Professor of Rock

Wow! Where Do I even start with this one? The Police's Blockbuster record Synchronicity DEFINED IT’S TIME AS MUCH AS any album could with 4 huge hits… including Every Breath You Take, a song that has become the most-played in the history of recorded music. But all in all Synchronicity is pretty dark. In fact, its main themes are obsession, surveillance, control, murder, jealousy, revenge, and owne...

Coming up, the story behind Ac/DC's Big Balls, a song with a dual meaning that makes the puritans blush, and even the most uptight fuddy daddy truly fall on the floor laughing! It was written by rock icon Bon Scott who was always the life of the party to his detriment. In a drunken daze, Bon turned his fascination with one of his body parts into a song meant as filler for an album, but Big Balls b...

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How many bands would give their right arm to hit the big time and have their song played everywhere? To tour the world and take their music to the masses? Well, Counting Crows did. Their singer Adam Duritz wrote a hit song called Mr. Jones about hitting the big time. And then when the very song he wrote pulverized radio and made them huge stars, Adam hated it. He detested Mr. Jones and at the peak...

17 seconds. That’s all anyone had to go off of. Just a few years back an anonymous user uploaded a clip of a mystery track from the 80s to a song discovery site. The audio was low quality, and the lyrics were hard to decipher. Some people claimed to have heard it before. But no one knew who sang it. And when pressed for more information the uploader refused to talk about it. But people had to know...

Coming up, the controversial song about female self-love… was written by a dude? Ha ha. It's I Touch Myself by the Divinyls. This story is almost too good to be true, and yet it is. I have an interview with a Hall of Fame songwriter Billy Steinberg who wrote 5 #1 hits with his songwriting partner Tom Kelly. And all five #1s were for female artists. All 5 songs were huge in the 80s, but at the end...

Oh man… today’s song Sara by Fleetwood Mac is epic. Clocking in at over 15 minutes long, the original version of this breathtaking song once had a total of sixteen verses. And even that might not have been enough to contain the true story its author Stevie Nicks intended. After all was said and done Sara was edited down to a radio-friendly four-plus minutes. It still alludes to more misadventure a...

Coming up… the story of two of the most enigmatic artists of the rock era, linked by the classic track Everybody's Talkin that wasn't fully appreciated until it became the theme song for a groundbreaking, provocative film—an X-rated film... Midnight Cowboy was a smash hit and won a Grammy. The original creator of Everybody's Talkin' Fred Neil was a cult hero who retreated from the spotlight, while...

No doubt about it. Heart is one of the defining acts of the rock era. And their catalog is filled with essential entries in the rock canon. Today, we’re telling the start-to-finish story of Heart who rose to prominence in the 70s, fell from grace in the early 80s, and then put together one of the greatest comebacks of the neon decade. And we’re doing it via five vital tracks that capture what they...

Coming up next, we've got Devo and a song that is not at all what it seems: Whip It. For over 40 years everyone has thought this all-time hit was "Dirty." It was such a catchy ditty it became a slogan of the 80s and it was one of the first major hits where the main riff was from a synthesizer from one of the funniest bands ever.. Whip It was actually pieces of three different songs that were all i...

Today's featured song Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas will have you kicking some serious butt while moving to the groove. A smash hit from the 70s, Kung Fu Fighting was inspired by a dance fight at a pinball arcade. As Carl Douglas watched what was taking place, the lyrics and melody started flowing into his head. However, the song wouldn’t resurface until later on. In the studio, Carl was record...

So I gotta ask… Is this the most tortured track of the 80s? I mean we’re talking about With or Without You by U2, a song that is physically painful to listen to. And really, that’s a good thing… This song is so agonizing, you can’t “not” listen to it. It pulls you in every time… Written at a crucial time in Bono's career, he was being pulled in two opposite directions at once… between his music an...

Coming up next... Tipsy from some serious ‘day-drinking,’ two members of one of England’s premier bands, The Hollies, composed a song about the Prohibition Era when alcohol was illegal. Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress was a rock epic that evolved into a mystery about a beautiful woman in a sexy dress. The Hollies purposely mimicked Elvis’s sound on the song using a vocal effect to give it some po...

Imagine a time when one man's voice was heard on about every other song on the radio. Dubbed "the man of a thousand voices," Tony Burrows holds the unique distinction of being the lead vocalist on FIVE hit songs from the 70s including Let's Go to San Francisco, My Baby Loves Lovin', and Beach Baby… In fact all five songs were one-hit wonders and four of them were on the singles chart at the same t...

Up next, a Hall of Fame Songwriter Billy Steinberg who wrote five #1 hits for Madonna, Whitney Houston, the band Heart and the Bangles tells the story of working with one of the Founding Fathers of Rock and Roll.., the great Roy Orbison. Roy has electrified everyone from Elvis to Bob Dylan. He passed away in 1988 but Roy had always been Billy's hero and so he wrote a song for him called I Drove Al...

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I’m telling you won’t believe this story. Today’s rocker Jim Peterik used to give this beautiful girl a ride home from school… He was head over heels in love with her. But she had no idea. He wanted this girl to notice him but he was already stuck in the friend zone so he wrote a song about her called Vehicle and brought it to his band Ides of March. They put some relish on it, and it blew up… it...

Next up, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, a timeless anthem of liberation from a suffocating romantic entanglement. Fashioned by Paul Simon, one of music's master lyricists following the breakup of his Simon and Garfunkel along with the end of his first marriage. Paul Simon dismissed it as nonsense, a song that was just a joke… a game he was playing with his toddler to teach him how to rhyme simple wo...

Coming up… an interview with iconic singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega who climbed up from the underground and had one of the biggest hits of 1987 with Luka. This hit song was one of the most unlikely hits of the decade because of its subject matter. When Suzanne played it for live audiences they never really liked it because it was sad and made them uncomfortable. So when her manager told her it shou...

Coming up, an interview with the band Animotion, which was somehow a one-hit wonder TWICE. In 1985 they released Obsession, a song that had a killer hook that will be in your head for days and that’s a GOOD thing. Obsession Blew up the top 10 and then a few years later principals Astrid Plane and Bill Wadhams were FIRED and replaced with another duo. And they had a top 10 hit in 1989 only to break...

Coming up, the story of Can't Take My Eyes Off You, a song that has had a huge impact on pop culture since its release over 50 years ago. Before it dominated the global pop charts, it had to overcome fierce resistance from a record label that feared a solo transition by frontman Frankie Valli would destroy their golden goose Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons—a four-piece pop group that had been A...

They’re brash, they’re cocky, and completely full of themselves… And today’s featured bandmate brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis were as likely to punch each other in the mouth as they were to kick out chart-topping hits. But for whatever reason the dynamic worked. And this sibling rivalry captured the imagination of a nation propelling Oasis to heights not seen in decades. For this episod...

Today’s Legendary band Aerosmith killed in the 70s, faltered in the early 80s, and then made one of the biggest comebacks in rock history in the late 80s and leveled up in the 90s… with 3 massive #1 hits, Cryin', Amazing, and Crazy, that... well… kind of sounded like the same song with different lyrics! Let’s go behind the scenes and investigate a rich time for Aerosmith…You’ll find everything fro...

Coming up… the story of one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the rock era, Carol King. Ironically, Carol despised her own voice and, when she started composing songs without her famous husband, she doubted anyone would care. It took the friendship of another emerging superstar of the singer/songwriter world, James Taylor, to encourage her to open for him at an iconic nightclub in West...

Coming up next, icon John Oates tells the surprising story of the classic Maneater. This all-time hit came to John after he sat next to a famous actress in a restaurant and she began to cuss like a sailor telling dirty joke after dirty joke… Oates was no prude, but he was SHOCKED. All of a sudden, one of the most familiar lyrics of the 80s came into his head, and within a few minutes, he was jotti...