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Duane Eddy, one of rock’s first guitar heroes and an idol of George Harrison, Jeff Beck, John Fogerty, Dan Auerbach, and many other guitar-slingers who followed, died Sunday at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. He was 86. A source close to the family confirmed Eddy’s death to Rolling Stone.

Released in 1958, Eddy’s “Rebel-’Rouser” wasn’t the first instrumental hit, but it was one of the most arresting. Arriving just a few years into the birth of rock & roll, “Rebel-’Rouser” announced that the raucous new genre was...

Duane Eddy, the twangy, Grammy-winning rock guitarist who had Top 10 instrumental hits including “Rebel Rouser” and “Forty Miles of Bad Road” and scored with a version of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn,” died Wednesday of cancer at a hospital in Franklin, Tn, his wife Deed Abbate told The Associated Press. He had turned 86 last week.

Eddy, who influenced generations of guitar legends including George Harrison, John Fogerty, Bruce Springsteen, Ritchie Blackmore, Mark Knopfler and The Ventures’ Don Wilson, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Born on April 26, 1938, in Corning, NY, Eddy began playing guitar at age 5. He moved at 13 with his family to Arizona, where he met local DJ Lee Hazlewood, and the two would share a long, fruitful association. Eddy first recorded with Jimmy Delbridge as Duane & Jimmy in 1955, and his debut single as a solo act to dent the charts came three years...

By Todd Garbarini

The 1960s and 1970s had their share of genre films that were popular with audiences. One of the most prolific was the biker film which, along with the horror film, were showcased to many audiences through the beloved and nearly extinct drive-in theatres. The genre reached a level of respectability in 1969 with the release of Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider which played at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to gross an estimated 160 times its production budget of $375,000. Little wonder why producers and filmmakers alike jumped on the biker film bandwagon. Easy Rider helped put Jack Nicholson on the map following his appearances in Richard Rush’s Hell’s Angels on Wheels (1967) and the then-forthcoming The Rebel Rousers (1970) by Martin B. Cohen.

Lee Madden’s 1970 outing Angel Unchained came on the heels, or tires if you will, of Easy Rider and tells a familiar story that dates back many years,...

Doctor Sleep may be the sequel to The Shining, but it’s still very much its own book: The horrors aren’t just related to the Overlook Hotel and its ghosts, but also (spoiler alert) a roving pack of vampire-like creatures that feast on children who possess that psychic glimmer knowing as the shining. As such, the music for the upcoming film echoes the original Stanley Kubrick adaptation, but brings in its own special air of doom.

Consequence of Sound premiered two tracks scored by The Newton Brothers: “The Overlook,...

Only in the ‘70s, man, only in the ‘70s. Long before PC culture invaded popular entertainment, movies were the haven of the taboo, a safe house for ideas two steps from the norm. Now, many of these films of perversion were relegated to grindhouse theatres and the third feature of a Dusk Til Dawn showing at your local Drive-In. But occasionally a film will crawl towards the mainstream and plop itself down, bawling for attention. The Baby (1973) is one such film, so twisted in conception that it’s hard to believe it would be released in any decade. Except the ‘70s of course, where you could even get the director of a Dirty Harry and a Planet of the Apes flick to helm it.

Distributed by Scotia International in March, The Baby was given a limited theatrical release; and that’s really for the best – as much as the film...

What's Jack Nicholson's secret? Maybe it's the eyebrows, hovering like ironic quotation marks over every line reading. Maybe it's the hooded eyes, which hold the threat of danger or the promise of joviality -- you're never sure which. Same with that sharklike grin. Or maybe it's the voice, which has evolved over the years from a thin sneer to a deep rumble, but is always precisely calibrated to provoke a reaction. Put them all together, and they say: "I am a man to be reckoned with. Ignore me at your peril." Nicholson, who turns 75 on April 22, is often criticized for relying on his bag of tricks, for just showing up and doing Jack Nicholson (though indeed, he often seems to have been hired precisely for that purpose). But he's also capable of burrowing deep into a character, finding his wounded heart, and revealing the ugly truth without fear or vanity.