The music happened here.

A songwriting retreat, a Stockholm recording studio and the Brighton stage connect three parts of ABBA’s breakthrough song.

The bellfoundry where AC/DC’s opening toll was cast, tuned and recorded before becoming a familiar piece of rock theatre.

Adele and Paul Epworth’s demo retains its force through recording work at Eastcote and Tom Elmhirst’s mix at Metropolis.

Amy Winehouse and Tony Bennett’s Abbey Road duet: a shared recording room, a familiar microphone and a final session preserved on film.

Early Sheffield demos, rural Lincolnshire recording, live mixing in London and a Liverpool cover photograph surround Arctic Monkeys’ debut.

Two nights in a Los Angeles church became a live gospel album and, decades later, a film of the same performances.

A loop of tape in France and final studio work in Miami explain the recording behind Saturday Night Fever’s familiar song.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s video makes the Louvre’s art, ceremonial staircases and courtyard part of its performance space.

Billie Eilish and Finneas’s family-home recording setting gives bad guy an intimate starting point before its mix reaches a wider audience.

A London studio supplied the debut album’s recorded sound; a Thames-side watermill supplied its cover setting. The two places have different roles in Black Sabbath’s first album.

Romford supplied the front-cover race photograph; Walthamstow supplied Paul Postle’s photographs of the band for the packaging.

Julien Temple’s video takes Blur through Trafalgar Square and onto Primrose Hill, giving the single a filmed London setting.

An archived ticket and the official concert record return a famous electric performance to its Manchester venue.

The 25 July 1965 performance returned to Festival Field through an original programme and a contextual history of Newport’s festival sites.

From an apartment on West Fourth Street to a cold walk on Jones Street: the small Greenwich Village geography of Dylan’s album sleeve.

A Chelsea base and the Basing Street recording sessions locate Exodus in London, while the album’s later reinterpretation reveals the continuing life of its session tapes.

The London theatre where Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band made their European concert debut, preserved in a later film and live album.

Carole King and Lou Adler remember the preparation, players and deliberately simple production of Tapestry at A&M.

Follow Chuck Berry’s song from its Chicago recording site to his performance at JPL during the 1989 Voyager 2 Neptune celebration.

The directors’ account of choosing Studland Bay, and Coldplay’s explanation of how a beach walk became the finished video.

Conway, Henson, Electric Lady, Capitol and Gang form the production geography of Daft Punk’s album, with musicians, orchestral sessions and mixing kept distinct.

The London concert where Bowie ended the Ziggy and Spiders show, rather than his own performing career.

A Schöneberg home, a nearby café and Hansa’s recording rooms: separate settings within Bowie’s Berlin life.

Trident tape boxes and a Heddon Street doorstep reveal two kinds of making behind Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album.

Logic Studios in Milan and Puk in Denmark provide contrasting settings for Depeche Mode’s Violator sessions.

The New York nightclub debut that Mary Wilson remembered as a glamorous, crowded encounter with a different audience.

A childhood memory takes written form on a touring bus and becomes a 1971 recording at Nashville’s RCA Studio B.

The Eagles’ album moves between Los Angeles and Miami recording rooms before a Beverly Hills hotel becomes its cover image.

The small West Hollywood club where a piano trio made Elton John’s American debut on 25 August 1970.

A residential French studio where lyrics arrived at night, music followed in the morning and the band set up in the dining room.

The Memphis session behind That’s All Right, and the radio response that carried the recording beyond the room.

The Las Vegas engagement that turned a hotel showroom into a central Elvis performance and recording site.

A Honolulu arena becomes the source of a satellite concert, with rehearsal, live transmission and later broadcasts kept distinct.

Why Ken Caillat took Christine McVie’s intimate piano song into Zellerbach Auditorium while making Rumours.

The studio concert that brought five Fleetwood Mac musicians back together and renewed an earlier collaboration with USC.

The Foo Fighters record at Dave Grohl’s garage, try mixing at Chalice, then return to the home setting before mastering at The Lodge.

The Copa Room residency behind Sinatra’s live album, with Count Basie’s orchestra and Quincy Jones shaping the performances.

Wembley’s role in Queen’s Live Aid appearance, kept separate from the headline concerts that followed in 1986.

Green Day’s prepared songs enter a professional Berkeley studio, then reach a festival audience at Woodstock ’94. The anniversary edition preserves both stages of that journey.

An older pop song becomes a Hank Williams signature through a Cincinnati recording and a celebrated Nashville performance.

James Brown’s self-financed Harlem recording connects a working stage, the decisions made for a record, and the Apollo’s long relationship with its performer.

The Monterey County Fairgrounds stage where the Experience brought its London-developed act to the festival audience.

Two prison sets, an audience of inmates and guards, and the live album that made the setting part of the music.

Mitchell’s account follows a song written around a Cretan village into the Hollywood studio where she recorded it for Blue.

The 24 July 2022 Fort Adams performance, its gathering of musicians and the following year’s live album.

Strawberry Studios shaped the album’s sound; data from Arecibo lies behind the scientific graphic adapted for its sleeve.

Kate Bush’s Hammersmith residency and the Pinewood filming of And Dream of Sheep show how a stage production can join live performance, recorded sound and a constructed landscape.

A residential house, a mobile studio and the lobby recording that gave When the Levee Breaks its distinctive drum sound.

Little Richard’s breakthrough recording meets the small New Orleans studio and the engineer who helped capture its performance.

Two London workplaces explain Transformer: Trident’s recording room and the King’s Cross concert from which Mick Rock took its cover.

The free Rio beach concert that concluded the Celebration Tour, documented through the announcement and the city’s event report.

Engineer Bob Olhsson recalls rhythm, strings and the later mixing decisions that shaped Marvin Gaye’s album.

The real Broadway theatre behind Thriller’s cinema sequence, and the 2024 screening that brought the film back to its location.

A solo Toronto performance, the new songs heard there, and Neil Young’s later decision to release the recording from his archive.

Nashville rhythm sessions, London orchestral recording, a California barn and a live Royce Hall performance meet on Harvest.

A headlining festival set that put Nirvana’s past, breakthrough and next album into the same field on one night.

Brian Cannon’s early-morning Soho scene places two passing figures on a real record-shopping street.

Follow the song’s bay-side beginnings in Sausalito, its collaboration and recording in Memphis, and the distinction between the original Stax studio and its museum site.

Electric Lady’s recording room and Sam Wagstaff’s apartment connect the album’s music with Robert Mapplethorpe’s cover photograph.

An empty Roman amphitheatre becomes a concert-film setting, with its stone seating replacing the familiar presence of a crowd.

Morris Hayes’s account of a wet stage, a storm warning and Purple Rain turns a broadcast landmark back into a physical performance.

A Minneapolis benefit concert helps give Purple Rain its anthem, before First Avenue becomes the setting for the film’s musical drama.

Reflection’s recording rooms and a later Athens exhibition connect the making of Murmur with the preservation of its visual history.

Nigel Godrich’s contemporary account of turning a country house into a recording environment for Radiohead.

Recording rooms and a connected painting barn bring music and album imagery into the same Provençal working landscape.

Ray Charles’s duet album moves from the familiar surroundings of RPM to orchestral recording at Warner Bros. and a final mix at Capitol.

Sam Cooke’s live recording joins the Harlem Square Club’s Overtown history with the long delay before the performance reached listeners.

A Manchester hall, an Islington cinema, a Chelmsford prison and a Burton club form the concert sequence preserved on Live ’76.

A free reunion on the Great Lawn connects Simon & Garfunkel’s performance to the care and restoration of New York’s park.

A performance in Mount Morris Park, preserved on film and later brought forward through Questlove’s Summer of Soul.

The Hollywood concerts filmed by Jonathan Demme, followed by the San Francisco cinema where the finished work premiered.

An album made across separate rooms, followed by the filmed performance that brought its collaborators together in upstate New York.

A Los Angeles recording room and a San Diego zoo: the different places behind Pet Sounds’ sound and sleeve.

The Dutch barn, the Californian memories and the Los Angeles sessions behind Holland.

The recording rooms and zebra crossing that gave the Beatles’ last-recorded album its sound, title and public image.

A final public performance above Apple Corps’ London headquarters, with the recording story continuing downstairs at 3 Savile Row.

From Trident’s recording room to the audience-filled promotional film at Twickenham: two London settings for one song.

From a Manhattan hotel to CBS Studio 50: the places behind the Beatles’ first live Ed Sullivan appearance.

Three clubs on Große Freiheit trace the Beatles’ early Hamburg performance geography.

The Liverpool grounds behind Lennon’s remembered place, and the London studio where that memory became a recording.

A photograph of Paul Simonon at New York’s Palladium becomes the centre of a sleeve designed by Ray Lowry.

Tim Pope’s film connects The Cure’s 7 July 2018 Hyde Park anniversary concert with later cinema-sound work at Abbey Road.

Henry Diltz’s brief photographic session turned a downtown Los Angeles hotel window into the Doors’ album title and frame.

A Los Angeles concert preserved on film and multitrack tape, then reconstructed so previously missing songs could rejoin the performance.

Ray Davies links a remembered hospital view with the song’s observer, then explains the practical making behind the imagined scene.

A London studio, a Riviera basement and a Los Angeles finishing room: the places behind an album often reduced to one French address.

Stephen Wright’s exterior photograph became an album image, then helped connect the club with a worldwide audience and fundraising.

The Weeknd’s 2021 halftime show turns a fixed stadium-end set, fabricated skyline and coordinated screens into a performance for both the Tampa crowd and television viewers.

A university concert, a recording intended as a backup and the later recovery of the wider performance.

The difficult Berlin sessions at Hansa and the improvised breakthrough that became One.

The hotel pool, Tony Pike’s screen appearance and one room behind the holiday fantasy in Wham!’s video.

The cable car, separate chalet interiors and exteriors, and the crew’s hotel stay behind the Alpine video.

The Beijing and Guangzhou concerts, the manager’s preparations and the archive revisited decades later.

Willie Nelson’s deliberately spare concept album connects a Garland recording studio with the city’s fiftieth-anniversary tribute.