She scored her first hit, “Society’s Child” in 1966. An earnest plea for the acceptance of interracial relationships that cleverly ends with the protagonist copping out and telling her steady to hit the road, Janis Ian was 15 when it was released; by 1975 she was an industry vet who knew a lot about the road, the studio, and her mind.  Producer Brooks Arthur had also carved out a place for himself in the history of pop music by that time, through his engineering work on a string of number one singles that stretched back to The Angels’, “My Boyfriend’s Back” and The McCoys’ trash rock hit, “Hang On Sloopy.”

Ah, to be a rock icon of the 1960’s, standing astride the lower world-peopled by ordinary folks like the kids who glom onto your creations-and the higher realm, where the gods who tapped you to lead lost youth into the promised land hang out. Tempted, many a rock musician fell into the snares of narcissism and hubris.  John Kay’s early experiences, however, helped him maneuver around these traps.

The Brill Building, 1619 Broadway, New York, New York, circa 1962. Under the glass, that one spot reveals more about the history of pop rock than almost any other place on the globe. 

Heir to the fabled Tin Pan Alley that spawned Berlin and the Gershwins, the still standing Brill Building was the home of a crew of young songwriters, singers, and at least one producer, Don Kirshner, who would change the face of popular culture. One of them was a fresh faced kid from Brooklyn with a glossy tenor, a clever harmonic sense, and tons of ambition.

So you wanna be a rock ‘n roll star, and your rapidly ascending single is providing a foothold that may allow you to ascend to a lofty peak. But its clever lyric and hooks aren’t enough to get you all the way up the mountain. Through force of personality, brilliance, or the simple ability to reveal a distinct aspect of the common culture, the premiere acts give us more: characters that hop off the delivery medium and become a part of our lives.

When Luther Vandross succumbed several months ago to the effects of a stroke he suffered in 2003, the world lost a great singer, a tireless self promoter with a razor keen vision of his place in the pantheon, and a top tier tunesmith.  Those who worked with Luther remember a perfectionist who would coax, cajole and demand the best out of others, and himself.

Daryl Hall is a man with clear beliefs. “We’re all products of our genes, our history, the region we grew up in, and our influences. These things, in my opinion, determine how an individual responds to the great muse in the sky. Everyone’s an original, you can’t generalize about groups.” But wait— isn’t there a difference in the way Ben E. King and the Kingston Trio phrase that can be traced to the divide, geographic and cultural, that separates Western European countries and Africa?

Let’s check out the formula.  You grow up loving literature, pick up the guitar in college, and then, while you and your young wife-who you adore-are looking after the baby, noodle around until you find a melody, its lyric, and the simple chord changes that will turn your work into a monster hit that continues to attract listeners thirty years after its release.  

In this Amy Winehouse, post Kurt Cobain era it may be hard to imagine a day when doing drugs was not yet de rigueur.  Back in the mid to late 1960’s, however, hallucinogens were just beginning their tiptoe march towards the broader youth culture. While many kids-and more than a few older initiates-slapped on a cooler than thou front, it often masked an understandable fear of the unknown.  

Slickered up and properly packaged, the current crop of country music stars lack-some say-the root experiences that informed the work of George Jones, Waylon Jennings, and the cadre of comrades who defined C+W in the middle years of the 20th century. Even among this earlier crew, however, Merle Haggard stands on separate ground.  

In the late 1960's every corner of the pop music playing field was covered. On any given day, an AM station might send out a bit of confection like The Archies “Sugar, Sugar,” follow it with The Fifth Dimension's version of “The Age of Aquarius,” from the Broadway show Hair, and end the set with some greasy funk, maybe James Brown's “Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud).” Somehow, it all worked.

He remains one of rock’s most enigmatic figures, and today, nearly 35 years since the recording of “Moondance,” Van Morrison’s fans know little about him. Ironically, tracing the recording history of “Moondance,” the title track of the album that bore the same name--also turns out to be something of a mystery.

There’s this: “Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Oh, where have you been, my darling young one? I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains, I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways, I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests, I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans, I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard, And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard, And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.”

If you happened to take a course on the art of songwriting given recently at the Songwriting Institute of Los Angeles and were not aware that the slightly bemused middle aged fellow sitting in your midst was in fact a highly decorated recording artist who secured his place in the pop pantheon with a string of hits in the late 1970’s, your oversight is understandable and excused. Stephen Bishop simply felt the desire to brush up his technique, and hits like “Separate Lives,” “Save It For a Rainy Day,” and this month’s Classic Track, “On and On,” haven’t separated him from the desire to develop as an artist.

There was something audacious about it: a group from Scotland calling itself The Average White Band: if the funk don't fly, the honky jokes surely will. But these guys had clearly absorbed the oeuvre of James Brown, the Stax roster and the essence of American R&B. Play they could.

Folk singers wouldn’t throw in the towel. The Brits were here. Blues masters tossed jagged contrapuntal lines into a densely textured pop symphony. Back in 1966, young musicians like Tom Dawes and Dan Dannemann had many influences to draw upon.  For a while, the two contributed to a kaleidoscopic culture with a vantage point few shared. Along with drummer Marty Fried and keyboardist Earl Pickens, they were the Cyrkle, a group that recorded a pair of hits, “Red Rubber Ball” and “Turn Down Day” and spent a season in the sun with The Beatles.

Max Steiner...what a talented little dude he was. A whiz kid, Steiner trained at the prestigious Vienna Conservatory, at a time when the influence of Brahms was all over the German landscape. It’s safe to assume that Steiner had his counterpoint and orchestration chops together before he left Vienna and arrived in the USA while still in his early 20’s.

It was a life cut tragically short and a song that eerily captured the meteoric rise and brevity of its author’s career. “Time In a Bottle,” reached the top slot on the pop charts in December, 1973 but this posthumously released single was not Jim Croce’s only number one record, as his producers Tommy West and Terry Cashman vividly recall.

The idea seems so anachronistic-a record label with its own house band. Back in the 60’s though, the majors weren’t simply offices populated by executives. The best- Motown, Atlantic Records, Stax-Volt Records-were thriving art communities, with distinct personalities forged in large part by the stable of musicians who created the arrangements and rhythm tracks that helped define the sides they released.  

Cover band mates cum pop stars. As old as rock itself, this dream, born from endless hours spent wood shedding hits of the day, can come true, and in the late 1960’s it did, for a club band from Florida called the Classics IV.  Featuring Dennis Yost’s throaty baritone and a tight rhythm section that consisted of the group’s original guitar player, J.R. Cobb, and session players from Atlanta, the Classics IV scored three major hits, Spooky, Stormy, and this month’s classic track, “Traces.”

Bach, Beethoven-those guys will edge them out over the long haul, but will any musician ever have a more explosive short term impact on the world than the Beatles did during their great run that ended with the release of Abbey Road in 1969? After the super group super splintered and each band member was left to his own devices, it came as no surprise that Paul-whose cherubic smile masked a flinty resolve was first out of the gate.  McCartney, released in 1970, yielded the hit “Maybe I’m Amazed” and remained on the charts for nearly a year.