Pete Townshend wrote the lyrics for "My Generation" by The Who during a train ride from London to Southampton on his 20th birthday when he was thinking about "trying to find a place in society."
Bob Marley gave the songwriting credit for "No Woman No Cry" to his friend Vincent Ford, who ran a soup kitchen in Trenchtown, the area of Kingston where Marley grew up.
Tom Cochrane wrote "Life Is A Highway" to pull himself out of a funk following an exhausting humanitarian trip to Africa.
On the surface, "Summer Breeze" by Seals & Crofts is just a song about a guy coming home from work, but the duo claimed it had a deeper meaning about finding direction in one's personal life.
Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is about their founding member Syd Barrett, who became an acid casualty. Notice the S-Y-D in the title.
The R.E.M. song "Don't Go Back To Rockville" is about Mike Mills' girlfriend at the University of Georgia, who had to go back to Rockville, Maryland, for the summer.
Gramm co-wrote this gorgeous ballad and delivered an inspired vocal, but the song was the beginning of the end of his time with Foreigner.
A scholarly analysis of yacht rock favorites ("Steal Away," "Baker Street"...) with a member of the leading YR cover band.
"Missing You" was a spontaneous outpouring of emotion triggered by a phone call. John tells that story and explains what MTV meant to his career.
The man who ran Nirvana's first label gets beyond the sensationalism (drugs, Courtney) to discuss their musical and cultural triumphs in the years before Nevermind.
From the lake in "Roundabout" to Sister Bluebird in "Starship Trooper," Jon Anderson talks about how nature and spirituality play into his lyrics for Yes.
Charlie discusses the songs that made him a Southern Rock icon, and settles the Devil vs. Johnny argument once and for all.