I’ve been writing feature articles about musicians for about two decades now, starting with my college rock magazine, Nadine (named after the Chuck Berry song and edited by a crew of friends who are still among the coolest people I’ve ever known). My first interview: They Might Be Giants (“Wow, you really know our material,” John Linnell said. “If I had known that, I wouldn’t have lied so much.”) The first interview I got paid for: A short Spin profile of Bad English, the now-forgotten fusion of John Waite and Journey’s Neal Schon, who had a number one single with “When I See You Smile.” (“Is it too Keith Richards?” Waite asked me as he tied a scarf around his ankle. Even though it was my first time backstage, I knew instinctively that of the many problems that afflicted his ankle scarf, an excess of Keithness was not among them.) The interview that got me a job at Details: J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. (no pithy quote in this parenthesis—he just grunted at me a lot and crushed peanuts the whole time we spoke).

Anyway, the point of this chapter introduction is not that I used my access to the music world to answer a lot of the questions in this book (although that’s true) or that I can use these introductions to tell self-indulgent war stories if I feel like it (also true). The point is this: A lot’s changed about the music business in the past twenty years, and I am now a well-informed observer instead of a bewildered outsider wondering what exactly a “mechanical royalty” is, anyway. But one thing has remained constant: If a record company can screw a young act, they will.

Why are CDs released on Tuesdays?

“We decided to level the playing field back in the mid-eighties,” Joe McFadden, senior vice president of sales and field marketing at Capitol Records, informed me. “Records used to come out ‘the week of,’ and retailers would sell it when they got it.” This created some serious discrepancies; stores that were more remote geographically, or that had a longer distribution chain, would get the music much later. So the labels settled on Tuesdays as a universal release date. “We were trying to avoid anyone breaking the street date,” McFadden said. “We figured if people got the product on Monday, they could sell it on Tuesday. And even if distributors got it on Friday, they couldn’t get it on sale in stores over the weekend.” This also had the advantage of getting people to visit record stores on a steady schedule—although recently, rush releases of leaked records have happened on other days. And, McFadden confided, “There have been backroom conversations among labels recently about moving the street date to Friday.”

Help me settle a bet! A friend of mine insists that Billy Ocean had exactly three number one hits—and that all of them had exactly eight words in the title. I say that can’t possibly be right: “When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going” obviously has nine words in the title!

Indeed it does—which is perhaps the reason that song fell short of the number one slot, hitting number two in 1985. Strange as it may seem, your friend wins the bet. Billy Ocean, the likeable singer of pop songs lightly inflected with reggae, hit the top of the charts exactly three times; each time the complete song title had exactly eight words in it. Let the Freemasons ponder these twenty-four words of mystical power: “Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run),” “There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry),” “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car.”

Sometimes I’ll see an import release by one of my favorite bands in my local record store with two or more extra songs on it. Why do the foreign releases get so many extras?

“Eighty percent of those import releases come from Japan,” John Voigtmann, senior director of international marketing at RCA Records, told me. “By law, Japan’s music industry is artifically divided into two categories, and import CDs are always sold at cheaper prices than local editions. So, in order for Japanese companies to stay competitive, we provide them with extra tracks. Anything other than that is usually a special marketing campaign; we might add some ‘live in Norway’ tracks to make it cool for Norwegians.” Of course, many foreign releases are exactly the same as the American versions—but your local store doesn’t bother to import those.

What song has been covered the most?

Unfortunately, the major song-rights organizations, ASCAP and BMI, don’t keep track of this data—they’re more concerned with how many times a song is played than by how many different people. But by general agreement, the song in the rock era with the most cover versions is “Yesterday,” a Lennon/ McCartney composition. (Or, as Sir Paul would prefer it, given that he wrote it all by himself, a McCartney/Lennon composition.) It’s been put on wax by more than two thousand different performers, including Ray Charles, En Vogue, Marvin Gaye, Merle Haggard, Elvis Presley, LeAnn Rimes, the Supremes, Tammy Wynette, and a whole bunch of different elevator-music string sections. The Gershwin ballad “Summertime,” from Porgy & Bess, however, seems to have even more versions than that; and “Silent Night,” written by Josef Mohr and Franz Gruber in 1818, may come in as many as five thousand different versions on various records.

For more information on a different Lennon/McCartney composition— “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”— Chapter 3.

Did James Brown really fine his musicians if he wasn’t happy with their performance?

Absolutely; the hardest-working man in show business couldn’t put on a show with the military precision of his ’60s revue without being a tough boss. Bobby Byrd, who sang backup vocals for Brown as one of the Famous Flames, gave me the details. He said that Brown’s fines were usually five or ten dollars, but they went up dramatically when he was playing at the Apollo Theater in 1962, where he was recording a live album: fifty or a hundred dollars for a miscue. Byrd told me, “James would do a routine when he fined you, counting off that hundred dollars. You’d whisper on the stage, ‘Man, get your part right,’ and then he’d see you and fine you for carrying on a conversation.”

Another soul genius had strict, but very different, rules of the road for his legendary revue; Chapter 2. for the regulations of Ray Charles.

Before Nelly did it with “Dilemma” and “Hot in Herre,” who was the last recording artist to simultaneously have both the number one and number two songs on the Billboard Top 100?

Not many people noticed, but Ja Rule did it in March 2002. “Ain’t It Funny,” by Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule, was number one, while “Always on Time,” by Ja Rule featuring Ashanti, was number two. If you sneer at guest appearances, then the last act to qualify was the Bee Gees in 1978, with “Night Fever” and “StayiN’ Alive.” Only four other acts in the rock era had occupied the top two slots simultaneously before Nelly: P. Diddy, Boyz II Men, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles (who had the top five singles the first week of April 1964: from top to bottom, they were “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Twist and Shout,” “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and “Please Please Me”).

Everyone knows John Lennon and Paul McCartney signed a bad songwriting contract while in the Beatles. George Harrison, however, never complained about any ownership problems with his songs. Was he bound to a different contract?

Lennon and McCartney were perpetually unhappy with Northern Songs, their publishing company— largely because they felt they had been jobbed out of 51 percent of the ownership by Dick James before they got savvy to the ways of music publishing. “We could see owning a house, a guitar, or a car; they were physical objects,” McCartney said. “But a song, not being a physical object, we couldn’t see how it was possible to have a copyright in it. And therefore, with great glee, publishers saw us coming.”

Harrison, however, had it even worse whenever Northern Songs handled one of his compositions; although he was contractually bound to the company and received royalties for songs he wrote, his percentage ownership in Northern was tiny. Originally he owned no part of the company, but when it went public in 1965 he and Ringo Starr each bought a whopping one-half of one percent of the shares. (Lennon and McCartney were issued 20 percent each.) So Harrison did, indeed, bellyache. “Only a Northern Song,” his contribution to the soundtrack of Yellow Submarine, laid out his complaint: “It doesn’t really matter what chords I play … it’s only a Northern Song.” Harrison’s Northern Songs contract lapsed in 1968; he briefly signed with Apple Publishing and then started his own publishing company, Singsong Ltd., later renamed Harrisongs.

I heard my CDs will disintegrate after twenty or thirty years—is that true?

If compact discs self-destructed after twenty years, then the earliest discs would be vanishing in puffs of digital smoke right about now—and they’re not. But despite the early marketing claims of “perfect sound forever,” a few small batches are already unplayable; some defective late-’80s discs manufactured in the U.K. suffered from “CD rot,” where the top layer puckered and the contents oxidized. “Those things are pancakes, and in the end, they’re going to pop apart,” I was told by Ted Sheldon, chair of the Audio Engineering Society’s standards committee on preservation and restoration of audio. “It’s an open question as to when. I think most CDs, if kept inside and out of the sun, should last for fifty years. But I don’t know that—there hasn’t been enough accelerated life testing.” CD-Rs probably will have even shorter life spans because the laser you burn them with at home is less powerful than one found in commercial models. Of course, even if your CDs survive for decades, you’ll need to maintain the right equipment—when was the last time you tried to play a 78-rpm record?

On their album Last Splash., the Breeders cover a song called “Invisible Man.” I’ve looked everywhere, but I can’t discover who wrote it. You’re my only hope —do you know who wrote the song?

The Last Splash CD is strangely lacking in songwriting credits, but according to BMI, which supervises the band’s publishing, the song’s sole author is Kim Deal, leader of the Breeders. Perhaps you’re thinking of “DriviN’ on 9,” the only cover on Last Splash, originally performed by the quirky folk-calypso band Ed’s Redeeming Qualities; Ed’s violinist, Carrie Bradley, has sometimes played with the Breeders. Other songs covered by the Breeders on disc include the Beatles’ “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” the Who’s “So Sad About Us,” Hank Williams’s “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You),” Aerosmith’s “Lord of the Thighs,” and the theme from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Who had the most number two singles without hitting number one?

En Vogue had three singles that fell just short, as did Blood, Sweat & Tears, but the champion of silver medals on the Billboard Hot 100, without a doubt, was Creedence Clearwater Revival, who had five number two singles, all of them between March 1969 and October 1970: “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Green River,” “TraveliN’ Band,” and “LookiN’ out My Back Door.” (That falls short of the record for the most number two singles ever, which belongs to Madonna, with six; of course, she has a dozen number one singles to go along with them.) Bandleader John Fogerty was philosophical about not making it to the top of the pops, saying, “Number two tries harder and all that.”

Did Neil Young really buy 150,000 copies of his own Comes a Time just so he could destroy them?

Nope—Young bought 200,000 copies. Young, as is his habit, tinkered with Comes a Time until its release, switching around the running order and also repeatedly changing album covers. Then, just before the release, he discovered that he had approved a test pressing of the record made from a damaged master tape—some of the high frequencies were missing. When Young alerted his record company, he discovered that they had already printed 200,000 copies and shipped them around the world. He acknowledged that it was his mistake but insisted on recalling the records; his bill was over $160,000. “I don’t like throwing money around,” he told his father. “But I wasn’t going to have this album circulating around the world in bad quality.” How did Young guarantee that the recalled records wouldn’t leak out? He kept the cases of albums on his ranch—after firing at each box with a rifle.