"Here Comes Your Man" is the closest the Pixies came to a hit in America. It was rumored to be about a drug dealer, but Black Francis says it's just a story about some hobos who travel by train and die in an earthquake.
"Mercedes Boy" by Pebbles is about a real guy she fell in love with - they both drove Mercedes when she wrote it.
Bruce Springsteen's "Streets Of Philadelphia" won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1994, beating out Neil Young's "Philadelphia," which was also written for the movie Philadelphia.
"November Rain" by Guns N' Roses has a literary influence: The lyric is based on a story called Without You by Del James.
"Tenderness" by General Public was partly inspired by the outbreak of AIDS, which at the time was thought to be contagious.
The title of Florence + the Machine's "How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful" was inspired by the Los Angeles skyline.
After cutting his teeth on hardcore punk videos, Paul defined the grunge look with his work on "Hunger Strike" and "Man in the Box."
The Kiss rocker covers a lot of ground in this interview, including why there are no Kiss collaborations, and why the Rock Hall has "become a sham."
Billy Joel and Hall & Oates hated making videos, so they chose a director with similar contempt for the medium. That was Jay Dubin, and he has a lot to say on the subject.
Many unusual folks appear in Grateful Dead songs. Can you identify them?
Jim talks about the impact of "The Middle" and uses a tree metaphor to describe his songwriting philosophy.
