By 1961, Joan Baez, the dark-haired waif who had captured the spotlight at the first Newport Folk Festival just two years earlier, was folk music's virginal superstar, leading the coffeehouse culture of a new American generation. And an unknown, unwashed, Woody Guthrie—worshiping kid from the Minnesota suburbs named Bob Dylan had just arrived in Greenwich Village. In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Positively 4th Street, DAVID HAJDU recalls the prickly beginnings of the Baez-Dylan relationship, the strange symbiosis between her voice and his music, and the triumphant, magical appearance at Freebody Park that made musical history
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The Steve Miller Band found its groove as a hitmaking machine in the mid-'70s, churning out a series of amiable rockers that were tailor-made for radio consumption. "Jet Airliner," which soared into the Top 10 in 1977, fit so well into the continuum that you might be surprised to learn that Miller didn't write it himself, but rather did a bit of editing on someone else's original. What is "Jet Airliner" about? Who wrote and performed it first? And how did Miller bend and twist it into the shape of a hit single? Let's take this flight back to the early '70s when the story of this song began.