Professor of Rock

Coming up, one of the funniest interviews I’ve been involved with and it’s one of the last full-length interviews this famous rocker ever gave and it’s entertaining as hell! His name is Eddie Money and today he tells the story of both a 70s rock classic Two Tickets to Paradise and his big comeback song of the 80s Take Me Home Tonight. He was a poor kid from the other side of the tracks dating a ri...

Just call him smooth… The familiar voice of Billy Ocean took the 80s by storm with 8 Top 10 hits in just a few years, including three #1s and two #2s. And you know all of them by heart. There are also some surprising stories around these songs including Caribbean Queen that was recorded under three different names for three different continents. Another, Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car that w...

1981 was a wild ride for music, bursting with fresh sounds and unexpected hits. Some of the year's best songs came together through Mistakes, mysterious women, and a little bit of chaos. Jessie's Girl was written about another guy’s girlfriend…and when it hit #1 they tried to track the mystery girl down…45 years later they still haven’t found her find out why… another classic Steve Winwood hit was...

Huey Lewis and the News came out of nowhere in the eighties to take over radio… fact is Huey paid his dues for almost a decade and had a failed band and record deal before he finally made it with his first hit at 33 year of age. But Huey stole the spotlight in the most completive year in music. and the song that put them over the top for good was one the singer wrote in mere minutes: I Want a New...

Bass players don’t always get the credit they deserve when it comes to hit songs. A lot of it comes down to their role—laying down the foundation of the track in a lower frequency range that isn’t always front and center. To the casual listener, the bass can feel like it’s just hanging out in the background while the melody and vocals steal the spotlight. But the truth is, a killer bass line is wh...

Coming up, a band that took over radio with 6 hits in the late 70s. Soft rock kings…Firefall. They ruled radio with You Are the Woman and Just Remember I Love You and then up and disappeared in the 80s. These are classic hits we still listen to today and they were written and sung by a master of am gold, Rick Roberts…. I’ve wondered for the longest time what happened to Firefall and Rick so I trac...

Today’s band Survivor was flying high in the early 80s they’d just scored their first #1 hit Eye of the Tiger. In fact, it was one of the biggest hits of the year and they were ready for more but when their next album flopped and their lead singer lost his voice, many wondered if this band would survive… After auditioning many singers they found the perfect frontman Jimi Jamison, which led to seve...

We all have those songs—the ones we blast in the car but quickly turn down when we come to a stoplight. You know what I’m talking about, songs we pretend not to know every word to… We often call them guilty pleasures. Tracks that are just SO UNCOOL…So we listen to them in secret when we think no one else is around…Today, we’re coming clean in the ultimate musical confession booth and counting five...

Coming up…. we tackle the challenge of ranking the top 10 songs from yet another legendary year in music. This list is jam-packed with unforgettable tracks, including a Bee Gees song inspired by the road noise of tires on a bridge that unlocked a legendary falsetto 10 years into a legendary career… another by Sweet was born from the band’s chaotic escape from a bottle-throwing crowd, another from...

Coming up next, a song by Joe Jackson called Steppin' Out. It is so haunting, fascinating, and unique, that it rose above the regular rock and pop fair of one of the greatest years in music… I mean this song was unlike anything on radio or MTV at the time then and now. This song sounds out of place in any decade and that’s a great thing... Joe was absolutely on a higher musical vibration at his pe...

Coming up, we’re breaking down seminal vocal performances that defined the ‘80s. One where John Bon Jovi hit such a high note, that he would never be able to perform it in the same key live ever again with Living on a Prayer.. and then Steve Perry when he was in Journey was so overwhelmed by the song Mother Father's realism, he barely made it through the recording. and Total Eclipse of the Heart,...

Coming up an interview with a band that was a major force in the 80s and 90s and you may have wondered whatever happened to them? I’m talking about 10,000 Maniacs... Well, they’re here today to tell us their story. they were an underground band for years but just when they started breaking through their lead singer Natalie Merchant told them she was quitting to pursue a solo career but she would d...

In the 80s Def Leppard, AC DC, Bon Jovi, Poison, Motley Crue, Guns N Roses, and Whitesnake ruled rock radio. But we have lead singer Stephen Pearcy in our midst today whose band RATT was right there with them, selling 5 million albums out of nowhere! Fueled by a true classic Round and Round due to a renaissance in pop culture might be more popular now than it was in its heyday. Next Stephen tells...

Today we’re sharing the cold hard facts on the velvet-voiced soft rocker Paul Davis, a guy who looked like your next-door neighbor and ordinary average guy... but who was extraordinary for a time when his classic 1978 hit I Go Crazy spent a record 40 weeks in the charts… In fact, he had 8 hits. But after his biggest-selling record in the early 80s, he wanted nothing to do with recording. It was so...

1988 was an absolute goldmine for music—an era of massive hits, legendary albums, and songs that still give us chills. Looking back, it’s wild how many classics came out of that year! From soaring rock anthems to unforgettable pop gems, these tracks captured everything—passion, joy, romance, seduction, escapism, and pure musical magic including a song by Def Leppard with so many guitar parts it wa...

Today’s song Vienna by Ultravox has been voted the greatest bridesmaid song in history. The Greatest #2 ever. Sadly it was kept out of the #1 spot by one of the worst songs ever. It was a novelty song that annoyed everyone all the way to the top of the charts. But today we have Midge Ure the singer and writer of the classic #2 song with us to tell the story. Vienna also has a badass viola solo in...

Coming up… we’re counting down 5 massive hits from the Rock Era that were once everywhere but have since become socially unacceptable. These songs topped the charts, ruled the airwaves, and seemed untouchable—until shifting times and cultural scrutiny pushed them into taboo territory. Some artists refuse to play them, others have tried to rewrite history, and a few have vanished from pop culture....

Today’s band Foreigner was a revelation in the '70s and '80s. A British band with an American singer, they set the FM radio dial on fire with half a dozen smash hits over their first few albums getting as close as you could get to #1 but they were always the bridesmaid. Actually, they created the biggest #2 hit in history, sitting at the runner-up spot for a record 10 weeks. Then in 1984 into 1985...

Coming up next, the most requested band of the last year… April Wine. I’ve received over a thousand requests in our comment section for the last year to interview or cover this band. Well, I actually interviewed their guitarist Brian Greenway over a year ago, but the Zoom interview didn’t work. The file wouldn’t open. Well, the other night I tracked it down again and was finally able to make it wo...

We’ve all been there—watching a movie we thought was amazing, only to find out that someone else absolutely hated it. Or going to a restaurant a friend swore by, only to think it was terrible. You’ve probably said to yourself, “I’m never listening to that guy again!” Well, music works the same way. You might totally vibe with a song that someone else can’t stand. It’s all so subjective, and that’s...

Today we’re telling the story of Cheap Trick, a band who may have invented the phrase “Big in Japan.” These guys really struggled to get off the ground and were flirting with disaster when they discovered they were revered as rock royalty halfway around the world. Capitalizing on this good fortune, things really blew up when they recorded their live album Cheap Trick at Budokan which wasn’t meant...

Many called Bonnie Raitt an overnight success when she swept the Grammys in 1989… but today’s guitar-toting songstress was actually two decades and ten studio albums in the making. Without a doubt, it was a long, hard road to get there. Dropped by her label, written off by critics, and getting loaded after every show, it seemed like Bonnie's career was over. But Raitt’s comeback was oh so sweet wh...

Coming up, we're celebrating 10 songs from one of the greatest years in music, 1973. It was a year when we were gifted with songs that rejuvenated our souls like few others. There were iconic guitar riffs and solos that were considered the best of the Rock Era... including a song called D’yer Mak’er that was so hard to say DJ’s and fans still mispronounce it 50 years later even though it’s played...

Coming up next an interview with a true legend… Smokey Robinson. I’ve been wanting to talk to him for a long time because he has one the greatest voices of any era, not to mention he's one of the greatest lyricists and producers…and he has some legendary stories behind today’s songs… one he started singing in the middle of a concert as his group was ending a song, he got caught up in the moment an...

Coming up, it’s the most played song by an Australian act and if you took 100 guesses you get it wrong. It’s not a song from Men At Work or AC/DC or INXS, it’s by Little River Band that had many hits in the 70s and 80s on the American charts, but "Reminiscing" was their biggest... It went to #3 and since then it’s been played over 6 million times on American radio and the song was almost thrown aw...