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      Mick Rock, Sought-After Rock Photographer, Dies at 72

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      His images of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Queen and others helped define the 1970s. He was still shooting the stars decades later.Mick Rock, whose striking images of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, as well as more recent stars like Theophilus London and Snoop Dogg, made him one of rock and pop’s most acclaimed photographers, died on Thursday at a hospital in Staten Island. He was 72.His family posted news of his death on his website. No cause was given.Mr. Rock was often called “the man who shot the ’70s” because of his photographs that captured the rock stars of that flamboyant decade, both in his native England and in New York. He lived the rock lifestyle as he was photographing it, becoming part of the scene inhabited by Mr. Bowie, Mr. Reed and the rest.“I was drawn to the good, the bad and the wicked,” he said in “Shot! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock,” a 2016 documentary about him directed by Barney Clay.“I’ve lived a very wild life because I’ve been hanging out with a lot of very wild people,” he added. “And the camera just kind of led me by the nose.”Mr. Rock in 2016 at an exhibition of his photographs in Toulouse, France.Remy Gabalda/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSome of his photographs adorned memorable album covers: the bleached-out shot of Mr. Reed on “Transformer” (1972); the eerily dark image of the members of Queen on “Queen II” (1974), later recreated in the much-viewed music video for “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Others captured stars in poses — Mr. Bowie looking androgynously enigmatic; Ms. Harry, of the group Blondie, looking like Marilyn Monroe. And still others caught performances or unguarded moments.“I am not in the business of documenting or revealing personalities,” Mr. Rock wrote in a diary early in his career. “I am in the business of freezing shadows and bottling auras.”Befriending the stars of the day, which included taking the same drugs they were often taking, gave him the sort of access that most photographers can only dream of. As Mr. Reed put it in the introduction to one of Mr. Rock’s books, “Mick Rock was so much a part of things that it was quite natural to have him snapping away and think of him as invisible.”But Mr. Rock wasn’t limited to one era. He continued photographing rockers, rappers and other music personalities for the next 40 years, even after a heart attack in 1996 led him to embrace a quieter lifestyle. (“All I am is a retired degenerate,” he joked in a 2011 interview with The New York Times.) In recent decades he had photographed Snoop Dogg, Lady Gaga, Rufus Wainwright and many others.Bob Marley, photographed in 1975.Mick Rock“It was barely over a year ago I sat with you by the window listening to Bowie stories,” Miley Cyrus wrote on Twitter after learning of his death. “It was my honor.”Mr. Rock often said he was fated to have the career he had because of his name: He was born Michael David Rock on Nov. 21, 1948, in London to David and Joan (Gibbs) Rock.He graduated from Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied modern languages. While a student there, as he put it in the documentary, “photography wandered idly into my life.” He was hanging out in a friend’s room with a companion, and the friend had left a 35-milimeter camera lying about (which turned out to have no film in it, though Mr. Rock didn’t realize that).“I was with a young lady in a state of — I think chemical inebriation is probably the best way of putting it,” he told The Daily Telegraph of Britain in 2010, “when I started snapping away. I was just playing, but there was something about it that I really liked.”So he got himself his own camera, with film, and began taking pictures of friends and friends’ friends. One friend, whom he had met early in his time at Cambridge, was Syd Barrett of the band Pink Floyd. Through Mr. Barrett he came to know other musicians, and a few not only asked him to photograph them but also paid him.“I suddenly realized you could make money from this,” Mr. Rock wrote in “Classic Queen,” his 2007 book about his work with that band. “That was terrific: much better than getting a ‘real’ job.”Snoop Dogg in 2009. Mr. Rock continued photographing rockers, rappers and other music personalities well into the 21st century. Mick RockHe started writing for various publications and illustrating his articles with his own photographs. One musician he came to know was Mr. Bowie, and one particular picture he took, in 1972, was career-making. Onstage at the Oxford Town Hall, Mr. Bowie pantomimed performing fellatio on the guitar of one of his musicians, Mick Ronson, as he played. Mr. Rock’s photograph of the moment turned up in Melody Maker magazine.“This was that shot that put my name on the map,” Mr. Rock wrote in the Queen book. “Suddenly I was in demand, and my camera was clearly speaking louder than my words.”Famed shots of Mr. Reed and Iggy Pop came along about the same time.“I took those when Lou and Iggy were relatively unknown, unless you were really, really hip,” he told The Telegraph, “but somehow those shots seemed to have defined them forever.”Madonna in 1980.Mick RockSoon his reputation was such that Queen came calling.“I didn’t really know their music, but, when they played me their album, I said, ‘Wow! Ziggy Stardust meets Led Zeppelin!’ and that seemed to seal the deal,” he said.Mr. Rock moved to New York in 1977 and became immersed in the turbulent scene there that included Blondie, the Ramones and other performers.“I needed a new edge, and I found it in New York in spades,” he told The Sunday Herald of Scotland in 1995.“Over the years Mick Rock has made history with all the musicians and rock stars that he has immortalized,” Ms. Harry wrote in the introduction to Mr. Rock’s book “Debbie Harry and Blondie: Picture This” (2019). “A good photo session is sometimes as good as sex. You leave feeling well massaged, satisfied and a little bit outside yourself.”Debbie Harry in 1978. “Mick Rock,” she wrote, “has made history with all the musicians and rock stars that he has immortalized.”Mick RockMr. Rock’s marriage to the photographer Sheila Rock ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Pati Rock, whom he married in 1997; a daughter, Nathalie Rock; and five siblings, Carol, Jacqueline, Don, Angela and Laura.Mr. Rock’s work was featured in various exhibitions. In the Blondie book, he lamented that he’d made such an impact as a rock photographer that it restricted him in some ways.“Like a hit record to a rock ’n’ roller, the downside is that a great image, besides defining the subject, can limit what others call on the photographer to do,” he wrote. “I wouldn’t mind shooting the occasional politician or actor (or even a gangster or two), but that’s not how art directors or magazines view me.” More

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      Earl Sweatshirt Exhibits His Evolution, and 14 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by FKA twigs, Makaya McCraven, Hazel English and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Earl Sweatshirt, ‘2010’In 2010, Earl Sweatshirt released his debut mixtape, “Earl,” and his new song titled for that moment in time shows how much he’s evolved while still retaining his sagely iconoclastic spirit. Earl’s more recent releases — “Some Rap Songs” from 2018; “Feet of Clay” from 2019 — have represented his music at its most avant-garde, moving through murky, collagelike atmospheres in a constant state of transformation. “2010,” though, is more straightforward and sustained, with an understated beat from the producer Black Noise that allows Earl to lock into a hypnotic flow. The succinctly poetic imagery (“crescent moon wink, when I blinked it was gone”) and strangely satisfying plain-spoken admissions (“walked outside, it was still gorgeous”) pour out of him as steadily as water from a tap. LINDSAY ZOLADZFKA twigs featuring Central Cee, ‘Measure of a Man’This song’s distinctive descending chord progression, dramatic swells and even its lyrics — “the measure of a hero is the measure of a man” — could make it a James Bond theme. That’s a sign of FKA twigs’s overarching ambitions, her willingness to engage carnality and idealism, and how carefully she gauges the gradations of her voice in every phrase. JON PARELESHazel English, ‘Nine Stories’Call it a meet twee: “You lent me ‘Nine Stories,’ while you starred in mine,” the Australian-born, California-based musician Hazel English sings at the beginning of her ode to every artsy teen’s favorite J.D. Salinger book. The track is a three-minute dream-pop reverie, obscuring lyrics wryly bookish enough for a Belle & Sebastian song beneath a swirl of jangly guitars and shyly murmured vocals. It’s also something of an act of nostalgia, finding the 30-year-old conjuring the sounds and memories of her high school days: “Now that I’m falling, I can’t ignore it,” she sings sweetly, sounding as blissfully crush-struck as a teenager. ZOLADZHorsegirl, ‘Billy’The young Chicago trio Horsegirl is proof that the shaggy-dog spirit of Gen X indie rock is alive and well within a certain subset of Gen Z. Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein’s overlapping vocals are buried beneath a dissonant avalanche of “Daydream Nation”-esque guitars, but enough lyrical imagery comes to the surface to create a strangely poetic impression of their titular character on this stand-alone single, their first release since signing to Matador Records. “He washes off his robes in preparation to be crucified,” Cheng intones, while Lowenstein’s more melodic vocal line adds additional texture to the song’s enveloping, shoegaze-y atmosphere. ZOLADZBen LaMar Gay featuring Ayanna Woods, ‘Touch. Don’t Scroll’On “Touch. Don’t Scroll,” Ben LaMar Gay and Ayanna Woods, two musical polymaths from Chicago, sing about trying to stay connected to each other in an overcorrected world. “Now, baby, I will never leave you ’lone/Oh, can you hear me or are you on your phone?” they drone in unison, an octave apart, over a syncopated beat and lightly twinkling electronics. The track is nestled deep within “Open Arms to Open Us,” Gay’s latest album and probably his most broadly appealing, pulling together influences from country blues, Afro-Brazilian percussion, puckish Chicago free jazz and 2000s indie-rock. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOCardi B, ‘Bet It’“Bet It,” from the soundtrack to Halle Berry’s directorial debut “Bruised,” is only the second solo single Cardi B has released this year. And while it’s nowhere near as fun or inspired than that previous hit, “Up,” “Bet It” is more like a braggadocios status update on Cardi’s recent past, taking in her Grammy wins and her memorable Met Gala appearance in a dress with a “tail so long it drag 30 minutes after.” ZOLADZMorray featuring Benny the Butcher, ‘Never Fail’An impressively feverish turn from Morray, whose 2020 breakout single “Quicksand” leaned toward the spiritual. Here, though, he’s ferocious, rapping with a scratchy yelp and a sense of defiance. He’s accompanied by Benny the Butcher, who is among the calmest-sounding boasters in hip-hop. An unexpected and unexpectedly effective pairing. JON CARAMANICAFrank Dukes, ‘Likkle Prince’The producer Frank Dukes — who’s made understated, hauntingly melodic work with Frank Ocean, the Weeknd, Rihanna and many others — is releasing “The Way of Ging,” his first project under his own name. It’s an album of beats — a beat tape, as they used to say — that’s available for a limited time online, and will eventually be removed from the internet and available only as a set of NFTs. “Likkle Prince” channels early ’80s electro along with some squelched disco majesty. It’s spooky and propulsive. CARAMANICAunderscores, ‘Everybody’s Dead!’A rousing and trippy burst of hyperpop mayhem, “Everybody’s Dead!” is a new single from underscores, who earlier this year released “Fishmonger,” an excellent, scrappy, and puckish debut album. CARAMANICAMicrohm, ‘Spooky Actions’The Mexico City sound artist Microhm, born Leslie Garcia, produced “Spooky Actions” and its accompanying EP using only modular synths. The result feels like hurtling through a Black Hole, where sound and time warp into quantum dislocation. Ambient textures swirl over the lurch of steady drum kicks, as the moments drip into oblivion. ISABELIA HERRERALeon Bridges featuring Jazmine Sullivan, ‘Summer Rain’Leon Bridges looks back to Sam Cooke’s soul; Jazmine Sullivan can go back to the scat-singing of bebop. They trade verses over a slow-motion beat and rhythm guitar in “Summer Rain” to evoke endless conjugal bliss, urging each other “don’t stop now,” for less under minutes of suspended time meant to play on repeat. PARELESIbeyi featuring Pa Salieu, ‘Made of Gold’Ibeyi’s music has always harnessed a sense of ancestral knowledge: The Afro-Cuban French twins grew up listening to Yoruba folk songs that channel the spirit of enslaved people brought to the Caribbean over the middle passage. But their new single, “Made of Gold,” featuring the Ghanian British rapper Pa Salieu, trades the simple but potent piano and cajón for a celestial, spectral otherworldliness. Culling references to the Yoruba deities Shango and Yemaya, as well as Frida Kahlo and the ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead,” the duo summons power from intergenerational sources to shield them. “Oh you with a spine, who would work your mouth against this Magic of mine,” they intone. “It has been handed down in an unbroken line.” HERRERASting, ‘Loving You’Sting’s new album, “The Bridge,” often harks back to the jazz-folk-Celtic-pop hybrids he forged on his first solo albums in the 1980s; one song, “Harmony Road,” even features a saxophone solo from Branford Marsalis, who was central to “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” in 1985. Many of the new songs lean toward parable and metaphor, but not “Loving You,” a husband’s confrontation with the cheating wife he still loves: “We made vows inside the church to forgive each others’ sins,” he sings. “But there are things I have to endure like the smell of another man’s skin.” Written with the British electronic musician Maya Jane Coles, the track confines itself to two chords and a brittle beat, punctuated by faraway arpeggios and tones that emerge like unwanted memories; it’s memorably bleak. PARELESSingle Girl, Married Girl, ‘Scared to Move’With patient arpeggios and soothing bass notes, the harpist and composer Mary Lattimore builds a grandly meditative edifice behind Chelsey Coy, the songwriter and singer at the core of Single Girl, Married Girl, in “Scared to Move.” It’s from the new album “Three Generations of Leaving.” Cale’s multitracked harmonies promise, “In a strange new half-light, I will be your guide” as Lattimore’s harp patterns construct a glimmering path forward. PARELESMakaya McCraven, ‘Tranquillity’“Deciphering the Message,” Makaya McCraven’s first LP for Blue Note Records, could easily get you thinking of “Shades of Blue,” Madlib’s classic 2003 album remixing old tracks from that label’s jazz archive. On “Deciphering,” McCraven — a drummer, producer and beat dissector — digs through 13 tracks from the label’s catalog and attacks them through his personal method of remixing and pastiche. “Deciphering” crackles with McCraven’s sonic signatures: viscid ambience, restlessly energetic drumming, the recognizable sounds of his longtime collaborators (Marquis Hill on trumpet, Matt Gold on guitar, Joel Ross on vibraphone, et al). “Tranquillity” stems from a track by the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, from his 1966 album “Components,” and McCraven’s intervention is two-pronged: He doubles down on the original’s curved-glass effect, adding whispery trumpet and fluttering flute atop the original track, but his own drums — kinetic, unrelenting — keep the energy at a rolling boil. RUSSONELLO More

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      Overlooked No More: Ruth Polsky, Who Shaped New York’s Music Scene

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      She booked concerts at influential nightclubs in the 1980s, bringing exposure to up-and-coming artists like the Smiths and New Order.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.In the late 1970s and early ’80s, New York City’s nightclub scene was vibrant and daring, attracting an eclectic mix of creative types like artists, writers and musicians. It was also predominantly run by men.A notable exception was Ruth Polsky, who arranged concerts for cutting-edge rock artists, like the Smiths and New Order, at the influential Manhattan clubs Hurrah and Danceteria, whose regulars included Madonna and Jean-Michel Basquiat.Polsky had a knack for finding young talent, and helped both clubs earn a reputation for debuting new artists. Early in their careers, British bands like the Cure and the Specials played American shows at Hurrah, and Madonna performed one of her first-ever live shows at Danceteria, in 1982.Polsky’s choice of artists was diverse. She booked guitar-driven bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, influential minimalists like Young Marble Giants and challenging genre-busters like Einstürzende Neubauten and the Birthday Party, fronted by Nick Cave.There were potent, female-led groups, including Au Pairs, a politically-fuelled band from Birmingham, England, and kitschy Pulsallama from New York. She was an early supporter of Ru Paul, who performed with bands in the 1980s. (Ru Paul was occasionally referred to by a friend as Ru Polsky.)Polsky also arranged the United States premieres of alternative rock bands, many from the United Kingdom, including New Order, the Psychedelic Furs and Simple Minds, whose music eventually became mainstream soundtracks of the 1980s.“This is the place where anything goes,” Polsky said about Danceteria in a British television interview in the mid-1980s, “from oompah bands to Diamanda Galás to the funkiest thing happening on the street.”Her inclusive approach welcomed a clientele from all over the city, one that was racially diverse and of varying socioeconomic backgrounds. She turned her clubs into a hub for nonconformists, some of whom, like the actress Debi Mazar and the Beastie Boys, became famous.“It was kind of weirdos unite,” said Cynthia Sley, a member of Bush Tetras, whom Polsky booked several times. “Everybody who was an outcast from regular society would converge down there.”Her interactions with musicians went well beyond a professional obligation.“She was good at her job, and she had people power,” Bernard Sumner, a member of the band New Order, said in an interview. “She could handle people and charm them over.”And her dealings with performers didn’t end when the shows were over; she often invited them to her West Houston Street apartment to mingle with other musicians.Danceteria in 1980. The nightclub was a vibrant, daring scene that attracted creative types like artists, writers and musicians.Allan Tannenbaum“It was like a writers’ salon, but for punk rockers,” said Hugo Burnham, a founding member of Gang of Four, a taut British band who played several shows that Polsky booked. “She was the punk rock Dorothy Parker.”Her style was enhanced by the sort of devotion a loyal friend would show. It was a “mixture of strength and a kind of sisterly, kind of motherly instinct,” said Johnny Marr, a former member of the Smiths, whose first American show was at Danceteria.“You could stay up until 4 o’clock in the morning with her,” he added, “but then she would make sure that you went out and had a decent breakfast and a warm coat.”Part of her drive came from frequently being the only woman in the room, interacting with managers, booking agents and club owners who were mostly men.“She wanted to show that she could make a difference as a woman in a very male-dominated world,” said Howard Thompson, a former record company executive and a friend of Polsky’s.Ruth Rachel Polsky was born on Dec. 5, 1954, in Toms River, N.J., to Louis and Bertha (Rudnick) Polsky. Her father was an egg distributor, her mother a homemaker. From a young age, Ruthie, as she was called, was an excellent student. By the time she was a teenager, her love of books and writing was matched only by an obsession with music. Her taste, even then, was precocious: In high school, she saw the Doors and Led Zeppelin play live.Polsky attended Clark University in Massachusetts, where she wrote about music for the school paper. She earned a degree in English literature in 1976 and began writing for Aquarian Weekly, an alternative newspaper in New Jersey, covering up-and-coming music as a contributing editor. She also worked at a magazine publishing company.In her writing, she championed innovative sounds and encouraged fans to support them.“Right now, people need to dance,” she wrote in Aquarian Weekly in 1979, “not the well-oiled, machine-like dancing of a bland, conformist half-decade, but the individualistic style of a crazy new era.”That year, she started booking bands at Hurrah, a club near Lincoln Center, alongside another well-known promoter, Jim Fouratt. Three years later, she moved to Danceteria, a multilevel space in the Flatiron district.Polsky, left, at a party 1982. After the club shows she had booked, she’d often invite the performers over to her Houston Street apartment to mingle with other musicians. “It was like a writers’ salon, but for punk rockers,” one musician said.Howard ThompsonBefore long her impact began reaching well beyond New York City. In 1981, Polsky took a handful of American bands, including Bush Tetras, to London to perform for the first time in England. The show was called “Taking Liberties From New York.”In the United States, bands were able to use the money they earned from the concerts Polsky had arranged to go on national tours, furthering their exposure and success.“People in Columbus and Madison and Seattle and Minneapolis could see these bands that normally wouldn’t be able to tour America,” said Robert Vickers, a former member of the Go-Betweens, an Australian band that played several shows arranged by Polsky. “It made it possible for these cutting-edge bands, the post-punk bands, that Americans in these smaller cities would never have seen except for Ruth.”By the summer of 1986, Ms. Polsky had started her own company, S.U.S.S. — for Solid United States Support, a nod to a colloquial British term for astutely figuring something out — to help artists from abroad navigate their careers in America. She was managing bands, too, and writing a memoir about her nightlife adventures.Polsky died on Sept. 7, 1986, when she was hit by an out-of-control taxi outside the Limelight, a Manhattan club where she had arranged for one of her clients, Certain General, to play that evening. She was 31.“It just seemed like such an awful waste,” Mr. Sumner said, “because she was on an upward trajectory.”As alternative music was gaining in popularity, that path might well have included working directly with superstars, her ultimate goal.“She had the smarts, she had the passion, she had the good taste and she had the nurturing qualities,” said Mr. Marr of the Smiths. “She was tough and really ticked all the boxes to have been really successful with a band.” More

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      ‘Jagged’ Review: The Painful Road to Era-Defining Success

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      This documentary from Alison Klayman catalogs the odds that Alanis Morissette overcame to make her 1995 hit album “Jagged Little Pill.”Alanis Morissette’s megaselling, epoch-defining 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill” sounds like an obvious centerpiece for a film. Until, that is, you consider the comparatively low number of documentaries about women in rock and pop, especially focusing on the creation of a record. Just look at how few female musicians are represented in the long-running documentary series “Classic Albums.”Kudos, then, to the director Alison Klayman for getting “Jagged” done in the first place.It kicks off with Morissette’s start as a teen sensation in the 1980s and tracks her transformation into a generation’s electrifying bard. Klayman (“The Brink”) is at her best illustrating Morissette’s candid, thoughtful reminiscences with period footage, and documenting the wild year that followed the release of “Jagged Little Pill,” when the newly minted star toured nonstop, backed by male bandmates who now semi-sheepishly confess to preying on the girls and young women flocking to the concerts. (Morissette has recently distanced herself from “Jagged,” accusing it of having a “salacious agenda” and offering a “reductive take.”)The film, which is fairly conventional aesthetically and narratively, follows the testosterone-laden “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage” in HBO’s Music Box series. Taken together, they paint an unsettling portrait of the structural and behavioral sexism pervasive in the music world — a former radio program director interviewed in “Jagged” remarks, for example, that “it was regarded as a no-no to play female artists back to back.”This makes the vision of Morissette reclaiming her life and art in great, powerful yelps while pacing arena stages in baggy T-shirts all the more thrilling: We know the cost.JaggedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More

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      The Meters’ Leo Nocentelli Gets a Solo Career, 50 Years Late

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      In the 1970s, Nocentelli recorded a folk album drastically different from his band’s funk music. Barely anyone heard it — until it ended up at a swap meet.Leo Nocentelli decided to record a solo album just once, in the early 1970s. Though he was the guitarist and primary songwriter of the Meters — the epochal house band of New Orleans funk — he had a different palette in mind for his own LP: James Taylor and Elton John. He made “Another Side,” what he has referred to as his “country-and-western album,” and then it disappeared.“I completely forgot about it,” Nocentelli, 75, said on a video call, wearing a newsboy cap and shades at his home in New Orleans, noting that he didn’t even have a copy of the record. “It was like a distant memory. I didn’t remember the songs.”The quarter-inch master tapes of “Another Side,” out Friday in various formats after a 50-year delay, sat unreleased in storage for decades at Allen Toussaint’s Sea-Saint Recording Studio in New Orleans. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Sea-Saint — which housed numerous landmark recordings — was destroyed by floodwater, and its archives were reasonably presumed to have perished along with it.But about a quarter of the tapes at the facility were spared. And eventually the surviving material made its way to Los Angeles, where Bill Valenziano, who bought Sea-Saint in 1995, had it put into storage. After some missed payments and an auction in 2018, 16 boxes of master tapes bearing the Sea-Saint name landed at a swap meet in Torrance, Calif. When they were brought out for sale, a collector and D.J. named Mike Nishita was called over to take a look, and his eyes widened at the sight of the names: the Meters, Dr. John, Irma Thomas.“I didn’t really know about that studio at all,” Nishita, a soft-spoken individual known by some as “Hawaiian Mike,” said in a recent interview. (His brother is “Money Mark” Nishita, a keyboardist often referred to as the unofficial fourth member of the Beastie Boys.) “I just Googled ‘Sea-Saint,’ and was like, ‘Holy [expletive].’” He bought the lot for $100 a box, and got out of there before the seller could change his mind. Sifting through the music, he quickly found his favorite reel of the bunch: Nocentelli’s lost solo album, which no one else in the world seemed to know existed.“I immediately wanted to shut it off — like, someone has to hear this besides me,” he said, remembering when he hit play for the first time. “It kind of wasn’t fair that I get to listen to it.”Clockwise from left: Zigaboo Modeliste, Art Neville, George Porter Jr. and Leo Nocentelli of the Meters, known as the house band of New Orleans funk.Gilles Petard/Redferns, via Getty ImagesNishita was well aware of Nocentelli — as a member of the Meters, a group that made its name with infectious semi-instrumentals like “Cissy Strut” and “Look-Ka Py Py,” seven of which charted on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1969 and 1970. With Art Neville on keyboard, George Porter Jr. on bass, Zigaboo Modeliste on drums and Nocentelli on guitar, the Meters were just as busy behind the scenes, regularly playing as session musicians on a variety of Toussaint productions, such as Dr. John’s “Right Place, Wrong Time” and Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade.”But according to Nocentelli, his path might very well have gone in a completely different direction. “The Meters kind of happened by accident,” he said, noting that, growing up in New Orleans, he was more interested in becoming a jazz guitarist in the vein of Wes Montgomery. That was before he found himself scooped into the world of R&B, playing on Lee Dorsey’s Top 10 hit “Ya Ya” when he was 15, and supporting Otis Redding on tour at 16.Just as quickly as the Meters took off, though, there were problems that threatened their future. What the group has described as an unfavorable publishing and managerial arrangement with Toussaint and his business partner, Marshall Sehorn, limited the band’s royalties, and in 1971, the group’s label, Josie Records, went out of business. Around that point, the Meters went on a hiatus — and at home in the Seventh Ward, Nocentelli began noodling around with a nylon-string guitar.He was inspired by the sounds and stories of James Taylor’s 1970 album, “Sweet Baby James,” and wanted to craft his own take on the style: Catchy songs like “Pretty Mittie,” about a farmer’s plans to move to the city, and “Riverfront,” a working-class anthem inspired by the real life of Aaron Neville, Art’s brother. There were also somber songs about love and loss — and about the question of what success really means in the entertainment industry. “Reaching high but not getting nowhere,” he sings on “Getting Nowhere,” his trademark propulsive riffing replaced with understated strumming. “I must have gotten on the wrong cloud.”Initially, Nocentelli didn’t have any intention to record his solo music, which he didn’t tell anyone about. But being around the elegant and confident Toussaint ultimately changed his mind. “I really admired him,” Nocentelli said, clearly sentimental about their long, complicated friendship. “He was a huge influence on me with recording aspects of the business.”Snagging any opening he could at Cosimo Matassa’s Jazz City, the pre-eminent New Orleans recording studio before Sea-Saint opened in 1973, Nocentelli began recording his album, tapping those around him to play supporting parts: Toussaint on piano, Porter on bass, Modeliste and the highly regarded jazz player James Black on drums. All said, Nocentelli laid down nine originals and a cover of the Elton John single “Your Song,” which had then just been released.“We would be in the studio recording, not knowing what or who we were recording for,” Porter, 73, said on the phone from New Orleans of how swamped with sessions the band was during those years. “When Leo was reminding me that I’m playing on this record, I said, ‘Really?’”“There’s a certain spirituality about this that I feel,” Nocentelli said. “Things like this are very rare. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”Akasha Rabut for The New York TimesThe pieces had started to come together, but the album never went further than the rough recordings, which Nocentelli essentially viewed as demos at the time. The way he remembers it, his money was drying up, and the Meters were soon back together and busier than ever after signing to Warner Bros., leaving “Another Side” to pick up cobwebs. But Porter has a less charitable view of why he and his bandmates weren’t encouraged to branch out on their own and how a record like this could be left behind: “My gut feeling was that Marshall Sehorn did not at all want us to become so big that we weren’t under his thumb,” he said. “So him sitting on that project and making that disappear is not a surprise.”Either way, the Meters carried on into their major-label period, subsequently embracing songs with more traditional singing parts. Yet Nocentelli almost never took lead vocals while in the band, despite having proven more than capable during his solo foray. “I was always the shy guy,” he said. If you look, it’s hard to even find pictures of Nocentelli by himself in the Meters’ original run.As time has gone on, the main narratives of this era of New Orleans music have solidified, and some of the chapters have started to close; Sehorn died in 2006, Matassa in 2014, Toussaint in 2015 and Art Neville in 2019. (The Meters broke up in 1977; since the late ’80s, they have reunited off and on in various forms.) But when a new wrinkle in the timeline opened at that swap meet in Torrance, it offered a sideways glimpse at an alternate reality in which Nocentelli became a star in his own right.“There’s a certain spirituality about this that I feel,” Nocentelli said. “Things like this are very rare. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”In terms of finally giving “Another Side” the industry attention it previously missed, it was not difficult to find an interested party. Nishita is close friends with Mario Caldato Jr., a producer and engineer who’s worked with the Beastie Boys and knows Matt Sullivan, the founder of Light in the Attic Records. Sullivan was one of the first people invited to check out the collection, and soon set up the Nocentelli release. Right place, right time.“Every time I listen to this record, it’s like, how was this never released?” Sullivan said, speaking from Austin, Texas. “This should have been on the radio in the ’70s.”There are still approximately 3,000 more hours of Sea-Saint-related music sitting in Nishita’s garage, which he says includes an unreleased Meters album from their early days. The prospect of that particular one ever being released is far more precarious from a legal perspective than Nocentelli’s solo album, but if all principal parties can get on board, it could happen.For now, Nocentelli is giving his new role a try, embracing a spotlight that had flickered near him for so long. He’s even beginning to accept the imperfections of “Another Side” that still stick out when he listens, 50 years later. “I was hearing much more than what was there,” he said, explaining that he planned for the album to have horns, as well as additional instrumentation. “But that doesn’t mean that what was there wasn’t sufficient. Evidently it was. And it is.” More

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      The Moment That Janet Jackson’s Career Stalled and Justin Timberlake’s Soared

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      Jackson was vilified after her 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, while Timberlake’s popularity seemed to take off. Our new documentary examines how the superstars were treated after their unforgettable wardrobe malfunction.Reuters//Gary Hershorn (United States Entertainment)‘Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson’Producer/Director Jodi GomesReporter/Senior Producer Rachel AbramsReporter Alan LightWatch our new documentary on Friday, Nov. 19, at 10 p.m. on FX and streaming on Hulu.The term “wardrobe malfunction” has been part of our vocabulary ever since Janet Jackson’s right breast made a surprise appearance at the end of the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.When Justin Timberlake tore off part of Jackson’s bustier in front of 70,000 people in Houston’s Reliant Stadium, over 140 million people watching on TV gasped — if they noticed.It happened so quickly (the moment lasted nine-sixteenths of one second) that even some of the halftime show’s producers missed it until their phones, and phones all over America, started ringing.“Did you see what just happened?” Jim Steeg, the National Football League’s director of special events, asked Salli Frattini, the MTV executive in charge of the halftime show. She had to rewind the tape to be sure.“We looked at the close-up shot. We looked at the wide shot, and we all stood there in shock,” Frattini recalled in a new documentary by The New York Times.Was it an accident? Was it planned? Was it a stunt?The ensuing uproar — from the N.F.L., from the Federal Communications Commission, from politicians and their allies — was the peak of a national debate at the time over what’s acceptable on America’s airwaves, and who gets to decide.In our documentary, premiering Friday at 10 p.m. Eastern time on FX and Hulu, we hear from the former commissioner of the N.F.L., Paul Tagliabue, and the MTV executives who were in charge of producing the halftime show. And we talk to some of the politicians who seized on the moment to try to rein in content that they deemed inappropriate.We also look back at Jackson’s long career, which never seemed to recover, while Timberlake’s soared. And we consider how issues of race and sexism mixed to consume one superstar’s legacy and propel another’s career to the next level.Supervising Producer Liz DayProducers Fred Charleston, Jr., Anthony McLemore, Timothy MoranCo-Producer Melanie BencosmeDirector of Photography Asad FaruqiVideo Editor Geoff O’Brien“The New York Times Presents” is a series of documentaries representing the unparalleled journalism and insight of The New York Times, bringing viewers close to the essential stories of our time. More

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      The Emotional and Financial Business of Taylor Swift’s ‘All Too Well’

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe cornerstone of Taylor Swift’s new rerecording of her 2012 album “Red” is the extended 10-minute “All Too Well.” Its original version is one of Swift’s great heartbreak anthems; the new one doubles down on the grim details of a love gone sour. She performed the extended cut on “Saturday Night Live” the day after its release, in front of the short film she directed to accompany it.The creative success of this song offers an artistic bonus to what has essentially been a business decision: faithfully rerecording her old albums to devalue the master recordings of the original versions and own the new ones herself. Swift understands how to craft compelling public-facing narratives even while grappling with behind-the-scenes dramas.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Swift’s rerecorded albums, the unruly fervor of the new “All Too Well” and whether one can ever fully truly channel the past when saddled with the knowledge of the present.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorLindsay Zoladz, who writes about pop music for The New York Times and othersConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Philip Margo of the Tokens, Who Sang of a Snoozing Lion, Dies at 79

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      His baritone contributed to the 1961 hit “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” which became one of the most recognizable American pop songs ever.Philip Margo, a member of the close-harmony group the Tokens, which earned enduring pop-music fame with the No. 1 hit “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in 1961, died on Saturday in a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 79.The cause was a stroke, his family said.Mr. Margo had a varied career, performing with the Tokens and its offshoots, producing records and writing for television. But nothing had a bigger impact than the recording he was part of when he was 19: “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” became one of the most recognizable songs in American music, instantly identifiable from Jay Siegel’s opening falsetto. Mr. Margo sang baritone.The song had its origins in South Africa, where Solomon Linda and the Original Evening Birds recorded a simple tune they called “Mbube” — Zulu for “the lion” — containing the now-familiar melody. In the early 1950s the American folk group the Weavers, whose members included Pete Seeger, began performing it but rendered the word of the title as “wim-o-weh.” The Kingston Trio and others picked up on that version.In 1961 the Tokens were looking for a follow-up to their first record, “Tonight I Fell in Love,” and Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, producers at RCA Records, brought in the lyricist George Weiss, who added the English lyrics that begin “In the jungle, the mighty jungle.”Philip Margo and some of the others in the group didn’t have a lot of confidence in the resulting recording.“We were embarrassed by it and tried to convince Hugo and Luigi not to release it,” he said in an interview quoted in “The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits” by Fred Bronson. “They said it would be a big record and it was going out.”They were right. It hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart in December 1961, remained there for three weeks and became a cultural touchstone. A whole new generation was introduced to it in 1994 when a version turned up in the Disney movie “The Lion King.”“Now that it’s current, we’re current,” Mr. Margo said at the time. “I am thrilled.”Philip Frederick Margo was born on April 1, 1942, in Brooklyn to Leon and Ruth (Becker) Margo. He grew up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. In 1959 he returned there from a summer job playing piano in the Catskills and, with his younger brother, began trying doo-wop harmonizing with Mr. Siegel and Hank Medress, seeing what they could do with songs like “A Teenager in Love,” a hit at the time for Dion and the Belmonts.“We sounded so good we started writing songs ourselves,” Mr. Margo told The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash., in 1992. One song they came up with was “Tonight I Fell in Love,” which they recorded and brought to the small Warwick label, whose owner, Marty Kraft, said they needed a name.“We wanted to call ourselves Those Guys, but that was unheard-of in 1960,” Mr. Margo said in the Billboard book interview. “It had to be ‘The Somethings.’”So they took the name from an earlier group Mr. Medress had been in, becoming the Tokens.The Tokens released a number of other singles over the years, including “I Hear Trumpets Blow” (1966), and a string of albums. Collectively the group also produced records for others, including the Chiffons and the Happenings.Mr. Margo continued to perform with his brother, who died in 2017, and with Mr. Medress, who died in 2007. He settled in Beverly Hills and was a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. During the 1998 baseball season his version of the Tokens (Mr. Siegel has his own) performed the national anthem in every major league ballpark, and is said to have been the first pop group to have accomplished that feat.In the 1980s and 1990s Mr. Margo wrote and produced television movies and wrote episodes of shows including the sitcom “Benson.” He also managed the career of that show’s star, Robert Guillaume, for a time.Mr. Margo is survived by his wife, Abbie S. Margo, whom he married in 1966; two sons, Noah Margo and Joshua Ginsberg-Margo; a daughter, Neely S. Irwin; a sister, Maxine Margo Rubin; and eight grandchildren.The Margo brothers appeared on “CBS This Morning” in 1994, promoting a recently released album called “Oldies Are Now.” Paula Zahn, one of the show’s hosts, asked them about “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” including a question — “How many ways can you butcher a-wim-o-weh?” — that they needed no prompting to answer.“Wingle-whop, wingle-whetta, wing-away,” said Phil.“Wing-o-wack,” said Mitch.“Wing-o-wack,” agreed Phil.To which Mitch added, “And then some that we can’t repeat.” More