Special Features

Little is known about the real Tom Waits, and for the better part of his 40-year career, that's what's made him one of the most intriguing singer-songwriters in the game. After emerging in the '70s as a lounge-rat crooner, he wiled out in the '80s, reinventing himself as the comically gruff chronicler of over-the-top underworld characters he's played ever since.

Know how we said Lou Reed invented punk? You might also credit the forever-shirtless force of nature pictured here. Born James Osterberg Jr., this Midwestern misfit picked himself an apt stage name -- think "Pop" as dynamite, not Top 40 music -- and found the perfect band. As leader of the original Stooges, Iggy made three albums of loud, abrasive, audacious rock 'n' roll, inspiring weir

Lou Reed has been rocking since the mid-'60s, when got his start as an in-house songwriter for the budget label Pickwick Records. In 1967, he and the Velvet Underground invented punk with their seminal debut, and after three more albums with that wildly influential band, he ventured off on his own, establishing himself as one of rock's true poets, visionaries and grumps.

A word of advice for those going to see Leonard Cohen in concert: Take a nap before the show, and grab a coffee on the way in. Dude's 78 years old, but he goes for more than three hours, and he spends much of that time down on one knee, adding theatricality to a stage show that would get by on music and lyrics alone.

David Bowie isn't actually a rock 'n' roll Iron Man. He's Iron Men -- plural -- an enigmatic shape-shifter who's played numerous characters since dropping his first album in 1967. Just when you think you know the guy, he morphs into a martian, makes a disco record, tours with Morrissey, pals around with Marilyn Manson or disappears for a decade, as he did following a 2004 heart attack.

As a kid, 22-year-old rocker Tyler Bryant spent plenty of time listening to the music of Jeff Beck, so it must've been quite a thrill when the classic rock legend tapped him and his band, the Shakedown, as tour openers. It must have been an even bigger thrill when Bryant began guesting with the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer during his headlining set each night.

Yep, Taylor Swift wrote today's mystery lyrics: "Bring on all the pretenders / One day we will be remembered" They come from her song 'Love Live,' which can be found on her 2010 album 'Speak Now.' It's the final song on her third LP, and it plays like either a graduation-day sign-off (crowns and trophies are thrown around) or a medieval fantasy (there's talk of fighting dragons)... Read

Punk legends the Dead Kennedys had been broken up for more than a decade when former members East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride and D. H. Peligro noticed that the band's label, Alternative Tentacles, had been shorting them on record royalties to the benefit of frontman Jello Biafra, who also just happened to run the record label. What followed was a very un-punk lawsuit over record royalties and publish

Several years after the 1994 suicide of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, his widow, Courtney Love, formed a business partnership called Nirvana L.L.C. with surviving members Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl to oversee future uses of the band's music. But Love soon filed suit against the two, claiming that they were merely minor sidemen in Nirvana, that she joined the partnership under duress, and that