from lonely London boy struggling to find his way in the Swinging Sixties to cultural innovator, whose relentless drive and daring nearly destroyed him. You know the songs, now meet the man....
Published 02/02/21
Published 02/02/21
Elvis Presley was the man to beat when Jerry Lee Lewis made the drive from small-town Louisiana to Memphis in 1956. The piano punisher had come for the King of Rock’s crown and was determined to show him up at every turn. Jerry Lee scored a deal on Elvis’ onetime label, employed the same management, and even some of the same songwriters. The pair duked it out in the charts in the late ‘50s, but the image conscious Elvis remained a much bigger crossover star than Jerry Lee, who relished his...
Published 01/27/21
Our series on The Eagles concludes with a look at the business dealings and lawsuits that took place behind the scenes and the man who helped to shape their early career, David Geffen. A Brooklyn kid whose mother called him King David, Geffen moved to L.A. in the sixties and swiftly became a mover and shaker. By the time he met The Eagles, he was a kingmaker in the local rock scene. But as The Eagles themselves became kings, their relationship with Geffen soured, setting the stage for...
Published 01/20/21
Our special series on The Eagles continues with their post-"Hotel California" years, in which the band was more popular than ever, selling one million albums per month while also falling apart. There was tension between the band's twin leaders, Don Henley and Glenn Frey, who fought for control of The Eagles. But most of the ire was focused around Don Felder, the talented guitarist who wrote the music for the song "Hotel California." This carried over to the band's reunion years in the 1990s,...
Published 01/13/21
Welcome to our epic three-part series on all of the beefs, feuds, and simmering resentments that occurred inside one of the most successful bands in history, The Eagles. In part one, we cover the band's early years, which included multiple battles inside the band and out. First, there was the feud with Glyn Johns, the super producer known for working with the best British bands of the era who resisted Glenn Frey's urge to rock. Then there was Bernie Leadon, the genius instrumentalist who...
Published 01/06/21
Back in the late 1980s, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E were members of N.W.A., one of the most important and iconic hip-hop groups ever. But in the wake of their historic 1988 album Straight Outta Compton, the two fell out over business disagreements. Once Dre went solo, he proceeded to rip Eazy apart on diss tracks prominently featured on his blockbuster LP The Chronic, forever fixing Eazy in the eyes of millions of pop fans as the clownish "Sleazy-E." A few years after that, however, Eazy tragically...
Published 12/30/20
This is an especially personal one for Steve — back when he was a Britpop-loving teen in the nineties, this was one of the first rock rivalries that he cared about. Which is odd, because in America, nobody really cared about Oasis vs. Blur the way people did in England, where they were the two biggest bands in the land. Blur were the knowing chroniclers of posh British society, and Oasis was the scrappy pub-rock band of the working class. While Blur was actually supportive of Oasis early on,...
Published 12/23/20
Before there was Megadeth, Dave Mustaine was the guitarist in a promising San Francisco thrash metal band called Metallica. And then he was fired for being an obnoxious drunk, a slight compounded by the fact that all the other members of Metallica were also obnoxious drunks. From then on, Mustaine was obsessed with getting his revenge, and he formed Megadeth with the purpose of dethroning Metallica from the top of the thrash metal heap. Alas, it proved difficult to compete with the most...
Published 12/16/20
Two burgeoning musical geniuses came together in the mid-60s to form the Velvet Underground, a group that expanded the definition of what a rock band could be. Lou Reed’s literary ambitions led him to craft lyrics steeped in the gritty language of the streets, while John Cale called upon his background in the avant garde music scene of downtown Manhattan. Their unique talents coalesced on tracks like “Venus in Furs,” “Sister Ray,” and “Heroin,” groundbreaking songs that laid the groundwork...
Published 12/09/20
In the 1980s, the biggest rock band in the world was The Police. While all three members were blonde and good-looking, they were hardly a conventional success story. The Police was a supposed punk band composed of a prog-rock drummer, a jazzy bassist, and a guitarist who was pushing 40. But their unique chemistry (as well as Sting's trove of catchy pop songs) made them among the first acts to really break out during the MTV era. As they gained in popularity, however, they also grew to despise...
Published 12/02/20
In the mid-'90s, no two rock stars struck more fear into the hearts of parents than Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson. These toxic twins started out having a teacher-student dynamic, with Reznor guiding Manson musically to stardom. But Manson's shock-rock antics soon overshadowed his mentor, who was hard at work for years trying to finish his masterwork "The Fragile." In time, Reznor would come to see Manson as a "dopey clown" while Manson seethed about Reznor literally losing the master...
Published 11/25/20
For ‘80s babies, Britney and Christina represent the ultimate fan face-off. Originally friends and co-stars on The Mickey Mouse Club reboot in the early ‘90s, by the decade’s end they were pitted against one another in the press and in the charts. On the surface, the comparisons were obvious. They were two blonde, ex-Disney stars turned pop upstarts, barnstorming Billboard with suggestive ear-candy like “…Baby One More Time” and “Genie in a Bottle.” But a close listen to their discographies...
Published 11/18/20
If you were an alienated teenager in the 1980s — or an alienated teenager during any era who loves the music of the 1980s — then you have probably spent a lot of time listening to The Smiths and The Cure. But the lead singers of those bands, Morrissey and Robert Smith, hated listening to each other. Starting with an interview in 1984 in which Morrisey expressed his desire to shoot Smith, the rivalry between these two mope-rock kings has been vicious and often extremely hilarious. When it...
Published 11/11/20
Our special two-part series on the battles between Van Halen and their two most famous singers concludes with this exploration of the Van Hagar years. Before he joined Van Halen, Sammy Hagar was a journeyman rock howler with a love of fast cars and mind-controlling aliens. In retrospect, most fans prefer the Roth years, but Hagar was at the head of four consecutive no. 1 albums for Van Halen in the late 1980s and early '90s. And he had a true friendship with Eddie Van Halen, until various...
Published 11/04/20
In tribute to the late Eddie Van Halen, we’re devoting a pair of episodes to the two distinct eras of his namesake band. The first installment explores the guitar virtuoso’s relationship with the group’s original frontman, a karate kicking, spandex wearing, hyperactive rock ’n’ roll peacock named David Lee Roth. More a musical marriage of convenience than genuine friendship, the sparks between the pair both onstage and in the studio helped make Van Halen the biggest band in the world. But...
Published 10/28/20
In the early '90s, no couple in rock was more notorious than Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. The tabloid circus that followed them wearied Cobain's bandmates in Nirvana, and that tension only grew worse after Cobain's untimely death in 1994. For the next 20 years, Courtney and Nirvana's former drummer and current Foo Fighter, Dave Grohl, engaged in a war of words in songs and Howard Stern interviews. In the process, cultural institutions like Guitar Hero and The Muppets were dragged into the...
Published 10/21/20
Marvin Gaye's 1971 masterpiece What's Going On was recently voted by Rolling Stone magazine the greatest album of all time. But one person who was not a fan of that record initially was the head of Gaye's label, Berry Gordy, the visionary founder of Motown. Gordy believed that alienating white audiences and deviating from a proven pop-R&B formula was commercial poison. But even before What's Going On, Gaye and Gordy were at odds, playing out a twisted father-son dynamic that Gaye...
Published 10/14/20
Joy Division and New Order are two of the greatest and most important post-punk bands of all time, and at the center of those groups are two men: Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook. For years, they had a fruitful partnership: Sumner was the quiet and introspective one, and Hook was the gregarious rocker. But as the '80s unfolded, and New Order became one of the era's top indie pop groups, their relationship started to break down from clashes over the artistic direction of the band and their...
Published 10/07/20
Eric Clapton had earned a reputation as “God” in the mid-‘60s for his virtousic guitar work in R&B-inspired British bands like the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Then an unknown American named Jimi Hendrix hit London in 1966 and changed the game entirely. Hendrix’s unparalleled playing and explosive style forged a new genre and redefined what it meant to be a guitarist — and sent the British boys back to the woodshed. Clapton’s status as London’s top axe-man had been...
Published 09/30/20
Whitney Houston ruled the pop world in the late '80s with a string of infectious hits that included seven consecutive number ones. But when Mariah Carey burst onto the scene at the start of the new decade, America's Sweetheart turned bitter and famously shaded the newcomer in a series of interviews. The vocal powerhouses spent much of the '90s duking it out on the charts, breaking records with their multi-octave ranges. Though they publicly buried the hatchet with a high profile duet, their...
Published 09/23/20
The final part of our epic trilogy exploring the rivalries within CSNY examines the arrival of Neil Young, whose introduction to the highly-combustible supergroup made the band all the more explosive. Initially hired by his ex-Buffalo Springfield rival Stephen Stills as a sideman for CSN’s live performances, Young earned a full partnership in the group. He ultimately became the most influential member through a mix of sheer talent and masterful passive aggressive manipulation. While CSN...
Published 09/16/20